What Happened
What Happened is a weekly free range of editorial comments on key Berkeley City meetings
to give a flavor of Berkeley and how local meetings tie into the larger world.
Note that not every meeting of the week is covered.
Editorial comments usually close with a book read by the editor in the preceding week.
What Happened is also published as the Activist's Diary in the Berkeley Daily Planet.
to give a flavor of Berkeley and how local meetings tie into the larger world.
Note that not every meeting of the week is covered.
Editorial comments usually close with a book read by the editor in the preceding week.
What Happened is also published as the Activist's Diary in the Berkeley Daily Planet.
January 12, 2023
It has begun. The race for the California State Senate seat is on. Mayor Arreguin will be filling out his dance card in his run for State Senate. Nancy Skinner is termed out. https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Candidates/list.aspx?view=intention&electNav=124
Some rumors have State Senator Nancy Skinner coming back to Berkeley to run for mayor with the rumored reason being her retirement income isn’t enough. The other rumor is that Skinner and Arreguin will be endorsing each other to change places. I hear second hand Sophie Hahn also has her eyes on running for mayor.
Barbara Lee seems to be falling for the lure to run for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, we can expect a feeding frenzy for Lee’s House seat. I hope Lee comes to her senses and finishes out her career in the House rather than going down with a loss in a statewide race and leaving us with a list of unsatisfactory choices to fill her shoes in Congress. Nancy Pelosi endorsed Adam Schiff, but I am hearing from friends they are supporting Katie Porter. Even my out of state sister wanted to talk this week about how great Katie Porter would be as a California Senator.
Age keeps coming into the picture with President Biden who is now 80. (I do support a second Biden term though after reading Amy Klobucher’s book Antitrust I wish she was VP). Barbara Lee is 76. Adam Schiff is 62. Katie Porter is 49.
This is going to be an interesting year of musical chairs as we move to the March 2024 California primary.
I have long speculated that Arreguin’s actions revolved around his next career move. Since the holders of the money to fill the dance card weigh heavily in the real estate industry (including developers/builders/construction), should we expect more compromising sounding language from the dais that does nothing so as not to offend those campaign contributors?
There was a lot of writing from the dais by Arreguin on the appeal of 2065 Kittredge by the union workers at the last City Council meeting. In the end all that language, all those flowery sounding amendments for working and hiring conditions got them nothing. The project developer Bill Shrader with owner CA Student Living Berkeley, LLC of the international Student-Living – CA Ventures walked away with a requirement of only to turn in an affidavit when the building is done of how many union worker’s and local workers within 10 miles actually worked at the job site.
Arreguin’s Hard Hat ordinance of conditions and protections for worker’s, the center of the worker appeal was a referral to the city manager. A lot of what happens at council are referrals that leave the public believing something was actually accomplished, when it is another line on someone’s or some commission’s referral list.
The first test for Arreguin now that the intent to run for State Senate is in the open will be Tuesday evening, February 14 at the regular City Council meeting on Item-13 Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements. The vote from January 17 on affordable housing has to be redone to correct the language. Will Arreguin go for the Taplin-Humbert proposal that gives even bigger discounts through expanded exemptions to the developers than the first round on the affordable housing in lieu mitigation fee or will Arreguin stand with Councilmember Harrison’s 13b. Revised Material and look out for Berkeley’s best interests, eliminating discounts and limiting exemptions?
If you missed or forgot what happened with the first go around on changing the in lieu to being calculated by square feet instead of counted by units, that was summarized in the January 22 Activist’s Diary https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-22/article/50158?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-Jan.-22-2023--Kelly-Hammargren
In case you need a brush up on housing terms, “Housing Buzz Words Explained” can be found here: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-22/article/50157?headline=Housing-Buzz-Words-Explained--Kelly-Hammargren
At the Monday Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meeting Councilmember Kate Harrison informed the group that the results of the Civic Center survey the three top priorities for the Civic Center Park were biodiversity, daylighting the creek (restoring the creek to its natural state) and seating in the park.
Thursday was the Civic Center update to the super commission subcommittee (Arts, Parks, Landmarks and Infrastructure). As all to usual for city meetings, the presentation and slides were not available to the commissioners in advance of the meeting, but they are posted now. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Civic-Center-presentation-design-concepts-Feb2023_0.pdf
The consultants have given up the promenade through the center of the park, but they are still holding on to bulb outs and other narrowing alterations to MLK Jr Way at the Civic Center. So far, they are ignoring that MLK Jr Way is an evacuation route. The consultants were weakly open to daylighting the creek and said they would save existing trees and develop a tree succession plan.
Landmarks Commissioner Finacom’s long list of comments on the Maudelle Shirek Building included that a new single use council chamber was deadly to gaining public support. Instead it should be a flexible multi-purpose room used by council and for other purposes. And, that with so many city and community activities needing meeting space, creating a public policy center as a new program with space should be a flat no. He also suggested adding a kitchen to make the building usable for events.
Parks Commissioner Diehm supported Finacom’s comments and added that she understood that an application for a grant on exploring daylighting the creek had already been submitted. Commissioner Cox nixed the consultants’ suggestion of food trucks and said the city should be supporting local merchants. And while he liked the idea of an amphitheater, the topography is the opposite of a natural grade for an amphitheater.
John Caner pushed a performance center with stage in the park. Wyndy KnoxCarr had questioned how the buildings would be managed. She was also glad to see that the playgrounds for children for younger and older children were together no longer separated.
When it came to my turn, I expressed my disappointment that there is not more of a connection of the Civic Center to the downtown and expanding the potential for festival space into the downtown. I also commented that so often consultants have a misconception of biodiversity and think that bringing in plants from China and the Mediterranean make it a diverse setting when what is needed to create and restore intact ecosystems is at least 70% native plants. I was surprised by the number of commenters who followed me on native plants.
Lawrence Abbott challenged the consultants to reach out to the California Native Plant Society, stating that everything starts with the plants and if nonnative plants are used they might as well be plastic because insects can’t eat the nonnative plants and the entire ecosystem collapses.
At the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on Wednesday, Director Ferris reported that the T1 funds were short $7 million to $8 million to complete the already approved projects. I asked what happened in the intervening eight days, when Ferris reported to City Council at the special 4 pm meeting on January 31, that the T1 funding gap was $3.2 million to $4.5 million. Ferris said rebuilding the African American Holistic Center made the difference. At the Council meeting Ferris reported that the cost of rebuilding would be maybe $1 million more than a remodel.
There were many commenters at the T1 special Council meeting that the City was not engaging with the African American community. It certainly appears that with a plan to tear down and rebuild this should be revisited. With this major change in the cost estimate of constructing rather than reuse remodeling, the African American Holistic Center faces more postponements.
How the 2018 ballot Measure P funds for homeless services, are used was the subject of questioning at the Budget and Finance Committee by Harrison. She started with how does a sprinkler system in old City Hall (Maudelle Shirek Building) fit into Measure P funds when the homeless are sheltered there for a very limited time of the year. Councilmember Kesarwani asked if there was a strategic plan (there isn’t) and what it costs to shelter a person and get a person into permanent housing.
Everyone can feel better now that the Here There homeless encampment on Adeline is closed. We don’t have to face the failures of our society as we drive by and it looks better for the musical chairs mentioned earlier, but the real problem exposed at the Budget and Finance Committee is that no one representing the City of Berkeley administration present at the Budget meeting including Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager, Peter Radu, Assistant City Manager, Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health Housing and Community Services and Joshua Jacobs from Health, Housing and Community Services seemed to have any idea of how many people are served with Measure P funds.
The projected expenditures for FY 2023 Measure P funds are $25,482,864. As I called around to check if I was on the right track that there were no reports of persons placed and for how long, I learned that one of the first things approved by the Homeless Services Panel of Experts and approved by Council was spending P funds for housing families and children and that the program was never implemented.
The other piece missing is when homeless people are housed, how many end up back on the street without shelter and how soon does that happen?
Reading meeting agendas as I do for the Activist’s Calendar and attending as many city meetings as I can to report back to you, the Homeless Services Panel of Experts which is supposed to oversee Measure P funds seems to be a pass through for how the city administration has decided to allocate the funds. What I think we should all know is how many individuals were helped by the various programs, how many were moved off the street, how many were placed in housing and how many of those placed are still in housing at six months, one year, two years and five years. And when it comes to children, being homeless as a child is the path to being homeless as an adult.
The Zoning Adjustment Board had only three items on the agenda, no big projects. They all passed on consent and the meeting ended at 7:41 pm. The big multi-unit projects including 2190 Shattuck, the 25 story project at the Walgreens site come this week at the Design Review Committee.
The book finished this week was The Complete Guide to MEMORY: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind by Richard Restak, MD. It was filled with memory exercises and the recitation of brain science that didn’t strike my interest. I almost sent it back to the library unfinished, but kept reading in the hope that the book would get better and it did.
In the last two chapters Restak veered off course from memory exercises into politics and the use of disinformation, misinformation and the corrosive effects of falsifications on individual and collective memory even quoting George Orwell, “Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.”
Restak followed Orwell with comments on Russia and China and the drive to create a common vision of the past and future, to suppress alternative points of view and then moved on to the U.S. South, how history taught in school, the reported in the media and how this embeds as true in memory.
This brings us to what is going on right now in Florida to shutter access to books and classes on Black history.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders dipped into the buzz words to stoke right/conservative fears and anxieties in her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address. She infused her speech with “critical race theory,” “WOKE fantasies,” “indoctrination,” “radical left,” and references to transgender persons with Democrats “can’t define a woman is” all while touting Republicans stand for freedom and normalcy against crazy. Crazy seemed to be a better definition of her own view and speech. Banning books, censuring classes, and taking away the right of women to control their own bodies doesn’t sound like freedom to me.
My father used to quote Tip O’Neil, always tell the truth, then you don’t have to remember what you said yesterday. Telling the truth doesn’t seem to matter much anymore as new lies replace the old ones. The memory from yesterday is erased and filled with a new version today.
Restak did not get into how the constant lying and replacing one story with another from “the former guy” fits into memory, but for improving memory he likened it to exercise. Stop depending on our devices and focus. His advice on alcohol is if you are still imbibing at 65 stop which he followed with citing studies on the impact of alcohol on heart rate, irregular heart rhythms and blood pressure and finished with alcohol is toxic to the brain.
It has begun. The race for the California State Senate seat is on. Mayor Arreguin will be filling out his dance card in his run for State Senate. Nancy Skinner is termed out. https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Candidates/list.aspx?view=intention&electNav=124
Some rumors have State Senator Nancy Skinner coming back to Berkeley to run for mayor with the rumored reason being her retirement income isn’t enough. The other rumor is that Skinner and Arreguin will be endorsing each other to change places. I hear second hand Sophie Hahn also has her eyes on running for mayor.
Barbara Lee seems to be falling for the lure to run for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, we can expect a feeding frenzy for Lee’s House seat. I hope Lee comes to her senses and finishes out her career in the House rather than going down with a loss in a statewide race and leaving us with a list of unsatisfactory choices to fill her shoes in Congress. Nancy Pelosi endorsed Adam Schiff, but I am hearing from friends they are supporting Katie Porter. Even my out of state sister wanted to talk this week about how great Katie Porter would be as a California Senator.
Age keeps coming into the picture with President Biden who is now 80. (I do support a second Biden term though after reading Amy Klobucher’s book Antitrust I wish she was VP). Barbara Lee is 76. Adam Schiff is 62. Katie Porter is 49.
This is going to be an interesting year of musical chairs as we move to the March 2024 California primary.
I have long speculated that Arreguin’s actions revolved around his next career move. Since the holders of the money to fill the dance card weigh heavily in the real estate industry (including developers/builders/construction), should we expect more compromising sounding language from the dais that does nothing so as not to offend those campaign contributors?
There was a lot of writing from the dais by Arreguin on the appeal of 2065 Kittredge by the union workers at the last City Council meeting. In the end all that language, all those flowery sounding amendments for working and hiring conditions got them nothing. The project developer Bill Shrader with owner CA Student Living Berkeley, LLC of the international Student-Living – CA Ventures walked away with a requirement of only to turn in an affidavit when the building is done of how many union worker’s and local workers within 10 miles actually worked at the job site.
Arreguin’s Hard Hat ordinance of conditions and protections for worker’s, the center of the worker appeal was a referral to the city manager. A lot of what happens at council are referrals that leave the public believing something was actually accomplished, when it is another line on someone’s or some commission’s referral list.
The first test for Arreguin now that the intent to run for State Senate is in the open will be Tuesday evening, February 14 at the regular City Council meeting on Item-13 Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements. The vote from January 17 on affordable housing has to be redone to correct the language. Will Arreguin go for the Taplin-Humbert proposal that gives even bigger discounts through expanded exemptions to the developers than the first round on the affordable housing in lieu mitigation fee or will Arreguin stand with Councilmember Harrison’s 13b. Revised Material and look out for Berkeley’s best interests, eliminating discounts and limiting exemptions?
If you missed or forgot what happened with the first go around on changing the in lieu to being calculated by square feet instead of counted by units, that was summarized in the January 22 Activist’s Diary https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-22/article/50158?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-Jan.-22-2023--Kelly-Hammargren
In case you need a brush up on housing terms, “Housing Buzz Words Explained” can be found here: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-22/article/50157?headline=Housing-Buzz-Words-Explained--Kelly-Hammargren
At the Monday Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meeting Councilmember Kate Harrison informed the group that the results of the Civic Center survey the three top priorities for the Civic Center Park were biodiversity, daylighting the creek (restoring the creek to its natural state) and seating in the park.
Thursday was the Civic Center update to the super commission subcommittee (Arts, Parks, Landmarks and Infrastructure). As all to usual for city meetings, the presentation and slides were not available to the commissioners in advance of the meeting, but they are posted now. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Civic-Center-presentation-design-concepts-Feb2023_0.pdf
The consultants have given up the promenade through the center of the park, but they are still holding on to bulb outs and other narrowing alterations to MLK Jr Way at the Civic Center. So far, they are ignoring that MLK Jr Way is an evacuation route. The consultants were weakly open to daylighting the creek and said they would save existing trees and develop a tree succession plan.
Landmarks Commissioner Finacom’s long list of comments on the Maudelle Shirek Building included that a new single use council chamber was deadly to gaining public support. Instead it should be a flexible multi-purpose room used by council and for other purposes. And, that with so many city and community activities needing meeting space, creating a public policy center as a new program with space should be a flat no. He also suggested adding a kitchen to make the building usable for events.
Parks Commissioner Diehm supported Finacom’s comments and added that she understood that an application for a grant on exploring daylighting the creek had already been submitted. Commissioner Cox nixed the consultants’ suggestion of food trucks and said the city should be supporting local merchants. And while he liked the idea of an amphitheater, the topography is the opposite of a natural grade for an amphitheater.
John Caner pushed a performance center with stage in the park. Wyndy KnoxCarr had questioned how the buildings would be managed. She was also glad to see that the playgrounds for children for younger and older children were together no longer separated.
When it came to my turn, I expressed my disappointment that there is not more of a connection of the Civic Center to the downtown and expanding the potential for festival space into the downtown. I also commented that so often consultants have a misconception of biodiversity and think that bringing in plants from China and the Mediterranean make it a diverse setting when what is needed to create and restore intact ecosystems is at least 70% native plants. I was surprised by the number of commenters who followed me on native plants.
Lawrence Abbott challenged the consultants to reach out to the California Native Plant Society, stating that everything starts with the plants and if nonnative plants are used they might as well be plastic because insects can’t eat the nonnative plants and the entire ecosystem collapses.
At the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on Wednesday, Director Ferris reported that the T1 funds were short $7 million to $8 million to complete the already approved projects. I asked what happened in the intervening eight days, when Ferris reported to City Council at the special 4 pm meeting on January 31, that the T1 funding gap was $3.2 million to $4.5 million. Ferris said rebuilding the African American Holistic Center made the difference. At the Council meeting Ferris reported that the cost of rebuilding would be maybe $1 million more than a remodel.
There were many commenters at the T1 special Council meeting that the City was not engaging with the African American community. It certainly appears that with a plan to tear down and rebuild this should be revisited. With this major change in the cost estimate of constructing rather than reuse remodeling, the African American Holistic Center faces more postponements.
How the 2018 ballot Measure P funds for homeless services, are used was the subject of questioning at the Budget and Finance Committee by Harrison. She started with how does a sprinkler system in old City Hall (Maudelle Shirek Building) fit into Measure P funds when the homeless are sheltered there for a very limited time of the year. Councilmember Kesarwani asked if there was a strategic plan (there isn’t) and what it costs to shelter a person and get a person into permanent housing.
Everyone can feel better now that the Here There homeless encampment on Adeline is closed. We don’t have to face the failures of our society as we drive by and it looks better for the musical chairs mentioned earlier, but the real problem exposed at the Budget and Finance Committee is that no one representing the City of Berkeley administration present at the Budget meeting including Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager, Peter Radu, Assistant City Manager, Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health Housing and Community Services and Joshua Jacobs from Health, Housing and Community Services seemed to have any idea of how many people are served with Measure P funds.
The projected expenditures for FY 2023 Measure P funds are $25,482,864. As I called around to check if I was on the right track that there were no reports of persons placed and for how long, I learned that one of the first things approved by the Homeless Services Panel of Experts and approved by Council was spending P funds for housing families and children and that the program was never implemented.
The other piece missing is when homeless people are housed, how many end up back on the street without shelter and how soon does that happen?
Reading meeting agendas as I do for the Activist’s Calendar and attending as many city meetings as I can to report back to you, the Homeless Services Panel of Experts which is supposed to oversee Measure P funds seems to be a pass through for how the city administration has decided to allocate the funds. What I think we should all know is how many individuals were helped by the various programs, how many were moved off the street, how many were placed in housing and how many of those placed are still in housing at six months, one year, two years and five years. And when it comes to children, being homeless as a child is the path to being homeless as an adult.
The Zoning Adjustment Board had only three items on the agenda, no big projects. They all passed on consent and the meeting ended at 7:41 pm. The big multi-unit projects including 2190 Shattuck, the 25 story project at the Walgreens site come this week at the Design Review Committee.
The book finished this week was The Complete Guide to MEMORY: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind by Richard Restak, MD. It was filled with memory exercises and the recitation of brain science that didn’t strike my interest. I almost sent it back to the library unfinished, but kept reading in the hope that the book would get better and it did.
In the last two chapters Restak veered off course from memory exercises into politics and the use of disinformation, misinformation and the corrosive effects of falsifications on individual and collective memory even quoting George Orwell, “Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.”
Restak followed Orwell with comments on Russia and China and the drive to create a common vision of the past and future, to suppress alternative points of view and then moved on to the U.S. South, how history taught in school, the reported in the media and how this embeds as true in memory.
This brings us to what is going on right now in Florida to shutter access to books and classes on Black history.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders dipped into the buzz words to stoke right/conservative fears and anxieties in her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address. She infused her speech with “critical race theory,” “WOKE fantasies,” “indoctrination,” “radical left,” and references to transgender persons with Democrats “can’t define a woman is” all while touting Republicans stand for freedom and normalcy against crazy. Crazy seemed to be a better definition of her own view and speech. Banning books, censuring classes, and taking away the right of women to control their own bodies doesn’t sound like freedom to me.
My father used to quote Tip O’Neil, always tell the truth, then you don’t have to remember what you said yesterday. Telling the truth doesn’t seem to matter much anymore as new lies replace the old ones. The memory from yesterday is erased and filled with a new version today.
Restak did not get into how the constant lying and replacing one story with another from “the former guy” fits into memory, but for improving memory he likened it to exercise. Stop depending on our devices and focus. His advice on alcohol is if you are still imbibing at 65 stop which he followed with citing studies on the impact of alcohol on heart rate, irregular heart rhythms and blood pressure and finished with alcohol is toxic to the brain.
January 5, 2023
In another time, pre-pandemic, I would be standing in line at the Shattuck Cinemas to see “All That Breathes” the Academy Award nominated documentary film of two brothers in New Delhi who rescue black kite birds. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/2/all_that_breathes_shaunak_sen
The ten theatres with the murals so many of us love are closed and on the demolition block to make way for 2065 Kittredge. In place of the Shattuck Cinemas once the economic engine of the downtown with over 300,000 patrons annually from the entire Bay Area and beyond, will stand student housing. It is a development many will applaud with 187 units (including four live/work and nine very low income units) stacked into eight stories with 4,993 square feet of commercial space at street level and 43 parking spaces underground. The nine very low income units qualify the project for a density bonus and added height and California Senate Bill 330 limits review to five meetings including the appeal on January 31 to City Council.
The appeal to City Council was not brought by unhappy neighbors protesting the planting of an oversize tower lording over their little houses. This appeal was brought by Adams, Broadwell, Joseph and Cardozo on behalf of East Bay Residents for Responsible Development. East Bay Residents for Responsible Development are our local skilled and trained workforce, union workers like plumbers, electricians, and sheet metal workers and local residents seeking to complete apprenticeship training. They were not trying to stop the project, they were asking for the hiring of local union trade workers, healthcare, apprenticeships and safe working conditions. You can read the complaint in pages 63 – 80 https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-01-31%20Item%2021%20ZAB%20Appeal%202065%20Kittredge%20Street.pdf
The applicant for 2065 Kittredge is William “Bill” Shrader (developer/builder) with CA Student Living Berkeley, LLC as the property owner which is Student Living – CA Ventures, an international investor in student housing based in Chicago with European headquarters in London and offices in Milan, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The big investors have come to town.
There was a lot that came to light. Bill Shrader, who has several active projects in Berkeley, said he ran an open shop and less than 40% of workers were union. Healthcare coverage is not provided.
The Hard Hat ordinance authored by Mayor Arreguin with councilmembers Bartlett, Hahn and Taplin as supporters which was central to the complaint as the conditions sought by the workers is so far a big nothing. The ordinance described in the September 20, 2022 City Council agenda as “Helping Achieve Responsible Development with Healthcare and Apprenticeship Training Standards (HARD HATS) Referral” languishes somewhere in the bowels of city administration as a referral to the City Manager and the City Attorney. It is a referral likely to wither and die with big money on the plate. At the very least it is months possibly years away from turning into legislation (local law).
The appellants visited seven worksites in Berkeley and sent photos of findings of unsafe conditions to the City for action. While it was acknowledged at the hearing that the City received the photos and is acting on the unsafe work conditions, the public was given no information as to the sites or the extent of the conditions.
The City Council voted unanimously to dismiss the appeal and approve 2065 Kittredge with Arreguin’s “modifications from the floor.” The added conditions sounded as though the issues from the unions were recognized. Actually, Shrader received a green light to proceed. Shrader only has to consider the feasibility of an apprenticeship program, only consider making contributions to healthcare, and make a good faith effort to hire residents living within 10 miles of the project. The only binding modification that Arreguin added and council approved is for Shrader to send an affidavit (report) after all the work is done and the building is ready for the students to move in of the number of union workers and local workers within 10 miles of the project who actually worked at the Kittredge job site.
The other big news of the week was the Department of Housing and Community Development Division of Housing Policy Development (HCD) rejected the Berkeley Housing Element for the years 2023 – 2031. The contract with the consultants Rami + Associates hired for $540,000 to “perform professional planning services” for the Housing Element doesn’t expire until May 15, 2023, so maybe they can still pull it out of the rejection bag.
The plan sent to HCD was based on an Environmental Impact Report for adding 15,001 new dwelling units, 6,067 more than the assigned 8,934. In all of the maps and charts in the Housing Element sent to HCD, not one of them showed the fault line, running through the hills, the slide areas and the high fire hazard zones where we shouldn’t be adding more housing. Nor was there any mapping of liquefaction and flood plains. These things ought to be of higher consideration after the atmospheric river put the hillside and at least one house on the move.
The day before the HCD letter arrived the January 29, 2023 San Francisco Chronicle edition published back in section E page 7, “Population in Bay Area, state continues to decline. The entire Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) and mandate for the updated Housing Element is based on enormous population growth. There is a major disconnect between the facts on the ground of declining population which is a good thing and HCD growth projections.
The January 30, 2023 letter from HCD is finally posted for the public to read on the City Housing Element Update webpage by clicking on the words “formal comments.” There is the call for upzoning (increasing density with multi-unit projects) in high resource areas (wealthy neighborhoods) and more importantly the housing element “…should include additional actions beyond housing improvements such as infrastructure,
streetscapes, active transportation, community amenities, parks, and other
community improvements...” https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
It is the call for parks that I love. If we are going to add more people or even if we don’t, parks rejuvenate us. One of my favorite books An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong is #6 on the SF Chronicle bestsellers list. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer has been on the SF best seller list for months. These are wonderful books about nature. People love nature. Parks filled with birds and butterflies bring the awesome world around us right to us. Strawberry Creek Park is a magnate for people. Just imagine how lovely the Civic Center Park could be with restoring Strawberry Creek to its natural state (daylighting).
For all the bad news, the HCD rejection there is opportunity here. We should be adding and enhancing our parks.
There are times and places for entertainment. We can do a lot more with taking advantage of the BART Plaza and downtown for festivals. The times Shattuck Avenue has been closed to traffic and open for events, it was filled with people making activating the street a real thing.
And it isn’t just parks, we have our own part in nature by making connections with creating habitat for birds and butterflies where ever we live. Go back to the January 29 Activist’s Diary and read Erin Diehm’s gardening directions steps 1 to 5. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-28/article/50165?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-Jan.-29--Kelly-Hammargren
In case you missed it, at the Community for a Cultural Civic Center on January 30th, former mayor Tom Bates suggested that since the Civic Center buildings (old city hall-Maudelle Shirik and the Veterans Building) are in need of millions of dollars of seismic upgrade, maybe the city should give the buildings to UC.
In the “go to meeting” of the week, the Monday Agenda and Rules Committee with the Droste proposals, one to limit public comment at City Council meetings and the other to limit legislation to one item per year per each councilmember, Arreguin kept the attendees hanging on for nearly two hours until 4:20 pm. That is when Arreguin finally said he opposed former Councilmember Droste’s measure to limit public comment at city meetings. He wasn’t even sure if it was legal. After public comment Arreguin and Vice Mayor Bartlett voted to make a negative recommendation to Council on the Droste public comment proposal.
Another important statement at the meeting was by Todd Darling who described South Berkeley as a “pin cushion of projects,” consultants as a rubber stamp for the Planning Department and the need for a better process. That the Planning Department which is dependent on developer fees selects consultants who go along with developers wishes and intentions and this is not in the public interest.
The Droste proposal on legislation will come back again. The proposal to add Youth to the Climate and Environment Commissions will show up at a future Council meeting with three options. Arreguin and Bartlett were not in favor of allowing BUSD making the appointments citing BUSD has not been filling all the vacant commission spots. What is the saying? “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” I am for BUSD making the appointments not council. Council already has nine spots.
The Commission on Disability has only two commissioners and seven open spots. We need a robust Commission on Disability with the challenges impacting the disabled community in street redesign. As stated at one of the many meetings on the Hopkins corridor Plan, there are at least as many disabled persons as bicyclists.
Pete Buttegieg was making the rounds this last week on pedestrian deaths. In one interview he noted, pedestrian deaths increased after the implementation of Vision Zero in Los Angeles. Vision Zero is supposed to eliminate traffic deaths through narrowing streets with road diets, bulb outs, bike lanes and such. https://www.fastcompany.com/90841997/this-is-a-preventable-crisis-pete-buttigieg-on-spending-800-million-to-eliminate-traffic-deaths
In the interview I caught, Buttegieg skirted commenting on vehicle design. I suppose to avoid giving the GOP more bait with adding SUVs and light trucks to their list of threats, “they (Democrats) are coming for your guns and gas stoves.”
Next time you look at an SUV or truck compare that to a car. It is that high front end that restricts visibility and hits people in the chest. These vehicles come with a deadly cost. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/07/27/study-americas-suv-jag-spurred-pedestrian-death-surge/
My own opinion is evolving as a pedestrian and a driver following the furor over the Hopkins Corridor Plan. I had a bunch of errands to run for a friend sick with COVID (now is not the time to skip that N95 mask) and drove up Hopkins from Gilman to Sutter. Hopkins is already narrow and the state of moderate disrepair slows traffic.
I made a third trip at dusk to pick up Paxlovid from Kaiser Oakland and drove back after dark on Telegraph then Shattuck. The street lighting high above the tree canopy doesn’t do much for pedestrians nearly all dressed in black. Only one cyclist of the handful had a bike light and that was in the front, not the back.
I am coming to the point where I do not believe bike lanes on busy streets reduces injuries and fatalities. In fact, bike lanes seem to give the bicyclist a false unwarranted sense of safety. That is not what the consultants, road diet enthusiasts and bicyclists what to hear.
Politicians love newly repaved streets and of course all the repaving and redesign keeps the engineers, repaving companies and transportation administration happy. It also quiets complaining residents. If you want to speed up vehicle traffic, increase traffic deaths, then the way to do it is repave the streets. If you want more people to die in an emergency then do what Paradise, California did, put evacuation routes on a road diet.
I’d like to go back to the pandemic slow streets. Maybe put an island in the middle of Monterey at Hopkins. Otherwise fix the potholes and leave the rest alone. There are plenty of other ways to spend taxpayer money. And repairing ecosystems sits higher on my priority list.
Not so long ago, a friend sent the link to the article “Addressing Climate Change Will Not Save the Planet” by Christopher Ketcham in the Intercept. Ketcham is correct. Climate change was not the cause of 69% of total wildlife between 1970 and 2018. That was us. https://theintercept.com/2022/12/03/climate-biodiversity-green-energy/
The cause of the biodiversity crisis, more aptly described as the biodiversity apocalypse is deforestation, overgrazing of livestock, monocrop agriculture, megafauna kill-off, soil degradation, habitat fragmentation, pollution, open pit and mountain top mining, depleted fresh water, toxification of rainfall, destruction of ecosystems. The constant is a dysfunctional system of perpetual growth of economies and population.
Warren M. Hern, physician, anthropologist, epidemiologist, writes that the earth cannot be saved without identifying the disease process, the diagnosis and that is Homo Ecophagus, “the man who devours the ecosystem.”
Homo Ecophagus: A Deep Diagnosis to Save the Earth is not the kind of book you will find on any shelf in Governor Ron DeSantis’ Florida where anything that might make a child uncomfortable or challenge the thinking of college students like classes on race must be removed and censured.
There is a lot in Hern’s book as he lays out how he reached his diagnosis of the disease process. Hern describes the harsh truths we wish to deny. The book is also filled with beautiful photographs, charts and stories of his travels to remote villages in South America and hiking in the Colorado wilderness.
Hern describes the tension between denial and the diagnosis, the wanting to turn away from the facts. The diagnosis is grim, humans as a cancer devouring the planet, but not hopeless if we accept the urgency and choose to act with immediacy.
Douglas Tallamy gives hope too. There is a challenge here, restoring biodiversity, restoring ecosystems. Joining the Homegrown National Park is a movement that can bring endless pleasure in the amazing world around us. Will we grab it?
The psychology professor in the nursing program in my college classes, lectured endlessly on the capacity for denial. I never believed her.
After graduation, I remember vividly as a young nurse standing in the room when the physician walked in to give the results of surgery to one of my assigned patients. It was 1970 three years before the first CT scanner was installed in the U.S. In 1970 surgeons performed “exploratory” surgery. The physician told my patient he was sorry, she had an aggressive cancer that had spread. There was nothing he could do, it was inoperable. It was terrible news, a death sentence. After the doctor left the room. My patient turned to me and said, “Isn’t it wonderful, my doctor told me I am going to be just fine.”
In another time, pre-pandemic, I would be standing in line at the Shattuck Cinemas to see “All That Breathes” the Academy Award nominated documentary film of two brothers in New Delhi who rescue black kite birds. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/2/all_that_breathes_shaunak_sen
The ten theatres with the murals so many of us love are closed and on the demolition block to make way for 2065 Kittredge. In place of the Shattuck Cinemas once the economic engine of the downtown with over 300,000 patrons annually from the entire Bay Area and beyond, will stand student housing. It is a development many will applaud with 187 units (including four live/work and nine very low income units) stacked into eight stories with 4,993 square feet of commercial space at street level and 43 parking spaces underground. The nine very low income units qualify the project for a density bonus and added height and California Senate Bill 330 limits review to five meetings including the appeal on January 31 to City Council.
The appeal to City Council was not brought by unhappy neighbors protesting the planting of an oversize tower lording over their little houses. This appeal was brought by Adams, Broadwell, Joseph and Cardozo on behalf of East Bay Residents for Responsible Development. East Bay Residents for Responsible Development are our local skilled and trained workforce, union workers like plumbers, electricians, and sheet metal workers and local residents seeking to complete apprenticeship training. They were not trying to stop the project, they were asking for the hiring of local union trade workers, healthcare, apprenticeships and safe working conditions. You can read the complaint in pages 63 – 80 https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-01-31%20Item%2021%20ZAB%20Appeal%202065%20Kittredge%20Street.pdf
The applicant for 2065 Kittredge is William “Bill” Shrader (developer/builder) with CA Student Living Berkeley, LLC as the property owner which is Student Living – CA Ventures, an international investor in student housing based in Chicago with European headquarters in London and offices in Milan, Barcelona and Amsterdam. The big investors have come to town.
There was a lot that came to light. Bill Shrader, who has several active projects in Berkeley, said he ran an open shop and less than 40% of workers were union. Healthcare coverage is not provided.
The Hard Hat ordinance authored by Mayor Arreguin with councilmembers Bartlett, Hahn and Taplin as supporters which was central to the complaint as the conditions sought by the workers is so far a big nothing. The ordinance described in the September 20, 2022 City Council agenda as “Helping Achieve Responsible Development with Healthcare and Apprenticeship Training Standards (HARD HATS) Referral” languishes somewhere in the bowels of city administration as a referral to the City Manager and the City Attorney. It is a referral likely to wither and die with big money on the plate. At the very least it is months possibly years away from turning into legislation (local law).
The appellants visited seven worksites in Berkeley and sent photos of findings of unsafe conditions to the City for action. While it was acknowledged at the hearing that the City received the photos and is acting on the unsafe work conditions, the public was given no information as to the sites or the extent of the conditions.
The City Council voted unanimously to dismiss the appeal and approve 2065 Kittredge with Arreguin’s “modifications from the floor.” The added conditions sounded as though the issues from the unions were recognized. Actually, Shrader received a green light to proceed. Shrader only has to consider the feasibility of an apprenticeship program, only consider making contributions to healthcare, and make a good faith effort to hire residents living within 10 miles of the project. The only binding modification that Arreguin added and council approved is for Shrader to send an affidavit (report) after all the work is done and the building is ready for the students to move in of the number of union workers and local workers within 10 miles of the project who actually worked at the Kittredge job site.
The other big news of the week was the Department of Housing and Community Development Division of Housing Policy Development (HCD) rejected the Berkeley Housing Element for the years 2023 – 2031. The contract with the consultants Rami + Associates hired for $540,000 to “perform professional planning services” for the Housing Element doesn’t expire until May 15, 2023, so maybe they can still pull it out of the rejection bag.
The plan sent to HCD was based on an Environmental Impact Report for adding 15,001 new dwelling units, 6,067 more than the assigned 8,934. In all of the maps and charts in the Housing Element sent to HCD, not one of them showed the fault line, running through the hills, the slide areas and the high fire hazard zones where we shouldn’t be adding more housing. Nor was there any mapping of liquefaction and flood plains. These things ought to be of higher consideration after the atmospheric river put the hillside and at least one house on the move.
The day before the HCD letter arrived the January 29, 2023 San Francisco Chronicle edition published back in section E page 7, “Population in Bay Area, state continues to decline. The entire Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) and mandate for the updated Housing Element is based on enormous population growth. There is a major disconnect between the facts on the ground of declining population which is a good thing and HCD growth projections.
The January 30, 2023 letter from HCD is finally posted for the public to read on the City Housing Element Update webpage by clicking on the words “formal comments.” There is the call for upzoning (increasing density with multi-unit projects) in high resource areas (wealthy neighborhoods) and more importantly the housing element “…should include additional actions beyond housing improvements such as infrastructure,
streetscapes, active transportation, community amenities, parks, and other
community improvements...” https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
It is the call for parks that I love. If we are going to add more people or even if we don’t, parks rejuvenate us. One of my favorite books An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong is #6 on the SF Chronicle bestsellers list. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer has been on the SF best seller list for months. These are wonderful books about nature. People love nature. Parks filled with birds and butterflies bring the awesome world around us right to us. Strawberry Creek Park is a magnate for people. Just imagine how lovely the Civic Center Park could be with restoring Strawberry Creek to its natural state (daylighting).
For all the bad news, the HCD rejection there is opportunity here. We should be adding and enhancing our parks.
There are times and places for entertainment. We can do a lot more with taking advantage of the BART Plaza and downtown for festivals. The times Shattuck Avenue has been closed to traffic and open for events, it was filled with people making activating the street a real thing.
And it isn’t just parks, we have our own part in nature by making connections with creating habitat for birds and butterflies where ever we live. Go back to the January 29 Activist’s Diary and read Erin Diehm’s gardening directions steps 1 to 5. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-28/article/50165?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-Jan.-29--Kelly-Hammargren
In case you missed it, at the Community for a Cultural Civic Center on January 30th, former mayor Tom Bates suggested that since the Civic Center buildings (old city hall-Maudelle Shirik and the Veterans Building) are in need of millions of dollars of seismic upgrade, maybe the city should give the buildings to UC.
In the “go to meeting” of the week, the Monday Agenda and Rules Committee with the Droste proposals, one to limit public comment at City Council meetings and the other to limit legislation to one item per year per each councilmember, Arreguin kept the attendees hanging on for nearly two hours until 4:20 pm. That is when Arreguin finally said he opposed former Councilmember Droste’s measure to limit public comment at city meetings. He wasn’t even sure if it was legal. After public comment Arreguin and Vice Mayor Bartlett voted to make a negative recommendation to Council on the Droste public comment proposal.
Another important statement at the meeting was by Todd Darling who described South Berkeley as a “pin cushion of projects,” consultants as a rubber stamp for the Planning Department and the need for a better process. That the Planning Department which is dependent on developer fees selects consultants who go along with developers wishes and intentions and this is not in the public interest.
The Droste proposal on legislation will come back again. The proposal to add Youth to the Climate and Environment Commissions will show up at a future Council meeting with three options. Arreguin and Bartlett were not in favor of allowing BUSD making the appointments citing BUSD has not been filling all the vacant commission spots. What is the saying? “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” I am for BUSD making the appointments not council. Council already has nine spots.
The Commission on Disability has only two commissioners and seven open spots. We need a robust Commission on Disability with the challenges impacting the disabled community in street redesign. As stated at one of the many meetings on the Hopkins corridor Plan, there are at least as many disabled persons as bicyclists.
Pete Buttegieg was making the rounds this last week on pedestrian deaths. In one interview he noted, pedestrian deaths increased after the implementation of Vision Zero in Los Angeles. Vision Zero is supposed to eliminate traffic deaths through narrowing streets with road diets, bulb outs, bike lanes and such. https://www.fastcompany.com/90841997/this-is-a-preventable-crisis-pete-buttigieg-on-spending-800-million-to-eliminate-traffic-deaths
In the interview I caught, Buttegieg skirted commenting on vehicle design. I suppose to avoid giving the GOP more bait with adding SUVs and light trucks to their list of threats, “they (Democrats) are coming for your guns and gas stoves.”
Next time you look at an SUV or truck compare that to a car. It is that high front end that restricts visibility and hits people in the chest. These vehicles come with a deadly cost. https://usa.streetsblog.org/2021/07/27/study-americas-suv-jag-spurred-pedestrian-death-surge/
My own opinion is evolving as a pedestrian and a driver following the furor over the Hopkins Corridor Plan. I had a bunch of errands to run for a friend sick with COVID (now is not the time to skip that N95 mask) and drove up Hopkins from Gilman to Sutter. Hopkins is already narrow and the state of moderate disrepair slows traffic.
I made a third trip at dusk to pick up Paxlovid from Kaiser Oakland and drove back after dark on Telegraph then Shattuck. The street lighting high above the tree canopy doesn’t do much for pedestrians nearly all dressed in black. Only one cyclist of the handful had a bike light and that was in the front, not the back.
I am coming to the point where I do not believe bike lanes on busy streets reduces injuries and fatalities. In fact, bike lanes seem to give the bicyclist a false unwarranted sense of safety. That is not what the consultants, road diet enthusiasts and bicyclists what to hear.
Politicians love newly repaved streets and of course all the repaving and redesign keeps the engineers, repaving companies and transportation administration happy. It also quiets complaining residents. If you want to speed up vehicle traffic, increase traffic deaths, then the way to do it is repave the streets. If you want more people to die in an emergency then do what Paradise, California did, put evacuation routes on a road diet.
I’d like to go back to the pandemic slow streets. Maybe put an island in the middle of Monterey at Hopkins. Otherwise fix the potholes and leave the rest alone. There are plenty of other ways to spend taxpayer money. And repairing ecosystems sits higher on my priority list.
Not so long ago, a friend sent the link to the article “Addressing Climate Change Will Not Save the Planet” by Christopher Ketcham in the Intercept. Ketcham is correct. Climate change was not the cause of 69% of total wildlife between 1970 and 2018. That was us. https://theintercept.com/2022/12/03/climate-biodiversity-green-energy/
The cause of the biodiversity crisis, more aptly described as the biodiversity apocalypse is deforestation, overgrazing of livestock, monocrop agriculture, megafauna kill-off, soil degradation, habitat fragmentation, pollution, open pit and mountain top mining, depleted fresh water, toxification of rainfall, destruction of ecosystems. The constant is a dysfunctional system of perpetual growth of economies and population.
Warren M. Hern, physician, anthropologist, epidemiologist, writes that the earth cannot be saved without identifying the disease process, the diagnosis and that is Homo Ecophagus, “the man who devours the ecosystem.”
Homo Ecophagus: A Deep Diagnosis to Save the Earth is not the kind of book you will find on any shelf in Governor Ron DeSantis’ Florida where anything that might make a child uncomfortable or challenge the thinking of college students like classes on race must be removed and censured.
There is a lot in Hern’s book as he lays out how he reached his diagnosis of the disease process. Hern describes the harsh truths we wish to deny. The book is also filled with beautiful photographs, charts and stories of his travels to remote villages in South America and hiking in the Colorado wilderness.
Hern describes the tension between denial and the diagnosis, the wanting to turn away from the facts. The diagnosis is grim, humans as a cancer devouring the planet, but not hopeless if we accept the urgency and choose to act with immediacy.
Douglas Tallamy gives hope too. There is a challenge here, restoring biodiversity, restoring ecosystems. Joining the Homegrown National Park is a movement that can bring endless pleasure in the amazing world around us. Will we grab it?
The psychology professor in the nursing program in my college classes, lectured endlessly on the capacity for denial. I never believed her.
After graduation, I remember vividly as a young nurse standing in the room when the physician walked in to give the results of surgery to one of my assigned patients. It was 1970 three years before the first CT scanner was installed in the U.S. In 1970 surgeons performed “exploratory” surgery. The physician told my patient he was sorry, she had an aggressive cancer that had spread. There was nothing he could do, it was inoperable. It was terrible news, a death sentence. After the doctor left the room. My patient turned to me and said, “Isn’t it wonderful, my doctor told me I am going to be just fine.”
January 29, 2023
Nature and gardening are restorative about halfway down is how to create habitat for birds and butterflies even in small spaces.
This was a very difficult week with more mass shootings and the terrible beating and death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis Police
The special unit Scorpian which stands for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods is disbanded now, but I expect it was built on the myth that Black men, Black boys and Black neighborhoods require tougher policing than white, high resource (wealthy) neighborhoods. The kind of policing that grew stop and frisk and exercises in power, intimidation, harassment, fear and violence. It is all justified as stopping crime. It is ugly and described over and over in books on systemic racism and disparate treatment like White Space Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality by Sheryll Cashin, A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes, Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence 3rd Edition by Michael W. Quinn, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth by Kristin Henning.
Taking away police from traffic stops for minor infractions is in the talk show discussions again along with how body cameras were supposed to stop police violence. Body cameras just give the public a record when and if they are released.
In the beating of Tyre Nichols, the police gave 71 confusing and conflicting commands in 13 minutes like yelling “on the ground” when Nichols was already pinned down on the ground. All apparently to create the narrative that Nichols was the aggressor and the police a victim. It is sickening.
Berkeley Mayor Arreguin generated the concept of BerkDOT back in 2020. BerkDOT stands for a new Berkeley Department of Transportation with the purpose of removing minor traffic violations away from policing as a method to address biased policing. Months of meetings were devoted to creating BerkDOT and then it stopped. California State law prevents implementation of BerkDOT, but that may change.
I was never an enthusiast of BerkDOT as I felt it doesn’t get to the core of biased policing, but we shall see. It does take away one method to deliver policing by intimidation and force that is imbedded in systemic racism myths and the long ugly national history of using police as enforcers to keep people of color in their “place.”
Governor Newsom declared that the climate emergency that gave us virtual meetings will end February 28, 2023 and President Biden set the date as May 11. City Council is going to stay hybrid (in-person and virtual), but all commission meetings will be in-person starting March 1, 2023. Once we go back to in-person we really need more volunteers who are willing to attend commission meetings and fill us in.
Thursday morning, I listened to podcast 123 with Dr. Osterholm https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ and Thursday evening I listened to Dr. Lisa Hernandez, Health Officer for the City of Berkeley answer questions from Commissioner Andy Katz about COVID and masking as the Community Health Commission meeting was getting started.
Dr. Hernandez said she still masked, but she did not take the opportunity to differentiate the difference between a mask and a N95 securely fitting mask (respirator). Maybe there was an assumption that this was already known or possibly to Dr. Hernandez there is little difference in what mask is used so the generic term is adequate.
This lack of differentiation in the protection performance of the various masks and treating all of them as the same is a pet peeve with Dr. Osterholm. He is forever educating his listeners in masks, protection or the lack thereof. Dr. Osterholm reminded listeners that COVID is still very much with us no matter how much we want it to be over. There are right now 550 deaths per day from COVID.
Dr. Osterholm also gave the statistics on gun deaths, another series of tragedies. There are roughly 124 deaths per day in the U.S. from guns. In 2020 the most recent year accurate statistics are available there were 45,222 deaths from guns, 43% murder, 54% suicide and 3% unintentional. The incidence of suicide by gun at a startling 54% of all gun deaths reminded me of the chapter on suicide in Jonathan M. Metzel’s 2019 book Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland.
The Community Health Commission meeting agenda was on the annual workplan. After the introductory comments and the beginning of line by line review of the workplan, I left.
I can’t say that after attending the January 24, 2023 Zero Waste Commission, I have any better understanding of the Zero Waste Strategic Plan other than two Zero Waste Commission Commissioners were named by the presenter Ruth Abbe of Abbe & Associates as key team members of the Strategic Plan. Commissioner Christienne de Tournay is Assisstant Project Manager and Commissioner Steven Sherman is listed as Operations Analysis. From the presentation chart they are part of Abbe & Associates who was responsible for the strategic plan.
That brings another question. We need well informed commissioners to contribute to recommendations to City Council, but when is work or association a conflict of interest? Elected officials, appointees are required to submit a Statement of Economic Interests (form 700) reporting investments, business entities/trusts, property (excludes residence), income, gifts, and travel payment from third parties.
Attending as many City meetings as I do and watching commissioners over time, sometimes bias is subtle and sometimes I feel like it comes with a bullhorn. As important as that 700 form might be, membership in various organizations or association with groups and work as an employee or consultant looks to be the heavy weight on where decisions and recommendations to council land.
Attending the Zero Waste Commission, I often feel the “insider industry language” demonstrates little interest in communicating with the public and commissioners have said as much. Of course, if Berkeley is to meet zero waste goals, and all of us, the residents are part of meeting the goals, it seems to me there should be a high degree of interest in the effectiveness of communication with the public.
The Mental Health Commission was Saturday and devoted to the workplan. I did not attend.
As I wrote previously with all this water-soaked soil, now this is the perfect time to remove /pull
up non-native plants and replace them with natives that will provide critical habitat. Per Doug
Tallamy to support sustainable bird populations we need to strive for at least 70% native plants.
Anything less won’t provide the insects birds need to feed their babies.
I had planned to do this last year, but a fracture put that to an end. I am healed so before making any more gardening mistakes, I contacted Erin Diehm who has turned her city yard into a delightful native plant paradise filled with birds, bees, butterflies and little crawly bugs that become baby bird food. I know of Diehm’s gardening talent through her volunteer work to help create and maintain pollinator gardens in our city parks.
Here are Erin Diehm’s directions:
Step 1) Pull out the larger non-native vegetation that needs to be removed or at least pull them out (or cut down) enough of it so that what is left can be sheet mulched.
Step 2) To sheet mulch, completely cover the area with one or two layers of cardboard as
the first layer and, then add 4 to 6 inches of mulch (more is better). There is free mulch by the
community garden on Bancroft and at the Marina. The mulch and cardboard will kill the
existing vegetation in the ground and make pulling out stragglers (which may sprout
from the existing weed seed bank) easier in the future. Leave space about a foot or two between sheet mulch and tree trunks.
Step 3) Make your list of plants. Go to https://calscape.org/ Everywhere there are pictures, descriptions of planting conditions and plants to attract butterflies and birds. There is a whole new section under design and inspiration, Bay Area Garden Planner. https://bayarea.calscape.org/
Step 4) Go shopping, Calscape has a map and list of native plant nurseries.
Step 5) The perfect time to plant and break through the cardboard and mulch is just before a
rain.
As I spent an afternoon in my tiny yard on step 1, pulling out non-natives (wet ground helps) two things were on my mind, how can one person make so many gardening mistakes and how is it the green bin is not full yet. Of course, I wanted to jump to step three picking out my plants from Calscape and ran into some frustration that the plants I picked out weren’t available so I went back to the drawing board looking at Calscape and the list at the Watershed Nursery list of available plants. There are other native plant nurseries you can find by just pulling up the map in the website.
We live in a society that is into instant gratification. I decided I need to rearrange my thinking. Creating habitat to provide food for native bees, butterflies, caterpillars takes a little time. Like in the Doug Tallamy talks, videos and books, plant it and they (nature) will come. And, that is the reward for a little patience.
Last words from Diehm, it is true that the sheet mulching will block native bees access to the soil (70% of native bees are ground nesting), but the cardboard and mulch will break down and blocking the weeds is a real time saver to creating a healthy habitat for nature to survive. For more information on sheet mulching, see the video posted by the Bringing back the Natives Garden Tour at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0oCY59NsBc
Last week the City Council actions ate up so much space I couldn’t get back to my award to David Trachtenberg for the project presented at the Zoning Adjustment Board with the fewest native plants. I did hear from him.
David Trachtenberg emailed me that I was unfair and he is a fan of Douglas Tallamy. I call out behavior to change behavior. At the Design Review Committee (DRC) the following week, Isaiah Stackhouse presented the project at 3000 Shattuck for Trachtenberg Architects. At the beginning of the presentation before a word was said from anyone, Stackhouse announced the plant palette was changed and would be 80% native plants. A big thank you comes from this corner.
The DRC was not happy with the building design for 3000 Shattuck, though not much can be done to change that with state legislation like SB 330. This will be the first 10 story building in a neighborhood of one and two story houses. There are problems that need correction related to loading zones for this 166 unit building that when full may house somewhere between 250 and 400 people depending on how many people share a unit. Included in that 166 are 17 very low income units to take advantage of the state density bonus and bring the height to 10 floors.
The other project of that evening was 3031 Adeline. Moshe Dinar is the architect and presented the building. It is seven stories with 64 units which Dinar stated would be 25% affordable. The project has a light feel to it with all the glass and that is exactly the problem. 3031 Adeline is a death trap for birds with floors of glass corner walls. Birds don’t see glass and will fly into it as to a bird’s eye the glass is open space to fly through. There are walls of glass to reflect sky and trees. There is a fix and that is to use bird safe glass with markings/etchings that birds see.
After speaking up to these issues, bird safe glass, downward directed lighting month after month, it is a mystery as to why these hazardous designs are not addressed before they arrive at the Design Review Committee or the Zoning Adjustment Board. We had the same problem with corner windows at 1773 Oxford represented by Mark Rhoades and Yes Duffy Architects.
From what I’ve seen by attending meetings month after month, year after year doing the right thing doesn’t just happen by being asked, making recommendations. It requires pressure and strong ordinances.
Berkeley has a chance here to be a real leader in the bird safe ordinance like this city was with banning natural gas in new construction something other cities have picked up. Gas stoves are now a national discussion.
There is construction all over the downtown and none of these projects are going up with bird safe glass and it isn’t because the developers have not heard about bird safe glass. I was present at those meetings where projects were reviewed and approved. The absence of bird safe glass is that it is not required. There should be no excuse for not requiring new building projects to be 100% bird safe glass based on the model from the American Bird Conservancy. https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/model-ordinance/
Small projects like the window replacements I am planning when the weather warms up are an easy fix. As I learned from Glenn Philips, Golden Gate Audubon Executive Director, all I need to do is order the windows with screens on the outside. Double hung windows that open at the top and the bottom with a full screen are perfect.
Casement windows that roll out and have screens on the inside are the dangerous model for birds. Applying film can fix those windows.
I first heard of the book How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight of Our Future on November 30, 2022 on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with guest Maria Ressa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpWevZ5yQz8
Ressa writes of her initial excitement and vision of opportunities in Facebook and social media. Then reality sets in and the book gets into the meat of how social media algorithms, bots, fake accounts and bloggers trash journalists and fill the space with lies, misinformation and disinformation. She gives warnings and advice in her urgent plea for integrity, vigilance and transparency.
The Philippines has the highest percentage of Facebook users in the world. As Ressa writes, Facebook carries oversize influence to the detriment of democracy.
META/Facebook not to be outdone by Twitter announced it is going to let Trump back on the Platform. Alex Wagner in her show tonight on January 25, 2023 covered the perils well. https://www.msnbc.com/alex-wagner-tonight/watch/facebook-ignores-risk-of-trump-inciting-violence-with-lifting-of-ban-161821253720
Nature and gardening are restorative about halfway down is how to create habitat for birds and butterflies even in small spaces.
This was a very difficult week with more mass shootings and the terrible beating and death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis Police
The special unit Scorpian which stands for Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods is disbanded now, but I expect it was built on the myth that Black men, Black boys and Black neighborhoods require tougher policing than white, high resource (wealthy) neighborhoods. The kind of policing that grew stop and frisk and exercises in power, intimidation, harassment, fear and violence. It is all justified as stopping crime. It is ugly and described over and over in books on systemic racism and disparate treatment like White Space Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality by Sheryll Cashin, A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes, Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence 3rd Edition by Michael W. Quinn, The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth by Kristin Henning.
Taking away police from traffic stops for minor infractions is in the talk show discussions again along with how body cameras were supposed to stop police violence. Body cameras just give the public a record when and if they are released.
In the beating of Tyre Nichols, the police gave 71 confusing and conflicting commands in 13 minutes like yelling “on the ground” when Nichols was already pinned down on the ground. All apparently to create the narrative that Nichols was the aggressor and the police a victim. It is sickening.
Berkeley Mayor Arreguin generated the concept of BerkDOT back in 2020. BerkDOT stands for a new Berkeley Department of Transportation with the purpose of removing minor traffic violations away from policing as a method to address biased policing. Months of meetings were devoted to creating BerkDOT and then it stopped. California State law prevents implementation of BerkDOT, but that may change.
I was never an enthusiast of BerkDOT as I felt it doesn’t get to the core of biased policing, but we shall see. It does take away one method to deliver policing by intimidation and force that is imbedded in systemic racism myths and the long ugly national history of using police as enforcers to keep people of color in their “place.”
Governor Newsom declared that the climate emergency that gave us virtual meetings will end February 28, 2023 and President Biden set the date as May 11. City Council is going to stay hybrid (in-person and virtual), but all commission meetings will be in-person starting March 1, 2023. Once we go back to in-person we really need more volunteers who are willing to attend commission meetings and fill us in.
Thursday morning, I listened to podcast 123 with Dr. Osterholm https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/ and Thursday evening I listened to Dr. Lisa Hernandez, Health Officer for the City of Berkeley answer questions from Commissioner Andy Katz about COVID and masking as the Community Health Commission meeting was getting started.
Dr. Hernandez said she still masked, but she did not take the opportunity to differentiate the difference between a mask and a N95 securely fitting mask (respirator). Maybe there was an assumption that this was already known or possibly to Dr. Hernandez there is little difference in what mask is used so the generic term is adequate.
This lack of differentiation in the protection performance of the various masks and treating all of them as the same is a pet peeve with Dr. Osterholm. He is forever educating his listeners in masks, protection or the lack thereof. Dr. Osterholm reminded listeners that COVID is still very much with us no matter how much we want it to be over. There are right now 550 deaths per day from COVID.
Dr. Osterholm also gave the statistics on gun deaths, another series of tragedies. There are roughly 124 deaths per day in the U.S. from guns. In 2020 the most recent year accurate statistics are available there were 45,222 deaths from guns, 43% murder, 54% suicide and 3% unintentional. The incidence of suicide by gun at a startling 54% of all gun deaths reminded me of the chapter on suicide in Jonathan M. Metzel’s 2019 book Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland.
The Community Health Commission meeting agenda was on the annual workplan. After the introductory comments and the beginning of line by line review of the workplan, I left.
I can’t say that after attending the January 24, 2023 Zero Waste Commission, I have any better understanding of the Zero Waste Strategic Plan other than two Zero Waste Commission Commissioners were named by the presenter Ruth Abbe of Abbe & Associates as key team members of the Strategic Plan. Commissioner Christienne de Tournay is Assisstant Project Manager and Commissioner Steven Sherman is listed as Operations Analysis. From the presentation chart they are part of Abbe & Associates who was responsible for the strategic plan.
That brings another question. We need well informed commissioners to contribute to recommendations to City Council, but when is work or association a conflict of interest? Elected officials, appointees are required to submit a Statement of Economic Interests (form 700) reporting investments, business entities/trusts, property (excludes residence), income, gifts, and travel payment from third parties.
Attending as many City meetings as I do and watching commissioners over time, sometimes bias is subtle and sometimes I feel like it comes with a bullhorn. As important as that 700 form might be, membership in various organizations or association with groups and work as an employee or consultant looks to be the heavy weight on where decisions and recommendations to council land.
Attending the Zero Waste Commission, I often feel the “insider industry language” demonstrates little interest in communicating with the public and commissioners have said as much. Of course, if Berkeley is to meet zero waste goals, and all of us, the residents are part of meeting the goals, it seems to me there should be a high degree of interest in the effectiveness of communication with the public.
The Mental Health Commission was Saturday and devoted to the workplan. I did not attend.
As I wrote previously with all this water-soaked soil, now this is the perfect time to remove /pull
up non-native plants and replace them with natives that will provide critical habitat. Per Doug
Tallamy to support sustainable bird populations we need to strive for at least 70% native plants.
Anything less won’t provide the insects birds need to feed their babies.
I had planned to do this last year, but a fracture put that to an end. I am healed so before making any more gardening mistakes, I contacted Erin Diehm who has turned her city yard into a delightful native plant paradise filled with birds, bees, butterflies and little crawly bugs that become baby bird food. I know of Diehm’s gardening talent through her volunteer work to help create and maintain pollinator gardens in our city parks.
Here are Erin Diehm’s directions:
Step 1) Pull out the larger non-native vegetation that needs to be removed or at least pull them out (or cut down) enough of it so that what is left can be sheet mulched.
Step 2) To sheet mulch, completely cover the area with one or two layers of cardboard as
the first layer and, then add 4 to 6 inches of mulch (more is better). There is free mulch by the
community garden on Bancroft and at the Marina. The mulch and cardboard will kill the
existing vegetation in the ground and make pulling out stragglers (which may sprout
from the existing weed seed bank) easier in the future. Leave space about a foot or two between sheet mulch and tree trunks.
Step 3) Make your list of plants. Go to https://calscape.org/ Everywhere there are pictures, descriptions of planting conditions and plants to attract butterflies and birds. There is a whole new section under design and inspiration, Bay Area Garden Planner. https://bayarea.calscape.org/
Step 4) Go shopping, Calscape has a map and list of native plant nurseries.
Step 5) The perfect time to plant and break through the cardboard and mulch is just before a
rain.
As I spent an afternoon in my tiny yard on step 1, pulling out non-natives (wet ground helps) two things were on my mind, how can one person make so many gardening mistakes and how is it the green bin is not full yet. Of course, I wanted to jump to step three picking out my plants from Calscape and ran into some frustration that the plants I picked out weren’t available so I went back to the drawing board looking at Calscape and the list at the Watershed Nursery list of available plants. There are other native plant nurseries you can find by just pulling up the map in the website.
We live in a society that is into instant gratification. I decided I need to rearrange my thinking. Creating habitat to provide food for native bees, butterflies, caterpillars takes a little time. Like in the Doug Tallamy talks, videos and books, plant it and they (nature) will come. And, that is the reward for a little patience.
Last words from Diehm, it is true that the sheet mulching will block native bees access to the soil (70% of native bees are ground nesting), but the cardboard and mulch will break down and blocking the weeds is a real time saver to creating a healthy habitat for nature to survive. For more information on sheet mulching, see the video posted by the Bringing back the Natives Garden Tour at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0oCY59NsBc
Last week the City Council actions ate up so much space I couldn’t get back to my award to David Trachtenberg for the project presented at the Zoning Adjustment Board with the fewest native plants. I did hear from him.
David Trachtenberg emailed me that I was unfair and he is a fan of Douglas Tallamy. I call out behavior to change behavior. At the Design Review Committee (DRC) the following week, Isaiah Stackhouse presented the project at 3000 Shattuck for Trachtenberg Architects. At the beginning of the presentation before a word was said from anyone, Stackhouse announced the plant palette was changed and would be 80% native plants. A big thank you comes from this corner.
The DRC was not happy with the building design for 3000 Shattuck, though not much can be done to change that with state legislation like SB 330. This will be the first 10 story building in a neighborhood of one and two story houses. There are problems that need correction related to loading zones for this 166 unit building that when full may house somewhere between 250 and 400 people depending on how many people share a unit. Included in that 166 are 17 very low income units to take advantage of the state density bonus and bring the height to 10 floors.
The other project of that evening was 3031 Adeline. Moshe Dinar is the architect and presented the building. It is seven stories with 64 units which Dinar stated would be 25% affordable. The project has a light feel to it with all the glass and that is exactly the problem. 3031 Adeline is a death trap for birds with floors of glass corner walls. Birds don’t see glass and will fly into it as to a bird’s eye the glass is open space to fly through. There are walls of glass to reflect sky and trees. There is a fix and that is to use bird safe glass with markings/etchings that birds see.
After speaking up to these issues, bird safe glass, downward directed lighting month after month, it is a mystery as to why these hazardous designs are not addressed before they arrive at the Design Review Committee or the Zoning Adjustment Board. We had the same problem with corner windows at 1773 Oxford represented by Mark Rhoades and Yes Duffy Architects.
From what I’ve seen by attending meetings month after month, year after year doing the right thing doesn’t just happen by being asked, making recommendations. It requires pressure and strong ordinances.
Berkeley has a chance here to be a real leader in the bird safe ordinance like this city was with banning natural gas in new construction something other cities have picked up. Gas stoves are now a national discussion.
There is construction all over the downtown and none of these projects are going up with bird safe glass and it isn’t because the developers have not heard about bird safe glass. I was present at those meetings where projects were reviewed and approved. The absence of bird safe glass is that it is not required. There should be no excuse for not requiring new building projects to be 100% bird safe glass based on the model from the American Bird Conservancy. https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/model-ordinance/
Small projects like the window replacements I am planning when the weather warms up are an easy fix. As I learned from Glenn Philips, Golden Gate Audubon Executive Director, all I need to do is order the windows with screens on the outside. Double hung windows that open at the top and the bottom with a full screen are perfect.
Casement windows that roll out and have screens on the inside are the dangerous model for birds. Applying film can fix those windows.
I first heard of the book How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight of Our Future on November 30, 2022 on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with guest Maria Ressa. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpWevZ5yQz8
Ressa writes of her initial excitement and vision of opportunities in Facebook and social media. Then reality sets in and the book gets into the meat of how social media algorithms, bots, fake accounts and bloggers trash journalists and fill the space with lies, misinformation and disinformation. She gives warnings and advice in her urgent plea for integrity, vigilance and transparency.
The Philippines has the highest percentage of Facebook users in the world. As Ressa writes, Facebook carries oversize influence to the detriment of democracy.
META/Facebook not to be outdone by Twitter announced it is going to let Trump back on the Platform. Alex Wagner in her show tonight on January 25, 2023 covered the perils well. https://www.msnbc.com/alex-wagner-tonight/watch/facebook-ignores-risk-of-trump-inciting-violence-with-lifting-of-ban-161821253720
January 22, 2023
Harry Brill once said he wasn’t much interested in local politics, it was just about real estate. He was correct. Much of local politics is about real estate. And, real estate is about so much more, where we live, yearn to live, can’t afford to live, racism, classism, profit, greed and poverty.
Developers, the real estate industry are significant contributors to election campaigns either directly or indirectly through PACs (Political Action Committees) often called dark money. For small direct and PAC investments in local elections, the public can be influenced into electing industry friendly city councils, mayors and other officials and voting for or against ballot measures. Industry friendly mayors and council members can be swayed into industry friendly legislation, discounts and exemptions. And, this background makes local, state and national politics so very interesting.
There is a lot to cover and a great deal of council actions were not good news so buckle up.
The week started with a rather tame Agenda Committee on January 17, 2023. Both Mayor Arreguin and Councilmember Hahn were absent leaving Councilmember Wengraf and the alternate committee member Vice Mayor Bartlett holding down the fort. Little happened with the agenda for the January 31 council meeting, however, the public arrived on ZOOM to comment in opposition to the Droste proposals to limit public participation at City Council meetings. The Droste proposals were in the “unscheduled list” not officially up for discussion and action. With Arreguin and Hahn absent it is unknown when the two items will be discussed one on limiting public comment and the other on limiting legislation, so concerned citizens are on the hook to keep showing up. Both proposals are explained in the January 8 Activist’s Diary. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-08/article/50141?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-January-8--Kelly-Hammargren )
The Tuesday evening regular City Council meeting and the Special City Council meeting on Wednesday are connected with big implications.
This gets complicated fast and I have broken out the basics on what is RHNA, an in lieu mitigation fee, a Nexus study, AMI, inclusionary housing, AB 1505 - the Palmer Fix, SB 330 and the 2022 chart on affordable income levels separately to keep what happened at City Council on January 17 and January 18 to a readable length and give space to adding comment and to provide a separate reference for this Diary and anyone who needs it for the future.
Tuesday evening Item-21 was Affordable Housing Requirements amending BMC 23.328. The purpose of this section of the Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) is described as to, “Promote Housing Element goals to develop affordable housing for households with incomes below the median…” https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.328.010
Item-21 changes how the in lieu mitigation fee is calculated. Councilmember Robinson takes credit for suggesting changing the in lieu mitigation fee from per unit to square footage as one of his first actions after being elected in 2018. It was a welcome suggestion with visions of ending developers gaming the system by designing mixed-use buildings with four, five, even six bedroom units to maximize rent and minimize the in lieu fee. With an in lieu fee by square feet, there would be no need to exempt projects with fewer than five units and McMansions could also be charged a fee.
The process to change the fee was long and protracted as it was handed off to Street Level Advisors and wound its way through the Planning Department with stops at the Planning Commission on October 21, 2020 and May 5, 2021. Finally, on March 2, 2022 the Planning Commissioners approved the recommended fee schedule and sent it to City Council where it arrived another 10 ½ months later for a City Council vote on Tuesday, January 17 with several options including discounting the square footage fee back to the 2020 level instead of 2022.
So how did the City Council play out for Mayor Arreguin to get an eight to one vote when 43% of the 8934 units assigned to Berkeley to build through the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) are for very low income households (2446 units) and low income households (1408 units)?
After closing the public comment (only six members of the public spoke), Mayor Arreguin called on Councilmember Hahn, even though Councilmember Harrison had her ZOOM hand up first.
Hahn stated she supported the inclusion of all projects regardless of their size and that there is no basis for adopting the lower 2020 fee level. The fact that developers choose to pay the fee instead of providing inclusionary units indicates that the in lieu fee may actually be too low.
Then Arreguin called on himself, made his motion to accept the supplemental from Planning choosing the discounted 2020 fee schedule and exempting the projects under five units.
Then Arreguin called on Robinson who praised the motion. Wengraf followed asking questions and settled in behind Arreguin. Finally, Arreguin called on the patiently waiting Harrison who got into the meat of the proposed ordinance and the mayor’s motion asking why if the ordinance was to change the in lieu fee to square feet then why was there an exemption for four unit buildings instead of setting the exemption by size, square feet which would reasonably be around 4000 square feet.
Harrison asked what was the reasoning behind recommending reducing the in lieu fee with a sliding scale fee starting at 11,999 square feet and how were those reduced fees created? Was there any study to come up with the adjusted fees? Rick Jacobus, the Principal of Street Level Advisors (the consultant) and Steven Buckley, City of Berkeley Planning Manager, had no explanation, saying that a study was not done for the sliding scale and one would be done in the future, implying a new Nexus study.
An 11,999 square foot project could be anywhere from 13 to over thirty units depending on whether the building is filled with two bedroom units with an average of 700 square feet or small studios of 350 square feet. Or that 11,999 square foot building could be a fourplex, triplex or duplex with luxury size units of over 3000 square feet each as was suggested and rejected by members of the Planning Commission during a discussion on zoning.
From all appearances, a deal had been made prior to the meeting. Arreguin bristled at the questioning and time after time Arreguin refused consideration of any changes to his motion. Arreguin even went so far as directing his comment at Harrison and stating, “For open government purposes, I think sticking with the proposal that’s in the packet and that’s public is probably the appropriate thing. If we’re reinventing this on the floor, I don’t know whether, you know, there are Brown Act implications, so I’m not going to accept that.”
Arreguin’s statement that making modifications “from the floor” during a public city council meeting was a Brown Act violation is pretty shocking coming from someone who is forever making modifications “from the floor” when it suits him or more accurately suits those who have his ear. Modifications “from the floor” are common at City Council meetings as agenda action items are hashed out following public comment and council discussion.
But maybe the “Brown Act implications” was a slip that there have been serial meetings with councilmembers to line up behind an industry friendlier amendment. Serial meetings are a series of private meetings by which a majority of the members of a legislative body like council commit to a decision or engage in collective deliberation violating the Brown Act’s open meeting requirement.
The mayor and majority chose the fee based on net floor area with the theory that developers would be more generous with common space like mailrooms, laundry rooms, hallways, maybe even a common room with a fee calculated only on the actual living/dwelling unit. It looks more like net floor area will bring smaller units which might be a good thing depending on your point of view.
Mayor Arreguin’s Tuesday evening motion that passed with eight yes votes and one abstention from Councilmember Harrison discounted the in lieu fee back to the 2020 using the net residential floor area with an in lieu fee of $56.25 per square foot. The formula in the agenda packet placed the net floor area in lieu fee of $56.25 per square foot as equivalent to $45 per square foot if gross residential square footage had been used instead.
When I read through the old 2015 Berkeley Nexus study and calculated the gross square foot fee from the recommended $34,000 per unit fee, a fee that in 2015 gave the developers a 13.9% profit when a 10% to 12% profit was considered reasonable. That fee was $45 per square foot.
The in lieu mitigation fee essentially says to the developer, the investors in these multi-unit apartment and condominiums buildings, you cannot build on Berkeley City land and profiteer without giving back to the community. Your new building carries with it an impact on the community. You can either include in your building 20% affordable housing units with 10% for low income households and 10% for very low income households or you can pay the in lieu mitigation fee to avoid having any lower income residents in the building or some combination of the fee and units.
Berkeley is a microcosm of what is happening around the country and around the world. People who used to define themselves as middle class are priced out of housing and people who fall into what they and we define as poor are on the street in tents, sleeping in cars, living in RVs, shelters or with nothing. Yes, some are mentally ill, but it is market rate (high priced) housing and a dearth of affordable housing that keeps a stable place to live out of reach and places low income households in the precarious position where an unplanned financial emergency of even a few hundred dollars can mean the difference between being able to pay rent, buy food, pay for medications, or keep a car running that is needed to keep the job to pay the bills.
For all the wealth in Berkeley, in the years 2016-2020 (that latest available record) twenty-two percent of children in Berkeley were on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) commonly known as food stamps. https://www.healthyalamedacounty.org/indicators/index/view?indicatorId=5749&localeId=132160
When nearly every multi-unit building under construction or planned is housing for students, what happened Tuesday evening won’t get us housing for moderate income and low income households. To secure the maximum state density bonus with the fewest inclusionary affordable units, 10% very low income units are the ticket. When the eventual day comes that there is enough money in the Housing Trust Fund to build affordable housing it is dominated by units for very low income households. Watch out for this in the BART station housing projects.
Councilmember Kesarwani started her comments on Tuesday evening referencing the Laffer Curve. That is the theoretical relationship between the rates of taxes and the resulting levels of revenue. The Laffer Curve has been a GOP favorite used as the justification that cutting taxes will spur so much economic growth, that the new growth will offset the losses created by tax cuts.
Kesarwani and I obviously went to different graduate programs. The business lectures I listened to for my MBA called the Laffer Curve the Laugher Curve meaning it was questionable nonsense, but obviously there are true believers.
That takes care of Tuesday. Wednesday the City Council voted on the Housing Element.
Kesarwani’s gift to the Housing Element with co-sponsors Arreguin, Taplin and Humbert was the supplemental to increase density and development along San Pablo Avenue and by right demolition (no one can stop the demolition) of single family homes if the home to be demolished has not been occupied by tenants in the last five years and is replaced by a middle housing project that increases density. The middle housing projects are the duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes that the mayor and seven councilmembers (Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Hahn, Wengraf, Humbert) voted to exempt from any in lieu fee on Tuesday evening.
Calling single family home zoning as racist and exclusionary is how the real estate industry and true believers in density convince cities to change zoning and open historic minority neighborhoods to development. Mayor Arreguin and the Berkeley City Council jumped on that bandwagon a year ago. Arreguin made his nod to the real estate industry and California YIMBY parroting the same banner of triumph of ending exclusionary zoning Wednesday night.
Never mind that single family zoning (R-1) in the historical Black neighborhood in South Berkeley around San Pablo Park is what protected those homes from demolition up until now. Berkeley eliminated that protection ignoring that Black families just like White families like yards where their children can play and their own space where they can gather with family and friends. Now that will go to getting on the list first to reserve a table if there is one at a park.
Segregation through housing law is way more complicated than single family zoning. It was covenants to prohibit the sale of property to any potential home owner who was other than white. It was refusing to rent to non-whites in White neighborhoods. It was redlining to define minority neighborhoods as high risk limiting bank loans, investment, resources, sinking housing values and keeping them low. Richard Rothstein lays it all out in his excellent book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
Redlining continues to impact housing and land value in Berkeley. It was because of the former redlining that I was able to afford the house I now live in. There was a lot I didn’t know in 1990, but lots of reading, discussions, listening and the Black Panther exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California brought it all home with the map of redlining on full display that put my house right in the redlined area.
Councilmembers Hahn, Harrison and Wengraf voted against by right demolition of single family homes and lost to the majority so it was folded into the Housing Element and the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) which passed with a unanimous vote.
Tucked into that Housing Element and FEIR are plans to add 15,001 new housing units or 5,167 more units than the required 8,934 RHNA which many of us see as ridiculous in this city of 10.5 square miles bounded on the west by water and the Hayward Fault, landslides and high fire hazard zones in the hills on the east side. Despite this foolishness, the council promised to attack zoning to increase density. And, we can expect where all that new building will land, on the land that costs the least in a tight market.
Stay tuned.
Harry Brill once said he wasn’t much interested in local politics, it was just about real estate. He was correct. Much of local politics is about real estate. And, real estate is about so much more, where we live, yearn to live, can’t afford to live, racism, classism, profit, greed and poverty.
Developers, the real estate industry are significant contributors to election campaigns either directly or indirectly through PACs (Political Action Committees) often called dark money. For small direct and PAC investments in local elections, the public can be influenced into electing industry friendly city councils, mayors and other officials and voting for or against ballot measures. Industry friendly mayors and council members can be swayed into industry friendly legislation, discounts and exemptions. And, this background makes local, state and national politics so very interesting.
There is a lot to cover and a great deal of council actions were not good news so buckle up.
The week started with a rather tame Agenda Committee on January 17, 2023. Both Mayor Arreguin and Councilmember Hahn were absent leaving Councilmember Wengraf and the alternate committee member Vice Mayor Bartlett holding down the fort. Little happened with the agenda for the January 31 council meeting, however, the public arrived on ZOOM to comment in opposition to the Droste proposals to limit public participation at City Council meetings. The Droste proposals were in the “unscheduled list” not officially up for discussion and action. With Arreguin and Hahn absent it is unknown when the two items will be discussed one on limiting public comment and the other on limiting legislation, so concerned citizens are on the hook to keep showing up. Both proposals are explained in the January 8 Activist’s Diary. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-08/article/50141?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-January-8--Kelly-Hammargren )
The Tuesday evening regular City Council meeting and the Special City Council meeting on Wednesday are connected with big implications.
This gets complicated fast and I have broken out the basics on what is RHNA, an in lieu mitigation fee, a Nexus study, AMI, inclusionary housing, AB 1505 - the Palmer Fix, SB 330 and the 2022 chart on affordable income levels separately to keep what happened at City Council on January 17 and January 18 to a readable length and give space to adding comment and to provide a separate reference for this Diary and anyone who needs it for the future.
Tuesday evening Item-21 was Affordable Housing Requirements amending BMC 23.328. The purpose of this section of the Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) is described as to, “Promote Housing Element goals to develop affordable housing for households with incomes below the median…” https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/23.328.010
Item-21 changes how the in lieu mitigation fee is calculated. Councilmember Robinson takes credit for suggesting changing the in lieu mitigation fee from per unit to square footage as one of his first actions after being elected in 2018. It was a welcome suggestion with visions of ending developers gaming the system by designing mixed-use buildings with four, five, even six bedroom units to maximize rent and minimize the in lieu fee. With an in lieu fee by square feet, there would be no need to exempt projects with fewer than five units and McMansions could also be charged a fee.
The process to change the fee was long and protracted as it was handed off to Street Level Advisors and wound its way through the Planning Department with stops at the Planning Commission on October 21, 2020 and May 5, 2021. Finally, on March 2, 2022 the Planning Commissioners approved the recommended fee schedule and sent it to City Council where it arrived another 10 ½ months later for a City Council vote on Tuesday, January 17 with several options including discounting the square footage fee back to the 2020 level instead of 2022.
So how did the City Council play out for Mayor Arreguin to get an eight to one vote when 43% of the 8934 units assigned to Berkeley to build through the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) are for very low income households (2446 units) and low income households (1408 units)?
After closing the public comment (only six members of the public spoke), Mayor Arreguin called on Councilmember Hahn, even though Councilmember Harrison had her ZOOM hand up first.
Hahn stated she supported the inclusion of all projects regardless of their size and that there is no basis for adopting the lower 2020 fee level. The fact that developers choose to pay the fee instead of providing inclusionary units indicates that the in lieu fee may actually be too low.
Then Arreguin called on himself, made his motion to accept the supplemental from Planning choosing the discounted 2020 fee schedule and exempting the projects under five units.
Then Arreguin called on Robinson who praised the motion. Wengraf followed asking questions and settled in behind Arreguin. Finally, Arreguin called on the patiently waiting Harrison who got into the meat of the proposed ordinance and the mayor’s motion asking why if the ordinance was to change the in lieu fee to square feet then why was there an exemption for four unit buildings instead of setting the exemption by size, square feet which would reasonably be around 4000 square feet.
Harrison asked what was the reasoning behind recommending reducing the in lieu fee with a sliding scale fee starting at 11,999 square feet and how were those reduced fees created? Was there any study to come up with the adjusted fees? Rick Jacobus, the Principal of Street Level Advisors (the consultant) and Steven Buckley, City of Berkeley Planning Manager, had no explanation, saying that a study was not done for the sliding scale and one would be done in the future, implying a new Nexus study.
An 11,999 square foot project could be anywhere from 13 to over thirty units depending on whether the building is filled with two bedroom units with an average of 700 square feet or small studios of 350 square feet. Or that 11,999 square foot building could be a fourplex, triplex or duplex with luxury size units of over 3000 square feet each as was suggested and rejected by members of the Planning Commission during a discussion on zoning.
From all appearances, a deal had been made prior to the meeting. Arreguin bristled at the questioning and time after time Arreguin refused consideration of any changes to his motion. Arreguin even went so far as directing his comment at Harrison and stating, “For open government purposes, I think sticking with the proposal that’s in the packet and that’s public is probably the appropriate thing. If we’re reinventing this on the floor, I don’t know whether, you know, there are Brown Act implications, so I’m not going to accept that.”
Arreguin’s statement that making modifications “from the floor” during a public city council meeting was a Brown Act violation is pretty shocking coming from someone who is forever making modifications “from the floor” when it suits him or more accurately suits those who have his ear. Modifications “from the floor” are common at City Council meetings as agenda action items are hashed out following public comment and council discussion.
But maybe the “Brown Act implications” was a slip that there have been serial meetings with councilmembers to line up behind an industry friendlier amendment. Serial meetings are a series of private meetings by which a majority of the members of a legislative body like council commit to a decision or engage in collective deliberation violating the Brown Act’s open meeting requirement.
The mayor and majority chose the fee based on net floor area with the theory that developers would be more generous with common space like mailrooms, laundry rooms, hallways, maybe even a common room with a fee calculated only on the actual living/dwelling unit. It looks more like net floor area will bring smaller units which might be a good thing depending on your point of view.
Mayor Arreguin’s Tuesday evening motion that passed with eight yes votes and one abstention from Councilmember Harrison discounted the in lieu fee back to the 2020 using the net residential floor area with an in lieu fee of $56.25 per square foot. The formula in the agenda packet placed the net floor area in lieu fee of $56.25 per square foot as equivalent to $45 per square foot if gross residential square footage had been used instead.
When I read through the old 2015 Berkeley Nexus study and calculated the gross square foot fee from the recommended $34,000 per unit fee, a fee that in 2015 gave the developers a 13.9% profit when a 10% to 12% profit was considered reasonable. That fee was $45 per square foot.
The in lieu mitigation fee essentially says to the developer, the investors in these multi-unit apartment and condominiums buildings, you cannot build on Berkeley City land and profiteer without giving back to the community. Your new building carries with it an impact on the community. You can either include in your building 20% affordable housing units with 10% for low income households and 10% for very low income households or you can pay the in lieu mitigation fee to avoid having any lower income residents in the building or some combination of the fee and units.
Berkeley is a microcosm of what is happening around the country and around the world. People who used to define themselves as middle class are priced out of housing and people who fall into what they and we define as poor are on the street in tents, sleeping in cars, living in RVs, shelters or with nothing. Yes, some are mentally ill, but it is market rate (high priced) housing and a dearth of affordable housing that keeps a stable place to live out of reach and places low income households in the precarious position where an unplanned financial emergency of even a few hundred dollars can mean the difference between being able to pay rent, buy food, pay for medications, or keep a car running that is needed to keep the job to pay the bills.
For all the wealth in Berkeley, in the years 2016-2020 (that latest available record) twenty-two percent of children in Berkeley were on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) commonly known as food stamps. https://www.healthyalamedacounty.org/indicators/index/view?indicatorId=5749&localeId=132160
When nearly every multi-unit building under construction or planned is housing for students, what happened Tuesday evening won’t get us housing for moderate income and low income households. To secure the maximum state density bonus with the fewest inclusionary affordable units, 10% very low income units are the ticket. When the eventual day comes that there is enough money in the Housing Trust Fund to build affordable housing it is dominated by units for very low income households. Watch out for this in the BART station housing projects.
Councilmember Kesarwani started her comments on Tuesday evening referencing the Laffer Curve. That is the theoretical relationship between the rates of taxes and the resulting levels of revenue. The Laffer Curve has been a GOP favorite used as the justification that cutting taxes will spur so much economic growth, that the new growth will offset the losses created by tax cuts.
Kesarwani and I obviously went to different graduate programs. The business lectures I listened to for my MBA called the Laffer Curve the Laugher Curve meaning it was questionable nonsense, but obviously there are true believers.
That takes care of Tuesday. Wednesday the City Council voted on the Housing Element.
Kesarwani’s gift to the Housing Element with co-sponsors Arreguin, Taplin and Humbert was the supplemental to increase density and development along San Pablo Avenue and by right demolition (no one can stop the demolition) of single family homes if the home to be demolished has not been occupied by tenants in the last five years and is replaced by a middle housing project that increases density. The middle housing projects are the duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes that the mayor and seven councilmembers (Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Hahn, Wengraf, Humbert) voted to exempt from any in lieu fee on Tuesday evening.
Calling single family home zoning as racist and exclusionary is how the real estate industry and true believers in density convince cities to change zoning and open historic minority neighborhoods to development. Mayor Arreguin and the Berkeley City Council jumped on that bandwagon a year ago. Arreguin made his nod to the real estate industry and California YIMBY parroting the same banner of triumph of ending exclusionary zoning Wednesday night.
Never mind that single family zoning (R-1) in the historical Black neighborhood in South Berkeley around San Pablo Park is what protected those homes from demolition up until now. Berkeley eliminated that protection ignoring that Black families just like White families like yards where their children can play and their own space where they can gather with family and friends. Now that will go to getting on the list first to reserve a table if there is one at a park.
Segregation through housing law is way more complicated than single family zoning. It was covenants to prohibit the sale of property to any potential home owner who was other than white. It was refusing to rent to non-whites in White neighborhoods. It was redlining to define minority neighborhoods as high risk limiting bank loans, investment, resources, sinking housing values and keeping them low. Richard Rothstein lays it all out in his excellent book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.
Redlining continues to impact housing and land value in Berkeley. It was because of the former redlining that I was able to afford the house I now live in. There was a lot I didn’t know in 1990, but lots of reading, discussions, listening and the Black Panther exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California brought it all home with the map of redlining on full display that put my house right in the redlined area.
Councilmembers Hahn, Harrison and Wengraf voted against by right demolition of single family homes and lost to the majority so it was folded into the Housing Element and the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) which passed with a unanimous vote.
Tucked into that Housing Element and FEIR are plans to add 15,001 new housing units or 5,167 more units than the required 8,934 RHNA which many of us see as ridiculous in this city of 10.5 square miles bounded on the west by water and the Hayward Fault, landslides and high fire hazard zones in the hills on the east side. Despite this foolishness, the council promised to attack zoning to increase density. And, we can expect where all that new building will land, on the land that costs the least in a tight market.
Stay tuned.
January 15, 2023
I’ve taken to keeping an eye on the battery status of my phone and iPad, knowing that at any point there might be another power failure. It was just a little over a week ago, when I was watching the late news with a map on the screen of all the power outages, when my house and the neighborhood dropped into darkness.
Most of us are probably in the middle of precipitation whiplash watching pictures of flooded land that until December were drying and dried up creeks and rivers after years of drought. It is difficult to absorb that the future may bring storms with twice as much water as what has already dropped if we are to believe the impact of warming ocean and air on atmospheric rivers.
It may be difficult to grasp in the middle of back to back storms, flooding and mudslides that climate driven weather disasters are not our biggest threat. The biggest threat is the loss of biodiversity and the collapse of nature. And, each of us has the opportunity and responsibility to act. That was the message of Douglas Tallamy Wednesday evening at the Golden Gate Audubon Society.
In case you missed Tallamy as I did, the recording is already posted on the Golden Gate Audubon website and that is where I watched it. https://goldengateaudubon.org/speaker_series/natures-best-hope/
I confess the whole host plant and special relationship between insects and native plants was lost on me until on our way to the Y my swim partner started pointing out which yards with non-native plants were dead zones for pollinators. I thought plants were plants, you pick the pretty one and never having much gardening talent, it didn’t much matter as in my care it would die anyway. Then my swim pointed out the yards with native plants local to our area filled with activity, buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies, caterpillars lunching on their host plants.
Reading Tallamy’s book the Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees filled the gap for me. Now I understand Monarch butterflies may spend their winter resting on the non-native eucalyptus, when there are no pine, fir or cedar trees to moderate winter temperatures, but unless there is milkweed on which to lay their eggs come spring there will be no Monarch butterflies. Milkweed is the only source of digestible food for Monarch caterpillars. The host relationship is the same for the pipevine and pipevine butterfly.
The meaning of ecosystems, the interdependent relationships between plants, animals, insects, fungi, organisms that work together with their physical environment finally sunk in.
It is a message that is lost on the city foresters and the Parks Department and unfortunately too many people who are in the position to give direction and make planting choices. From everything I hear and see we have city foresters who think diversity means taking plants from around the world that are drought tolerant and planting them in Berkeley apparently not understanding there is an evolutionary relationship in nature that developed over hundreds and thousands of years.
When it comes to the restoration of ecosystems, alien plants are dead zones. This matters.
Wildlife, nature is affected by climate, but the biggest threat is us, we are the biggest threat to the survival of our own species.
Tallamy started his talk with this message from E.O. Wilson, Insects are: “The Little Things That Run the World”
Life as we know it depends on insects
If insects were to disappear
1)Most flowering plants would go extinct
2)That would change the physical structure and energy flow of most terrestrial habitats
3)Which would cause the rapid collapse of the food webs that support amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals (including us)
4)The biosphere would rot due to the loss of insect decomposers
5)Humanity would be doomed!
After all this rain with water logged soil, downed trees, ruined gardens, we have the perfect setting to pull out all of our non-native plants, especially those non-native invasive plants and replace them with California natives. Tallamy emphasized not all native plants are equal and to put our sights on the plants that support the most species (available in calscape). No matter what is the size of your space for plants, Tallamy said there is a place for us in the Homegrown National Park and we have Calscape to help. https://calscape.org/
We can restore ecosystems and that was the message Tallamy gave.
Thursday evening there were seven projects on the Zoning Adjustment Board agenda with the last at 1752 Shattuck a Trachtenberg project. In my public comment, I gave David Trachtenberg the award for the evening with the project with the fewest native plants followed with that given all the projects he designs in Berkeley he should do and know better by now. When I suggested he watch and read Douglas Tallamy, Trachtenberg said he had his book. I continue to wonder if he read it given the list of plants in the project plans.
When starting fresh it should be easy to do the right thing. The plan for the 68 unit mixed-use building at 1752 Shattuck gained added height by including seven very low income units to capture the state density bonus.
On a happier note you can read “They Fought the Lawn. And the Lawn’s Done” about how Janet and Jeff Crouch changed state law in the process to change minds about native plants.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/climate/native-plants-lawns-homeowners.html
I attended the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on ZOOM on one computer and captured the transcript of the Police Accountability Board (PAB) meeting through ZOOM, save transcript on another. The computerized voice capture isn’t perfect, but close enough for meeting content.
The PAB had two agenda items I’ve been following, the complaints against the Police Downtown Bike Unit which upended the appointment of Jennifer Louis from interim chief to Chief of Police on November 15, 2022 (check the November 20, 2022 Activist’s Diary) https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-11-20/article/50077?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-Week-Ending-November-20--Kelly-Hammargren and the report of misconduct by Jennifer Louis in 2017 when Andrew Greenwood was still Police Chief.
The accusation of sexual harassment leaked to the public on December 29, 2022. I might have missed it if I hadn’t turned on the late night news on KRON4. The Los Angeles Times has the most complete report, but these days you need a subscription to read it.
Jennifer Louis was accused in 2017 of sexual harassment, misconduct. After an independent investigator sustained the complaint, Chief Greenwood moved to suspend Louis for five days. Louis appealed the suspension and City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley reduced it to a written reprimand and one-on-one training. Then in 2020 according to the LA Times the report was removed from Louis’s file.
I was expecting the PAB to discuss the content of what happened, but instead the discussion was about getting the information, especially from Internal Affairs.
My questions and concerns revolve around the response by the City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley undermining police chief Greenwood and why the whole affair (employee complaint, investigation, reprimand with a letter that was later removed instead of a suspension) did not reach the Mayor and City Council and the Police Accountability Board during consideration of awarding Jennifer Louis the permanent position as Chief of Police?
Furthermore, how is it that the officer that owes a “clean” file to the city manager is recommended by the same city manager to be appointed interim chief in 2021 and “permanent” police chief in November 2022? Did this affair in its entirety, essentially a tap on the wrist, set the stage where Berkeley Police officers could send racist texts, arrest quotas, harass the homeless, and act with impunity as described by Brandon Woods, Public Defender for Alameda County at the November 15, 2022 City Council meeting? Is this City administration environment why a 20-month search for a new police chief (from the outside) turned up empty?
The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission does not record meetings and requests for recording meetings or even turning on closed captioning falls on deaf ears. And, the description “deaf” is not used lightly. The subject of closed captioning, live transcription and allowing attendees to save meeting transcripts is the subject of the complaint I brought to the Open Government Commission that will be discussed on January 19, 2023.
Scott Ferris, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, reported a T1 funding gap of around $4,500,000 due to an increase in construction costs by about 25% and that priority projects were facilities, roads and restrooms. Ferris’s proposal to remove $300,000 from the Civic Center Turtle Island Monument Project was met with firm resistance from the Parks Commission. The estimate to renovate the African American Holistic Center is about $1,000,000 less than what it would cost to tear down the existing building and start from scratch. All of these estimates were before we feel the full impact of the destruction from our winter storms.
The list of unfinished projects will go back to the joint subcommittee of Parks and Infrastructure and Transportation and eventually City Council.
Brennan Cox, Parks Commissioner and Landscape Architect voted in the end with the rest of the commissioners to support the Turtle Island Monument Project latest design. His comments prior to voting captured the state of affairs and much that I agree with. “This has gone on too long, something should be built, I don’t think we should build something to build something…The design is not moving enough for me” Cox stated he spent a lot of time looking at monuments/memorials and went on to name some, the National African American Museum, the National Veterans Memorial, the Kindred Spirits: Choctaw Native American Monument, the exhibit by Wai Wai at Alcatraz.
When my turn to speak came I answered Martin Nicholus’ question of did the monument include a snapping turtle, I answered in the affirmative and added that snapping turtles are illegal to possess or release in California.
Ferris still has no estimate for the cost of the latest design or any timeline, though he stated that his experience shows he can get it done on time.
The next day the Community for a Cultural Civic Center met and the discussion continued. One member asked how the Turtle Island Monument represents the local Indigenous Peoples the Ohlone. It doesn’t. The Ohlone creation story is of an eagle, a hummingbird and a coyote not a turtle.
The saga continues, no cost estimates, no timeline, a T1 fund shortage. This still looks to me like Lucy pulling the football.
Before the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there never would have been the need for a 10-year child in Ohio to travel to Indiana for a medication abortion. While access to abortion and contraceptives is a fundamental right in California, the Peace and Justice Commission ensued researching the availability of information and access to reproductive health services for Berkeley High and UC Berkeley students. Most of the meeting evening was consumed with the discussion of the results of their research which ended in a report that will be sent to council supporting hiring two community health educators as suggested by Lisa Warhuus PhD, ORSCC, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services.
No mention was made in the Peace and Justice discussion or report of Berkeley City College students, nor did there seem to be any mention of middle school and grade school. The average age for menarche in the U.S. is 12, but some little girls start menstruating years earlier, even as young as 8. Sadly, the need for reproductive health services reaches to children.
BNC (Berkeley Neighborhoods Council) finished the week. The agenda as always is so full, we could really use two meetings to cover it all. What you won’t catch elsewhere was the presentation on the reconfiguration of San Pablo. There is an open website to submit comment. https://www.alamedactc.org/programs-projects/multimodal-arterial-roads/sanpabloave
In contrast to the City of Berkeley, the team for the San Pablo Avenue Corridor Project looks to establishing a parallel bike network. Meaning that instead of Road Diets and taking away traffic lanes, the San Pablo Corridor Project plan is to place the bike routes on quieter parallel streets.
The reconfiguration of Hopkins with removing traffic lanes, parking and adding bike lanes in front of the Monterey Market and block of businesses continues to create an uproar and for good reason. The whole redesign is justified by a fatal accident that occurred April 14, 2017 at 6:30 pm when a driver failed to yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The entire redesign doesn’t end distracted driving, but it does make Hopkins more confusing to navigate for everyone, narrow an evacuation route and put the survival of local businesses at risk.
When I finish here, the Housing Element is waiting, all 1428 pages of it. It is a reading task that I have been dreading. The Housing Element is how Berkeley will add enough new housing to meet the assigned Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 8,934 units with 3,854 of them for extremely low income, very low income and low income households between now and December 31, 2031. It is the only agenda item for the special City Council meeting Wednesday, January 18 at 4 pm.
The draft came with adding 19,098 units, basically 14,016 market rate and moderate income to get to 3,854 affordable units and a statement to the effect that so much of Berkeley is ruined with non-native plants, we might as well cover the city with housing.
The final version is supposed to be proposing squeezing around 15,000 additional units into this 10.5 square miles we call Berkeley. That should turn Berkeley into a city of wall to wall cement. Not terribly appealing except for the land owners who can expect big profits from upzoning for bigger buildings and the developers who will build them. By the time Berkeley is built over with housing and coffee shops there might be more several more atmospheric rivers to send weather disaster refugees to our doorsteps along with the burgeoning classes of UC Berkeley students.
The reading I did finish was Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics by Michael Cohen. I read Cohen’s first book Disloyal and found the inside scoop fascinating. Revenge is Cohen’s perspective on how Trump used the Department of Justice against him. I kept reading Cohen’s second book expecting it to get better. It didn’t.
Despite this there is an important message, it is grievance politics. It is about getting even something it looks like we will be living with for the next two years with the Republican majority in the House. If Trump runs in 2024 and manages to win, revenge will be on the platter.
The stack of books on Trump seems endless and there are many that are better written and more thorough like The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glaser. At 752 pages or 29 hours if you pick up the audiobook as I did, there is little that is left out. I am anxious to see how that book compares with the copy of January 6 Report by the January 6 House Committee that arrived this week.
Last week I wrote about Bob Woodward’s book The Trump Tapes. The podcast the Political Scene with David Remnick and Bob Woodward discussing the book, Trump and reporting is worth a listen. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bob-woodward-on-his-calls-with-trump/id268213039?i=1000594674083
I’ve taken to keeping an eye on the battery status of my phone and iPad, knowing that at any point there might be another power failure. It was just a little over a week ago, when I was watching the late news with a map on the screen of all the power outages, when my house and the neighborhood dropped into darkness.
Most of us are probably in the middle of precipitation whiplash watching pictures of flooded land that until December were drying and dried up creeks and rivers after years of drought. It is difficult to absorb that the future may bring storms with twice as much water as what has already dropped if we are to believe the impact of warming ocean and air on atmospheric rivers.
It may be difficult to grasp in the middle of back to back storms, flooding and mudslides that climate driven weather disasters are not our biggest threat. The biggest threat is the loss of biodiversity and the collapse of nature. And, each of us has the opportunity and responsibility to act. That was the message of Douglas Tallamy Wednesday evening at the Golden Gate Audubon Society.
In case you missed Tallamy as I did, the recording is already posted on the Golden Gate Audubon website and that is where I watched it. https://goldengateaudubon.org/speaker_series/natures-best-hope/
I confess the whole host plant and special relationship between insects and native plants was lost on me until on our way to the Y my swim partner started pointing out which yards with non-native plants were dead zones for pollinators. I thought plants were plants, you pick the pretty one and never having much gardening talent, it didn’t much matter as in my care it would die anyway. Then my swim pointed out the yards with native plants local to our area filled with activity, buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies, caterpillars lunching on their host plants.
Reading Tallamy’s book the Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees filled the gap for me. Now I understand Monarch butterflies may spend their winter resting on the non-native eucalyptus, when there are no pine, fir or cedar trees to moderate winter temperatures, but unless there is milkweed on which to lay their eggs come spring there will be no Monarch butterflies. Milkweed is the only source of digestible food for Monarch caterpillars. The host relationship is the same for the pipevine and pipevine butterfly.
The meaning of ecosystems, the interdependent relationships between plants, animals, insects, fungi, organisms that work together with their physical environment finally sunk in.
It is a message that is lost on the city foresters and the Parks Department and unfortunately too many people who are in the position to give direction and make planting choices. From everything I hear and see we have city foresters who think diversity means taking plants from around the world that are drought tolerant and planting them in Berkeley apparently not understanding there is an evolutionary relationship in nature that developed over hundreds and thousands of years.
When it comes to the restoration of ecosystems, alien plants are dead zones. This matters.
Wildlife, nature is affected by climate, but the biggest threat is us, we are the biggest threat to the survival of our own species.
Tallamy started his talk with this message from E.O. Wilson, Insects are: “The Little Things That Run the World”
Life as we know it depends on insects
If insects were to disappear
1)Most flowering plants would go extinct
2)That would change the physical structure and energy flow of most terrestrial habitats
3)Which would cause the rapid collapse of the food webs that support amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals (including us)
4)The biosphere would rot due to the loss of insect decomposers
5)Humanity would be doomed!
After all this rain with water logged soil, downed trees, ruined gardens, we have the perfect setting to pull out all of our non-native plants, especially those non-native invasive plants and replace them with California natives. Tallamy emphasized not all native plants are equal and to put our sights on the plants that support the most species (available in calscape). No matter what is the size of your space for plants, Tallamy said there is a place for us in the Homegrown National Park and we have Calscape to help. https://calscape.org/
We can restore ecosystems and that was the message Tallamy gave.
Thursday evening there were seven projects on the Zoning Adjustment Board agenda with the last at 1752 Shattuck a Trachtenberg project. In my public comment, I gave David Trachtenberg the award for the evening with the project with the fewest native plants followed with that given all the projects he designs in Berkeley he should do and know better by now. When I suggested he watch and read Douglas Tallamy, Trachtenberg said he had his book. I continue to wonder if he read it given the list of plants in the project plans.
When starting fresh it should be easy to do the right thing. The plan for the 68 unit mixed-use building at 1752 Shattuck gained added height by including seven very low income units to capture the state density bonus.
On a happier note you can read “They Fought the Lawn. And the Lawn’s Done” about how Janet and Jeff Crouch changed state law in the process to change minds about native plants.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/climate/native-plants-lawns-homeowners.html
I attended the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on ZOOM on one computer and captured the transcript of the Police Accountability Board (PAB) meeting through ZOOM, save transcript on another. The computerized voice capture isn’t perfect, but close enough for meeting content.
The PAB had two agenda items I’ve been following, the complaints against the Police Downtown Bike Unit which upended the appointment of Jennifer Louis from interim chief to Chief of Police on November 15, 2022 (check the November 20, 2022 Activist’s Diary) https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-11-20/article/50077?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-Week-Ending-November-20--Kelly-Hammargren and the report of misconduct by Jennifer Louis in 2017 when Andrew Greenwood was still Police Chief.
The accusation of sexual harassment leaked to the public on December 29, 2022. I might have missed it if I hadn’t turned on the late night news on KRON4. The Los Angeles Times has the most complete report, but these days you need a subscription to read it.
Jennifer Louis was accused in 2017 of sexual harassment, misconduct. After an independent investigator sustained the complaint, Chief Greenwood moved to suspend Louis for five days. Louis appealed the suspension and City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley reduced it to a written reprimand and one-on-one training. Then in 2020 according to the LA Times the report was removed from Louis’s file.
I was expecting the PAB to discuss the content of what happened, but instead the discussion was about getting the information, especially from Internal Affairs.
My questions and concerns revolve around the response by the City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley undermining police chief Greenwood and why the whole affair (employee complaint, investigation, reprimand with a letter that was later removed instead of a suspension) did not reach the Mayor and City Council and the Police Accountability Board during consideration of awarding Jennifer Louis the permanent position as Chief of Police?
Furthermore, how is it that the officer that owes a “clean” file to the city manager is recommended by the same city manager to be appointed interim chief in 2021 and “permanent” police chief in November 2022? Did this affair in its entirety, essentially a tap on the wrist, set the stage where Berkeley Police officers could send racist texts, arrest quotas, harass the homeless, and act with impunity as described by Brandon Woods, Public Defender for Alameda County at the November 15, 2022 City Council meeting? Is this City administration environment why a 20-month search for a new police chief (from the outside) turned up empty?
The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission does not record meetings and requests for recording meetings or even turning on closed captioning falls on deaf ears. And, the description “deaf” is not used lightly. The subject of closed captioning, live transcription and allowing attendees to save meeting transcripts is the subject of the complaint I brought to the Open Government Commission that will be discussed on January 19, 2023.
Scott Ferris, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, reported a T1 funding gap of around $4,500,000 due to an increase in construction costs by about 25% and that priority projects were facilities, roads and restrooms. Ferris’s proposal to remove $300,000 from the Civic Center Turtle Island Monument Project was met with firm resistance from the Parks Commission. The estimate to renovate the African American Holistic Center is about $1,000,000 less than what it would cost to tear down the existing building and start from scratch. All of these estimates were before we feel the full impact of the destruction from our winter storms.
The list of unfinished projects will go back to the joint subcommittee of Parks and Infrastructure and Transportation and eventually City Council.
Brennan Cox, Parks Commissioner and Landscape Architect voted in the end with the rest of the commissioners to support the Turtle Island Monument Project latest design. His comments prior to voting captured the state of affairs and much that I agree with. “This has gone on too long, something should be built, I don’t think we should build something to build something…The design is not moving enough for me” Cox stated he spent a lot of time looking at monuments/memorials and went on to name some, the National African American Museum, the National Veterans Memorial, the Kindred Spirits: Choctaw Native American Monument, the exhibit by Wai Wai at Alcatraz.
When my turn to speak came I answered Martin Nicholus’ question of did the monument include a snapping turtle, I answered in the affirmative and added that snapping turtles are illegal to possess or release in California.
Ferris still has no estimate for the cost of the latest design or any timeline, though he stated that his experience shows he can get it done on time.
The next day the Community for a Cultural Civic Center met and the discussion continued. One member asked how the Turtle Island Monument represents the local Indigenous Peoples the Ohlone. It doesn’t. The Ohlone creation story is of an eagle, a hummingbird and a coyote not a turtle.
The saga continues, no cost estimates, no timeline, a T1 fund shortage. This still looks to me like Lucy pulling the football.
Before the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there never would have been the need for a 10-year child in Ohio to travel to Indiana for a medication abortion. While access to abortion and contraceptives is a fundamental right in California, the Peace and Justice Commission ensued researching the availability of information and access to reproductive health services for Berkeley High and UC Berkeley students. Most of the meeting evening was consumed with the discussion of the results of their research which ended in a report that will be sent to council supporting hiring two community health educators as suggested by Lisa Warhuus PhD, ORSCC, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services.
No mention was made in the Peace and Justice discussion or report of Berkeley City College students, nor did there seem to be any mention of middle school and grade school. The average age for menarche in the U.S. is 12, but some little girls start menstruating years earlier, even as young as 8. Sadly, the need for reproductive health services reaches to children.
BNC (Berkeley Neighborhoods Council) finished the week. The agenda as always is so full, we could really use two meetings to cover it all. What you won’t catch elsewhere was the presentation on the reconfiguration of San Pablo. There is an open website to submit comment. https://www.alamedactc.org/programs-projects/multimodal-arterial-roads/sanpabloave
In contrast to the City of Berkeley, the team for the San Pablo Avenue Corridor Project looks to establishing a parallel bike network. Meaning that instead of Road Diets and taking away traffic lanes, the San Pablo Corridor Project plan is to place the bike routes on quieter parallel streets.
The reconfiguration of Hopkins with removing traffic lanes, parking and adding bike lanes in front of the Monterey Market and block of businesses continues to create an uproar and for good reason. The whole redesign is justified by a fatal accident that occurred April 14, 2017 at 6:30 pm when a driver failed to yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The entire redesign doesn’t end distracted driving, but it does make Hopkins more confusing to navigate for everyone, narrow an evacuation route and put the survival of local businesses at risk.
When I finish here, the Housing Element is waiting, all 1428 pages of it. It is a reading task that I have been dreading. The Housing Element is how Berkeley will add enough new housing to meet the assigned Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 8,934 units with 3,854 of them for extremely low income, very low income and low income households between now and December 31, 2031. It is the only agenda item for the special City Council meeting Wednesday, January 18 at 4 pm.
The draft came with adding 19,098 units, basically 14,016 market rate and moderate income to get to 3,854 affordable units and a statement to the effect that so much of Berkeley is ruined with non-native plants, we might as well cover the city with housing.
The final version is supposed to be proposing squeezing around 15,000 additional units into this 10.5 square miles we call Berkeley. That should turn Berkeley into a city of wall to wall cement. Not terribly appealing except for the land owners who can expect big profits from upzoning for bigger buildings and the developers who will build them. By the time Berkeley is built over with housing and coffee shops there might be more several more atmospheric rivers to send weather disaster refugees to our doorsteps along with the burgeoning classes of UC Berkeley students.
The reading I did finish was Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics by Michael Cohen. I read Cohen’s first book Disloyal and found the inside scoop fascinating. Revenge is Cohen’s perspective on how Trump used the Department of Justice against him. I kept reading Cohen’s second book expecting it to get better. It didn’t.
Despite this there is an important message, it is grievance politics. It is about getting even something it looks like we will be living with for the next two years with the Republican majority in the House. If Trump runs in 2024 and manages to win, revenge will be on the platter.
The stack of books on Trump seems endless and there are many that are better written and more thorough like The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glaser. At 752 pages or 29 hours if you pick up the audiobook as I did, there is little that is left out. I am anxious to see how that book compares with the copy of January 6 Report by the January 6 House Committee that arrived this week.
Last week I wrote about Bob Woodward’s book The Trump Tapes. The podcast the Political Scene with David Remnick and Bob Woodward discussing the book, Trump and reporting is worth a listen. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bob-woodward-on-his-calls-with-trump/id268213039?i=1000594674083
January 8, 2023
City Council sent Lori Droste off into the sunset as a former two term Councilmember with nearly 1 ½ hours of accolades on December 6, 2022. Sometime before signing off that last evening Droste submitted two proposals that were first seen in the draft agenda for the January 17, 2023 City Council meeting as items 26 and 27 at the January 4, 2023 Agenda and Rules Committee.
The Agenda and Rules Committee with members Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf, rarely receives much attention. There are only two or three regular public attendees (I am one) and city staff.
If you have been following Kevin McCarthy’s quest for Speaker of the House and the concessions made to get the gavel including three spots on the Rules Committee for Freedom Caucus members, then you might have heard Representative Jim McGovern Democrat from Massachusetts describe the Rules Committee as the most powerful committee that no one knows anything about. The House of Representatives Rules Committee decides what gets to the floor for a vote. And the Rules, McCarthy concessions (promises), most of which are in a secret appendix determine how the House of Representatives will operate.
The Berkeley Council Agenda and Rules does much the same, determines what reaches the final agenda for a Council vote and how Council meetings are managed. For now, the Council Agenda and Rules Committee referred Droste’s parting gestures back to itself for further discussion, but that shouldn’t give anyone any assurance that Council won’t get behind these changes.
Draft Agenda Item 26 was “Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Referral Improvement and Prioritization Effort (BE RIPE).” This agenda item would limit each councilmember to no more than one major legislative proposal or set of amendments to any existing ordinance per year, with the mayor allowed two proposals. And, budget referrals and allocations must be explicitly related to previously established or passed policies or programs.
Droste’s proposal for limiting legislation and budget referrals would certainly dampen Berkeley’s position as a progressive city though other than Harrison’s natural gas ban in new construction in 2019, Berkeley has fallen off a cliff when it comes to innovation. Looking at submissions, the two councilmembers who would be most affected by limiting legislation are Taplin and Harrison. Every councilmember would feel the pinch on budget referrals.
Councilmember Taplin turns out a stack of legislative proposals every month, more than what would be reasonably produced by office staff/legislative aide with Taplin turning over presentations and responses to questions to others. I can only think of one Taplin proposal that didn’t end up as a referral for the City Manager to finish and that was the ordinance on giving priority to native plants. By the time it reached a council vote it was so watered down it can best be described as a near meaningless gesture when what is really needed is recognition of the critical importance of urban forests, support for ecosystems and firm thresholds for native plants which research shows should not drop below 70%.
The other councilmember that turns in significant legislation is Harrison. The difference between the two councilmembers is: Harrison knows her legislative proposals thoroughly, goes through steps of refinement, is ready to answer questions which frequently turns into grilling requiring explaining every facet and little to nothing is left to finish except implementation if approved.
Droste’s Draft Agenda Item 27 “Reforms to Public Comment Procedures at meetings of the Berkeley City Council“ consolidates all public comment non-agenda, agenda consent and action into a single comment period with a limit on the number of speakers at the beginning of meetings and additional time at the end of meetings using BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) School Board as a model. This rule revision is proposed as temporary during COVID-19, however, no one should feel confident if it is passed that this would not be extended.
This would leave public comment to emails/letters. Since it appears that some council members never finish reading the agenda packet, it lays open to question how they do with reading emails/letters.
I remember sitting at a BUSD with two others until I was called on at 1:35 am to give public comment. I also remember months ago when Mayor Arreguin said at a public meeting that commenters opposing his plan for a ferry didn’t represent Berkeley. I can think of no better way to create a bubble of sycophants around the mayor and council than to shut down public comment.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission started off Thursday evening January 5, 2023 ordinarily enough with a demolition referral for the rather non-descript box like commercial building at 1652 – 1658 University last occupied by Radio Shack. There was the usual back and forth over how a new building (size and mass unknown) might impact the existing historical buildings next door.
Mark Hulbert Preservation Architect hired to do the demolition assessment of 1652-1658 University concluded:
“[T]he subject property and building are not associated with the movement or evolution of religious, cultural, government, social or economic developments of the City (LPO Section A.2). In its mid-University Ave. and mid-20th century commercial development context there are no development patterns of any potential historic importance associated with this property or its ordinary store and office building.”
The conclusion in the staff report by Allison Riemer, Associate Planner was similar:
“[A] study of its construction history, ownership and occupancy records revealed no information linking this site to any events or singular episode of primary importance to Berkeley’s history or economic development.”
Both the Preservation Architect and City staff missed what Fran Cappelletti, Archivist for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association found. In 1923, a permit was taken for the West Gate Masonic Association to build a building on that corner (University and Jefferson) for the Masonic Lodge for African Americans. Objections arose from the neighbors who did not want African Americans at this site in any form and went so far as to pressure the City to change the zoning. The City Council did not approve the zoning change, but the construction stopped and the lot sat vacant for twenty-four years until the current commercial building was constructed in 1947.
Commissioner Finacom asked for a plaque to be at the site to commemorate the history, but was met with pushback and objections from Commission Chair Enchill, “So I think we can find those type of histories and stories throughout the city, and I don’t think there’s enough for me to that that’s a particularly unique story that the developer should be required to provide a plaque here.” Commission Crandall agreed as did the rest of the commissioners.
Commissioner Finacom stated he respectfully disagreed and spoke to the vanishing collective history. “[I]f there is a plaque, it seeps its way into a public consciousness, because people read it, and they mention it… it actually has a cultural context to the property and the story of Berkeley.”
Commissioner Chair Encill’s statement that there is nothing particularly unique about the history of 1652 – 1658 University seems to be all the more reason to memorialize how racism ended building a Masonic Lodge for African Americans at the corner of University and Jefferson. How many other stories need to be told and memorialized?
If we look to the cover story in the December 2022 issue of the Atlantic, “Monuments to the Unthinkable America still can’t figure out how to memorialize the sins of our history. What can we learn from Germany?” by Clint Smith we should have plaques everywhere. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/holocaust-remembrance-lessons-america/671893/
Smith gives us a lot to think about. How do we come to grips with the sins of our history and the continuing racism that seeps into every corner of this country.
Councilmember Hahn put forward the land acknowledgement to remind us of our history, that we are on unceded Indigenous land. Hahn also authored the letter sent by Council to the leaders of the House of Representatives and Representative Barbara Lee to honor the Treaty of New Echota and seat the official delegate nominated by the Cherokee Nation.
It is a start.
As I finish this Diary it is 100 years to the day, January 10, 1923 since a white mob burned the Black town of Rosewood, Florida to the ground and murdered six Black residents. Florida is now the state where Governor Ron DeSantis proudly champions legislation designed to limit instruction about racism and privilege in the STOP W.O.K.E. Act https://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Stop-Woke-Handout.pdf
I did attend the Homeless Services Panel of Experts meeting on January 4, but about halfway through the long rambling discussion that ate up most of the meeting with Sharon Byrne from Santa Barbara, I lost focus. Byrne detailed the effort and collaboration of unlikely partners redirecting little more than a handful of disruptive chronically homeless persons into housing and productive behavior. No meeting actions were taken other than approving the minutes and agreeing on the meeting agenda.
After listening to the first two taped interviews in the audiobook The Trump Tapes by Bob Woodward, 2022, 11 hours and 29 minutes I was about ready to hang it all up, but I pushed ahead and finished the entire audiobook. As with nearly every book I pick up the impact is so much greater by reading or listening in its entirety. Listening to Trump in his own words, adds even more to the question of how can it be that he has a solid core of true believers somewhere around 30% - 40% of the voting public.
The Trump tapes are amazing in so many ways like how Woodward attempted to lead Trump to self-reflection only for Trump to bark back his grievances and self-aggrandizement.
Woodward reminds us that a switch of 44,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia would have given Trump and Biden an electoral tie sending the election back to the House of Representatives where each state would have one vote. Since more states were Republican dominated, Trump would have won.
Woodward concludes Trump lives in his own self-inflicted melodrama where “everything is mine, I do what I want” and is totally unfit for office.
Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows you How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People by Joe Navarro and Toni Sciarra Poynter published in 2014 was the perfect reading companion to the Trump tapes. Navarro and Sciarra describe four dangerous personality types: narcissistic, unstable, paranoid and predator and give a check list with scoring for the lay reader.
I went through the exercise of every list, checking the boxes and scoring Trump. I fully expected the outlandishly high score for the narcissistic personality, but I was less prepared for the scoring as a predator to land in the dangerous territory too. I should have been ready with all the reports of swindling investors and contractors, the assaults on women, the Trump University scandal, the Fair Housing Act discrimination settlement, the conviction of the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records, the Trump Foundation charity scam and the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
Remember how pre-election Trump promoters said he will become presidential when he is elected and Susan Collins said after the first impeachment Trump has learned a lesson. He did, he can get away with anything.
The message throughout the book is people with dangerous personalities do not change. They are an emotional, physical and financial threat.
Donald J. Trump fits the profile of a narcissistic personality and a predator. Donald J. Trump is not going to change and using the profiles we all need to remember he is not just a narcissist, he is also a predator.
There is one more thing to remember. It took fifteen cycles of voting and a pile of concessions for Kevin McCarthy to be elected Speaker of the House. Let us not forget who McCarthy made those concessions to. Out of the 218 Republican members in the House of Representatives, 121 were re-elected after voting against certifying the election of President Biden on January 6, 2021. We are in for a rough ride with a caucus bent on burning the House down.
City Council sent Lori Droste off into the sunset as a former two term Councilmember with nearly 1 ½ hours of accolades on December 6, 2022. Sometime before signing off that last evening Droste submitted two proposals that were first seen in the draft agenda for the January 17, 2023 City Council meeting as items 26 and 27 at the January 4, 2023 Agenda and Rules Committee.
The Agenda and Rules Committee with members Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf, rarely receives much attention. There are only two or three regular public attendees (I am one) and city staff.
If you have been following Kevin McCarthy’s quest for Speaker of the House and the concessions made to get the gavel including three spots on the Rules Committee for Freedom Caucus members, then you might have heard Representative Jim McGovern Democrat from Massachusetts describe the Rules Committee as the most powerful committee that no one knows anything about. The House of Representatives Rules Committee decides what gets to the floor for a vote. And the Rules, McCarthy concessions (promises), most of which are in a secret appendix determine how the House of Representatives will operate.
The Berkeley Council Agenda and Rules does much the same, determines what reaches the final agenda for a Council vote and how Council meetings are managed. For now, the Council Agenda and Rules Committee referred Droste’s parting gestures back to itself for further discussion, but that shouldn’t give anyone any assurance that Council won’t get behind these changes.
Draft Agenda Item 26 was “Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Referral Improvement and Prioritization Effort (BE RIPE).” This agenda item would limit each councilmember to no more than one major legislative proposal or set of amendments to any existing ordinance per year, with the mayor allowed two proposals. And, budget referrals and allocations must be explicitly related to previously established or passed policies or programs.
Droste’s proposal for limiting legislation and budget referrals would certainly dampen Berkeley’s position as a progressive city though other than Harrison’s natural gas ban in new construction in 2019, Berkeley has fallen off a cliff when it comes to innovation. Looking at submissions, the two councilmembers who would be most affected by limiting legislation are Taplin and Harrison. Every councilmember would feel the pinch on budget referrals.
Councilmember Taplin turns out a stack of legislative proposals every month, more than what would be reasonably produced by office staff/legislative aide with Taplin turning over presentations and responses to questions to others. I can only think of one Taplin proposal that didn’t end up as a referral for the City Manager to finish and that was the ordinance on giving priority to native plants. By the time it reached a council vote it was so watered down it can best be described as a near meaningless gesture when what is really needed is recognition of the critical importance of urban forests, support for ecosystems and firm thresholds for native plants which research shows should not drop below 70%.
The other councilmember that turns in significant legislation is Harrison. The difference between the two councilmembers is: Harrison knows her legislative proposals thoroughly, goes through steps of refinement, is ready to answer questions which frequently turns into grilling requiring explaining every facet and little to nothing is left to finish except implementation if approved.
Droste’s Draft Agenda Item 27 “Reforms to Public Comment Procedures at meetings of the Berkeley City Council“ consolidates all public comment non-agenda, agenda consent and action into a single comment period with a limit on the number of speakers at the beginning of meetings and additional time at the end of meetings using BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) School Board as a model. This rule revision is proposed as temporary during COVID-19, however, no one should feel confident if it is passed that this would not be extended.
This would leave public comment to emails/letters. Since it appears that some council members never finish reading the agenda packet, it lays open to question how they do with reading emails/letters.
I remember sitting at a BUSD with two others until I was called on at 1:35 am to give public comment. I also remember months ago when Mayor Arreguin said at a public meeting that commenters opposing his plan for a ferry didn’t represent Berkeley. I can think of no better way to create a bubble of sycophants around the mayor and council than to shut down public comment.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission started off Thursday evening January 5, 2023 ordinarily enough with a demolition referral for the rather non-descript box like commercial building at 1652 – 1658 University last occupied by Radio Shack. There was the usual back and forth over how a new building (size and mass unknown) might impact the existing historical buildings next door.
Mark Hulbert Preservation Architect hired to do the demolition assessment of 1652-1658 University concluded:
“[T]he subject property and building are not associated with the movement or evolution of religious, cultural, government, social or economic developments of the City (LPO Section A.2). In its mid-University Ave. and mid-20th century commercial development context there are no development patterns of any potential historic importance associated with this property or its ordinary store and office building.”
The conclusion in the staff report by Allison Riemer, Associate Planner was similar:
“[A] study of its construction history, ownership and occupancy records revealed no information linking this site to any events or singular episode of primary importance to Berkeley’s history or economic development.”
Both the Preservation Architect and City staff missed what Fran Cappelletti, Archivist for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association found. In 1923, a permit was taken for the West Gate Masonic Association to build a building on that corner (University and Jefferson) for the Masonic Lodge for African Americans. Objections arose from the neighbors who did not want African Americans at this site in any form and went so far as to pressure the City to change the zoning. The City Council did not approve the zoning change, but the construction stopped and the lot sat vacant for twenty-four years until the current commercial building was constructed in 1947.
Commissioner Finacom asked for a plaque to be at the site to commemorate the history, but was met with pushback and objections from Commission Chair Enchill, “So I think we can find those type of histories and stories throughout the city, and I don’t think there’s enough for me to that that’s a particularly unique story that the developer should be required to provide a plaque here.” Commission Crandall agreed as did the rest of the commissioners.
Commissioner Finacom stated he respectfully disagreed and spoke to the vanishing collective history. “[I]f there is a plaque, it seeps its way into a public consciousness, because people read it, and they mention it… it actually has a cultural context to the property and the story of Berkeley.”
Commissioner Chair Encill’s statement that there is nothing particularly unique about the history of 1652 – 1658 University seems to be all the more reason to memorialize how racism ended building a Masonic Lodge for African Americans at the corner of University and Jefferson. How many other stories need to be told and memorialized?
If we look to the cover story in the December 2022 issue of the Atlantic, “Monuments to the Unthinkable America still can’t figure out how to memorialize the sins of our history. What can we learn from Germany?” by Clint Smith we should have plaques everywhere. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/holocaust-remembrance-lessons-america/671893/
Smith gives us a lot to think about. How do we come to grips with the sins of our history and the continuing racism that seeps into every corner of this country.
Councilmember Hahn put forward the land acknowledgement to remind us of our history, that we are on unceded Indigenous land. Hahn also authored the letter sent by Council to the leaders of the House of Representatives and Representative Barbara Lee to honor the Treaty of New Echota and seat the official delegate nominated by the Cherokee Nation.
It is a start.
As I finish this Diary it is 100 years to the day, January 10, 1923 since a white mob burned the Black town of Rosewood, Florida to the ground and murdered six Black residents. Florida is now the state where Governor Ron DeSantis proudly champions legislation designed to limit instruction about racism and privilege in the STOP W.O.K.E. Act https://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Stop-Woke-Handout.pdf
I did attend the Homeless Services Panel of Experts meeting on January 4, but about halfway through the long rambling discussion that ate up most of the meeting with Sharon Byrne from Santa Barbara, I lost focus. Byrne detailed the effort and collaboration of unlikely partners redirecting little more than a handful of disruptive chronically homeless persons into housing and productive behavior. No meeting actions were taken other than approving the minutes and agreeing on the meeting agenda.
After listening to the first two taped interviews in the audiobook The Trump Tapes by Bob Woodward, 2022, 11 hours and 29 minutes I was about ready to hang it all up, but I pushed ahead and finished the entire audiobook. As with nearly every book I pick up the impact is so much greater by reading or listening in its entirety. Listening to Trump in his own words, adds even more to the question of how can it be that he has a solid core of true believers somewhere around 30% - 40% of the voting public.
The Trump tapes are amazing in so many ways like how Woodward attempted to lead Trump to self-reflection only for Trump to bark back his grievances and self-aggrandizement.
Woodward reminds us that a switch of 44,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia would have given Trump and Biden an electoral tie sending the election back to the House of Representatives where each state would have one vote. Since more states were Republican dominated, Trump would have won.
Woodward concludes Trump lives in his own self-inflicted melodrama where “everything is mine, I do what I want” and is totally unfit for office.
Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows you How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People by Joe Navarro and Toni Sciarra Poynter published in 2014 was the perfect reading companion to the Trump tapes. Navarro and Sciarra describe four dangerous personality types: narcissistic, unstable, paranoid and predator and give a check list with scoring for the lay reader.
I went through the exercise of every list, checking the boxes and scoring Trump. I fully expected the outlandishly high score for the narcissistic personality, but I was less prepared for the scoring as a predator to land in the dangerous territory too. I should have been ready with all the reports of swindling investors and contractors, the assaults on women, the Trump University scandal, the Fair Housing Act discrimination settlement, the conviction of the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records, the Trump Foundation charity scam and the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
Remember how pre-election Trump promoters said he will become presidential when he is elected and Susan Collins said after the first impeachment Trump has learned a lesson. He did, he can get away with anything.
The message throughout the book is people with dangerous personalities do not change. They are an emotional, physical and financial threat.
Donald J. Trump fits the profile of a narcissistic personality and a predator. Donald J. Trump is not going to change and using the profiles we all need to remember he is not just a narcissist, he is also a predator.
There is one more thing to remember. It took fifteen cycles of voting and a pile of concessions for Kevin McCarthy to be elected Speaker of the House. Let us not forget who McCarthy made those concessions to. Out of the 218 Republican members in the House of Representatives, 121 were re-elected after voting against certifying the election of President Biden on January 6, 2021. We are in for a rough ride with a caucus bent on burning the House down.
December 11, 2022
I’ve been attending the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meetings for months and following the Turtle Island Monument Project story. Looking over the history of the Turtle Island Monument sketchy as it is and the current situation, it looks ever so much like Lucy pulling the football once again and unstated plans to spend the close to $1,000,000 elsewhere.
I wasted what felt like a day trying to find the documents in the city archives, “records online” to see for myself the original approval process. I had heard the Turtle Island Monument had been discussed for years, but finding documents in records online is like crawling into a deep computer rabbit hole for hours and coming up with little to nothing. I could not find artist submissions or the selection process or meeting agendas and minutes I was seeking. I did find the contracts with Scott K. Parsons and expenditure statements from 2006 and a few other reports. The rest comes from the Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting documents on December 1, 2022.
The dedication of Indigenous Peoples Day was declared in 1992 and the idea of turning the defunct Civic Center fountain into the Turtle Island Monument evolved shortly after. In 1996, $900,000 was dedicated from Measure S to the Civic Center Park. The Turtle Island Monument was to be paid for out of those funds. Obviously that money went somewhere other than the Turtle Island Monument.
The Turtle Island Project came back again in 2005 and Council approved a scaled back version with the four bronze Loggerhead Sea Turtles and eight medallions 3 feet in diameter commemorating Native People. A contract was signed with the Scott K. Parson from Sioux Falls, South Dakota on June 16, 2006. Parsons fulfilled his commitment and finished the eight medallions and four bronze life size Loggerhead Sea Turtles. None of these artworks ever made it for placement in the fountain.
In 2018, the Turtle Island Monument Project was resurrected again incorporating the turtles sculpted and cast by Scott Parsons and the eight medallions. The proposal using native plants and creating a new seating ledge worked within the restriction of keeping the fountain intact. This design was approved by the T1 Committee in 2020. https://turtleislandfountain.org/
PGAdesign was hired by the City to implement the project and the T1 committee approved design. The T1 approved design was discarded in 2022 in meetings which were not public. A new design credited to Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson for the Turtle Island Monument and presented to the public at the Landmarks Preservation Commission on December 1, 2022 consists of removing the top of the fountain, then placing on top of what is left of the fountain a piece of black granite 15 feet in diameter and 4 feet 3 inches thick (estimated weight 18 tons) with a 12 foot bronze snapping turtle on top. There are four openings in the base of fountain with a blue glass mosaic representing water in two of the openings. The eight tribal medallions are to be embedded in boulders and six more blank medallions representing tribes lost to colonialism are to be placed in the renovated flagstone. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-12-01_LPC_Item%205_Turtle%20Island.pdf
Sprague has been very insistent in placing a snapping turtle on top of the granite as the symbol of the indigenous peoples’ creation story. The hard shell back of the turtle is the emblem of land and life emerging from the sea to land.
The deadlines to spend the funds financing the project are June 30, 2024 for the $591,666 from the Clean California Local Grant Program and December 2025 for the $300,000 from the T1 funds. These spending deadlines may seem like a long way off, but a circular piece of black granite 15 feet in diameter and 51 inches thick is not like going over to your local kitchen and bath remodeling store to buy a black granite counter.
The Civic Arts Commission did review the project on December 7, 2022 and voted to approve the new conceptual design. This time quite a number of local tribal members did show up to support the project and others who had not previously identified as having indigenous heritage also spoke.
Lisa Bullwinkel as promised to CCCC asked about budget/cost of the project. Jennifer Lovvorn City of Berkeley staff dismissed Bullwinkel’s question and insisted the cost was unimportant. Bullwinkel moved from there to support the design and it was passed unanimously by the Arts Commission.
The Turtle Island Monument Project was expected to be on the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission (PRW) agenda on December 14, but it was pushed down to an information item containing a letter from John Caner for CCCC. The worry from CCCC is that the Turtle Island Monument project will not be completed within the funding grant deadlines and the funds diverted elsewhere. Gordon Wozniak, PRW commission chair stated the city manager asked to have discussion postponed until January when the City will give a presentation.
Scott Parson’s public art can be seen in Colorado, Ohio, Canada, Florida, Minnesota, Arizona and Wisconsin, but in Berkeley Parsons’ artwork for the Turtle Island Monument sits in storage and at 2180 Milvia. https://damnfineart.com/our-projects/page/2/
The artwork I found for Marlene Watson are paintings and posters. I can’t find any public art for Lee Sprague. This isn’t to say Watson and Sprague can’t have impressive wonderful concepts and the latest design is quite exciting, but it does lay to question whether they have the experience to maneuver a project in a city that has a long history of what once again looks more like Lucy pulling the football and feels like there are other plans on where and how to spend the money with statements like project cost is unimportant.
There are two corrections from my December 4 write-up. it was the group that resurrected the Turtle Island Monument Project in 2018 that tracked down Lee Sprague first not City staff and I rechecked the size of the granite it is 15 feet in diameter and 51 inches thick changing the weight to 18 tons. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-12-04/article/50095?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-Week-Ending-December-4--Kelly-Hammargren)
Bait and switch is a well worn tactic in Berkeley when it comes to how money is spent and it happened again at the Council 5 pm special meeting on December 13 and was the topic of discussion at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on December 14.
In the City Council’s letter to Nancy Skinner, Chair of the State Senate Budget Committee and to Phil Ting, Chair of the State Assembly Budget Committee, the City Council lined out how they would spend the $15 million requested for the Berkeley Marina. Once the money was granted when it came around to approving the expenditures on December 13, $2,961,000 of the all important dock and piling replacement funds turned into paying for the environmental review and design of the pier/ferry project.
Scott Ferris and crew swear that WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) is going pay the city back when or if the lawsuit for Regional Measure 3 funds is settled in favor of the Bay Area Toll Authority and WETA gets a cut of the Measure 3 bridge tolls.
Ferris put forward the argument that completing an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and design is only a study and not a commitment. EIRs are completed to meet CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) requirements and not undertaken unless there are plans to move forward, meaning “study and not a commitment” falls into pure B.S.
The entire pier/ferry plan with the promise of WETA is going to pay for it makes me think of Trump’s border wall and Mexico is going to pay for it. Commissioner Kerry Birnbach said her friends were anxious for a ferry ride in Berkeley. In my public comment, I asked if they would feel the same if they paid a full fare of around $28. I received a text that some believe the true per person cost of ferrying people across the bay when all costs are included may be as high as $100 per rider.
After going through the WETA year to date revenue and expenditures, that average fare cost of around $5.53 is subsidized with bridge tolls, Contra Costa Measure J and federal funds to the tune of $27.74 or actual cost of $33.27 per ferry ride. This subsidy calculation is low as it does not include all of the funding needed for terminal rehabilitation, infrastructure, new and replacement vessels.
The main point is that ferries do not exist on the Bay without substantial public financing through federal funds, state funds, bridge tolls and sales taxes. The people who use the ferries are disproportionally high income households with 35% of weekday commuter survey respondents reporting household incomes of greater than $200,000. People from low income households earning less than $50,000 make up 7% of riders overall with their utilization primarily on the weekends.
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to ask Tom Rubin who described himself as having over five decades of experience in transportation what he thought about road diets. He was quite blunt in his answer after first differentiating that “streets” are for local traffic and “roads” are to get from one place to another. Putting roads on a diet meaning decreasing the lanes of traffic pushes drivers on narrowed principal roads onto neighborhood streets not designed for through traffic creating a “stroad” problem.
Another problem Rubin noted with road diets and redesigns is that once the changes are made it is near impossible to undo the damage. That should be a warning to us, not to let up on the pressure to save Hopkins and the businesses we love there.
He added that road diets create major public safety problems. Every minute of delay for an emergency vehicle means substantial increase in a fatal incident or permanent injury. Pedestrian deaths increased after road diets in Southern California the opposite of the claim that road diets make streets safer. Rubin ended with, “fire chiefs are under great pressure to keep their mouths shut if they want to keep their jobs.”
If you haven’t responded to the Civic Center Survey, set aside a few minutes to send off your opinion. It doesn’t take long to look at the diagrams, check boxes and add comments if you choose. Survey link: https://qualtricsxmjph7lvfxl.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aa71ggvGKG50ZIa
If you wish to see the presentation from the consultants before completing the survey here is the link: https://qualtricsxmjph7lvfxl.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aa71ggvGKG50ZIa
The consultants Siegal & Strain Architects for the Civic Center seem set on a road diet for MLK Jr. Way. They also have in their plans new offices for city council in Maudelle Shirek. CCCC members have had their eyes on using a restored Maudelle Shirek Building for community non-profits and a historical museum. I’d like to see space for indigenous people.
Book and Film Recommendations
In a cruise through the New York Times before settling in for the final edit of this Diary, I saw the article that a Statue of Henrietta Lacks will replace a monument to Robert E. Lee in Roanoke, Virginia as part of a local project to recognize Black history in community spaces.
Henrietta Lacks, a poor Black woman, living not far from the Johns Hopkins Hospital was treated for cervical cancer, but before diagnosis was made and treatment begun, a sample of her tumor was taken. For the first time, when all other attempts to culture cancerous cells, grow cancerous cells in a lab failed, the tumor cells from Henrietta Lacks grew and multiplied every 20 to 24 hours. The cell line was named HeLa.
I didn’t read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot when it was published in 2010. It wasn’t until 2014 when it really sunk in how much I was missing by not reading books. That is when I went looking for a book club that focused on nonfiction and politics and couldn’t find one. It was a conversation over coffee with Barbara Ruffner that lead to starting a group that reads nearly 100% nonfiction on politics, race, climate and the environment. Barbara was a vibrant 88 when we started, but failing health caught up.
Barbara always pulled our choices to Democratic Socialism and it wasn’t long before we understood, we couldn’t read about politics without reading about race and racism. This review is dedicated to Barbara who passed away in October.
The book is the story of Henrietta, her family, descendants, the research, researchers and travels and the persistence of Rebecca Skloot to put it altogether.
Henrietta Lacks died at the young age of 31. The HeLa cells were used in the development of polio and COVID-19 vaccines, the study of leukemia, AIDS virus and cancer. HeLa cancer cells are the root of worldwide research studying the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses.
Honoring Henrietta Lacks is even more meaningful after reading the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks if you haven’t picked it up already.
Film
Senator Warnock just won re-election by a healthy margin over Hershel Walker and much was made of voter turnout and questioning whether there really was voter suppression. The film “Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman” written by Greg Palast produced by Maria Florio with Executive Producers Martin Sheen, George DiCaprio and Stephen Nemeth lays bare the impact of Georgia’s SB 202 “Election Integrity Act of 2021” and the disenfranchisement of Black voters in Georgia. Mail-in voting dropped by 81%.
After seeing Greg Palast in person at a KPFA event, I always think of him as a man full of himself. I found the film unexpectantly informative and good and definitely worth watching especially because Georgia’s SB 202 is a bill that is and will be imitated elsewhere.
The film is currently free online until January 1, 2023 at 11 pm. https://watch.showandtell.film/watch/vigilante-ga/
I’ve been attending the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meetings for months and following the Turtle Island Monument Project story. Looking over the history of the Turtle Island Monument sketchy as it is and the current situation, it looks ever so much like Lucy pulling the football once again and unstated plans to spend the close to $1,000,000 elsewhere.
I wasted what felt like a day trying to find the documents in the city archives, “records online” to see for myself the original approval process. I had heard the Turtle Island Monument had been discussed for years, but finding documents in records online is like crawling into a deep computer rabbit hole for hours and coming up with little to nothing. I could not find artist submissions or the selection process or meeting agendas and minutes I was seeking. I did find the contracts with Scott K. Parsons and expenditure statements from 2006 and a few other reports. The rest comes from the Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting documents on December 1, 2022.
The dedication of Indigenous Peoples Day was declared in 1992 and the idea of turning the defunct Civic Center fountain into the Turtle Island Monument evolved shortly after. In 1996, $900,000 was dedicated from Measure S to the Civic Center Park. The Turtle Island Monument was to be paid for out of those funds. Obviously that money went somewhere other than the Turtle Island Monument.
The Turtle Island Project came back again in 2005 and Council approved a scaled back version with the four bronze Loggerhead Sea Turtles and eight medallions 3 feet in diameter commemorating Native People. A contract was signed with the Scott K. Parson from Sioux Falls, South Dakota on June 16, 2006. Parsons fulfilled his commitment and finished the eight medallions and four bronze life size Loggerhead Sea Turtles. None of these artworks ever made it for placement in the fountain.
In 2018, the Turtle Island Monument Project was resurrected again incorporating the turtles sculpted and cast by Scott Parsons and the eight medallions. The proposal using native plants and creating a new seating ledge worked within the restriction of keeping the fountain intact. This design was approved by the T1 Committee in 2020. https://turtleislandfountain.org/
PGAdesign was hired by the City to implement the project and the T1 committee approved design. The T1 approved design was discarded in 2022 in meetings which were not public. A new design credited to Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson for the Turtle Island Monument and presented to the public at the Landmarks Preservation Commission on December 1, 2022 consists of removing the top of the fountain, then placing on top of what is left of the fountain a piece of black granite 15 feet in diameter and 4 feet 3 inches thick (estimated weight 18 tons) with a 12 foot bronze snapping turtle on top. There are four openings in the base of fountain with a blue glass mosaic representing water in two of the openings. The eight tribal medallions are to be embedded in boulders and six more blank medallions representing tribes lost to colonialism are to be placed in the renovated flagstone. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-12-01_LPC_Item%205_Turtle%20Island.pdf
Sprague has been very insistent in placing a snapping turtle on top of the granite as the symbol of the indigenous peoples’ creation story. The hard shell back of the turtle is the emblem of land and life emerging from the sea to land.
The deadlines to spend the funds financing the project are June 30, 2024 for the $591,666 from the Clean California Local Grant Program and December 2025 for the $300,000 from the T1 funds. These spending deadlines may seem like a long way off, but a circular piece of black granite 15 feet in diameter and 51 inches thick is not like going over to your local kitchen and bath remodeling store to buy a black granite counter.
The Civic Arts Commission did review the project on December 7, 2022 and voted to approve the new conceptual design. This time quite a number of local tribal members did show up to support the project and others who had not previously identified as having indigenous heritage also spoke.
Lisa Bullwinkel as promised to CCCC asked about budget/cost of the project. Jennifer Lovvorn City of Berkeley staff dismissed Bullwinkel’s question and insisted the cost was unimportant. Bullwinkel moved from there to support the design and it was passed unanimously by the Arts Commission.
The Turtle Island Monument Project was expected to be on the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission (PRW) agenda on December 14, but it was pushed down to an information item containing a letter from John Caner for CCCC. The worry from CCCC is that the Turtle Island Monument project will not be completed within the funding grant deadlines and the funds diverted elsewhere. Gordon Wozniak, PRW commission chair stated the city manager asked to have discussion postponed until January when the City will give a presentation.
Scott Parson’s public art can be seen in Colorado, Ohio, Canada, Florida, Minnesota, Arizona and Wisconsin, but in Berkeley Parsons’ artwork for the Turtle Island Monument sits in storage and at 2180 Milvia. https://damnfineart.com/our-projects/page/2/
The artwork I found for Marlene Watson are paintings and posters. I can’t find any public art for Lee Sprague. This isn’t to say Watson and Sprague can’t have impressive wonderful concepts and the latest design is quite exciting, but it does lay to question whether they have the experience to maneuver a project in a city that has a long history of what once again looks more like Lucy pulling the football and feels like there are other plans on where and how to spend the money with statements like project cost is unimportant.
There are two corrections from my December 4 write-up. it was the group that resurrected the Turtle Island Monument Project in 2018 that tracked down Lee Sprague first not City staff and I rechecked the size of the granite it is 15 feet in diameter and 51 inches thick changing the weight to 18 tons. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-12-04/article/50095?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-Week-Ending-December-4--Kelly-Hammargren)
Bait and switch is a well worn tactic in Berkeley when it comes to how money is spent and it happened again at the Council 5 pm special meeting on December 13 and was the topic of discussion at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on December 14.
In the City Council’s letter to Nancy Skinner, Chair of the State Senate Budget Committee and to Phil Ting, Chair of the State Assembly Budget Committee, the City Council lined out how they would spend the $15 million requested for the Berkeley Marina. Once the money was granted when it came around to approving the expenditures on December 13, $2,961,000 of the all important dock and piling replacement funds turned into paying for the environmental review and design of the pier/ferry project.
Scott Ferris and crew swear that WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) is going pay the city back when or if the lawsuit for Regional Measure 3 funds is settled in favor of the Bay Area Toll Authority and WETA gets a cut of the Measure 3 bridge tolls.
Ferris put forward the argument that completing an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and design is only a study and not a commitment. EIRs are completed to meet CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) requirements and not undertaken unless there are plans to move forward, meaning “study and not a commitment” falls into pure B.S.
The entire pier/ferry plan with the promise of WETA is going to pay for it makes me think of Trump’s border wall and Mexico is going to pay for it. Commissioner Kerry Birnbach said her friends were anxious for a ferry ride in Berkeley. In my public comment, I asked if they would feel the same if they paid a full fare of around $28. I received a text that some believe the true per person cost of ferrying people across the bay when all costs are included may be as high as $100 per rider.
After going through the WETA year to date revenue and expenditures, that average fare cost of around $5.53 is subsidized with bridge tolls, Contra Costa Measure J and federal funds to the tune of $27.74 or actual cost of $33.27 per ferry ride. This subsidy calculation is low as it does not include all of the funding needed for terminal rehabilitation, infrastructure, new and replacement vessels.
The main point is that ferries do not exist on the Bay without substantial public financing through federal funds, state funds, bridge tolls and sales taxes. The people who use the ferries are disproportionally high income households with 35% of weekday commuter survey respondents reporting household incomes of greater than $200,000. People from low income households earning less than $50,000 make up 7% of riders overall with their utilization primarily on the weekends.
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to ask Tom Rubin who described himself as having over five decades of experience in transportation what he thought about road diets. He was quite blunt in his answer after first differentiating that “streets” are for local traffic and “roads” are to get from one place to another. Putting roads on a diet meaning decreasing the lanes of traffic pushes drivers on narrowed principal roads onto neighborhood streets not designed for through traffic creating a “stroad” problem.
Another problem Rubin noted with road diets and redesigns is that once the changes are made it is near impossible to undo the damage. That should be a warning to us, not to let up on the pressure to save Hopkins and the businesses we love there.
He added that road diets create major public safety problems. Every minute of delay for an emergency vehicle means substantial increase in a fatal incident or permanent injury. Pedestrian deaths increased after road diets in Southern California the opposite of the claim that road diets make streets safer. Rubin ended with, “fire chiefs are under great pressure to keep their mouths shut if they want to keep their jobs.”
If you haven’t responded to the Civic Center Survey, set aside a few minutes to send off your opinion. It doesn’t take long to look at the diagrams, check boxes and add comments if you choose. Survey link: https://qualtricsxmjph7lvfxl.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aa71ggvGKG50ZIa
If you wish to see the presentation from the consultants before completing the survey here is the link: https://qualtricsxmjph7lvfxl.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aa71ggvGKG50ZIa
The consultants Siegal & Strain Architects for the Civic Center seem set on a road diet for MLK Jr. Way. They also have in their plans new offices for city council in Maudelle Shirek. CCCC members have had their eyes on using a restored Maudelle Shirek Building for community non-profits and a historical museum. I’d like to see space for indigenous people.
Book and Film Recommendations
In a cruise through the New York Times before settling in for the final edit of this Diary, I saw the article that a Statue of Henrietta Lacks will replace a monument to Robert E. Lee in Roanoke, Virginia as part of a local project to recognize Black history in community spaces.
Henrietta Lacks, a poor Black woman, living not far from the Johns Hopkins Hospital was treated for cervical cancer, but before diagnosis was made and treatment begun, a sample of her tumor was taken. For the first time, when all other attempts to culture cancerous cells, grow cancerous cells in a lab failed, the tumor cells from Henrietta Lacks grew and multiplied every 20 to 24 hours. The cell line was named HeLa.
I didn’t read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot when it was published in 2010. It wasn’t until 2014 when it really sunk in how much I was missing by not reading books. That is when I went looking for a book club that focused on nonfiction and politics and couldn’t find one. It was a conversation over coffee with Barbara Ruffner that lead to starting a group that reads nearly 100% nonfiction on politics, race, climate and the environment. Barbara was a vibrant 88 when we started, but failing health caught up.
Barbara always pulled our choices to Democratic Socialism and it wasn’t long before we understood, we couldn’t read about politics without reading about race and racism. This review is dedicated to Barbara who passed away in October.
The book is the story of Henrietta, her family, descendants, the research, researchers and travels and the persistence of Rebecca Skloot to put it altogether.
Henrietta Lacks died at the young age of 31. The HeLa cells were used in the development of polio and COVID-19 vaccines, the study of leukemia, AIDS virus and cancer. HeLa cancer cells are the root of worldwide research studying the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses.
Honoring Henrietta Lacks is even more meaningful after reading the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks if you haven’t picked it up already.
Film
Senator Warnock just won re-election by a healthy margin over Hershel Walker and much was made of voter turnout and questioning whether there really was voter suppression. The film “Vigilante: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman” written by Greg Palast produced by Maria Florio with Executive Producers Martin Sheen, George DiCaprio and Stephen Nemeth lays bare the impact of Georgia’s SB 202 “Election Integrity Act of 2021” and the disenfranchisement of Black voters in Georgia. Mail-in voting dropped by 81%.
After seeing Greg Palast in person at a KPFA event, I always think of him as a man full of himself. I found the film unexpectantly informative and good and definitely worth watching especially because Georgia’s SB 202 is a bill that is and will be imitated elsewhere.
The film is currently free online until January 1, 2023 at 11 pm. https://watch.showandtell.film/watch/vigilante-ga/
December 4, 2022
I watched a nearly empty San Francisco bound train go by before boarding Lake Merritt BART at 8:01 Monday to report for jury duty. According to BART reports ridership has increased (incrementally), but comparing the present to pre-pandemic ridership, it has basically fallen off a cliff. Even the best day of the week, Tuesday, ridership reaches a high of 40% of pre-pandemic. Monday is the lowest at 35%.
This was only my second time on BART since COVID hit our shores and the first ride during commute hours.
The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) meets this week and as with every monthly Board meeting there are charts showing WETA ridership with CalTrain and BART comparing where each is in recovering to pre-pandemic levels. WETA is doing the best at near 80%, but looking deeper into utilization, systemwide at the very best hour of the morning at 80% recovery the highest ridership is 31% of capacity. In the evening it is 36%. All of this means that most of the time the 307,603 gallons of fuel (October 2022 usage) is to take near empty ferries back and forth across the bay. (ridership reports are on pages 17 – 20 https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/default/files/weta-public/currentmeeting/b120822aFULL.pdf )
You may ask why does this matter? It is because the City of Berkeley contracted with consultants for $1,100,000 for a plan for the Berkeley Marina to make the Marina a booming income generating enterprise zone with a new pier and ferry. And all this is based on a thriving utilization of ferries two and from San Francisco bolstered by morning and evening commuters.
When the pandemic hit and everyone who could work from home was sent home the initial reaction was something like “what you expect me to work from home, I can’t possibly work from home” and then once adjustment set in, it is, “what you want me to return to the office, I can’t possibly go back to the office, at least not every day.” Commuter car traffic still seems to be pretty heavy, but on the few days, I’ve actually had to drive in it, it is not as bad as it used to be.
I think it is time to rearrange our thinking on expecting offices full of workers. Scanning business articles, a 50% return to the office seems to be the national average. This has wide ranging implications.
I am all for a smaller footprint, a smaller impact on the environment and climate and working remotely can certainly help. The next four to six months should be very telling in how much we need to rearrange our thinking. Whatever changes do or don’t appear, we need to plan for a different future than just expecting to replicate how we lived prior to March 2020.
As for jury duty, we were given a screening questionnaire for a criminal case. I got the call Friday I didn’t need to return. No surprise, I had so many “yes” answers and explanations to complete, I was the last one out of the room.
At Monday’s Agenda Committee meeting, Councilmember Ben Bartlett’s item on regulating miniature bottles of alcohol was forwarded to the Health Commission and his item on creating a Berkeley song and flag was forwarded to the Civic Arts Commission. Councilmember Terry Taplin’s item on hiring consultants for creating a plan for dedicated bus lanes and elevated platforms on University Avenue was referred to the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) Committee. I asked that all of these road diets and modifications on emergency access and evacuation routes be looked at in total not one street at a time.
My walk partner and I were in the last mile of our 5 mile walk when a Fire Truck came screaming down Monterey and turned onto Hopkins. She commented, with the reminder that Hopkins is one of those emergency routes about to be narrowed.
At council on Tuesday Jim O’Fell (spelling from captioner’s record) commented on the lack of public engagement from City staff on the Hopkins corridor. There has been no response from questions regarding whether the plan had been reviewed by the Fire Department and Department of Emergency Services. Also, people on Talbot blocks away from Hopkins were asked about parking, but not neighbors on Alvina a half block from Hopkins that would bear the brunt of the removal of parking.
Berkeley has a new Fire Chief, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on a fire chief standing up to a team of consultants, the council, city planners and bicycle activists bent on road diets, turning emergency access and evacuation routes into single lane roads as is the current fashion, but while we’re waiting we might want to watch this video of the impacts of road diets on public safety and possibly Chief Sprague could use it in showing what happens with road diets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PamppHOHTs
Council returns to hybrid meetings with the option to attend in-person or virtually via zoom on December 6. This is just as RSV, Flu and COVID are surging in California. Do not follow the announcement Friday evening on KRON 10 pm news that surgical masks are just as effective as N95 (or KN95). Epidemiologist Osterholm ripped that study to shreds in his Thursday podcast. He said surgical masks offer little protection and it is fine to reuse your N95 until it is visibly dirty or no longer holds a seal (men with beards cannot maintain a seal). Osterholm also said get your vaccines and boosters and if you contract COVID do your best to get access to Paxlovid ASAP. Per Johns Hopkins data 12/3/2022 in the U.S. the daily average of deaths from COVID is 305. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-119
The last item on the council agenda was the reconfiguration of Adeline at BART and Ed Roberts Campus. Machai Freeman, Mary Lee Smith and others spoke to the problems of access for persons with disabilities with road diets and street reconfigurations with Milvia as an example of the worst design for disabled persons in wheelchairs.
The reconfiguration of Milvia with its bicycle lanes and curbs is often touted as a huge success. A picture of Farid Javandel, Transportation Division Manager on his bicycle riding down Milvia even made a frontpage splash on the local paper that comes in print.
Parking didn’t get much attention except in relation to disabled persons at the Ed Roberts campus. It did not come up for how the flea market vendors will get their goods to the locations on the plaza. I guess the assumption was made that was covered, but I am not sure how it all will work.
Councilmember Hahn was full of ideas for the plaza like chess boards as seen at Washington Square in Manhattan and bocchi ball like in Spain, France and Portugal. No one needs to go to Manhattan to see people playing chess outside. A trip to the plaza in front of the old Cody’s bookstore on Telegraph will do the same.
An actual plan for the housing project at Ashby BART is several years away. A statement was added to the motion by Councilmember Harrison to “developing preliminary engineering concepts ensuring universal design and access for the public.” The council voted for configuration 2 with a 60 foot wide plaza that will extend to the retail frontage. (page 9 https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-11-29%20Item%2015%20Adeline%20Street%20at%20Ashby%20BART.pdf)
The presentations and discussion of lighting and restroom improvements at Ohlone Park were refreshing. The plan is not yet finalized with public comment open until January 2, 2023 You can send your comments to echan@cityofBerkeley.info and srutherford@cityofberkeley.info. When you go to the city webpage, scroll to past events and pick the 3rd document in the list, the presentation. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/ohlone-park-restroom-and-lighting-improvements
The Romtec restroom received the most votes by attendees and A and D were the top restroom site choices, but that was before we heard from the neighbor at site D. There were requests for night lighting on the volleyball court and multiple attendees requested directed, shielded down lighting below tree canopy for pathways. Concerns were raised about the impact of night light.
It was an ugly Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) meeting on Thursday evening and it may well be repeated on Wednesday, December 7 at the Civic Arts Commission at 6 pm.
It is now 30 years since Berkeley renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day and when the idea started of changing the defunct Civic Center Fountain into a space for dedication to the indigenous people of this area, the Lisjan/Ohlone. Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson both of whom are indigenous people were the original design team in 1992. The project stalled for over two decades when a community group of supporters and local indigenous people came together around 2018 picking it back up, raising money and developing a design that would fit within the confines of the existing fountain structures incorporating the bronze turtles created for the project sitting in City Hall and the eight indigenous peoples’ medallions. https://turtleislandfountain.org/
City staff stepped in this year, tracked down Lee Sprague and Marelene Watson, hired PGA as consultants, threw out previous designs including the most recent and started over and this is where the evening at LPC began its descent.
After the new design was presented, I asked where were the representatives of the Lisjan/Ohlone we are accustomed to seeing and hearing from? Scott Ferris Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront said “we chose not to bring them” to the effect it would be too chaotic. Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson (neither of whom are Lisjan/Ohlone) while the original designers are not local and we have been hearing how the local indigenous people have been shut out of meetings in creating the public art to honor their history.
Beyond the questions and comments from the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners requesting a water feature, expressing the difficulty as an outsider of determining who is representative of the indigenous community and being asked to be a jury and not a commissioner, the design itself appears to be steeped with problems. And that is beside the fact that the newest Sprague and Watson design would conflict with the historical designation. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-12-01_LPC_Item%205_Turtle%20Island.pdf
The new design comes with no budget estimate. It features a 12 foot snapping turtle on top of a circular slab of polished granite that sits on top of the fountain (top level of the fountain removed) and glass tile work at the base to simulate water. To me it did not appear that this design would actually work especially the large slap of granite.
I found an online calculator https://stoneyard.com/calculators/stone-slab-weight/ just to get a gross estimate of what a slap of granite would weigh to sit on top of the fountain with a 12 foot bronze turtle on top. A circular slab of granite 14 feet in diameter and two feet thick would weigh 64,680 lbs or 32.34 tons. Slimming it down to 13 feet by 1 foot thick would be 27,885 lbs or 13.9425 tons. I heard today at CCCC there is not solid ground under the fountain so weight is even more of a problem.
One additional problem (I am sure there are others) Snapping Turtles are not native to California, are illegal in California and the California Fish & Game regulations specifically forbid possession or release of any genus or species of snapping turtle. So, the centerpiece, the snapping turtle is a predator of local wildlife. Maybe Sprague, Watson, PGA and the City have an explanation as to why they chose an invasive predatory species to honor the Ohlone. Is there another message here, maybe the genocide of the indigenous people and the theft of their land or am I reading too much into the symbolism?
If we are really going to honor the Lisjan/Ohlone a more meaningful action than land acknowledgements recited at City meetings would be giving our indigenous people prominent space in the Maudelle Shirek Building instead of building new offices for city council and staff.
I skipped the Monday Sugar Sweetened Beverage subcommittee meeting and Tuesday morning Civic Arts Commission Policy Subcommittee meeting. I couldn’t attend the Zero Waste Commission and Community Health Commission meetings as they ran the same time as City Council. I attended the 4 x 4 Joint Task Force Committee on Housing only long enough to raise the concern that minutes were not posted in a timely manner. I attended the Environment and Climate Commission long enough to learn that the subcommittee on Native Plants and Pesticide Reduction had not met, but I was encouraged by the remarks on native plants from Shannon Allen who has left City of Berkeley employment. The Thursday morning Land Use Committee meeting was cancelled.
I can’t say exactly where I heard of Kelly Weill’s book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Believe Anything, but it seemed like a perfect selection for these times when conspiracies appear to have consumed seemingly well-educated people we thought to be normal and most days it feels like half the country at least half of those who voted live in a different universe.
Weill a journalist for the Daily Beast wrote she started looking at the Flat Earth website in 2017 whenever the days news felt too crazy and checking in on the Flat Earth movement gave a sense of normalcy.
2017 was, of course, at the beginning of Trump’s presidency before COVID and the U.S. and the world slid into embracing bizarre level conspiracies, fortified by social media. Before we were surrounded by anti-vaxxers claiming COVID vaccines were injecting micro-chips to track us (a smart phone and google do that).
Pizzagate started in 2016 with the hacking of John Podesta’s and the claim that Comet Ping Pong pizzeria pizza orders in the emails were really code for human trafficking and a child sex ring. This conspiracy was merged into QAnon and we saw those believers joining the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys in the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021. Weill wrote 97 QAnon supporters ran for Congress in 2020.
After hearing that over one hundred legislators that voted to overturn the election of President Biden in the evening after the January 6 attack on the capital were re-elected in November 2022, I went looking for an article that gave the actual results. When I couldn’t find one, I pulled up the list and went through them one by one. Of the eight senators only John Neely Kennedy from Louisiana was up for re-election. He won with 61.6% of the vote against twelve other candidates. The other seven senators are up for re-election in 2024 and 2026.
In the House of Representatives, one hundred thirty-nine voted against certifying the election of President Biden. Only two of the 139 were defeated by Democrats. Yvette Herrell lost to Gabriel Vasquez in New Mexico and Steve Chabot lost to Greg Landsman in Ohio. Of the remaining 137, five ran for other offices, four were defeated in the primary, four did not run for re-election and three died, leaving 121 who voted to overturn the election and were re-elected in November 2022. Of that 121 eight ran unopposed.
If you are feeling at all secure that there was no Republican sweep, we still lost the House and are barely hanging on to the Senate. We have work ahead if we want to maintain a democracy and we would do well to understand how people are sucked into conspiracies. Kelly Weill found many fell into flat earth through YouTube algorithms. And the more they were questioned, rejected, unfriended, the more they with dug in reaching for reinforcement within in their group (sound familiar). And one more thing, the deeper the flat earthers were into one conspiracy, the easier the reach to other conspiracies.
I watched a nearly empty San Francisco bound train go by before boarding Lake Merritt BART at 8:01 Monday to report for jury duty. According to BART reports ridership has increased (incrementally), but comparing the present to pre-pandemic ridership, it has basically fallen off a cliff. Even the best day of the week, Tuesday, ridership reaches a high of 40% of pre-pandemic. Monday is the lowest at 35%.
This was only my second time on BART since COVID hit our shores and the first ride during commute hours.
The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) meets this week and as with every monthly Board meeting there are charts showing WETA ridership with CalTrain and BART comparing where each is in recovering to pre-pandemic levels. WETA is doing the best at near 80%, but looking deeper into utilization, systemwide at the very best hour of the morning at 80% recovery the highest ridership is 31% of capacity. In the evening it is 36%. All of this means that most of the time the 307,603 gallons of fuel (October 2022 usage) is to take near empty ferries back and forth across the bay. (ridership reports are on pages 17 – 20 https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/default/files/weta-public/currentmeeting/b120822aFULL.pdf )
You may ask why does this matter? It is because the City of Berkeley contracted with consultants for $1,100,000 for a plan for the Berkeley Marina to make the Marina a booming income generating enterprise zone with a new pier and ferry. And all this is based on a thriving utilization of ferries two and from San Francisco bolstered by morning and evening commuters.
When the pandemic hit and everyone who could work from home was sent home the initial reaction was something like “what you expect me to work from home, I can’t possibly work from home” and then once adjustment set in, it is, “what you want me to return to the office, I can’t possibly go back to the office, at least not every day.” Commuter car traffic still seems to be pretty heavy, but on the few days, I’ve actually had to drive in it, it is not as bad as it used to be.
I think it is time to rearrange our thinking on expecting offices full of workers. Scanning business articles, a 50% return to the office seems to be the national average. This has wide ranging implications.
I am all for a smaller footprint, a smaller impact on the environment and climate and working remotely can certainly help. The next four to six months should be very telling in how much we need to rearrange our thinking. Whatever changes do or don’t appear, we need to plan for a different future than just expecting to replicate how we lived prior to March 2020.
As for jury duty, we were given a screening questionnaire for a criminal case. I got the call Friday I didn’t need to return. No surprise, I had so many “yes” answers and explanations to complete, I was the last one out of the room.
At Monday’s Agenda Committee meeting, Councilmember Ben Bartlett’s item on regulating miniature bottles of alcohol was forwarded to the Health Commission and his item on creating a Berkeley song and flag was forwarded to the Civic Arts Commission. Councilmember Terry Taplin’s item on hiring consultants for creating a plan for dedicated bus lanes and elevated platforms on University Avenue was referred to the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) Committee. I asked that all of these road diets and modifications on emergency access and evacuation routes be looked at in total not one street at a time.
My walk partner and I were in the last mile of our 5 mile walk when a Fire Truck came screaming down Monterey and turned onto Hopkins. She commented, with the reminder that Hopkins is one of those emergency routes about to be narrowed.
At council on Tuesday Jim O’Fell (spelling from captioner’s record) commented on the lack of public engagement from City staff on the Hopkins corridor. There has been no response from questions regarding whether the plan had been reviewed by the Fire Department and Department of Emergency Services. Also, people on Talbot blocks away from Hopkins were asked about parking, but not neighbors on Alvina a half block from Hopkins that would bear the brunt of the removal of parking.
Berkeley has a new Fire Chief, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on a fire chief standing up to a team of consultants, the council, city planners and bicycle activists bent on road diets, turning emergency access and evacuation routes into single lane roads as is the current fashion, but while we’re waiting we might want to watch this video of the impacts of road diets on public safety and possibly Chief Sprague could use it in showing what happens with road diets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PamppHOHTs
Council returns to hybrid meetings with the option to attend in-person or virtually via zoom on December 6. This is just as RSV, Flu and COVID are surging in California. Do not follow the announcement Friday evening on KRON 10 pm news that surgical masks are just as effective as N95 (or KN95). Epidemiologist Osterholm ripped that study to shreds in his Thursday podcast. He said surgical masks offer little protection and it is fine to reuse your N95 until it is visibly dirty or no longer holds a seal (men with beards cannot maintain a seal). Osterholm also said get your vaccines and boosters and if you contract COVID do your best to get access to Paxlovid ASAP. Per Johns Hopkins data 12/3/2022 in the U.S. the daily average of deaths from COVID is 305. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-119
The last item on the council agenda was the reconfiguration of Adeline at BART and Ed Roberts Campus. Machai Freeman, Mary Lee Smith and others spoke to the problems of access for persons with disabilities with road diets and street reconfigurations with Milvia as an example of the worst design for disabled persons in wheelchairs.
The reconfiguration of Milvia with its bicycle lanes and curbs is often touted as a huge success. A picture of Farid Javandel, Transportation Division Manager on his bicycle riding down Milvia even made a frontpage splash on the local paper that comes in print.
Parking didn’t get much attention except in relation to disabled persons at the Ed Roberts campus. It did not come up for how the flea market vendors will get their goods to the locations on the plaza. I guess the assumption was made that was covered, but I am not sure how it all will work.
Councilmember Hahn was full of ideas for the plaza like chess boards as seen at Washington Square in Manhattan and bocchi ball like in Spain, France and Portugal. No one needs to go to Manhattan to see people playing chess outside. A trip to the plaza in front of the old Cody’s bookstore on Telegraph will do the same.
An actual plan for the housing project at Ashby BART is several years away. A statement was added to the motion by Councilmember Harrison to “developing preliminary engineering concepts ensuring universal design and access for the public.” The council voted for configuration 2 with a 60 foot wide plaza that will extend to the retail frontage. (page 9 https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-11-29%20Item%2015%20Adeline%20Street%20at%20Ashby%20BART.pdf)
The presentations and discussion of lighting and restroom improvements at Ohlone Park were refreshing. The plan is not yet finalized with public comment open until January 2, 2023 You can send your comments to echan@cityofBerkeley.info and srutherford@cityofberkeley.info. When you go to the city webpage, scroll to past events and pick the 3rd document in the list, the presentation. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/ohlone-park-restroom-and-lighting-improvements
The Romtec restroom received the most votes by attendees and A and D were the top restroom site choices, but that was before we heard from the neighbor at site D. There were requests for night lighting on the volleyball court and multiple attendees requested directed, shielded down lighting below tree canopy for pathways. Concerns were raised about the impact of night light.
It was an ugly Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) meeting on Thursday evening and it may well be repeated on Wednesday, December 7 at the Civic Arts Commission at 6 pm.
It is now 30 years since Berkeley renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day and when the idea started of changing the defunct Civic Center Fountain into a space for dedication to the indigenous people of this area, the Lisjan/Ohlone. Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson both of whom are indigenous people were the original design team in 1992. The project stalled for over two decades when a community group of supporters and local indigenous people came together around 2018 picking it back up, raising money and developing a design that would fit within the confines of the existing fountain structures incorporating the bronze turtles created for the project sitting in City Hall and the eight indigenous peoples’ medallions. https://turtleislandfountain.org/
City staff stepped in this year, tracked down Lee Sprague and Marelene Watson, hired PGA as consultants, threw out previous designs including the most recent and started over and this is where the evening at LPC began its descent.
After the new design was presented, I asked where were the representatives of the Lisjan/Ohlone we are accustomed to seeing and hearing from? Scott Ferris Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront said “we chose not to bring them” to the effect it would be too chaotic. Lee Sprague and Marlene Watson (neither of whom are Lisjan/Ohlone) while the original designers are not local and we have been hearing how the local indigenous people have been shut out of meetings in creating the public art to honor their history.
Beyond the questions and comments from the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners requesting a water feature, expressing the difficulty as an outsider of determining who is representative of the indigenous community and being asked to be a jury and not a commissioner, the design itself appears to be steeped with problems. And that is beside the fact that the newest Sprague and Watson design would conflict with the historical designation. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-12-01_LPC_Item%205_Turtle%20Island.pdf
The new design comes with no budget estimate. It features a 12 foot snapping turtle on top of a circular slab of polished granite that sits on top of the fountain (top level of the fountain removed) and glass tile work at the base to simulate water. To me it did not appear that this design would actually work especially the large slap of granite.
I found an online calculator https://stoneyard.com/calculators/stone-slab-weight/ just to get a gross estimate of what a slap of granite would weigh to sit on top of the fountain with a 12 foot bronze turtle on top. A circular slab of granite 14 feet in diameter and two feet thick would weigh 64,680 lbs or 32.34 tons. Slimming it down to 13 feet by 1 foot thick would be 27,885 lbs or 13.9425 tons. I heard today at CCCC there is not solid ground under the fountain so weight is even more of a problem.
One additional problem (I am sure there are others) Snapping Turtles are not native to California, are illegal in California and the California Fish & Game regulations specifically forbid possession or release of any genus or species of snapping turtle. So, the centerpiece, the snapping turtle is a predator of local wildlife. Maybe Sprague, Watson, PGA and the City have an explanation as to why they chose an invasive predatory species to honor the Ohlone. Is there another message here, maybe the genocide of the indigenous people and the theft of their land or am I reading too much into the symbolism?
If we are really going to honor the Lisjan/Ohlone a more meaningful action than land acknowledgements recited at City meetings would be giving our indigenous people prominent space in the Maudelle Shirek Building instead of building new offices for city council and staff.
I skipped the Monday Sugar Sweetened Beverage subcommittee meeting and Tuesday morning Civic Arts Commission Policy Subcommittee meeting. I couldn’t attend the Zero Waste Commission and Community Health Commission meetings as they ran the same time as City Council. I attended the 4 x 4 Joint Task Force Committee on Housing only long enough to raise the concern that minutes were not posted in a timely manner. I attended the Environment and Climate Commission long enough to learn that the subcommittee on Native Plants and Pesticide Reduction had not met, but I was encouraged by the remarks on native plants from Shannon Allen who has left City of Berkeley employment. The Thursday morning Land Use Committee meeting was cancelled.
I can’t say exactly where I heard of Kelly Weill’s book Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Believe Anything, but it seemed like a perfect selection for these times when conspiracies appear to have consumed seemingly well-educated people we thought to be normal and most days it feels like half the country at least half of those who voted live in a different universe.
Weill a journalist for the Daily Beast wrote she started looking at the Flat Earth website in 2017 whenever the days news felt too crazy and checking in on the Flat Earth movement gave a sense of normalcy.
2017 was, of course, at the beginning of Trump’s presidency before COVID and the U.S. and the world slid into embracing bizarre level conspiracies, fortified by social media. Before we were surrounded by anti-vaxxers claiming COVID vaccines were injecting micro-chips to track us (a smart phone and google do that).
Pizzagate started in 2016 with the hacking of John Podesta’s and the claim that Comet Ping Pong pizzeria pizza orders in the emails were really code for human trafficking and a child sex ring. This conspiracy was merged into QAnon and we saw those believers joining the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys in the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021. Weill wrote 97 QAnon supporters ran for Congress in 2020.
After hearing that over one hundred legislators that voted to overturn the election of President Biden in the evening after the January 6 attack on the capital were re-elected in November 2022, I went looking for an article that gave the actual results. When I couldn’t find one, I pulled up the list and went through them one by one. Of the eight senators only John Neely Kennedy from Louisiana was up for re-election. He won with 61.6% of the vote against twelve other candidates. The other seven senators are up for re-election in 2024 and 2026.
In the House of Representatives, one hundred thirty-nine voted against certifying the election of President Biden. Only two of the 139 were defeated by Democrats. Yvette Herrell lost to Gabriel Vasquez in New Mexico and Steve Chabot lost to Greg Landsman in Ohio. Of the remaining 137, five ran for other offices, four were defeated in the primary, four did not run for re-election and three died, leaving 121 who voted to overturn the election and were re-elected in November 2022. Of that 121 eight ran unopposed.
If you are feeling at all secure that there was no Republican sweep, we still lost the House and are barely hanging on to the Senate. We have work ahead if we want to maintain a democracy and we would do well to understand how people are sucked into conspiracies. Kelly Weill found many fell into flat earth through YouTube algorithms. And the more they were questioned, rejected, unfriended, the more they with dug in reaching for reinforcement within in their group (sound familiar). And one more thing, the deeper the flat earthers were into one conspiracy, the easier the reach to other conspiracies.
November 27, 2022
I don’t know how complete my diary will be next week as I’ve been summoned to report to jury duty on Monday. My first reaction was, did you not look at my age? I’m closer to 80 than 70, but then our President just turned 80 this week. Bernie Sanders is 81 and Noam Chomsky is 94.
I always say, people age at different rates and so do bodies and minds. Age was the subject of my morning podcast. Reagan was showing signs of dementia in his second term (age 73-77) and Adam Schiff wrote in his book Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could of the mental decline of Robert Mueller III (age 74 when Mueller report was released)
When Elton John walked on and off the stage in 2019 in Vegas, then 72 he was no longer capable of the cartwheels and flips I saw him do across the stage at the end of his performance at Hollywood Bowl nearly 50 years earlier when we were both in our early twenties. But as he sat down at the piano starting the evening performance, the music was richer and more dynamic. I said to my friends he walks like an old man and plays like a young man.
If the Paradise City Council had listened to the Mildred Eslin in 2014, the 88 year-old woman who was the lone voice in opposition to narrowing the road (road diet) in and out of Paradise, would that same road have become the “kill zone” as it was labeled after the 2018 fire? Would 85 people have died? How prescient were her words, “The main thing is fire danger, if the council is searching for a way to diminish the population of Paradise, this would be the way to do it.”
Vision Zero (reducing traffic deaths to zero) - Road Diets are the latest fashion in city planning. In “Artificial Gridlock: Who Put the ‘Die’ in LA Road DIEts?” published in City Watch, Liz Amsden wrote that the LAPD reported 294 people were killed in traffic collisions in 2021, 22% more than in 2020 and a 58% increase in pedestrian deaths since Vision Zero was launched.
Road diets work in some places and not others. Dwight is much easier to cross at California with the reconfiguration.
The main message is road diets don’t work everywhere and when they are on emergency access and evacuation routes disaster isn’t far behind. That is the warning that Margot Smith has been giving and Liz Amsden lays it out clearly in her article with this:
“As implemented in the United States, road diets have proven to be dangerous, doing the opposite of what they're supposed to – causing more accidents and fatalities, while slowing emergency responders from reaching people.
It took an ambulance and fire engine nearly four minutes to travel four blocks to where a motorcyclist lay pinned under a semi due to the Venice Boulevard road diet.
A road diet on Foothill Boulevard the in Sunland-Tujunga neighborhood during the 2017 La Tuna Fire, the biggest in Los Angeles in half a century, created a bottleneck for evacuations and blocked access by police and fire.
The Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council passed a motion to return the boulevard to four lanes, two in each direction to avoid a repeat but the City ignored the request and, to add insult to injury, has added another road diet, this one to La Tuna Canyon Road which is the sole route through hilly wildfire-prone terrain.
Firefighters, paramedics, and police officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere have confirmed lane reductions, particularly so-called “road diets,” have significantly increased response times. Ask any first responder – even 30 seconds delay can mean the difference if someone lives or dies.
The Paradise fire was so deadly because three years earlier a Complete Streets road diet narrowed the main road from four lanes to two creating total gridlock when residents attempted to flee the advancing flames. The fire department called it their kill zone. Places where there have been similar lane removals are being called death traps for fires still to come.
Imposing solutions that worked in another country or even from another area of Los Angeles without addressing underlying needs and local concerns will never work in a city with so many geographically diverse neighborhoods.
The goal of getting people out of their cars is based on the theory that people can readily shift to other ways of commuting. That is just plain balderdash for Los Angeles which is an enormous, spread-out city with limited viable public transportation options.
Every road diet also exacerbates the problem of drivers cutting through side streets and residential neighborhoods, past schools and parks.”
https://citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/24745-la-traffic-who-put-the-die-in-road-diets
Fashion and fads are hard to break. Adeline, Telegraph, Hopkins are all mapped as emergency access and evacuation routes and are in some stage of planning for a road diet. Siegal & Strain is pushing a road diet for MLK Jr Way. And, Taplin’s proposal for University Avenue listed in the draft agenda for December 13 makes five. If there is one take away, it is in the title who put the DIE in road DIEt. If you follow the link, the die extends to businesses which sits in contrast to comments from Walk Bike Berkeley that the reconfiguration of Hopkins Street will benefit businesses.
The City meetings piled up on Monday with the main event being the City Council special meeting on the Fair Work Week Ordinance at 5 pm. I gave a description of the November 3 Fair Work Week filibuster in my November 6 edition of the Activist’s Diary. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-11-06/article/50047?headline=A-Berkeley-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-November-6-2022--Kelly-Hammargren
The effort for the Fair Work Week Ordinance started in 2018. Basically, it protects workers earning less than twice the minimum wage (under $33.98 per hour). In the Fair Work Week Ordinance, qualified current employed workers must be offered additional hours before new employees are hired or staffing agencies are called in. They also receive a minimum pay (4 hours of pay or the hours scheduled whichever is less) when canceled in less than 24 hours. In scheduling changes of greater than 24 hours, the employee receives one hour of pay for the scheduling changes or cancellations.
For those of us who have been tracking the Fair Work Week Ordinance and attended the November 3, 2022 council meeting, the core resistance was coming from the City of Berkeley Administration with game playing and pick up by Wengraf and Droste to carry administration water.
Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager and LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager were not present Monday evening. Instead in this round, the City was represented by Paul Budenhaggen who was in general supportive and came with financial analysis that put objections to rest. Wengraf tried and failed to modify the proposed ordinance by excluding Longlife Medical Berkeley and changing the criteria for businesses exempted from the ordinance.
Droste was absent the entire evening and Wengraf signed off the meeting according to record at 6:39 pm which I first noticed when the vote was called. The ordinance passed with no changes with a unanimous vote by those remaining (Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson and Arreguin). The meeting adjourned at 6:58 pm.
In all the council meetings I’ve attended, I don’t ever recall Wengraf taking a stand alone. When she comes up for re-election in 2024 (if she runs) District 6 voters might want to ask why she left without staying just a few minutes longer to cast her vote for or against the Fair Work Week Ordinance.
By Tuesday morning all that was left of City meetings was the Land Use, Housing and Economic Development special meeting at 9:30 am. The chair Councilmember Rigel Robinson announced that neither of the authors (Wengraf and Harrison) could attend for the single item on the agenda so no action would be taken on the amendment to BMC Chapter 13.110 the COVID emergency eviction moratorium. Mayor Arreguin stepped in as an alternate for the meeting and opened his statement with that he was opposed to the proposed amendment. With no action in the offing, I tuned out. The 1 ½ hour recording is available if you wish to listen, just go to the bottom of the page under Additional Information and click on audio recordings. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-land-use-housing-economic-development
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met at noon on Monday to discuss the election results, the Civic Center Vision Plan open house and the status of the Turtle Island Monument Project.
There was disappointment from some that Measure L didn’t pass, but no one thought there was going to be any significant contribution to the Civic Center. More than the election was the concern that the plan presented at the open house by Susi Mazuola from Siegal & Strain and Gehl Consultants was to move city offices into the Maudelle Shirek Building and relegate the media and the historical society museum to the basement.
I said from the beginning that Measure L money would be going to vanity projects. The Civic Center plans presented at the open house certainly confirmed for me that my instinct was correct. Looks like if this goes forward, Berkeley can have its own multi-million-dollar expenditure, so the mayor and council can strut around in their new digs while community non-profits sit in any leftover space the basement, out of sight out of mind sinking the community visions for use of Maudelle Shirek and the Veterans Buildings.
The update on the Turtle Island Monument Project for the Civic Center Fountain brought more bad news. The architects PGA Design Landscape Architects https://pgadesign.com/ have completely shut out the indigenous people that the monument is supposed to honor and the group that raised the money for the project.
It is unknown what PGA Design Landscape Architects will present at the Landscape Preservation Commission on December 1 at 7 pm and at the Civic Center Commission on December 7. CCCC voted to send a letter to city council regarding the handling of the Turtle Island Monument Project.
On October 11, 2022 Berkeley City Council voted to adopt the Land Acknowledgement Statement recognizing Berkeley as the ancestral, unceded home of the Ohlone people. The Land Acknowledgement is now included in writing (not recited) under preliminary matters in council regular meeting agendas (not special meetings or closed meeting agendas).
Councilmember Hahn who authored the acknowledgement spoke to how much she learned in the process. There is much to learn and one piece that barely hit the radar until notice of a hearing was published in New York Times that the U.S. has yet to fulfill the promise of Article 7 in the Treaty of New Echota of 1835 / TREATY WITH THE CHEROKEE, 1835. Kim Teehee is the Cherokee Nation Delegate requesting to be seated as a nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives. Teehee has been waiting three years, the Cherokees nearly 200 years for the vote of admission as a delegate to the House of Representatives.
“ARTICLE 7. The Cherokee nation having already made great progress in civilization and deeming it important that every proper and laudable inducement should be offered to their people to improve their condition as well as to guard and secure in the most effectual manner the rights guaranteed to them in this treaty, and with a view to illustrate the liberal and enlarged policy of the Government of the United States towards the Indians in their removal beyond the territorial limits of the States, it is stipulated that they shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United states whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.”
https://americanindian.si.edu/static/nationtonation/pdf/Treaty-of-New-Echota-1835.pdf
The community meeting on the Ohlone Park restroom and lighting is Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm. It has been ingrained for decades through scary movies and suspense scenes that crime lurks in the darkness and if we just have enough bright light we will be safe and secure. In the webinar “Light at Night: A Glowing Hazard” one of the speakers related how her partner’s catalytic converter was stolen from a vehicle parked in bright light right under a street light.
Light at night disrupts our own circadian rhythm and wild life. The question is can we overcome our fear of the dark and put artificial light at night (ALAN) in the proper frame as light pollution and treat it like every other pollution? Reducing night light pollution means shielding light so it is directed to only where and when it is needed, placing fixtures close to the ground, using the least amount of light needed with the appropriate color temperature with red/orange/yellow wave lengths and utilizing timers and motion detectors.
Dahlia Lithwick who as senior legal correspondent for Slate writes about law, the Supreme Court and hosts the podcast Amicus https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus is also the author of the book Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America. The early chapters are energizing reviews of women in law who took courageous stands, started programs, took on white supremacists, defended reproductive rights, like Sally Yates serving as Acting Attorney General in the transition from President Obama to Trump refused to defend the Muslim ban, Becca Hellar started the International Refugee Assistance Program and was instrumental in the lawyers that showed up at airports providing legal support during the Trump travel ban, Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn litigated Charlottesville. Bridgitte Ameri was the attorney assisting for the teenager seeking an abortion in an ICE detention facility who overcame through appeal the 2 to 1 decision with Kavanaugh in the majority delaying access to abortion.
The chapter titled MeToo speaks to the sexual harrassment of Judge Alex Kozinski, how Kozinski’s sexual misconduct was an “open secret” until Heidi Bond a former clerk finally blew the whistle in the Washington Post. Lithwick writes “Everybody knew something awful absolved all of us of the burden of doing anything. All of us hoping the story would break someday and we would be off the hook.” The powerful Judge Kozinski was in the position to make or break legal careers. For Brett Kavanaugh clerking for Judge Kosinski was the step to clerking for Justice Kennedy and making his way to the Supreme Court.
Lithwick lays out how those subjected to the harassment and the bystanders who stayed silent makes everyone complicit. It is the ethical question of when and where do we draw the line.
I don’t know how complete my diary will be next week as I’ve been summoned to report to jury duty on Monday. My first reaction was, did you not look at my age? I’m closer to 80 than 70, but then our President just turned 80 this week. Bernie Sanders is 81 and Noam Chomsky is 94.
I always say, people age at different rates and so do bodies and minds. Age was the subject of my morning podcast. Reagan was showing signs of dementia in his second term (age 73-77) and Adam Schiff wrote in his book Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could of the mental decline of Robert Mueller III (age 74 when Mueller report was released)
When Elton John walked on and off the stage in 2019 in Vegas, then 72 he was no longer capable of the cartwheels and flips I saw him do across the stage at the end of his performance at Hollywood Bowl nearly 50 years earlier when we were both in our early twenties. But as he sat down at the piano starting the evening performance, the music was richer and more dynamic. I said to my friends he walks like an old man and plays like a young man.
If the Paradise City Council had listened to the Mildred Eslin in 2014, the 88 year-old woman who was the lone voice in opposition to narrowing the road (road diet) in and out of Paradise, would that same road have become the “kill zone” as it was labeled after the 2018 fire? Would 85 people have died? How prescient were her words, “The main thing is fire danger, if the council is searching for a way to diminish the population of Paradise, this would be the way to do it.”
Vision Zero (reducing traffic deaths to zero) - Road Diets are the latest fashion in city planning. In “Artificial Gridlock: Who Put the ‘Die’ in LA Road DIEts?” published in City Watch, Liz Amsden wrote that the LAPD reported 294 people were killed in traffic collisions in 2021, 22% more than in 2020 and a 58% increase in pedestrian deaths since Vision Zero was launched.
Road diets work in some places and not others. Dwight is much easier to cross at California with the reconfiguration.
The main message is road diets don’t work everywhere and when they are on emergency access and evacuation routes disaster isn’t far behind. That is the warning that Margot Smith has been giving and Liz Amsden lays it out clearly in her article with this:
“As implemented in the United States, road diets have proven to be dangerous, doing the opposite of what they're supposed to – causing more accidents and fatalities, while slowing emergency responders from reaching people.
It took an ambulance and fire engine nearly four minutes to travel four blocks to where a motorcyclist lay pinned under a semi due to the Venice Boulevard road diet.
A road diet on Foothill Boulevard the in Sunland-Tujunga neighborhood during the 2017 La Tuna Fire, the biggest in Los Angeles in half a century, created a bottleneck for evacuations and blocked access by police and fire.
The Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council passed a motion to return the boulevard to four lanes, two in each direction to avoid a repeat but the City ignored the request and, to add insult to injury, has added another road diet, this one to La Tuna Canyon Road which is the sole route through hilly wildfire-prone terrain.
Firefighters, paramedics, and police officers in Los Angeles and elsewhere have confirmed lane reductions, particularly so-called “road diets,” have significantly increased response times. Ask any first responder – even 30 seconds delay can mean the difference if someone lives or dies.
The Paradise fire was so deadly because three years earlier a Complete Streets road diet narrowed the main road from four lanes to two creating total gridlock when residents attempted to flee the advancing flames. The fire department called it their kill zone. Places where there have been similar lane removals are being called death traps for fires still to come.
Imposing solutions that worked in another country or even from another area of Los Angeles without addressing underlying needs and local concerns will never work in a city with so many geographically diverse neighborhoods.
The goal of getting people out of their cars is based on the theory that people can readily shift to other ways of commuting. That is just plain balderdash for Los Angeles which is an enormous, spread-out city with limited viable public transportation options.
Every road diet also exacerbates the problem of drivers cutting through side streets and residential neighborhoods, past schools and parks.”
https://citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/24745-la-traffic-who-put-the-die-in-road-diets
Fashion and fads are hard to break. Adeline, Telegraph, Hopkins are all mapped as emergency access and evacuation routes and are in some stage of planning for a road diet. Siegal & Strain is pushing a road diet for MLK Jr Way. And, Taplin’s proposal for University Avenue listed in the draft agenda for December 13 makes five. If there is one take away, it is in the title who put the DIE in road DIEt. If you follow the link, the die extends to businesses which sits in contrast to comments from Walk Bike Berkeley that the reconfiguration of Hopkins Street will benefit businesses.
The City meetings piled up on Monday with the main event being the City Council special meeting on the Fair Work Week Ordinance at 5 pm. I gave a description of the November 3 Fair Work Week filibuster in my November 6 edition of the Activist’s Diary. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-11-06/article/50047?headline=A-Berkeley-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-November-6-2022--Kelly-Hammargren
The effort for the Fair Work Week Ordinance started in 2018. Basically, it protects workers earning less than twice the minimum wage (under $33.98 per hour). In the Fair Work Week Ordinance, qualified current employed workers must be offered additional hours before new employees are hired or staffing agencies are called in. They also receive a minimum pay (4 hours of pay or the hours scheduled whichever is less) when canceled in less than 24 hours. In scheduling changes of greater than 24 hours, the employee receives one hour of pay for the scheduling changes or cancellations.
For those of us who have been tracking the Fair Work Week Ordinance and attended the November 3, 2022 council meeting, the core resistance was coming from the City of Berkeley Administration with game playing and pick up by Wengraf and Droste to carry administration water.
Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager and LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager were not present Monday evening. Instead in this round, the City was represented by Paul Budenhaggen who was in general supportive and came with financial analysis that put objections to rest. Wengraf tried and failed to modify the proposed ordinance by excluding Longlife Medical Berkeley and changing the criteria for businesses exempted from the ordinance.
Droste was absent the entire evening and Wengraf signed off the meeting according to record at 6:39 pm which I first noticed when the vote was called. The ordinance passed with no changes with a unanimous vote by those remaining (Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson and Arreguin). The meeting adjourned at 6:58 pm.
In all the council meetings I’ve attended, I don’t ever recall Wengraf taking a stand alone. When she comes up for re-election in 2024 (if she runs) District 6 voters might want to ask why she left without staying just a few minutes longer to cast her vote for or against the Fair Work Week Ordinance.
By Tuesday morning all that was left of City meetings was the Land Use, Housing and Economic Development special meeting at 9:30 am. The chair Councilmember Rigel Robinson announced that neither of the authors (Wengraf and Harrison) could attend for the single item on the agenda so no action would be taken on the amendment to BMC Chapter 13.110 the COVID emergency eviction moratorium. Mayor Arreguin stepped in as an alternate for the meeting and opened his statement with that he was opposed to the proposed amendment. With no action in the offing, I tuned out. The 1 ½ hour recording is available if you wish to listen, just go to the bottom of the page under Additional Information and click on audio recordings. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/council-committees/policy-committee-land-use-housing-economic-development
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met at noon on Monday to discuss the election results, the Civic Center Vision Plan open house and the status of the Turtle Island Monument Project.
There was disappointment from some that Measure L didn’t pass, but no one thought there was going to be any significant contribution to the Civic Center. More than the election was the concern that the plan presented at the open house by Susi Mazuola from Siegal & Strain and Gehl Consultants was to move city offices into the Maudelle Shirek Building and relegate the media and the historical society museum to the basement.
I said from the beginning that Measure L money would be going to vanity projects. The Civic Center plans presented at the open house certainly confirmed for me that my instinct was correct. Looks like if this goes forward, Berkeley can have its own multi-million-dollar expenditure, so the mayor and council can strut around in their new digs while community non-profits sit in any leftover space the basement, out of sight out of mind sinking the community visions for use of Maudelle Shirek and the Veterans Buildings.
The update on the Turtle Island Monument Project for the Civic Center Fountain brought more bad news. The architects PGA Design Landscape Architects https://pgadesign.com/ have completely shut out the indigenous people that the monument is supposed to honor and the group that raised the money for the project.
It is unknown what PGA Design Landscape Architects will present at the Landscape Preservation Commission on December 1 at 7 pm and at the Civic Center Commission on December 7. CCCC voted to send a letter to city council regarding the handling of the Turtle Island Monument Project.
On October 11, 2022 Berkeley City Council voted to adopt the Land Acknowledgement Statement recognizing Berkeley as the ancestral, unceded home of the Ohlone people. The Land Acknowledgement is now included in writing (not recited) under preliminary matters in council regular meeting agendas (not special meetings or closed meeting agendas).
Councilmember Hahn who authored the acknowledgement spoke to how much she learned in the process. There is much to learn and one piece that barely hit the radar until notice of a hearing was published in New York Times that the U.S. has yet to fulfill the promise of Article 7 in the Treaty of New Echota of 1835 / TREATY WITH THE CHEROKEE, 1835. Kim Teehee is the Cherokee Nation Delegate requesting to be seated as a nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives. Teehee has been waiting three years, the Cherokees nearly 200 years for the vote of admission as a delegate to the House of Representatives.
“ARTICLE 7. The Cherokee nation having already made great progress in civilization and deeming it important that every proper and laudable inducement should be offered to their people to improve their condition as well as to guard and secure in the most effectual manner the rights guaranteed to them in this treaty, and with a view to illustrate the liberal and enlarged policy of the Government of the United States towards the Indians in their removal beyond the territorial limits of the States, it is stipulated that they shall be entitled to a delegate in the House of Representatives of the United states whenever Congress shall make provision for the same.”
https://americanindian.si.edu/static/nationtonation/pdf/Treaty-of-New-Echota-1835.pdf
The community meeting on the Ohlone Park restroom and lighting is Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm. It has been ingrained for decades through scary movies and suspense scenes that crime lurks in the darkness and if we just have enough bright light we will be safe and secure. In the webinar “Light at Night: A Glowing Hazard” one of the speakers related how her partner’s catalytic converter was stolen from a vehicle parked in bright light right under a street light.
Light at night disrupts our own circadian rhythm and wild life. The question is can we overcome our fear of the dark and put artificial light at night (ALAN) in the proper frame as light pollution and treat it like every other pollution? Reducing night light pollution means shielding light so it is directed to only where and when it is needed, placing fixtures close to the ground, using the least amount of light needed with the appropriate color temperature with red/orange/yellow wave lengths and utilizing timers and motion detectors.
Dahlia Lithwick who as senior legal correspondent for Slate writes about law, the Supreme Court and hosts the podcast Amicus https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus is also the author of the book Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America. The early chapters are energizing reviews of women in law who took courageous stands, started programs, took on white supremacists, defended reproductive rights, like Sally Yates serving as Acting Attorney General in the transition from President Obama to Trump refused to defend the Muslim ban, Becca Hellar started the International Refugee Assistance Program and was instrumental in the lawyers that showed up at airports providing legal support during the Trump travel ban, Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn litigated Charlottesville. Bridgitte Ameri was the attorney assisting for the teenager seeking an abortion in an ICE detention facility who overcame through appeal the 2 to 1 decision with Kavanaugh in the majority delaying access to abortion.
The chapter titled MeToo speaks to the sexual harrassment of Judge Alex Kozinski, how Kozinski’s sexual misconduct was an “open secret” until Heidi Bond a former clerk finally blew the whistle in the Washington Post. Lithwick writes “Everybody knew something awful absolved all of us of the burden of doing anything. All of us hoping the story would break someday and we would be off the hook.” The powerful Judge Kozinski was in the position to make or break legal careers. For Brett Kavanaugh clerking for Judge Kosinski was the step to clerking for Justice Kennedy and making his way to the Supreme Court.
Lithwick lays out how those subjected to the harassment and the bystanders who stayed silent makes everyone complicit. It is the ethical question of when and where do we draw the line.
November 20, 2022
So much happened this last week it is hard to know where to begin. And much of it has been in the news already. Here is how the Tuesday evening, November 15, 2022 Berkeley City Council meeting rolled out. Jennifer Louis’s appointment as Berkeley Police Chief was supposed to slide through on consent with 21 other items and likely no comment from council other than congratulations, but the entirety of the appointment broke open Monday afternoon when Nathan Mizell sent out a press release published in the Planet and elsewhere. The dump of derogatory, racist texts alluding to arrest quotas from whistleblower Corey Shedoudy, a former Berkeley police officer who was fired earlier in the year started circulating in emails on Tuesday morning.
The Police Accountability Board (PAB) held an emergency meeting at 2 pm Tuesday afternoon, November 15. It was there that we learned the PAB had received the notification of the allegations on the previous Thursday. After a long discussion the PAB agreed on a letter to council to be sent after the close of the meeting requesting a delay in the appointment of Louis as police chief and the formation of a subcommittee. The PAB will do its own investigation separate from whatever investigations are performed by the city manager.
At just 22 minutes into the evening council meeting, Mayor Arreguin called on Brandon Woods, Public Defender for Alameda County who made this statement:
“I’m coming on to discuss my issues. I’m urging you delay the confirmation of interim chief Louis until the full investigation is completed and my belief come comes from my interactions or lack of with her. On July 6, I sent her an email outlining outrageous conduct by her officers as they refused to read the Miranda Rights on the phone with our attorneys. A new law provides minors should be allowed to speak to an attorney when they read the Miranda Rights to make sure they understand. The officers were hostile and rude and often hang up on our attorneys. The Oakland Police Department did the same conduct and corrected the conduct when addressed. I emailed on July 6, no response, I emailed on July 10 and on July 11. I see the response from a captain. On August * I emailed the chief again and today I have not received a response from her correcting their practices. That’s the way she responds to the Public Defender of Alameda County and the way she handled minors in her custody and I don’t have faith she’ll respond properly to the new allegations, arrest quotas, derogatory comments about unhoused people and racism have no place in policing but seem to be present in the Berkeley Police Department and prevalent under the current leadership. I’m asking, I’m requesting, the least the council can do is postpone this vote tonight. Thank you for giving me the time and space to advocate for the residents of Alameda County and the residents of Berkeley and for the people that I’m honored to represent. Thank you.”
Councilmember Hahn asked if the emails to the chief had been sent to council, they hadn’t and then requested the emails to Louis be forwarded to city council.
The council meeting went on for the next half hour with the usual blather about agenda items until 6:57 pm when Councilmember Bartlett was called on and in a subdued, unemotional voice asked for item 2 the appointment of Jennifer Louis as Chief of Police to be removed from consent and moved to action. The council rules require three councilmembers to remove a consent item and place it on action. Councilmembers Harrison and Hahn joined Bartlett.
No mention of the letter from the PAB requesting delay was ever made during the evening.
Arreguin told meeting attendees before opening public comment on the consent calendar that they would need to wait to comment on the appointment of the chief until. “we get to the item.”
Item 17 on the consent calendar was declaring November 13 – 19th, 2022 as United Against Hate Week. Andrea Pritchette did what the mayor and council did not do, she tied united against hate to the texts in her allotted one minute,
“I’m definitely appreciative of the efforts to address hate speech and I would like to think that we are united against hate. But, I fear that more than events and posters and more than slogans, is the actions of our city leaders that can really direct our city. So when racist messages appear in the city department, when people are made aware of it, or when people in positions of authority ignore it, then that undermines the good intentions of your united against hate week. I hope you understand that the most potent, the best work we can create against hate crimes is good leadership that is willing to being brave in situations that are uncomfortable.”
The appointment of Louis as Chief of Police sat as the last discussion and action item of the evening until 10:10 pm when the City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley announced that she was withdrawing the appointment of Jennifer Louis as Chief of Police until the investigation complete stating, “Chief Lewis is still the interim Chief. I also believe that ultimately the outcome of the investigation will find she was not aware of and made public statement, to this effect, to my understanding and were aware of it she would have taken immediate action to address the issue. I hope that the outcome of an investigation will collaborate that.”
Back in 2017, the City Council received the report from the Center for Policing Equity on biased policing in Berkeley. Residents of Berkeley have been reporting incidents of harassment at public meetings. There was a task force that met for months on Reimagining Public Safety, there was the task force on Fair and Impartial Policing. Harassment has been reported in the Planet.
How soon we forget what happened to Jorge Colon, Program Manager at the Berkeley Drop-In Center on February 2, 2022 (under Jennifer Louis watch) Four police officers approached Colon from behind with guns drawn, forced Colon on the ground, handcuffed and detained him. What was Colon’s sin? Hanging Black History Month Decorations while Black. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-03-06/article/49638?headline=Un-armed-Berkeley-Drop-In-Center-Manager-Detained-at-Gun-Point-by-BPD-Letter-to-Berkeley-Mayor-Arreguin--Katrina-Killian-Executive-Director-Alameda-County-Network-of-Mental-Health-Clients- Was there ever an apology, was there ever an investigation of police behavior? What was the follow-up with the four police officers and is it the same four police officers that are in the string of texts released now?
The release of text that are racist with arrest quotas should come as a surprise to no one. It is the excuse of not knowing that comes as a surprise for someone who has been a member of the police department for 23 years.
Jennifer Louis has been with the Berkeley Police Department since 1999. She became a Police Captain in 2016 and was appointed interim Police Chief in March 2021.
Not knowing what is going on in a department makes a police chief just as incapable and ineffectual as a Chief of Police that knows and does nothing.
Darren Kacalek on the downtown bike patrol and the center of the arrest quotas, texts, president of the Berkeley Police Association, the police union is now on leave of absence.
Adam Serwer, journalist, senior editor at the Atlantic and author of the 2021 book The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America had this to say about police unions, “This is not a system ruined by a few bad apples. This is a system that creates and protects bad apples by design. Being a good cop can get you in trouble with your superiors, your fellow officers, and the union that represents you. Being a bad one can get you elected as a union rep.”
Reflecting on past public comment at city meetings of harassment of the poor, the homeless, of People of Color leaves a lot of questions. From the outside, what looks like a failure of meaningful follow-through says more about who we are as a city than a declaration of United Against Hate.
While the Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community City Council Policy Committee was considering Councilmember Taplin’s Office of Racial Equity: Re-Entry Employment and Guaranteed Income Program proposal, the Ashby Village/Elder Action and Berkeley Friends/Racial Justice Action Team was moderating “Shining the Light on The Militarization of Police Departments” on AB 481.
California AB 481 requires law enforcement agencies to obtain approval for the acquisition and use of military equipment and for the governing body to either disapprove or authorize the controlling ordinance(s) annually. In Berkeley the PAB writes/reviews the policy and City Council approves the final version often with council modifications. Berkeley and the PAB are further along in the process than Oakland and Richmond.
I wouldn’t label the video of the panel discussion on the Militarization of Police Departments as a must see, but it helped me put together the responsibilities of the PAB and City Council in relation to controlling the availability and use of military equipment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9gHJyvaI-E Given the Oakland panelist Omar Farmer’s description of the use of the bearcat (a tank with wheels instead of treads) and military equipment in Oakland and multi-million-dollar settlements, to everyone in Berkeley who fought against military equipment here, it was and is worth the fight.
As for Taplin’s proposal on guaranteed income and re-entry employment, it was modified and passed out of committee and now sits in the draft agenda for the December 6 council meeting. Like so much that comes out of Taplin’s office it is a referral to the city manager which means it could be months or years before we see it again. The re-entry employment was diluted to review available services.
The in-person public meeting on the Civic Center design started with a presentation by Susi Muzuola from Siegel & Strain Architects and followed with four stations to give comment on the design of the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings, the Civic Center Park and reconfiguration of MLK Jr. Way. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Civic-Center-Phase-II_Open-House-Presentation.pdf
The proposed plan is to move city council into new offices in the Maudelle Shirek Building, build a 14,000 square foot addition (or close to that size) for new city council meeting chambers and put the Media Center and Historical Society Museum in the basement. And, bring the Maudelle Shirek building to immediate occupancy (IO) seismic standards (the level used for hospitals).
The Veterans Building seismic upgrade would be downgraded to basic life safety plus without buttressing that would have added needed backstage space to increase functionality.
The plan for the Emergency Access and Evacuation Network Route street MLK Jr Way is to put this evacuation route on a “road diet” with narrowing driving lanes, widening sidewalks and pedestrian bulb outs.
There appears to be a disconnect. A large chunk of Berkeley sits in high fire hazard zones and evacuation from fire in the high fire hazard zones is already challenged. This means that a rapidly moving fire will likely overtake people trying to escape (evacuate) under current conditions. This is before according to the evening presentation, the architects, city planners, and the transportation department will put together a plan for the Civic Center to narrow yet another emergency access and evacuation route.
We would all do well to listen to those warning of the hazard of narrowing roads. Margot Smith has been calling the alarm in Berkeley of the looming danger of putting the Emergency Access and Evacuation Routes on road diets. Before any of us dismiss those warnings, we should all remember, Mildred Eselin’s words to the city council of Paradise, California as reported in the Los Angeles Times.
“Town recordings show a lone voice of concern at the 2014 council meeting giving final approval to the road narrowing. ‘The main thing is fire danger,’ Mildred Eselin, 88. ‘If the council is searching for a way to diminish the population of Paradise, this would be the way to do it.’” https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
Reading a little further in the article you will come across this,
“Paradise officials repeatedly told The Times they never envisioned a firestorm reaching the town. But the 2005 state fire management plan for the ridge, developed in consultation with some of those same Paradise planners, warned that canyon winds posed a ‘serious threat’ to Paradise. The ‘greatest risk’ was an ‘east wind’ fire, the document said, ‘the same type of fire that impacted the Oakland Berkeley Hills during the Oct. 20, 1991, firestorm’ that killed 25 people.”
The meeting on North Berkeley BART objective standards started with an hour-long large group introduction and a 90-page presentation which is on the city website for the North Berkeley BART housing project. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/NB-BART_PreODS_Community_Meeting_1_v1.pdf The introduction was followed with breakout groups and the evening closed without reports of breakout group discussions. Nothing was decided and there will be more meetings on establishing objective standards.
The Open Government Commission heard my complaint and request and will be following up in January. For the complaint I submitted a list of the committees, boards and commissions that are not posting draft meeting minutes within 14 calendar days of meeting (as recommended by the Open Government Commission and passed by City Council). The list includes the 2 x 2 (Council and BUSD), 3 x 3 (Council and Housing Authority), 4 x 4, (Council and Rent Stabilization Board) City/UC/Student Relations Committee Housing, Board of Library Trustees, Commission on Disability, Community Health Commission, Fair Campaign Practices Commission, Landmarks Preservation Commission, Mental Health Commission, Youth Commission and the Zoning Adjustment Board.
The request was that live transcription be made available at all city meetings (not just city council) as a requirement.
This is long already. I will cover the webinar “Light at Night a Glowing Hazard” in the next Diary.
I’ve already included a short quote from Adam Serwer’s The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America. With Trump declaring he is running for President again, the book is worth reading. Serwer is a senior editor for the Atlantic. The book is an expansion on his articles, Trump and his devotees, his cult revolve around cruelty, revenge, name calling, blaming, getting even, greed and selfishness.
It is all such a sharp contrast to the link a friend sent me on why / how/ what lead people to call themselves socialists. Their responses to why they were socialists were all about caring about the welfare of others. This is a link worth pulling up when you feel everything is hopeless. Click on comments. https://rb.gy/79zodb
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Kelly
So much happened this last week it is hard to know where to begin. And much of it has been in the news already. Here is how the Tuesday evening, November 15, 2022 Berkeley City Council meeting rolled out. Jennifer Louis’s appointment as Berkeley Police Chief was supposed to slide through on consent with 21 other items and likely no comment from council other than congratulations, but the entirety of the appointment broke open Monday afternoon when Nathan Mizell sent out a press release published in the Planet and elsewhere. The dump of derogatory, racist texts alluding to arrest quotas from whistleblower Corey Shedoudy, a former Berkeley police officer who was fired earlier in the year started circulating in emails on Tuesday morning.
The Police Accountability Board (PAB) held an emergency meeting at 2 pm Tuesday afternoon, November 15. It was there that we learned the PAB had received the notification of the allegations on the previous Thursday. After a long discussion the PAB agreed on a letter to council to be sent after the close of the meeting requesting a delay in the appointment of Louis as police chief and the formation of a subcommittee. The PAB will do its own investigation separate from whatever investigations are performed by the city manager.
At just 22 minutes into the evening council meeting, Mayor Arreguin called on Brandon Woods, Public Defender for Alameda County who made this statement:
“I’m coming on to discuss my issues. I’m urging you delay the confirmation of interim chief Louis until the full investigation is completed and my belief come comes from my interactions or lack of with her. On July 6, I sent her an email outlining outrageous conduct by her officers as they refused to read the Miranda Rights on the phone with our attorneys. A new law provides minors should be allowed to speak to an attorney when they read the Miranda Rights to make sure they understand. The officers were hostile and rude and often hang up on our attorneys. The Oakland Police Department did the same conduct and corrected the conduct when addressed. I emailed on July 6, no response, I emailed on July 10 and on July 11. I see the response from a captain. On August * I emailed the chief again and today I have not received a response from her correcting their practices. That’s the way she responds to the Public Defender of Alameda County and the way she handled minors in her custody and I don’t have faith she’ll respond properly to the new allegations, arrest quotas, derogatory comments about unhoused people and racism have no place in policing but seem to be present in the Berkeley Police Department and prevalent under the current leadership. I’m asking, I’m requesting, the least the council can do is postpone this vote tonight. Thank you for giving me the time and space to advocate for the residents of Alameda County and the residents of Berkeley and for the people that I’m honored to represent. Thank you.”
Councilmember Hahn asked if the emails to the chief had been sent to council, they hadn’t and then requested the emails to Louis be forwarded to city council.
The council meeting went on for the next half hour with the usual blather about agenda items until 6:57 pm when Councilmember Bartlett was called on and in a subdued, unemotional voice asked for item 2 the appointment of Jennifer Louis as Chief of Police to be removed from consent and moved to action. The council rules require three councilmembers to remove a consent item and place it on action. Councilmembers Harrison and Hahn joined Bartlett.
No mention of the letter from the PAB requesting delay was ever made during the evening.
Arreguin told meeting attendees before opening public comment on the consent calendar that they would need to wait to comment on the appointment of the chief until. “we get to the item.”
Item 17 on the consent calendar was declaring November 13 – 19th, 2022 as United Against Hate Week. Andrea Pritchette did what the mayor and council did not do, she tied united against hate to the texts in her allotted one minute,
“I’m definitely appreciative of the efforts to address hate speech and I would like to think that we are united against hate. But, I fear that more than events and posters and more than slogans, is the actions of our city leaders that can really direct our city. So when racist messages appear in the city department, when people are made aware of it, or when people in positions of authority ignore it, then that undermines the good intentions of your united against hate week. I hope you understand that the most potent, the best work we can create against hate crimes is good leadership that is willing to being brave in situations that are uncomfortable.”
The appointment of Louis as Chief of Police sat as the last discussion and action item of the evening until 10:10 pm when the City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley announced that she was withdrawing the appointment of Jennifer Louis as Chief of Police until the investigation complete stating, “Chief Lewis is still the interim Chief. I also believe that ultimately the outcome of the investigation will find she was not aware of and made public statement, to this effect, to my understanding and were aware of it she would have taken immediate action to address the issue. I hope that the outcome of an investigation will collaborate that.”
Back in 2017, the City Council received the report from the Center for Policing Equity on biased policing in Berkeley. Residents of Berkeley have been reporting incidents of harassment at public meetings. There was a task force that met for months on Reimagining Public Safety, there was the task force on Fair and Impartial Policing. Harassment has been reported in the Planet.
How soon we forget what happened to Jorge Colon, Program Manager at the Berkeley Drop-In Center on February 2, 2022 (under Jennifer Louis watch) Four police officers approached Colon from behind with guns drawn, forced Colon on the ground, handcuffed and detained him. What was Colon’s sin? Hanging Black History Month Decorations while Black. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-03-06/article/49638?headline=Un-armed-Berkeley-Drop-In-Center-Manager-Detained-at-Gun-Point-by-BPD-Letter-to-Berkeley-Mayor-Arreguin--Katrina-Killian-Executive-Director-Alameda-County-Network-of-Mental-Health-Clients- Was there ever an apology, was there ever an investigation of police behavior? What was the follow-up with the four police officers and is it the same four police officers that are in the string of texts released now?
The release of text that are racist with arrest quotas should come as a surprise to no one. It is the excuse of not knowing that comes as a surprise for someone who has been a member of the police department for 23 years.
Jennifer Louis has been with the Berkeley Police Department since 1999. She became a Police Captain in 2016 and was appointed interim Police Chief in March 2021.
Not knowing what is going on in a department makes a police chief just as incapable and ineffectual as a Chief of Police that knows and does nothing.
Darren Kacalek on the downtown bike patrol and the center of the arrest quotas, texts, president of the Berkeley Police Association, the police union is now on leave of absence.
Adam Serwer, journalist, senior editor at the Atlantic and author of the 2021 book The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America had this to say about police unions, “This is not a system ruined by a few bad apples. This is a system that creates and protects bad apples by design. Being a good cop can get you in trouble with your superiors, your fellow officers, and the union that represents you. Being a bad one can get you elected as a union rep.”
Reflecting on past public comment at city meetings of harassment of the poor, the homeless, of People of Color leaves a lot of questions. From the outside, what looks like a failure of meaningful follow-through says more about who we are as a city than a declaration of United Against Hate.
While the Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community City Council Policy Committee was considering Councilmember Taplin’s Office of Racial Equity: Re-Entry Employment and Guaranteed Income Program proposal, the Ashby Village/Elder Action and Berkeley Friends/Racial Justice Action Team was moderating “Shining the Light on The Militarization of Police Departments” on AB 481.
California AB 481 requires law enforcement agencies to obtain approval for the acquisition and use of military equipment and for the governing body to either disapprove or authorize the controlling ordinance(s) annually. In Berkeley the PAB writes/reviews the policy and City Council approves the final version often with council modifications. Berkeley and the PAB are further along in the process than Oakland and Richmond.
I wouldn’t label the video of the panel discussion on the Militarization of Police Departments as a must see, but it helped me put together the responsibilities of the PAB and City Council in relation to controlling the availability and use of military equipment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9gHJyvaI-E Given the Oakland panelist Omar Farmer’s description of the use of the bearcat (a tank with wheels instead of treads) and military equipment in Oakland and multi-million-dollar settlements, to everyone in Berkeley who fought against military equipment here, it was and is worth the fight.
As for Taplin’s proposal on guaranteed income and re-entry employment, it was modified and passed out of committee and now sits in the draft agenda for the December 6 council meeting. Like so much that comes out of Taplin’s office it is a referral to the city manager which means it could be months or years before we see it again. The re-entry employment was diluted to review available services.
The in-person public meeting on the Civic Center design started with a presentation by Susi Muzuola from Siegel & Strain Architects and followed with four stations to give comment on the design of the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings, the Civic Center Park and reconfiguration of MLK Jr. Way. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Civic-Center-Phase-II_Open-House-Presentation.pdf
The proposed plan is to move city council into new offices in the Maudelle Shirek Building, build a 14,000 square foot addition (or close to that size) for new city council meeting chambers and put the Media Center and Historical Society Museum in the basement. And, bring the Maudelle Shirek building to immediate occupancy (IO) seismic standards (the level used for hospitals).
The Veterans Building seismic upgrade would be downgraded to basic life safety plus without buttressing that would have added needed backstage space to increase functionality.
The plan for the Emergency Access and Evacuation Network Route street MLK Jr Way is to put this evacuation route on a “road diet” with narrowing driving lanes, widening sidewalks and pedestrian bulb outs.
There appears to be a disconnect. A large chunk of Berkeley sits in high fire hazard zones and evacuation from fire in the high fire hazard zones is already challenged. This means that a rapidly moving fire will likely overtake people trying to escape (evacuate) under current conditions. This is before according to the evening presentation, the architects, city planners, and the transportation department will put together a plan for the Civic Center to narrow yet another emergency access and evacuation route.
We would all do well to listen to those warning of the hazard of narrowing roads. Margot Smith has been calling the alarm in Berkeley of the looming danger of putting the Emergency Access and Evacuation Routes on road diets. Before any of us dismiss those warnings, we should all remember, Mildred Eselin’s words to the city council of Paradise, California as reported in the Los Angeles Times.
“Town recordings show a lone voice of concern at the 2014 council meeting giving final approval to the road narrowing. ‘The main thing is fire danger,’ Mildred Eselin, 88. ‘If the council is searching for a way to diminish the population of Paradise, this would be the way to do it.’” https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
Reading a little further in the article you will come across this,
“Paradise officials repeatedly told The Times they never envisioned a firestorm reaching the town. But the 2005 state fire management plan for the ridge, developed in consultation with some of those same Paradise planners, warned that canyon winds posed a ‘serious threat’ to Paradise. The ‘greatest risk’ was an ‘east wind’ fire, the document said, ‘the same type of fire that impacted the Oakland Berkeley Hills during the Oct. 20, 1991, firestorm’ that killed 25 people.”
The meeting on North Berkeley BART objective standards started with an hour-long large group introduction and a 90-page presentation which is on the city website for the North Berkeley BART housing project. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/NB-BART_PreODS_Community_Meeting_1_v1.pdf The introduction was followed with breakout groups and the evening closed without reports of breakout group discussions. Nothing was decided and there will be more meetings on establishing objective standards.
The Open Government Commission heard my complaint and request and will be following up in January. For the complaint I submitted a list of the committees, boards and commissions that are not posting draft meeting minutes within 14 calendar days of meeting (as recommended by the Open Government Commission and passed by City Council). The list includes the 2 x 2 (Council and BUSD), 3 x 3 (Council and Housing Authority), 4 x 4, (Council and Rent Stabilization Board) City/UC/Student Relations Committee Housing, Board of Library Trustees, Commission on Disability, Community Health Commission, Fair Campaign Practices Commission, Landmarks Preservation Commission, Mental Health Commission, Youth Commission and the Zoning Adjustment Board.
The request was that live transcription be made available at all city meetings (not just city council) as a requirement.
This is long already. I will cover the webinar “Light at Night a Glowing Hazard” in the next Diary.
I’ve already included a short quote from Adam Serwer’s The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America. With Trump declaring he is running for President again, the book is worth reading. Serwer is a senior editor for the Atlantic. The book is an expansion on his articles, Trump and his devotees, his cult revolve around cruelty, revenge, name calling, blaming, getting even, greed and selfishness.
It is all such a sharp contrast to the link a friend sent me on why / how/ what lead people to call themselves socialists. Their responses to why they were socialists were all about caring about the welfare of others. This is a link worth pulling up when you feel everything is hopeless. Click on comments. https://rb.gy/79zodb
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Kelly
November 13, 2022
Before going on to the meetings of the week, first why did Measure L lose. Measure L certainly didn’t lose through lack of funding. Donations to pass Measure L are now over $400,000 if my addition is correct while No on Measure L is a little over $30,000. Most donations to No on L were in the $100 to $250 range. The few listed as $1200 pale in the shadow of Yes on Measure L donations with $10,000 after $10,000 after $10,000.
You can see the list for yourself just go to the City of Berkeley Portal https://public.netfile.com/pub2/?aid=BRK and type: Measure L in “Search By Name” and click on “search” (no other blocks need to be filled).
Berkeley City Council, Council committees, boards and commissions generally operate in the bliss of a city that pays more attention to national politics than the actions of city elected and council appointees. This time that bliss of inattentive residents was not enough to slide through the $650,000,000 Measure L bonds even with a normally kneejerk generous community and $400,000 of funds to fill our mail boxes with glossy card stock Yes on L flyers.
After listening to a lengthy discussion with a mix of people describing why they voted for or against Measure L, it came down to the same objections as those who signed on to oppose Measure L. Measure L was poorly written. It was too ill-defined, too big, too expensive. There were no named projects. The promise of oversight didn’t hold water with the City’s poor track record of providing the necessary information to the commissions to perform their oversight responsibilities of existing ballot measures.
One person took a slightly different view citing inflation and the possible loss of Proposition 13 homeowner protections, but that doesn’t explain why Berkeley’s Measure L lost and Oakland’s similar but incrementally better written Measure U sailed through with 71% approval.
It is interesting that the Yes vote on Measure L is so far right on target with the voter survey results by Lake Research Partners (reported to city council May 31, 2022). The survey results showed voters favored a split between a parcel tax for streets and a $300,000,000 bond. Only 57% of the surveyed voters supported a $600,000,000 bond. So instead of listening to the voters and using the survey results, this Mayor and City Council dug in and decided to go for an even bigger bond. And, because of mistakes in the financial calculations and the cost to property owners the period of the bonds was placed as 48 years.
Since it appears that some people were counting on passing Measure L to advance to the next step on their political ambition ladder, we can expect at least one of those “some people” to throw blame around for losing instead of looking inward at their responsibility for creating this debacle.
None of us that signed on to oppose Measure L disagreed that there are significant infrastructure needs. What we saw is a Mayor, Council and City Manager that could not be trusted with a big slush fund and no defined projects.
The Housing Element was on the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council Agenda at the November 12th meeting. There is continued frustration with the RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) allocation to Berkeley with inflating the number of new housing units to 19,098 from 8934 for the planning purposes to supposedly reach the assigned 2446 very low income and 1408 low income and 1416 moderate income units. That would mean saddling Berkeley with an excess of 10,164 units of market rate housing, tearing down of older structures and adding more 8-story residential buildings towering over little one-story houses as will happen again with 1598 University. Since Measure M passed maybe one day Berkeley will see revenue from vacant market rate units.
It is the same story heard over and over at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meetings, the late discovery that Berkeley zoning codes and State density bonuses mean big tall projects backing up to your lot line and little house. 1598 University is an SB 330 project so it will likely slide through with little change. The neighbors can thank State Senator Nancy Skinner for the streamlined approval process that allows only a maximum of five city meetings and a near guarantee that new groups of neighbors will have a mixed-use tower next door. The appeal of 2018 Blake, a middle of the block 6-story residential project, comes back again to Council Tuesday evening.
The Planning Department staff stated publicly, the 19,098 number was to drive changing the zoning codes. The push to turn Berkeley into a dense Manhattan style city continues.
The Planning Department seems to have absorbed that they actually need to meet the Housing Element (the plan for where to put these new units) submission deadlines, so we can all expect more, lengthy reports to read with insufficient time to digest the content. The Housing Element and building housing for UCB students are the drivers for changing zoning codes and suggesting there should be a Berkeley density bonus for bigger, taller buildings in the southside area next to campus that don’t require inclusionary affordable housing. As written previously, the Planning Department contends it is too difficult to determine student financial status and since the southside is planned for student housing, developers should be awarded density bonuses for bigger taller buildings by paying a fee. That proposal will come back to the Planning Commission at a future meeting.
In December, after the year-end financial reports are completed, the Council makes adjustments to the budget. The process is called AAO (Annual Appropriations Ordinance) #1. This is when previously denied budget requests are reconsidered along with new requests. Interestingly, only the City Manager’s requests were listed with the reports at the Thursday morning Council Budget and Finance Committee meeting and none of the councilmember requests were listed. When Mayor Arreguin asked about this omission, it was promised to be added at the next round.
Some things stood out in the preliminary reports, like why do we have homeless on the street and a year-end balance of $19,513,097 under Measure P – the fund the voters approved for homeless services in 2018? Another, with the City website such an abysmal mess with historical data stashed in impossible to find Records Online, how is the IT (Information Technology) budget under spent by 30%?
The Berkeley Police Department (BPD) as always is over budget and it was again. The reason given was a shortage of officers and mandatory overtime. There was no answer to my question during public comment, with all these shortages, was BPD still sending an officer to Apple? It was after the meeting I received this link that states that Berkeley spent $243,023 per police position in 2022. https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/as-berkeley-struggles-with-police-costs-14-cops-made-over-300-000/article_0e615650-5b8b-11ed-83fd-f79e2d55fb0a.html
Thursday evening was the North Berkeley BART Station developer candidate presentations. It was initially listed as four candidates, but two were eliminated before the meeting leaving BRIDGE and RCD each with companion for-profit developers. They both did their self-promotion presentations.
The public was asked to submit questions in advance or at the meeting on cards or on zoom.
Here are the questions from the North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance that did not get asked by the BART meeting moderator. Maybe they will come up at the BART meeting on Objective Standards this coming Wednesday, November 16 at 7 pm.
· What is the largest size project that your lead partner has been directly responsible for developing and building?
· What is your view of what the area around the North Berkeley BART station should be like, looking out 10-20 years?
· If you are chosen to sign an exclusive negotiating agreement with BART, you will then have a vested right to the zoning (per AB 2923) - what development rights do you believe that gives you?
· Have you ever been involved in a project that provides you a vested right to the site's zoning upon signing a negotiating agreement with the agency that owns the land?
· How do you see the affordable housing component of this project fitting into the actual site plan at North Berkeley?
· What experience do you have and what approach will you take toward having a significant part of the development at North Berkeley provide for substantial "missing middle" housing?
· The area around North Berkeley BART (for over a half mile radius) is primarily made up of 50'x150' lots with single homes, duplexes and small apartments - how will your project integrate into this community fabric?
· What commitments will you make to what level of community engagement in the design process, given that BART and AB 2923 greatly limit the requirement for any such engagement?
· Will you rule out right now building any structure taller than seven stories at North Berkeley BART?
· Why do you think that the financial marketplace for development (and the present supply chain/inflation circumstances) will be favorable for any type of project at North Berkeley BART within 10 years?
· If there were no AB 2923 requirements, what type of project would you think most appropriate to build at North Berkeley BART?
My questions asking if they would commit to bird safe glass and dark skies also didn’t get asked. My question about constructing a zero-net energy building was merged into a question on sustainability that was answered by both teams in a way that left me wondering if they had any clear understanding of sustainable construction.
Davis and Sacramento are listed as two of the top cities in the nation with the largest number of net-zero housing projects, but none of that has spilled over to Berkeley. There are two net-zero projects I’ve been watching 303 Battery in Seattle by Sustainable Living Innovations https://sli.co/ (our goal is mid-size – 7 stories) and Soleil Lofts in Herriman, Utah.
As an FYI here is A Technical Guide to Zoning for AB 2923 Conformance which defines the broad parameters for the BART housing projects.
https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/02_AB2923_TechGuide_Draft_Appendix2.pdf
Not enough happened at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission or the Peace and Justice Commission to take up space. Double and triple scheduling of meetings meant I missed the Personnel Board meeting, the Housing Advisory Commission, and the Police Accountability Board. I did attend the E-Bike webinar with an over-the-top E-Bike enthusiast as the presenter, but had to sign off to attend the BART meeting before they covered pricing and discounts. We really need more people attending and reporting on city meetings so nothing gets passed over.
It was October 11, 2022 that the Berkeley City Council adopted item 19. “Land Acknowledgement Recognizing Berkeley as the Ancestral, Unceded Home of the Ohlone people.” with councilmember Hahn as the author and co-sponsors Arreguin, Taplin, Robinson. It is another tiny step forward for indigenous people, but looming over this well intended motion is the Supreme Court, which is poised to take a hacksaw to the Indian Child Welfare Act and federal Indian law.
For those of us who listen to Democracy Now, Thursday morning we heard about the Supreme Court and Haaland v. Brackeen, “a case challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act and ultimately threatening the legal foundations of federal Indian law. ICWA was created in 1978 to address the systemic crisis of family separation in Native communities waged by the U.S. and requires the government to ensure foster children are adopted by members of their Indigenous tribes, as well as blood relatives, before being adopted by non-Indigenous parents. Now right-wing groups are supporting white foster parents to challenge the law as discriminatory. ‘Not only are our children on the line, but the legal foundation, the legal structure that defends the rights of Indigenous nations in the United States is literally at stake,’ says journalist Rebecca Nagle, who has been reporting on the case for years and says it’s likely the Supreme Court will strike ICWA down.” https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/haaland_v_brackeen_indian_child_welfare
How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America by Sara Sinclair isn’t an easy read. The book is a narrative from twelve Indigenous People in the United States and Canada and their individual struggles for identity and place in the frame of discrimination, bullying, poverty, drugs, alcohol, coerced residential and boarding schools, foster care, forced assimilation, loss of family, and on top of everything failure of the United States to fulfill Indian treaty agreements.
How We Go Home from the oral history project, Voice of Witness provides a look into the past and present we need to know.
Justice Gorsuch comes from the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals encompassing six states: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming and the territory of 76 federally recognized Indian Tribes. Justice Gorsuch has decided a number of cases in favor of tribal sovereignty. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/vol--43/vol--43--no--1/justice-gorsuch-and-federal-indian-law/
As noted in the podcast Strict Scrutiny https://crooked.com/podcast/the-uncertain-future-of-the-indian-child-welfare-act/, the Indian Tribes worked with Justice Gorsuch during his tenure in the Tenth Circuit.
The question remains, will Justice Gorsuch pull one more to support LCWA? From the descriptions of the questioning and comments of the Supreme Court hearing, Justice Thomas will definitely decide with the plaintiff against LCWA, Justice Kavanagh is a probable against LCWA and Chief Justice Roberts is always on the side of dismantling anything that whiffs of protections for minority groups. That leaves Justice Amy Coney Barrett who was not mentioned in any reviews as the swing vote.
Before going on to the meetings of the week, first why did Measure L lose. Measure L certainly didn’t lose through lack of funding. Donations to pass Measure L are now over $400,000 if my addition is correct while No on Measure L is a little over $30,000. Most donations to No on L were in the $100 to $250 range. The few listed as $1200 pale in the shadow of Yes on Measure L donations with $10,000 after $10,000 after $10,000.
You can see the list for yourself just go to the City of Berkeley Portal https://public.netfile.com/pub2/?aid=BRK and type: Measure L in “Search By Name” and click on “search” (no other blocks need to be filled).
Berkeley City Council, Council committees, boards and commissions generally operate in the bliss of a city that pays more attention to national politics than the actions of city elected and council appointees. This time that bliss of inattentive residents was not enough to slide through the $650,000,000 Measure L bonds even with a normally kneejerk generous community and $400,000 of funds to fill our mail boxes with glossy card stock Yes on L flyers.
After listening to a lengthy discussion with a mix of people describing why they voted for or against Measure L, it came down to the same objections as those who signed on to oppose Measure L. Measure L was poorly written. It was too ill-defined, too big, too expensive. There were no named projects. The promise of oversight didn’t hold water with the City’s poor track record of providing the necessary information to the commissions to perform their oversight responsibilities of existing ballot measures.
One person took a slightly different view citing inflation and the possible loss of Proposition 13 homeowner protections, but that doesn’t explain why Berkeley’s Measure L lost and Oakland’s similar but incrementally better written Measure U sailed through with 71% approval.
It is interesting that the Yes vote on Measure L is so far right on target with the voter survey results by Lake Research Partners (reported to city council May 31, 2022). The survey results showed voters favored a split between a parcel tax for streets and a $300,000,000 bond. Only 57% of the surveyed voters supported a $600,000,000 bond. So instead of listening to the voters and using the survey results, this Mayor and City Council dug in and decided to go for an even bigger bond. And, because of mistakes in the financial calculations and the cost to property owners the period of the bonds was placed as 48 years.
Since it appears that some people were counting on passing Measure L to advance to the next step on their political ambition ladder, we can expect at least one of those “some people” to throw blame around for losing instead of looking inward at their responsibility for creating this debacle.
None of us that signed on to oppose Measure L disagreed that there are significant infrastructure needs. What we saw is a Mayor, Council and City Manager that could not be trusted with a big slush fund and no defined projects.
The Housing Element was on the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council Agenda at the November 12th meeting. There is continued frustration with the RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) allocation to Berkeley with inflating the number of new housing units to 19,098 from 8934 for the planning purposes to supposedly reach the assigned 2446 very low income and 1408 low income and 1416 moderate income units. That would mean saddling Berkeley with an excess of 10,164 units of market rate housing, tearing down of older structures and adding more 8-story residential buildings towering over little one-story houses as will happen again with 1598 University. Since Measure M passed maybe one day Berkeley will see revenue from vacant market rate units.
It is the same story heard over and over at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meetings, the late discovery that Berkeley zoning codes and State density bonuses mean big tall projects backing up to your lot line and little house. 1598 University is an SB 330 project so it will likely slide through with little change. The neighbors can thank State Senator Nancy Skinner for the streamlined approval process that allows only a maximum of five city meetings and a near guarantee that new groups of neighbors will have a mixed-use tower next door. The appeal of 2018 Blake, a middle of the block 6-story residential project, comes back again to Council Tuesday evening.
The Planning Department staff stated publicly, the 19,098 number was to drive changing the zoning codes. The push to turn Berkeley into a dense Manhattan style city continues.
The Planning Department seems to have absorbed that they actually need to meet the Housing Element (the plan for where to put these new units) submission deadlines, so we can all expect more, lengthy reports to read with insufficient time to digest the content. The Housing Element and building housing for UCB students are the drivers for changing zoning codes and suggesting there should be a Berkeley density bonus for bigger, taller buildings in the southside area next to campus that don’t require inclusionary affordable housing. As written previously, the Planning Department contends it is too difficult to determine student financial status and since the southside is planned for student housing, developers should be awarded density bonuses for bigger taller buildings by paying a fee. That proposal will come back to the Planning Commission at a future meeting.
In December, after the year-end financial reports are completed, the Council makes adjustments to the budget. The process is called AAO (Annual Appropriations Ordinance) #1. This is when previously denied budget requests are reconsidered along with new requests. Interestingly, only the City Manager’s requests were listed with the reports at the Thursday morning Council Budget and Finance Committee meeting and none of the councilmember requests were listed. When Mayor Arreguin asked about this omission, it was promised to be added at the next round.
Some things stood out in the preliminary reports, like why do we have homeless on the street and a year-end balance of $19,513,097 under Measure P – the fund the voters approved for homeless services in 2018? Another, with the City website such an abysmal mess with historical data stashed in impossible to find Records Online, how is the IT (Information Technology) budget under spent by 30%?
The Berkeley Police Department (BPD) as always is over budget and it was again. The reason given was a shortage of officers and mandatory overtime. There was no answer to my question during public comment, with all these shortages, was BPD still sending an officer to Apple? It was after the meeting I received this link that states that Berkeley spent $243,023 per police position in 2022. https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/as-berkeley-struggles-with-police-costs-14-cops-made-over-300-000/article_0e615650-5b8b-11ed-83fd-f79e2d55fb0a.html
Thursday evening was the North Berkeley BART Station developer candidate presentations. It was initially listed as four candidates, but two were eliminated before the meeting leaving BRIDGE and RCD each with companion for-profit developers. They both did their self-promotion presentations.
The public was asked to submit questions in advance or at the meeting on cards or on zoom.
Here are the questions from the North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance that did not get asked by the BART meeting moderator. Maybe they will come up at the BART meeting on Objective Standards this coming Wednesday, November 16 at 7 pm.
· What is the largest size project that your lead partner has been directly responsible for developing and building?
· What is your view of what the area around the North Berkeley BART station should be like, looking out 10-20 years?
· If you are chosen to sign an exclusive negotiating agreement with BART, you will then have a vested right to the zoning (per AB 2923) - what development rights do you believe that gives you?
· Have you ever been involved in a project that provides you a vested right to the site's zoning upon signing a negotiating agreement with the agency that owns the land?
· How do you see the affordable housing component of this project fitting into the actual site plan at North Berkeley?
· What experience do you have and what approach will you take toward having a significant part of the development at North Berkeley provide for substantial "missing middle" housing?
· The area around North Berkeley BART (for over a half mile radius) is primarily made up of 50'x150' lots with single homes, duplexes and small apartments - how will your project integrate into this community fabric?
· What commitments will you make to what level of community engagement in the design process, given that BART and AB 2923 greatly limit the requirement for any such engagement?
· Will you rule out right now building any structure taller than seven stories at North Berkeley BART?
· Why do you think that the financial marketplace for development (and the present supply chain/inflation circumstances) will be favorable for any type of project at North Berkeley BART within 10 years?
· If there were no AB 2923 requirements, what type of project would you think most appropriate to build at North Berkeley BART?
My questions asking if they would commit to bird safe glass and dark skies also didn’t get asked. My question about constructing a zero-net energy building was merged into a question on sustainability that was answered by both teams in a way that left me wondering if they had any clear understanding of sustainable construction.
Davis and Sacramento are listed as two of the top cities in the nation with the largest number of net-zero housing projects, but none of that has spilled over to Berkeley. There are two net-zero projects I’ve been watching 303 Battery in Seattle by Sustainable Living Innovations https://sli.co/ (our goal is mid-size – 7 stories) and Soleil Lofts in Herriman, Utah.
As an FYI here is A Technical Guide to Zoning for AB 2923 Conformance which defines the broad parameters for the BART housing projects.
https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/02_AB2923_TechGuide_Draft_Appendix2.pdf
Not enough happened at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission or the Peace and Justice Commission to take up space. Double and triple scheduling of meetings meant I missed the Personnel Board meeting, the Housing Advisory Commission, and the Police Accountability Board. I did attend the E-Bike webinar with an over-the-top E-Bike enthusiast as the presenter, but had to sign off to attend the BART meeting before they covered pricing and discounts. We really need more people attending and reporting on city meetings so nothing gets passed over.
It was October 11, 2022 that the Berkeley City Council adopted item 19. “Land Acknowledgement Recognizing Berkeley as the Ancestral, Unceded Home of the Ohlone people.” with councilmember Hahn as the author and co-sponsors Arreguin, Taplin, Robinson. It is another tiny step forward for indigenous people, but looming over this well intended motion is the Supreme Court, which is poised to take a hacksaw to the Indian Child Welfare Act and federal Indian law.
For those of us who listen to Democracy Now, Thursday morning we heard about the Supreme Court and Haaland v. Brackeen, “a case challenging the Indian Child Welfare Act and ultimately threatening the legal foundations of federal Indian law. ICWA was created in 1978 to address the systemic crisis of family separation in Native communities waged by the U.S. and requires the government to ensure foster children are adopted by members of their Indigenous tribes, as well as blood relatives, before being adopted by non-Indigenous parents. Now right-wing groups are supporting white foster parents to challenge the law as discriminatory. ‘Not only are our children on the line, but the legal foundation, the legal structure that defends the rights of Indigenous nations in the United States is literally at stake,’ says journalist Rebecca Nagle, who has been reporting on the case for years and says it’s likely the Supreme Court will strike ICWA down.” https://www.democracynow.org/2022/11/10/haaland_v_brackeen_indian_child_welfare
How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America by Sara Sinclair isn’t an easy read. The book is a narrative from twelve Indigenous People in the United States and Canada and their individual struggles for identity and place in the frame of discrimination, bullying, poverty, drugs, alcohol, coerced residential and boarding schools, foster care, forced assimilation, loss of family, and on top of everything failure of the United States to fulfill Indian treaty agreements.
How We Go Home from the oral history project, Voice of Witness provides a look into the past and present we need to know.
Justice Gorsuch comes from the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals encompassing six states: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming and the territory of 76 federally recognized Indian Tribes. Justice Gorsuch has decided a number of cases in favor of tribal sovereignty. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/vol--43/vol--43--no--1/justice-gorsuch-and-federal-indian-law/
As noted in the podcast Strict Scrutiny https://crooked.com/podcast/the-uncertain-future-of-the-indian-child-welfare-act/, the Indian Tribes worked with Justice Gorsuch during his tenure in the Tenth Circuit.
The question remains, will Justice Gorsuch pull one more to support LCWA? From the descriptions of the questioning and comments of the Supreme Court hearing, Justice Thomas will definitely decide with the plaintiff against LCWA, Justice Kavanagh is a probable against LCWA and Chief Justice Roberts is always on the side of dismantling anything that whiffs of protections for minority groups. That leaves Justice Amy Coney Barrett who was not mentioned in any reviews as the swing vote.
November 6, 2022
I play Wordle in the New York Times every day. It is a word game with six chances to guess the five letter word of the day. By my second try I had four of the five letters R-E-A-D. The answer was DREAM which I got on my fourth try. My third try was DREAD which tells you everything you need to know about how I feel about the election. I am worried.
The big news of the week is the filibuster by Councilmembers Wengraf and Droste with help from Councilmembers Taplin and Kesarwani and the maneuver by LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager and Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager to block passing the Fair Work Week Ordinance.
The City Council discussion of the Fair Work Week Ordinance started at 8:43 pm Thursday evening (council was on Thursday instead of the usual Tuesday) with Labor Commission commissioner Andy Katz describing the labor protections in the ordinance and that the protections are for low wage workers. After Katz, the floor was turned over to Vice Mayor Kate Harrison who added detail and the process of developing the Fair Work Week Ordinance which started on May 15, 2018.
The four key features of the Fair Work Week Ordinance to provide more stability to low wage workers are: 1) At least 14 days advance notice of work schedules in writing, 2) Predictability Pay (Cancellation pay) if a shift is changed, reduced, cancelled with 24 hour notice or greater the predictability pay would be one hour of pay. If the reduced hours or cancellation is less than 24 hours notice the predictability pay would be 4 hours of pay or the scheduled hours of work whichever is less, 3) Additional hours shall be offered to existing qualified workers before hiring new employees or using staffing agencies, and 4) Right to rest, the right to decline work hours that occur less than 11 hours after the end of the previous shift.
Mayor Arreguin was quite wound up when he took the floor emphasizing he was voting for the Fair Work Week and wanted to see it passed and stated, “I believe this is really essential to show the respect and to provide more rights to our essential workers in Berkeley” and then went through grammatical and clarifying corrections one of which exempted Life Long Medical Care.
It was then turned over to Councilmember Wengraf who wanted “an analysis of the fiscal impacts on the City of Berkeley of implementing this ordinance and I don’t see a report.” And this is where the filibuster started with this batting back and forth with Wengraf and Droste about not knowing the cost to the City of Berkeley and they couldn’t possibly vote for it without knowing the cost and Dee Williams-Ridley saying she didn’t know that number and LaTanya Bellow stating she needed more time for that data. (Williams-Ridley and Bellow had already been given an extension on October 11, 2022 to collect this data.) This went on without public comment even starting until 10:36 pm when Hahn made a motion to extend the meeting until midnight and then backed off midnight and made the motion for 11:45 pm. The vote to extend was unanimous.
Hahn was the last to speak before public comment and pointed out the contrast to when raises were given the to the City’s highest paid employees, the impact on the budget was never questioned and there was never the kind of “handwringing” that was going on over the cost of benefits to the lowest paid City of Berkeley workers.
Public speakers emphasized the bias, the number of years this had been in process and workers needing protection. Swati Rayasam (spelling) asked that the exemption be removed for Life Long Medical and spoke movingly to the undue burden of healthcare workers and the oppression of the lowest paid workers.
The most recent salary post I could find for LaTanya Bellow is $310,150 and Dee Williams-Ridley $386,160. Williams-Ridley was awarded a 28% raise of $84,732 in November 2021. Keep that in mind when considering the Thursday evening actions impact to City of Berkeley employees and workers in Berkeley earning less than twice the minimum wage.
Using the current Berkeley minimum wage of $16.99, the Fair Work Week Ordinance would benefit workers earning under $33.98 per hour or $70,684.40 per year. That is less money than the generous $84,732 raise to Williams-Ridley which placed her salary greater than the City Manager of San Jose a city of nearly 180 square miles and over 1 million people. (Berkeley is 10.5 square miles with a population of 124,000). In the salary survey completed for that $84,732 raise, it actually demonstrated that the city manager’s existing salary of $301,428 was in line or possibly just a little bit high when compared to bay area cities of similar population and size.
Debate continued with the main motion to pass the Fair Work Week Ordinance with the final amendments and Life Long Medical back in. At about 11:43 Arreguin asked the clerk if the extension was to 11:45 pm or midnight. The clerk stated 11:45. Arreguin called for a vote to extend the meeting. Taplin, Droste, Wengraf and Kesarwani all voted No. The vote to extend failed. Six yes votes were needed. Arreguin called for a vote on the Fair Work Work ordinance, but the clock had ticked past 11:45 pm and the meeting was declared over by the clerk, the parliamentarian.
The Fair Work Week ordinance died. Kesarwani stated earlier in the evening that she would vote for the Fair Work Week Ordinance, but by joining with Droste, Wengraf, and Taplin to vote against extending the meeting for a vote on the ordinance, she killed the Fair Work Week Ordinance. Harrison was in shock, saying, “I’ve been gobsmacked.”
Sitting on the sidelines watching, I called it a filibuster in my public comment at 11:15 pm. I also stated that as a former shift employee and a manager responsible for scheduling this was not an impossible task. If the vote had been called in time before 11:45 pm, I counted five (Arreguin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson) to pass it.
Nothing earth shattering happened at the Monday Agenda committee. City Council will return to hybrid meetings December 6. The Boards and Commissions will return to in person. The City does not have enough equipment to conduct the board and commission meetings as hybrid, so those will return to in person only, when the COVID emergency ends on February 28th.
I received a number of emails this week asking why items in the draft agenda from the City Manager (and city department directors, city manager deputies, etc.) are listed with “See Report” and then the page in the packet for the report states, “No Material Available for this Item.” My answer was it is always this way. City Administration reports are not available until the Council agenda is finalized and published ten days before the meeting. Access to financial reports for the Council Budget Committee is even worse. Early access to financial reports seems to be the day before and the usual practice is too often a posting on the morning of the meeting.
All this is annoying, but certainly not as critical or as disastrous as the new city website which Wyndy J Hella KnoxCarrRuud described this way, “I absolutely agree about the new City of Berkeley website. The thing is absolutely opaque, "simplified" to the point of idiocy, with archival and other search options completely absent, unlinked to documentation and/or unusable. Dead ends everywhere, putting walls of cheery-looking nothing up in front of the public and our active participation in civic life. SO disappointing! Techno-privatization at its worst. Ugh. What more can I say?” KnoxCarrRudd has a Master of Library, Archives and Information Studies and certainly knows more than a thing or two about the importance of historical archives.
The November 2, 2022 Planning Commission held discussion on zoning changes for the Southside Area and a Local density Bonus to compete with the State Density bonus. No vote was held. This is all to create student housing and will come back for a hearing. There is a lot to absorb. If you have any thoughts either for or against increasing building height, lot coverage, reducing setbacks and removing building separations, the time to get involved is now. You can read the proposals and see the maps with this link. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/2022-11-02_PC%20Agenda%20Packet.pdf (starts on page 9)
The density bonus suggestion is that since determining true student income status is so difficult to determine, shouldn’t there be an alternative to onsite affordable housing units so projects can qualify for a density bonus without being required to provide affordable housing units within the project. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/2022-11-02_PC%20Agenda%20Packet.pdf (starts on page 669)
It appears that the decision has been made, the Southside, the blocks south of UC Berkeley are to be developed for student housing with six to twelve story residential buildings. And, as UC continues to increase student admissions will there be zoning “creep?”
The Planning Commission vote on the Bird Safe Ordinance is now postponed to February or March 2023. The two ad hoc subcommittee members Christina Oates and Alfred Twu, along with Glenn Philips from Golden Gate Audubon, Erin Diehm and myself met with City staff Justin Horner on Friday. Juli Dickey a birder joined and listened to the discussion on the Bird Safe ordinance. I don’t know how this will turn out. Oates, Twu and Horner agreed that when the Bird Safe Ordinance comes back to the Planning Commission it should be in the final form ready for a vote.
It doesn’t look like there will be another ad hoc committee meeting and this was our last chance for real discussion. Diehm and I gave our best pleas to keep Dark Skies as part of the ordinance. In talking about requirements or phasing in for small remodels or limited installation of replacement windows, Glenn Philips put the order of preference to bird safe glass the optimal choice with the alternative of bug screens as second and film on the outside of windows third. Any glass that is greater than 2” high and 4” wide is a hazard for birds, but of course the greater the amount of glass on a building and the size of the panes multiplies the danger.
In the morning before the meeting, I was out walking with a friend talking about the bird safe ordinance, when I saw a house across the street from us in a major remodel. It had been raised to two stories and every single window was new. It probably had 40 to 50 new windows. I took my friend across the street as I talked about the bird safe features that could have been applied. The owner came out saying how they had followed all the building codes. I responded of course you did. It is not your fault. It is the city that failed to act.
The Water Emergency Transportation Authority plans to add ferry service in Berkeley in 2027. The Board is optimistic ridership will return even though since the onset of the pandemic commuters have really never shown up as anything more than a small blip on the charts. Now that summer is over, total ridership is showing a downward slope.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a brief review of Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice by David Enrich published this year in September. Enrich covered the Jones Day Law Firm and the revolving door with the Trump administration and stacking the courts. That lead me to his 2020 book Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction.
I was really hoping for an inside scoop on the relationship between Donald Trump and Justin Kennedy, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son. The author did not furnish much in that answer only that the Trump Administration courted Justice Kennedy the Supreme Court swing vote to retire making an opening for Brett Kavanaugh the expected reliable pro-business, pro-Trump, culturally conservative vote. What the book does cover in great detail is the sordid story of how the insatiable hunger for ever bigger profits lead to money laundering for Russian oligarchs, the rise of Rosemary Vrablic in the private banking division who arranged hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Trump even after Trump sued Deutsche Bank to squeeze out of the loan repayment over the Chicago Trump Tower and the sad account of Val Broeksmit the son of Willian Broeksmit, Deutsche Bank executive who committed suicide in 2014.
In Val’s journey to uncover why his father committed suicide, Val accessed his father’s email account and shared his late father’s internal bank documents with federal authorities and the media.
Val was found dead at age 46 in Los Angeles April 25, 2022 (19 months after the publication of Dark Towers). No cause of death is listed for Val and conspiracies abound. Reported in the book, Val had a long history of drug abuse and addiction which frequently lead to the media and federal authorities dismissing the treasure trove of Deutsche Bank documents in his possession through his father’s emails. Even Adam Schiff is described as being put off by Val’s appearance and ushering him out of his office without grasping the boatload of information Val was trying to offer.
I play Wordle in the New York Times every day. It is a word game with six chances to guess the five letter word of the day. By my second try I had four of the five letters R-E-A-D. The answer was DREAM which I got on my fourth try. My third try was DREAD which tells you everything you need to know about how I feel about the election. I am worried.
The big news of the week is the filibuster by Councilmembers Wengraf and Droste with help from Councilmembers Taplin and Kesarwani and the maneuver by LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager and Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager to block passing the Fair Work Week Ordinance.
The City Council discussion of the Fair Work Week Ordinance started at 8:43 pm Thursday evening (council was on Thursday instead of the usual Tuesday) with Labor Commission commissioner Andy Katz describing the labor protections in the ordinance and that the protections are for low wage workers. After Katz, the floor was turned over to Vice Mayor Kate Harrison who added detail and the process of developing the Fair Work Week Ordinance which started on May 15, 2018.
The four key features of the Fair Work Week Ordinance to provide more stability to low wage workers are: 1) At least 14 days advance notice of work schedules in writing, 2) Predictability Pay (Cancellation pay) if a shift is changed, reduced, cancelled with 24 hour notice or greater the predictability pay would be one hour of pay. If the reduced hours or cancellation is less than 24 hours notice the predictability pay would be 4 hours of pay or the scheduled hours of work whichever is less, 3) Additional hours shall be offered to existing qualified workers before hiring new employees or using staffing agencies, and 4) Right to rest, the right to decline work hours that occur less than 11 hours after the end of the previous shift.
Mayor Arreguin was quite wound up when he took the floor emphasizing he was voting for the Fair Work Week and wanted to see it passed and stated, “I believe this is really essential to show the respect and to provide more rights to our essential workers in Berkeley” and then went through grammatical and clarifying corrections one of which exempted Life Long Medical Care.
It was then turned over to Councilmember Wengraf who wanted “an analysis of the fiscal impacts on the City of Berkeley of implementing this ordinance and I don’t see a report.” And this is where the filibuster started with this batting back and forth with Wengraf and Droste about not knowing the cost to the City of Berkeley and they couldn’t possibly vote for it without knowing the cost and Dee Williams-Ridley saying she didn’t know that number and LaTanya Bellow stating she needed more time for that data. (Williams-Ridley and Bellow had already been given an extension on October 11, 2022 to collect this data.) This went on without public comment even starting until 10:36 pm when Hahn made a motion to extend the meeting until midnight and then backed off midnight and made the motion for 11:45 pm. The vote to extend was unanimous.
Hahn was the last to speak before public comment and pointed out the contrast to when raises were given the to the City’s highest paid employees, the impact on the budget was never questioned and there was never the kind of “handwringing” that was going on over the cost of benefits to the lowest paid City of Berkeley workers.
Public speakers emphasized the bias, the number of years this had been in process and workers needing protection. Swati Rayasam (spelling) asked that the exemption be removed for Life Long Medical and spoke movingly to the undue burden of healthcare workers and the oppression of the lowest paid workers.
The most recent salary post I could find for LaTanya Bellow is $310,150 and Dee Williams-Ridley $386,160. Williams-Ridley was awarded a 28% raise of $84,732 in November 2021. Keep that in mind when considering the Thursday evening actions impact to City of Berkeley employees and workers in Berkeley earning less than twice the minimum wage.
Using the current Berkeley minimum wage of $16.99, the Fair Work Week Ordinance would benefit workers earning under $33.98 per hour or $70,684.40 per year. That is less money than the generous $84,732 raise to Williams-Ridley which placed her salary greater than the City Manager of San Jose a city of nearly 180 square miles and over 1 million people. (Berkeley is 10.5 square miles with a population of 124,000). In the salary survey completed for that $84,732 raise, it actually demonstrated that the city manager’s existing salary of $301,428 was in line or possibly just a little bit high when compared to bay area cities of similar population and size.
Debate continued with the main motion to pass the Fair Work Week Ordinance with the final amendments and Life Long Medical back in. At about 11:43 Arreguin asked the clerk if the extension was to 11:45 pm or midnight. The clerk stated 11:45. Arreguin called for a vote to extend the meeting. Taplin, Droste, Wengraf and Kesarwani all voted No. The vote to extend failed. Six yes votes were needed. Arreguin called for a vote on the Fair Work Work ordinance, but the clock had ticked past 11:45 pm and the meeting was declared over by the clerk, the parliamentarian.
The Fair Work Week ordinance died. Kesarwani stated earlier in the evening that she would vote for the Fair Work Week Ordinance, but by joining with Droste, Wengraf, and Taplin to vote against extending the meeting for a vote on the ordinance, she killed the Fair Work Week Ordinance. Harrison was in shock, saying, “I’ve been gobsmacked.”
Sitting on the sidelines watching, I called it a filibuster in my public comment at 11:15 pm. I also stated that as a former shift employee and a manager responsible for scheduling this was not an impossible task. If the vote had been called in time before 11:45 pm, I counted five (Arreguin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson) to pass it.
Nothing earth shattering happened at the Monday Agenda committee. City Council will return to hybrid meetings December 6. The Boards and Commissions will return to in person. The City does not have enough equipment to conduct the board and commission meetings as hybrid, so those will return to in person only, when the COVID emergency ends on February 28th.
I received a number of emails this week asking why items in the draft agenda from the City Manager (and city department directors, city manager deputies, etc.) are listed with “See Report” and then the page in the packet for the report states, “No Material Available for this Item.” My answer was it is always this way. City Administration reports are not available until the Council agenda is finalized and published ten days before the meeting. Access to financial reports for the Council Budget Committee is even worse. Early access to financial reports seems to be the day before and the usual practice is too often a posting on the morning of the meeting.
All this is annoying, but certainly not as critical or as disastrous as the new city website which Wyndy J Hella KnoxCarrRuud described this way, “I absolutely agree about the new City of Berkeley website. The thing is absolutely opaque, "simplified" to the point of idiocy, with archival and other search options completely absent, unlinked to documentation and/or unusable. Dead ends everywhere, putting walls of cheery-looking nothing up in front of the public and our active participation in civic life. SO disappointing! Techno-privatization at its worst. Ugh. What more can I say?” KnoxCarrRudd has a Master of Library, Archives and Information Studies and certainly knows more than a thing or two about the importance of historical archives.
The November 2, 2022 Planning Commission held discussion on zoning changes for the Southside Area and a Local density Bonus to compete with the State Density bonus. No vote was held. This is all to create student housing and will come back for a hearing. There is a lot to absorb. If you have any thoughts either for or against increasing building height, lot coverage, reducing setbacks and removing building separations, the time to get involved is now. You can read the proposals and see the maps with this link. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/2022-11-02_PC%20Agenda%20Packet.pdf (starts on page 9)
The density bonus suggestion is that since determining true student income status is so difficult to determine, shouldn’t there be an alternative to onsite affordable housing units so projects can qualify for a density bonus without being required to provide affordable housing units within the project. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/2022-11-02_PC%20Agenda%20Packet.pdf (starts on page 669)
It appears that the decision has been made, the Southside, the blocks south of UC Berkeley are to be developed for student housing with six to twelve story residential buildings. And, as UC continues to increase student admissions will there be zoning “creep?”
The Planning Commission vote on the Bird Safe Ordinance is now postponed to February or March 2023. The two ad hoc subcommittee members Christina Oates and Alfred Twu, along with Glenn Philips from Golden Gate Audubon, Erin Diehm and myself met with City staff Justin Horner on Friday. Juli Dickey a birder joined and listened to the discussion on the Bird Safe ordinance. I don’t know how this will turn out. Oates, Twu and Horner agreed that when the Bird Safe Ordinance comes back to the Planning Commission it should be in the final form ready for a vote.
It doesn’t look like there will be another ad hoc committee meeting and this was our last chance for real discussion. Diehm and I gave our best pleas to keep Dark Skies as part of the ordinance. In talking about requirements or phasing in for small remodels or limited installation of replacement windows, Glenn Philips put the order of preference to bird safe glass the optimal choice with the alternative of bug screens as second and film on the outside of windows third. Any glass that is greater than 2” high and 4” wide is a hazard for birds, but of course the greater the amount of glass on a building and the size of the panes multiplies the danger.
In the morning before the meeting, I was out walking with a friend talking about the bird safe ordinance, when I saw a house across the street from us in a major remodel. It had been raised to two stories and every single window was new. It probably had 40 to 50 new windows. I took my friend across the street as I talked about the bird safe features that could have been applied. The owner came out saying how they had followed all the building codes. I responded of course you did. It is not your fault. It is the city that failed to act.
The Water Emergency Transportation Authority plans to add ferry service in Berkeley in 2027. The Board is optimistic ridership will return even though since the onset of the pandemic commuters have really never shown up as anything more than a small blip on the charts. Now that summer is over, total ridership is showing a downward slope.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a brief review of Servants of the Damned: Giant Law Firms, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of Justice by David Enrich published this year in September. Enrich covered the Jones Day Law Firm and the revolving door with the Trump administration and stacking the courts. That lead me to his 2020 book Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction.
I was really hoping for an inside scoop on the relationship between Donald Trump and Justin Kennedy, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son. The author did not furnish much in that answer only that the Trump Administration courted Justice Kennedy the Supreme Court swing vote to retire making an opening for Brett Kavanaugh the expected reliable pro-business, pro-Trump, culturally conservative vote. What the book does cover in great detail is the sordid story of how the insatiable hunger for ever bigger profits lead to money laundering for Russian oligarchs, the rise of Rosemary Vrablic in the private banking division who arranged hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Trump even after Trump sued Deutsche Bank to squeeze out of the loan repayment over the Chicago Trump Tower and the sad account of Val Broeksmit the son of Willian Broeksmit, Deutsche Bank executive who committed suicide in 2014.
In Val’s journey to uncover why his father committed suicide, Val accessed his father’s email account and shared his late father’s internal bank documents with federal authorities and the media.
Val was found dead at age 46 in Los Angeles April 25, 2022 (19 months after the publication of Dark Towers). No cause of death is listed for Val and conspiracies abound. Reported in the book, Val had a long history of drug abuse and addiction which frequently lead to the media and federal authorities dismissing the treasure trove of Deutsche Bank documents in his possession through his father’s emails. Even Adam Schiff is described as being put off by Val’s appearance and ushering him out of his office without grasping the boatload of information Val was trying to offer.
October 30, 2022
This may seem out of order, starting out my Activist’s Diary with a book review, but as you keep reading you will see how it all pulls together with this last week’s meetings.
Our book club choice for October/November was A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul published in 2021.
Even though I have been pleading for many months for dark skies, bird safe glass and native plants at the Design Review Committee and the Zoning Adjustment Board and for the Planning Commission to approve the Bird Safe ordinance with the latest science my appreciation of the importance of these actions is so much deeper after reading Scott Weidensaul’s book A World on the Wing.
In the chapter titled Big Data, we learn how miniature GPS tracking devices so tiny they can be put on the backs of even little songbirds has changed what we know about migration, habitat stopovers, winter and nesting locations and how many miles birds travel without stopping. Because of one of those GPS devices on the back of a juvenile (5-month old) bar-tailed godwit known only by its satellite tag 234684 there is a new record flight. This little bird around 10 ounces flew without stopping from Alaska to north-east Tasmania 8,435 miles in 11 days and one hour.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/bar-tailed-godwit-sets-world-record-with-13560km-continuous-flight-from-alaska-to-southern-australia
Migratory feats that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years feel like nothing less than a miracle.
As mentioned in previous Diaries, nearly 3 billion birds, 30% of the birds in North America have disappeared since 1970. It is not just North America. Just published in September 2022 in the fifth edition of BirdLife’s “State of the World’s Birds,” nearly half of all bird species are in decline worldwide with one in eight at risk of extinction. https://www.birdlife.org/papers-reports/state-of-the-worlds-birds-2022/ This includes common birds like sparrows. An exception are geese like those invading Lake Merritt. This species is expanding. Maybe cities and meat-eating readers ought to consider a goose for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner instead of turkey. It would save farmland.
The scientific report published September 19, 2019 about loss of birds would not have been possible without decades of data of annual bird counts. There are two online programs that add to our knowledge of bird migration, habitat, stopovers and survival, eBird https://ebird.org/about managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology which collects data/information submitted by citizen birders on birds seen and heard worldwide and birdcast https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/local-migration-alerts/ which uses radar to track bird migration live.
In the chapter on climate, Weidensaul calls it climate weirding as some locations in migration are heating up faster and others have unexpected cold. Climate change puts the timing of migration of thousands of miles to arrive, mate, nest and when baby birds hatch out of sync with when insects (caterpillars their primary source of food) emerge.
Climate change does much more than change the timing of the arrival seasons. Sea level rise washes away coastal habitat and drought dries up inland wetlands. Even global wind patterns which migrating birds use to ease their flight are weirding. Take a look at the path of the polar jet stream from the Sunday Chronicle weather map.
Through new study made possible by those tiny GPS devices, ornithologists are able to track the impact of deterioration in wintering habitat carrying over into birds unable to build the fat stores and muscle to survive migration, reduced clutches in nesting habitat and poorer chick survival. Douglas Tallamy in his study of resident birds (birds that do not migrate) found that areas that have replaced native trees and plants with non-native plant species (ornamental plants and trees) results in smaller chicks and poorer chick survival.
Even though the negative impact of urban light was noted in the 1800s, it was those miniature GPS devices that demonstrated how artificial night light lures birds away from higher quality habitat to cities where urban parks are overrun with exotic invasive plants of limited value to birds. Young birds in their first migration are especially vulnerable to light pollution and are drawn to urban areas to rest and refuel only to find useless ornamental plants devoid of insects. A lesson here from A World on the Wing is that restoring habitat in a fairly small urban park may be more important than a larger tract of land in some more distant location.
The authors of the Housing Element Update Draft Environmental Impact Report (HEU DEIR) that closed for comment on October 17, 2022 reasoned that the abundance of ornamental, exotic and invasive non-native plants and non-native trees in Berkeley that are unsuitable habitat would make further development adding 19,098 units with 47,433 new residents insignificant. In other words, since we have already destroyed so much of the landscape, further destruction from developments carries little impact.
The conclusion from the HEU DEIR is the opposite to the thinking and planning that I heard from Dr. Ann Riley in her presentation to the Community for a Cultural Civic Center group. I listed Riley, expert in urban creek restoration, daylighting urban creeks as my “go to meeting” of the week. And, she did not disappoint.
Riley spoke to how daylighting creeks has proven over and over to be a significant economic benefit to business and city centers as people are drawn to open streams, nature and wildlife habitat.
If you have never heard the term daylighting creeks, this is the process for restoring a creek to its natural state, above ground open to day light, hence the term daylighting. That is instead of diverting creeks into underground culverts. When undergrounded creek culverts fail, disintegrate and collapse that can result in sink holes and flooding.
Riley showed picture after picture of the transformation from undergrounded culverted creeks to open streams and parks. Strawberry Creek in Strawberry Creek Park was one of the first projects of taking down a culvert and restoring a creek to daylight.
Most amazing is that there are grants to daylight creeks and the Coastal Conservancy has money available for projects like daylighting Strawberry Creek in Civic Center Park.
Daylighting urban creeks really got its start in 1983 in the California Assembly when Tom Bates authored the urban creeks legislation (Bates was a representative to the California Assembly before becoming Berkeley mayor). The first attempt failed when Governor Deukmejian (R) vetoed it. The bill was brought back in 1984 with the Republican legislator Eric Seastrand as the author and Bates as co-author.
Riley describes it this way in her book, “The Urban Creeks Restoration and Flood Control Act of 1984, acquired political legs because it recognized that restoration projects were a new, multi-objective strategy to address common urban stream erosion and flood hazards with practical but environmentally friendly solutions.”
It was also got legs because the revived bill placed a Republican name prominently in the author list. That got it by the Republican governor. The grants from the Urban Creeks Act continue to be awarded to this day.
The idea of daylighting the creek is not in the plan from consultants Berkeley hired. Gehl was tasked to create a plan for the Civic Center to restore and stabilize the Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and Veterans Buildings and redo the Civic Center Park. Their concept was a promenade across the center of the park either north to south between the Veterans Building and Berkeley High or east to west from city offices at 2180 Milvia to the Maudelle Shirek Building. The Gehl park plan for Berkeley is a smaller version of the San Francisco City Hall park, a park with lots of gravel which seems to be more of an attraction for the homeless and protests than a place to go to relax and refresh.
The Gehl plan from the time I first saw it conjured up a vision of councilmembers and city administrators parading across the park marking their importance on the promenade.
Contrast that to Strawberry Creek Park. The Strawberry Creek Park is just lovely, a well-used treasure that neighbors in large numbers spoke to at the Redistricting meetings last spring.
I was open to the idea of daylighting Strawberry Creek in Civic Center Park before hearing Riley’s presentation. Now that I have a better understanding of the importance of restoring habitat in cities and urban parks and the how daylighting creeks benefits the well-being of all of us including nature and local businesses, daylighting Strawberry Creek in the Civic Center Park has moved up to the top of the list of important actions.
This presentation would never have happened without the work of Erin Diehm, who put this program together. It is because of Diehm and her depth of knowledge of ecosystems and habitat that we are even having this discussion. Diehm’s work gave us pollinator gardens in our parks.
Diehm also sent the link to birdcast last Fall so we could track how many migrating birds were flying over Berkeley. Berkeley is in the Pacific Flyway, the flight path birds take from northern nesting areas to wintering sites in Central and South America.
When I hear about turning parks into entertainment centers, I wonder why we aren’t taking a broader look at our city center. We close down Shattuck for events. Why are we not looking at making better use of the BART Plaza and the Shattuck street scape?
And why are we not looking at corridors connecting habitat across the city? Is cement and lot line to lot line building the only answer for the future which is the picture painted in the Revised Housing Element Update (RHEU)? Even the old 2012 Downtown Area Plan includes environmental sustainability “nature in the city” (pdf page 45) and that was written before the recent research covered in The World on a Wing which tells us parks with native plant habitat are important to bird survival.
The Revised Housing Element Update (RHEU) stand that since we have already destroyed so much landscape, we should just finish it off isn’t the only misstep. The authors of the RHEU in their declaration that utilities are adequate for the projected growth, seem to have missed Leila Moncharsh’s review of infrastructure, that Berkeley still has in parts of the city hollowed redwood tree trunks as sewer lines. Leave it to the historians to know what lies in the ground below.
Wastewater processing for the projected growth was also declared to be adequate. That ignores the 2014 consent decree with the EPA and the violations of sewage release of waste overflow in 2017 and, the harmful algae bloom of Heterosigma akashiwo in August 2022 with a huge die - off of thousands of fish in the bay and Lake Merritt. The algae bloom of Heterosigma akashiwo was possible through the confluence of warming bay water and nutrients/Nitrogen and Phosphorus released from water processing plants. EBMUD was one of the top two named culprits in the October 24, 2022 webinar by Baykeeper and Speaking Up for Point Molate on the algae bloom and causes. Water processing plants need upgrading now to prevent another like algae bloom in the future.
There is another section in the RHEU that Moncharsh did not cover in the October 26, 2022 post in the Berkeley Daily Planet, water! What caught my attention was the Infrastructure Constraints 4.2.1 on document pages 89 & 90 (pdf pages 90 & 91) “EBMUD’s water supplies are estimated to be sufficient during the planning period (2010-2040) in normal and single dry years.” Which begs the question is no one aware that we are in a multiple year drought? And, has no one looked at the drought map? It is pretty bleak. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ The RHEU provided the simple answer, during multi-year drought water will be rationed.
If we really think that the Housing Element is a planning tool instead of just an exercise to fulfill a state mandate, and we really think that significant population growth is in our future, then we need to step back and consider what that means, how do we need to change to absorb 47,433 more people. One question might be, when do we stop flushing our toilets with drinkable water? Is the answer when the faucet goes dry? Or, do we change how we construct new buildings and remodel old?
As for new construction and remodeling, updating the fire code will be on the City Council November 15, 2022 agenda. Last time when requiring sprinkler systems in new construction and remodels of over $100,000 in the high fire hazard zones came before council, the building and real estate industry ran to the podium to protest and got their way in removing it. I’ll be watching to see what happens this time with a new Fire Department Chief.
I missed the Zero Waste Commission opting instead to attend Speaking up for Point Molate on the algae bloom. This was the week that NYT published only 5% of plastic is actually recycled.
I did attend the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. Two issues came up that have been repeated in multiple meetings, why are commissioners not notified when commission items finally reach the council agenda? (This problem is common to nearly all the commissions) And, why are reports not part of the minutes? Kim Chin said the City Clerks office notified him that minutes should be action only. Chin related minutes are saved by the city but staff reports and agendas are kept for only eight years.
Discarding reports and agendas after eight years erases history that that used to be at our fingertips with the old website. This makes one more loss for transparency.
The redesign for Telegraph Avenue Dwight to Woolsey from one side to the other is: curb – bike lane – parking – traffic lane – traffic lane – parking – bike lane - curb. The questions are what to do about right turns and left turns.
Remember Cooper (the birder) versus Cooper (the dog owner) in Central Park? Christian Cooper the birder wrote the book review for A World on the Wing for the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/books/review/a-world-on-the-wing-scott-weidensaul.html A World on the Wing is available in print, ebook and audiobook from our local library.
This may seem out of order, starting out my Activist’s Diary with a book review, but as you keep reading you will see how it all pulls together with this last week’s meetings.
Our book club choice for October/November was A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds by Scott Weidensaul published in 2021.
Even though I have been pleading for many months for dark skies, bird safe glass and native plants at the Design Review Committee and the Zoning Adjustment Board and for the Planning Commission to approve the Bird Safe ordinance with the latest science my appreciation of the importance of these actions is so much deeper after reading Scott Weidensaul’s book A World on the Wing.
In the chapter titled Big Data, we learn how miniature GPS tracking devices so tiny they can be put on the backs of even little songbirds has changed what we know about migration, habitat stopovers, winter and nesting locations and how many miles birds travel without stopping. Because of one of those GPS devices on the back of a juvenile (5-month old) bar-tailed godwit known only by its satellite tag 234684 there is a new record flight. This little bird around 10 ounces flew without stopping from Alaska to north-east Tasmania 8,435 miles in 11 days and one hour.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/27/bar-tailed-godwit-sets-world-record-with-13560km-continuous-flight-from-alaska-to-southern-australia
Migratory feats that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years feel like nothing less than a miracle.
As mentioned in previous Diaries, nearly 3 billion birds, 30% of the birds in North America have disappeared since 1970. It is not just North America. Just published in September 2022 in the fifth edition of BirdLife’s “State of the World’s Birds,” nearly half of all bird species are in decline worldwide with one in eight at risk of extinction. https://www.birdlife.org/papers-reports/state-of-the-worlds-birds-2022/ This includes common birds like sparrows. An exception are geese like those invading Lake Merritt. This species is expanding. Maybe cities and meat-eating readers ought to consider a goose for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner instead of turkey. It would save farmland.
The scientific report published September 19, 2019 about loss of birds would not have been possible without decades of data of annual bird counts. There are two online programs that add to our knowledge of bird migration, habitat, stopovers and survival, eBird https://ebird.org/about managed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology which collects data/information submitted by citizen birders on birds seen and heard worldwide and birdcast https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/local-migration-alerts/ which uses radar to track bird migration live.
In the chapter on climate, Weidensaul calls it climate weirding as some locations in migration are heating up faster and others have unexpected cold. Climate change puts the timing of migration of thousands of miles to arrive, mate, nest and when baby birds hatch out of sync with when insects (caterpillars their primary source of food) emerge.
Climate change does much more than change the timing of the arrival seasons. Sea level rise washes away coastal habitat and drought dries up inland wetlands. Even global wind patterns which migrating birds use to ease their flight are weirding. Take a look at the path of the polar jet stream from the Sunday Chronicle weather map.
Through new study made possible by those tiny GPS devices, ornithologists are able to track the impact of deterioration in wintering habitat carrying over into birds unable to build the fat stores and muscle to survive migration, reduced clutches in nesting habitat and poorer chick survival. Douglas Tallamy in his study of resident birds (birds that do not migrate) found that areas that have replaced native trees and plants with non-native plant species (ornamental plants and trees) results in smaller chicks and poorer chick survival.
Even though the negative impact of urban light was noted in the 1800s, it was those miniature GPS devices that demonstrated how artificial night light lures birds away from higher quality habitat to cities where urban parks are overrun with exotic invasive plants of limited value to birds. Young birds in their first migration are especially vulnerable to light pollution and are drawn to urban areas to rest and refuel only to find useless ornamental plants devoid of insects. A lesson here from A World on the Wing is that restoring habitat in a fairly small urban park may be more important than a larger tract of land in some more distant location.
The authors of the Housing Element Update Draft Environmental Impact Report (HEU DEIR) that closed for comment on October 17, 2022 reasoned that the abundance of ornamental, exotic and invasive non-native plants and non-native trees in Berkeley that are unsuitable habitat would make further development adding 19,098 units with 47,433 new residents insignificant. In other words, since we have already destroyed so much of the landscape, further destruction from developments carries little impact.
The conclusion from the HEU DEIR is the opposite to the thinking and planning that I heard from Dr. Ann Riley in her presentation to the Community for a Cultural Civic Center group. I listed Riley, expert in urban creek restoration, daylighting urban creeks as my “go to meeting” of the week. And, she did not disappoint.
Riley spoke to how daylighting creeks has proven over and over to be a significant economic benefit to business and city centers as people are drawn to open streams, nature and wildlife habitat.
If you have never heard the term daylighting creeks, this is the process for restoring a creek to its natural state, above ground open to day light, hence the term daylighting. That is instead of diverting creeks into underground culverts. When undergrounded creek culverts fail, disintegrate and collapse that can result in sink holes and flooding.
Riley showed picture after picture of the transformation from undergrounded culverted creeks to open streams and parks. Strawberry Creek in Strawberry Creek Park was one of the first projects of taking down a culvert and restoring a creek to daylight.
Most amazing is that there are grants to daylight creeks and the Coastal Conservancy has money available for projects like daylighting Strawberry Creek in Civic Center Park.
Daylighting urban creeks really got its start in 1983 in the California Assembly when Tom Bates authored the urban creeks legislation (Bates was a representative to the California Assembly before becoming Berkeley mayor). The first attempt failed when Governor Deukmejian (R) vetoed it. The bill was brought back in 1984 with the Republican legislator Eric Seastrand as the author and Bates as co-author.
Riley describes it this way in her book, “The Urban Creeks Restoration and Flood Control Act of 1984, acquired political legs because it recognized that restoration projects were a new, multi-objective strategy to address common urban stream erosion and flood hazards with practical but environmentally friendly solutions.”
It was also got legs because the revived bill placed a Republican name prominently in the author list. That got it by the Republican governor. The grants from the Urban Creeks Act continue to be awarded to this day.
The idea of daylighting the creek is not in the plan from consultants Berkeley hired. Gehl was tasked to create a plan for the Civic Center to restore and stabilize the Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and Veterans Buildings and redo the Civic Center Park. Their concept was a promenade across the center of the park either north to south between the Veterans Building and Berkeley High or east to west from city offices at 2180 Milvia to the Maudelle Shirek Building. The Gehl park plan for Berkeley is a smaller version of the San Francisco City Hall park, a park with lots of gravel which seems to be more of an attraction for the homeless and protests than a place to go to relax and refresh.
The Gehl plan from the time I first saw it conjured up a vision of councilmembers and city administrators parading across the park marking their importance on the promenade.
Contrast that to Strawberry Creek Park. The Strawberry Creek Park is just lovely, a well-used treasure that neighbors in large numbers spoke to at the Redistricting meetings last spring.
I was open to the idea of daylighting Strawberry Creek in Civic Center Park before hearing Riley’s presentation. Now that I have a better understanding of the importance of restoring habitat in cities and urban parks and the how daylighting creeks benefits the well-being of all of us including nature and local businesses, daylighting Strawberry Creek in the Civic Center Park has moved up to the top of the list of important actions.
This presentation would never have happened without the work of Erin Diehm, who put this program together. It is because of Diehm and her depth of knowledge of ecosystems and habitat that we are even having this discussion. Diehm’s work gave us pollinator gardens in our parks.
Diehm also sent the link to birdcast last Fall so we could track how many migrating birds were flying over Berkeley. Berkeley is in the Pacific Flyway, the flight path birds take from northern nesting areas to wintering sites in Central and South America.
When I hear about turning parks into entertainment centers, I wonder why we aren’t taking a broader look at our city center. We close down Shattuck for events. Why are we not looking at making better use of the BART Plaza and the Shattuck street scape?
And why are we not looking at corridors connecting habitat across the city? Is cement and lot line to lot line building the only answer for the future which is the picture painted in the Revised Housing Element Update (RHEU)? Even the old 2012 Downtown Area Plan includes environmental sustainability “nature in the city” (pdf page 45) and that was written before the recent research covered in The World on a Wing which tells us parks with native plant habitat are important to bird survival.
The Revised Housing Element Update (RHEU) stand that since we have already destroyed so much landscape, we should just finish it off isn’t the only misstep. The authors of the RHEU in their declaration that utilities are adequate for the projected growth, seem to have missed Leila Moncharsh’s review of infrastructure, that Berkeley still has in parts of the city hollowed redwood tree trunks as sewer lines. Leave it to the historians to know what lies in the ground below.
Wastewater processing for the projected growth was also declared to be adequate. That ignores the 2014 consent decree with the EPA and the violations of sewage release of waste overflow in 2017 and, the harmful algae bloom of Heterosigma akashiwo in August 2022 with a huge die - off of thousands of fish in the bay and Lake Merritt. The algae bloom of Heterosigma akashiwo was possible through the confluence of warming bay water and nutrients/Nitrogen and Phosphorus released from water processing plants. EBMUD was one of the top two named culprits in the October 24, 2022 webinar by Baykeeper and Speaking Up for Point Molate on the algae bloom and causes. Water processing plants need upgrading now to prevent another like algae bloom in the future.
There is another section in the RHEU that Moncharsh did not cover in the October 26, 2022 post in the Berkeley Daily Planet, water! What caught my attention was the Infrastructure Constraints 4.2.1 on document pages 89 & 90 (pdf pages 90 & 91) “EBMUD’s water supplies are estimated to be sufficient during the planning period (2010-2040) in normal and single dry years.” Which begs the question is no one aware that we are in a multiple year drought? And, has no one looked at the drought map? It is pretty bleak. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ The RHEU provided the simple answer, during multi-year drought water will be rationed.
If we really think that the Housing Element is a planning tool instead of just an exercise to fulfill a state mandate, and we really think that significant population growth is in our future, then we need to step back and consider what that means, how do we need to change to absorb 47,433 more people. One question might be, when do we stop flushing our toilets with drinkable water? Is the answer when the faucet goes dry? Or, do we change how we construct new buildings and remodel old?
As for new construction and remodeling, updating the fire code will be on the City Council November 15, 2022 agenda. Last time when requiring sprinkler systems in new construction and remodels of over $100,000 in the high fire hazard zones came before council, the building and real estate industry ran to the podium to protest and got their way in removing it. I’ll be watching to see what happens this time with a new Fire Department Chief.
I missed the Zero Waste Commission opting instead to attend Speaking up for Point Molate on the algae bloom. This was the week that NYT published only 5% of plastic is actually recycled.
I did attend the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. Two issues came up that have been repeated in multiple meetings, why are commissioners not notified when commission items finally reach the council agenda? (This problem is common to nearly all the commissions) And, why are reports not part of the minutes? Kim Chin said the City Clerks office notified him that minutes should be action only. Chin related minutes are saved by the city but staff reports and agendas are kept for only eight years.
Discarding reports and agendas after eight years erases history that that used to be at our fingertips with the old website. This makes one more loss for transparency.
The redesign for Telegraph Avenue Dwight to Woolsey from one side to the other is: curb – bike lane – parking – traffic lane – traffic lane – parking – bike lane - curb. The questions are what to do about right turns and left turns.
Remember Cooper (the birder) versus Cooper (the dog owner) in Central Park? Christian Cooper the birder wrote the book review for A World on the Wing for the New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/books/review/a-world-on-the-wing-scott-weidensaul.html A World on the Wing is available in print, ebook and audiobook from our local library.
October 24, 2022
I totally missed the Berkeley Bird Festival last Sunday, instead I was tethered to the computer pulling together the response to the Housing Element Update (HEU) Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) to meet the 5 pm Monday, October 17 deadline only to be hit on Tuesday with a revision arriving with a one week to respond putting me behind for another week. I have never heard of such a thing, one week to respond to a revision of a DEIR, but as I wrote last week Berkeley was outed by the San Francisco Business Times and looks to be on target to miss the January 31, 2023 Housing Element deadline. So I guess to make up time, we get the minimal seven days to find the changes and respond. https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
One interesting chart in the revised HEU DEIR on pages 11-13 is the list of community groups the preparers chose to contact, East Bay for Everyone, Berkeley Design Advocates and Southside Neighborhood Consortium and who they did not contact, Friends of Adeline, Berkeley Neighborhoods Council and Berkeley Tenants Union. The groups not contacted represent the communities most impacted by gentrification and exorbitant market rate rents. The excuse is these three organizations did not respond, which adds another layer of unanswered questions of how did this happen.
At the Monday Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meeting, John Caner expressed his doubt that enough money will come out of the Measure L Bonds to do the seismic work at the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings. That feeling was seconded by others. Since the Measure L Bonds are as put to me by Vincent Casalaina are “money looking for projects not projects looking for money” no one knows or better said the voting public doesn’t know what the Mayor and his tightest cronies have in their sights. I might have thought “tightest cronies” was too strong, but given the amount of money pouring into the yes on L campaign, somebody(s) is looking to have their hands in the pot.
Deb Durant gave an update on the Berkeley Turtle Island Monument Project. Through grants, awards and support the funds to implement the project is over $1,000,000, however, those funds look to be evaporating after the City turned over the project to PGAdesign Landscape Architects based in Oakland. https://pgadesign.com/ The Turtle Island Monument group is being pushed aside and this includes the indigenous community for whom the monument is supposed to be dedicated with the message to the indigenous community to start from scratch. A mess unless you are the architects eating up the project funds.
The Agenda Committee met on Wednesday. I am so accustomed to a Monday meeting that I automatically listed it there, but as of late, the Agenda Committee has been moved to other days. Nothing earth shattering happened. Hybrid meetings will likely resume with the November 15 council meeting, but stay tuned. With Governor Newsom announcing the pandemic emergency to end February 28, 2023, everyone needs to get ready to return to in-person meetings, that also looks to mean the end to the convenience of zoom for committee and commission meetings.
California AB 361 signed October 10, 2021 authorized exceptions to local government open meeting requirements during the pandemic giving us the zoom boom. California AB 2449 signed September 13, 2022 defines the rules for teleconferencing when the pandemic emergency ends. https://www.hansonbridgett.com/Publications/articles/220916-4000-ab-2449 The City still promises to have hybrid meetings for City Council so the public can still videoconference and teleconference meetings that can last until 12:42 am or later, but it looks like council members will be required to be onsite for the meeting with few exceptions and a limit on how often an exception can be used.
Bringing the bird safe ordinance back to the Planning Commission is the story of a long haul to make change in building standards in Berkeley and it is not over. Jamie Cooney continues to persist and zoomed in Wednesday evening to tell her personal story. In 2018 when Jamie Cooney was a hazardous materials intern, she found two dead birds from glass collisions in front of her office in downtown Berkeley in one week. She began reaching out to a number of bird organizations including Golden Gate Audubon Society which responded by coming to the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) to present on bird safe glass and building features. And that is how the bird safe ordinance in Berkeley started.
A lot has happened since the proposed ordinance made it out of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission in the spring of 2019 to weave through to council in November 2019 and then on to the Planning Commission where it languished at the bottom of the to do list aka workplan until there were finally enough calls from the public to revive it.
On September 19, 2019 Kenneth V. Rosenberg and colleagues published the results of their study of the staggering decline of bird populations in North America, with an estimated loss of nearly 3 billion birds since 1970 or 30% of the bird population. https://www.science.org/content/article/three-billion-north-american-birds-have-vanished-1970-surveys-show#:~:text=His%20team%20determined%20that%2019,house%20sparrows%2C%20are%20losing%20ground.
Simultaneously, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) in the last year published a model ordinance for bird safety for cities to use https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/model-ordinance/
There are many factors threatening bird survival, loss of habitat, climate change and a warming planet but at the top of the list of what we can control on a local basis are outdoor cats followed by collisions with glass. And 44% of collisions with glass are one and two story buildings including single family houses. We can fix this.
While this has been in the works, I’ve watched building after building being approved and going up without bird safe glass. Though we have had success with several projects lately voluntarily committing to installing bird safe glass, that does not include David Trachtenberg and Bill Schrader. Trachtenberg and Schrader have multiple projects going up in Berkeley. Schrader agreed to install one window of bird safe glass in one building at the entrance next to a green wall of plants. That is it. And, that came with a lot of whining and moaning. These two are an excellent example of why recommendations that are voluntary do not work and a strong mandatory ordinance in line with the ABC model is desperately needed.
In March 2022 when the proposed bird safe ordinance was first heard by the Planning Commission, commissioners wanted the latest science and asked for more research. Now on October 19, 2022 listening to the commissioners’ discussion it is unclear whether there is a majority with a real interest in using science to establish policy.
Alfred Twu (who is running for AC Transit District Director-at-Large) wanted to know if there are other cities currently exploring ordinances, “so we don’t end up with 10 different standards” a statement that would make sense until one realizes that some cities that implemented bird safe standards did them years ago and they need to be updated to the new science. So will Berkeley lead by using the latest science? That is the unanswered question.
Christina Oatfield and Alfred Twu agreed to be on the adhoc subcommittee to bring back recommendations for the December Planning Commission meeting.
I am worried about Alfred Twu’s place on the subcommittee. I can’t put out of my mind Alfred Twu’s tweet to remove the woodlands from Tilden Park and fill it with housing. I couldn’t grab the old tweet from Twitter, but Thomas Lord captured it and the Berkeley Daily Planet published it in 2021. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-05-02/article/49171##49171
The original proposed ordinance from CEAC included a well written section on Dark Skies (I would still like to see fewer exceptions), but when Erin Diehm asked whether Dark Skies would be included, there was no answer.
The next evening near the end of the Design Review Committee (DRC) meeting Steve Finacom picked up on my comment and spoke to dark skies relating what happened when PG&E shut off street lights so they could replace power poles. Steve said, “You went out in the street, and you could see the sky. Orion was up there and you could see Orion’s belt. And, we even saw a meteor. I can’t ever remember seeing a meteor in Berkeley. So even a little change, this was just the street lights were out and home lights went on, and the rest of the city was brilliant, but we could see the sky, so the dark sky stuff does really matter.”
Dark skies are not just better for nature. In fact, just as dark skies are important for ecosystems and habitat, dark skies and complete darkness when we sleep is important for our own health. (advice from nurse Kelly turn off the lights).
The Hopkins Street Corridor is still a hot enough issue to break through the steady stream of campaign requests for donations flooding my email inbox. All these City plans for bicycle lanes and “road diets” which is the term for making streets narrower to slow down traffic seem to be disconnected from the citywide Emergency Access and Evacuation Network map (see picture - Thank you Margot Smith) You can also get a good look from the map link at https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Emergency-Access-Evacuation-Routes-06-2011.pdf embedded in the Fire weather and Evacuation webpage https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/fire/fire-weather-evacuation
The reconfiguration of Adeline between Ashby and MLK Jr Way was Thursday night with the Transportation Commission offered two choices both of which narrow the street (an evacuation route). Adolfo Cabral has started attending the Transportation Commission. We spoke afterwards. I was at the DRC and only caught a sliver of the Transportation Commission meeting. Cabral said he wanted to look at the recording to capture everything and was surprised that the meeting wasn’t recorded. We both worry the plan for the plaza on Adeline is just not going to work for the flea market. This coming Wednesday the redesign for Telegraph from Dwight south to Woolsey will be presented on zoom another evacuation route.
The election is heating up. I called several friends to find out what happened at their ballot get togethers. It was an interesting mix especially when it came to Measure L. At one ballot gathering someone called people opposed to L liars and another someone looked up San Jose a city with a population over one million and the physical size of 179.97 square miles and was quite incensed comparing the salaries of Berkeley City administrators and the size of Measure L compared to San Jose 17 times larger in land mass and 8 times larger in population and a bond that was passed in San Jose that was considered as huge. It was $650,000,000.
San Jose is the third largest city in California. Berkeley doesn’t even make the top 50, but this council wants to spend like it is in the top 3 except when it comes to taking care of city employees, not the top paid employees who have been given generous raises, but those on the lower rungs. That is where resistance comes down from city management with energy put into blocking the passage of the Fair Work Week ordinance. The attempt to pass legislation protecting part time workers started back in 2018. It was first mentioned as a council referral to the Commission on Labor in their February 2019 minutes.
The City Manager finally withdrew her companion report to send the Fair Work Week ordinance back through another round of committee meetings at the October 11, 2022 council meeting.
Fair Work Week is item 35 on the November 3 Council regular 6 pm meeting agenda. Expect road blocks from the city administration and the conservative wing council members throwing wrenches at it. Fair Work Week includes offering existing part-time workers more hours or fulltime positions before hiring new employees, advance scheduling, minimum pay for scheduled work cancellations and rest between shifts. It is all spelled out under #35 https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-regular-meeting-eagenda-november-3-2022.
Anyone who is wobbling in supporting Ukraine or maybe even believes negotiating with Vladimir Putin is possible needs to pick up Masha Gessen’s book The Man Without a Face the Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin published in 2012. Reviews done when the book was published criticize it as biased, speculative and harsh, but so much more has happened in the intervening decade. Gessen’s descriptions of Putin as a ruthless tyrant look to be far more accurate than her book critics as we watch the obliteration of Ukraine play out right now.
Gessen portrays Putin as a vindictive cold-hearted man who willingly rains destruction for any perceived insult or slight or just to cement his power. Accordingly, we should never underestimate his craven lust for power or greed or revenge. Gessen gives many examples painting the picture of who Putin is from his orchestrated pictures as the virile man with tigers and bears, of FSB (Russian Federal Security Bureau) connections to bombings and botched hostage recues. Add the suspicious deaths of Russian oligarchs, murders of Russian reporters, poisonings with polonium-210 and imprisonment of those who challenge him.
Gessen closes with a face to face interview with Putin, her assessment of how Obama misjudged the nature of Putin and how Putin uses the demonization of the LGBTQ community.
When I turn in the ebook today, Libby (the library ebook program) tells me there are three people waiting and out of the five libraries I use, only San Francisco has The Man Without a Face. Our libraries are an incredible service and worth every penny and more than that fee that shows up on our property tax bill. My bill is $309.96 and I happily pay it, thankful that nearly all of the 57 books I’ve read so far this year are from our Bay Area libraries.
I totally missed the Berkeley Bird Festival last Sunday, instead I was tethered to the computer pulling together the response to the Housing Element Update (HEU) Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) to meet the 5 pm Monday, October 17 deadline only to be hit on Tuesday with a revision arriving with a one week to respond putting me behind for another week. I have never heard of such a thing, one week to respond to a revision of a DEIR, but as I wrote last week Berkeley was outed by the San Francisco Business Times and looks to be on target to miss the January 31, 2023 Housing Element deadline. So I guess to make up time, we get the minimal seven days to find the changes and respond. https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
One interesting chart in the revised HEU DEIR on pages 11-13 is the list of community groups the preparers chose to contact, East Bay for Everyone, Berkeley Design Advocates and Southside Neighborhood Consortium and who they did not contact, Friends of Adeline, Berkeley Neighborhoods Council and Berkeley Tenants Union. The groups not contacted represent the communities most impacted by gentrification and exorbitant market rate rents. The excuse is these three organizations did not respond, which adds another layer of unanswered questions of how did this happen.
At the Monday Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meeting, John Caner expressed his doubt that enough money will come out of the Measure L Bonds to do the seismic work at the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings. That feeling was seconded by others. Since the Measure L Bonds are as put to me by Vincent Casalaina are “money looking for projects not projects looking for money” no one knows or better said the voting public doesn’t know what the Mayor and his tightest cronies have in their sights. I might have thought “tightest cronies” was too strong, but given the amount of money pouring into the yes on L campaign, somebody(s) is looking to have their hands in the pot.
Deb Durant gave an update on the Berkeley Turtle Island Monument Project. Through grants, awards and support the funds to implement the project is over $1,000,000, however, those funds look to be evaporating after the City turned over the project to PGAdesign Landscape Architects based in Oakland. https://pgadesign.com/ The Turtle Island Monument group is being pushed aside and this includes the indigenous community for whom the monument is supposed to be dedicated with the message to the indigenous community to start from scratch. A mess unless you are the architects eating up the project funds.
The Agenda Committee met on Wednesday. I am so accustomed to a Monday meeting that I automatically listed it there, but as of late, the Agenda Committee has been moved to other days. Nothing earth shattering happened. Hybrid meetings will likely resume with the November 15 council meeting, but stay tuned. With Governor Newsom announcing the pandemic emergency to end February 28, 2023, everyone needs to get ready to return to in-person meetings, that also looks to mean the end to the convenience of zoom for committee and commission meetings.
California AB 361 signed October 10, 2021 authorized exceptions to local government open meeting requirements during the pandemic giving us the zoom boom. California AB 2449 signed September 13, 2022 defines the rules for teleconferencing when the pandemic emergency ends. https://www.hansonbridgett.com/Publications/articles/220916-4000-ab-2449 The City still promises to have hybrid meetings for City Council so the public can still videoconference and teleconference meetings that can last until 12:42 am or later, but it looks like council members will be required to be onsite for the meeting with few exceptions and a limit on how often an exception can be used.
Bringing the bird safe ordinance back to the Planning Commission is the story of a long haul to make change in building standards in Berkeley and it is not over. Jamie Cooney continues to persist and zoomed in Wednesday evening to tell her personal story. In 2018 when Jamie Cooney was a hazardous materials intern, she found two dead birds from glass collisions in front of her office in downtown Berkeley in one week. She began reaching out to a number of bird organizations including Golden Gate Audubon Society which responded by coming to the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) to present on bird safe glass and building features. And that is how the bird safe ordinance in Berkeley started.
A lot has happened since the proposed ordinance made it out of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission in the spring of 2019 to weave through to council in November 2019 and then on to the Planning Commission where it languished at the bottom of the to do list aka workplan until there were finally enough calls from the public to revive it.
On September 19, 2019 Kenneth V. Rosenberg and colleagues published the results of their study of the staggering decline of bird populations in North America, with an estimated loss of nearly 3 billion birds since 1970 or 30% of the bird population. https://www.science.org/content/article/three-billion-north-american-birds-have-vanished-1970-surveys-show#:~:text=His%20team%20determined%20that%2019,house%20sparrows%2C%20are%20losing%20ground.
Simultaneously, the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) in the last year published a model ordinance for bird safety for cities to use https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/model-ordinance/
There are many factors threatening bird survival, loss of habitat, climate change and a warming planet but at the top of the list of what we can control on a local basis are outdoor cats followed by collisions with glass. And 44% of collisions with glass are one and two story buildings including single family houses. We can fix this.
While this has been in the works, I’ve watched building after building being approved and going up without bird safe glass. Though we have had success with several projects lately voluntarily committing to installing bird safe glass, that does not include David Trachtenberg and Bill Schrader. Trachtenberg and Schrader have multiple projects going up in Berkeley. Schrader agreed to install one window of bird safe glass in one building at the entrance next to a green wall of plants. That is it. And, that came with a lot of whining and moaning. These two are an excellent example of why recommendations that are voluntary do not work and a strong mandatory ordinance in line with the ABC model is desperately needed.
In March 2022 when the proposed bird safe ordinance was first heard by the Planning Commission, commissioners wanted the latest science and asked for more research. Now on October 19, 2022 listening to the commissioners’ discussion it is unclear whether there is a majority with a real interest in using science to establish policy.
Alfred Twu (who is running for AC Transit District Director-at-Large) wanted to know if there are other cities currently exploring ordinances, “so we don’t end up with 10 different standards” a statement that would make sense until one realizes that some cities that implemented bird safe standards did them years ago and they need to be updated to the new science. So will Berkeley lead by using the latest science? That is the unanswered question.
Christina Oatfield and Alfred Twu agreed to be on the adhoc subcommittee to bring back recommendations for the December Planning Commission meeting.
I am worried about Alfred Twu’s place on the subcommittee. I can’t put out of my mind Alfred Twu’s tweet to remove the woodlands from Tilden Park and fill it with housing. I couldn’t grab the old tweet from Twitter, but Thomas Lord captured it and the Berkeley Daily Planet published it in 2021. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-05-02/article/49171##49171
The original proposed ordinance from CEAC included a well written section on Dark Skies (I would still like to see fewer exceptions), but when Erin Diehm asked whether Dark Skies would be included, there was no answer.
The next evening near the end of the Design Review Committee (DRC) meeting Steve Finacom picked up on my comment and spoke to dark skies relating what happened when PG&E shut off street lights so they could replace power poles. Steve said, “You went out in the street, and you could see the sky. Orion was up there and you could see Orion’s belt. And, we even saw a meteor. I can’t ever remember seeing a meteor in Berkeley. So even a little change, this was just the street lights were out and home lights went on, and the rest of the city was brilliant, but we could see the sky, so the dark sky stuff does really matter.”
Dark skies are not just better for nature. In fact, just as dark skies are important for ecosystems and habitat, dark skies and complete darkness when we sleep is important for our own health. (advice from nurse Kelly turn off the lights).
The Hopkins Street Corridor is still a hot enough issue to break through the steady stream of campaign requests for donations flooding my email inbox. All these City plans for bicycle lanes and “road diets” which is the term for making streets narrower to slow down traffic seem to be disconnected from the citywide Emergency Access and Evacuation Network map (see picture - Thank you Margot Smith) You can also get a good look from the map link at https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Emergency-Access-Evacuation-Routes-06-2011.pdf embedded in the Fire weather and Evacuation webpage https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/fire/fire-weather-evacuation
The reconfiguration of Adeline between Ashby and MLK Jr Way was Thursday night with the Transportation Commission offered two choices both of which narrow the street (an evacuation route). Adolfo Cabral has started attending the Transportation Commission. We spoke afterwards. I was at the DRC and only caught a sliver of the Transportation Commission meeting. Cabral said he wanted to look at the recording to capture everything and was surprised that the meeting wasn’t recorded. We both worry the plan for the plaza on Adeline is just not going to work for the flea market. This coming Wednesday the redesign for Telegraph from Dwight south to Woolsey will be presented on zoom another evacuation route.
The election is heating up. I called several friends to find out what happened at their ballot get togethers. It was an interesting mix especially when it came to Measure L. At one ballot gathering someone called people opposed to L liars and another someone looked up San Jose a city with a population over one million and the physical size of 179.97 square miles and was quite incensed comparing the salaries of Berkeley City administrators and the size of Measure L compared to San Jose 17 times larger in land mass and 8 times larger in population and a bond that was passed in San Jose that was considered as huge. It was $650,000,000.
San Jose is the third largest city in California. Berkeley doesn’t even make the top 50, but this council wants to spend like it is in the top 3 except when it comes to taking care of city employees, not the top paid employees who have been given generous raises, but those on the lower rungs. That is where resistance comes down from city management with energy put into blocking the passage of the Fair Work Week ordinance. The attempt to pass legislation protecting part time workers started back in 2018. It was first mentioned as a council referral to the Commission on Labor in their February 2019 minutes.
The City Manager finally withdrew her companion report to send the Fair Work Week ordinance back through another round of committee meetings at the October 11, 2022 council meeting.
Fair Work Week is item 35 on the November 3 Council regular 6 pm meeting agenda. Expect road blocks from the city administration and the conservative wing council members throwing wrenches at it. Fair Work Week includes offering existing part-time workers more hours or fulltime positions before hiring new employees, advance scheduling, minimum pay for scheduled work cancellations and rest between shifts. It is all spelled out under #35 https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-regular-meeting-eagenda-november-3-2022.
Anyone who is wobbling in supporting Ukraine or maybe even believes negotiating with Vladimir Putin is possible needs to pick up Masha Gessen’s book The Man Without a Face the Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin published in 2012. Reviews done when the book was published criticize it as biased, speculative and harsh, but so much more has happened in the intervening decade. Gessen’s descriptions of Putin as a ruthless tyrant look to be far more accurate than her book critics as we watch the obliteration of Ukraine play out right now.
Gessen portrays Putin as a vindictive cold-hearted man who willingly rains destruction for any perceived insult or slight or just to cement his power. Accordingly, we should never underestimate his craven lust for power or greed or revenge. Gessen gives many examples painting the picture of who Putin is from his orchestrated pictures as the virile man with tigers and bears, of FSB (Russian Federal Security Bureau) connections to bombings and botched hostage recues. Add the suspicious deaths of Russian oligarchs, murders of Russian reporters, poisonings with polonium-210 and imprisonment of those who challenge him.
Gessen closes with a face to face interview with Putin, her assessment of how Obama misjudged the nature of Putin and how Putin uses the demonization of the LGBTQ community.
When I turn in the ebook today, Libby (the library ebook program) tells me there are three people waiting and out of the five libraries I use, only San Francisco has The Man Without a Face. Our libraries are an incredible service and worth every penny and more than that fee that shows up on our property tax bill. My bill is $309.96 and I happily pay it, thankful that nearly all of the 57 books I’ve read so far this year are from our Bay Area libraries.
October 16, 2022
My Diary is late again. After the political discussion with my walk partner, I realized everything that I took out in my editing has to go back in. So here we go.
My week was bookended by listening to Rachel Maddow’s new podcast Ultra on Monday and finishing with the book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Friday and spending the weekend on responding to the Housing Element Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). In between there was a council meeting, a stack of city meetings, the January 6th business/hearing, the State of the City address by Mayor Arreguin and a Measure L forum with debate between Mayor Arreguin and Jim MacGrath.
The Tuesday 4 pm Council special meeting was an attempt to quell the criticisms of Measure L the $650,000,000 Bonds that is spread over 48 years. We are supposed to feel reassured that the new to be created Affordable Housing and Infrastructure Bond Oversight Committee staffed by the Budget office will ensure that bond money is well spent and there will be an independent audit and reporting. It is all laid out in the Arreguin’s resolution, which he declares is absolutely binding.
Rock solid resolutions are only as binding as five votes to keep or undo them or the desire to enforce them.
At the Berkeley Chamber sponsored Measure L Forum with Mayor Arreguin supporting L and Jim MacGrath opposing L, MacGrath described picking projects as a “food fight” and looking at the process from Arreguin’s resolution, it certainly looks that way.
The mayor’s resolution does not define any priorities or specific projects, that list according to the resolution will come from the Public Works Department, the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department, Health Housing and Community Services Department, Office of Energy and Sustainability and the Fire Department all of which will send their prioritized (wish) lists with bond and funding sources to the “authorized commissions” the Housing Advisory Commission, the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission and the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission where there will be robust public participation to develop recommendations to send to council.
Meanwhile the Affordable Housing and Infrastructure Bond Oversight Committee “nominated” by council (meaning council selects the members) “would create a policy and procedures manual that would include project goals and projection selection and prioritization criteria”
So let’s try to get this straight, the departments submit their wish lists, the wish list somehow get to the authorized commissions where we get to appear and plead our case in one or two minute bites for our desired project which may or may not have made the list, the commissions are swayed or ignore our pleas while the commissioners add their own opinions and make their recommendations to the council, the oversight committee meets four times a year and creates their list of how to decide on projects (from the policy and procedures manual created) which may or may not match the recommendations from the authorized commissions. This goes to the council where it meets up with the phrase in the Resolution, “Funding from the Bonds will be guided by the City Council’s plans and policies, as may be amended from time to time…”
Which, of course, makes sense. These bonds are going to be spread over 48 years with spending commitments made over 18 years, things change, which begs the real question, why are we handing council $650,000,000 now?
More importantly all this sounds like what we usually get: this is what we’ve decided don’t you love it? Which from this corner looks to why projects are decided/revealed after handing over the money. All while endless volunteer hours tally up and the consultants prepare their plans and reports at substantial expense.
To the second-hand comment passed on to me about being “parcel taxed out,” and therefore supportive of the bonds, Measure L, because it isn’t a parcel tax, have you not figured out who pays for the Bonds? It is property owners. When future property tax bills come, the bonds will be added to the long list of Fixed Charges and/or Special Assessments in the property tax statement. The Measure O Bond fee to property owners starts in 2025/2026.
The bonds are based on assessed value, so new homeowners/property owners pay the most. Parcel taxes are based on square footage of improvements/buildings (BSFT). Occasionally, parcel taxes can be based on square footage of the parcel/lot/land (LSFT). Berkeley usually uses the former (BSFT). With parcel taxes new and long time property owners are taxed the same rate depending on size, of course.
Low income senior households who own property (like the house they live in) are not exempted from the property tax fees for bonds. At least for parcel taxes, the way streets should be financed, low-income over 65 seniors can apply for parcel tax exemptions. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/PropertyTaxesFAQs.pdf
Why should streets be paid for with parcel taxes instead of bonds? Streets can start breaking down in as little as four years, but may last 10-15 years, while the bonds financing the repair are paid off with interest over 30 years. This is why bonds are used for infrastructure and projects expected to last decades not streets that need continuous repair.
Two things stood out from the Arreguin - MCGrath Measure L debate forum sponsored by the Berkeley Chamber. Jim McGrath’s picture of street deterioration four years after repair and Mayor Arreguin blaming prior mayors for deterioration of the City’s infrastructure, stating he had been mayor for only five years. Once again, I need to apologize for working on Arreguin’s 2016 campaign for mayor. In Arreguin’s speeches and literature, he bragged about all his accomplishments during his years on City Council. I know, it was part of the canvassing pitch. Arreguin had eight years on council as a councilmember and five years as mayor, thirteen years in total and now after thirteen years infrastructure deterioration is somebody else’s fault. https://youtu.be/AS4exMTwSys
On to the October 11 regular council meeting. The Fair Work Week and Harriet Tubman Terrace agenda items were postponed to November 3. Council finally made it to the second item under action at 9:00 pm, an appeal of the six-story multi-unit building at 2018 Blake. The appeal started with Jordan Klein Director of Planning and Development recognizing Sharon Gong, Planner who would present the project for the City for her “excellent work” and the hearing went downhill from there.
Councilmember Wengraf started the questioning on the project noting this was targeted to students and asked questions about the density bonus, which units would be the two low income units, what would be the requirements. Vice Mayor Harrison was next asking more about density bonus. Questioning continued to the number of bedrooms, group living requirements as the city planning staff and Director Klein fumbled, clearly out of their league unable to answer the council’s questions. It all dragged on until 10:50 pm when Harrison made a motion to stop and continue the appeal to another meeting when the Planning Department would be prepared to answer council questions.
At 10:52 pm, there were still 171 attendees tethered to ZOOM hanging on to comment on the Reconsideration of the Hopkins Corridor Plan. While most of the older folks and disabled tuckered out, the walk bike Berkeley held on in large numbers to insist moving forward without delay with the current plan removing parking and adding bike lanes in front of the shops and Monterey Market.
The meeting dragged on so long that even live transcription/closed captioning ended at 11:30 pm. It was after 12:30 am when Arreguin called on Former Mayor Shirley Dean. She was the last of the public to speak and came out strongly against the Hopkins redesign. The meeting finally closed at 12:42 am with a unanimous council vote to reconsider the Hopkins Street Plan between McGee and Sacramento and throw another $400,000 at the project.
The little bit I caught of the Homeless Services Panel of Experts (HSPE) meeting, Carol Marasovic, chair has not let go of discounting the HSPE June 22, 2022 meeting in which the motion to send the letter to council denouncing the use of Measure P funds to balance the City budget rather than for new homeless services was unanimously approved by those present. Marasovic who was not present for the vote brought it up again this week that June 22 wasn’t a valid meeting, stating it wasn’t properly announced and that such strong language in the letter passed by meeting attendees might offend some people (is the offended people the mayor who appointed her?).
The meeting was announced and Paul Kealoha-Blake said at the HSPE October 12th meeting he stood by the comments/letter from June 22.
The Mayor read his State of the City speech Thursday evening before a half-filled room and a YouTube audience. You can watch it on YouTube just go to JesseArreguin.com. Other than the usual reassuring everything is wonderful, so much has been accomplished. There isn’t much. If you weren’t tuned in to the Housing Element Draft Environmental Impact Report being written for adding 19,098 housing units you might have missed that comment.
I didn’t follow my own instructions on the Housing Element and spent my weekend responding. Probably a good thing I was out of time as my response was already over 12 pages by Monday at 4:30 pm. The 441 pages of the Housing Element Update Draft Environmental Impact Report (HEU DEIR) basically declares that the impact to Berkeley of adding 19,098 new housing units and 47,443 more people to fill all these units is insignificant. The only thing that merited significant and unavoidable impact was adding development in the hills and that the Housing Element Update recommended anyway.
The City Housing Element webpage lists that State law requires submission by January 2023 and then states the timeline for adoption of the final draft is December 2022 – March 2023. The actual deadline is January 31, 2023 and as published in the San Francisco Business Times, “Any jurisdiction that adopts its Housing Element later than the January 31, 2023 deadline for this region will immediately be subject to loss of local zoning control, a punitive measure colloquially known as the builder’s remedy.”
At the presentation of the Housing Element Update Draft Environmental Impact Report to the Planning Commission, I asked why the report was written for 19,098 units when the RHNA allocation is 8934 units. The answer was to push zoning code changes. It now looks like with this apparent screw-up in the making - missing the deadline, the City doesn’t need to go through all that messy changing zoning codes, the staff, consultants and council can just miss the deadline instead and the builder’s get their “remedy.”
Even if you are NOT a fan and can’t stand Rachel Maddow, you have got to listen to the podcast Ultra (it is free) https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra. The absolute first thing I thought as I tuned in was I wished my dad was alive so I could ask him what it was like when the U.S. Senator from Minnesota Ernest Lundeen was killed in a plane crash in 1940 and found to have a speech he was going to give written by a Nazi agent.
The podcast is about the embrace of authoritarianism, support for Nazis and fascism the America First movement, the Christian Front, and the Senators and Congressman involved in the plot and the sedition trial of 1944, and denial that it all happened even though much of this made front page news.
There are so many parallels to today with the embrace of authoritarianism and the growing militias and violence. Even if you don’t listen to Fox, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or traffic in websites like Parlor, Gab, TheDonald or Truth Social Trump’s website, the conspiracies, hate speech and disinformation spillover and infect school boards, city councils, politics, the media nationwide with the same old tropes recirculating, replacement theory, antisemitism. We have escaped a lot of this in Berkeley, but these far-right movements are present in Southern California and inland and all around us.
Reading about prior attempted coups and the pull back to reason and democracy is not making me feel any better about the upcoming election. Most of us reading this lived through the Assassination of JFK, 1968 and Watergate, but if we look at history, each attempted coup to overthrow the U.S. Government moves closer to success. Smedley Butler blowing the whistle on industrialists trying to pull him in as a war hero to lead a coup to overthrow the U.S. government was in 1933. That is all detailed in the Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire, by Jonathan Katz and precedes the next attempt in 1940 the subject of Ultra by just a few years.
Setting aside the little bit of grandstanding before the camera in Alexandria’s film documenting the actions of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer during the January 6th rampage of the capital, watching it this time brought back how I felt that day, unbelieving this could really happen and at the same time taking in the horror of it all. The push back and slow walking from the Department of Defense on the recorded phone calls in the documentary shows we are only as secure as good people in the right places at the right time.
In closing, Talia Lavin does a much better longer review of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present than I can do here, but no review can replace what is gained from reading the book. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/corruption-violence-and-toxic-masculinity-what-strongmen-like-trump-have-in-common/2020/12/23/bc58b076-40dc-11eb-9453-fc36ba051781_story.html
Ruth Ben-Ghiat lays out how Trump fits the strongman, authoritarian takeover playbook, demanding loyalty, shuffling and firing staff and cabinet members, giving family members positions of prominence and responsibility, self-dealing, corruption and the repeated embrace of violence and normalization of violence. Think about all those MAGA rally clips with Trump calling on his crowd to “beat him up,” name calling and demonization of the “other.”
Going back to January 6th, Trump’s demand to take him to the capital sounds ever so close to Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922. Mussolini had his fascist demonstrators and Blackshirt para militaries. Trump didn’t get his wish “I’ll be there with you,” to march to the capital as he declared on the ellipse, but Trump had his MAGA and QAnon demonstrators and the three militias, the Oathkeepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters storming the capital.
If you are prone to nightmares, don’t read the chapter on violence or at least don’t read that chapter at bedtime.
The best time to save a democracy is before it’s gone.
My Diary is late again. After the political discussion with my walk partner, I realized everything that I took out in my editing has to go back in. So here we go.
My week was bookended by listening to Rachel Maddow’s new podcast Ultra on Monday and finishing with the book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Friday and spending the weekend on responding to the Housing Element Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). In between there was a council meeting, a stack of city meetings, the January 6th business/hearing, the State of the City address by Mayor Arreguin and a Measure L forum with debate between Mayor Arreguin and Jim MacGrath.
The Tuesday 4 pm Council special meeting was an attempt to quell the criticisms of Measure L the $650,000,000 Bonds that is spread over 48 years. We are supposed to feel reassured that the new to be created Affordable Housing and Infrastructure Bond Oversight Committee staffed by the Budget office will ensure that bond money is well spent and there will be an independent audit and reporting. It is all laid out in the Arreguin’s resolution, which he declares is absolutely binding.
Rock solid resolutions are only as binding as five votes to keep or undo them or the desire to enforce them.
At the Berkeley Chamber sponsored Measure L Forum with Mayor Arreguin supporting L and Jim MacGrath opposing L, MacGrath described picking projects as a “food fight” and looking at the process from Arreguin’s resolution, it certainly looks that way.
The mayor’s resolution does not define any priorities or specific projects, that list according to the resolution will come from the Public Works Department, the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Department, Health Housing and Community Services Department, Office of Energy and Sustainability and the Fire Department all of which will send their prioritized (wish) lists with bond and funding sources to the “authorized commissions” the Housing Advisory Commission, the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission and the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission where there will be robust public participation to develop recommendations to send to council.
Meanwhile the Affordable Housing and Infrastructure Bond Oversight Committee “nominated” by council (meaning council selects the members) “would create a policy and procedures manual that would include project goals and projection selection and prioritization criteria”
So let’s try to get this straight, the departments submit their wish lists, the wish list somehow get to the authorized commissions where we get to appear and plead our case in one or two minute bites for our desired project which may or may not have made the list, the commissions are swayed or ignore our pleas while the commissioners add their own opinions and make their recommendations to the council, the oversight committee meets four times a year and creates their list of how to decide on projects (from the policy and procedures manual created) which may or may not match the recommendations from the authorized commissions. This goes to the council where it meets up with the phrase in the Resolution, “Funding from the Bonds will be guided by the City Council’s plans and policies, as may be amended from time to time…”
Which, of course, makes sense. These bonds are going to be spread over 48 years with spending commitments made over 18 years, things change, which begs the real question, why are we handing council $650,000,000 now?
More importantly all this sounds like what we usually get: this is what we’ve decided don’t you love it? Which from this corner looks to why projects are decided/revealed after handing over the money. All while endless volunteer hours tally up and the consultants prepare their plans and reports at substantial expense.
To the second-hand comment passed on to me about being “parcel taxed out,” and therefore supportive of the bonds, Measure L, because it isn’t a parcel tax, have you not figured out who pays for the Bonds? It is property owners. When future property tax bills come, the bonds will be added to the long list of Fixed Charges and/or Special Assessments in the property tax statement. The Measure O Bond fee to property owners starts in 2025/2026.
The bonds are based on assessed value, so new homeowners/property owners pay the most. Parcel taxes are based on square footage of improvements/buildings (BSFT). Occasionally, parcel taxes can be based on square footage of the parcel/lot/land (LSFT). Berkeley usually uses the former (BSFT). With parcel taxes new and long time property owners are taxed the same rate depending on size, of course.
Low income senior households who own property (like the house they live in) are not exempted from the property tax fees for bonds. At least for parcel taxes, the way streets should be financed, low-income over 65 seniors can apply for parcel tax exemptions. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/PropertyTaxesFAQs.pdf
Why should streets be paid for with parcel taxes instead of bonds? Streets can start breaking down in as little as four years, but may last 10-15 years, while the bonds financing the repair are paid off with interest over 30 years. This is why bonds are used for infrastructure and projects expected to last decades not streets that need continuous repair.
Two things stood out from the Arreguin - MCGrath Measure L debate forum sponsored by the Berkeley Chamber. Jim McGrath’s picture of street deterioration four years after repair and Mayor Arreguin blaming prior mayors for deterioration of the City’s infrastructure, stating he had been mayor for only five years. Once again, I need to apologize for working on Arreguin’s 2016 campaign for mayor. In Arreguin’s speeches and literature, he bragged about all his accomplishments during his years on City Council. I know, it was part of the canvassing pitch. Arreguin had eight years on council as a councilmember and five years as mayor, thirteen years in total and now after thirteen years infrastructure deterioration is somebody else’s fault. https://youtu.be/AS4exMTwSys
On to the October 11 regular council meeting. The Fair Work Week and Harriet Tubman Terrace agenda items were postponed to November 3. Council finally made it to the second item under action at 9:00 pm, an appeal of the six-story multi-unit building at 2018 Blake. The appeal started with Jordan Klein Director of Planning and Development recognizing Sharon Gong, Planner who would present the project for the City for her “excellent work” and the hearing went downhill from there.
Councilmember Wengraf started the questioning on the project noting this was targeted to students and asked questions about the density bonus, which units would be the two low income units, what would be the requirements. Vice Mayor Harrison was next asking more about density bonus. Questioning continued to the number of bedrooms, group living requirements as the city planning staff and Director Klein fumbled, clearly out of their league unable to answer the council’s questions. It all dragged on until 10:50 pm when Harrison made a motion to stop and continue the appeal to another meeting when the Planning Department would be prepared to answer council questions.
At 10:52 pm, there were still 171 attendees tethered to ZOOM hanging on to comment on the Reconsideration of the Hopkins Corridor Plan. While most of the older folks and disabled tuckered out, the walk bike Berkeley held on in large numbers to insist moving forward without delay with the current plan removing parking and adding bike lanes in front of the shops and Monterey Market.
The meeting dragged on so long that even live transcription/closed captioning ended at 11:30 pm. It was after 12:30 am when Arreguin called on Former Mayor Shirley Dean. She was the last of the public to speak and came out strongly against the Hopkins redesign. The meeting finally closed at 12:42 am with a unanimous council vote to reconsider the Hopkins Street Plan between McGee and Sacramento and throw another $400,000 at the project.
The little bit I caught of the Homeless Services Panel of Experts (HSPE) meeting, Carol Marasovic, chair has not let go of discounting the HSPE June 22, 2022 meeting in which the motion to send the letter to council denouncing the use of Measure P funds to balance the City budget rather than for new homeless services was unanimously approved by those present. Marasovic who was not present for the vote brought it up again this week that June 22 wasn’t a valid meeting, stating it wasn’t properly announced and that such strong language in the letter passed by meeting attendees might offend some people (is the offended people the mayor who appointed her?).
The meeting was announced and Paul Kealoha-Blake said at the HSPE October 12th meeting he stood by the comments/letter from June 22.
The Mayor read his State of the City speech Thursday evening before a half-filled room and a YouTube audience. You can watch it on YouTube just go to JesseArreguin.com. Other than the usual reassuring everything is wonderful, so much has been accomplished. There isn’t much. If you weren’t tuned in to the Housing Element Draft Environmental Impact Report being written for adding 19,098 housing units you might have missed that comment.
I didn’t follow my own instructions on the Housing Element and spent my weekend responding. Probably a good thing I was out of time as my response was already over 12 pages by Monday at 4:30 pm. The 441 pages of the Housing Element Update Draft Environmental Impact Report (HEU DEIR) basically declares that the impact to Berkeley of adding 19,098 new housing units and 47,443 more people to fill all these units is insignificant. The only thing that merited significant and unavoidable impact was adding development in the hills and that the Housing Element Update recommended anyway.
The City Housing Element webpage lists that State law requires submission by January 2023 and then states the timeline for adoption of the final draft is December 2022 – March 2023. The actual deadline is January 31, 2023 and as published in the San Francisco Business Times, “Any jurisdiction that adopts its Housing Element later than the January 31, 2023 deadline for this region will immediately be subject to loss of local zoning control, a punitive measure colloquially known as the builder’s remedy.”
At the presentation of the Housing Element Update Draft Environmental Impact Report to the Planning Commission, I asked why the report was written for 19,098 units when the RHNA allocation is 8934 units. The answer was to push zoning code changes. It now looks like with this apparent screw-up in the making - missing the deadline, the City doesn’t need to go through all that messy changing zoning codes, the staff, consultants and council can just miss the deadline instead and the builder’s get their “remedy.”
Even if you are NOT a fan and can’t stand Rachel Maddow, you have got to listen to the podcast Ultra (it is free) https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra. The absolute first thing I thought as I tuned in was I wished my dad was alive so I could ask him what it was like when the U.S. Senator from Minnesota Ernest Lundeen was killed in a plane crash in 1940 and found to have a speech he was going to give written by a Nazi agent.
The podcast is about the embrace of authoritarianism, support for Nazis and fascism the America First movement, the Christian Front, and the Senators and Congressman involved in the plot and the sedition trial of 1944, and denial that it all happened even though much of this made front page news.
There are so many parallels to today with the embrace of authoritarianism and the growing militias and violence. Even if you don’t listen to Fox, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity or traffic in websites like Parlor, Gab, TheDonald or Truth Social Trump’s website, the conspiracies, hate speech and disinformation spillover and infect school boards, city councils, politics, the media nationwide with the same old tropes recirculating, replacement theory, antisemitism. We have escaped a lot of this in Berkeley, but these far-right movements are present in Southern California and inland and all around us.
Reading about prior attempted coups and the pull back to reason and democracy is not making me feel any better about the upcoming election. Most of us reading this lived through the Assassination of JFK, 1968 and Watergate, but if we look at history, each attempted coup to overthrow the U.S. Government moves closer to success. Smedley Butler blowing the whistle on industrialists trying to pull him in as a war hero to lead a coup to overthrow the U.S. government was in 1933. That is all detailed in the Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire, by Jonathan Katz and precedes the next attempt in 1940 the subject of Ultra by just a few years.
Setting aside the little bit of grandstanding before the camera in Alexandria’s film documenting the actions of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer during the January 6th rampage of the capital, watching it this time brought back how I felt that day, unbelieving this could really happen and at the same time taking in the horror of it all. The push back and slow walking from the Department of Defense on the recorded phone calls in the documentary shows we are only as secure as good people in the right places at the right time.
In closing, Talia Lavin does a much better longer review of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present than I can do here, but no review can replace what is gained from reading the book. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/corruption-violence-and-toxic-masculinity-what-strongmen-like-trump-have-in-common/2020/12/23/bc58b076-40dc-11eb-9453-fc36ba051781_story.html
Ruth Ben-Ghiat lays out how Trump fits the strongman, authoritarian takeover playbook, demanding loyalty, shuffling and firing staff and cabinet members, giving family members positions of prominence and responsibility, self-dealing, corruption and the repeated embrace of violence and normalization of violence. Think about all those MAGA rally clips with Trump calling on his crowd to “beat him up,” name calling and demonization of the “other.”
Going back to January 6th, Trump’s demand to take him to the capital sounds ever so close to Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922. Mussolini had his fascist demonstrators and Blackshirt para militaries. Trump didn’t get his wish “I’ll be there with you,” to march to the capital as he declared on the ellipse, but Trump had his MAGA and QAnon demonstrators and the three militias, the Oathkeepers, the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters storming the capital.
If you are prone to nightmares, don’t read the chapter on violence or at least don’t read that chapter at bedtime.
The best time to save a democracy is before it’s gone.
October 2, 2022
In the September 25, 2022 edition of the Activist’s Diary, I ended with a recommendation of the book The Privatization of Everthing by Donald Cohen and Alan Mikaelian. If you watched any of forecasts of hurricane Ian, this was made possible through government funding of the National Weather Service (NWS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center and the international cooperation of 193 countries to provide free and unrestricted weather each day. It is an amazing feat.
Free access to NOAA, weather forecasts was close to lost if Barry Meyers former CEO of AccuWeather brother to Joel Meyers founder of AccuWeather a private forecasting company had made his way as a Trump appointee to head up NOAA. It was sexual harassment lawsuits that brought Barry Meyers down, but that still hasn’t stopped private companies like AccuWeather from taking free government funded service and monetizing weather forecasts and suing the government to secure profiteering.
Next time you use AccuWeather remember the Meyers brothers, how Barry Meyers in his advisory capacity on the NWS Board in 2017 killed the NWS work on a mobile ap or maybe you will be like me and do your best to avoid AccuWeather. AccuWeather is just a rehash of all that data collected through international cooperation and our own government. Google is filled with accolades for AccuWeather and links to direct you there.
The 3 x 3 Committee (3 council members and 3 Berkeley Housing Authority members) was the only City committee to meet during Rosh Hashanah. All other meetings were pushed to Wednesday Thursday and Friday. Mayor Arreguin announced at the 3 x 3 that five groups have been selected as potential developers for the North Berkeley BART station and mentioned a November 10, 2022 meeting to review the developers, but these days announced meetings get squishy with short notices, cancellations and rescheduling. The previously announced meeting on bolstering oversight for Measure L is now forecast (but not posted) for 4 pm October 11.
Concerned citizens need to keep a finger on the city website https://berkeleyca.gov/ to avoid missing important meetings posted at the last possible minute.
Selection of developers for the Ashby BART station per the mayor is postponed until the Fall of 2023 while air rights and the location of the Ashby Flea Market are worked out. Meetings on planning for the Adeline Corridor Ashby BART Station resume on Monday, October 3 (check Activist’s Calendar or City Website for virtual meeting links).
Once previously settled plans offered up from the City seem to be unraveling.
At the Agenda Committee on Wednesday, Councilmember Hahn with co-sponsor Wengraf submitted, “Reconsideration of the Hopkins Corridor Plan in Light of Newly Available Material Information” for the October 11 City Council meeting. It is posted as Agenda item 23 and puts a hold on the May 10, 2022 City Council action for the street redesign of traffic, parking, and bike lanes on the section of Hopkins from McGee to Gilman. This section of Hopkins contains the shops, Monterey Market and created the public uproar.
Sam Kaplan-Pettus attended the Environment and Climate Commission to request the addition of a Youth appointee to the commission in addition to the nine appointees by the mayor and council. The commission voted to approve the proposal, but the comment that caught my attention was when Sam Kaplan-Pettus said, “I think a lot of the work that commissions do is symbolic, because City Council doesn’t actually have to listen to us.” How true. That insight is one to remember when reviewing whatever is passed by City Council to rescue Measure L.
Later in the Environment and Climate Commission meeting Kurt Hurley (new city employee) gave a presentation on the new building codes and recommendations as to whether council should exceed the new state codes. The recommendation that EV charging parking spaces be set at 5% (minimum state standard) in new construction met with firm resistance that 5% is wholly inadequate. Range anxiety is already an issue in converting to EV. Certainly, requiring the minimum number of spaces be devoted to EV charging stations will not get the City or us to where we need to be in transitioning to EV. Additionally, fewer charging stations pushes bigger heavier batteries to power vehicles longer distances between scarce charging sites.
I’ve lost count of the number of Fire Chiefs and interim chiefs since I started attending the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. The newest interim Fire Chief is David Sprague. Sprague gave an enthusiastic presentation of using Measure FF funds to expand and reorganize Fire Department services with filling vacancies a continuing challenge. There was not much response from commissioners as they absorbed the overview of the new plans.
Sprague was asked about fire prevention inspections. Sprague answered currently properties are inspected only as far as is visible from the front. Back yards in fire zones are not inspected. This was not the desired answer.
Year-end financial reports were included in the agenda packet for FF and GG. Whatever the voters might have thought Measure FF (2020) wildfire prevention and preparedness and Measure GG (2008) fire protection and emergency response, covered these measures are primarily used for the cost of staffing and related benefit expenses. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/disaster-and-fire-safety-commission
The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission closed with what is hard to describe as anything more than the two ladies reading rapidly through their power point presentation for meeting number two out of three meetings for creating a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/community-wildfire-protection-plan
Looking at the May 2020 FEMA paper on Creating a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, the three scheduled CWPP meetings for the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission may fulfill some requirement, however, it doesn’t look like this is what the U.S. Fire Administration and FEMA had in mind. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/creating_a_cwpp.pdf
The Multi-Commission meeting on the Civic Center Vision Plan Project on Thursday morning felt a little thin when it came to commission attendees. Erin Diehm was present from Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, Lisa Bullwinkel and Liz Ozol from Civic Arts Commission and Steve Finacom from Landmarks Preservation Commission. Susi Mazuola went through her slide presentation stopping after each section (Veterans Building, Maudelle Shirek and Civic Center Park) for comments from commissioners leaving 8 minutes at meeting end for the public comment. The meeting was not recorded which is a shame and typical for the City when minds are made up and public meetings are perfunctory.
There were good suggestions and some definite criticisms. New council chambers are definitely part of the plan.
Should these come up again, the presentation of adding a signal in the middle of the block between Allston and Center for pedestrians was strongly rejected. The suggestion to close Center street to traffic was countered with there needs to be dropoff/pickup at the entrance to the Veterans Building. Allston Way is an important street for east-west bound traffic to and from the downtown and should remain open. External buttressing of the Maudelle Shirek Building is far more desirable than basement bracing which would eliminate the potential for useful community space. The Maudelle Shirek building should be a center for community space, the historical society and community organizations and not city offices. Big trees in the heart of the city should be preserved. Diehm asked for cost comparisons between the levels of seismic stabilization for the buildings. That information was not provided. Lisa Bullwinkel suggested a sculpture garden in front of the Maudelle Shirek Building. Those representing the Arts requested the level of external seismic buttressing of the Veterans Building be upped to BPON+.
A number of members of the public requested exploration of daylighting the creek, which Diehm described as magical. And, I learned that daylighting creeks, an international movement in building resiliency to climate change has roots in Berkeley.
You can see the presentation from the September 29th meeting at the Civic Center Vision Plan Project at https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/civic-center-vision-plan-project and email your responses to civiccenter@cityofberkeley.info Any emails I send will also include council@cityofberkeley.info and sustainableberkeleycoalition@gmail.com as all too often comments from meetings and emails on City projects seem to get lost in the ether and never see the light of day if they challenge already determined City decisions.
Lori Droste wrote in her newsletter that IKE Smart Kiosks would not be coming to Elmwood. The members of the Elmwood Business Improvement District Advisory Board voted against the placement of IKEs. So, it was interesting that at the Friday morning Elmwood Business Improvement District Advisory Board meeting, Kieron Slaughter, City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development, announced the planning of placement of an IKE Smart Kiosk at College and Ashby and College and Alcatraz. I checked the map to see if I was imagining that the intersection of College and Ashby was in Elmwood and, of course, Elmwood is plastered right over Ashby and College on the Berkeley online map. So much for neighborhood and business wishes when City minds are made up.
The business improvement district boards across the city are pretty lacking in members. Elmwood has only three members and only two attended on Friday, the chair is on maternity leave.
One of the members was complaining of the difficulty of keeping tree wells cleaned up and free of weeds. I was waiting for the Slaughter from the City Manager’s office to say something, but nothing until after I raised my hand and spoke to the flexi-pav and rubberway product used on University by BodyRox. Then Slaughter mentioned it was also used at the Downtown Y.
For the less than handful of times I have attended any of these business improvement district meetings it is obvious why it is so hard to give up any time to attend one. Why should anyone sit on an advisory board and give up time for a City of Berkeley meeting that blows off business requests (IKE Kiosks) and with city staff that don’t share innovations from other areas (flexi – pav) and don’t offer to connect business owners and representatives to the person (Scott Ferris) in the city that could help solve their problem?
I would love to be writing an Activist’s Diary filled with creative, innovative, engaging, forward thinking actions by City Council and City Administration. Sadly, those actions are few and far between and when something good does come along, sharing doesn’t seem to enter the picture.
The closest we got to City Council listening to the public was Thursday evening at the appeal hearing of 1201 – 1205 San Pablo Use Permit #ZP2021-0070 ZAB. The planned project is a 6-story mixed-use building on a vacant lot with 66 units (including 5 very low income units), 1680 sq ft of commercial space, 2614 sq ft of usable open space, and 17 to 28 ground-level parking spaces. The project takes advantage of California SB 330 which limits the number of public meetings for review to five and exceeds zoning height limits by two floors through including five very low income units. The neighbors limited their appeal to moving the building parking garage entrance to San Pablo and planting 36” box trees as a barrier instead of 24” box trees.
One attendee zoomer complained that holding the hearing was a waste of time, but this time council came through and listened. Council voted that the project proponent shall contact CalTrans to request the garage door open on San Pablo and if that is permissible for the architect to redesign the project to relocate the driveway to San Pablo. The neighbors got their 36” box trees and that negotiations on the solar shaded by the project continue. Robinson’s attempt to limit moving the garage door to only if a traffic study proved it to be safer rather than if CalTrans determined moving the garage door was permissible was quickly slapped down by Arreguin.
Council was sharply criticized for not establishing objective standards to protect solar as neighboring cities have done.
In closing, Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department by Geoffrey Berman was just released September 13, 2022 and I have already finished the audiobook from the San Francisco public library. The San Francisco library is simply amazing for access to just published books.
There are quite a number of reviews of Berman’s book Holding the Line focusing on Bill Barr and the telling by Berman of how the justice department was weaponized under Trump. You need to read all the way through to the end to get the full picture. Descriptions laying out how Bill Barr threw his weight around to advantage Trump and Trump cronies and attempts to “even things out” was spattered through the book.
Berman paints a picture of the work of SDNY (Southern District of New York) through indictments like how they closed in to end the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking operation and Laurence Doud III CEO of Rochester Drug Co-Operative (RDC) in the opioid crisis. There is the back and forth in the Halkbank indictment as Erdogan swung in and out of Trump’s favor. Barr’s involvement in George H. W. Bush’s pardons to dismantle indictments in the Iran Contra affair should leave meddling in justice under Trump as no surprise, but the ending still carries quite a punch.
In the September 25, 2022 edition of the Activist’s Diary, I ended with a recommendation of the book The Privatization of Everthing by Donald Cohen and Alan Mikaelian. If you watched any of forecasts of hurricane Ian, this was made possible through government funding of the National Weather Service (NWS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center and the international cooperation of 193 countries to provide free and unrestricted weather each day. It is an amazing feat.
Free access to NOAA, weather forecasts was close to lost if Barry Meyers former CEO of AccuWeather brother to Joel Meyers founder of AccuWeather a private forecasting company had made his way as a Trump appointee to head up NOAA. It was sexual harassment lawsuits that brought Barry Meyers down, but that still hasn’t stopped private companies like AccuWeather from taking free government funded service and monetizing weather forecasts and suing the government to secure profiteering.
Next time you use AccuWeather remember the Meyers brothers, how Barry Meyers in his advisory capacity on the NWS Board in 2017 killed the NWS work on a mobile ap or maybe you will be like me and do your best to avoid AccuWeather. AccuWeather is just a rehash of all that data collected through international cooperation and our own government. Google is filled with accolades for AccuWeather and links to direct you there.
The 3 x 3 Committee (3 council members and 3 Berkeley Housing Authority members) was the only City committee to meet during Rosh Hashanah. All other meetings were pushed to Wednesday Thursday and Friday. Mayor Arreguin announced at the 3 x 3 that five groups have been selected as potential developers for the North Berkeley BART station and mentioned a November 10, 2022 meeting to review the developers, but these days announced meetings get squishy with short notices, cancellations and rescheduling. The previously announced meeting on bolstering oversight for Measure L is now forecast (but not posted) for 4 pm October 11.
Concerned citizens need to keep a finger on the city website https://berkeleyca.gov/ to avoid missing important meetings posted at the last possible minute.
Selection of developers for the Ashby BART station per the mayor is postponed until the Fall of 2023 while air rights and the location of the Ashby Flea Market are worked out. Meetings on planning for the Adeline Corridor Ashby BART Station resume on Monday, October 3 (check Activist’s Calendar or City Website for virtual meeting links).
Once previously settled plans offered up from the City seem to be unraveling.
At the Agenda Committee on Wednesday, Councilmember Hahn with co-sponsor Wengraf submitted, “Reconsideration of the Hopkins Corridor Plan in Light of Newly Available Material Information” for the October 11 City Council meeting. It is posted as Agenda item 23 and puts a hold on the May 10, 2022 City Council action for the street redesign of traffic, parking, and bike lanes on the section of Hopkins from McGee to Gilman. This section of Hopkins contains the shops, Monterey Market and created the public uproar.
Sam Kaplan-Pettus attended the Environment and Climate Commission to request the addition of a Youth appointee to the commission in addition to the nine appointees by the mayor and council. The commission voted to approve the proposal, but the comment that caught my attention was when Sam Kaplan-Pettus said, “I think a lot of the work that commissions do is symbolic, because City Council doesn’t actually have to listen to us.” How true. That insight is one to remember when reviewing whatever is passed by City Council to rescue Measure L.
Later in the Environment and Climate Commission meeting Kurt Hurley (new city employee) gave a presentation on the new building codes and recommendations as to whether council should exceed the new state codes. The recommendation that EV charging parking spaces be set at 5% (minimum state standard) in new construction met with firm resistance that 5% is wholly inadequate. Range anxiety is already an issue in converting to EV. Certainly, requiring the minimum number of spaces be devoted to EV charging stations will not get the City or us to where we need to be in transitioning to EV. Additionally, fewer charging stations pushes bigger heavier batteries to power vehicles longer distances between scarce charging sites.
I’ve lost count of the number of Fire Chiefs and interim chiefs since I started attending the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. The newest interim Fire Chief is David Sprague. Sprague gave an enthusiastic presentation of using Measure FF funds to expand and reorganize Fire Department services with filling vacancies a continuing challenge. There was not much response from commissioners as they absorbed the overview of the new plans.
Sprague was asked about fire prevention inspections. Sprague answered currently properties are inspected only as far as is visible from the front. Back yards in fire zones are not inspected. This was not the desired answer.
Year-end financial reports were included in the agenda packet for FF and GG. Whatever the voters might have thought Measure FF (2020) wildfire prevention and preparedness and Measure GG (2008) fire protection and emergency response, covered these measures are primarily used for the cost of staffing and related benefit expenses. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/disaster-and-fire-safety-commission
The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission closed with what is hard to describe as anything more than the two ladies reading rapidly through their power point presentation for meeting number two out of three meetings for creating a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/community-wildfire-protection-plan
Looking at the May 2020 FEMA paper on Creating a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, the three scheduled CWPP meetings for the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission may fulfill some requirement, however, it doesn’t look like this is what the U.S. Fire Administration and FEMA had in mind. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/creating_a_cwpp.pdf
The Multi-Commission meeting on the Civic Center Vision Plan Project on Thursday morning felt a little thin when it came to commission attendees. Erin Diehm was present from Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, Lisa Bullwinkel and Liz Ozol from Civic Arts Commission and Steve Finacom from Landmarks Preservation Commission. Susi Mazuola went through her slide presentation stopping after each section (Veterans Building, Maudelle Shirek and Civic Center Park) for comments from commissioners leaving 8 minutes at meeting end for the public comment. The meeting was not recorded which is a shame and typical for the City when minds are made up and public meetings are perfunctory.
There were good suggestions and some definite criticisms. New council chambers are definitely part of the plan.
Should these come up again, the presentation of adding a signal in the middle of the block between Allston and Center for pedestrians was strongly rejected. The suggestion to close Center street to traffic was countered with there needs to be dropoff/pickup at the entrance to the Veterans Building. Allston Way is an important street for east-west bound traffic to and from the downtown and should remain open. External buttressing of the Maudelle Shirek Building is far more desirable than basement bracing which would eliminate the potential for useful community space. The Maudelle Shirek building should be a center for community space, the historical society and community organizations and not city offices. Big trees in the heart of the city should be preserved. Diehm asked for cost comparisons between the levels of seismic stabilization for the buildings. That information was not provided. Lisa Bullwinkel suggested a sculpture garden in front of the Maudelle Shirek Building. Those representing the Arts requested the level of external seismic buttressing of the Veterans Building be upped to BPON+.
A number of members of the public requested exploration of daylighting the creek, which Diehm described as magical. And, I learned that daylighting creeks, an international movement in building resiliency to climate change has roots in Berkeley.
You can see the presentation from the September 29th meeting at the Civic Center Vision Plan Project at https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/civic-center-vision-plan-project and email your responses to civiccenter@cityofberkeley.info Any emails I send will also include council@cityofberkeley.info and sustainableberkeleycoalition@gmail.com as all too often comments from meetings and emails on City projects seem to get lost in the ether and never see the light of day if they challenge already determined City decisions.
Lori Droste wrote in her newsletter that IKE Smart Kiosks would not be coming to Elmwood. The members of the Elmwood Business Improvement District Advisory Board voted against the placement of IKEs. So, it was interesting that at the Friday morning Elmwood Business Improvement District Advisory Board meeting, Kieron Slaughter, City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development, announced the planning of placement of an IKE Smart Kiosk at College and Ashby and College and Alcatraz. I checked the map to see if I was imagining that the intersection of College and Ashby was in Elmwood and, of course, Elmwood is plastered right over Ashby and College on the Berkeley online map. So much for neighborhood and business wishes when City minds are made up.
The business improvement district boards across the city are pretty lacking in members. Elmwood has only three members and only two attended on Friday, the chair is on maternity leave.
One of the members was complaining of the difficulty of keeping tree wells cleaned up and free of weeds. I was waiting for the Slaughter from the City Manager’s office to say something, but nothing until after I raised my hand and spoke to the flexi-pav and rubberway product used on University by BodyRox. Then Slaughter mentioned it was also used at the Downtown Y.
For the less than handful of times I have attended any of these business improvement district meetings it is obvious why it is so hard to give up any time to attend one. Why should anyone sit on an advisory board and give up time for a City of Berkeley meeting that blows off business requests (IKE Kiosks) and with city staff that don’t share innovations from other areas (flexi – pav) and don’t offer to connect business owners and representatives to the person (Scott Ferris) in the city that could help solve their problem?
I would love to be writing an Activist’s Diary filled with creative, innovative, engaging, forward thinking actions by City Council and City Administration. Sadly, those actions are few and far between and when something good does come along, sharing doesn’t seem to enter the picture.
The closest we got to City Council listening to the public was Thursday evening at the appeal hearing of 1201 – 1205 San Pablo Use Permit #ZP2021-0070 ZAB. The planned project is a 6-story mixed-use building on a vacant lot with 66 units (including 5 very low income units), 1680 sq ft of commercial space, 2614 sq ft of usable open space, and 17 to 28 ground-level parking spaces. The project takes advantage of California SB 330 which limits the number of public meetings for review to five and exceeds zoning height limits by two floors through including five very low income units. The neighbors limited their appeal to moving the building parking garage entrance to San Pablo and planting 36” box trees as a barrier instead of 24” box trees.
One attendee zoomer complained that holding the hearing was a waste of time, but this time council came through and listened. Council voted that the project proponent shall contact CalTrans to request the garage door open on San Pablo and if that is permissible for the architect to redesign the project to relocate the driveway to San Pablo. The neighbors got their 36” box trees and that negotiations on the solar shaded by the project continue. Robinson’s attempt to limit moving the garage door to only if a traffic study proved it to be safer rather than if CalTrans determined moving the garage door was permissible was quickly slapped down by Arreguin.
Council was sharply criticized for not establishing objective standards to protect solar as neighboring cities have done.
In closing, Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department by Geoffrey Berman was just released September 13, 2022 and I have already finished the audiobook from the San Francisco public library. The San Francisco library is simply amazing for access to just published books.
There are quite a number of reviews of Berman’s book Holding the Line focusing on Bill Barr and the telling by Berman of how the justice department was weaponized under Trump. You need to read all the way through to the end to get the full picture. Descriptions laying out how Bill Barr threw his weight around to advantage Trump and Trump cronies and attempts to “even things out” was spattered through the book.
Berman paints a picture of the work of SDNY (Southern District of New York) through indictments like how they closed in to end the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking operation and Laurence Doud III CEO of Rochester Drug Co-Operative (RDC) in the opioid crisis. There is the back and forth in the Halkbank indictment as Erdogan swung in and out of Trump’s favor. Barr’s involvement in George H. W. Bush’s pardons to dismantle indictments in the Iran Contra affair should leave meddling in justice under Trump as no surprise, but the ending still carries quite a punch.
September 25, 2022
Between my former lives as a plein air painter and a home health nurse in the inner city of Los Angeles, I am geared to taking in as much of my surroundings as possible. Last week I wrote about asphalt in tree wells in front of BODYROX. It is always a benefit to pay attention and this time it was a benefit to be wrong as that lead to an extended email exchange with Scott Ferris, Director of Recreation, Parks and Waterfront. It turns out the product around the trees only looks like asphalt and is instead a product that is flexible and porous protecting tree roots and letting water run through.
Ferris didn’t say which of the two manufacturers Rubberway https://sustainablesurfacing.com/pervious-pavement or Flexi-pave https://apaicorp.com/kbi.htm Berkeley is using, but the product used at 3120 Eton in 2017 to save a majestic Redwood from having its roots cut to replace damaged concrete is a much closer blend in color to a concrete sidewalk (see photo in google maps https://goo.gl/maps/H9G3E1zg6J7iDt7VA). It has a nice cushy feel when walking on it.
I’ve already emailed all the information Ferris sent to me to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) and the Design Review Committee (DRC). Charles Kahn, architect, on ZAB and DRC emailed he is sharing the information with his group. These products have a lot of potential. According to the websites there are a long list of benefits over asphalt. The most pressing need is to reduce runoff so that when we do get rain it soaks into the ground. Rubberway and Flexi-Pav do just that, let the rain water soak through and filter it too, but they are not just a permeable surface for sidewalks, paths, parking lots and roadways, they are durable, non-toxic, divert tires from landfill and more. Seattle and Washington DC are two cities Ferris named that are using these products.
We still need to change our thinking about trees so that what we plant will support local ecosystems and provide the shade we need from large canopies to reduce heat island effect.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met twice during the week. Councilmember Hahn attended the Monday noon meeting to pump votes and volunteers for yes on Measure L. According to the Yes on L card dropped on my doorstep, Hahn donated $5000.00 to the Yes on L campaign as did Gordon Wozniak. Jesse Arreguin and Raymond Yep both donated $1000.00. John Caner emphasized community members of CCCC represent a variety of opinions. I stand in strong opposition to Measure L.
At the meeting on Wednesday Susi Marzuola from Siegel & Strain gave a presentation from current meetings the consultants from Siegel & Strain have been having with the City. The presentation will be given at a “multi-commission” (Civic Arts, Landmarks and Public Works – now combined with Transportation) meeting at 11 am on Thursday, September 29. A meeting that is yet to appear on the City website. The zoom link sent by CCCC for that 11 am meeting is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81499570453?pwd=Qk9tU3BFbml2bFg0TWlmVGVTeHJGZz09.
Marzuola talked through a long list of slides and presented two considerations for construction of a new 270 seat new city council chamber at either the back of the Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) or in the Civic Center Park at the location of the parking lot connected to 2180 Milvia. CCCC strongly opposed building new city council chambers in the Civic Center Park months ago.
The external seismic buttressing to the Veterans Building which would have added 8000 square feet of usable “back stage” space making the Veterans Building incredibly versatile as a performance center was also rejected in favor of instead upgrading the Maudelle Shirek building to the seismic standard of IO, Immediate Occupancy, the standard used for hospitals and like buildings. The CCCC recommended seismic bracing to just below IO to BPON+ a standard at lower cost which would leave the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans buildings standing and repairable.
New Council Chambers for 270 is an interesting number. Prior to the pandemic the city council was meeting at 1231 Addison Street in the BUSD Board Room which was remodeled to be used jointly by BUSD and City Council. It has seating for 240 members of the public. Most city council meetings have well under 100 attendees frequently even less than 50. When there are contentious items on the agenda as there was at least once during the pandemic, attendance on zoom swelled to over 350.
The pandemic and zoom have really changed how we attend meetings. It is nice to see people in public, meet new people, reconnect, but the convenience of being able to walk over to a computer or carry a device around at home to watch a meeting instead of being trapped in a room all evening for one or two agenda items is the answer many want. Certainly, parents with young kids or really anyone with caregiving responsibilities appreciate being able to tune in for the agenda items that matter to them and still put their kids to bed on time on school nights and not have to pay for a babysitter.
Attending The Color of Water A Policy Discussion, a meeting hosted by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks was a reminder of why I prefer zoom. I spent 55 minutes in transit (driving and parking) for a four-hour meeting that had almost no new information that could have just as easily with less environmental impact been provided 100% via zoom. Just the plastic bags, throw away cups and plates should make anyone cringe with the waste of it all. And, though city council meetings do not provide food or beverages for the public, long meetings do provide meals for council and staff and the rest of us need to bring rations to make it through the usual long evenings.
It looks like the Rebuttal to Argument in Favor of Measure L got it right, “Future Councils will have the freedom to spend much of this money on vanity projects like new Council chambers as has been proposed!” Vincent Casalaina, who opposes Measure L described it this way, “This is money looking for projects, not projects looking for money.”
Every voter should read the East Bay Times editorial from September 3, 2022 regarding Oakland’s Measure U as it could just as easily have been written about Berkeley’s Measure L.
The paragraph that says it all states, “The issue is not whether the city needs more money to fix its badly dilapidated roads. It does. The issue is that, when city leaders ask for new taxes, they need to come with clear budgets that ensure the money will be wisely spent — and data that demonstrate past tax revenues have been used efficiently.” https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/09/03/editorial-oakland-voters-should-reject-850-million-measure-u-bond/
It should come as no surprise there is a long list of elected officials endorsing Measure L, as what elected official doesn’t love money coming with an opened ended list of ideas for spending.
Deb Durant said there are huge developments on the Turtle Island Monument/Fountain planning. The whole thing may be considerably delayed. She will share next time. Previous coverage of the Turtle Island Monument in the Activist Diary covered reporting that the project consultants did not want to hear from the Ohlone/Lisjuan Indians the Monument is supposed to honor.
Erin Diehm mentioned daylighting the creek in the Civic Center Park and that arrangements are still being made to schedule a presentation by Ann Riley. Marzuola was quick to brush this aside. Greening cities is a big movement and per Diehm’s research with Riley there is a lot of grant money available for projects. Watch for announcement of a future meeting on daylighting. After spending a morning in Strawberry Park, the park was packed, daylighting the creek sounds incredibly exciting.
This is a week when I feel like why can’t our devices work like a toaster. Put in the bread turn it on and toast. For us older folks, we remember when appliances just worked by turning them on and when they broke, they went to the repair person for a new cord or new switch or some other little part and lasted for many more years. This week I am hearing about emails and messages getting lost, texts requiring new programs, computers breaking down. It is all at a time with the days to the November election are flying away and there are never enough waking hours to fit everything in. At least Tuesday’s City Council meeting ended at around 8:09 pm.
Council moved everything to consent except technical edits and corrections to the Zoning code. Item 16 under action restoring and improving access to City of Berkeley website https://berkeleyca.gov/ was moved to consent cutting off discussion of the mess that has been created for those of us who search history for past city actions. I put in a specific resolution number into records online and got back pages and pages of documents to sift through (I stopped counting after 200) none of which had the document. I tried using the search option in the new City website which in turn spit out a list of unwanted documents, everything except what I requested.
Item 17. for extending existing contracts for services for the poor for another year instead of requesting new proposals with new cost estimates went to consent without even one word of discussion.
Even the City Auditor was relegated to public comment on the clock instead of giving the Audit Status Report presentation.
So while ending early is nice, cutting off needed discussion and debate, especially discussion that points out problems for which the City Manager bears responsibility, that should leave us to question just exactly why such problems are getting a pass instead of transparency.
The 4:00 pm City Council meeting on housing was a work session with no vote taken. The council received a report on adding “middle’ housing which is duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, these smaller buildings in previous single-family home neighborhoods and recommendations for increasing density in the Southside area for students. The hillside fire zones are exempted from adding density with these smaller multi-unit projects. Evacuating households in the fire zone areas are already a known problem.
Councilmember Harrison asked that housing plans include places for grocery stores instead of more coffee shops and reminded all that the least expensive units are in the buildings we already have (older buildings). Councilmember Hahn focused on that in adding all this lot coverage we need to be looking at green accessible space on the ground open to the public, not just street trees or green roofs that are not accessible at all. There needs to be accessible open green space. Both Hahn and Harrison noted the advantage of creating units inside existing buildings especially older large single-family homes.
The last project reviewed at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was 2065 Kittredge which will demolish the Shattuck Cinemas and most of the former Hinks Building.. When an attendee John D. (I didn’t get his last name) who identified himself as being from the building industry raised his hand, I expected a long dissertation on praises for the building. Instead it was a criticism that the developer is not using union labor and workers did not receive health benefits. Bill Shrader the developer for this building and several others downtown said he builds with an open shop and 40% to 60% are union labor.
Charles Kahn, architect and ZAB member responded that ZAB did not have the authority to require union labor and stated, “I would be ashamed to be a developer that health insurance is not provided.” The project was passed out of ZAB to return to the Design Review Committee to reconsider the color palette, removing the west facing wall section that is black, among other things.
In closing I wish to thank Michelle LePaule for the book recommendation The Privatization of Everthing by Donald Cohen and Alan Mikaelian. This book is fabulous and I will never look at privatization or public private partnerships the same way again. It is a solid reminder of all the great important services provided by government especially in the areas of research, weather, public libraries, education, water and that is just for starters. The authors lay out how privatization and the declarations of efficiency are really taking out the “service” and putting in “profit” and how the “profit” steadily drains away the service harming us all.
The authors call the promise of privatization as less costly and more efficient a false myth and go through example after example.
Cohen and Mikaelian go into detail how privatization actually hinders innovation. Innovation means taking risks that may not pan out. Innovation grows from sharing ideas, successes and failures. In privately held companies, when sharing means that some other company, a competitor might make the discovery or find the solution, then the privatized entity is going to keep innovations proprietary even going so far as to require employees to sign non-disclosure contracts. This even extends to examples of charter schools prohibiting teachers from sharing successful lessons.
There is a lot covered in The Privatization of Everything. It is definitely worth your time and the wait at the library. The library could use a couple more copies.
Between my former lives as a plein air painter and a home health nurse in the inner city of Los Angeles, I am geared to taking in as much of my surroundings as possible. Last week I wrote about asphalt in tree wells in front of BODYROX. It is always a benefit to pay attention and this time it was a benefit to be wrong as that lead to an extended email exchange with Scott Ferris, Director of Recreation, Parks and Waterfront. It turns out the product around the trees only looks like asphalt and is instead a product that is flexible and porous protecting tree roots and letting water run through.
Ferris didn’t say which of the two manufacturers Rubberway https://sustainablesurfacing.com/pervious-pavement or Flexi-pave https://apaicorp.com/kbi.htm Berkeley is using, but the product used at 3120 Eton in 2017 to save a majestic Redwood from having its roots cut to replace damaged concrete is a much closer blend in color to a concrete sidewalk (see photo in google maps https://goo.gl/maps/H9G3E1zg6J7iDt7VA). It has a nice cushy feel when walking on it.
I’ve already emailed all the information Ferris sent to me to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) and the Design Review Committee (DRC). Charles Kahn, architect, on ZAB and DRC emailed he is sharing the information with his group. These products have a lot of potential. According to the websites there are a long list of benefits over asphalt. The most pressing need is to reduce runoff so that when we do get rain it soaks into the ground. Rubberway and Flexi-Pav do just that, let the rain water soak through and filter it too, but they are not just a permeable surface for sidewalks, paths, parking lots and roadways, they are durable, non-toxic, divert tires from landfill and more. Seattle and Washington DC are two cities Ferris named that are using these products.
We still need to change our thinking about trees so that what we plant will support local ecosystems and provide the shade we need from large canopies to reduce heat island effect.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met twice during the week. Councilmember Hahn attended the Monday noon meeting to pump votes and volunteers for yes on Measure L. According to the Yes on L card dropped on my doorstep, Hahn donated $5000.00 to the Yes on L campaign as did Gordon Wozniak. Jesse Arreguin and Raymond Yep both donated $1000.00. John Caner emphasized community members of CCCC represent a variety of opinions. I stand in strong opposition to Measure L.
At the meeting on Wednesday Susi Marzuola from Siegel & Strain gave a presentation from current meetings the consultants from Siegel & Strain have been having with the City. The presentation will be given at a “multi-commission” (Civic Arts, Landmarks and Public Works – now combined with Transportation) meeting at 11 am on Thursday, September 29. A meeting that is yet to appear on the City website. The zoom link sent by CCCC for that 11 am meeting is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81499570453?pwd=Qk9tU3BFbml2bFg0TWlmVGVTeHJGZz09.
Marzuola talked through a long list of slides and presented two considerations for construction of a new 270 seat new city council chamber at either the back of the Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) or in the Civic Center Park at the location of the parking lot connected to 2180 Milvia. CCCC strongly opposed building new city council chambers in the Civic Center Park months ago.
The external seismic buttressing to the Veterans Building which would have added 8000 square feet of usable “back stage” space making the Veterans Building incredibly versatile as a performance center was also rejected in favor of instead upgrading the Maudelle Shirek building to the seismic standard of IO, Immediate Occupancy, the standard used for hospitals and like buildings. The CCCC recommended seismic bracing to just below IO to BPON+ a standard at lower cost which would leave the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans buildings standing and repairable.
New Council Chambers for 270 is an interesting number. Prior to the pandemic the city council was meeting at 1231 Addison Street in the BUSD Board Room which was remodeled to be used jointly by BUSD and City Council. It has seating for 240 members of the public. Most city council meetings have well under 100 attendees frequently even less than 50. When there are contentious items on the agenda as there was at least once during the pandemic, attendance on zoom swelled to over 350.
The pandemic and zoom have really changed how we attend meetings. It is nice to see people in public, meet new people, reconnect, but the convenience of being able to walk over to a computer or carry a device around at home to watch a meeting instead of being trapped in a room all evening for one or two agenda items is the answer many want. Certainly, parents with young kids or really anyone with caregiving responsibilities appreciate being able to tune in for the agenda items that matter to them and still put their kids to bed on time on school nights and not have to pay for a babysitter.
Attending The Color of Water A Policy Discussion, a meeting hosted by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks was a reminder of why I prefer zoom. I spent 55 minutes in transit (driving and parking) for a four-hour meeting that had almost no new information that could have just as easily with less environmental impact been provided 100% via zoom. Just the plastic bags, throw away cups and plates should make anyone cringe with the waste of it all. And, though city council meetings do not provide food or beverages for the public, long meetings do provide meals for council and staff and the rest of us need to bring rations to make it through the usual long evenings.
It looks like the Rebuttal to Argument in Favor of Measure L got it right, “Future Councils will have the freedom to spend much of this money on vanity projects like new Council chambers as has been proposed!” Vincent Casalaina, who opposes Measure L described it this way, “This is money looking for projects, not projects looking for money.”
Every voter should read the East Bay Times editorial from September 3, 2022 regarding Oakland’s Measure U as it could just as easily have been written about Berkeley’s Measure L.
The paragraph that says it all states, “The issue is not whether the city needs more money to fix its badly dilapidated roads. It does. The issue is that, when city leaders ask for new taxes, they need to come with clear budgets that ensure the money will be wisely spent — and data that demonstrate past tax revenues have been used efficiently.” https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/09/03/editorial-oakland-voters-should-reject-850-million-measure-u-bond/
It should come as no surprise there is a long list of elected officials endorsing Measure L, as what elected official doesn’t love money coming with an opened ended list of ideas for spending.
Deb Durant said there are huge developments on the Turtle Island Monument/Fountain planning. The whole thing may be considerably delayed. She will share next time. Previous coverage of the Turtle Island Monument in the Activist Diary covered reporting that the project consultants did not want to hear from the Ohlone/Lisjuan Indians the Monument is supposed to honor.
Erin Diehm mentioned daylighting the creek in the Civic Center Park and that arrangements are still being made to schedule a presentation by Ann Riley. Marzuola was quick to brush this aside. Greening cities is a big movement and per Diehm’s research with Riley there is a lot of grant money available for projects. Watch for announcement of a future meeting on daylighting. After spending a morning in Strawberry Park, the park was packed, daylighting the creek sounds incredibly exciting.
This is a week when I feel like why can’t our devices work like a toaster. Put in the bread turn it on and toast. For us older folks, we remember when appliances just worked by turning them on and when they broke, they went to the repair person for a new cord or new switch or some other little part and lasted for many more years. This week I am hearing about emails and messages getting lost, texts requiring new programs, computers breaking down. It is all at a time with the days to the November election are flying away and there are never enough waking hours to fit everything in. At least Tuesday’s City Council meeting ended at around 8:09 pm.
Council moved everything to consent except technical edits and corrections to the Zoning code. Item 16 under action restoring and improving access to City of Berkeley website https://berkeleyca.gov/ was moved to consent cutting off discussion of the mess that has been created for those of us who search history for past city actions. I put in a specific resolution number into records online and got back pages and pages of documents to sift through (I stopped counting after 200) none of which had the document. I tried using the search option in the new City website which in turn spit out a list of unwanted documents, everything except what I requested.
Item 17. for extending existing contracts for services for the poor for another year instead of requesting new proposals with new cost estimates went to consent without even one word of discussion.
Even the City Auditor was relegated to public comment on the clock instead of giving the Audit Status Report presentation.
So while ending early is nice, cutting off needed discussion and debate, especially discussion that points out problems for which the City Manager bears responsibility, that should leave us to question just exactly why such problems are getting a pass instead of transparency.
The 4:00 pm City Council meeting on housing was a work session with no vote taken. The council received a report on adding “middle’ housing which is duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, these smaller buildings in previous single-family home neighborhoods and recommendations for increasing density in the Southside area for students. The hillside fire zones are exempted from adding density with these smaller multi-unit projects. Evacuating households in the fire zone areas are already a known problem.
Councilmember Harrison asked that housing plans include places for grocery stores instead of more coffee shops and reminded all that the least expensive units are in the buildings we already have (older buildings). Councilmember Hahn focused on that in adding all this lot coverage we need to be looking at green accessible space on the ground open to the public, not just street trees or green roofs that are not accessible at all. There needs to be accessible open green space. Both Hahn and Harrison noted the advantage of creating units inside existing buildings especially older large single-family homes.
The last project reviewed at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was 2065 Kittredge which will demolish the Shattuck Cinemas and most of the former Hinks Building.. When an attendee John D. (I didn’t get his last name) who identified himself as being from the building industry raised his hand, I expected a long dissertation on praises for the building. Instead it was a criticism that the developer is not using union labor and workers did not receive health benefits. Bill Shrader the developer for this building and several others downtown said he builds with an open shop and 40% to 60% are union labor.
Charles Kahn, architect and ZAB member responded that ZAB did not have the authority to require union labor and stated, “I would be ashamed to be a developer that health insurance is not provided.” The project was passed out of ZAB to return to the Design Review Committee to reconsider the color palette, removing the west facing wall section that is black, among other things.
In closing I wish to thank Michelle LePaule for the book recommendation The Privatization of Everthing by Donald Cohen and Alan Mikaelian. This book is fabulous and I will never look at privatization or public private partnerships the same way again. It is a solid reminder of all the great important services provided by government especially in the areas of research, weather, public libraries, education, water and that is just for starters. The authors lay out how privatization and the declarations of efficiency are really taking out the “service” and putting in “profit” and how the “profit” steadily drains away the service harming us all.
The authors call the promise of privatization as less costly and more efficient a false myth and go through example after example.
Cohen and Mikaelian go into detail how privatization actually hinders innovation. Innovation means taking risks that may not pan out. Innovation grows from sharing ideas, successes and failures. In privately held companies, when sharing means that some other company, a competitor might make the discovery or find the solution, then the privatized entity is going to keep innovations proprietary even going so far as to require employees to sign non-disclosure contracts. This even extends to examples of charter schools prohibiting teachers from sharing successful lessons.
There is a lot covered in The Privatization of Everything. It is definitely worth your time and the wait at the library. The library could use a couple more copies.
September 11 and September 18, 2022
Before dipping into the main subject of this Diary, more Ike Kiosks are coming this time to the Gilman District, probably near Tokyo Market on San Pablo and near Gilman and Ninth, also there is interest from Donkey and Goat Winery at Gilman and Fifth for an IKE Kiosk with wifi. Jessica Burton (last name Burton not Brown) and Gaby Ghermezi with IKE have relocated to Hollywood, CA.
The Housing Element Draft Environmental Impact Report is a plan for adding 19,098 housing units in Berkeley not the RHNA 8,934. As stated at the Planning Commission in the presentation, the larger number is to push changing zoning in the City of Berkeley. The Comment Period ends October 17, 2022 at 5 pm. The document including appendices is over 500 pages so don’t wait until the last day to comment.
https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
Mayor Arreguin plans to call a special meeting on September 29 at 5 pm on oversight for the $650,000,000 Bond Measure L. The City of Berkeley has a very poor track record of providing information to commissions to fulfill their oversight responsibilities for current ballot measures. Those opposing Measure L list oversight and reporting a serious issue, but more pressing is the statement in the bond, "These dollar amounts are estimates and are not a commitment or guarantee that any specific amounts will be spent on particular projects or categories of projects.” No amount of declarations or resolutions can cover-up that the Measure L General Obligation Bond has no priority of projects or even defined projects, so it is impossible to hold to account a measure that states it is not a guarantee of anything except, of course, debt for us to pay off.
The Berkeley Neighborhood candidate forums that you missed were recorded and can be reviewed at https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/.
The Personnel Board approved all positions, classifications and pay scales as submitted to the Board from Donald E. Ellison, Interim Director Human Resources and LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager.
Leonard Powell is back on the Council agenda in closed session on Monday, September 19. The attack on Leonard Powell looks very much like a city bent on removing ownership of property from a Black homeowner in South Berkeley. From this corner previous reports of suffering caused to Leonard Powell, it looks like the City should be paying Powell damages for the City’s actions instead of fining Powell for over-priced so-called improvements.
The final design for the parking garage at 2213 Fourth Street with 412 parking spaces was not approved at the Design Review Committee (DRC) meeting and it will be coming back again. The developer did not have the final finishes. This parking garage plus 742 Grayson with 325 parking spaces and 600 Addison with 943 parking spaces will add parking for 1683 vehicles in West Berkeley in Council District 2 represented by Councilmember Terry Taplin.
There was exciting news from the DRC. Mark Schwettmann presented the 747 Bancroft Research and Development Project at Fourth Street. The developer team did meet/contact the Audubon Society and this modern dominant glass façade research and development and light manufacturing building is going to be 100% bird safe glass on all sides with 94% native plants and an Ohlone garden.
Erin Diehm is the person who really brought bird safe glass, dark skies and native plants to city commissions, the DRC and ZAB. I’ve learned a lot from her presentations. The two of us have been attending DRC and ZAB for months commenting on how to improve buildings and reduce the impact on the environment especially birds and supporting ecosystems and habitat. The DRC thanked us especially for how our contributions helped the DRC and developer. I never expect a thank you, but it was nice and Erin Diehm certainly earned the recognition with her deep knowledge and thoughtful comments on ecosystems, habitat and the environment.
Glenn Philips, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society joined the DRC meeting for the discussion of the proposed Bird Safe Ordinance. Approximately 1 billion birds die every year in North America from collisions with glass. Forty-four percent of the collisions are with glass in buildings of one to two stories. That includes houses. Fifty-six percent is with glass in three to eleven story buildings. The challenge ahead is getting to the point where bird safe glass windows are readably available and reasonably priced for new smaller buildings like single family homes and replacement windows.
Saturday, I had the privilege of attending the Sierra Club awards dinner as a member of the Citizens of East Shore Parks Board (CESP). When Mayor John Bauters of Emeryville stepped up to receive the inaugural David McCoard Visionary Award as a visionary leader for safe and healthy Bay Area Communities, he spoke about his connection to trees, how his father planted a tree for each child and that his was an oak that has grown to be three stories tall with a magnificent canopy. He told us that on his first day as mayor the Emeryville Planning Commission agenda included approval for PG&E to cut down fifty-five trees on the premise that the trees were next to a gas line.
Bauters had the item pulled to cut down the trees. On further investigation it was learned that the proximity between the gas line and the trees wasn’t what PG&E portrayed and the trees didn’t need to be cut down.
The way Bauters spoke about trees and immersing in nature in solo backcountry hikes to refresh and rejuvenate from the stresses of his day job was incredibly moving.
Forestry and a healthy watershed was the subject of another conversation during the socializing prior to the award presentations. Matt Turner who is running for EBMUD Ward 7 (Castro Valley, Cherryland, Fairview and parts of Hayward and San Leandro) and I talked for a long time on how current forestry practices need to change. Planting trees like the way corn fields are planted does not work.
Saving trees is no small matter. What trees we plant, how we plant them and how we care for them makes a huge difference in their survival, the place of trees in rejuvenating ecosystems and the shade they provide for our own survival in giving relief from extreme heat events.
Because this city, our City of Berkeley is more concerned with how trees fit into the narrow strip between sidewalks and streets rather than how to design our streets, sidewalks, medians and boulevards to support native trees with the generous canopies we need for the future, the street trees we are getting are non-native small trees that provide little shade and little to no habitat for birds and insects in our neighborhoods. There are native trees being planted in parks that will grow to have large canopies, but mature city trees are cut down with barely a blink of an eye.
The even the narrow square of open soil around trees is too much for BODYROX at the corner of California and University. Someone has surrounded these street trees with asphalt right up to the tree trunk so these trees will get no water, no air to roots and will die. This should be a hefty fine and immediate removal of the asphalt.
Friday was the last day to comment on the draft Environmental Impact Report for 2136 San Pablo, a 123 unit 6-story mixed-use building with 3 live-work units, 50 parking spaces and 10 units set aside for very low-income households. The 10 very-low income units makes this a density bonus project with two extra stories over the zoning limit of four and SB 330 qualified which limits the number of public meetings to five for review the project. The west side backs up to George Florence Park and three street trees, mature sycamores, will be cut down with the project. The sycamores grabbed no more attention than a notation.
Karen Hemphill in her first night on ZAB asked about impact of the project on the neighbors and commented on the number of vacancies along San Pablo and the changes to San Pablo with demolishing older one-story buildings.
The colors selected for the 2136 San Pablo development are lots of deep charcoal gray (the “in” color), terra cotta and very little white. Charles Kahn commented he was tired of gray and asked for “happy colors.”
Berkeley Lab studied the difference in energy demand between heat absorbing dark exterior walls and light-colored reflective walls and published “Can’t Take the Heat? ‘Cool Walls’ Can Reduce Energy Costs, Pollution” on July 9, 2019 by Glenn Roberts Jr. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2019/07/09/cool-walls-can-reduce-energy-costs-pollution/
Charcoal gray is everywhere and exactly the opposite of what is needed for a future of increasing extreme heat events like the one that almost brought down the grid on September 6th. The Office of Emergency Services sent this text alert at 5:48 pm on the 6th,
“Emergency Alert CalOES, Conserve energy now to protect public health and safety. Extreme heat is straining the energy grid. Power interruptions may occur unless you take immediate action. Turn off or reduce nonessential power if health allows, now until 9 pm.”
It was the quick response to the cell phone blast, that plunged power demand by 1.2 gigawatts between 5:50 pm and 5:55 pm saving the grid.
Changing the palate and finishes that are used for buildings may not seem like much especially with the mild bay area weather to which we have grown accustomed, but the cooling San Francisco fog is disappearing. The 2019 updated Berkeley Local Hazard Mitigation Report adopted by Berkeley City Council in December 2019 on B-141 (pdf page 168) gives this warning:
“Extreme heat events will increase in the Bay Area due to climate change in intensity, length, and frequency. By the end of the century, Bay Area residents may average six heat waves annually, which will average a length of ten days. Extreme heat threatens critical infrastructure, air quality, and public health. The urban heat island effect, where built surfaces absorb and retain heat causing higher nighttime temperatures, can exacerbate those health risks.”
The Hazard Mitigation Plan continues with pages B-153, B-154 (pdf page count 180, 181)
“Extreme heat events can be further exacerbated by the urban heat island (UHI) effect, through which densely-built cities like Berkeley experience higher temperatures in comparison to surrounding more rural areas. Factors contributing to the UHI effect include:
· A relative lack of vegetation;
· Reduced air flow;
· An abundance of hard, dark surfaces—such as buildings,[emphasis added] streets, cars and sidewalks— which absorb heat rather than reflect it. These surfaces also slowly release that absorbed heat throughout the night, contributing to warmer nighttime temperatures as well.
The UHI effect can also worsen air quality (particularly ground-level ozone) in urban environments. The UHI effect increases heat-related illnesses and fatalities, particularly after two to three days of extreme heat.”
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/Local-Hazard-Mitigation-Plan-2019.pdf
Walls of six story buildings and taller changing air flow, loss of mature large canopy trees to provide shade and dark surfaces to absorb heat sounds like urban heat island effect on steroids.
The “end of the century” extreme heat event warning is 2019 talk just like the temperature rise of 0.1°C that was supposed to happen each decade was 2011 talk. Instead it is a rise of 0.3°C in one decade. Every science and news report now includes statements about the accelerating speed of glacier melting and the exponential growth of extreme weather events. Lack of emergency action puts the planet on track to cross the temperature rise of 1.5°C by 2030. If what is happening worldwide with global warming of 1.1°C what happens with 1.5°C?
A friend sent this link to an August article in Bloomberg by Brian K. Sullivan, “The World’s Rivers, Canals and Reservoirs Are Turning to Dust Waterways have dried to a trickle thanks to droughts and heat waves that owe their origins to climate change.” If you can open this link the photos are stunning, shocking is probably a better word. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-26/why-are-rivers-drying-up-climate-change-turns-waterways-into-dust?srnd=premium&sref=McB70VY0
What really stuck with me from the heat event of September 6 was not the near miss of bringing down the grid, but the opinion piece by Matthew Bossoms three days later on September 9, 2022 in the New York Times titled “What My Family and I Saw When We Were Trapped in China’s Heat Wave.” The scene he described sounded like it could have come straight out of one of the climate books I’ve read like the End of ice or Uninhabitable Earth, or Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Ministry For the Future. Only this scene wasn’t some “future” heated planet it was right now, raging mountain rivers reduced to a trickle, deep swimming holes barely a foot deep, drying landscapes, withered crops, wildfires, heat stroke and restrictions on electricity that left cities scorching hot and normally cooled malls as hot and humid inside as outside.
In closing, I picked up two books which really go well as a pair, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President and Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.
Trump would be nowhere, just some crazy narcissist on a soap box screaming his perceived victimhood, injustice and being the only person to save us, without his blindly loyal faithful followers and wannabe despots riding his coattails. John Dean and Bob Altemeyer delve into the followers of authoritarians in Authoritarian Nightmare:Trump and His Followers.
My first introduction to Bob Altemeyer and his research is his 2006 book The Authoritarians which you can download for free from his website https://theauthoritarians.org/ While many books I pick up work well as audiobooks, Authoritarian Nightmare really needs to be read as a book in hand (print or ebook) unless you are already familiar with Alemeyer’s research. Altemeyer has a great sense of humor so while reading about RWAs (Right Wing Authoritarians) I was laughing out loud. The appendices include The Power Mad Scale and The Con Man Scale which Altemeyer predicts Trump would achieve a perfect score.
It was listening to a discussion with the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump Brandy X Lee, M.D., M,Div. and what behavior might be expected from someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Collapse (when the narcissist’s image and false reality collapse) that lead me to the second book. The Foreword to the second edition of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump published in March 2019 starts with “Donald Trump is a profound danger to Americans and to the rest of the world. He will remain a profound danger until he is no longer president…” What we are learning is that Donald Trump continues to be a danger after leaving the presidency. At the rally over the weekend in Ohio Trump stepped into full embrace of QAnon. Pictures of attendees in solidarity to QAnon with their arms up with one finger pointing symbolizing the QAnon pledge, “Where We Go 1 We Go All” (WWG1WGA floated across twitter often juxtaposed with pictures of a crowd in the Nazi Salute.
To quote Ken Burns, “The best time to save a democracy is before it’s lost.” Trump stirring up believers in the QAnon conspiracies is not anything to laugh at or dismiss. We are in very serious times.
Another shoe started to drop this week for Trump as Mazars USA Trump’s former accounting firm started turning over financial documents to the House Oversight Committee. Add this to the most prominent legal jeopardies, the investigations by the Department of Justice (DOJ) of the documents at Mar-a-Lago and January 6th attempted coup, the Georgia Criminal investigation, January 6th Hearings, The New York Attorney General Civil Investigation into the Trump organization, the walls are closing in, but will Trump slip through as he always does? MAGA now equals Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.
Before dipping into the main subject of this Diary, more Ike Kiosks are coming this time to the Gilman District, probably near Tokyo Market on San Pablo and near Gilman and Ninth, also there is interest from Donkey and Goat Winery at Gilman and Fifth for an IKE Kiosk with wifi. Jessica Burton (last name Burton not Brown) and Gaby Ghermezi with IKE have relocated to Hollywood, CA.
The Housing Element Draft Environmental Impact Report is a plan for adding 19,098 housing units in Berkeley not the RHNA 8,934. As stated at the Planning Commission in the presentation, the larger number is to push changing zoning in the City of Berkeley. The Comment Period ends October 17, 2022 at 5 pm. The document including appendices is over 500 pages so don’t wait until the last day to comment.
https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
Mayor Arreguin plans to call a special meeting on September 29 at 5 pm on oversight for the $650,000,000 Bond Measure L. The City of Berkeley has a very poor track record of providing information to commissions to fulfill their oversight responsibilities for current ballot measures. Those opposing Measure L list oversight and reporting a serious issue, but more pressing is the statement in the bond, "These dollar amounts are estimates and are not a commitment or guarantee that any specific amounts will be spent on particular projects or categories of projects.” No amount of declarations or resolutions can cover-up that the Measure L General Obligation Bond has no priority of projects or even defined projects, so it is impossible to hold to account a measure that states it is not a guarantee of anything except, of course, debt for us to pay off.
The Berkeley Neighborhood candidate forums that you missed were recorded and can be reviewed at https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/.
The Personnel Board approved all positions, classifications and pay scales as submitted to the Board from Donald E. Ellison, Interim Director Human Resources and LaTanya Bellow, Deputy City Manager.
Leonard Powell is back on the Council agenda in closed session on Monday, September 19. The attack on Leonard Powell looks very much like a city bent on removing ownership of property from a Black homeowner in South Berkeley. From this corner previous reports of suffering caused to Leonard Powell, it looks like the City should be paying Powell damages for the City’s actions instead of fining Powell for over-priced so-called improvements.
The final design for the parking garage at 2213 Fourth Street with 412 parking spaces was not approved at the Design Review Committee (DRC) meeting and it will be coming back again. The developer did not have the final finishes. This parking garage plus 742 Grayson with 325 parking spaces and 600 Addison with 943 parking spaces will add parking for 1683 vehicles in West Berkeley in Council District 2 represented by Councilmember Terry Taplin.
There was exciting news from the DRC. Mark Schwettmann presented the 747 Bancroft Research and Development Project at Fourth Street. The developer team did meet/contact the Audubon Society and this modern dominant glass façade research and development and light manufacturing building is going to be 100% bird safe glass on all sides with 94% native plants and an Ohlone garden.
Erin Diehm is the person who really brought bird safe glass, dark skies and native plants to city commissions, the DRC and ZAB. I’ve learned a lot from her presentations. The two of us have been attending DRC and ZAB for months commenting on how to improve buildings and reduce the impact on the environment especially birds and supporting ecosystems and habitat. The DRC thanked us especially for how our contributions helped the DRC and developer. I never expect a thank you, but it was nice and Erin Diehm certainly earned the recognition with her deep knowledge and thoughtful comments on ecosystems, habitat and the environment.
Glenn Philips, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society joined the DRC meeting for the discussion of the proposed Bird Safe Ordinance. Approximately 1 billion birds die every year in North America from collisions with glass. Forty-four percent of the collisions are with glass in buildings of one to two stories. That includes houses. Fifty-six percent is with glass in three to eleven story buildings. The challenge ahead is getting to the point where bird safe glass windows are readably available and reasonably priced for new smaller buildings like single family homes and replacement windows.
Saturday, I had the privilege of attending the Sierra Club awards dinner as a member of the Citizens of East Shore Parks Board (CESP). When Mayor John Bauters of Emeryville stepped up to receive the inaugural David McCoard Visionary Award as a visionary leader for safe and healthy Bay Area Communities, he spoke about his connection to trees, how his father planted a tree for each child and that his was an oak that has grown to be three stories tall with a magnificent canopy. He told us that on his first day as mayor the Emeryville Planning Commission agenda included approval for PG&E to cut down fifty-five trees on the premise that the trees were next to a gas line.
Bauters had the item pulled to cut down the trees. On further investigation it was learned that the proximity between the gas line and the trees wasn’t what PG&E portrayed and the trees didn’t need to be cut down.
The way Bauters spoke about trees and immersing in nature in solo backcountry hikes to refresh and rejuvenate from the stresses of his day job was incredibly moving.
Forestry and a healthy watershed was the subject of another conversation during the socializing prior to the award presentations. Matt Turner who is running for EBMUD Ward 7 (Castro Valley, Cherryland, Fairview and parts of Hayward and San Leandro) and I talked for a long time on how current forestry practices need to change. Planting trees like the way corn fields are planted does not work.
Saving trees is no small matter. What trees we plant, how we plant them and how we care for them makes a huge difference in their survival, the place of trees in rejuvenating ecosystems and the shade they provide for our own survival in giving relief from extreme heat events.
Because this city, our City of Berkeley is more concerned with how trees fit into the narrow strip between sidewalks and streets rather than how to design our streets, sidewalks, medians and boulevards to support native trees with the generous canopies we need for the future, the street trees we are getting are non-native small trees that provide little shade and little to no habitat for birds and insects in our neighborhoods. There are native trees being planted in parks that will grow to have large canopies, but mature city trees are cut down with barely a blink of an eye.
The even the narrow square of open soil around trees is too much for BODYROX at the corner of California and University. Someone has surrounded these street trees with asphalt right up to the tree trunk so these trees will get no water, no air to roots and will die. This should be a hefty fine and immediate removal of the asphalt.
Friday was the last day to comment on the draft Environmental Impact Report for 2136 San Pablo, a 123 unit 6-story mixed-use building with 3 live-work units, 50 parking spaces and 10 units set aside for very low-income households. The 10 very-low income units makes this a density bonus project with two extra stories over the zoning limit of four and SB 330 qualified which limits the number of public meetings to five for review the project. The west side backs up to George Florence Park and three street trees, mature sycamores, will be cut down with the project. The sycamores grabbed no more attention than a notation.
Karen Hemphill in her first night on ZAB asked about impact of the project on the neighbors and commented on the number of vacancies along San Pablo and the changes to San Pablo with demolishing older one-story buildings.
The colors selected for the 2136 San Pablo development are lots of deep charcoal gray (the “in” color), terra cotta and very little white. Charles Kahn commented he was tired of gray and asked for “happy colors.”
Berkeley Lab studied the difference in energy demand between heat absorbing dark exterior walls and light-colored reflective walls and published “Can’t Take the Heat? ‘Cool Walls’ Can Reduce Energy Costs, Pollution” on July 9, 2019 by Glenn Roberts Jr. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2019/07/09/cool-walls-can-reduce-energy-costs-pollution/
Charcoal gray is everywhere and exactly the opposite of what is needed for a future of increasing extreme heat events like the one that almost brought down the grid on September 6th. The Office of Emergency Services sent this text alert at 5:48 pm on the 6th,
“Emergency Alert CalOES, Conserve energy now to protect public health and safety. Extreme heat is straining the energy grid. Power interruptions may occur unless you take immediate action. Turn off or reduce nonessential power if health allows, now until 9 pm.”
It was the quick response to the cell phone blast, that plunged power demand by 1.2 gigawatts between 5:50 pm and 5:55 pm saving the grid.
Changing the palate and finishes that are used for buildings may not seem like much especially with the mild bay area weather to which we have grown accustomed, but the cooling San Francisco fog is disappearing. The 2019 updated Berkeley Local Hazard Mitigation Report adopted by Berkeley City Council in December 2019 on B-141 (pdf page 168) gives this warning:
“Extreme heat events will increase in the Bay Area due to climate change in intensity, length, and frequency. By the end of the century, Bay Area residents may average six heat waves annually, which will average a length of ten days. Extreme heat threatens critical infrastructure, air quality, and public health. The urban heat island effect, where built surfaces absorb and retain heat causing higher nighttime temperatures, can exacerbate those health risks.”
The Hazard Mitigation Plan continues with pages B-153, B-154 (pdf page count 180, 181)
“Extreme heat events can be further exacerbated by the urban heat island (UHI) effect, through which densely-built cities like Berkeley experience higher temperatures in comparison to surrounding more rural areas. Factors contributing to the UHI effect include:
· A relative lack of vegetation;
· Reduced air flow;
· An abundance of hard, dark surfaces—such as buildings,[emphasis added] streets, cars and sidewalks— which absorb heat rather than reflect it. These surfaces also slowly release that absorbed heat throughout the night, contributing to warmer nighttime temperatures as well.
The UHI effect can also worsen air quality (particularly ground-level ozone) in urban environments. The UHI effect increases heat-related illnesses and fatalities, particularly after two to three days of extreme heat.”
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-01/Local-Hazard-Mitigation-Plan-2019.pdf
Walls of six story buildings and taller changing air flow, loss of mature large canopy trees to provide shade and dark surfaces to absorb heat sounds like urban heat island effect on steroids.
The “end of the century” extreme heat event warning is 2019 talk just like the temperature rise of 0.1°C that was supposed to happen each decade was 2011 talk. Instead it is a rise of 0.3°C in one decade. Every science and news report now includes statements about the accelerating speed of glacier melting and the exponential growth of extreme weather events. Lack of emergency action puts the planet on track to cross the temperature rise of 1.5°C by 2030. If what is happening worldwide with global warming of 1.1°C what happens with 1.5°C?
A friend sent this link to an August article in Bloomberg by Brian K. Sullivan, “The World’s Rivers, Canals and Reservoirs Are Turning to Dust Waterways have dried to a trickle thanks to droughts and heat waves that owe their origins to climate change.” If you can open this link the photos are stunning, shocking is probably a better word. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-26/why-are-rivers-drying-up-climate-change-turns-waterways-into-dust?srnd=premium&sref=McB70VY0
What really stuck with me from the heat event of September 6 was not the near miss of bringing down the grid, but the opinion piece by Matthew Bossoms three days later on September 9, 2022 in the New York Times titled “What My Family and I Saw When We Were Trapped in China’s Heat Wave.” The scene he described sounded like it could have come straight out of one of the climate books I’ve read like the End of ice or Uninhabitable Earth, or Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel Ministry For the Future. Only this scene wasn’t some “future” heated planet it was right now, raging mountain rivers reduced to a trickle, deep swimming holes barely a foot deep, drying landscapes, withered crops, wildfires, heat stroke and restrictions on electricity that left cities scorching hot and normally cooled malls as hot and humid inside as outside.
In closing, I picked up two books which really go well as a pair, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President and Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.
Trump would be nowhere, just some crazy narcissist on a soap box screaming his perceived victimhood, injustice and being the only person to save us, without his blindly loyal faithful followers and wannabe despots riding his coattails. John Dean and Bob Altemeyer delve into the followers of authoritarians in Authoritarian Nightmare:Trump and His Followers.
My first introduction to Bob Altemeyer and his research is his 2006 book The Authoritarians which you can download for free from his website https://theauthoritarians.org/ While many books I pick up work well as audiobooks, Authoritarian Nightmare really needs to be read as a book in hand (print or ebook) unless you are already familiar with Alemeyer’s research. Altemeyer has a great sense of humor so while reading about RWAs (Right Wing Authoritarians) I was laughing out loud. The appendices include The Power Mad Scale and The Con Man Scale which Altemeyer predicts Trump would achieve a perfect score.
It was listening to a discussion with the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump Brandy X Lee, M.D., M,Div. and what behavior might be expected from someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Collapse (when the narcissist’s image and false reality collapse) that lead me to the second book. The Foreword to the second edition of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump published in March 2019 starts with “Donald Trump is a profound danger to Americans and to the rest of the world. He will remain a profound danger until he is no longer president…” What we are learning is that Donald Trump continues to be a danger after leaving the presidency. At the rally over the weekend in Ohio Trump stepped into full embrace of QAnon. Pictures of attendees in solidarity to QAnon with their arms up with one finger pointing symbolizing the QAnon pledge, “Where We Go 1 We Go All” (WWG1WGA floated across twitter often juxtaposed with pictures of a crowd in the Nazi Salute.
To quote Ken Burns, “The best time to save a democracy is before it’s lost.” Trump stirring up believers in the QAnon conspiracies is not anything to laugh at or dismiss. We are in very serious times.
Another shoe started to drop this week for Trump as Mazars USA Trump’s former accounting firm started turning over financial documents to the House Oversight Committee. Add this to the most prominent legal jeopardies, the investigations by the Department of Justice (DOJ) of the documents at Mar-a-Lago and January 6th attempted coup, the Georgia Criminal investigation, January 6th Hearings, The New York Attorney General Civil Investigation into the Trump organization, the walls are closing in, but will Trump slip through as he always does? MAGA now equals Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.
August 28 & September 4, 2022
As September begins and the last days of summer slip away, I am wishing I had taken off to some place interesting in August. I took sort of a staycation with good intentions of continuing weekly Diaries, but good intentions slid into combining the last two weeks of August meetings into this one Diary for September 4.
It is going to be a while longer before City Council goes back to hybrid meetings. City Council did meet August 23rd for 20 minutes and voted yes on the singular issue to renew continuing virtual meetings. There were 11 attendees with all, but one speaker requesting a return to hybrid council meetings.
The Mental Health Commission met August 23rd in the evening and it felt more like watching a group therapy session with commissioners filling the role of de-escalation and therapists. Andrea Prichett and Edward Opton were on the agenda for reappointment and in the end the vote was to reappoint both commissioners without dissent, but the reappointment vote came after a rather ugly public grilling. It is unknown to those of us attending what set off the Chair Margaret Fine, but Ed Opton resonded this way, “ Ms Pritchett and I were not prepared for this kind of hostile grilling, nothing in the conversations until tonight [indicated] that Ms Pritchett or myself would be cross examined in this way” Opton went further to call the experience “unduly hostile.” Mary Lee Smith commented, “I feel like a lot of harm has been done, there needs to be repair…”
At the Agenda Committee, Councilmember Taplin’s request for an information report on alternatives to chemical agents for response to violent large-scale crowd scenarios was referred to the Public Safety Committee and his item on an establishing an ordinance allowing efficiency units as small as 150 square feet instead of the current limit of 350 square feet was moved to action. Vision 2050 was removed from the proposed agenda by the City Manager. The final agenda for September 13th includes rezoning for R&D, safe streets, red curbing in fire zones, surveillance reports, homekey and much more.
At the PG&E webinar to reduce wildfire risk, it was learned that PG&E cuts down over a million trees per year near or impinging on power lines. Trees are chipped and then “turned into electricity” which means they are burned. The greenwashing term is biofuel, but there is nothing green about chopping up and burning trees. Between wildfire, beef and toilet paper (Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and Georgia-Pacific are the worst), we are losing our forests worldwide. And, while thinking about forests being chopped down to flush down the toilet, don’t forget those convenient disposable diapers are made from trees too and take up to 500 years to decompose in landfill. Is it time for cloth again?
The City and Visit Berkeley have plans to add 10 more IKE Kiosks to the Downtown. That is in addition to the five that are already installed. While Councilmember Harrison expressed her enthusiasm for the Ike Kiosks, she objected to adding ten more in the downtown.
Helen Walsh had lots of comments and questions about IKE Kiosks. Walsh, who is a member of the Commission on Disability and low vision herself, commented that Berkeley has a large disabled population and asked, “How does it benefit me?” Walsh likened the IKE to a brick on a corner and asked, who is in charge of the content accessible to a screen reader, are there text changes for low vision, is the content following global accessibility standards, what are the accommodations for users of screen readers? When Jessica Brown representing IKE said they worked with the Federation for the Blind, Walsh responded that Federation for the Blind does not represent all disabilities. From the non-answers to Walsh’s questions by Jessica Brown - IKE, Jeffrey Church – Visit Berkeley and Kirin Slaughter – CoB Office of Economic Development it might be said IKE Kiosks are seriously deficient when it comes to doing the research and providing equity for persons with disabilities.
Walsh also suggested since the IKEs have power, a possible benefit to the public would be an outlet for charging power wheelchairs and devices. Brown responded that had been considered by IKE and rejected, because they decided such charging services would bring loitering. Slaughter said charging stations were being considered for other locations. It seems pretty obvious it is the poor and homeless who could really benefit from access to charging and they are the same people who are not wanted around the electronic billboards except to find the screen on homeless services and shelter bed counts.
The logical places for the Kiosks are at bus/transit stops, but that creates a problem with access for queuing and boarding.
The next Ike Kiosk meeting is virtual on Wednesday, September 7 at 2pm to plan placement for IKE Kiosks in the Gillman District.
Thursday afternoon, September 1, felt like the first honest conversation among WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) board members and staff regarding ferry service and the challenges to attracting riders. People who can work remotely are not returning to the office more than a couple days a week if at all. Commuter riders are not returning. The first and last mile, getting to and from a ferry to the desired destination is a problem. Ferries are just not in convenient locations. To say ridership has returned to 75% of pre-pandemic as reported by staff was challenged by the chair pointing out it is just not supported by the rider charts. Why does this matter? Berkeley is still plowing ahead with plans for ferry service. Last heard the expectation is robust demand. And, WETA just completed a special session on an aggressive plan for expansion which was absent how it would be financed. Financing is supposed to be covered in a later session, but on September 1, they modified their advertising condition as was stated, “we need the money.”
It looks like the involvement of the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) is making the difference in resolving the complaints from tenants of Harriet Tubman Terrace. In July, tenants brought their complaints about construction work quality, debris, the manner in which tenants were relocated for construction and treatment while their apartments were being refurbished. Not every complaint is resolved yet, but Cassandra Palanza, Asset Manager, for Foundation Housing was able to report the actions taken and there appears to be good progress since July.
The Wildfire Evacuation Workshop: Building Your Fire Weather Plan was rather poorly attended with little more than a handful of attendees, which was unfortunate. The workshop by Khin Chin was really very good. There will be a workshop on home hardening in the coming weeks, watch for it. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/fire/fire-weather-evacuation
Every eight years the State of California projects future population growth and estimates how much new housing is needed to accommodate all those new bodies. The process by which the housing is distributed around the state is called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). The Housing Element is the plan each city (or county for rural areas) of where to put all those new housing units.
The topic of speaker Michael Barnes for Community Catalysts for Local Control was “How California’s Sixth Cycle of the RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) was Rigged.“ Barnes’ message was that the proposed number of housing units cities are assigned to build are deliberately high and unachievable. This sets cities up for failure. When cities aren’t meeting the mandated targets by the fourth year of the RHNA cycle (the next cycle is 2023 – 2031), the review/approval process becomes “streamlined ministerial” AKA by-right. This means the project developer is no longer subject to the public review process.
Some see ministerial / by-right approvals for large multi-unit, mixed-use (apartment buildings with commercial space at street level) as a big step in the right direction. Our state Senator, Nancy Skinner and Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks are on that train. As a regular attendee of the Zoning Adjustment Board and Design Review Committee meetings, there are most often significant positive changes in design from the review process and public input. Two of us Erin Diehm especially and myself have been successful in shifting landscape plans to native plants, increasing permeable paving and other measures that improve habitat and ecosystem survival.
My personal view is this city is not doing enough right now in architectural design, land use and landscape planning requirements to prepare us for a hotter more unpredictable climate future. Those opportunities are missed now with every project and will be even worse with projects skipping over reviews and cutting corners to the extent possible to squeeze out the maximum profit while staying within building and zoning codes.
Since I don’t attend statewide meetings, I can’t report whether or not the projected population growth and resulting allocation of new housing is based in a nefarious scheme. But, it should be asked how do the projections of population growth in California fit with the actual decrease as exemplified by the 2020 census and the loss of a congressional seat?
Many cities have joined in legal action opposing the RHNA allocations. Berkeley did not join. After all, our mayor, Jesse Arreguin is President of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) the organization tasked with distributing the RHNA allocations for the nine Bay area Counties and Arreguin headed the ABAG Housing Methodology Committee which determined the final housing allocation and the 8934 units assigned to Berkeley to construct in its 10.5 square miles. Our next door neighbor, Richmond with 52.5 square miles and many areas along transit corridors that would benefit from increased density is assigned 3614 units. https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-04/Final_RHNA_Methodology_Report_2023-2031_March2022_Update.pdf
The consequences of failing to meet the RHNA allocation is set in California Senate Bill 35 and what makes SB 35 worse is that the ministerial approval kicks in based on the number of units in the building permits that are pulled / exercised, not the number of units in the projects approved. Meaning that a city can approve stacks of new buildings, but if the owner of those projects decides to sit and not build the city falls into failing to meet the assigned RHNA allocation. Barnes hinted to expect a slowdown in building application permits until the halfway mark in the cycle so that the ministerial approval condition is triggered.
Berkeley’s RHNA allocation for the next cycle years of 2023 – 2031 is 8,934 new housing units. Which includes 2446 very low-income units (<50% of Area Median Income – AMI), 1408 low income units (50 - 80% AMI), 1416 moderate income units (80 – 120% AMI) and 3664 above moderate income (>120% AMI). According to these numbers, 43% of new housing is supposed to be for households earning less than 80% of AMI.
Berkeley did not meet the mandated RHNA targets for new very low and low-income household units in the current RHNA cycle (2015 – 2023) and as a consequence is already on the list for ministerial approval of projects with 50% (or more) of the units allocated to household incomes with less than 80% AMI (Area Median Income).
If all these numbers are meaningless check the charts on income by household size and matching “affordable” rents.
Berkeley ran by the RHNA quota for building new market rate housing and escaped ministerial approval for building market rate projects, however, Berkeley is subject to SB 330 from our State Senator Nancy Skinner (signed into law 2019) which limits public review of projects meeting the criteria of SB 330 to 5 meetings. If you attend projects going through the city review process, you will hear staff keeping tabs on the number of meetings. Five meetings is a limiting factor in the review of the 8-story student housing project at 2065 Kittredge with a plan that the Landmarks Preservation Commission found disappointing
WHAT YOU DO NOT SEE on the home page of the Berkeley City website is that the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the RHNA cycle 2023 – 2031 Housing Element was just released Tuesday, August 30th for public comment/response. We have until October 17, 2022 at 5 pm to make our way through the 441 page report and the 108 pages of Appendices to submit comments. https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
The DEIR underlies the Housing Element, basically where are we going to put the 8934 new units. The DEIR is the singular action item at the Planning Commission on September 7.
Fixing the broken access to city records with the new city website is expected to be on the September 20th City Council regular meeting agenda.
Compiling the list of upcoming city meetings for the Activist’s Calendar means I am in the new city website a lot and that is giving way to emails asking for help in finding city documents. One request was for how to find older council video recordings. After taking a rather circuitous route I found the non-obvious answer, go to “your government” then to “city council” look to the list of choices on the right and go to “participating in City Council meetings” then look for “recorded videos” in the last paragraph under “make a plan to participate.” Click on “recorded videos” and you will have access to council videos for the last 10 years.
Most people in Berkeley don’t care about these things, but for those of us who are monitoring city actions and looking up past history, the new website and “records online” can easily turn into hours lost in record searches and all too often a dead end.
In closing my read of the week was An Immense World: How Animal senses Reveal Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong. It is a dense read in print or ebook, but as an audiobook, I found it absolutely delightful filled with descriptions of how animals, creatures large and small perceive the world. It starts with dogs and how they explore the world through their nose, something any dog owner learns quickly in taking a dog for a walk. That is just the beginning.
The chapters are organized by senses with marvelous stories of how creatures navigate their umwelt (environment) through their special highly developed senses and communication. The book is filled with constant surprises, like whales using echo/sonar low pitched sound that can travel up to 13,000 miles (if measured) to navigate the ocean, male moths with eyes around their penis for mating, the star-nosed mole that explores tunnels through touch with fingerlike extensions from its nose. There is so much to appreciate in the animal world around us.
Edmund Soon-Weng Yong, the author, narrated the book. Yong is a Malaysian-born British Science journalist with, of course, a British accent.
As September begins and the last days of summer slip away, I am wishing I had taken off to some place interesting in August. I took sort of a staycation with good intentions of continuing weekly Diaries, but good intentions slid into combining the last two weeks of August meetings into this one Diary for September 4.
It is going to be a while longer before City Council goes back to hybrid meetings. City Council did meet August 23rd for 20 minutes and voted yes on the singular issue to renew continuing virtual meetings. There were 11 attendees with all, but one speaker requesting a return to hybrid council meetings.
The Mental Health Commission met August 23rd in the evening and it felt more like watching a group therapy session with commissioners filling the role of de-escalation and therapists. Andrea Prichett and Edward Opton were on the agenda for reappointment and in the end the vote was to reappoint both commissioners without dissent, but the reappointment vote came after a rather ugly public grilling. It is unknown to those of us attending what set off the Chair Margaret Fine, but Ed Opton resonded this way, “ Ms Pritchett and I were not prepared for this kind of hostile grilling, nothing in the conversations until tonight [indicated] that Ms Pritchett or myself would be cross examined in this way” Opton went further to call the experience “unduly hostile.” Mary Lee Smith commented, “I feel like a lot of harm has been done, there needs to be repair…”
At the Agenda Committee, Councilmember Taplin’s request for an information report on alternatives to chemical agents for response to violent large-scale crowd scenarios was referred to the Public Safety Committee and his item on an establishing an ordinance allowing efficiency units as small as 150 square feet instead of the current limit of 350 square feet was moved to action. Vision 2050 was removed from the proposed agenda by the City Manager. The final agenda for September 13th includes rezoning for R&D, safe streets, red curbing in fire zones, surveillance reports, homekey and much more.
At the PG&E webinar to reduce wildfire risk, it was learned that PG&E cuts down over a million trees per year near or impinging on power lines. Trees are chipped and then “turned into electricity” which means they are burned. The greenwashing term is biofuel, but there is nothing green about chopping up and burning trees. Between wildfire, beef and toilet paper (Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and Georgia-Pacific are the worst), we are losing our forests worldwide. And, while thinking about forests being chopped down to flush down the toilet, don’t forget those convenient disposable diapers are made from trees too and take up to 500 years to decompose in landfill. Is it time for cloth again?
The City and Visit Berkeley have plans to add 10 more IKE Kiosks to the Downtown. That is in addition to the five that are already installed. While Councilmember Harrison expressed her enthusiasm for the Ike Kiosks, she objected to adding ten more in the downtown.
Helen Walsh had lots of comments and questions about IKE Kiosks. Walsh, who is a member of the Commission on Disability and low vision herself, commented that Berkeley has a large disabled population and asked, “How does it benefit me?” Walsh likened the IKE to a brick on a corner and asked, who is in charge of the content accessible to a screen reader, are there text changes for low vision, is the content following global accessibility standards, what are the accommodations for users of screen readers? When Jessica Brown representing IKE said they worked with the Federation for the Blind, Walsh responded that Federation for the Blind does not represent all disabilities. From the non-answers to Walsh’s questions by Jessica Brown - IKE, Jeffrey Church – Visit Berkeley and Kirin Slaughter – CoB Office of Economic Development it might be said IKE Kiosks are seriously deficient when it comes to doing the research and providing equity for persons with disabilities.
Walsh also suggested since the IKEs have power, a possible benefit to the public would be an outlet for charging power wheelchairs and devices. Brown responded that had been considered by IKE and rejected, because they decided such charging services would bring loitering. Slaughter said charging stations were being considered for other locations. It seems pretty obvious it is the poor and homeless who could really benefit from access to charging and they are the same people who are not wanted around the electronic billboards except to find the screen on homeless services and shelter bed counts.
The logical places for the Kiosks are at bus/transit stops, but that creates a problem with access for queuing and boarding.
The next Ike Kiosk meeting is virtual on Wednesday, September 7 at 2pm to plan placement for IKE Kiosks in the Gillman District.
Thursday afternoon, September 1, felt like the first honest conversation among WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) board members and staff regarding ferry service and the challenges to attracting riders. People who can work remotely are not returning to the office more than a couple days a week if at all. Commuter riders are not returning. The first and last mile, getting to and from a ferry to the desired destination is a problem. Ferries are just not in convenient locations. To say ridership has returned to 75% of pre-pandemic as reported by staff was challenged by the chair pointing out it is just not supported by the rider charts. Why does this matter? Berkeley is still plowing ahead with plans for ferry service. Last heard the expectation is robust demand. And, WETA just completed a special session on an aggressive plan for expansion which was absent how it would be financed. Financing is supposed to be covered in a later session, but on September 1, they modified their advertising condition as was stated, “we need the money.”
It looks like the involvement of the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) is making the difference in resolving the complaints from tenants of Harriet Tubman Terrace. In July, tenants brought their complaints about construction work quality, debris, the manner in which tenants were relocated for construction and treatment while their apartments were being refurbished. Not every complaint is resolved yet, but Cassandra Palanza, Asset Manager, for Foundation Housing was able to report the actions taken and there appears to be good progress since July.
The Wildfire Evacuation Workshop: Building Your Fire Weather Plan was rather poorly attended with little more than a handful of attendees, which was unfortunate. The workshop by Khin Chin was really very good. There will be a workshop on home hardening in the coming weeks, watch for it. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/fire/fire-weather-evacuation
Every eight years the State of California projects future population growth and estimates how much new housing is needed to accommodate all those new bodies. The process by which the housing is distributed around the state is called the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). The Housing Element is the plan each city (or county for rural areas) of where to put all those new housing units.
The topic of speaker Michael Barnes for Community Catalysts for Local Control was “How California’s Sixth Cycle of the RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) was Rigged.“ Barnes’ message was that the proposed number of housing units cities are assigned to build are deliberately high and unachievable. This sets cities up for failure. When cities aren’t meeting the mandated targets by the fourth year of the RHNA cycle (the next cycle is 2023 – 2031), the review/approval process becomes “streamlined ministerial” AKA by-right. This means the project developer is no longer subject to the public review process.
Some see ministerial / by-right approvals for large multi-unit, mixed-use (apartment buildings with commercial space at street level) as a big step in the right direction. Our state Senator, Nancy Skinner and Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks are on that train. As a regular attendee of the Zoning Adjustment Board and Design Review Committee meetings, there are most often significant positive changes in design from the review process and public input. Two of us Erin Diehm especially and myself have been successful in shifting landscape plans to native plants, increasing permeable paving and other measures that improve habitat and ecosystem survival.
My personal view is this city is not doing enough right now in architectural design, land use and landscape planning requirements to prepare us for a hotter more unpredictable climate future. Those opportunities are missed now with every project and will be even worse with projects skipping over reviews and cutting corners to the extent possible to squeeze out the maximum profit while staying within building and zoning codes.
Since I don’t attend statewide meetings, I can’t report whether or not the projected population growth and resulting allocation of new housing is based in a nefarious scheme. But, it should be asked how do the projections of population growth in California fit with the actual decrease as exemplified by the 2020 census and the loss of a congressional seat?
Many cities have joined in legal action opposing the RHNA allocations. Berkeley did not join. After all, our mayor, Jesse Arreguin is President of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) the organization tasked with distributing the RHNA allocations for the nine Bay area Counties and Arreguin headed the ABAG Housing Methodology Committee which determined the final housing allocation and the 8934 units assigned to Berkeley to construct in its 10.5 square miles. Our next door neighbor, Richmond with 52.5 square miles and many areas along transit corridors that would benefit from increased density is assigned 3614 units. https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-04/Final_RHNA_Methodology_Report_2023-2031_March2022_Update.pdf
The consequences of failing to meet the RHNA allocation is set in California Senate Bill 35 and what makes SB 35 worse is that the ministerial approval kicks in based on the number of units in the building permits that are pulled / exercised, not the number of units in the projects approved. Meaning that a city can approve stacks of new buildings, but if the owner of those projects decides to sit and not build the city falls into failing to meet the assigned RHNA allocation. Barnes hinted to expect a slowdown in building application permits until the halfway mark in the cycle so that the ministerial approval condition is triggered.
Berkeley’s RHNA allocation for the next cycle years of 2023 – 2031 is 8,934 new housing units. Which includes 2446 very low-income units (<50% of Area Median Income – AMI), 1408 low income units (50 - 80% AMI), 1416 moderate income units (80 – 120% AMI) and 3664 above moderate income (>120% AMI). According to these numbers, 43% of new housing is supposed to be for households earning less than 80% of AMI.
Berkeley did not meet the mandated RHNA targets for new very low and low-income household units in the current RHNA cycle (2015 – 2023) and as a consequence is already on the list for ministerial approval of projects with 50% (or more) of the units allocated to household incomes with less than 80% AMI (Area Median Income).
If all these numbers are meaningless check the charts on income by household size and matching “affordable” rents.
Berkeley ran by the RHNA quota for building new market rate housing and escaped ministerial approval for building market rate projects, however, Berkeley is subject to SB 330 from our State Senator Nancy Skinner (signed into law 2019) which limits public review of projects meeting the criteria of SB 330 to 5 meetings. If you attend projects going through the city review process, you will hear staff keeping tabs on the number of meetings. Five meetings is a limiting factor in the review of the 8-story student housing project at 2065 Kittredge with a plan that the Landmarks Preservation Commission found disappointing
WHAT YOU DO NOT SEE on the home page of the Berkeley City website is that the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the RHNA cycle 2023 – 2031 Housing Element was just released Tuesday, August 30th for public comment/response. We have until October 17, 2022 at 5 pm to make our way through the 441 page report and the 108 pages of Appendices to submit comments. https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/land-use-development/general-plan-and-area-plans/housing-element-update
The DEIR underlies the Housing Element, basically where are we going to put the 8934 new units. The DEIR is the singular action item at the Planning Commission on September 7.
Fixing the broken access to city records with the new city website is expected to be on the September 20th City Council regular meeting agenda.
Compiling the list of upcoming city meetings for the Activist’s Calendar means I am in the new city website a lot and that is giving way to emails asking for help in finding city documents. One request was for how to find older council video recordings. After taking a rather circuitous route I found the non-obvious answer, go to “your government” then to “city council” look to the list of choices on the right and go to “participating in City Council meetings” then look for “recorded videos” in the last paragraph under “make a plan to participate.” Click on “recorded videos” and you will have access to council videos for the last 10 years.
Most people in Berkeley don’t care about these things, but for those of us who are monitoring city actions and looking up past history, the new website and “records online” can easily turn into hours lost in record searches and all too often a dead end.
In closing my read of the week was An Immense World: How Animal senses Reveal Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong. It is a dense read in print or ebook, but as an audiobook, I found it absolutely delightful filled with descriptions of how animals, creatures large and small perceive the world. It starts with dogs and how they explore the world through their nose, something any dog owner learns quickly in taking a dog for a walk. That is just the beginning.
The chapters are organized by senses with marvelous stories of how creatures navigate their umwelt (environment) through their special highly developed senses and communication. The book is filled with constant surprises, like whales using echo/sonar low pitched sound that can travel up to 13,000 miles (if measured) to navigate the ocean, male moths with eyes around their penis for mating, the star-nosed mole that explores tunnels through touch with fingerlike extensions from its nose. There is so much to appreciate in the animal world around us.
Edmund Soon-Weng Yong, the author, narrated the book. Yong is a Malaysian-born British Science journalist with, of course, a British accent.
August 21, 2022
A couple of months ago I heard the buzz of saws and found that the magnificent tree with an incredible canopy that provided much appreciated summer shade was coming down. I watched as the large healthy tree with a thick trunk probably near 100 years old, the age of the houses on this block was fed into the chipper. I couldn’t stop thinking about what a waste it was to grind up a trunk that could have been milled into lumber for any number of projects.
Margo Schueler took a different approach when she had to remove what she called a wonderful tree, a canary pine and wrote it up in NextDoor.
“Last month we had a large non-native pine taken down from our West Berkeley home. There were many compelling reasons to remove this wonderful tree but we had struggled with this decision for over decade. Fortunately, we found Mike Hudson on Nextdoor and he was able to mill 5 - 10 foot sections into wonderful lumber now drying in stacks for future building. Cost 65% of the bid to grind and dispose of the tree. Very happy with this direction. Even happier on reading the article below - “Reforestation Hubs” Are Saving Urban Trees From Heading to Landfills Did you know that the US is losing 36 million [urban] trees every year? Several organizations have stepped up with creative solutions to save the wood, reduce carbon emissions and create jobs. “More wood from cities goes into landfills than is harvested from US National Forests,” says J. Morgan Grove, a research forester at Baltimore Field Station, USDA Forest Service. Thank you Mike!” (picture from Margo Scheuler)
I went to see the stacked drying wood for myself, amazing!
The damage and destruction to Peoples Park is still painful no matter how it settles, but if those magnificent trees were turned into wood for housing that would at least be more palatable than piles of wood chips. When I spoke with Margo about milling the tree instead of chipping, she told me Mike Hudson told her he had offered to mill the redwood trees whose roots were destroyed (a condition of the approval was to preserve the trees) by the developer for the 1698 University mixed-use project at McGee. The developer refused the offer, because it would take two days to mill the trees into lumbar so the trees were chipped. That was in August 2018. The project still isn’t finished four years later from all appearances. Something is very wrong with this picture when a developer couldn’t stop for two days out of four years to turn redwood trees into usable lumber. And, something is very wrong with a city and a university that doesn’t have a vision and requirement to change this course and whose only solution is landfill and piles of mulch.
From doing a little reading there is a lot of resistance to turning urban trees into lumbar that are cut down to make way for developments, expansion or to remove them because of their growing size and proximity to existing structures. Berkeley was cutting down trees to rehab streets until neighborhoods rose up in objection.
I wish this were the end of the story. The article referenced by Scheuler has a list of resources, that I have yet to check out. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/reforestation-hubs-are-saving-urban-trees-from-heading-to-landfills?utm_source=Next+City+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c28eb8580f-DailyNL_2022_05_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcee5bf7a0-c28eb8580f-44126641 This morning before I could hit fast forward, the ad for Aspiration.com https://www.aspiration.com/ started to play. It is a promotion for a credit card that theoretically offsets destructive anti-environment choices and behavior with planting a tree with a credit card swipe. The message, make all that spending feel good. I might have been taken in by such an ad if I didn’t know most of these programs are a failure as far as the trees go. There is a lot more available on the nature of trees and forests, but a good start is listening to The Daily, The Sunday Read: ‘Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?’ https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS81NG5BR2NJbA/episode/MTg2MDZjOWMtNzRmMS00NTI1LThjYTMtOTQzOTNjYTUzMGY0?hl=en
Saving the world and planting trees requires more than a swipe of a credit card and sticking seedlings in the ground. If those seedlings even survive at all is a big question. At the top of the list should be whether the location selected is appropriate for trees and does the tree species selected support the local ecosystem, meaning is the tree native to the area and will the tree support native birds and insects. Then there is ongoing care for the first three years or so when a seedling or young tree is taking root.
Even here in Berkeley with a tree planting grant, it is not guaranteed that the trees selected and planted support local ecosystems. The city is following up with care for the critical early years of the newly planted trees, but I wonder about the “younger” trees that are already here that look to be suffering and dying from the drought especially in the Sacramento Street median.
The first project reviewed at the Thursday Design Review Committee (DRC) was a 5-story mixed-use building at 1820 San Pablo between Hearst and Delaware, the location of the former Albatross Bar. To understand how the building is allowed 5 stories when the permitted number for this location is 4 stories, this additional floor is the reward known as a “density bonus” for designating 4 units as very low income in a base project of 33 units. Setting aside four units for very low-income households, the project gained a density bonus of 11 more units and another floor making the total five floors and 44 dwelling units.
Brad Gunkel, the architect, for 1820 San Pablo was trying to add design interest so this 5-story block would not look like just another BUB (big ugly box). What Gunkel thought would be a nice addition to the design, untreated wood starting on the third floor for the northern third of the building facing San Pablo was the subject of considerable objection first noted by West Berkeley resident Phil Allen and then the DRC members. All agreed that the untreated wood would not age nicely as Gunkel described and would instead deteriorate within a few years and require replacement. Charles Kahn DRC member gave his concern stating that, “rather than being a gift to the neighborhood, that this would degrade and would be more a curse…” The DRC voted unanimously to continue review with a list of requested revisions and modifications to be incorporated before proceeding to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB).
The second DRC project at 2403 San Pablo at Channing, the former Omega Salvage Store, is a co-housing condominium project with 1, 2 and 3-bedroom units for a total of 36 units, with a large communal kitchen and great room and over 10,000 square feet of open space (six times more than required) designed by the people who plan to live there and are looking toward a future of aging in place. It is a lovely project and passed out of committee with an ask to make the San Pablo ground floor exterior more interesting. My vote would be to add a mural.
Committee member Steve Finacom said this about the co-housing project, “I’m very positive about this and I wish we saw more projects like this in terms of massing and setback and height, because all the issues that come up in previous in most of the projects we see the huge buildings built at property line that overshadow neighbors and that don’t have any real open space and that’s all addressed here…”
My neighbor who normally doesn’t follow projects, though he hears a fair amount of complaining about them from me, took a cruise through recent projects approved by ZAB with the two R & D projects in West Berkeley grabbing his attention. He commented, “why are they building parking lots for people to drive to work instead of housing so they can walk, I bet there is a lot of housing that could go up instead of those parking lots…” He is right.
There was a lot of complaining about the parking lots when the projects were being reviewed, but none of us thought to suggest that housing ought to go on the sites instead of cars. That won’t happen next time, but to actually require housing instead of parking lots, that demands city action. And, city action invariably falls into the cycle of referrals to the city manager and the Planning Commission whose agenda is tightly controlled by the Planning Department where little bubbles up.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met on Monday with Mayor Arreguin invited to discuss the $650,000,000 general obligation bond that will be on the November ballot. It wasn’t really clear what passing the bond would mean for restoring the Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and the Veterans Buildings. The mayor started with enthusiasm for raising funds and said the revitalization “could” be funded with the bond, but then diverged to tapping Congresswoman Barbara Lee for $50 million for the Civic Center as being reasonable. It was all pretty “vague” with the list of other things for bond spending like “complete streets” bike and pedestrian plans, sidewalks, waterfront, etc.
Arreguin said the bond package would be spread over 48 years instead of the usual 30 to bring down the cost to $40.91 for each $100,000 of assessed value. This is the projected annual cost to property owners not total cost of paying back the money to investors (the bond holders) as that was estimated to be around $1.2 billion in the August 3 Council meeting discussion and documents. And even that number is in question given the last-minute revisions from the Finance Department (instigated by citizen Lomax finding calculation errors) and all the variables of spreading the bond tranches (sliced portions of the bond) over 20 – 30 years with repayment over 48 years.
The update on the Turtle Island Monument Project is mixed. The project was conceived to remake the fountain as a monument to honor and recognize local Native American history and has close to $1 million in funding, which is all good. But, the current difficulty is the consultants hired to finish the design and implement the project are resistant to participation from the indigenous people who are native to this area, the Lisjan/Ohlone who the project is supposed to honor. The Lisjan/Ohlone have no reservations or protected land. The description of shutting down the voices of the Native Americans made me think of the Sioux Tribe orphan Mose in William Kent Kreuger’s novel, This Tender Land. As a small child Mose was discovered next to his murdered Indian mother with his tongue cut out.
The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) started on Wednesday morning with a planning workshop that could be titled “Dream Big.” It is a plan for expanding ferry service from 10 terminals and 6 routes to somewhere between 21 terminals and 29 routes with 18 vessels currently and needing 61 vessels for the most expansive proposal and somewhere in between for more moderate dreaming. https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/default/files/weta-public/currentmeeting/b081722aDECK.pdf
The problem is always funding including how to fund WETA for current service. The answer to how to finance expansion, the purchase of all those new vessels and build new facilities is supposed to come sometime this fall in another workshop. As summarized last week fares made up only 16.7% of the revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022. It is all the other federal, state subsidies, ballot measure J (Contra Costa Transportation Authority) and a share of bridge tolls that supports WETA. Next time you are in a traffic jam at the Bay Bridge, instead of being frustrated, think If all of these cars weren’t driving across the bridge, there wouldn’t be enough money for WETA ferries to stay afloat.
The question which isn’t being asked is how many transfers or modes of transportation are we willing to use to get to a desired location, though the inconvenience of ferry boarding locations does occasionally come up. I live in the flats near the high school. As I drove to the Marina, I thought about what it would be like to use a ferry to commute. Getting to a Berkeley ferry would require a bus, drive or bike ride, then the ferry ride followed with BART, bus or bike on the other end. Ferry locations just aren’t convenient unless you live next door and are maybe headed to a ballgame in SF. In the WETA survey, ferries as a means of transportation for commuting to and from work rated the lowest as desirable and as transportation to an event as the highest. I never considered the ferry when I lived in SF and worked in Oakland after the earthquake. It was bus to BART to shuttle. As soon as the bridge opened I was back in my car for the convenience.
There are always people excited about expansion of ferry service whether it makes sense or not and a city representative from the Hercules area filled that role.
One question on electric ferries was answered. Electric ferries must be small or they are just too slow to compete with other modes of transportation including heavy fuel oil or marine diesel-powered ferries.
In closing, I can’t help thinking about Smedley Butler every time I hear about Haiti and sending Haitian asylum seekers back to Haiti. The U.S. made mess in Haiti started before 1914, but it was in that year that the invasion by the marines was planned and Smedley Butler became the ongoing leader of the occupation.
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America’s of America’s Empire by Jonathan Katz is an absolutely fascinating book looking at history and regime change through the war hero Smedley Butler beginning with his joining the marines at 16 and ending in 1934 when Smedley Darlington Butler blew the whistle and testified before a two-man panel of the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities on the planned fascist putsch by American industrialists.
In 1924 Smedley Butler was granted a leave of absence from the Navy and inducted as director of the Department of Public Safety of the City of Philadelphia, where, Butler introduced war tactics into policing in the city of Philadelphia.
An interesting twist in the 1934 coup in planning is the American Liberty League with founders from the American elite multimillionaires of manufacturing and oil and the losing candidates to FDR and the New Deal. Their declared aim was to “combat radicalism, preserve property rights, uphold and preserve the constitution.” A book I finished a couple of weeks ago One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse picks up in the 1930s where the planned coup ended. Did the elites find religion as the next useful path to sway the public into rejecting social programs? That is for us to decide.
Regime change is our country history and it looks like what goes around comes around. 2022 is a critical election year and who wins this year’s elections will determine the future of democracy. An August 2022 NBC poll of 1000 registered voters found the number one concern is, threats to democracy. It was rated ahead of cost of living, jobs and the economy, immigration, climate change, guns, abortion, crime, other and COVID in that order.
I recommend both books, Gangsters of Capitalism and One Nation Under God and if I can keep up on my reading there will be a stack of interesting suggestions in the coming weeks.
A couple of months ago I heard the buzz of saws and found that the magnificent tree with an incredible canopy that provided much appreciated summer shade was coming down. I watched as the large healthy tree with a thick trunk probably near 100 years old, the age of the houses on this block was fed into the chipper. I couldn’t stop thinking about what a waste it was to grind up a trunk that could have been milled into lumber for any number of projects.
Margo Schueler took a different approach when she had to remove what she called a wonderful tree, a canary pine and wrote it up in NextDoor.
“Last month we had a large non-native pine taken down from our West Berkeley home. There were many compelling reasons to remove this wonderful tree but we had struggled with this decision for over decade. Fortunately, we found Mike Hudson on Nextdoor and he was able to mill 5 - 10 foot sections into wonderful lumber now drying in stacks for future building. Cost 65% of the bid to grind and dispose of the tree. Very happy with this direction. Even happier on reading the article below - “Reforestation Hubs” Are Saving Urban Trees From Heading to Landfills Did you know that the US is losing 36 million [urban] trees every year? Several organizations have stepped up with creative solutions to save the wood, reduce carbon emissions and create jobs. “More wood from cities goes into landfills than is harvested from US National Forests,” says J. Morgan Grove, a research forester at Baltimore Field Station, USDA Forest Service. Thank you Mike!” (picture from Margo Scheuler)
I went to see the stacked drying wood for myself, amazing!
The damage and destruction to Peoples Park is still painful no matter how it settles, but if those magnificent trees were turned into wood for housing that would at least be more palatable than piles of wood chips. When I spoke with Margo about milling the tree instead of chipping, she told me Mike Hudson told her he had offered to mill the redwood trees whose roots were destroyed (a condition of the approval was to preserve the trees) by the developer for the 1698 University mixed-use project at McGee. The developer refused the offer, because it would take two days to mill the trees into lumbar so the trees were chipped. That was in August 2018. The project still isn’t finished four years later from all appearances. Something is very wrong with this picture when a developer couldn’t stop for two days out of four years to turn redwood trees into usable lumber. And, something is very wrong with a city and a university that doesn’t have a vision and requirement to change this course and whose only solution is landfill and piles of mulch.
From doing a little reading there is a lot of resistance to turning urban trees into lumbar that are cut down to make way for developments, expansion or to remove them because of their growing size and proximity to existing structures. Berkeley was cutting down trees to rehab streets until neighborhoods rose up in objection.
I wish this were the end of the story. The article referenced by Scheuler has a list of resources, that I have yet to check out. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/reforestation-hubs-are-saving-urban-trees-from-heading-to-landfills?utm_source=Next+City+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c28eb8580f-DailyNL_2022_05_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcee5bf7a0-c28eb8580f-44126641 This morning before I could hit fast forward, the ad for Aspiration.com https://www.aspiration.com/ started to play. It is a promotion for a credit card that theoretically offsets destructive anti-environment choices and behavior with planting a tree with a credit card swipe. The message, make all that spending feel good. I might have been taken in by such an ad if I didn’t know most of these programs are a failure as far as the trees go. There is a lot more available on the nature of trees and forests, but a good start is listening to The Daily, The Sunday Read: ‘Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?’ https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS81NG5BR2NJbA/episode/MTg2MDZjOWMtNzRmMS00NTI1LThjYTMtOTQzOTNjYTUzMGY0?hl=en
Saving the world and planting trees requires more than a swipe of a credit card and sticking seedlings in the ground. If those seedlings even survive at all is a big question. At the top of the list should be whether the location selected is appropriate for trees and does the tree species selected support the local ecosystem, meaning is the tree native to the area and will the tree support native birds and insects. Then there is ongoing care for the first three years or so when a seedling or young tree is taking root.
Even here in Berkeley with a tree planting grant, it is not guaranteed that the trees selected and planted support local ecosystems. The city is following up with care for the critical early years of the newly planted trees, but I wonder about the “younger” trees that are already here that look to be suffering and dying from the drought especially in the Sacramento Street median.
The first project reviewed at the Thursday Design Review Committee (DRC) was a 5-story mixed-use building at 1820 San Pablo between Hearst and Delaware, the location of the former Albatross Bar. To understand how the building is allowed 5 stories when the permitted number for this location is 4 stories, this additional floor is the reward known as a “density bonus” for designating 4 units as very low income in a base project of 33 units. Setting aside four units for very low-income households, the project gained a density bonus of 11 more units and another floor making the total five floors and 44 dwelling units.
Brad Gunkel, the architect, for 1820 San Pablo was trying to add design interest so this 5-story block would not look like just another BUB (big ugly box). What Gunkel thought would be a nice addition to the design, untreated wood starting on the third floor for the northern third of the building facing San Pablo was the subject of considerable objection first noted by West Berkeley resident Phil Allen and then the DRC members. All agreed that the untreated wood would not age nicely as Gunkel described and would instead deteriorate within a few years and require replacement. Charles Kahn DRC member gave his concern stating that, “rather than being a gift to the neighborhood, that this would degrade and would be more a curse…” The DRC voted unanimously to continue review with a list of requested revisions and modifications to be incorporated before proceeding to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB).
The second DRC project at 2403 San Pablo at Channing, the former Omega Salvage Store, is a co-housing condominium project with 1, 2 and 3-bedroom units for a total of 36 units, with a large communal kitchen and great room and over 10,000 square feet of open space (six times more than required) designed by the people who plan to live there and are looking toward a future of aging in place. It is a lovely project and passed out of committee with an ask to make the San Pablo ground floor exterior more interesting. My vote would be to add a mural.
Committee member Steve Finacom said this about the co-housing project, “I’m very positive about this and I wish we saw more projects like this in terms of massing and setback and height, because all the issues that come up in previous in most of the projects we see the huge buildings built at property line that overshadow neighbors and that don’t have any real open space and that’s all addressed here…”
My neighbor who normally doesn’t follow projects, though he hears a fair amount of complaining about them from me, took a cruise through recent projects approved by ZAB with the two R & D projects in West Berkeley grabbing his attention. He commented, “why are they building parking lots for people to drive to work instead of housing so they can walk, I bet there is a lot of housing that could go up instead of those parking lots…” He is right.
There was a lot of complaining about the parking lots when the projects were being reviewed, but none of us thought to suggest that housing ought to go on the sites instead of cars. That won’t happen next time, but to actually require housing instead of parking lots, that demands city action. And, city action invariably falls into the cycle of referrals to the city manager and the Planning Commission whose agenda is tightly controlled by the Planning Department where little bubbles up.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met on Monday with Mayor Arreguin invited to discuss the $650,000,000 general obligation bond that will be on the November ballot. It wasn’t really clear what passing the bond would mean for restoring the Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and the Veterans Buildings. The mayor started with enthusiasm for raising funds and said the revitalization “could” be funded with the bond, but then diverged to tapping Congresswoman Barbara Lee for $50 million for the Civic Center as being reasonable. It was all pretty “vague” with the list of other things for bond spending like “complete streets” bike and pedestrian plans, sidewalks, waterfront, etc.
Arreguin said the bond package would be spread over 48 years instead of the usual 30 to bring down the cost to $40.91 for each $100,000 of assessed value. This is the projected annual cost to property owners not total cost of paying back the money to investors (the bond holders) as that was estimated to be around $1.2 billion in the August 3 Council meeting discussion and documents. And even that number is in question given the last-minute revisions from the Finance Department (instigated by citizen Lomax finding calculation errors) and all the variables of spreading the bond tranches (sliced portions of the bond) over 20 – 30 years with repayment over 48 years.
The update on the Turtle Island Monument Project is mixed. The project was conceived to remake the fountain as a monument to honor and recognize local Native American history and has close to $1 million in funding, which is all good. But, the current difficulty is the consultants hired to finish the design and implement the project are resistant to participation from the indigenous people who are native to this area, the Lisjan/Ohlone who the project is supposed to honor. The Lisjan/Ohlone have no reservations or protected land. The description of shutting down the voices of the Native Americans made me think of the Sioux Tribe orphan Mose in William Kent Kreuger’s novel, This Tender Land. As a small child Mose was discovered next to his murdered Indian mother with his tongue cut out.
The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) started on Wednesday morning with a planning workshop that could be titled “Dream Big.” It is a plan for expanding ferry service from 10 terminals and 6 routes to somewhere between 21 terminals and 29 routes with 18 vessels currently and needing 61 vessels for the most expansive proposal and somewhere in between for more moderate dreaming. https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/default/files/weta-public/currentmeeting/b081722aDECK.pdf
The problem is always funding including how to fund WETA for current service. The answer to how to finance expansion, the purchase of all those new vessels and build new facilities is supposed to come sometime this fall in another workshop. As summarized last week fares made up only 16.7% of the revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022. It is all the other federal, state subsidies, ballot measure J (Contra Costa Transportation Authority) and a share of bridge tolls that supports WETA. Next time you are in a traffic jam at the Bay Bridge, instead of being frustrated, think If all of these cars weren’t driving across the bridge, there wouldn’t be enough money for WETA ferries to stay afloat.
The question which isn’t being asked is how many transfers or modes of transportation are we willing to use to get to a desired location, though the inconvenience of ferry boarding locations does occasionally come up. I live in the flats near the high school. As I drove to the Marina, I thought about what it would be like to use a ferry to commute. Getting to a Berkeley ferry would require a bus, drive or bike ride, then the ferry ride followed with BART, bus or bike on the other end. Ferry locations just aren’t convenient unless you live next door and are maybe headed to a ballgame in SF. In the WETA survey, ferries as a means of transportation for commuting to and from work rated the lowest as desirable and as transportation to an event as the highest. I never considered the ferry when I lived in SF and worked in Oakland after the earthquake. It was bus to BART to shuttle. As soon as the bridge opened I was back in my car for the convenience.
There are always people excited about expansion of ferry service whether it makes sense or not and a city representative from the Hercules area filled that role.
One question on electric ferries was answered. Electric ferries must be small or they are just too slow to compete with other modes of transportation including heavy fuel oil or marine diesel-powered ferries.
In closing, I can’t help thinking about Smedley Butler every time I hear about Haiti and sending Haitian asylum seekers back to Haiti. The U.S. made mess in Haiti started before 1914, but it was in that year that the invasion by the marines was planned and Smedley Butler became the ongoing leader of the occupation.
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America’s of America’s Empire by Jonathan Katz is an absolutely fascinating book looking at history and regime change through the war hero Smedley Butler beginning with his joining the marines at 16 and ending in 1934 when Smedley Darlington Butler blew the whistle and testified before a two-man panel of the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities on the planned fascist putsch by American industrialists.
In 1924 Smedley Butler was granted a leave of absence from the Navy and inducted as director of the Department of Public Safety of the City of Philadelphia, where, Butler introduced war tactics into policing in the city of Philadelphia.
An interesting twist in the 1934 coup in planning is the American Liberty League with founders from the American elite multimillionaires of manufacturing and oil and the losing candidates to FDR and the New Deal. Their declared aim was to “combat radicalism, preserve property rights, uphold and preserve the constitution.” A book I finished a couple of weeks ago One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse picks up in the 1930s where the planned coup ended. Did the elites find religion as the next useful path to sway the public into rejecting social programs? That is for us to decide.
Regime change is our country history and it looks like what goes around comes around. 2022 is a critical election year and who wins this year’s elections will determine the future of democracy. An August 2022 NBC poll of 1000 registered voters found the number one concern is, threats to democracy. It was rated ahead of cost of living, jobs and the economy, immigration, climate change, guns, abortion, crime, other and COVID in that order.
I recommend both books, Gangsters of Capitalism and One Nation Under God and if I can keep up on my reading there will be a stack of interesting suggestions in the coming weeks.
August 14, 2021
I think I love August with city council on vacation. This coming week looks wonderfully light.
DO NOT MISS Love Letters to the Park This is the absolutely lovely book that is just as the title states a love of a park and the public response to the Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP) from April to July 2022 compiled and edited by Martin Nicolaus. You can read the pdf with this link https://chavezpark.org/new-book-love-letters-to-the-park/
After you read it, sign the Petition for saving Cesar Chavez Park https://chavezpark.org/petition-to-save-chavez-park-from-bmasp/ and send off an email to city council at Council@cityofberkeley.info Council needs to hear from you.
After we skate over the news, I’ll get to the main topic of this Diary.
As I start this Diary the country is in a whirl over the FBI descending on Mar-a-Lago, the Espionage Act listed on the search warrant and Trump taking the 5th over 440 times in the Manhattan District Attorney investigation of the Trump business. I confess nothing would make me happier as an end to Trump’s lifetime of criminology (the book Criminology on Trump should drop on my doorstep any day) than to see him in an orange jumpsuit without the hairspray for the combover.
Here in Berkeley it is blessedly quiet now that we have a stay at Peoples Park. It is thanks to the Peoples Park Historic District Advocacy Group that we have the attorney Tom Lippe representing the group and the stay to stop construction. You can bet UCB won’t give up and there are court battles ahead. Everything you need to know to donate to the cause to save Peoples Park is in this link: http://www.peoplesparkhxdist.org/donate-now/ For full disclosure, I dug out those paper checks I rarely use and dropped off my donation.
Nothing of consequence happened at the city meeting I did attend. Two house additions were approved at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) with the promise of full schedules for the two meetings in September. For those who are finding six and eight story buildings as their new neighbor attending the DRC meeting this coming Thursday would be a very beneficial introduction to the process. All the details are in the Activist’s Calendar.
I lost focus on the rambling Civic Arts Commission Grants Subcommittee meeting Friday morning and exited early.
WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) is meeting on Wednesday at 10 am for planning and 1 pm for the board meeting. Seems the WETA Chair and staff took a trip to Sweden and Norway to check out zero emission ferries. That report should be interesting. I wonder if they did any sightseeing while they were there, like ferry rides to interesting places.
Going through the financials, fares covered only 16.7% of the FY 2022 operating costs. Without Federal COVID-19 rescue funds, WETA would have been deeply underwater. Those funds covered 44.1% of total operating expenses. For June, the last month of the fiscal year 2022 when WETA reached 80% of pre-pandemic ridership, fares covered 19% of the operating cost and federal assistance made of 67%. It is unclear how Berkeley expects WETA to pick of the cost of a Berkeley pier and ferry and contribute to bailing out the Marina fund. It looks more like WETA is looking to Berkeley for the bailing out.
I deviated from my reading plan for the week and picked up This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor by Susan Wicklund with co-author Alan Kesselheim. The title really describes the book; Dr. Wicklund’s personal journey, patient experiences and the threats and harassment that physicians and their families face to provide this critical piece of reproductive health care. Wicklund writes about security escorts, being armed, colleagues who are murdered, the constant danger from anti-abortion extremists and support for her chosen career.
With the Supreme Court ending Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortion is on the ballot nationwide either directly with ballot initiatives or indirectly through who is elected. While national survey after national survey places 60% of the population supporting access to abortion, that is not the case for the Republicans who dominate legislatures in 26 states. They are banning abortions where they have the power to do so. If Republicans take over the House and the Senate, they are promising a nationwide abortion ban.
Despite an overwhelming vote in conservative red Kansas by 59% on August 2 to maintain access to abortion, just days later, in Indiana, the state that allowed a pregnant 10-year old from Ohio access to an abortion, Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law a sweeping ban on abortion starting at conception with exceptions only for rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality or when necessary to prevent severe health risks or death.
This November we will be voting on California Proposition 1, the Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment.
A “yes” vote supports amending the state constitution to prohibit the state from interfering with or denying an individual’s reproductive freedom, which is defined to include a right to an abortion and a right to contraceptives.
A “no” vote opposes this amendment providing a right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution.
The East Bay Times editorial board started their August 14 editorial with this, “In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s essential that California voters amend the state Constitution to ensure reproductive choice.”
No matter how we vote in November, even with an expected overwhelming “yes” to protect reproductive freedom in California, Federal law overrules states. What happens nationally matters.
In all the discussions, books, shows for or against abortion, one thing that is rarely mentioned is the number 39. Thirty-nine is the average number of years between the onset of menstruation and menopause. Later life pregnancies are not that common, but the possibility of pregnancy hovers over all of those years.
Nearly four decades is a long time and there are bound to be birth control, family planning failures. If the desired family size is two children the chart in The Turnaway Study gives the expected number of additional pregnancies which might be anywhere from 0 to 7. The zero is with the Implants and nine would be needed. Withdrawal is the least reliable. If abortion is used as birth control the estimate is 30 early medication abortions or 25 second trimester abortions.
That 39 year time may even be longer in the future. Though the average age is twelve, the onset of menarche (first period) is slowly moving earlier and may start when a child is as young as 8 years old. Some of those most rabidly anti-abortion oppose terminating a pregnancy in a child’s little immature body.
The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having or Being Denied an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster is the only book that really brings fertility, abortion, pregnancy and the impact on women’s lives into the full frame. I picked up the audiobook first from the library, but there is so much information I purchased the book to keep as a reference.
I continually marvel at how access to birth control and access to abortion really changed women’s lives. Women these days have so many opportunities and there are still doors to open, but with the loss of abortion all the gains made since Roe v. Wade in 1973 are slipping away for millions of women in this country.
The Turnaway Study chronicles the differences between women who had or were denied an abortion. Women denied abortion were poorer, stayed in abusive relationships longer, had to give up career and education plans. Their children were also impacted, especially with the higher incidence of poverty. Surprisingly women who continued their pregnancy and gave up the baby for adoption had the poorest emotional outcome. Pregnancy is not without risk. Two women in the study died of complications and this was even when the study deliberately excluded women with life threatening pregnancies.
Managing the national juried art exhibition “Choice” for Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (NCWCA) in 2013 was really a turning point for me. That is when I learned to start the conversation on reproductive rights, abortion at every opportunity, really anywhere and everywhere I happened to be next to another person long enough to strike up a conversation. The conversations spilled over to friends and I opened up about my own abortions.
I didn’t have a wrenching personal story to tell. I never risked my life for an illegal abortion. I was never conflicted in my decision for any one of my three abortions. I was and am just so grateful abortion was legal when I needed it. It was always the stories from other women that were far more interesting or the stories they wouldn’t tell that I knew about.
I think of one friend who shared she had multiple miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy before her daughter was born. I wonder what kind of care would she get if all this was happening right now if she lived in one of these draconian states that bans abortions. Would she get the medical care she needed or would the doctors be so afraid of losing their license and being sent to prison that they would withhold intervening until her life hung by a thread?
Would those miscarriages be misinterpreted as a self-induced abortion? Would she be in a legal battle instead of a grandmother with a daughter and two grandchildren? These aren’t far-fetched questions to ponder anymore. Even without these post Roe questions according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women 1300 women were arrested or charged in the U.S. from 2006 to 2020 for their actions during pregnancy.
There is the friend from my childhood who had an illegal abortion when we were about twenty. I wouldn’t have known about it if it hadn’t gone so badly, she nearly died. Her mother told my mother and my mother told me. I had this text exchange with my friend some weeks ago, after a lunch where two of us talked endlessly about the end of Roe and our support for access to abortion while my friend sat silent.
Me: Have you ever talked openly about your own abortion. I was waiting for you to say something when I said I had three.
Friend: No, not going to. Haven’t talked about mother’s either
Me: At one of my public speaking engagements I spoke about all three of you.
I don’t know why she won’t talk about it, maybe it was too traumatic, maybe she has regrets or maybe she is afraid of the repercussions if it got out in her closeknit circle of friends or at her church. After all her mother confessed on her deathbed that she was condemned by her pastor when she revealed to him that she had had an abortion at the onset of WWII.
The “three” in this text message is her younger sister who is also a close friend. One night several years ago when I started a discussion on abortion, my own and her sister’s brush with death from an illegal abortion It never occurred to me that she didn’t know. Oops! These two sisters are incredibly close and shared everything or so I thought. As the evening wore on, we talked about how we are shamed into silence over what is so common for so many of us. We spoke of her mother’s deathbed confession and then she talked with me about her own abortion.
I knew the two sisters spent a week together after the fall of Roe. I called the younger sister and asked if during that week with the end of Roe on the news day and night, did they ever talk about their own abortions or access to abortion. The answer was no.
The question that keeps coming up for me is how is it that three women, a mother and her two daughters, two sisters, all three who love each other very much and are incredibly close couldn’t share and talk with each other about this one thing, abortion and the abortions that each one of them had? We are all in our 70s now and still holding back. Where does that leave us if women who have had abortions and that is around one in three to one in four of us continue to wall ourselves into silence?
We are in the majority and yet, because we have been led to believe that all we need to do is send off another donation and we can or should hide in the closet of silence and abortion shame, we have been outflanked by Concerned Women of America (CWA) the well-organized, evangelical activist group of over 3 million promoting biblical values through advocacy and all the other anti-abortion organizations. It is long past time to learn from the CWA strategies, 98% of them vote, 93% have signed a petition, 77% have boycotted a company, 74% have contacted a public official and nearly half have written a letter to the editor. That is a lot of activism.
How many of us does it take to come out of the closet to talk to family, friends, neighbors, strangers to solidly secure reproductive freedom? How many of us does it take to outdo the activism of CWA and like groups? Certainly, thus far it is not enough of us or we wouldn’t be in this downward, backwards spiral.
Dr. Wicklund writes in her book that she always gives her patients the option of seeing the tissue removed if they want to. She describes one exchange with a young woman, who wanted an abortion and whose extended family was trying to stop her,
“’That’s all?’ She says when I show it to her. She escapes into her own thoughts for a minute and looks at me with hesitation. ‘What is it you’re thinking I prod.’ ‘How can it be that my uncle believes I am less important than that tiny bit of tissue you just took out of me?’”
Abortion was my choice when my method of birth control failed, but choice is not just about having access to abortion. It encompasses all choices, if and when to be a parent, method of contraception and termination of pregnancy. It is about celebrating a wanted pregnancy and weeping over a pregnancy not fulfilled. It is terminating a pregnancy without regret or feeling conflicted with loss wishing circumstances were different. Choice is all of these things. Choice is what each of us must be free to decide for ourselves.
To have that choice we need doctors nurses, midwifes, doulas, pharmacists who are on our side and if things go wrong, complications arise, they must be free to intervene and not hamstrung by abortion bans.
It is up to us where we go from here. And, how we vote is critical
I think I love August with city council on vacation. This coming week looks wonderfully light.
DO NOT MISS Love Letters to the Park This is the absolutely lovely book that is just as the title states a love of a park and the public response to the Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP) from April to July 2022 compiled and edited by Martin Nicolaus. You can read the pdf with this link https://chavezpark.org/new-book-love-letters-to-the-park/
After you read it, sign the Petition for saving Cesar Chavez Park https://chavezpark.org/petition-to-save-chavez-park-from-bmasp/ and send off an email to city council at Council@cityofberkeley.info Council needs to hear from you.
After we skate over the news, I’ll get to the main topic of this Diary.
As I start this Diary the country is in a whirl over the FBI descending on Mar-a-Lago, the Espionage Act listed on the search warrant and Trump taking the 5th over 440 times in the Manhattan District Attorney investigation of the Trump business. I confess nothing would make me happier as an end to Trump’s lifetime of criminology (the book Criminology on Trump should drop on my doorstep any day) than to see him in an orange jumpsuit without the hairspray for the combover.
Here in Berkeley it is blessedly quiet now that we have a stay at Peoples Park. It is thanks to the Peoples Park Historic District Advocacy Group that we have the attorney Tom Lippe representing the group and the stay to stop construction. You can bet UCB won’t give up and there are court battles ahead. Everything you need to know to donate to the cause to save Peoples Park is in this link: http://www.peoplesparkhxdist.org/donate-now/ For full disclosure, I dug out those paper checks I rarely use and dropped off my donation.
Nothing of consequence happened at the city meeting I did attend. Two house additions were approved at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) with the promise of full schedules for the two meetings in September. For those who are finding six and eight story buildings as their new neighbor attending the DRC meeting this coming Thursday would be a very beneficial introduction to the process. All the details are in the Activist’s Calendar.
I lost focus on the rambling Civic Arts Commission Grants Subcommittee meeting Friday morning and exited early.
WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) is meeting on Wednesday at 10 am for planning and 1 pm for the board meeting. Seems the WETA Chair and staff took a trip to Sweden and Norway to check out zero emission ferries. That report should be interesting. I wonder if they did any sightseeing while they were there, like ferry rides to interesting places.
Going through the financials, fares covered only 16.7% of the FY 2022 operating costs. Without Federal COVID-19 rescue funds, WETA would have been deeply underwater. Those funds covered 44.1% of total operating expenses. For June, the last month of the fiscal year 2022 when WETA reached 80% of pre-pandemic ridership, fares covered 19% of the operating cost and federal assistance made of 67%. It is unclear how Berkeley expects WETA to pick of the cost of a Berkeley pier and ferry and contribute to bailing out the Marina fund. It looks more like WETA is looking to Berkeley for the bailing out.
I deviated from my reading plan for the week and picked up This Common Secret: My Journey as an Abortion Doctor by Susan Wicklund with co-author Alan Kesselheim. The title really describes the book; Dr. Wicklund’s personal journey, patient experiences and the threats and harassment that physicians and their families face to provide this critical piece of reproductive health care. Wicklund writes about security escorts, being armed, colleagues who are murdered, the constant danger from anti-abortion extremists and support for her chosen career.
With the Supreme Court ending Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortion is on the ballot nationwide either directly with ballot initiatives or indirectly through who is elected. While national survey after national survey places 60% of the population supporting access to abortion, that is not the case for the Republicans who dominate legislatures in 26 states. They are banning abortions where they have the power to do so. If Republicans take over the House and the Senate, they are promising a nationwide abortion ban.
Despite an overwhelming vote in conservative red Kansas by 59% on August 2 to maintain access to abortion, just days later, in Indiana, the state that allowed a pregnant 10-year old from Ohio access to an abortion, Governor Eric Holcomb signed into law a sweeping ban on abortion starting at conception with exceptions only for rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality or when necessary to prevent severe health risks or death.
This November we will be voting on California Proposition 1, the Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment.
A “yes” vote supports amending the state constitution to prohibit the state from interfering with or denying an individual’s reproductive freedom, which is defined to include a right to an abortion and a right to contraceptives.
A “no” vote opposes this amendment providing a right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution.
The East Bay Times editorial board started their August 14 editorial with this, “In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, it’s essential that California voters amend the state Constitution to ensure reproductive choice.”
No matter how we vote in November, even with an expected overwhelming “yes” to protect reproductive freedom in California, Federal law overrules states. What happens nationally matters.
In all the discussions, books, shows for or against abortion, one thing that is rarely mentioned is the number 39. Thirty-nine is the average number of years between the onset of menstruation and menopause. Later life pregnancies are not that common, but the possibility of pregnancy hovers over all of those years.
Nearly four decades is a long time and there are bound to be birth control, family planning failures. If the desired family size is two children the chart in The Turnaway Study gives the expected number of additional pregnancies which might be anywhere from 0 to 7. The zero is with the Implants and nine would be needed. Withdrawal is the least reliable. If abortion is used as birth control the estimate is 30 early medication abortions or 25 second trimester abortions.
That 39 year time may even be longer in the future. Though the average age is twelve, the onset of menarche (first period) is slowly moving earlier and may start when a child is as young as 8 years old. Some of those most rabidly anti-abortion oppose terminating a pregnancy in a child’s little immature body.
The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having or Being Denied an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster is the only book that really brings fertility, abortion, pregnancy and the impact on women’s lives into the full frame. I picked up the audiobook first from the library, but there is so much information I purchased the book to keep as a reference.
I continually marvel at how access to birth control and access to abortion really changed women’s lives. Women these days have so many opportunities and there are still doors to open, but with the loss of abortion all the gains made since Roe v. Wade in 1973 are slipping away for millions of women in this country.
The Turnaway Study chronicles the differences between women who had or were denied an abortion. Women denied abortion were poorer, stayed in abusive relationships longer, had to give up career and education plans. Their children were also impacted, especially with the higher incidence of poverty. Surprisingly women who continued their pregnancy and gave up the baby for adoption had the poorest emotional outcome. Pregnancy is not without risk. Two women in the study died of complications and this was even when the study deliberately excluded women with life threatening pregnancies.
Managing the national juried art exhibition “Choice” for Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art (NCWCA) in 2013 was really a turning point for me. That is when I learned to start the conversation on reproductive rights, abortion at every opportunity, really anywhere and everywhere I happened to be next to another person long enough to strike up a conversation. The conversations spilled over to friends and I opened up about my own abortions.
I didn’t have a wrenching personal story to tell. I never risked my life for an illegal abortion. I was never conflicted in my decision for any one of my three abortions. I was and am just so grateful abortion was legal when I needed it. It was always the stories from other women that were far more interesting or the stories they wouldn’t tell that I knew about.
I think of one friend who shared she had multiple miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy before her daughter was born. I wonder what kind of care would she get if all this was happening right now if she lived in one of these draconian states that bans abortions. Would she get the medical care she needed or would the doctors be so afraid of losing their license and being sent to prison that they would withhold intervening until her life hung by a thread?
Would those miscarriages be misinterpreted as a self-induced abortion? Would she be in a legal battle instead of a grandmother with a daughter and two grandchildren? These aren’t far-fetched questions to ponder anymore. Even without these post Roe questions according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women 1300 women were arrested or charged in the U.S. from 2006 to 2020 for their actions during pregnancy.
There is the friend from my childhood who had an illegal abortion when we were about twenty. I wouldn’t have known about it if it hadn’t gone so badly, she nearly died. Her mother told my mother and my mother told me. I had this text exchange with my friend some weeks ago, after a lunch where two of us talked endlessly about the end of Roe and our support for access to abortion while my friend sat silent.
Me: Have you ever talked openly about your own abortion. I was waiting for you to say something when I said I had three.
Friend: No, not going to. Haven’t talked about mother’s either
Me: At one of my public speaking engagements I spoke about all three of you.
I don’t know why she won’t talk about it, maybe it was too traumatic, maybe she has regrets or maybe she is afraid of the repercussions if it got out in her closeknit circle of friends or at her church. After all her mother confessed on her deathbed that she was condemned by her pastor when she revealed to him that she had had an abortion at the onset of WWII.
The “three” in this text message is her younger sister who is also a close friend. One night several years ago when I started a discussion on abortion, my own and her sister’s brush with death from an illegal abortion It never occurred to me that she didn’t know. Oops! These two sisters are incredibly close and shared everything or so I thought. As the evening wore on, we talked about how we are shamed into silence over what is so common for so many of us. We spoke of her mother’s deathbed confession and then she talked with me about her own abortion.
I knew the two sisters spent a week together after the fall of Roe. I called the younger sister and asked if during that week with the end of Roe on the news day and night, did they ever talk about their own abortions or access to abortion. The answer was no.
The question that keeps coming up for me is how is it that three women, a mother and her two daughters, two sisters, all three who love each other very much and are incredibly close couldn’t share and talk with each other about this one thing, abortion and the abortions that each one of them had? We are all in our 70s now and still holding back. Where does that leave us if women who have had abortions and that is around one in three to one in four of us continue to wall ourselves into silence?
We are in the majority and yet, because we have been led to believe that all we need to do is send off another donation and we can or should hide in the closet of silence and abortion shame, we have been outflanked by Concerned Women of America (CWA) the well-organized, evangelical activist group of over 3 million promoting biblical values through advocacy and all the other anti-abortion organizations. It is long past time to learn from the CWA strategies, 98% of them vote, 93% have signed a petition, 77% have boycotted a company, 74% have contacted a public official and nearly half have written a letter to the editor. That is a lot of activism.
How many of us does it take to come out of the closet to talk to family, friends, neighbors, strangers to solidly secure reproductive freedom? How many of us does it take to outdo the activism of CWA and like groups? Certainly, thus far it is not enough of us or we wouldn’t be in this downward, backwards spiral.
Dr. Wicklund writes in her book that she always gives her patients the option of seeing the tissue removed if they want to. She describes one exchange with a young woman, who wanted an abortion and whose extended family was trying to stop her,
“’That’s all?’ She says when I show it to her. She escapes into her own thoughts for a minute and looks at me with hesitation. ‘What is it you’re thinking I prod.’ ‘How can it be that my uncle believes I am less important than that tiny bit of tissue you just took out of me?’”
Abortion was my choice when my method of birth control failed, but choice is not just about having access to abortion. It encompasses all choices, if and when to be a parent, method of contraception and termination of pregnancy. It is about celebrating a wanted pregnancy and weeping over a pregnancy not fulfilled. It is terminating a pregnancy without regret or feeling conflicted with loss wishing circumstances were different. Choice is all of these things. Choice is what each of us must be free to decide for ourselves.
To have that choice we need doctors nurses, midwifes, doulas, pharmacists who are on our side and if things go wrong, complications arise, they must be free to intervene and not hamstrung by abortion bans.
It is up to us where we go from here. And, how we vote is critical
August 7, 2021
This Diary is going to cover a lot of territory. It’s August and at least things look quiet for the week ahead. Looking back, there is so much that happened.
The Berkeley City Council is finally on summer recess through September 12th. Thank goodness! I so hope they stay away for the remainder of the summer. We could use weeks of peace to recover from CoB (City of Berkeley) WHIPLASH.
July 27, 2022 was the date, City Council was supposed to leave town or at least close up shop until mid-September, but Mayor Arreguin scheduled a special council meeting for August 3 dedicated to ballot initiatives. The mayor must have reconsidered how he handled the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure from the 4 x 4 Committee at July 26th council meeting. By Monday afternoon Arreguin had resurrected it placing it as the last item on the August 3 special council meeting agenda.
On Tuesday afternoon the day before the meeting, I received an email from someone I don’t know Geoff Lomax (evidently my email is being shared – thank you and I mean that sincerely) that the total debt service payment (the expected cost for property owners) in the City documents for the General Obligation Bond ballot measure was off by as much as 50%. And, that wasn’t in the good direction, meaning that any of us who are property owners would be paying almost double what the City initially estimated. https://womberkeley.blogspot.com/2022/08/wom-berkeley-identifies-flawed.html
I heard more about the error at National Night Out. It all fell into place when I saw the “Revised material – Finance (Supp 2)” from Henry Oyekanmi, Director of Finance with the document header, “Revised tax statement figures for both $600 million and $650 million tax statements.” https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-august-3-2022
Lomax’s analysis pushed the revision, but can we rely on the 22% adjustment as the final answer when there was so little time to review the package? That was the next question posed in the blog.
The council debated for nearly three hours whether the bond should be $600 million or $650 million and whether the “median” should be used instead of “average” to help property owners calculate the impact to their property tax bill. At times it felt they were almost giddy with the prospect of the big spending bond package.
The bigger question for me is; Does a $650,000,000 General Obligation Bond that residents of Berkeley are going to be paying for either directly or indirectly for the next 48 years with fuzzy spending and numbers even make sense? And even if it did make sense, can we really expect commission oversight to keep the funds away from sloshing around to cover budget overruns or pet projects when right now commissions that are assigned oversight responsibility for much smaller ballot measures complain that they are not provided the financial information, the documentation they need to fulfill their responsibilities.
The council finally ended discussion at 12:05 pm. Droste was absent for the entire day leaving the unanimous vote count as eight in favor of the bond. Arreguin, Hahn, Wengraf and Kesarwani will author the argument in support of bond.
After a brief break next up was Vice Mayor Harrison’s ballot initiative to tax residential units vacant for more than 182 days. This is a ballot measure that I have supported from the beginning. Berkeley has more than its share of housing that has been vacant for years and some for decades. It is past time for these vacant units to be brought back for housing or if they stay vacant for the owners to pay a tax on that vacancy.
Arreguin signed on to the revision which brought a sigh of relief as Wengraf, Taplin, Kesarwani and Droste all stood on the other side to sink a tax on vacant residential units. Taplin was a little cagey in his move to sink it by suggesting the ballot measure should go to committee for further review. Hahn was always a question of which way she would land. Hahn spoke earlier in the meeting by phone that she was in favor of the measure, but I’ve seen her say one thing and vote the opposite so many times that I sat on the edge of my chair when her name was called not once but six times. Her vote would determine the outcome of whether the ballot measure would pass or fail. It was unclear if she had just dropped off or changed her mind, finally, Hahn was able to unmute her phone, voted yes and the ballot measure passed with Wengraf as a resounding no and Kesarwani and Taplin abstaining.
The Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure from the 4 x 4 Committee was the last agenda item of the day. By the time that discussion started at 2:37 pm, we had all been on zoom since 9 am. Hahn, who could only connect by phone, dropped off after the Vacancy Tax passed so when the vote came to support the option of designating units in new construction as rent-controlled when they are created as the result of demolishing a building with rent-controlled units, it lost with one vote short of the needed five. Bartlett, Harrison, Robinson and Arreguin all voted for the option of designating the new units as rent-controlled (one new for one rent-controlled demolished). Kesarwani and Taplin abstained. Wengraf voted no.
The section on Eviction for Good Cause for the Golden Duplexes did not come up for a vote (lack of support). The only vote that held was the vote to suspend the current ordinance that ends rent control if the annual average rate of vacant units exceeds 5% over a six-month period. We should still keep an eye on this as with all the massive construction of large multi-unit buildings we may soon reach this threshold. I wouldn’t be surprised if that condition arises, pressure would come from the big international investors like Blackrock to end rent control.
In the end Soli Alpert representing the Rent Board said the cost of a ballot initiative could not be justified with only one section of the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance measure being passed by council and the rest failing.
This is a good time to pay attention to Kesarwani’s comments and watch how she votes. Elisa Mikiten just announced she is running against Rashi Kesarwani in District 1. Mikiten is currently chair of the Planning Commission and was previously on the Police Review Commission.
Wednesday meetings finished with Carol L. Rice, Wildlife Resource Management and Cheryl Miller, Registered Landscape Architect giving a well-practiced presentation that they defined as the first of three meetings on the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. It sounded as if they were hired as consultants and their presentation along with the two meetings to follow one in September and one in December is to fulfill some State mandate.
As far as meeting the goal to better prepare the community for the growing threat of wildfire, I would classify the presentation as 1 on a scale of 10. I can’t comment on this year’s meeting by councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn on wildfire in urban wildland interface, but prior year presentations from councilmembers were so much better than this run through a power point, but then I haven’t fully explored the new CWPP page to the city website. This may all be better than first appearances. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/community-wildfire-protection-plan
The Hillside Fire Safety Group showed up in generous numbers for the CWPP presentation and is still fixated on eucalyptus trees.
I saw the text on suspending the prohibition of the use of pepper spray and teargas just as the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission closed and found the post for another City Council Special meeting at 8:15 pm Thursday evening (the posting notice went up at 8:14 pm) with the AGENDA: 1. Discussion and possible action regarding the temporary suspension of the June 9, 2020 policy prohibiting the use of tear gas, smoke and pepper spray for the duration of the City Council recess [emphasis added] From: City Manager.
This is all about Peoples Park and UC Police marching in donned in riot gear to clear the park of people and then trees.
The mayor must have gotten a flood of pushback as the cancellation notices started to appear Thursday morning. Relief was the word of the day, but let’s not forget how we got here.
The destruction of Peoples Park is another chapter in this ugly history. This was decades in the making. The entire scene smacks of an institution determined to exercise its hold on this city and Peoples Park; to leave no doubt who has the hands of power. There are absolutely other places to build, but that wasn’t the point for UCB. It is power and the graveling of our elected at its feet that got us here. It all adds another layer of bitterness to the scene. https://www.peoplespark.org/wp/
And just in case your memory is short you might want to reread Mayor Jesse Arreguin: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-08-01/article/49330?headline=Mayor-Jesse-Arreguin-Snatching-Defeat-from-the-Jaws-of-Victory-br-or-br-Follow-the-Money-or-Lack-of-Money-in-the-UC-Settlement-Deal--Leila-H.-Moncharsh-attorney-for-Berkeley-Citizens-for-a-Better-Plan-bc4bp.com-
I walked up to see for myself the damage wrought by UCB. Words can hardly describe the heartbreaking scene and even the pictures don’t capture the impact of standing in the middle of the park surrounded by felled giant tree trunks lying like corpses amidst piles of branches with shriveling leaves. Towers of mulch fill empty spaces and when I looked up, a flock of birds circled overhead as if lost searching for the stately oaks and redwoods that once were their refuge. Devastating!
The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on Thursday evening was less than stunning as was the commission’s assessment of the new 8 story student housing project with 188 units at 2065 Kittridge. There can be no more than 5 meetings to review a project (SB 330) so the LPC was essentially stuck with approving a project that all of them found lacking in appeal and design. Bill Shrader, developer is still whining that he can’t have natural gas in the new building though I do agree with him that an open café/coffee shop on Allston across from the Y will have more traffic and a better chance of success than moving it to the corner of Harold Way and Kittridge across from the library as was requested by Commissioner Denise Hall Montgomery. The Shattuck Cinemas will soon be demolished to make way for the project. And, the LPC dismissed the request from Commissioner Finacom who was unable to attend, but sent written notes including a request that pictures be taken and preserved of the murals and artwork in the Shattuck Cinema theaters before they are demolished.
Before I picked up the book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perloth, I had never heard the term zero-day. Of course, I understood that systems can be hacked and read about cities and companies held hostage in the press. I’ve had my credit card hacked and replaced numerous times and shudder when I need to use my old computer with the operating system that can no longer be updated. I just didn’t know the word for a hole in security, a vulnerability in software that can be used for malicious intent like the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in May 2021 is called zero-day.
I have my reservations about how much spyware I bring into the house. I certainly would never have an Alexa to collect personal data or put appliances or devices on the internet just for convenience. It is bad enough that my iPhone tracks me everywhere and now my data can be picked up by IKE as I stroll through Berkeley commercial areas. These are the little things that those of us not skilled in coding can recognize.
Perloth’s book is about so much more. In her epilogue she writes her intended audience is for those of us not deep into cyber security.
The cyber invasions by Russia take up a lot of writing space. It was a huge surprise that some of the most skilled hackers are coming out of Argentina. Seems that being in a country that lacks broad digital access is actually a motivator for teenagers to learn how to hack into systems. Another piece of news was that two decades ago American teams from Berkeley, Harvard, and MIT dominated the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), the oldest and most prestigious contest of its kind with over a hundred countries represented. These days US teams don’t even make the top ten finalists. The winners are Russian, Polish, Chinese, South Korean and Taiwanese.
Perloth doesn’t hold any punches. Section VII. Boomerang chronicles how withholding notification from companies like Microsoft of zero-days discovered by the US NSA came back to bite us.
If you wish to pick up This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, it is available as an ebook at all the local libraries (Oakland, Contra Costa, Alameda County, San Francisco) except Berkeley.
One more thing, I heard at National Night Out that Charles Clarke is moving out of the area. If you don’t attend City Council meetings then you missed Charles Clarke’s dry sense of humor as he detailed points on issues, always in wonderfully entertaining ways as he dove into the heart of the matter. Even when I found myself on the other side, which was most of the time, I always admired Clarke’s incredible research and tenacity. I will miss him and hope he puts all his talent to good use wherever he lands. If you know Charles personally, I don’t, please pass on a thank you for me.
This Diary is going to cover a lot of territory. It’s August and at least things look quiet for the week ahead. Looking back, there is so much that happened.
The Berkeley City Council is finally on summer recess through September 12th. Thank goodness! I so hope they stay away for the remainder of the summer. We could use weeks of peace to recover from CoB (City of Berkeley) WHIPLASH.
July 27, 2022 was the date, City Council was supposed to leave town or at least close up shop until mid-September, but Mayor Arreguin scheduled a special council meeting for August 3 dedicated to ballot initiatives. The mayor must have reconsidered how he handled the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure from the 4 x 4 Committee at July 26th council meeting. By Monday afternoon Arreguin had resurrected it placing it as the last item on the August 3 special council meeting agenda.
On Tuesday afternoon the day before the meeting, I received an email from someone I don’t know Geoff Lomax (evidently my email is being shared – thank you and I mean that sincerely) that the total debt service payment (the expected cost for property owners) in the City documents for the General Obligation Bond ballot measure was off by as much as 50%. And, that wasn’t in the good direction, meaning that any of us who are property owners would be paying almost double what the City initially estimated. https://womberkeley.blogspot.com/2022/08/wom-berkeley-identifies-flawed.html
I heard more about the error at National Night Out. It all fell into place when I saw the “Revised material – Finance (Supp 2)” from Henry Oyekanmi, Director of Finance with the document header, “Revised tax statement figures for both $600 million and $650 million tax statements.” https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-august-3-2022
Lomax’s analysis pushed the revision, but can we rely on the 22% adjustment as the final answer when there was so little time to review the package? That was the next question posed in the blog.
The council debated for nearly three hours whether the bond should be $600 million or $650 million and whether the “median” should be used instead of “average” to help property owners calculate the impact to their property tax bill. At times it felt they were almost giddy with the prospect of the big spending bond package.
The bigger question for me is; Does a $650,000,000 General Obligation Bond that residents of Berkeley are going to be paying for either directly or indirectly for the next 48 years with fuzzy spending and numbers even make sense? And even if it did make sense, can we really expect commission oversight to keep the funds away from sloshing around to cover budget overruns or pet projects when right now commissions that are assigned oversight responsibility for much smaller ballot measures complain that they are not provided the financial information, the documentation they need to fulfill their responsibilities.
The council finally ended discussion at 12:05 pm. Droste was absent for the entire day leaving the unanimous vote count as eight in favor of the bond. Arreguin, Hahn, Wengraf and Kesarwani will author the argument in support of bond.
After a brief break next up was Vice Mayor Harrison’s ballot initiative to tax residential units vacant for more than 182 days. This is a ballot measure that I have supported from the beginning. Berkeley has more than its share of housing that has been vacant for years and some for decades. It is past time for these vacant units to be brought back for housing or if they stay vacant for the owners to pay a tax on that vacancy.
Arreguin signed on to the revision which brought a sigh of relief as Wengraf, Taplin, Kesarwani and Droste all stood on the other side to sink a tax on vacant residential units. Taplin was a little cagey in his move to sink it by suggesting the ballot measure should go to committee for further review. Hahn was always a question of which way she would land. Hahn spoke earlier in the meeting by phone that she was in favor of the measure, but I’ve seen her say one thing and vote the opposite so many times that I sat on the edge of my chair when her name was called not once but six times. Her vote would determine the outcome of whether the ballot measure would pass or fail. It was unclear if she had just dropped off or changed her mind, finally, Hahn was able to unmute her phone, voted yes and the ballot measure passed with Wengraf as a resounding no and Kesarwani and Taplin abstaining.
The Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure from the 4 x 4 Committee was the last agenda item of the day. By the time that discussion started at 2:37 pm, we had all been on zoom since 9 am. Hahn, who could only connect by phone, dropped off after the Vacancy Tax passed so when the vote came to support the option of designating units in new construction as rent-controlled when they are created as the result of demolishing a building with rent-controlled units, it lost with one vote short of the needed five. Bartlett, Harrison, Robinson and Arreguin all voted for the option of designating the new units as rent-controlled (one new for one rent-controlled demolished). Kesarwani and Taplin abstained. Wengraf voted no.
The section on Eviction for Good Cause for the Golden Duplexes did not come up for a vote (lack of support). The only vote that held was the vote to suspend the current ordinance that ends rent control if the annual average rate of vacant units exceeds 5% over a six-month period. We should still keep an eye on this as with all the massive construction of large multi-unit buildings we may soon reach this threshold. I wouldn’t be surprised if that condition arises, pressure would come from the big international investors like Blackrock to end rent control.
In the end Soli Alpert representing the Rent Board said the cost of a ballot initiative could not be justified with only one section of the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance measure being passed by council and the rest failing.
This is a good time to pay attention to Kesarwani’s comments and watch how she votes. Elisa Mikiten just announced she is running against Rashi Kesarwani in District 1. Mikiten is currently chair of the Planning Commission and was previously on the Police Review Commission.
Wednesday meetings finished with Carol L. Rice, Wildlife Resource Management and Cheryl Miller, Registered Landscape Architect giving a well-practiced presentation that they defined as the first of three meetings on the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. It sounded as if they were hired as consultants and their presentation along with the two meetings to follow one in September and one in December is to fulfill some State mandate.
As far as meeting the goal to better prepare the community for the growing threat of wildfire, I would classify the presentation as 1 on a scale of 10. I can’t comment on this year’s meeting by councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn on wildfire in urban wildland interface, but prior year presentations from councilmembers were so much better than this run through a power point, but then I haven’t fully explored the new CWPP page to the city website. This may all be better than first appearances. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/community-wildfire-protection-plan
The Hillside Fire Safety Group showed up in generous numbers for the CWPP presentation and is still fixated on eucalyptus trees.
I saw the text on suspending the prohibition of the use of pepper spray and teargas just as the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission closed and found the post for another City Council Special meeting at 8:15 pm Thursday evening (the posting notice went up at 8:14 pm) with the AGENDA: 1. Discussion and possible action regarding the temporary suspension of the June 9, 2020 policy prohibiting the use of tear gas, smoke and pepper spray for the duration of the City Council recess [emphasis added] From: City Manager.
This is all about Peoples Park and UC Police marching in donned in riot gear to clear the park of people and then trees.
The mayor must have gotten a flood of pushback as the cancellation notices started to appear Thursday morning. Relief was the word of the day, but let’s not forget how we got here.
The destruction of Peoples Park is another chapter in this ugly history. This was decades in the making. The entire scene smacks of an institution determined to exercise its hold on this city and Peoples Park; to leave no doubt who has the hands of power. There are absolutely other places to build, but that wasn’t the point for UCB. It is power and the graveling of our elected at its feet that got us here. It all adds another layer of bitterness to the scene. https://www.peoplespark.org/wp/
And just in case your memory is short you might want to reread Mayor Jesse Arreguin: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-08-01/article/49330?headline=Mayor-Jesse-Arreguin-Snatching-Defeat-from-the-Jaws-of-Victory-br-or-br-Follow-the-Money-or-Lack-of-Money-in-the-UC-Settlement-Deal--Leila-H.-Moncharsh-attorney-for-Berkeley-Citizens-for-a-Better-Plan-bc4bp.com-
I walked up to see for myself the damage wrought by UCB. Words can hardly describe the heartbreaking scene and even the pictures don’t capture the impact of standing in the middle of the park surrounded by felled giant tree trunks lying like corpses amidst piles of branches with shriveling leaves. Towers of mulch fill empty spaces and when I looked up, a flock of birds circled overhead as if lost searching for the stately oaks and redwoods that once were their refuge. Devastating!
The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on Thursday evening was less than stunning as was the commission’s assessment of the new 8 story student housing project with 188 units at 2065 Kittridge. There can be no more than 5 meetings to review a project (SB 330) so the LPC was essentially stuck with approving a project that all of them found lacking in appeal and design. Bill Shrader, developer is still whining that he can’t have natural gas in the new building though I do agree with him that an open café/coffee shop on Allston across from the Y will have more traffic and a better chance of success than moving it to the corner of Harold Way and Kittridge across from the library as was requested by Commissioner Denise Hall Montgomery. The Shattuck Cinemas will soon be demolished to make way for the project. And, the LPC dismissed the request from Commissioner Finacom who was unable to attend, but sent written notes including a request that pictures be taken and preserved of the murals and artwork in the Shattuck Cinema theaters before they are demolished.
Before I picked up the book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perloth, I had never heard the term zero-day. Of course, I understood that systems can be hacked and read about cities and companies held hostage in the press. I’ve had my credit card hacked and replaced numerous times and shudder when I need to use my old computer with the operating system that can no longer be updated. I just didn’t know the word for a hole in security, a vulnerability in software that can be used for malicious intent like the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in May 2021 is called zero-day.
I have my reservations about how much spyware I bring into the house. I certainly would never have an Alexa to collect personal data or put appliances or devices on the internet just for convenience. It is bad enough that my iPhone tracks me everywhere and now my data can be picked up by IKE as I stroll through Berkeley commercial areas. These are the little things that those of us not skilled in coding can recognize.
Perloth’s book is about so much more. In her epilogue she writes her intended audience is for those of us not deep into cyber security.
The cyber invasions by Russia take up a lot of writing space. It was a huge surprise that some of the most skilled hackers are coming out of Argentina. Seems that being in a country that lacks broad digital access is actually a motivator for teenagers to learn how to hack into systems. Another piece of news was that two decades ago American teams from Berkeley, Harvard, and MIT dominated the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), the oldest and most prestigious contest of its kind with over a hundred countries represented. These days US teams don’t even make the top ten finalists. The winners are Russian, Polish, Chinese, South Korean and Taiwanese.
Perloth doesn’t hold any punches. Section VII. Boomerang chronicles how withholding notification from companies like Microsoft of zero-days discovered by the US NSA came back to bite us.
If you wish to pick up This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, it is available as an ebook at all the local libraries (Oakland, Contra Costa, Alameda County, San Francisco) except Berkeley.
One more thing, I heard at National Night Out that Charles Clarke is moving out of the area. If you don’t attend City Council meetings then you missed Charles Clarke’s dry sense of humor as he detailed points on issues, always in wonderfully entertaining ways as he dove into the heart of the matter. Even when I found myself on the other side, which was most of the time, I always admired Clarke’s incredible research and tenacity. I will miss him and hope he puts all his talent to good use wherever he lands. If you know Charles personally, I don’t, please pass on a thank you for me.
July 31, 2022
I wrote in one of the many Activist’s Calendars that I sent, that Mayor Arreguin couldn’t get the job done on July 26 so council is meeting again this coming Wednesday morning, August 3 at 9 am. And, not getting the job done meant those of us dedicated to sit through until the end had a council marathon day starting at 3 pm and running until 11 pm.
It is unknown just exactly when the mayor decided to stiff the 4 x 4 Committee, but it most certainly happened well in advance of July 26th. Arreguin scheduled a special meeting on ballot measures for 3 pm on July 26th, but left the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance on the Council regular meeting agenda at 6 pm as the second to last item with a strategy to kill it.
Here is how the maneuver played out.
As you read through the steps know that Arreguin is a member of the 4 x 4 Committee and voted for the measure he decided to tank. The 4 x 4 Committee consists of four councilmembers and four Rent Board members with the mission to work collaboratively on housing issues of mutual concern. The four council members are: Arreguin, Taplin, Harrison, Robinson and 4 rent board members: Simon-Weisberg, Alpert, Johnson, Kelley.
By leaving the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance on the regular evening agenda instead of moving to take it up with the other ballot measures at the 3 pm special meeting, Arreguin could run out the clock using the hard stop at 11 pm to kill the ballot measure without so much as even bringing it up for discussion let alone a vote.
It was a plan that a friend and I missed as we were texting earlier in the evening groaning about how Councilmember Kesarwani was allowed to blather on and on when there were still items on the agenda for action and not a peep from Arreguin to bring the meeting discussion under control.
It was getting close to the goal of running out the clock, but not quite there, when Arreguin skipped over the ballot measure and pulled Hahn’s item on the City website out of order to finish the job. Hahn can always be counted on to talk endlessly. Arreguin used the excuse that Hahn was going to travel the next day.
At 10:58 pm when it was obvious the clock was about to run out without action on the ballot measure, it was Robinson, not Arreguin who asked for a vote to extend the meeting to 11:45 pm. Kesarwani, Taplin, Wengraf and Droste all voted against extending the meeting. A super majority is required to extend the meeting so with four “no” votes in the bag and Arreguin with the last vote in the roll call, he could vote for the extension giving the appearance of wanting to take up the ballot measure for action without any actual risk of having to follow through.
Agenda items that are not addressed automatically go to the Agenda Committee for rescheduling. The Agenda Committee won’t meet again until the last week of August to plan the September 13 council meeting. Ballot measures have deadlines that must be met to be included in the November 8 election which means that pushing off the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure until September kills it.
All this to avoid sending a ballot measure to the voters that contained eviction protections for tenants in “Golden duplexes” (owner-occupied as a principal residence) and to add an equal number of rent controlled units in new construction when that construction project demolished existing rent-controlled units.
You might be asking why go through all this to block a measure that offered protections to tenants? Berkeley is 57% renters and this ballot measure which the chamber, the real estate industry and Golden duplex owners gathered to protest at the July 12, 2022 council meeting would very likely pass and therefore must be kept out of the hands of the voters.
Evidently Arreguin decided he needed a way out to keep the real estate industry happy and what better way than to kill the Ballot Measure Amending the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance than by running out the clock after most of the City had given up for the evening and gone to bed. You probably wouldn’t know what happened unless I took the time to write about it.
You can go the July 26 Regular meeting agenda item 31 to read the full ballot measure and supplement responding to the July 12 council discussion. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas
Back in the day during the “Tax the Rich” rallies, we used to talk about politics, candidates for office and the difficulty of sorting through all the BS to figure out who actually had values, a moral core that wasn’t hollowed out with ambition. We never did have an answer, but following behavior is a good clue.
The Police Equipment and Community Impact Statements was moved earlier in the evening to be considered in September. And, the parcel tax to fix the roads and sidewalks was killed in the 3 pm meeting in favor of having one big General Obligation Bond ballot initiative to send to the voters
As for the City website, it is a mess with no action taken before the council meeting abruptly ended. The city manager, Dee Williams-Ridley compared the complaints about the new city website to objections to a new business logo. This kind of trivialization of links that are broken and documents that are lost into the ether is not like seeing a different picture (logo) associated with a business. Endless searches in Records Online to find documents that used to be a couple of keystrokes away is not somehow the same as a new logo for a familiar business. Such a comment demonstrates a complete disregard for legislative staff and the public; an unfitness for doing the job for which this city council gave this city manager a 28.11% raise of $84,732. That fact also demonstrates the unfitness of Mayor Arreguin who proposed that raise for the Berkeley City Manager; the manager of the smallest city in land mass and 11th in population of thirteen city and county administrators surveyed.
I took a break and watched the PBS Frontline special Facing Eviction. Emily Benfer from the Eviction Lab described eviction this way, “Housing is foundational to resiliency the same way education and employment are, but if you knock out that one pillar, your housing, your home, then you can’t access any of the others.”
The Thursday presentations at the Mental Health Commission: Achieving an Adequate Standard of Living for People with Serious Mental Illness and/or Substance Use Issues and Disorders, especially for people experiencing homelessness really dove into the impacts of homeless camp sweeps. It’s not just the few sentimental items that get tossed with the sweeps, the very documents the homeless need to get assistance end up in the belongings carted away by the City as trash. Medications are lost too. Most important sweeps break the contact, the link, case managers have with the homeless person.
Sweeps are a major setback for caseworkers and the homeless. It is probably difficult more like impossible for those of us reading this Diary in comfort to think of encampments that are seen as squalor as home and community for anyone, but when the most important pillar of resiliency, housing, is pulled away, even what we may consider trash becomes precious for someone who has nothing.
Margaret Fine described sweeps as a “horrible thing.” Andrea Pritchett gave three solid suggestions: 1) provide cell phones so the homeless could maintain contact with the case workers who were trying to help them, 2) provide staff with tablets so they could instantly update records when in the field and 3) council to identify safe/safer encampment locations where service providers can regularly provide services.
The Ballot Initiative to Tax Vacant Residential Units should come back on Wednesday. This time I hope council can see clear to pass it so we as voters can decide in November. There is an apartment building near me that has been vacant for decades. This city that likes to call itself progressive should be doing everything possible to get these older buildings back on the market as available housing. They certainly will be cheaper than $3397 for a 461 sq ft studio at the BLAKE. https://www.blakeatberkeley.com/floorplans/a4
And all that we can do to stabilize the most important pillar of resiliency, ought to be on the top of the list. It certainly wasn’t last Tuesday evening at 11 pm.
Nicole Kurian, Legislative Director, Californians Against Waste gave an update for the Zero Waste Commission of bills to watch SB 1046 regulates the pre-checkout bags (the plastic bags used for fruit, vegies, bulk goods, etc, AB 2046 reduces packaging in all those online orders delivered to our doors and SB 1013 requires a redemption payment for every beverage container. They all sound good, but like all bills at the end of the session, we shall see what passes.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Commission grant application turned out to be for the Marina and it didn’t require a vote from the newly blended commission of what used to be the separate Transportation Commission and the Public Works Commission. The application only required a presentation, not approval by the commission.
This is a sorry state of affairs. The least functional side of these two commissions is now in charge. The Public Works Commission turned out incredible work and analysis. The few times I tuned into the Transportation Commission, I was struck by the capacity of the commission to be at the same time dysfunctional and oblivious to the fact that not everyone is going to bicycle everywhere. Some of us like our intact bodies and others of us can’t bicycle for a wide variety of reasons.
I like listening to the Thom Hartmann podcasts. In a normal week there is usually a one-hour segment with someone from Congress taking questions from callers. The slot is often filled with Mark Pocan from Wisconsin or Ro Khanna from Silicon Valley. It’s always interesting and then there are the callers from all over the country making comments on the politics and the discussions of the day. Most often when I listen to the people calling in, I think, “you need to read more books.” It is why I like to finish my Diary with what I just finished reading including the audiobooks read to me.
Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell by Tim Miller just released in June is the kind of book with enough substance, but not too heavy to play while doing mindless tasks or to fill time while travelling. All of the five libraries I use have it and San Francisco just added 31 copies of the audiobook. As the title suggests it is entertaining, but the underlying questions of why people stuck with Trump and then ran back to him are answered with proximity to power, job, money, ambition and being in the club or really the cult.
The book I read with substance which drove me to take pages of notes in my reading journal is One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse, published in 2015.
This book is absolutely fascinating as Kruse pulls together how the invention of a Christian America took hold in the 1930s and 1940s with James W. Fifield the minister for the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles leading the charge catering to the LA millionaires. Fifield started the College of Life, radio programs and speaker series to send the message wealth is a sign of God’s blessing. His messaging success covered his generous salary, butler, cook and chauffer.
Fifield placed an ad in the LA times decrying the New Deal with the Chamber, Wall Street, Norman Vincent Peale, California Institute of Technology, UC, Stanford, U of Florida, Princeton Theological Seminary all jumping on the bandwagon. Hollywood joined in with Cecile B. DeMille, Disney and others promoting the selective religious message.
President Eisenhower and Evangelist Abraham Vereide started the national prayer breakfast in 1953 which continues to this day. Evangelist Billy Graham hovered through several administrations. Falwell, Robertson and others followed threading religiosity through our government. And, J. Walter Thompson the Madison Avenue ad agency was an early promoter of the new rituals.
The mythology of the United States founded as a Christian Nation was meticulously debunked in the Supreme Court decision of Engel v. Vitale on school prayer June 25, 1962 in the opinion by Justice Hugo L. Black. But that meticulous historical opinion from sixty years ago blocking prayer in schools did not stop the Christian Nation myth nor did it stop the recent opinion from Justice Gorsuch in the 6 to 3 decision Kennedy v. Bremerton School District on June 27, 2022 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a high school coach leading post-game school prayers at the 50 yard line.
Christian Nationalism has taken root and the tentacles are visible in the January 6th Insurrection, the Trump cult, the Tucker Carlson show, the Supreme Court decisions and the adulation of Viktor Orban for starters.
Next in my stack is the Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart.
I wrote in one of the many Activist’s Calendars that I sent, that Mayor Arreguin couldn’t get the job done on July 26 so council is meeting again this coming Wednesday morning, August 3 at 9 am. And, not getting the job done meant those of us dedicated to sit through until the end had a council marathon day starting at 3 pm and running until 11 pm.
It is unknown just exactly when the mayor decided to stiff the 4 x 4 Committee, but it most certainly happened well in advance of July 26th. Arreguin scheduled a special meeting on ballot measures for 3 pm on July 26th, but left the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance on the Council regular meeting agenda at 6 pm as the second to last item with a strategy to kill it.
Here is how the maneuver played out.
As you read through the steps know that Arreguin is a member of the 4 x 4 Committee and voted for the measure he decided to tank. The 4 x 4 Committee consists of four councilmembers and four Rent Board members with the mission to work collaboratively on housing issues of mutual concern. The four council members are: Arreguin, Taplin, Harrison, Robinson and 4 rent board members: Simon-Weisberg, Alpert, Johnson, Kelley.
By leaving the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance on the regular evening agenda instead of moving to take it up with the other ballot measures at the 3 pm special meeting, Arreguin could run out the clock using the hard stop at 11 pm to kill the ballot measure without so much as even bringing it up for discussion let alone a vote.
It was a plan that a friend and I missed as we were texting earlier in the evening groaning about how Councilmember Kesarwani was allowed to blather on and on when there were still items on the agenda for action and not a peep from Arreguin to bring the meeting discussion under control.
It was getting close to the goal of running out the clock, but not quite there, when Arreguin skipped over the ballot measure and pulled Hahn’s item on the City website out of order to finish the job. Hahn can always be counted on to talk endlessly. Arreguin used the excuse that Hahn was going to travel the next day.
At 10:58 pm when it was obvious the clock was about to run out without action on the ballot measure, it was Robinson, not Arreguin who asked for a vote to extend the meeting to 11:45 pm. Kesarwani, Taplin, Wengraf and Droste all voted against extending the meeting. A super majority is required to extend the meeting so with four “no” votes in the bag and Arreguin with the last vote in the roll call, he could vote for the extension giving the appearance of wanting to take up the ballot measure for action without any actual risk of having to follow through.
Agenda items that are not addressed automatically go to the Agenda Committee for rescheduling. The Agenda Committee won’t meet again until the last week of August to plan the September 13 council meeting. Ballot measures have deadlines that must be met to be included in the November 8 election which means that pushing off the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure until September kills it.
All this to avoid sending a ballot measure to the voters that contained eviction protections for tenants in “Golden duplexes” (owner-occupied as a principal residence) and to add an equal number of rent controlled units in new construction when that construction project demolished existing rent-controlled units.
You might be asking why go through all this to block a measure that offered protections to tenants? Berkeley is 57% renters and this ballot measure which the chamber, the real estate industry and Golden duplex owners gathered to protest at the July 12, 2022 council meeting would very likely pass and therefore must be kept out of the hands of the voters.
Evidently Arreguin decided he needed a way out to keep the real estate industry happy and what better way than to kill the Ballot Measure Amending the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance than by running out the clock after most of the City had given up for the evening and gone to bed. You probably wouldn’t know what happened unless I took the time to write about it.
You can go the July 26 Regular meeting agenda item 31 to read the full ballot measure and supplement responding to the July 12 council discussion. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas
Back in the day during the “Tax the Rich” rallies, we used to talk about politics, candidates for office and the difficulty of sorting through all the BS to figure out who actually had values, a moral core that wasn’t hollowed out with ambition. We never did have an answer, but following behavior is a good clue.
The Police Equipment and Community Impact Statements was moved earlier in the evening to be considered in September. And, the parcel tax to fix the roads and sidewalks was killed in the 3 pm meeting in favor of having one big General Obligation Bond ballot initiative to send to the voters
As for the City website, it is a mess with no action taken before the council meeting abruptly ended. The city manager, Dee Williams-Ridley compared the complaints about the new city website to objections to a new business logo. This kind of trivialization of links that are broken and documents that are lost into the ether is not like seeing a different picture (logo) associated with a business. Endless searches in Records Online to find documents that used to be a couple of keystrokes away is not somehow the same as a new logo for a familiar business. Such a comment demonstrates a complete disregard for legislative staff and the public; an unfitness for doing the job for which this city council gave this city manager a 28.11% raise of $84,732. That fact also demonstrates the unfitness of Mayor Arreguin who proposed that raise for the Berkeley City Manager; the manager of the smallest city in land mass and 11th in population of thirteen city and county administrators surveyed.
I took a break and watched the PBS Frontline special Facing Eviction. Emily Benfer from the Eviction Lab described eviction this way, “Housing is foundational to resiliency the same way education and employment are, but if you knock out that one pillar, your housing, your home, then you can’t access any of the others.”
The Thursday presentations at the Mental Health Commission: Achieving an Adequate Standard of Living for People with Serious Mental Illness and/or Substance Use Issues and Disorders, especially for people experiencing homelessness really dove into the impacts of homeless camp sweeps. It’s not just the few sentimental items that get tossed with the sweeps, the very documents the homeless need to get assistance end up in the belongings carted away by the City as trash. Medications are lost too. Most important sweeps break the contact, the link, case managers have with the homeless person.
Sweeps are a major setback for caseworkers and the homeless. It is probably difficult more like impossible for those of us reading this Diary in comfort to think of encampments that are seen as squalor as home and community for anyone, but when the most important pillar of resiliency, housing, is pulled away, even what we may consider trash becomes precious for someone who has nothing.
Margaret Fine described sweeps as a “horrible thing.” Andrea Pritchett gave three solid suggestions: 1) provide cell phones so the homeless could maintain contact with the case workers who were trying to help them, 2) provide staff with tablets so they could instantly update records when in the field and 3) council to identify safe/safer encampment locations where service providers can regularly provide services.
The Ballot Initiative to Tax Vacant Residential Units should come back on Wednesday. This time I hope council can see clear to pass it so we as voters can decide in November. There is an apartment building near me that has been vacant for decades. This city that likes to call itself progressive should be doing everything possible to get these older buildings back on the market as available housing. They certainly will be cheaper than $3397 for a 461 sq ft studio at the BLAKE. https://www.blakeatberkeley.com/floorplans/a4
And all that we can do to stabilize the most important pillar of resiliency, ought to be on the top of the list. It certainly wasn’t last Tuesday evening at 11 pm.
Nicole Kurian, Legislative Director, Californians Against Waste gave an update for the Zero Waste Commission of bills to watch SB 1046 regulates the pre-checkout bags (the plastic bags used for fruit, vegies, bulk goods, etc, AB 2046 reduces packaging in all those online orders delivered to our doors and SB 1013 requires a redemption payment for every beverage container. They all sound good, but like all bills at the end of the session, we shall see what passes.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Commission grant application turned out to be for the Marina and it didn’t require a vote from the newly blended commission of what used to be the separate Transportation Commission and the Public Works Commission. The application only required a presentation, not approval by the commission.
This is a sorry state of affairs. The least functional side of these two commissions is now in charge. The Public Works Commission turned out incredible work and analysis. The few times I tuned into the Transportation Commission, I was struck by the capacity of the commission to be at the same time dysfunctional and oblivious to the fact that not everyone is going to bicycle everywhere. Some of us like our intact bodies and others of us can’t bicycle for a wide variety of reasons.
I like listening to the Thom Hartmann podcasts. In a normal week there is usually a one-hour segment with someone from Congress taking questions from callers. The slot is often filled with Mark Pocan from Wisconsin or Ro Khanna from Silicon Valley. It’s always interesting and then there are the callers from all over the country making comments on the politics and the discussions of the day. Most often when I listen to the people calling in, I think, “you need to read more books.” It is why I like to finish my Diary with what I just finished reading including the audiobooks read to me.
Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell by Tim Miller just released in June is the kind of book with enough substance, but not too heavy to play while doing mindless tasks or to fill time while travelling. All of the five libraries I use have it and San Francisco just added 31 copies of the audiobook. As the title suggests it is entertaining, but the underlying questions of why people stuck with Trump and then ran back to him are answered with proximity to power, job, money, ambition and being in the club or really the cult.
The book I read with substance which drove me to take pages of notes in my reading journal is One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse, published in 2015.
This book is absolutely fascinating as Kruse pulls together how the invention of a Christian America took hold in the 1930s and 1940s with James W. Fifield the minister for the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles leading the charge catering to the LA millionaires. Fifield started the College of Life, radio programs and speaker series to send the message wealth is a sign of God’s blessing. His messaging success covered his generous salary, butler, cook and chauffer.
Fifield placed an ad in the LA times decrying the New Deal with the Chamber, Wall Street, Norman Vincent Peale, California Institute of Technology, UC, Stanford, U of Florida, Princeton Theological Seminary all jumping on the bandwagon. Hollywood joined in with Cecile B. DeMille, Disney and others promoting the selective religious message.
President Eisenhower and Evangelist Abraham Vereide started the national prayer breakfast in 1953 which continues to this day. Evangelist Billy Graham hovered through several administrations. Falwell, Robertson and others followed threading religiosity through our government. And, J. Walter Thompson the Madison Avenue ad agency was an early promoter of the new rituals.
The mythology of the United States founded as a Christian Nation was meticulously debunked in the Supreme Court decision of Engel v. Vitale on school prayer June 25, 1962 in the opinion by Justice Hugo L. Black. But that meticulous historical opinion from sixty years ago blocking prayer in schools did not stop the Christian Nation myth nor did it stop the recent opinion from Justice Gorsuch in the 6 to 3 decision Kennedy v. Bremerton School District on June 27, 2022 when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a high school coach leading post-game school prayers at the 50 yard line.
Christian Nationalism has taken root and the tentacles are visible in the January 6th Insurrection, the Trump cult, the Tucker Carlson show, the Supreme Court decisions and the adulation of Viktor Orban for starters.
Next in my stack is the Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart.
July 24, 2022
I only take the print edition of the Chronicle one day a week though I really miss having the full paper in hand every day. Reading the e-edition of my various subscriptions is not the same and it’s too easy to miss them altogether. Some say the Chronicle isn’t worth reading at all, but today on the front page is Mono Lake drying up from the drought and on the back the temperature map of the entire continental U.S. is in deep orange (90 – 100 degrees and above) with a tiny sliver on the west in yellow (60 degrees) where we live. This week more than 100 million in the US were under an excessive heat warning and Europe is burning up.
Maybe the investors of units sitting vacant about town with many if not all priced out of reach for those of us with income under the area median (AMI) are holding out for migration back to the Bay Area. A two-bedroom 1079 square foot unit at the Blake is available for $5410/month or maybe a 461 square foot studio at $3397/month is more in your price range. Neither are in my affordability range.
At a neighborhood gathering in District 8 last week, the conversation moved to apartments pulled from the market and turned into AirBnBs. Just a few blocks from me is an apartment building that has been vacant for decades. And I am surrounded by for rent/lease signs in the downtown and cranes of more buildings under construction. Meanwhile the homeless can be seen throughout the flats with their carts of belongings and tents.
Vacant units throughout Berkeley are the subject of the Vacancy Tax authored by Councilmember Kate Harrison. It is item 6 at the 3 pm (new time) City Council Special meeting on Tuesday July 26 on ballot initiatives for the November 8 election. Whether council members will do what is right for the community or bow to the real estate industry which they look to to support their elections and feather the PAC (political action committee) money to bolster “candidate friendly” campaigns is the big question.
The Empty Homes Tax (Vacancy Tax) was before council on June 14th with the usual suspects voting against moving it forward for the November election. Councilmembers Kesarwani, Wengraf, Droste and Taplin voted yes on a motion to move the Empty Homes Tax to the Council Land Use Committee where it would certainly languish until the deadline passed to approve a Vacancy Tax as a November ballot initiative. The second motion on June 14th referred the Empty Homes Tax to the City Attorney and City Manager for review to bring it back for the special meeting on ballot initiatives. That motion did pass with yes votes by Taplin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson and Mayor Arreguin. Arreguin said he was only voting to bring it back and that his vote was not indicating support.
As someone who put in countless hours in Arreguin’s campaign for mayor in 2016 and to everyone who is as disappointed as I am with his performance as mayor, I am sorry, so very very sorry for all those miles walked and doors knocked.
It’s hard to know if council will come through to put the Vacant Residential Units Tax on the November Ballot for the voters to decide. I certainly hope so. I do know for certain that holding units off the market should be a badge of shame and that what is being built, all this “market rate” housing is out of reach for so many of us. The Vacancy Tax is a win all the way around for our community by giving a push to bring units back for occupancy or at the very least making investors pay for withholding housing. You can read the measure at https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-july-26-2022 and please make your voice heard.
Vacant buildings, vacant units, monthly rental prices that push people out of housing is not unique to Berkeley. The manipulation of housing is nationwide and international. It is the subject of the film PUSH, the 2019 documentary on Housing Crisis in Modern Cities and multi-national investing in housing. You can start with the 16-minute clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4-VORQZ1-Q and when you find time watch the full film.
And, it isn’t just the big multi-unit buildings that are attractive to real estate investors like Blackstone. They are gobbling up single family homes and smaller unit buildings too.
On to last week’s City meetings.
The Council Land Use Committee on Tuesday voted to refer Robinson’s Ordinance “Keep Innovation in Berkeley” to the Planning Commission and the City Manager. This ordinance expands the zoning districts where research and development would be allowed. It includes Telegraph and the Downtown. Research and development is currently prohibited in these districts. Referrals to the Planning Commission languish for months and years before action, though this may move a little faster since it is City staff who determine the Planning Commission agenda. In other commissions, the chair and commissioners determine the agenda.
The Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee (FITES) voted to send Taplin’s “Regulation of Autonomous Vehicles” (driverless cars) to the City Attorney to assess the City Council’s “opportunity” to regulate operation, sale and testing in Berkeley.
The last meeting of the week was the Design Review Committee (DRC) at 7 pm Thursday evening; the last hour of the eighth January 6 hearing (thank goodness for hearing recordings). There was only one project up for review 2440 Shattuck.
In my initial non-agenda comment, I spoke to the current heatwave, heat island effect and how we really need to think about designing buildings differently, planning cities differently, top buildings with solar or green roofs (plants covering rooftops) and providing space between buildings for greenery, habitat and ecosystems. Cities with buildings backed up next to each other absorb and retain heat making cities up to 10 to 20 degrees hotter than more rural areas.
There isn’t time to say everything in non-agenda items, but I was certainly thinking of Thom Hartmann’s July 6 edition of the Hartmann Report reminding us that the last time our planet saw CO2 at 420 parts per million, sea levels were 60 feet higher and trees were growing in Antarctica. In the same edition, Hartmann also gives an excellent description of how to understand what is happening to the Polar Jet Stream, something I watch religiously in the weather maps. https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-climate-emergency-we-worried
This climate crisis we are living in now is with a temperature rise of just 1.16°C and CO2 at 420 ppm. And, we just keep flying by adding more carbon to the atmosphere and living like nothing has changed.
When the redesign of 2440 Shattuck came back with walls of deep dark brown brick, I commented that the dark brown would absorb more heat. Charles Kahn, Berkeley architect on the DRC, said he is yet to be convinced that color has any impact on heat absorption and heat island effect, but said he is open to proof.
If you see me out of the street with a clipboard and thermometers know that I am gathering data to duplicate the experiments by Benjamin Franklin from the 1700s and the exercises I found online written for school children to understand color and absorption and reflection of sunlight and the resulting difference in temperature of dark and light surfaces.
Bird safe glass was another request. Bill Shrader, project developer, insisted he couldn’t find any source for bird safe glass. I don’t know where he was looking, but Mountain View, Oakland and San Francisco all have bird safe glass ordinances and San Francisco’s ordinance was passed in 2011.
I am still trying to set up a time with neighbor Josiah who is an architect for high-rises in Oakland. In a street side conversation, Josiah said bird safe glass was no big deal and was in disbelief that Berkeley didn’t have a bird safe ordinance in place.
Janet Tam, architect on the DRC, said she has had projects with bird safe glass.
Looking at the planet heating up it is beginning to feel like we are stepping into Kim Stanley Robinson’s book The Ministry For the Future with some scientists suggesting the controversial geoengineering to dim sunlight in an unbearably hot world. In Robinson’s science fiction book it worked, but that is science fiction. In Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2021 book Under A White Sky she leads us through all the manmade catastrophes of trying to manipulate nature before ending the book with possibilities of the unknown of what could go wrong with geoengineering.
There is a correction from last week. The corrected link to Busting Myths Around Creating Defensible Space with the subdivision from southern California that burned to the ground and left the Eucalyptus surrounding it intact is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JpOdS9ffI
There is a piece of happy news on which to close.
Governor Newsom signed $36 million in the budget for the East Bay Regional Park District for acquisition and cleanup of Point Molate. The members of Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP) have been working on this for years. Those who were involved from the beginning might say decades. https://www.richmondcommunitynews.com/ The work to turn Point Molate into a park isn’t over, but this is really a thrill.
I am a member of CESP and cannot take even a sliver of credit for this accomplishment. All the credit goes to the members who were there long before I joined and continue in their amazing work to expand and preserve our parks. Sally Tobin and Pam Stello have been organizing an incredible series on Mondays from 6 – 7 pm Speaking Up for Point Molate YouTube Channel:https://tinyurl.com/bdfrywys.
I only take the print edition of the Chronicle one day a week though I really miss having the full paper in hand every day. Reading the e-edition of my various subscriptions is not the same and it’s too easy to miss them altogether. Some say the Chronicle isn’t worth reading at all, but today on the front page is Mono Lake drying up from the drought and on the back the temperature map of the entire continental U.S. is in deep orange (90 – 100 degrees and above) with a tiny sliver on the west in yellow (60 degrees) where we live. This week more than 100 million in the US were under an excessive heat warning and Europe is burning up.
Maybe the investors of units sitting vacant about town with many if not all priced out of reach for those of us with income under the area median (AMI) are holding out for migration back to the Bay Area. A two-bedroom 1079 square foot unit at the Blake is available for $5410/month or maybe a 461 square foot studio at $3397/month is more in your price range. Neither are in my affordability range.
At a neighborhood gathering in District 8 last week, the conversation moved to apartments pulled from the market and turned into AirBnBs. Just a few blocks from me is an apartment building that has been vacant for decades. And I am surrounded by for rent/lease signs in the downtown and cranes of more buildings under construction. Meanwhile the homeless can be seen throughout the flats with their carts of belongings and tents.
Vacant units throughout Berkeley are the subject of the Vacancy Tax authored by Councilmember Kate Harrison. It is item 6 at the 3 pm (new time) City Council Special meeting on Tuesday July 26 on ballot initiatives for the November 8 election. Whether council members will do what is right for the community or bow to the real estate industry which they look to to support their elections and feather the PAC (political action committee) money to bolster “candidate friendly” campaigns is the big question.
The Empty Homes Tax (Vacancy Tax) was before council on June 14th with the usual suspects voting against moving it forward for the November election. Councilmembers Kesarwani, Wengraf, Droste and Taplin voted yes on a motion to move the Empty Homes Tax to the Council Land Use Committee where it would certainly languish until the deadline passed to approve a Vacancy Tax as a November ballot initiative. The second motion on June 14th referred the Empty Homes Tax to the City Attorney and City Manager for review to bring it back for the special meeting on ballot initiatives. That motion did pass with yes votes by Taplin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson and Mayor Arreguin. Arreguin said he was only voting to bring it back and that his vote was not indicating support.
As someone who put in countless hours in Arreguin’s campaign for mayor in 2016 and to everyone who is as disappointed as I am with his performance as mayor, I am sorry, so very very sorry for all those miles walked and doors knocked.
It’s hard to know if council will come through to put the Vacant Residential Units Tax on the November Ballot for the voters to decide. I certainly hope so. I do know for certain that holding units off the market should be a badge of shame and that what is being built, all this “market rate” housing is out of reach for so many of us. The Vacancy Tax is a win all the way around for our community by giving a push to bring units back for occupancy or at the very least making investors pay for withholding housing. You can read the measure at https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-july-26-2022 and please make your voice heard.
Vacant buildings, vacant units, monthly rental prices that push people out of housing is not unique to Berkeley. The manipulation of housing is nationwide and international. It is the subject of the film PUSH, the 2019 documentary on Housing Crisis in Modern Cities and multi-national investing in housing. You can start with the 16-minute clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4-VORQZ1-Q and when you find time watch the full film.
And, it isn’t just the big multi-unit buildings that are attractive to real estate investors like Blackstone. They are gobbling up single family homes and smaller unit buildings too.
On to last week’s City meetings.
The Council Land Use Committee on Tuesday voted to refer Robinson’s Ordinance “Keep Innovation in Berkeley” to the Planning Commission and the City Manager. This ordinance expands the zoning districts where research and development would be allowed. It includes Telegraph and the Downtown. Research and development is currently prohibited in these districts. Referrals to the Planning Commission languish for months and years before action, though this may move a little faster since it is City staff who determine the Planning Commission agenda. In other commissions, the chair and commissioners determine the agenda.
The Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee (FITES) voted to send Taplin’s “Regulation of Autonomous Vehicles” (driverless cars) to the City Attorney to assess the City Council’s “opportunity” to regulate operation, sale and testing in Berkeley.
The last meeting of the week was the Design Review Committee (DRC) at 7 pm Thursday evening; the last hour of the eighth January 6 hearing (thank goodness for hearing recordings). There was only one project up for review 2440 Shattuck.
In my initial non-agenda comment, I spoke to the current heatwave, heat island effect and how we really need to think about designing buildings differently, planning cities differently, top buildings with solar or green roofs (plants covering rooftops) and providing space between buildings for greenery, habitat and ecosystems. Cities with buildings backed up next to each other absorb and retain heat making cities up to 10 to 20 degrees hotter than more rural areas.
There isn’t time to say everything in non-agenda items, but I was certainly thinking of Thom Hartmann’s July 6 edition of the Hartmann Report reminding us that the last time our planet saw CO2 at 420 parts per million, sea levels were 60 feet higher and trees were growing in Antarctica. In the same edition, Hartmann also gives an excellent description of how to understand what is happening to the Polar Jet Stream, something I watch religiously in the weather maps. https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-climate-emergency-we-worried
This climate crisis we are living in now is with a temperature rise of just 1.16°C and CO2 at 420 ppm. And, we just keep flying by adding more carbon to the atmosphere and living like nothing has changed.
When the redesign of 2440 Shattuck came back with walls of deep dark brown brick, I commented that the dark brown would absorb more heat. Charles Kahn, Berkeley architect on the DRC, said he is yet to be convinced that color has any impact on heat absorption and heat island effect, but said he is open to proof.
If you see me out of the street with a clipboard and thermometers know that I am gathering data to duplicate the experiments by Benjamin Franklin from the 1700s and the exercises I found online written for school children to understand color and absorption and reflection of sunlight and the resulting difference in temperature of dark and light surfaces.
Bird safe glass was another request. Bill Shrader, project developer, insisted he couldn’t find any source for bird safe glass. I don’t know where he was looking, but Mountain View, Oakland and San Francisco all have bird safe glass ordinances and San Francisco’s ordinance was passed in 2011.
I am still trying to set up a time with neighbor Josiah who is an architect for high-rises in Oakland. In a street side conversation, Josiah said bird safe glass was no big deal and was in disbelief that Berkeley didn’t have a bird safe ordinance in place.
Janet Tam, architect on the DRC, said she has had projects with bird safe glass.
Looking at the planet heating up it is beginning to feel like we are stepping into Kim Stanley Robinson’s book The Ministry For the Future with some scientists suggesting the controversial geoengineering to dim sunlight in an unbearably hot world. In Robinson’s science fiction book it worked, but that is science fiction. In Elizabeth Kolbert’s 2021 book Under A White Sky she leads us through all the manmade catastrophes of trying to manipulate nature before ending the book with possibilities of the unknown of what could go wrong with geoengineering.
There is a correction from last week. The corrected link to Busting Myths Around Creating Defensible Space with the subdivision from southern California that burned to the ground and left the Eucalyptus surrounding it intact is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JpOdS9ffI
There is a piece of happy news on which to close.
Governor Newsom signed $36 million in the budget for the East Bay Regional Park District for acquisition and cleanup of Point Molate. The members of Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP) have been working on this for years. Those who were involved from the beginning might say decades. https://www.richmondcommunitynews.com/ The work to turn Point Molate into a park isn’t over, but this is really a thrill.
I am a member of CESP and cannot take even a sliver of credit for this accomplishment. All the credit goes to the members who were there long before I joined and continue in their amazing work to expand and preserve our parks. Sally Tobin and Pam Stello have been organizing an incredible series on Mondays from 6 – 7 pm Speaking Up for Point Molate YouTube Channel:https://tinyurl.com/bdfrywys.
July 17, 2022
Councilmember Hahn had hoped to move the Fair Work Week ordinance out of the City Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee on Monday, but it was stalled once again. With Council summer recess starting on July 27th, it is unlikely that anything will happen before the fall. Councilmember Kesarwani is probably hoping it can be stalled until after the November election so it can be one more thing to skate around. She can stand with businesses without coming out against employees. We still don’t know if anyone will be running against her in the November 8th election.
Hahn is on the right (correct) side of the issue along with Councilmember Harrison and the Commission on Labor. Hahn described the current situation as “employees are bearing 100% of the burden of last minute changes and those changes mostly come from changes beyond the employers’ control, the pandemic being just one of many things … the question here is who bears the cost … right now employees bear the whole cost and if I had to pick between who is in a better position of who is able to bear the cost, I think the employers are in a better position…”
What is the Fair Work Week about? It is paying a shift cancellation fee – one hour of pay—and a four hours if called in to work and sent home.
Who is resisting? The Chamber of Commerce, businesses and the City of Berkeley administration. The Directors reporting to the City Manager are showing up at meetings throwing in road blocks to the Fair Work Week ordinance. Scott Ferris, Director of Recreation, Parks and Waterfront, expressed his concern that offering shifts to existing recreation part-time employees could force having to fill a position with an unqualified person.
Wednesday, July 20, at 7 pm the Fair Work Week ordinance is on the agenda at the Commission on Labor
Little time was left for discussion of the Re-Entry Employment and Guaranteed Income Programs authored by Councilmember Taplin and supported by Councilmembers Harrison, Hahn and Robinson. It will come back in September. The type of job being described for re-entry employment is cleaning up the city. There is nothing wrong with these jobs, but I continue to ask why California prisoners risk their lives to fight fires and there is no re-entry support program to join the Berkeley Fire Department in the proposal. The support would be key given what looks like deep seeded bias against giving the prison fire fighters a second chance.
Early in the City Council meeting Tuesday evening it was beginning to look like a short night, when Mayor Arreguin preempted discussion and moved Taplin’s revision on Warrantless Searches of Individuals on Supervised Release Search Conditions to consent. Taplin withdrew from Droste’s proposal and wrote his own. I heard third hand there was more to this split, so Droste’s play of asking Taplin during the meeting to be added as a co-sponsor when Taplin couldn’t say no without looking petty carried a bit of a sting. Nathan Mizell, Vice-Chair of the Police Accountability Board (PAB) expressed his objections to the handling of the revision and side-stepping the PAB.
The item which took up most of the evening was the Rent Board Ballot initiative that included a section to end the owner occupied Golden Duplex exemption from just cause evictions and rent control. Both motions on the Golden Duplexes failed. Councilmember Bartlett lives in a Golden Duplex so he had to recuse himself from participating. That left an even number with a four to four split on motions. It will all come back again on July 26th at the 6 pm meeting. The other ballot initiatives are scheduled for 4 pm on July 26th, the special meeting which is not yet posted.
Over 100 attended the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on Wednesday evening to speak against developing the Berkeley Marina into a commercial venture with an outdoor events pavilion in Cesar Chavez Park. The comments were in addition to the many personal letters plus letters from the Citizens for East Shore Parks and the Sierra Club. There were so many wonderful moving comments that I wish the meeting had been recorded. Here is one from Julia Cato:
“The parks at the Berkeley Marina are Berkeley’s greatest treasure. I am appalled that the City wants to commercialize Ceasar Chavez Park and make that serene setting into something like an amusement park complete with zip lines and venue for music. That is not the purpose of a park, particularly a park that is beloved by so many for the peace and beauty that it offers us, a place to restore our balance, to pause and be thankful that there is such beauty in the world, a place that is also a wildlife refuge that was built to protect various vulnerable species which we have the privilege of observing from a distance. Now we are supposed to share this with zip lines, loud music and crowds that don’t care about where they are but only what they are doing. Those of us who love this place, and there are thousands of us who visit over the span of a few weeks, care greatly about where we are when we are at the park. It is where we get, for free, some of the best views in the bay area, the bay the bridge, Mt. Tam and the hills with their ever-changing hues of light and shadow. And above all, living things, plants, seabirds,
shorebirds, baby owls, and other little rock critters-- and we like knowing they have a safe home here and will be protected and there when we come back the next day or the next week.
City parks were created to provide this kind of environment of open space, beauty and nature –things most of us have little access to where we live. The park is my real yard, my real open space. The city has already taken the pier from us, where we walked to watch the sunset and the moonrise, where fishermen of diverse ethnicity spent their weekends and their children played along its length. They are seen no more at our park. Now the city is going after the very heart of the park. What will be left? Do you know that hundreds of people come to the park just to watch the sunset each day? It is a lovely experience sitting on a bench or in your car with all these other people watching the sun go down into the water, it’s like a ritual -- something spiritual, almost holy. And it is quiet, very quiet.”
Not one of the speakers was in support of the proposed development plan. Support came from commissioner Brennan Cox, who stated that he did not think of the marina as thriving. Cox went on in his derogatory description of the Marina and then moved into his positive comments about the consultants and development.
Cox failed to disclose, in his complimentary remarks about the plan from the consultants for development of the Berkeley Marina, that he has a business relationship with those very consultants, Hargreaves Associates, and even lists them in his bio page at Groundworks Office website. https://www.groundworksoffice.com/bc-cv
In the letter from Citizens for East Shore Parks (I am a Board member), it is noted that Cesar Chavez Park was originally intended to be part of the McLaughlin Eastshore Sate Park. If that had happened, instead of the City of Berkeley deciding to maintain it as a municipal park, we wouldn’t be looking at a plan to turn it into a commercial enterprise. And that should be a lesson.
I do not believe it is being overly cynical to observe that the Marina fund was set up to fail, to fall short to maintain infrastructure. The pier deteriorated through sheer City neglect. All this and the deliberate shifting of revenue generated in the Marina through the hotel tax (TOT-Transient Occupancy Tax) to fatten the general fund produced the current setting whereby the City declares consultants must be hired to the tune of $1,101,000 to turn the park into a moneymaking enterprise with this fantasy entertainment development as the answer to save it.
It is another ugly City action in the making. And for all that money that is supposed to be made, if the past gives a hint of the future, will go into overtime pay for the Berkeley Police to provide protection for the park events.
I signed the petition to save the park. You can too.
https://chavezpark.org/petition-to-save-chavez-park-from-bmasp/
The week closed with the Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force Virtual Summit Ecological Protection, a long title for three speaker subjects, Militarism and Climate, Petrochemicals PFAS often called forever chemicals and Wildfires. The last two were my favorites.
Carol Kwaitkowski, the first speaker on PFAS, is with the Green Science Policy Institute. She introduced her talk by mentioning the film Dark Waters, the true story of Robert Bilott, the attorney who sued DuPont for contaminating land and drinking water with PFOA, used in the production of Teflon. The 2019 film is terrific in case you missed it, showing the conversion of Bilott from protecting corporations to going after them for decades for the harm caused to employees and the community. It also covers what these forever chemicals do to our bodies and the environment.
The website for contaminants in our environment, food, water is one to save and look at often. https://greensciencepolicy.org/ The other website which Kwaitkowski did not mention, but it is in her bio, https://tedx.org/interactive-tools/pfas-test , is no longer supported which is unfortunate as it provides more information on PFAS and promises only to be available until September 2022.
Ben Schleifer from Center for Environmental Health, https://ceh.org/ followed Kwaitkowski and spent much of his time talking about PFAS in single-use food ware, the disposable trays used for school lunches around the country and the program to replace this toxic laden throwaway with reusables.
I don’t know how lunches are served to Berkeley students, but I came away from the presentation that serving children food on disposable trays coated with PFAS – hormone disrupters is completely unnecessary and unconscionable as is sending hundreds of thousands of single-use trays and containers to landfill.
Maya Khosla the last speaker focused on Wildfire featuring nature returning to the forest, the snags, after fire. Khosla’s talk was filled with lovely pictures of birds nesting in burned out trees Khosla also hit on the myth that biomass facilities are somehow “green” energy.
If you are unfamiliar with Biomass facilities, as I was not so long ago, this is cutting down of trees / forests and burning them instead of coal or natural gas in large energy plants. In other words instead of burning coal, forests are burned up. You can get a deeper explanation in the documentary Burned https://burnedthemovie.com/streaming-and-screening/
If you happened to watch the film Planet of the Humans which created an enormous uproar and unending attacks on Michael Moore, there is an interview clip in the film with Bill McKibben justifying biomass fuel plants as “green.” Watching him squirm in the interview is quite an interesting contrast to his continual portrayal as a climate hero.
Clearing the forest after fires for salvageable wood is a moneymaker for the logging industry. With solid lobbying power, perpetuation of myths and legislators captured to keep the business going, snags are cleared, forests are thinned, cleared and severely damaged.
The Berkeley Hillside Fire Safety Group, which has been showing up at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission and City Council to secure public funding for clearing Eucalyptus groves in the Berkeley Hills, probably won’t let go of their hysteria over Eucalyptus trees, but the rest of us would do well to watch the Myth Busting Defensible Space video in the list below.
The Home Hardening for Wildfire: Vents and Property Clean Up webinar on Wednesday evening provided by the Berkeley Fire Department was not recorded. The video list here from Maya Kholsa covers the same territory on fire prevention. I watched all three. We live in a high risk fire city. These are worth your time and you would do well to watch and share.
The first two videos are the best
If your home doesn’t ignite it can’t burn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM
Fire Chief Debunks Defensible Space - Myth Busting Defensible Space 20:44. This video is excellent and includes eucalyptus tress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JpOdS9ffI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqKFDDBGd5o
Protecting Your Home From Wildfire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW4ojYJtGbA
More are available at https://firesafemarin.org/
If you want to learn more about snags and rejuvenation of nature after wildfire Chad Hanson’s book Smokescreen is highly recommended. You can find it as an ebook from the San Francisco library.
Councilmember Hahn had hoped to move the Fair Work Week ordinance out of the City Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee on Monday, but it was stalled once again. With Council summer recess starting on July 27th, it is unlikely that anything will happen before the fall. Councilmember Kesarwani is probably hoping it can be stalled until after the November election so it can be one more thing to skate around. She can stand with businesses without coming out against employees. We still don’t know if anyone will be running against her in the November 8th election.
Hahn is on the right (correct) side of the issue along with Councilmember Harrison and the Commission on Labor. Hahn described the current situation as “employees are bearing 100% of the burden of last minute changes and those changes mostly come from changes beyond the employers’ control, the pandemic being just one of many things … the question here is who bears the cost … right now employees bear the whole cost and if I had to pick between who is in a better position of who is able to bear the cost, I think the employers are in a better position…”
What is the Fair Work Week about? It is paying a shift cancellation fee – one hour of pay—and a four hours if called in to work and sent home.
Who is resisting? The Chamber of Commerce, businesses and the City of Berkeley administration. The Directors reporting to the City Manager are showing up at meetings throwing in road blocks to the Fair Work Week ordinance. Scott Ferris, Director of Recreation, Parks and Waterfront, expressed his concern that offering shifts to existing recreation part-time employees could force having to fill a position with an unqualified person.
Wednesday, July 20, at 7 pm the Fair Work Week ordinance is on the agenda at the Commission on Labor
Little time was left for discussion of the Re-Entry Employment and Guaranteed Income Programs authored by Councilmember Taplin and supported by Councilmembers Harrison, Hahn and Robinson. It will come back in September. The type of job being described for re-entry employment is cleaning up the city. There is nothing wrong with these jobs, but I continue to ask why California prisoners risk their lives to fight fires and there is no re-entry support program to join the Berkeley Fire Department in the proposal. The support would be key given what looks like deep seeded bias against giving the prison fire fighters a second chance.
Early in the City Council meeting Tuesday evening it was beginning to look like a short night, when Mayor Arreguin preempted discussion and moved Taplin’s revision on Warrantless Searches of Individuals on Supervised Release Search Conditions to consent. Taplin withdrew from Droste’s proposal and wrote his own. I heard third hand there was more to this split, so Droste’s play of asking Taplin during the meeting to be added as a co-sponsor when Taplin couldn’t say no without looking petty carried a bit of a sting. Nathan Mizell, Vice-Chair of the Police Accountability Board (PAB) expressed his objections to the handling of the revision and side-stepping the PAB.
The item which took up most of the evening was the Rent Board Ballot initiative that included a section to end the owner occupied Golden Duplex exemption from just cause evictions and rent control. Both motions on the Golden Duplexes failed. Councilmember Bartlett lives in a Golden Duplex so he had to recuse himself from participating. That left an even number with a four to four split on motions. It will all come back again on July 26th at the 6 pm meeting. The other ballot initiatives are scheduled for 4 pm on July 26th, the special meeting which is not yet posted.
Over 100 attended the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on Wednesday evening to speak against developing the Berkeley Marina into a commercial venture with an outdoor events pavilion in Cesar Chavez Park. The comments were in addition to the many personal letters plus letters from the Citizens for East Shore Parks and the Sierra Club. There were so many wonderful moving comments that I wish the meeting had been recorded. Here is one from Julia Cato:
“The parks at the Berkeley Marina are Berkeley’s greatest treasure. I am appalled that the City wants to commercialize Ceasar Chavez Park and make that serene setting into something like an amusement park complete with zip lines and venue for music. That is not the purpose of a park, particularly a park that is beloved by so many for the peace and beauty that it offers us, a place to restore our balance, to pause and be thankful that there is such beauty in the world, a place that is also a wildlife refuge that was built to protect various vulnerable species which we have the privilege of observing from a distance. Now we are supposed to share this with zip lines, loud music and crowds that don’t care about where they are but only what they are doing. Those of us who love this place, and there are thousands of us who visit over the span of a few weeks, care greatly about where we are when we are at the park. It is where we get, for free, some of the best views in the bay area, the bay the bridge, Mt. Tam and the hills with their ever-changing hues of light and shadow. And above all, living things, plants, seabirds,
shorebirds, baby owls, and other little rock critters-- and we like knowing they have a safe home here and will be protected and there when we come back the next day or the next week.
City parks were created to provide this kind of environment of open space, beauty and nature –things most of us have little access to where we live. The park is my real yard, my real open space. The city has already taken the pier from us, where we walked to watch the sunset and the moonrise, where fishermen of diverse ethnicity spent their weekends and their children played along its length. They are seen no more at our park. Now the city is going after the very heart of the park. What will be left? Do you know that hundreds of people come to the park just to watch the sunset each day? It is a lovely experience sitting on a bench or in your car with all these other people watching the sun go down into the water, it’s like a ritual -- something spiritual, almost holy. And it is quiet, very quiet.”
Not one of the speakers was in support of the proposed development plan. Support came from commissioner Brennan Cox, who stated that he did not think of the marina as thriving. Cox went on in his derogatory description of the Marina and then moved into his positive comments about the consultants and development.
Cox failed to disclose, in his complimentary remarks about the plan from the consultants for development of the Berkeley Marina, that he has a business relationship with those very consultants, Hargreaves Associates, and even lists them in his bio page at Groundworks Office website. https://www.groundworksoffice.com/bc-cv
In the letter from Citizens for East Shore Parks (I am a Board member), it is noted that Cesar Chavez Park was originally intended to be part of the McLaughlin Eastshore Sate Park. If that had happened, instead of the City of Berkeley deciding to maintain it as a municipal park, we wouldn’t be looking at a plan to turn it into a commercial enterprise. And that should be a lesson.
I do not believe it is being overly cynical to observe that the Marina fund was set up to fail, to fall short to maintain infrastructure. The pier deteriorated through sheer City neglect. All this and the deliberate shifting of revenue generated in the Marina through the hotel tax (TOT-Transient Occupancy Tax) to fatten the general fund produced the current setting whereby the City declares consultants must be hired to the tune of $1,101,000 to turn the park into a moneymaking enterprise with this fantasy entertainment development as the answer to save it.
It is another ugly City action in the making. And for all that money that is supposed to be made, if the past gives a hint of the future, will go into overtime pay for the Berkeley Police to provide protection for the park events.
I signed the petition to save the park. You can too.
https://chavezpark.org/petition-to-save-chavez-park-from-bmasp/
The week closed with the Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force Virtual Summit Ecological Protection, a long title for three speaker subjects, Militarism and Climate, Petrochemicals PFAS often called forever chemicals and Wildfires. The last two were my favorites.
Carol Kwaitkowski, the first speaker on PFAS, is with the Green Science Policy Institute. She introduced her talk by mentioning the film Dark Waters, the true story of Robert Bilott, the attorney who sued DuPont for contaminating land and drinking water with PFOA, used in the production of Teflon. The 2019 film is terrific in case you missed it, showing the conversion of Bilott from protecting corporations to going after them for decades for the harm caused to employees and the community. It also covers what these forever chemicals do to our bodies and the environment.
The website for contaminants in our environment, food, water is one to save and look at often. https://greensciencepolicy.org/ The other website which Kwaitkowski did not mention, but it is in her bio, https://tedx.org/interactive-tools/pfas-test , is no longer supported which is unfortunate as it provides more information on PFAS and promises only to be available until September 2022.
Ben Schleifer from Center for Environmental Health, https://ceh.org/ followed Kwaitkowski and spent much of his time talking about PFAS in single-use food ware, the disposable trays used for school lunches around the country and the program to replace this toxic laden throwaway with reusables.
I don’t know how lunches are served to Berkeley students, but I came away from the presentation that serving children food on disposable trays coated with PFAS – hormone disrupters is completely unnecessary and unconscionable as is sending hundreds of thousands of single-use trays and containers to landfill.
Maya Khosla the last speaker focused on Wildfire featuring nature returning to the forest, the snags, after fire. Khosla’s talk was filled with lovely pictures of birds nesting in burned out trees Khosla also hit on the myth that biomass facilities are somehow “green” energy.
If you are unfamiliar with Biomass facilities, as I was not so long ago, this is cutting down of trees / forests and burning them instead of coal or natural gas in large energy plants. In other words instead of burning coal, forests are burned up. You can get a deeper explanation in the documentary Burned https://burnedthemovie.com/streaming-and-screening/
If you happened to watch the film Planet of the Humans which created an enormous uproar and unending attacks on Michael Moore, there is an interview clip in the film with Bill McKibben justifying biomass fuel plants as “green.” Watching him squirm in the interview is quite an interesting contrast to his continual portrayal as a climate hero.
Clearing the forest after fires for salvageable wood is a moneymaker for the logging industry. With solid lobbying power, perpetuation of myths and legislators captured to keep the business going, snags are cleared, forests are thinned, cleared and severely damaged.
The Berkeley Hillside Fire Safety Group, which has been showing up at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission and City Council to secure public funding for clearing Eucalyptus groves in the Berkeley Hills, probably won’t let go of their hysteria over Eucalyptus trees, but the rest of us would do well to watch the Myth Busting Defensible Space video in the list below.
The Home Hardening for Wildfire: Vents and Property Clean Up webinar on Wednesday evening provided by the Berkeley Fire Department was not recorded. The video list here from Maya Kholsa covers the same territory on fire prevention. I watched all three. We live in a high risk fire city. These are worth your time and you would do well to watch and share.
The first two videos are the best
If your home doesn’t ignite it can’t burn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM
Fire Chief Debunks Defensible Space - Myth Busting Defensible Space 20:44. This video is excellent and includes eucalyptus tress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JpOdS9ffI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqKFDDBGd5o
Protecting Your Home From Wildfire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW4ojYJtGbA
More are available at https://firesafemarin.org/
If you want to learn more about snags and rejuvenation of nature after wildfire Chad Hanson’s book Smokescreen is highly recommended. You can find it as an ebook from the San Francisco library.
July 10, 2022
Last Thursday and Friday there were seven IKE Phase II Location Community Meetings, three in person and four via zoom. In case you missed them, no announcement was posted by the City on the City website. Councilmember Hahn did send an announcement to her email list and that is how most of us learned of the meetings.
If you never heard of an IKE (Interactive Kiosk Experience) kiosk, you can see the oversize 8-foot tall digital advertising billboard thing by the curb in front of Pegasus Books on Shattuck.
The City Council voted in 2018 to install up to 31 of these “things” called IKE kiosks in commercial areas around the city and authorized a 15-year contract with the agreement that no IKE kiosks can be removed in the first two years. After two years, one kiosk can be removed or two relocated per year with a signature of 30 residents and businesses within 1000 feet and the designation of two other sites in proximity.
Denny Abrams (the developer of the extremely successful 4th Street shopping district) didn’t take to kindly to an installation of an IKE kiosk on 4th Street. Abrams said there was nothing on the IKE kiosk that couldn’t be found on our smart phones. He described the kiosks as intrusive, and a blight to any retail location that would negatively impact the value of the retail space in proximity. He said they had no place on 4th Street; none of the businesses there wanted them. Abrams reminded Kieron Slaughter(Chief Community Development Officer of the City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development and host of the meeting) multiple times that 4th Street is the most successful retail corridor in Berkeley and 4th Street doesn’t want and doesn’t need IKE. Several other business owners at the 2 pm Friday meeting joined in with their objections.
After my own visit to an IKE kiosk, I would say they are less useful than the information on my iPhone. Understandably, they are not fully set up with all the ads they promise to carry, but even then, who wants to stand around looking at a giant digital billboard?
And, the last thing I want is my data to be collected as I walk by (IKE is said to be able to capture phone/device data within 75 feet)and/or ads to pop up on my iPhone. The cameras are supposed to be turned off (one rep said the cameras that are part of the system were not installed for Berkeley) and then pointed out the locations where cameras could be installed. We can hope we aren’t filmed as our data is collected, like in Miami (DeSantis country).
Now that I’ve seen this IKE thing in person it is hard to imagine how anyone on Council could be excited about IKE and eager to have these devices taking space on our sidewalks. I remember when the Ike Smart City Kiosks hit the council agenda and Councilmember Bartlett barely contained himself in his enthusiasm for them, describing his recent experience with them on his trip to Denver.
Maybe the mayor’s and council’s enthusiasm is greased by the vision of getting a cut of the revenue. According to council meeting documents dating back to 2018, the City of Berkeley gets a cut of the IKE kiosk advertising revenue through a handoff from Visit Berkeley (formerly the Berkeley Convention & Visitors Bureau).
Here is language from Ordinance No. 7,626-N.S defining how the City of Berkeley gets its cut.
Section 2. The City Manager is hereby authorized to enter into a 15 year franchise agreement, which may be extended upon mutual consent with IKE Smart City LLC, as operator of the wayfinding kiosks program. As a contracting agent to the City for marketing, wayfinding and other information, Visit Berkeley is an appropriate party to administer and oversee the IKE kiosk program. The proposed revenue allocation is that IKE will provide 10% of gross revenues to Visit Berkeley in the first two years of the program and 25% in subsequent years of the term. Visit Berkeley may retain the lesser amount of 25% of the revenue share or $100,000, for its costs for administration of the program, and will distribute the remainder of the revenue share to the City of Berkeley. The revenue will be distributed to the City within 30 days of Visit Berkeley receiving it and preliminary projections anticipate approximately $829,361 per year in General Fund revenue to the City of Berkeley once the program is fully deployed, or approximately $26,754 per year per kiosk that is deployed.
From its web site: “Visit Berkeley has become the voice of the hospitality and tourism industry in Berkeley. Governed by a Board of Directors comprised of Berkeley tourism and hospitality professionals, Visit Berkeley operates as a 501c(6) private, not for profit, mutual benefit corporation.
It takes a little high school algebra to calculate the total cost to businesses for the City of Berkeley to add $829,361 to revenue collections. At year three that would be around $3,717,444 in gross advertising revenue.
Not everyone fell for the sales pitch. Former Councilmember Cheryl Davilla abstained on all votes and Councilmember Sophie Hahn finally came around to voting no on the 2nd reading of the ordinance.
I heard second hand that at one of the IKE meetings I missed, someone suggested community activism of knitting covers for the kiosks. These things are huge; a cover would be a lot of yarn and knitting. Oh well, maybe someone has a better idea of how to get out of the contract.
So far there are 37 letters opposing the data-mining ugly, intrusive, useless, invasive, polluting, offensive, eyesore IKE kiosks that create a stain on the City of Berkeley and clutter on the sidewalk attached to the July 26 City Council meeting. You might want to add your own comments to the ones I read, if you haven’t written already.
There are also a whole string of letters opposing developing Cesar Chavez Park, which I will write about in my next Diary.
The neighbors to the mixed-use project at 1201-1205 San Pablo approved by ZAB on April 28, 2022 joined the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meeting on Saturday. Their appeal is scheduled for September 29, 2022. After participating in two appeals and observing others, I don’t give them much hope and said as much: “it’s over.” They haven’t given up and still hold hope they can lower the height and size of the project and secure other changes.
Out of the 66 units in the 1201 – 1205 San Pablo project, five will be for households with very low income. For this little offering to financially strapped households, the developer gets a bonus to exceed area height limits. This project’s bonus award for those 5 units is two more full floors, bringing the total to six stories. The little one-story house next door will sit in the shadow of their new towering neighbor. Another loses solar access.
The shock of learning your new neighbor is a tower taking away your sunshine, light, privacy, solar access is repeated over and over in full display when you attend the Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meetings. The difficulty for the DRC and ZAB is that they have very little power any more. State legislation took away much of local control and Berkeley City Council dropped the ball on the rest.
Fighting against the lobbyists for high-density high-rise housing requires an all-out effort and even then it is a nail bitter. Just look at the years soaked up to limit the height of the planned housing projects for the North Berkeley and Ashby BART Stations to seven stories. And the effort is still ongoing to maximize affordable housing and put a lid on density bonuses.
If the California YIMBYs (lobbying organization for high density housing) and developers and investors who support them get their way, the experience of the neighbors of 1201-1205 San Pablo story will spread across the State. Of course, it doesn’t end there, as the developers set their sights on demolishing single family homes and packing the lots with multiple units. The lobbyists have helping hands from Senators Nancy Skinner (Berkeley), Scott Wiener (San Francisco) and Toni Atkins (San Diego). Don’t count on Berkeley’s Assemblymember Buffy Wicks to vote no either. A site to check for good and bad housing legislation is Livable California https://www.livablecalifornia.org/livable-california-priority-bills-position-letters/
The City Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee continued the agenda items on plastic bags to the Fall. Greenhouse gas emissions and the City Climate Action plan will return on July 20th along with with autonomous vehicles / driverless cars.
The City Council Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee approved a referral to the City Manager and the Planning Commission to establish standards for efficiency units. The current minimum unit size is 350 square feet per occupant. An efficiency unit is decidedly smaller. If you have ever spent a mindless evening looking at tiny house plans on YouTube as I did some months ago, you would find there are a lot of very innovative imaginative tiny houses. A place to start is Living Big in a tiny house https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLZyTlbuG9A.
If more architects, councilmembers and commissioners spent a little time on these sites, we would have better designed smaller ADUs. Don’t expect anything to happen soon with efficiency units; this is after all going to the Planning Commission where they project they will finish the bird safe glass ordinance in October 2022, three years after receiving the referral from the City Council.
The Planning Commission did meet, and had a discussion following the staff presentation on an affordable housing overlay and local density bonus. Nothing was decided, and it will come back again to consider accepting an in-lieu fee versus requiring all affordable units to be built on site (inclusionary affordable housing). Commissioner Ghosh asked if we are doing more segregation with 100% affordable buildings, and what are we trying to accomplish with objective design standards? Commissioner Twu said he worked on a couple of projects under California Affordable Housing bill AB 1763 and sometimes height isn’t an issue as costs go up with height; going wider would be more usefl.
A good deal of time at the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) was devoted to reports of violations of ADA guidelines and standards, health and safety and sub-standard renovations / ”upgrades,” harassment and retaliation against tenants at Harriet Tubman Terrace. The 91 unit mid-rise building of affordable housing for adults 62 or older and for adults with disabilities is described by Affordable Housing online as “luxurious apartment living at an affordable price.”
The film produced by the tenants of repairs and their treatment, being relocated out of their apartments for construction and then moved back in, is a better fit to the submission from District 8 Commissioner Mari Mendonca. Cassandra Palanza, the Harriet Tubman Terrace Project Manager, wrote a 9-page response, including an offer to provide the City Inspection Log. The HAC voted to send a letter to the City Council to request a directive to the City Manager to investigate. Nothing from a commission seems to work its way through the system in a hurry. If the process is normal, this might appear on the Council agenda by November.
At the same HAC meeting, City Staff requested a one-year extension to Community Agency Contracts and to postpone RFPs, because the City doesn’t have the staff bandwidth to do the RFPs. Only two service providers were present. The representative from the Center for Independent Living spoke to the issue of inflation and the impact of contracts being extended without a new bid. It would mean not being able to serve as many clients because of the cost of materials. The HAC voted to support the extension with a request to Council to consider Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for the one-year extension.
It is hard to defend the importance of commissions when dysfunction is in plain view. Such was the case of the Commission on Disability last week. Nearly 40 minutes (checked my watch) were wasted in a back and forth discussion of the order of the agenda. In the time that was wasted, a good part of the agenda could have been covered making any rearranging of the order of the agenda items irrelevant. We need a robust Commission on Disability to bring forward issues needing attention. Filling commission vacancies and retaining commissioners requires councilmembers to make their commissioner appointments and a functional commission to get work done. Currently six of the nine Commission on Disability commissioner positions are vacant.
In the commission reorganization initiated by Councilmember Droste, there consideration was given to merging the Commission on Aging and the Commission on Disability. They were left separate with discussion that not all older adults are disabled and certainly people with disabilities are of all ages. Each has unique contributions to make.
Some months ago as plans for the Marina were starting to roll starting with the pier and ferry, Mayor Arreguin said at a public meeting on the Marina that the opposition wasn’t representative of Berkeley.
Local does matter. So far it looks like the mayor and council are NOT representative of the community. Too often it is one councilmember standing alone against the rest. That we need to change. Sending your opinion to Council@cityofberkeley.info is a start.
Last Thursday and Friday there were seven IKE Phase II Location Community Meetings, three in person and four via zoom. In case you missed them, no announcement was posted by the City on the City website. Councilmember Hahn did send an announcement to her email list and that is how most of us learned of the meetings.
If you never heard of an IKE (Interactive Kiosk Experience) kiosk, you can see the oversize 8-foot tall digital advertising billboard thing by the curb in front of Pegasus Books on Shattuck.
The City Council voted in 2018 to install up to 31 of these “things” called IKE kiosks in commercial areas around the city and authorized a 15-year contract with the agreement that no IKE kiosks can be removed in the first two years. After two years, one kiosk can be removed or two relocated per year with a signature of 30 residents and businesses within 1000 feet and the designation of two other sites in proximity.
Denny Abrams (the developer of the extremely successful 4th Street shopping district) didn’t take to kindly to an installation of an IKE kiosk on 4th Street. Abrams said there was nothing on the IKE kiosk that couldn’t be found on our smart phones. He described the kiosks as intrusive, and a blight to any retail location that would negatively impact the value of the retail space in proximity. He said they had no place on 4th Street; none of the businesses there wanted them. Abrams reminded Kieron Slaughter(Chief Community Development Officer of the City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development and host of the meeting) multiple times that 4th Street is the most successful retail corridor in Berkeley and 4th Street doesn’t want and doesn’t need IKE. Several other business owners at the 2 pm Friday meeting joined in with their objections.
After my own visit to an IKE kiosk, I would say they are less useful than the information on my iPhone. Understandably, they are not fully set up with all the ads they promise to carry, but even then, who wants to stand around looking at a giant digital billboard?
And, the last thing I want is my data to be collected as I walk by (IKE is said to be able to capture phone/device data within 75 feet)and/or ads to pop up on my iPhone. The cameras are supposed to be turned off (one rep said the cameras that are part of the system were not installed for Berkeley) and then pointed out the locations where cameras could be installed. We can hope we aren’t filmed as our data is collected, like in Miami (DeSantis country).
Now that I’ve seen this IKE thing in person it is hard to imagine how anyone on Council could be excited about IKE and eager to have these devices taking space on our sidewalks. I remember when the Ike Smart City Kiosks hit the council agenda and Councilmember Bartlett barely contained himself in his enthusiasm for them, describing his recent experience with them on his trip to Denver.
Maybe the mayor’s and council’s enthusiasm is greased by the vision of getting a cut of the revenue. According to council meeting documents dating back to 2018, the City of Berkeley gets a cut of the IKE kiosk advertising revenue through a handoff from Visit Berkeley (formerly the Berkeley Convention & Visitors Bureau).
Here is language from Ordinance No. 7,626-N.S defining how the City of Berkeley gets its cut.
Section 2. The City Manager is hereby authorized to enter into a 15 year franchise agreement, which may be extended upon mutual consent with IKE Smart City LLC, as operator of the wayfinding kiosks program. As a contracting agent to the City for marketing, wayfinding and other information, Visit Berkeley is an appropriate party to administer and oversee the IKE kiosk program. The proposed revenue allocation is that IKE will provide 10% of gross revenues to Visit Berkeley in the first two years of the program and 25% in subsequent years of the term. Visit Berkeley may retain the lesser amount of 25% of the revenue share or $100,000, for its costs for administration of the program, and will distribute the remainder of the revenue share to the City of Berkeley. The revenue will be distributed to the City within 30 days of Visit Berkeley receiving it and preliminary projections anticipate approximately $829,361 per year in General Fund revenue to the City of Berkeley once the program is fully deployed, or approximately $26,754 per year per kiosk that is deployed.
From its web site: “Visit Berkeley has become the voice of the hospitality and tourism industry in Berkeley. Governed by a Board of Directors comprised of Berkeley tourism and hospitality professionals, Visit Berkeley operates as a 501c(6) private, not for profit, mutual benefit corporation.
It takes a little high school algebra to calculate the total cost to businesses for the City of Berkeley to add $829,361 to revenue collections. At year three that would be around $3,717,444 in gross advertising revenue.
Not everyone fell for the sales pitch. Former Councilmember Cheryl Davilla abstained on all votes and Councilmember Sophie Hahn finally came around to voting no on the 2nd reading of the ordinance.
I heard second hand that at one of the IKE meetings I missed, someone suggested community activism of knitting covers for the kiosks. These things are huge; a cover would be a lot of yarn and knitting. Oh well, maybe someone has a better idea of how to get out of the contract.
So far there are 37 letters opposing the data-mining ugly, intrusive, useless, invasive, polluting, offensive, eyesore IKE kiosks that create a stain on the City of Berkeley and clutter on the sidewalk attached to the July 26 City Council meeting. You might want to add your own comments to the ones I read, if you haven’t written already.
There are also a whole string of letters opposing developing Cesar Chavez Park, which I will write about in my next Diary.
The neighbors to the mixed-use project at 1201-1205 San Pablo approved by ZAB on April 28, 2022 joined the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meeting on Saturday. Their appeal is scheduled for September 29, 2022. After participating in two appeals and observing others, I don’t give them much hope and said as much: “it’s over.” They haven’t given up and still hold hope they can lower the height and size of the project and secure other changes.
Out of the 66 units in the 1201 – 1205 San Pablo project, five will be for households with very low income. For this little offering to financially strapped households, the developer gets a bonus to exceed area height limits. This project’s bonus award for those 5 units is two more full floors, bringing the total to six stories. The little one-story house next door will sit in the shadow of their new towering neighbor. Another loses solar access.
The shock of learning your new neighbor is a tower taking away your sunshine, light, privacy, solar access is repeated over and over in full display when you attend the Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meetings. The difficulty for the DRC and ZAB is that they have very little power any more. State legislation took away much of local control and Berkeley City Council dropped the ball on the rest.
Fighting against the lobbyists for high-density high-rise housing requires an all-out effort and even then it is a nail bitter. Just look at the years soaked up to limit the height of the planned housing projects for the North Berkeley and Ashby BART Stations to seven stories. And the effort is still ongoing to maximize affordable housing and put a lid on density bonuses.
If the California YIMBYs (lobbying organization for high density housing) and developers and investors who support them get their way, the experience of the neighbors of 1201-1205 San Pablo story will spread across the State. Of course, it doesn’t end there, as the developers set their sights on demolishing single family homes and packing the lots with multiple units. The lobbyists have helping hands from Senators Nancy Skinner (Berkeley), Scott Wiener (San Francisco) and Toni Atkins (San Diego). Don’t count on Berkeley’s Assemblymember Buffy Wicks to vote no either. A site to check for good and bad housing legislation is Livable California https://www.livablecalifornia.org/livable-california-priority-bills-position-letters/
The City Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee continued the agenda items on plastic bags to the Fall. Greenhouse gas emissions and the City Climate Action plan will return on July 20th along with with autonomous vehicles / driverless cars.
The City Council Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee approved a referral to the City Manager and the Planning Commission to establish standards for efficiency units. The current minimum unit size is 350 square feet per occupant. An efficiency unit is decidedly smaller. If you have ever spent a mindless evening looking at tiny house plans on YouTube as I did some months ago, you would find there are a lot of very innovative imaginative tiny houses. A place to start is Living Big in a tiny house https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLZyTlbuG9A.
If more architects, councilmembers and commissioners spent a little time on these sites, we would have better designed smaller ADUs. Don’t expect anything to happen soon with efficiency units; this is after all going to the Planning Commission where they project they will finish the bird safe glass ordinance in October 2022, three years after receiving the referral from the City Council.
The Planning Commission did meet, and had a discussion following the staff presentation on an affordable housing overlay and local density bonus. Nothing was decided, and it will come back again to consider accepting an in-lieu fee versus requiring all affordable units to be built on site (inclusionary affordable housing). Commissioner Ghosh asked if we are doing more segregation with 100% affordable buildings, and what are we trying to accomplish with objective design standards? Commissioner Twu said he worked on a couple of projects under California Affordable Housing bill AB 1763 and sometimes height isn’t an issue as costs go up with height; going wider would be more usefl.
A good deal of time at the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) was devoted to reports of violations of ADA guidelines and standards, health and safety and sub-standard renovations / ”upgrades,” harassment and retaliation against tenants at Harriet Tubman Terrace. The 91 unit mid-rise building of affordable housing for adults 62 or older and for adults with disabilities is described by Affordable Housing online as “luxurious apartment living at an affordable price.”
The film produced by the tenants of repairs and their treatment, being relocated out of their apartments for construction and then moved back in, is a better fit to the submission from District 8 Commissioner Mari Mendonca. Cassandra Palanza, the Harriet Tubman Terrace Project Manager, wrote a 9-page response, including an offer to provide the City Inspection Log. The HAC voted to send a letter to the City Council to request a directive to the City Manager to investigate. Nothing from a commission seems to work its way through the system in a hurry. If the process is normal, this might appear on the Council agenda by November.
At the same HAC meeting, City Staff requested a one-year extension to Community Agency Contracts and to postpone RFPs, because the City doesn’t have the staff bandwidth to do the RFPs. Only two service providers were present. The representative from the Center for Independent Living spoke to the issue of inflation and the impact of contracts being extended without a new bid. It would mean not being able to serve as many clients because of the cost of materials. The HAC voted to support the extension with a request to Council to consider Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for the one-year extension.
It is hard to defend the importance of commissions when dysfunction is in plain view. Such was the case of the Commission on Disability last week. Nearly 40 minutes (checked my watch) were wasted in a back and forth discussion of the order of the agenda. In the time that was wasted, a good part of the agenda could have been covered making any rearranging of the order of the agenda items irrelevant. We need a robust Commission on Disability to bring forward issues needing attention. Filling commission vacancies and retaining commissioners requires councilmembers to make their commissioner appointments and a functional commission to get work done. Currently six of the nine Commission on Disability commissioner positions are vacant.
In the commission reorganization initiated by Councilmember Droste, there consideration was given to merging the Commission on Aging and the Commission on Disability. They were left separate with discussion that not all older adults are disabled and certainly people with disabilities are of all ages. Each has unique contributions to make.
Some months ago as plans for the Marina were starting to roll starting with the pier and ferry, Mayor Arreguin said at a public meeting on the Marina that the opposition wasn’t representative of Berkeley.
Local does matter. So far it looks like the mayor and council are NOT representative of the community. Too often it is one councilmember standing alone against the rest. That we need to change. Sending your opinion to Council@cityofberkeley.info is a start.
July 3, 2022
As the Supreme Court hands out one frightening decision after another, I am finding my way into reading and rereading that little 5 ¼ by 3 ½ inch 38-page booklet “The Constitution of the United States of America” that I received years ago in the mail from the ACLU.
Article III applies to the court. In Article III Section 2 the constitution gives the Court the power to settle controversies between states, between a State and Citizens of another state, so if anyone thinks that the right to travel from a state banning abortion to another permitting it is the solution to the end of Roe v. Wade for women with the means to travel, I wouldn’t feel too confident going forward. A right to travel isn’t specifically spelled out. Article IV Section 2 does spell out a person charged with a crime in one state found in another can be “delivered up.”
The “Originalists” or “Textualists” as the radical conservatives call themselves pick and choose pieces from history and the constitution that suits them as they chip away at rights with a sledge hammer. This Court doesn’t need Chief Justice Roberts to moderate. It is looking more and more like no right is sacrosanct. With a 6 to 3 radical conservative majority one can drop off here and there and the rest can hold.
This week we can add separation of church and state to the list going down the drain with the convoluted decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District from Justice Gorsuch. Gorsuch delivered the opinion that Joseph Kennedy was exercising freedom of speech when he knelt on the field to offer a “quiet” prayer of thanks. Bremerton is a public school and “quiet” is the fiction on which the Gorsuch decision rests.
Justice Sotomayor with Justices Breyer and Kagan in their dissent included pictures portraying the true nature of what took place on the football field and responded with, “[S]chool officials leading prayer is constitutionally impermissible. Official-led prayer strikes at the core of our constitutional protections for the religious liberty of students and their parents.” The pictures in the dissent are a crowd on the field clearly showing Gorsuch’s use of the word “quiet” as a made-up description to reach the majority’s desired end. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf
We have for so long depended on good faith and expanding rights, but things are changing quickly.
Saturday, I asked guests, the daughter and son-in-law of a close friend, a couple I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade what they thought about the state of the country, the answer was, “terrified.”
They aren’t the only ones as Heather Cox wrote in her Letters from an American June 30, 2022
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-30-2022?r=8mwa3&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
The fear that I had in 2016 when Trump was elected that one day the U.S. would look much like the USSR on December 25, 1991 doesn’t seem so farfetched anymore.
I might suggest picking up and reading two of the books I previously reviewed, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky.
Pay particular attention in After the Fall to the twelve steps describing how the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban (the darling of the right, Tucker Carlson, Trump and CPAC) took Hungary from a democracy to authoritarianism in ten years. Number five on the list is pack the courts, seven is demonize opponents (the January 6th Commission hearings) and ten is wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
In the other book How Democracies Die, Ziblatt and Levitsky write that a politician with even one of the following four behaviors is a clear warning of concern of an authoritarian.
1)disregard for norms,
2)denies the legitimacy of opponents,
3)tolerates or encourages violence
4)indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents including the media.
Trump hit all four.
We would all be wise to look for warning signs in the presidential wannabees in the wings. Some of them are pretty frightening. I wouldn’t put saving this democracy on the top of their list.
There is a third book that I am picking up to reread, From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp https://www.aeinstein.org/from-dictatorship-to-democracy/ It is free online from the Albert Einstein Institution www.aeinstein.org. We do need to vote and as much as voting counts, we need a plan that is more than show up and give money.
State and local elections matter as those are often the stepping stones to positions of greater power. With the Court dismantling the laws we depended on and putting the authority in the hands of the states, we can’t take our eyes off what is happening closer to home or for that matter what a Republican state is cooking up until they fulfill their authoritarian dream of a super majority in Congress and one of their own as President. Keeping track of all of it is a lot to swallow.
With national news soaking up so much attention, it was a relief that there were only two evenings with meetings of consequence.
Tuesday evening City Council approved the $737,068,276 biennial budget for FY 2023 and FY 2024. The 410 page budget booklet is enough to give any normal person a headache. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-06-28%20Item%2044%20Biennial%20Budget%20Adoption.pdf It makes me feel like the City answer to public review is drown them in paper or more rightly an e-document with hundreds of pages. At least there is a table of contents to ease the journey and the contents are not as daunting as one might expect, although I wouldn’t suggest trying to wade through it in one sitting. If you are looking for how much the City spends on consultants, it isn’t available in this budget document.
The City Manager listed the new City website as an accomplishment, something with which many of us would disagree.
If you are looking for the total of authorized fulltime equivalent City employees (FTEs - part time positions are added together) it is 1,735.09 for FY 2023 and 1,737.09 for FY 2024 (pages 74 – 92). The startling number is that it takes the City an average of 242 days, nearly eight months to fill a posted position. (page 208).
Whatever promises the Council pledged in their votes to reimagine public safety after the murder of George Floyd and demonstrations locally and around the world, the Berkeley Police got their wish, a bigger police force budget of 180 sworn officers, a total department of 290.2 FTEs and a $12.5 million budget increase.
The goBerkeley pilot, which council passed the same evening, to charge for parking in residential neighborhoods (no matter what justification is thrown up) looks more and more like the mechanism to bail out the Parking Meter Fund. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds allocated to parking run out in 2023 (page 64). That leaves paying for things such as the Center Street Garage debt underfunded. Money has to come from somewhere. Neighborhoods look to be the next source to tap.
There is nothing that requires the Berkeley Marina to be a self-sustaining financial entity, however, that is how the City has chosen to define it (an enterprise fund) while at the same sending the Marina hotel taxes (transient occupancy tax – TOT) into the general fund to be redistributed. ARPA funds will bail out the Marina temporarily and then it will slip back into falling short. This lays the ground for commercial development projects and Mayor Arreguin’s dream of the Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) building a new pier or at least paying for a big chunk of it and adding a ferry. There is the expectation the WETA endeavor and the commercial developments will boost the City coffers.
WETA is counting on regaining pre-pandemic ridership to cover its own financial shortfalls. I asked my guests who work in Silicon Valley, one as a manager, the other a programmer if a return to the office to pre-pandemic levels is in the offing. They answered people do come in, but as to a full return that answer is no. In fact, working from home defined what was important in the layout of the home they purchased.
The allocation to EV charging stations at the corporation yard and at sites in the city from the Mayor’s budget did survive. The allocation of funding to councilmembers for an additional legislative aide survived with only half of the desired funding. Councilmember Kesarwani lead the opposition to allow any funding for legislative aides.
In the public comment on the budget, there were a number of speakers from the Berkeley Hillside Fire Safety Group lobbying to use Measure FF funds for the removal of eucalyptus trees from private property in the fire zones. That request did not gain traction, but we can expect them to continue showing up.
Wednesday, I chose the Housing Element Workshop #3 over the Police Accountability Board and the Rent Board Convention. There wasn’t anything new which means still reading the 500 plus pages to find what is packed away in the details. Breakout groups followed the short presentation.
The increase density attendees clearly won the day. A future of perpetual droughts, water shortages, hardscape with water runoff and heat island effect are clearly not part of the picture, nor are habitat loss and damage to ecosystems. Solar access is dismissed.
The Matthew Lewis (there two) employed by California YIMBY as Director of Communications proclaimed rooftop solar is a big nothing as Berkeley has opted the city up to 100% renewable with EBCE (East Bay Community Energy). The 4000 plus owners of rooftop solar in Berkeley would beg to differ except, of course, Matthew Lewis is paid to send the message that only density near mass transit matters.
If I didn’t give you enough to ponder as we cross another July 4th holiday, for a longer look at older Supreme Court decisions starting with Marbury v. Madison in 1803, check this website https://www.infoplease.com/us/government/judicial-branch/milestone-cases-in-supreme-court-history. Marbury v. Madison is the first instance in which a law passed by Congress was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
As the Supreme Court hands out one frightening decision after another, I am finding my way into reading and rereading that little 5 ¼ by 3 ½ inch 38-page booklet “The Constitution of the United States of America” that I received years ago in the mail from the ACLU.
Article III applies to the court. In Article III Section 2 the constitution gives the Court the power to settle controversies between states, between a State and Citizens of another state, so if anyone thinks that the right to travel from a state banning abortion to another permitting it is the solution to the end of Roe v. Wade for women with the means to travel, I wouldn’t feel too confident going forward. A right to travel isn’t specifically spelled out. Article IV Section 2 does spell out a person charged with a crime in one state found in another can be “delivered up.”
The “Originalists” or “Textualists” as the radical conservatives call themselves pick and choose pieces from history and the constitution that suits them as they chip away at rights with a sledge hammer. This Court doesn’t need Chief Justice Roberts to moderate. It is looking more and more like no right is sacrosanct. With a 6 to 3 radical conservative majority one can drop off here and there and the rest can hold.
This week we can add separation of church and state to the list going down the drain with the convoluted decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District from Justice Gorsuch. Gorsuch delivered the opinion that Joseph Kennedy was exercising freedom of speech when he knelt on the field to offer a “quiet” prayer of thanks. Bremerton is a public school and “quiet” is the fiction on which the Gorsuch decision rests.
Justice Sotomayor with Justices Breyer and Kagan in their dissent included pictures portraying the true nature of what took place on the football field and responded with, “[S]chool officials leading prayer is constitutionally impermissible. Official-led prayer strikes at the core of our constitutional protections for the religious liberty of students and their parents.” The pictures in the dissent are a crowd on the field clearly showing Gorsuch’s use of the word “quiet” as a made-up description to reach the majority’s desired end. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf
We have for so long depended on good faith and expanding rights, but things are changing quickly.
Saturday, I asked guests, the daughter and son-in-law of a close friend, a couple I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade what they thought about the state of the country, the answer was, “terrified.”
They aren’t the only ones as Heather Cox wrote in her Letters from an American June 30, 2022
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-30-2022?r=8mwa3&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
The fear that I had in 2016 when Trump was elected that one day the U.S. would look much like the USSR on December 25, 1991 doesn’t seem so farfetched anymore.
I might suggest picking up and reading two of the books I previously reviewed, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky.
Pay particular attention in After the Fall to the twelve steps describing how the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban (the darling of the right, Tucker Carlson, Trump and CPAC) took Hungary from a democracy to authoritarianism in ten years. Number five on the list is pack the courts, seven is demonize opponents (the January 6th Commission hearings) and ten is wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
- Win elections through right-wing populism that taps into people’s outrage over the corruption and inequities wrought by unbridled globalization.
- Enrich corrupt oligarchs who in turn fund your politics.
- Create a vast partisan propaganda machine.
- Redraw parliamentary districts to entrench your party in power.
- Pack the courts with right-wing judges and erode the independence of the rule of law.
- Keep big business on your side with low taxes and favorable treatment.
- Demonize your political opponents through social media disinformation.
- Attack civil society as a tool of George Soros.
- Cast yourself as the legitimate defender of national security.
- Wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
- Offer a sense of belonging for the disaffected masses.
- Relentlessly attack the Other: immigrants, Muslims, liberal elites.
In the other book How Democracies Die, Ziblatt and Levitsky write that a politician with even one of the following four behaviors is a clear warning of concern of an authoritarian.
1)disregard for norms,
2)denies the legitimacy of opponents,
3)tolerates or encourages violence
4)indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents including the media.
Trump hit all four.
We would all be wise to look for warning signs in the presidential wannabees in the wings. Some of them are pretty frightening. I wouldn’t put saving this democracy on the top of their list.
There is a third book that I am picking up to reread, From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp https://www.aeinstein.org/from-dictatorship-to-democracy/ It is free online from the Albert Einstein Institution www.aeinstein.org. We do need to vote and as much as voting counts, we need a plan that is more than show up and give money.
State and local elections matter as those are often the stepping stones to positions of greater power. With the Court dismantling the laws we depended on and putting the authority in the hands of the states, we can’t take our eyes off what is happening closer to home or for that matter what a Republican state is cooking up until they fulfill their authoritarian dream of a super majority in Congress and one of their own as President. Keeping track of all of it is a lot to swallow.
With national news soaking up so much attention, it was a relief that there were only two evenings with meetings of consequence.
Tuesday evening City Council approved the $737,068,276 biennial budget for FY 2023 and FY 2024. The 410 page budget booklet is enough to give any normal person a headache. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-06-28%20Item%2044%20Biennial%20Budget%20Adoption.pdf It makes me feel like the City answer to public review is drown them in paper or more rightly an e-document with hundreds of pages. At least there is a table of contents to ease the journey and the contents are not as daunting as one might expect, although I wouldn’t suggest trying to wade through it in one sitting. If you are looking for how much the City spends on consultants, it isn’t available in this budget document.
The City Manager listed the new City website as an accomplishment, something with which many of us would disagree.
If you are looking for the total of authorized fulltime equivalent City employees (FTEs - part time positions are added together) it is 1,735.09 for FY 2023 and 1,737.09 for FY 2024 (pages 74 – 92). The startling number is that it takes the City an average of 242 days, nearly eight months to fill a posted position. (page 208).
Whatever promises the Council pledged in their votes to reimagine public safety after the murder of George Floyd and demonstrations locally and around the world, the Berkeley Police got their wish, a bigger police force budget of 180 sworn officers, a total department of 290.2 FTEs and a $12.5 million budget increase.
The goBerkeley pilot, which council passed the same evening, to charge for parking in residential neighborhoods (no matter what justification is thrown up) looks more and more like the mechanism to bail out the Parking Meter Fund. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds allocated to parking run out in 2023 (page 64). That leaves paying for things such as the Center Street Garage debt underfunded. Money has to come from somewhere. Neighborhoods look to be the next source to tap.
There is nothing that requires the Berkeley Marina to be a self-sustaining financial entity, however, that is how the City has chosen to define it (an enterprise fund) while at the same sending the Marina hotel taxes (transient occupancy tax – TOT) into the general fund to be redistributed. ARPA funds will bail out the Marina temporarily and then it will slip back into falling short. This lays the ground for commercial development projects and Mayor Arreguin’s dream of the Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) building a new pier or at least paying for a big chunk of it and adding a ferry. There is the expectation the WETA endeavor and the commercial developments will boost the City coffers.
WETA is counting on regaining pre-pandemic ridership to cover its own financial shortfalls. I asked my guests who work in Silicon Valley, one as a manager, the other a programmer if a return to the office to pre-pandemic levels is in the offing. They answered people do come in, but as to a full return that answer is no. In fact, working from home defined what was important in the layout of the home they purchased.
The allocation to EV charging stations at the corporation yard and at sites in the city from the Mayor’s budget did survive. The allocation of funding to councilmembers for an additional legislative aide survived with only half of the desired funding. Councilmember Kesarwani lead the opposition to allow any funding for legislative aides.
In the public comment on the budget, there were a number of speakers from the Berkeley Hillside Fire Safety Group lobbying to use Measure FF funds for the removal of eucalyptus trees from private property in the fire zones. That request did not gain traction, but we can expect them to continue showing up.
Wednesday, I chose the Housing Element Workshop #3 over the Police Accountability Board and the Rent Board Convention. There wasn’t anything new which means still reading the 500 plus pages to find what is packed away in the details. Breakout groups followed the short presentation.
The increase density attendees clearly won the day. A future of perpetual droughts, water shortages, hardscape with water runoff and heat island effect are clearly not part of the picture, nor are habitat loss and damage to ecosystems. Solar access is dismissed.
The Matthew Lewis (there two) employed by California YIMBY as Director of Communications proclaimed rooftop solar is a big nothing as Berkeley has opted the city up to 100% renewable with EBCE (East Bay Community Energy). The 4000 plus owners of rooftop solar in Berkeley would beg to differ except, of course, Matthew Lewis is paid to send the message that only density near mass transit matters.
If I didn’t give you enough to ponder as we cross another July 4th holiday, for a longer look at older Supreme Court decisions starting with Marbury v. Madison in 1803, check this website https://www.infoplease.com/us/government/judicial-branch/milestone-cases-in-supreme-court-history. Marbury v. Madison is the first instance in which a law passed by Congress was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
June 26, 2022
After the week we are just finishing it is hard to focus on anything other than the end of Roe - Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Clarence Thomas setting his sights on gay sex – Lawrence v Texas, same sex marriage - Obergefell v. Hodges and contraception – Griswold v. Connecticut. Note that Clarence Thomas did not cite the other transformative Supreme Court decision based on the Fourteenth Amendment Lovings v. Virginia ending the ban on interracial marriage.
Roe isn’t the end of all the bad 6 to 3 rulings this session. The Court ruled on Thursday that a New York law restricting the ability to carry a gun in public violated the Second Amendment in New York state rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. There was Shinn v. Ramirez that inmates can only use evidence previously produced in state court proceedings and cannot present new evidence. This leaves inmates on death row unable to present new evidence, the center of the Innocence Project. And, Vega v. Tekoh that a person cannot sue a police officer under federal civil rights for violating their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by failing to provide a Miranda warning.
We should note how generously John Eastman, former professor and Trump lawyer plead the Fifth a total of 146 times when questioned in deposition. Jeffrey Clark who appeared in White House logs on January 3, 2020 as acting Attorney General before Trump backed down also plead the Fifth when under oath.
It is an ugly time. The seductive lure of authoritarianism and power rides high in the righteous right. And, on top of this mess is that the most corrupt president of all time brought us here and he lost the popular vote twice. Even those who testified to Trump’s corruption and attempted theft of the presidency he lost, said they would vote for Trump again should he run.
We should all recognize that this week was in the making for a very long time, decades. In fact, CWA which I will get to later organized in 1978. We are now in a country that is split into those who embrace authoritarianism, the power it brings and the wish to impose their Christian interpretation on all of us and those who still want to live in a democracy, a multicultural one at that where women have agency over their bodies, where there is separation of church and state, equity and equality exist and sexuality and exercise of gender is not tied to a past saturated in repression, oppression and imprisonment.
We have a radical conservative Supreme Court majority of five that bluntly threw Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts under the bus in their critique of Roberts’ concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barret don’t need Roberts to impose their beliefs on the nation.
Tuesday, Council held two meetings. The 4 pm meeting was to finish the two items left from June 14th. The contract with Axon, Inc for body worn cameras was passed quickly with little fanfare. Vice Mayor Harrison submitted “revised material” for the second item “Police Equipment & Community Safety Ordinance Impact Statements.” Harrison’s revision passed in a 6 to 3 vote with Droste, Wengraf and Kesarwani abstaining all stating they had not had time to read and compare the documents from the police department and the submission from Harrison. Droste did the usual dance, she didn’t understand. Harrison filled the holes left by BPD which was the actual potential impact – potential injury from use of equipment. Now the package is on the way to the Police Accountability Board to finish the work.
The Council 6 pm special meeting was to give input to staff regarding developing the ballot initiatives for November. One is the parcel tax for streets and the other is for a general obligation bond for infrastructure under the broad umbrella of Vision 2050. I rarely agree with Alex Sharenko, but this time we landed close when he described the bond as an “ill defined slush fund.” Thomas Lord who I nearly always agree with and did again described the infrastructure bond this way:
“…This plan was conceived by a council in climate denial and who remains that way. It would make some sense if this were 1990. If we were two years out from James Hansen’s testimony before Congress. If we had a few decades to take our time with something like this, but today is 2022 more than three decades later and the situation has changed and this is much more urgent. This isn’t about sea level rise for god’s sake. It isn’t a hot day. This is one of the coldest years you are ever going to experience for the rest of your lives.”
The Wednesday 5 pm meeting of the Environment and Climate Commission was significant in a number of ways. Staff described in general action the commission could take to educate the public a direct contrast to the Zero Waste Commission where the chair stated at a recent meeting that the role of the commission was restricted to advising the City Council and nothing more.
The Environment and Climate Commission meeting was recorded and though Alene Pearson, Deputy Director of Planning, said when asked, the recording was only available through a PRA (Public Records Act request). The recording can theoretically be publicly accessed through the cumbersome PRA process. This response is in stark contrast to Roger Miller, Secretary and Scott Ferris, Director of the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission and Khin Chin, Emergency Services Coordinator, the staff person supporting the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission that met at 7 pm the same evening. Chin give a flood of reasons that evening as to why Disaster and Fire Safety meetings can’t possibly be recorded. Miller and Ferris have been on the same course impeding meeting recordings.
Not having recordings means that when Mayor Arreguin touts public oversight for the planned infrastructure bond on the November ballot, opponents won’t have recordings from the commissioners with responsibility for ballot measure oversight expressing their frustration that they can’t perform their responsibilities.
Failure of the City of Berkeley and the Fire Department specifically to provide the necessary information for oversight was exactly the center of discussion Wednesday evening at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. The commissioners spoke at length of their frustration and inability to fulfill their responsibility to provide oversight to Measure FF (fire services emergency response, hazard mitigation, wildfire prevention) and Measure GG (improve emergency medical response, disaster preparedness and keep fire stations open).
The Homeless Panel of Experts is having the same problem with Measure P (funding for navigation centers, mental health, rehousing, homeless services). When the chair called a special meeting for June 22 on short notice to review and finalize recommendations to the Budget and Finance Committee on Measure P, the secretary published the wrong meeting time.
Because so few of us attend city meetings especially commissions and even fewer of us attempt to publish what happened, the city can create all kinds of fantastical promises. A public record is essentially absent. The majority of voters will have little to go on to make their decision in determining whether to vote yes or no on the November ballot measures and that just might be what the City leadership is depending on.
At the Budget and Finance Committee, Arreguin was pushed by public comment from me and verified by former mayor and current commissioner Shirley Dean to ask the City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley why the commissions were not receiving the information they needed for oversight. She had no explanation.
The mayor’s proposed budget is better than I expected. I was looking for funding the EV (Electric Vehicle) charging stations at the corporation yard and parking enforcement in fire zones. Both are included which brings us back to the Environment and Climate Commission.
After the presentation on Climate Literacy for BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) students, Thomas Lord responded that high schoolers already know the stuff on climate and their complaint is that it is the adults who need the education. Lord went on to call out we are in a climate emergency, action is needed, it is the elected leaders who need the education.
Thursday morning Councilmember Kesarwani was the first to respond to the mayor’s proposed budget and began by asking why the corporation yard needed EV charging stations, stating it is such a big sum of money over $1 million. Vice Mayor Harrison explained to Kesarwani, that the City can’t have EVs without charging stations. Kesarwani still didn’t seem to grasp that EV batteries need to be charged. Harrison continued to expand her explanation until Kesarwani finally said she understood.
I was floored that any elected official in 2022 in this highly educated city didn’t understand that EV and charging stations are connected, that batteries need to be plugged into a charging station to load the battery to power the vehicle, just like combustion engine cars need gasoline to power the motor. Kesarwani certainly confirmed Thomas Lord’s analysis, it is the elected that need education on climate and climate action. Maybe this plus a host of other issues is why there is an ad to find someone to run against Kesarwani in District 1 for the election in November.
The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was the last meeting of the week and the last project reviewed was 2213 Fourth Street and 747 (787) Bancroft Way. This project sits right at the edge of Aquatic Park which is in the Pacific flyway. Migrating birds land to rest and refresh before continuing on their journey. The project was posted with bird safe glass only on the west side as if birds can read our instructions to never fly to Aquatic Park from the north, south or east. The proposed building is designed surrounded in glass from ground to roof, deadly for birds. We finally achieved success by requiring that the developer connect with the Golden Gate Audubon Society for final direction on bird safety for the building.
As I am finishing, I saw that the January 6th Committee is meeting Tuesday, the day Book club was set to discuss Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. The biggest shock in reading the book was the activism of the profamily anti-feminist evangelical women’s organization Concerned Women of America (CWA) with this record: 98% vote, 93% sign petitions, 77% boycotted a company, 74% had contacted a public official and nearly 50% had written a letter to an editor. CWA with over 3 million members has been organizing since 1978 to take down ROE. We have a lot of work ahead of us and it won’t get done by checking out.
Next time you hear someone say they are going to sit out an election, keep these CWA numbers and rattle them off. And, send along this YouTube recording from 1980 of conservative Paul Weyrich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw. "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
I keep intending to write down where or from whom I heard about each book I pick up to read. I know that I did not pick up How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going by Vaclav Smil because it is on Bill Gates’ reading list. I sort of make a note never to check his list, but after I finished this book I learned Vaclav Smil is one of Gates favorite authors. Smil a Czech-Canadian scientist packed How the World Really Works with information beginning with the four things he identified modern civilization can’t live without, cement, steel, plastics and ammonia.
July is the challenge month to give up plastics or at least try and remain keenly aware of how plastic is ubiquitous penetrating every corner of our lives and the planet. Smil challenges our thinking, assumptions, perceptions of risk, wishful thinking and throughout the book, he gives a heavy dose of reality with descriptions of misguided ventures, adventures and irrelevant quests. I don’t know if Thomas Lord read this book, but I am convinced he would like the closing, “…of all the risks we face global climate change is the one we need to tackle most urgently…” and the ending, “The future as ever is not predetermined. Its outcome depends on our actions.”
I heard the news about Thomas Lord while I was reading the last chapters of How the World Really Works. I only met Thomas in person a couple of times, but that was pre-pandemic and before I really grew to appreciate his consistent strong voice and call for action on climate.
Thomas Lord and I seemed to be following each other with our comments at recent meetings as we spoke to Council and Commissioners. I would have liked to talk to him about my latest read, but that opportunity is gone and so too is the opportunity to say thank you and just how much I appreciated his consistent caring and warning voice. Thomas Lord was very special. Life is fragile. I will miss him.
After the week we are just finishing it is hard to focus on anything other than the end of Roe - Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Clarence Thomas setting his sights on gay sex – Lawrence v Texas, same sex marriage - Obergefell v. Hodges and contraception – Griswold v. Connecticut. Note that Clarence Thomas did not cite the other transformative Supreme Court decision based on the Fourteenth Amendment Lovings v. Virginia ending the ban on interracial marriage.
Roe isn’t the end of all the bad 6 to 3 rulings this session. The Court ruled on Thursday that a New York law restricting the ability to carry a gun in public violated the Second Amendment in New York state rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. There was Shinn v. Ramirez that inmates can only use evidence previously produced in state court proceedings and cannot present new evidence. This leaves inmates on death row unable to present new evidence, the center of the Innocence Project. And, Vega v. Tekoh that a person cannot sue a police officer under federal civil rights for violating their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by failing to provide a Miranda warning.
We should note how generously John Eastman, former professor and Trump lawyer plead the Fifth a total of 146 times when questioned in deposition. Jeffrey Clark who appeared in White House logs on January 3, 2020 as acting Attorney General before Trump backed down also plead the Fifth when under oath.
It is an ugly time. The seductive lure of authoritarianism and power rides high in the righteous right. And, on top of this mess is that the most corrupt president of all time brought us here and he lost the popular vote twice. Even those who testified to Trump’s corruption and attempted theft of the presidency he lost, said they would vote for Trump again should he run.
We should all recognize that this week was in the making for a very long time, decades. In fact, CWA which I will get to later organized in 1978. We are now in a country that is split into those who embrace authoritarianism, the power it brings and the wish to impose their Christian interpretation on all of us and those who still want to live in a democracy, a multicultural one at that where women have agency over their bodies, where there is separation of church and state, equity and equality exist and sexuality and exercise of gender is not tied to a past saturated in repression, oppression and imprisonment.
We have a radical conservative Supreme Court majority of five that bluntly threw Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts under the bus in their critique of Roberts’ concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barret don’t need Roberts to impose their beliefs on the nation.
Tuesday, Council held two meetings. The 4 pm meeting was to finish the two items left from June 14th. The contract with Axon, Inc for body worn cameras was passed quickly with little fanfare. Vice Mayor Harrison submitted “revised material” for the second item “Police Equipment & Community Safety Ordinance Impact Statements.” Harrison’s revision passed in a 6 to 3 vote with Droste, Wengraf and Kesarwani abstaining all stating they had not had time to read and compare the documents from the police department and the submission from Harrison. Droste did the usual dance, she didn’t understand. Harrison filled the holes left by BPD which was the actual potential impact – potential injury from use of equipment. Now the package is on the way to the Police Accountability Board to finish the work.
The Council 6 pm special meeting was to give input to staff regarding developing the ballot initiatives for November. One is the parcel tax for streets and the other is for a general obligation bond for infrastructure under the broad umbrella of Vision 2050. I rarely agree with Alex Sharenko, but this time we landed close when he described the bond as an “ill defined slush fund.” Thomas Lord who I nearly always agree with and did again described the infrastructure bond this way:
“…This plan was conceived by a council in climate denial and who remains that way. It would make some sense if this were 1990. If we were two years out from James Hansen’s testimony before Congress. If we had a few decades to take our time with something like this, but today is 2022 more than three decades later and the situation has changed and this is much more urgent. This isn’t about sea level rise for god’s sake. It isn’t a hot day. This is one of the coldest years you are ever going to experience for the rest of your lives.”
The Wednesday 5 pm meeting of the Environment and Climate Commission was significant in a number of ways. Staff described in general action the commission could take to educate the public a direct contrast to the Zero Waste Commission where the chair stated at a recent meeting that the role of the commission was restricted to advising the City Council and nothing more.
The Environment and Climate Commission meeting was recorded and though Alene Pearson, Deputy Director of Planning, said when asked, the recording was only available through a PRA (Public Records Act request). The recording can theoretically be publicly accessed through the cumbersome PRA process. This response is in stark contrast to Roger Miller, Secretary and Scott Ferris, Director of the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission and Khin Chin, Emergency Services Coordinator, the staff person supporting the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission that met at 7 pm the same evening. Chin give a flood of reasons that evening as to why Disaster and Fire Safety meetings can’t possibly be recorded. Miller and Ferris have been on the same course impeding meeting recordings.
Not having recordings means that when Mayor Arreguin touts public oversight for the planned infrastructure bond on the November ballot, opponents won’t have recordings from the commissioners with responsibility for ballot measure oversight expressing their frustration that they can’t perform their responsibilities.
Failure of the City of Berkeley and the Fire Department specifically to provide the necessary information for oversight was exactly the center of discussion Wednesday evening at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. The commissioners spoke at length of their frustration and inability to fulfill their responsibility to provide oversight to Measure FF (fire services emergency response, hazard mitigation, wildfire prevention) and Measure GG (improve emergency medical response, disaster preparedness and keep fire stations open).
The Homeless Panel of Experts is having the same problem with Measure P (funding for navigation centers, mental health, rehousing, homeless services). When the chair called a special meeting for June 22 on short notice to review and finalize recommendations to the Budget and Finance Committee on Measure P, the secretary published the wrong meeting time.
Because so few of us attend city meetings especially commissions and even fewer of us attempt to publish what happened, the city can create all kinds of fantastical promises. A public record is essentially absent. The majority of voters will have little to go on to make their decision in determining whether to vote yes or no on the November ballot measures and that just might be what the City leadership is depending on.
At the Budget and Finance Committee, Arreguin was pushed by public comment from me and verified by former mayor and current commissioner Shirley Dean to ask the City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley why the commissions were not receiving the information they needed for oversight. She had no explanation.
The mayor’s proposed budget is better than I expected. I was looking for funding the EV (Electric Vehicle) charging stations at the corporation yard and parking enforcement in fire zones. Both are included which brings us back to the Environment and Climate Commission.
After the presentation on Climate Literacy for BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) students, Thomas Lord responded that high schoolers already know the stuff on climate and their complaint is that it is the adults who need the education. Lord went on to call out we are in a climate emergency, action is needed, it is the elected leaders who need the education.
Thursday morning Councilmember Kesarwani was the first to respond to the mayor’s proposed budget and began by asking why the corporation yard needed EV charging stations, stating it is such a big sum of money over $1 million. Vice Mayor Harrison explained to Kesarwani, that the City can’t have EVs without charging stations. Kesarwani still didn’t seem to grasp that EV batteries need to be charged. Harrison continued to expand her explanation until Kesarwani finally said she understood.
I was floored that any elected official in 2022 in this highly educated city didn’t understand that EV and charging stations are connected, that batteries need to be plugged into a charging station to load the battery to power the vehicle, just like combustion engine cars need gasoline to power the motor. Kesarwani certainly confirmed Thomas Lord’s analysis, it is the elected that need education on climate and climate action. Maybe this plus a host of other issues is why there is an ad to find someone to run against Kesarwani in District 1 for the election in November.
The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was the last meeting of the week and the last project reviewed was 2213 Fourth Street and 747 (787) Bancroft Way. This project sits right at the edge of Aquatic Park which is in the Pacific flyway. Migrating birds land to rest and refresh before continuing on their journey. The project was posted with bird safe glass only on the west side as if birds can read our instructions to never fly to Aquatic Park from the north, south or east. The proposed building is designed surrounded in glass from ground to roof, deadly for birds. We finally achieved success by requiring that the developer connect with the Golden Gate Audubon Society for final direction on bird safety for the building.
As I am finishing, I saw that the January 6th Committee is meeting Tuesday, the day Book club was set to discuss Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. The biggest shock in reading the book was the activism of the profamily anti-feminist evangelical women’s organization Concerned Women of America (CWA) with this record: 98% vote, 93% sign petitions, 77% boycotted a company, 74% had contacted a public official and nearly 50% had written a letter to an editor. CWA with over 3 million members has been organizing since 1978 to take down ROE. We have a lot of work ahead of us and it won’t get done by checking out.
Next time you hear someone say they are going to sit out an election, keep these CWA numbers and rattle them off. And, send along this YouTube recording from 1980 of conservative Paul Weyrich, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw. "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
I keep intending to write down where or from whom I heard about each book I pick up to read. I know that I did not pick up How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going by Vaclav Smil because it is on Bill Gates’ reading list. I sort of make a note never to check his list, but after I finished this book I learned Vaclav Smil is one of Gates favorite authors. Smil a Czech-Canadian scientist packed How the World Really Works with information beginning with the four things he identified modern civilization can’t live without, cement, steel, plastics and ammonia.
July is the challenge month to give up plastics or at least try and remain keenly aware of how plastic is ubiquitous penetrating every corner of our lives and the planet. Smil challenges our thinking, assumptions, perceptions of risk, wishful thinking and throughout the book, he gives a heavy dose of reality with descriptions of misguided ventures, adventures and irrelevant quests. I don’t know if Thomas Lord read this book, but I am convinced he would like the closing, “…of all the risks we face global climate change is the one we need to tackle most urgently…” and the ending, “The future as ever is not predetermined. Its outcome depends on our actions.”
I heard the news about Thomas Lord while I was reading the last chapters of How the World Really Works. I only met Thomas in person a couple of times, but that was pre-pandemic and before I really grew to appreciate his consistent strong voice and call for action on climate.
Thomas Lord and I seemed to be following each other with our comments at recent meetings as we spoke to Council and Commissioners. I would have liked to talk to him about my latest read, but that opportunity is gone and so too is the opportunity to say thank you and just how much I appreciated his consistent caring and warning voice. Thomas Lord was very special. Life is fragile. I will miss him.
June 19, 2022
Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters from an American June 19, 2022 edition gives a full description of Juneteenth including General Order No. 3 in full. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-19-2022?utm_source=email
When I think back on all the things I never learned in school or even college and how much I’ve learned through the political book club Barbara Ruffner and I formed over coffee at the “sanity café” in 2014, I wish I had that set of encyclopedias my father bought for my sister and me. I’d like to go back and look through them with fresh eyes for how much of our history was left out to paint a different kind of picture of this country.
Jeffery Robinson, former ACLU Deputy Legal Director, in the documentary, “This Is Who We Are” describes the same kind of revelation in the opening of the film. He describes himself as having had one of the best educations in America and that even as a Black man there is so much he didn’t learn until suddenly he became the parent of his 13 year old nephew struggling what to tell his Black son about racism in America.
The City of Berkeley offices are closed on Monday in observation of the Juneteenth holiday though the celebrations really did start on Sunday. AB 1655 to officially recognize Juneteenth as a State of California holiday is still pending.
When I was writing the description of Juneteenth for the Activist’s Calendar, I found on June 17, 2021, the same day President Biden signed into law Juneteenth as a national holiday, Governor Carney of Delaware signed House Bill 198 mandating teaching Black history, the significance of enslavement, contributions of Black people to American life, the impact of racial trauma and the responsibilities of all citizens to combat racism.
Some weeks later on August 6, 2021 Governor Newsom signed the requirement for California high schoolers to complete a semester course of Ethnic studies beginning with the 2025-2026 academic year to earn a high school diploma. That puts Delaware ahead with a 2022-2023 implementation and tighter definition of content.
It isn’t just the South where parents are showing up at school boards declaring critical race theory must be banned and books removed from school libraries. California is not immune to White Supremacy and white parents pushing back on what can be taught about racism. In one of the articles I found it mentions Ramona Unified in San Diego County adopting a course that promotes patriotism while tightly restricting what can be taught about racism. We have a long way to go.
Just Saturday, the Republican Party of Texas adopted a platform that should give all of us chills. Heather Cox Richardson covers it well in her June 18, 2022 Edition. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-18-2022?utm_source=email
The week started with the staged reading of ROE on Sunday and a repeat on Thursday. I was glued in full attention curious to see how closely ROE would parallel the life of Norma McCorvey as it was covered in Joshua Prager’s book The Family Roe: An American Story. The play was written in 2017 and the book was published in 2021. A 2 ½ play can’t possibly cover a lifetime, but playwright Lisa Loomer captured McCorvey’s true character and closely paralleled the book. The friends I sat with thought McCorvey was overplayed, but reading the book showed the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley under the direction of Susannah Wood really got it right. Carole Marasovich did an amazing job of pulling this together in just three months. If you missed ROE and see another reading grab a ticket.
The City Council meeting Tuesday evening got a little testy as the voting approached on Harrison’s proposed ballot initiative the Empty Homes Tax aka the “Vacancy Tax.” Harrison said we tell homeowners to pay and we never say to developers, to out of town owners to pay. Wengraf responded with, “…if you said this was an item that referred to ten units or more then you would be targeting larger landlords…” Which begs the question what does Wengraf read? Single-family homes are being gobbled up by investment firms. Blackstone Group Inc. struck a $6 billion deal last year on a single-family home rental strategy. Big investment companies are moving into smaller properties. Setting a limit at ten misses what is happening in the market by big investors. Arreguin voiced his concern that putting the Vacancy Tax on the ballot would impact “our ability to pass both our streets parcel tax and our housing and infrastructure bond.”
Arreguin has it all backwards if he thinks the vacancy tax is going to hurt his November ballot initiatives for an infrastructure bond and parcel tax. If anything, a vacancy tax will help as it makes the developer, the out of town property owners pay. That makes a bond and parcel tax more palatable for local homeowners. We know there are buildings not being rented and can see the homeless on the street. These investor owners shouldn’t slide by, by keeping units off the market. In my view, even if a vacancy tax was a break even, just getting existing housing back on the market and rented is a success.
From Harrison’s presentation, the Empty Homes Tax ballot initiative has a dual benefit, it brings units back on the market and for those landlords that withhold housing the tax collected will expand the Housing Trust Fund for acquisitions and construction. I read the proposed Empty Homes ordinance in full and it is well written with limited exemptions and very specific uses for the tax collected.
If Arreguin’s bond and parcel tax ballot measures fail this November to garner enough votes, it won’t be because an Empty Homes Tax is on the ballot with it. It will be because of actions like the City Manager attempting to use ballot Measure GG funds for fire prevention to pay for carpet. It will be because of a staff member telling the chair of the Homeless Commission that Measure P funds for homelessness were needed to balance the budget. It will be because of the years of work on the Adeline Corridor Plan being thrown out by the mayor in the final vote. It will be because Berkeley is contributing $53 million to get 35% affordable housing at the North Berkeley and Ashby BART Stations and El Cerrito is getting 49% with no contributions.
It will be because of the kind of foolishness that placed the Berkeley City Manager as the 4th highest paid manager of 13 bay area cities surveyed. Berkeley was the smallest city of the 13 in square miles (10.5 square miles, 17.7 if water is included) and 11th in population. At $386,160, Berkeley pays its city manager more than the city manager of San Jose with a population of over 1 million and a physical size of 179.9 square miles. If the bond ballot measure loses it will be because of broken trust and the language is too squishy allowing funds to be shifted to cover pet projects and departments.
At the Agenda Committee, Councilmember Taplin’s measure to set a parking maximum in manufacturing districts eliminating the current parking minimum was moved to the consent calendar for the June 28th council meeting. It will arrive too late for the neighbors of the project at 2213 Fourth Street and 747 (787) Bancroft Way with its 4 ½ story 412 parking space garage being reviewed this Thursday, June 23 at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). It is too late for 742 Grayson with 325 parking spaces spread over 7 stories reviewed at the Design Review Committee (DRC) last Thursday. It is way too late for 600 Addison which was approved for 943 parking spaces months ago.
Like seemingly all of Taplin’s measures of substance, they are a referral to the City Manager. Taplin can tell his constituents he is working for them and yet we can expect nothing to happen. It seems anything that would put a crimp in any developer’s dream projects ends up being captured in the Planning Commission bottleneck. To be fair I am told changes in ordinances have to go through the Planning Commission, however, it appears that only items that eliminate development restrictions bubble up through staff for action. The rest recirculate or languish and die making referrals the kiss of death.
I’d like to ask what happened to the days when the Planning Commission met twice a month. It certainly felt like things got done. Maybe it was no better since I wasn’t tracking as closely, but the way it looks now Berkeley is bogged down in process on top of more process ad nauseum. I can’t see that the City Manager’s generous raise of $84,732 brought any efficiency with it unless the efficiency is to make work and squash measures the public wants, but the elected and city administrations don’t.
The Fair Work Week ordinance effort which started in 2018 with a referral by Councilmember Harrison to the Labor Commission ran up against a wall. It was on the April 12, 2022 regular council agenda under action for the first reading. Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services, entered a companion report for the City Manager requesting further study. The supplemental submission from Harrison was an objection to delay, but in the end, Harrison agreed to send the Fair Work Week ordinance to the Council Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee to save it.
The Fair Work Week ordinance was discussed in committee on Monday. No action was taken. Councilmember Hahn voiced her concern for low paid workers.
We might want to ask how many years must ordinances be studied before they move forward. And, whatever happened to Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) from the mayor.
All this makes Councilmember Harrison’s July 16, 2019 ordinance banning natural gas in new construction with the implementation date of January 1, 2020 all the more amazing. Of course, there are still chef’s and cooks who insist they can’t possibly learn to use induction stovetops and restaurants insisting not having natural gas would ruin their food as was indicated by the architect for 2439 Durant. He said at the DRC meeting on Thursday that KIPS restaurant would be asking for an exception to the natural gas ban for the kitchen in the new to be constructed 2439 Durant.
This strikes me more like someone who learned to drive a car with a clutch insisting they couldn’t possibly drive a car with an automatic shift, or the handful of medical personnel who resisted the transition to digital imaging insisting film x-rays with all the chemical developing were just as good. I had to deal with a veterinarian in that camp.
Calling out the luddites of cooking brings us to climate and budget. Will Mayor Arreguin walk the talk and include the Public Works request for $1,000,000 for EV charging stations at the corporation yard? We’ll see Thursday morning when he reveals his proposed biennial budget for 2023 & 2024. The City of Berkeley can’t do its part to transition the City’s vehicles to electric without the charging station infrastructure.
The election of the Sheriff is over. Yesenia Sanchez is the winner for the Alameda County Sheriff with 52% of the vote and Gregory J. Ahern conceded, the man I can’t think of without picturing the Oath Keepers sharing the Sheriff’s booth in the Urban Shield photos.
When I first heard of the Oath Keepers I understood them as a White Supremacist organization. Now with the insurrection, failed coup and the January 6th hearings, I know so much more.
Trump laid the framework for staying in office months in advance of the election. None of us should underestimate Trump or the lust for power and money.
Trump is a con man and a lifelong criminal (still waiting on my order of the book The Criminology on Trump). If you pick up the book I just finished Putin’s People: How the KGB took Back Russia and Then Took On the West by Catherine Belton and just want to read about Trump’s hand in money laundering, corruption and connections with Russia go to chapter 15. If this is your first big dive into reading about Putin, I would suggest keeping a note pad to write the names, scandals and connections to keep it all straight. My big take away is how much the Mueller investigation missed or more likely chose not to explore.
There is a waiting list at the library.
Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters from an American June 19, 2022 edition gives a full description of Juneteenth including General Order No. 3 in full. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-19-2022?utm_source=email
When I think back on all the things I never learned in school or even college and how much I’ve learned through the political book club Barbara Ruffner and I formed over coffee at the “sanity café” in 2014, I wish I had that set of encyclopedias my father bought for my sister and me. I’d like to go back and look through them with fresh eyes for how much of our history was left out to paint a different kind of picture of this country.
Jeffery Robinson, former ACLU Deputy Legal Director, in the documentary, “This Is Who We Are” describes the same kind of revelation in the opening of the film. He describes himself as having had one of the best educations in America and that even as a Black man there is so much he didn’t learn until suddenly he became the parent of his 13 year old nephew struggling what to tell his Black son about racism in America.
The City of Berkeley offices are closed on Monday in observation of the Juneteenth holiday though the celebrations really did start on Sunday. AB 1655 to officially recognize Juneteenth as a State of California holiday is still pending.
When I was writing the description of Juneteenth for the Activist’s Calendar, I found on June 17, 2021, the same day President Biden signed into law Juneteenth as a national holiday, Governor Carney of Delaware signed House Bill 198 mandating teaching Black history, the significance of enslavement, contributions of Black people to American life, the impact of racial trauma and the responsibilities of all citizens to combat racism.
Some weeks later on August 6, 2021 Governor Newsom signed the requirement for California high schoolers to complete a semester course of Ethnic studies beginning with the 2025-2026 academic year to earn a high school diploma. That puts Delaware ahead with a 2022-2023 implementation and tighter definition of content.
It isn’t just the South where parents are showing up at school boards declaring critical race theory must be banned and books removed from school libraries. California is not immune to White Supremacy and white parents pushing back on what can be taught about racism. In one of the articles I found it mentions Ramona Unified in San Diego County adopting a course that promotes patriotism while tightly restricting what can be taught about racism. We have a long way to go.
Just Saturday, the Republican Party of Texas adopted a platform that should give all of us chills. Heather Cox Richardson covers it well in her June 18, 2022 Edition. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-18-2022?utm_source=email
The week started with the staged reading of ROE on Sunday and a repeat on Thursday. I was glued in full attention curious to see how closely ROE would parallel the life of Norma McCorvey as it was covered in Joshua Prager’s book The Family Roe: An American Story. The play was written in 2017 and the book was published in 2021. A 2 ½ play can’t possibly cover a lifetime, but playwright Lisa Loomer captured McCorvey’s true character and closely paralleled the book. The friends I sat with thought McCorvey was overplayed, but reading the book showed the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley under the direction of Susannah Wood really got it right. Carole Marasovich did an amazing job of pulling this together in just three months. If you missed ROE and see another reading grab a ticket.
The City Council meeting Tuesday evening got a little testy as the voting approached on Harrison’s proposed ballot initiative the Empty Homes Tax aka the “Vacancy Tax.” Harrison said we tell homeowners to pay and we never say to developers, to out of town owners to pay. Wengraf responded with, “…if you said this was an item that referred to ten units or more then you would be targeting larger landlords…” Which begs the question what does Wengraf read? Single-family homes are being gobbled up by investment firms. Blackstone Group Inc. struck a $6 billion deal last year on a single-family home rental strategy. Big investment companies are moving into smaller properties. Setting a limit at ten misses what is happening in the market by big investors. Arreguin voiced his concern that putting the Vacancy Tax on the ballot would impact “our ability to pass both our streets parcel tax and our housing and infrastructure bond.”
Arreguin has it all backwards if he thinks the vacancy tax is going to hurt his November ballot initiatives for an infrastructure bond and parcel tax. If anything, a vacancy tax will help as it makes the developer, the out of town property owners pay. That makes a bond and parcel tax more palatable for local homeowners. We know there are buildings not being rented and can see the homeless on the street. These investor owners shouldn’t slide by, by keeping units off the market. In my view, even if a vacancy tax was a break even, just getting existing housing back on the market and rented is a success.
From Harrison’s presentation, the Empty Homes Tax ballot initiative has a dual benefit, it brings units back on the market and for those landlords that withhold housing the tax collected will expand the Housing Trust Fund for acquisitions and construction. I read the proposed Empty Homes ordinance in full and it is well written with limited exemptions and very specific uses for the tax collected.
If Arreguin’s bond and parcel tax ballot measures fail this November to garner enough votes, it won’t be because an Empty Homes Tax is on the ballot with it. It will be because of actions like the City Manager attempting to use ballot Measure GG funds for fire prevention to pay for carpet. It will be because of a staff member telling the chair of the Homeless Commission that Measure P funds for homelessness were needed to balance the budget. It will be because of the years of work on the Adeline Corridor Plan being thrown out by the mayor in the final vote. It will be because Berkeley is contributing $53 million to get 35% affordable housing at the North Berkeley and Ashby BART Stations and El Cerrito is getting 49% with no contributions.
It will be because of the kind of foolishness that placed the Berkeley City Manager as the 4th highest paid manager of 13 bay area cities surveyed. Berkeley was the smallest city of the 13 in square miles (10.5 square miles, 17.7 if water is included) and 11th in population. At $386,160, Berkeley pays its city manager more than the city manager of San Jose with a population of over 1 million and a physical size of 179.9 square miles. If the bond ballot measure loses it will be because of broken trust and the language is too squishy allowing funds to be shifted to cover pet projects and departments.
At the Agenda Committee, Councilmember Taplin’s measure to set a parking maximum in manufacturing districts eliminating the current parking minimum was moved to the consent calendar for the June 28th council meeting. It will arrive too late for the neighbors of the project at 2213 Fourth Street and 747 (787) Bancroft Way with its 4 ½ story 412 parking space garage being reviewed this Thursday, June 23 at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). It is too late for 742 Grayson with 325 parking spaces spread over 7 stories reviewed at the Design Review Committee (DRC) last Thursday. It is way too late for 600 Addison which was approved for 943 parking spaces months ago.
Like seemingly all of Taplin’s measures of substance, they are a referral to the City Manager. Taplin can tell his constituents he is working for them and yet we can expect nothing to happen. It seems anything that would put a crimp in any developer’s dream projects ends up being captured in the Planning Commission bottleneck. To be fair I am told changes in ordinances have to go through the Planning Commission, however, it appears that only items that eliminate development restrictions bubble up through staff for action. The rest recirculate or languish and die making referrals the kiss of death.
I’d like to ask what happened to the days when the Planning Commission met twice a month. It certainly felt like things got done. Maybe it was no better since I wasn’t tracking as closely, but the way it looks now Berkeley is bogged down in process on top of more process ad nauseum. I can’t see that the City Manager’s generous raise of $84,732 brought any efficiency with it unless the efficiency is to make work and squash measures the public wants, but the elected and city administrations don’t.
The Fair Work Week ordinance effort which started in 2018 with a referral by Councilmember Harrison to the Labor Commission ran up against a wall. It was on the April 12, 2022 regular council agenda under action for the first reading. Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services, entered a companion report for the City Manager requesting further study. The supplemental submission from Harrison was an objection to delay, but in the end, Harrison agreed to send the Fair Work Week ordinance to the Council Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee to save it.
The Fair Work Week ordinance was discussed in committee on Monday. No action was taken. Councilmember Hahn voiced her concern for low paid workers.
We might want to ask how many years must ordinances be studied before they move forward. And, whatever happened to Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) from the mayor.
All this makes Councilmember Harrison’s July 16, 2019 ordinance banning natural gas in new construction with the implementation date of January 1, 2020 all the more amazing. Of course, there are still chef’s and cooks who insist they can’t possibly learn to use induction stovetops and restaurants insisting not having natural gas would ruin their food as was indicated by the architect for 2439 Durant. He said at the DRC meeting on Thursday that KIPS restaurant would be asking for an exception to the natural gas ban for the kitchen in the new to be constructed 2439 Durant.
This strikes me more like someone who learned to drive a car with a clutch insisting they couldn’t possibly drive a car with an automatic shift, or the handful of medical personnel who resisted the transition to digital imaging insisting film x-rays with all the chemical developing were just as good. I had to deal with a veterinarian in that camp.
Calling out the luddites of cooking brings us to climate and budget. Will Mayor Arreguin walk the talk and include the Public Works request for $1,000,000 for EV charging stations at the corporation yard? We’ll see Thursday morning when he reveals his proposed biennial budget for 2023 & 2024. The City of Berkeley can’t do its part to transition the City’s vehicles to electric without the charging station infrastructure.
The election of the Sheriff is over. Yesenia Sanchez is the winner for the Alameda County Sheriff with 52% of the vote and Gregory J. Ahern conceded, the man I can’t think of without picturing the Oath Keepers sharing the Sheriff’s booth in the Urban Shield photos.
When I first heard of the Oath Keepers I understood them as a White Supremacist organization. Now with the insurrection, failed coup and the January 6th hearings, I know so much more.
Trump laid the framework for staying in office months in advance of the election. None of us should underestimate Trump or the lust for power and money.
Trump is a con man and a lifelong criminal (still waiting on my order of the book The Criminology on Trump). If you pick up the book I just finished Putin’s People: How the KGB took Back Russia and Then Took On the West by Catherine Belton and just want to read about Trump’s hand in money laundering, corruption and connections with Russia go to chapter 15. If this is your first big dive into reading about Putin, I would suggest keeping a note pad to write the names, scandals and connections to keep it all straight. My big take away is how much the Mueller investigation missed or more likely chose not to explore.
There is a waiting list at the library.
June 12, 2022
Berkeley did not set a new temperature record on Friday, June 10th, but plenty of other cities in the greater Bay Area did. It was still hot with the temperature nearing 90°. The weatherman on local news said temperatures on Friday were 20° above normal making it another climate warning as this heat wave moves east.
Why we might then ask, as the earth is hurtling toward the global warming climate catastrophe with CO2 levels in the atmosphere at 420 ppm the highest levels in human history is the Public Works Department 2023 budget request for $1,000,000 for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at the corporation yard off the table in the City Manager’s proposed biennial budget?
At Thursday’s Budget and Finance Committee, Councilmember Harrison called not investing in electrification infrastructure, “pennywise and pound foolish”. And, that was before the posting of the purchase order request from Public Works to increase the money for diesel fuel by $1,900,000.
Item 13 in the draft agenda for the June 28th City Council meeting gives the new total to be spent on diesel fuel as $10,744,000. That is a hefty sum going to Diesel Direct West, Inc for fuel for City vehicles. The report that is supposed to accompany the request is not in the Agenda Committee packet, so we can’t calculate monthly, yearly, costs or how many months are added by extending the contract to December 31, 2023, but regardless $10,744,000 for diesel fuel is still a lot of money in a city that is supposedly committed to becoming fossil fuel free. And, that cost doesn’t include the damage to the environment to extract crude oil, process it into diesel and burn it in combustion engines.
This city can’t make the conversion to EV without the charging infrastructure. For all the bluster from our Mayor about being a progressive city, most days I wonder what our city leaders actually believe, because it is not showing up action.
Each time I walk past the corporation staff parking lot at the end of Allston, I think about how that space could more effectively utilized. At the very least it could be covered with solar to power up those EV charging stations Public Works is requesting. Maybe it could house RVs or tiny houses.
Something interesting happened with the Council Public Safety Committee agenda posting. City Council meetings including Council Committees are normally posted so they are available on the City website after 5 pm on Thursday for the following week, something I really appreciate so I can get a jump start on the weekly summary for the Activist’s Calendar. In a normal week, going through all the meetings, documents and typing it up is usually around ten hours of work.
If you read my calendar regularly you will note that I often don’t quote the agenda item title exactly. After I read the full agenda item not just the title, I try to give a better description of the content so you can decide whether you think it is important enough to look further, send an email or attend the meeting. I also drop extraneous words. I listed the Public Safety Committee agenda item 2 as “Police Equipment” (that was all I had) with the note that as of 3:27 pm there were no documents. At some point on June 3 the original agenda I saw was replaced with “Information Report on Current Policies Related to Tear Gas, Smoke, and Pepper Spray.” Changing the agenda after posting is very unusual.
As far as I can tell, BPD has been itching to get tear gas back into their arsenal and gave their case with Captain Okies as the meeting presenter that tear gas is harmless causing no injuries once it wears off. Councilmember Kesarwani, chair of the committee, said at the outset no action would be taken. Thomas Lord commented that pepper spray, tear gas are not benign and are potentially lethal.
I have never been tear gassed so I can’t give a first-hand description. The “Tear Gas and Pepper Spray Toxicity” by R. David Tidwell and Brandon K. Wills in the January 10, 2022 update from the NIH, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information sections on History and Physical, Evaluation, Treatment / Management, Complications and Enhancing Healthcare Team Outcomes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544263/ does state that “death after exposure is extremely rare, but reports do exist…” and then describes autopsy findings. The article also describes injuries as this is an article for the healthcare team.
Those who attended the June 2020 City Council meeting when tear gas was banned may remember this was the evening when former BPD Chief Greenwood answered the question on what could be used if tear gas wasn’t available with, “Firearms, we can shoot people,” the statement that ended his career nine months later.
The councilmembers Kesarwani, Wengraf and Taplin with Captain Okie went on to discuss their imagined scenarios when tear gas could be useful. Kesarwani pulled up an old committee recommendation with limited approval for tear gas that was never submitted to the full council. Mutual aid was a big part of the discussion.
Councilmember Wengraf said she spoke with the sheriff, she did not give the name, but the Alameda County sheriff is Greg Ahern the person who shared space with the Oathkeepers at the now defunct Urban Shield exercises and is currently the second place finisher place in the June 7th primary at 34.02% with Yesenia Sanchez at 50.12%. The association with the Oathkeepers and White Supremacist overlay has been a driving force behind finding a replacement for Sheriff Ahern. This looks like the election year where the movement to remove Ahern from office may well succeed. The role of the Oathkeepers in the January 6, 2021 insurrection should bring everyone to vote for Sanchez, but money and advertising have been known to swing voters in the wrong direction even in the Bay Area where everyone thinks they are informed and above such propaganda tactics. And we still have White Supremacists in our midst.
Wengraf related that the sheriff stated he would not send aid to Berkeley as long as the tear gas ban was in place. Berkeley would need to use the National Guard and that would require a 48 hour notice. With a very pro-police Public Safety Committee, I worry this will bypass a review by the Police Accountability Board and instead work the way up to the full council and the majority will cave to police demands, but we shall see. I am always hopeful.
This brings us back to the Budget Committee “FY 23 & 24 Budget Balancing Strategies and Priorities” document tinyurl.com/37bfhknv with Reimagining Public Safety funding requests listed page 3 as $4,871,462 for 2023 and $4,186,462 for 2024. If you hesitate to use the url, the document is listed as Item #2 “Proposed Biennial Budget Discussion” for June 9, 2022. After searching through multiple budget meeting agendas and documents, nowhere can I find a list of what falls into that $9,057,924 for Reimagining Public Safety. That leaves me uneasy after the City Manager tried to pay for new carpet using Measure GG Fire Prevention funds before pulling it when questioned by Councilmember Wengraf and highlighted by public comment.
The two stage readings of ROE are this week, Sunday, June 12th at 5 pm and Thursday June 16th at 7 pm. If you missed finding the website for the free tickets here it is: https://www.aeofberkeley.org/productions/upcoming-shows/378-roe-by-lisa-loomer
What was really interesting this week on the impact of Roe v. Wade was the quiz in the Washington Post of how women’s lives have changed from 1970 to 2020 with women gaining agency over their body deciding when and if to bear children. The answers are in the table and it really says it all, how Roe v. Wade has made women’s lives more equal. And, of course, how those same answers give way to why legislators busy taking away access to abortion are filled with White men. The Turnaway Study which I reviewed May 22 is an excellent choice to read more about the impact of having or being denied an abortion.
Agenda Item 8 at the Peace and Justice Commission, “Pass a Resolution Declaring the City of Berkeley’s Commitment to Abortion Rights” evolved into a lengthy discussion after the usual litany of difficulties from members who have trouble with their computers, using zoom, and other problems. The resolution is well meaning, but what came out in the discussion was how little was known by the commissioners regarding local services and access and how little exploration was completed prior to writing the draft resolution. And for that matter California State legislation signed into law and in process was absent from the discussion. The Peace and Justice Commission is supposed to merge with the Human welfare and Community action Commission sometime this year.
The Police Accountability Board did meet on Wednesday, but my attendance was limited to hearing a fuller description of the police action and follow-up to ending the Berkeley High School student’s attempt to recruit other teens to engage in a Berkeley High shooting and bombing. There was less information from the BPD officer in attendance than from the local news sources.
Thank goodness someone tipped off the police to squash this tragedy in the making. My question is where are the parents in all this and how was a high schooler able to start amassing the equipment to pull it off?
Fareed Zakaria in his June 12, 2022 CNN show GPS and his Washington Post column stated how he was wrong to dismiss Mitt Romney’s warning during his 2012 presidential campaign that Russia posed the single largest threat to the United States going on to write that, “Romney clearly understood that power in the international realm is measured by a mixture of capabilities and intentions. And though Russia is not a rising giant, it is determined to challenge and divide America and Europe and tear up the rules-based international system. Putin’s Russia is the World’s great spoiler.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/09/biden-administration-defeat-russia-contain-china-ukraine-war/
The book I finished this week is Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. This is my third book on Russia. I also read Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick and The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder. I am nearly finished with Putin’s People: How the KGB took Back Russia and Then Took On the West by Catherine Belton.
In August 1991 my husband and I were in Greece when we heard from people on the street of the coup in Russia. The August Coup to seize Russia from Gorbachev failed, but by December 26, 1991 it was over and the Soviet Union was dissolved.
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is not the best written book and at times is hard to follow, still the overwhelming message in the post Soviet Union Russia is how propaganda, corruption, and bribery fill every corner and creep out as the oligarchs use their thievery to buy up property, super yachts and move their money into London, Paris, New York, Geneva. Even Cyprus is mentioned. The demise of oligarchs who lose favor is described in detail, how they end up in jail, lose their companies or worse. There is the occasional success when the right connection is found to bribe.
There are connections and parallels to be drawn between Russia, Putin and the corruption that permeated the Trump Presidency, his cabinet, his embrace of Putin and the Republicans who pledge their fealty to Trump, Trumpism and authoritarianism. This isn’t over. The January 6th insurrection is just one piece and it was much closer to success than many of us may believe. We would be wise to see the warnings. I will be glued to the January 6th hearings and the CNN special on Alex Jones and “Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal” series.
Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram and especially Tucker Carlson and their messages of victimhood, replacement, racism fill the heads of their listeners and creep out into the mainstream whether or not the rest of us tune into Fox.
There is one person who is clear eyed, tenacious and unafraid, Liz Cheney. I expect there is little on which Cheney and I would agree, except this one issue putting Trump at the head of the attempted coup to stay in power.
Berkeley did not set a new temperature record on Friday, June 10th, but plenty of other cities in the greater Bay Area did. It was still hot with the temperature nearing 90°. The weatherman on local news said temperatures on Friday were 20° above normal making it another climate warning as this heat wave moves east.
Why we might then ask, as the earth is hurtling toward the global warming climate catastrophe with CO2 levels in the atmosphere at 420 ppm the highest levels in human history is the Public Works Department 2023 budget request for $1,000,000 for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at the corporation yard off the table in the City Manager’s proposed biennial budget?
At Thursday’s Budget and Finance Committee, Councilmember Harrison called not investing in electrification infrastructure, “pennywise and pound foolish”. And, that was before the posting of the purchase order request from Public Works to increase the money for diesel fuel by $1,900,000.
Item 13 in the draft agenda for the June 28th City Council meeting gives the new total to be spent on diesel fuel as $10,744,000. That is a hefty sum going to Diesel Direct West, Inc for fuel for City vehicles. The report that is supposed to accompany the request is not in the Agenda Committee packet, so we can’t calculate monthly, yearly, costs or how many months are added by extending the contract to December 31, 2023, but regardless $10,744,000 for diesel fuel is still a lot of money in a city that is supposedly committed to becoming fossil fuel free. And, that cost doesn’t include the damage to the environment to extract crude oil, process it into diesel and burn it in combustion engines.
This city can’t make the conversion to EV without the charging infrastructure. For all the bluster from our Mayor about being a progressive city, most days I wonder what our city leaders actually believe, because it is not showing up action.
Each time I walk past the corporation staff parking lot at the end of Allston, I think about how that space could more effectively utilized. At the very least it could be covered with solar to power up those EV charging stations Public Works is requesting. Maybe it could house RVs or tiny houses.
Something interesting happened with the Council Public Safety Committee agenda posting. City Council meetings including Council Committees are normally posted so they are available on the City website after 5 pm on Thursday for the following week, something I really appreciate so I can get a jump start on the weekly summary for the Activist’s Calendar. In a normal week, going through all the meetings, documents and typing it up is usually around ten hours of work.
If you read my calendar regularly you will note that I often don’t quote the agenda item title exactly. After I read the full agenda item not just the title, I try to give a better description of the content so you can decide whether you think it is important enough to look further, send an email or attend the meeting. I also drop extraneous words. I listed the Public Safety Committee agenda item 2 as “Police Equipment” (that was all I had) with the note that as of 3:27 pm there were no documents. At some point on June 3 the original agenda I saw was replaced with “Information Report on Current Policies Related to Tear Gas, Smoke, and Pepper Spray.” Changing the agenda after posting is very unusual.
As far as I can tell, BPD has been itching to get tear gas back into their arsenal and gave their case with Captain Okies as the meeting presenter that tear gas is harmless causing no injuries once it wears off. Councilmember Kesarwani, chair of the committee, said at the outset no action would be taken. Thomas Lord commented that pepper spray, tear gas are not benign and are potentially lethal.
I have never been tear gassed so I can’t give a first-hand description. The “Tear Gas and Pepper Spray Toxicity” by R. David Tidwell and Brandon K. Wills in the January 10, 2022 update from the NIH, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information sections on History and Physical, Evaluation, Treatment / Management, Complications and Enhancing Healthcare Team Outcomes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544263/ does state that “death after exposure is extremely rare, but reports do exist…” and then describes autopsy findings. The article also describes injuries as this is an article for the healthcare team.
Those who attended the June 2020 City Council meeting when tear gas was banned may remember this was the evening when former BPD Chief Greenwood answered the question on what could be used if tear gas wasn’t available with, “Firearms, we can shoot people,” the statement that ended his career nine months later.
The councilmembers Kesarwani, Wengraf and Taplin with Captain Okie went on to discuss their imagined scenarios when tear gas could be useful. Kesarwani pulled up an old committee recommendation with limited approval for tear gas that was never submitted to the full council. Mutual aid was a big part of the discussion.
Councilmember Wengraf said she spoke with the sheriff, she did not give the name, but the Alameda County sheriff is Greg Ahern the person who shared space with the Oathkeepers at the now defunct Urban Shield exercises and is currently the second place finisher place in the June 7th primary at 34.02% with Yesenia Sanchez at 50.12%. The association with the Oathkeepers and White Supremacist overlay has been a driving force behind finding a replacement for Sheriff Ahern. This looks like the election year where the movement to remove Ahern from office may well succeed. The role of the Oathkeepers in the January 6, 2021 insurrection should bring everyone to vote for Sanchez, but money and advertising have been known to swing voters in the wrong direction even in the Bay Area where everyone thinks they are informed and above such propaganda tactics. And we still have White Supremacists in our midst.
Wengraf related that the sheriff stated he would not send aid to Berkeley as long as the tear gas ban was in place. Berkeley would need to use the National Guard and that would require a 48 hour notice. With a very pro-police Public Safety Committee, I worry this will bypass a review by the Police Accountability Board and instead work the way up to the full council and the majority will cave to police demands, but we shall see. I am always hopeful.
This brings us back to the Budget Committee “FY 23 & 24 Budget Balancing Strategies and Priorities” document tinyurl.com/37bfhknv with Reimagining Public Safety funding requests listed page 3 as $4,871,462 for 2023 and $4,186,462 for 2024. If you hesitate to use the url, the document is listed as Item #2 “Proposed Biennial Budget Discussion” for June 9, 2022. After searching through multiple budget meeting agendas and documents, nowhere can I find a list of what falls into that $9,057,924 for Reimagining Public Safety. That leaves me uneasy after the City Manager tried to pay for new carpet using Measure GG Fire Prevention funds before pulling it when questioned by Councilmember Wengraf and highlighted by public comment.
The two stage readings of ROE are this week, Sunday, June 12th at 5 pm and Thursday June 16th at 7 pm. If you missed finding the website for the free tickets here it is: https://www.aeofberkeley.org/productions/upcoming-shows/378-roe-by-lisa-loomer
What was really interesting this week on the impact of Roe v. Wade was the quiz in the Washington Post of how women’s lives have changed from 1970 to 2020 with women gaining agency over their body deciding when and if to bear children. The answers are in the table and it really says it all, how Roe v. Wade has made women’s lives more equal. And, of course, how those same answers give way to why legislators busy taking away access to abortion are filled with White men. The Turnaway Study which I reviewed May 22 is an excellent choice to read more about the impact of having or being denied an abortion.
Agenda Item 8 at the Peace and Justice Commission, “Pass a Resolution Declaring the City of Berkeley’s Commitment to Abortion Rights” evolved into a lengthy discussion after the usual litany of difficulties from members who have trouble with their computers, using zoom, and other problems. The resolution is well meaning, but what came out in the discussion was how little was known by the commissioners regarding local services and access and how little exploration was completed prior to writing the draft resolution. And for that matter California State legislation signed into law and in process was absent from the discussion. The Peace and Justice Commission is supposed to merge with the Human welfare and Community action Commission sometime this year.
The Police Accountability Board did meet on Wednesday, but my attendance was limited to hearing a fuller description of the police action and follow-up to ending the Berkeley High School student’s attempt to recruit other teens to engage in a Berkeley High shooting and bombing. There was less information from the BPD officer in attendance than from the local news sources.
Thank goodness someone tipped off the police to squash this tragedy in the making. My question is where are the parents in all this and how was a high schooler able to start amassing the equipment to pull it off?
Fareed Zakaria in his June 12, 2022 CNN show GPS and his Washington Post column stated how he was wrong to dismiss Mitt Romney’s warning during his 2012 presidential campaign that Russia posed the single largest threat to the United States going on to write that, “Romney clearly understood that power in the international realm is measured by a mixture of capabilities and intentions. And though Russia is not a rising giant, it is determined to challenge and divide America and Europe and tear up the rules-based international system. Putin’s Russia is the World’s great spoiler.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/09/biden-administration-defeat-russia-contain-china-ukraine-war/
The book I finished this week is Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev. This is my third book on Russia. I also read Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick and The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder. I am nearly finished with Putin’s People: How the KGB took Back Russia and Then Took On the West by Catherine Belton.
In August 1991 my husband and I were in Greece when we heard from people on the street of the coup in Russia. The August Coup to seize Russia from Gorbachev failed, but by December 26, 1991 it was over and the Soviet Union was dissolved.
Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is not the best written book and at times is hard to follow, still the overwhelming message in the post Soviet Union Russia is how propaganda, corruption, and bribery fill every corner and creep out as the oligarchs use their thievery to buy up property, super yachts and move their money into London, Paris, New York, Geneva. Even Cyprus is mentioned. The demise of oligarchs who lose favor is described in detail, how they end up in jail, lose their companies or worse. There is the occasional success when the right connection is found to bribe.
There are connections and parallels to be drawn between Russia, Putin and the corruption that permeated the Trump Presidency, his cabinet, his embrace of Putin and the Republicans who pledge their fealty to Trump, Trumpism and authoritarianism. This isn’t over. The January 6th insurrection is just one piece and it was much closer to success than many of us may believe. We would be wise to see the warnings. I will be glued to the January 6th hearings and the CNN special on Alex Jones and “Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal” series.
Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram and especially Tucker Carlson and their messages of victimhood, replacement, racism fill the heads of their listeners and creep out into the mainstream whether or not the rest of us tune into Fox.
There is one person who is clear eyed, tenacious and unafraid, Liz Cheney. I expect there is little on which Cheney and I would agree, except this one issue putting Trump at the head of the attempted coup to stay in power.
June 5, 2022
The June 2 special City Council meeting on the housing developments on the BART Station parking lots was the big event of the week. The North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance let out a sigh of relief and celebration as the council voted unanimously after midnight in support of limiting the housing projects to a base of seven stories.
The Berkeley Neighbors for Housing and Climate (BNCHA) who rejected the staff recommendation of a seven-story project and pushed the twelve story base project approved by the Planning Commission in a 5 to 4 vote, declared victory that though they lost on their desired base height of 12 stories, they still won on the number of units with a minimum (not maximum) of 75 units per acre and the possibility of still getting to 12 stories through the state density bonus.
The state density bonus AB 2345 allows a developer/builder to exceed any zoning height limitation by reserving a percentage of units for low income households. There are a variety of combinations between the number affordable units and the level of affordability outlined in AB 2345 allowing a developer to exceed any zoning limits. The combination often used and the one of concern here is that by reserving 11% of the units for very low income households the developer receives a 50% award of extra units/height over any zoning restrictions. This could result in an eleven-story building instead of the seven-story limit in the council vote.
For those not immersed in the details of what really happened and what are the problems and potential outcomes, here are some perspectives and analysis.
Mayor Arreguin defined the flow of the evening and the tasks at hand, the vote on the EIR (Environmental Impact Report), the memorandum of agreement (MOA) with BART, defining the zoning and the joint vision and priorities. Arreguin reminded everyone that the first meeting on the BART housing projects was in March 2018.
Arreguin abruptly cut off Councilmember Hahn a number of times in the evening. Hahn submitted a supplemental document with recommended revisions to the Joint Vision and Priorities (JVP). Hahn’s rrevisions provided stronger language with more detail to landscaping with emphasis on tree canopy, wider sidewalks, children’s play area, a tighter breakdown of affordability by percentage of units. Arreguin submitted his own JVP supplemental using the staff’s document and Hahn’s document as a base. Where Arreguin did not remove Hahn’s recommendations he watered them down by adding the words “feasible” or “consider”.
In the first round of council comment prior to public comment, Councilmember Harrison clearly stated her support of the seven-story limit as being the best alternative for climate and the neighborhood, citing the increased GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions from high rise buildings. Councilmember Robinson followed Harrison and countered with his support of the twelve stories as the base height and his argument that there should not be a height limit and that increased height and density was the best climate alternative.
Public comment followed lasting several hours with a heavy majority attempting to persuade council to approve the seven-story height limit. Many made the statement, that they would not vote for anyone who voted for the twelve-story high-rise. This was clearly directed to Councilmember Kesarwani who is up for election in the November.
Through the night, I was doing my imaginary vote counting, trying to guess where each councilmember would land. I was never sure the seven-story limit would win even after Arreguin stated after the close of public comment that he was supporting the seven-story height limit. Arreguin spoke to respecting the public process and the years of work and engagement with the community.
BART is a heavy-rail public transit system which makes the parking lot land on which the housing projects are to be built public land. Even though BART is underground in Berkeley, the land for stations was taken by eminent domain. And, that is the rub for many who spoke in favor of the seven-story limit and 100% affordable housing. They rightly insist public land needs to be used for affordable housing, for the public good not for the profiteering of a for-profit developer/lessee of the public land.
Non-profit affordable housing developers like to keep projects in the sweet spot of four to six stories where the number of affordable units is maximized and the added cost of high-rise construction and high-rise building maintenance is avoided. Construction changes as the building grows taller usually breaking around eight stories calling for substantial bracing (steel) to stabilize the taller structure.
Whoever builds on the Ashby and North Berkeley BART Station sites, to be in compliance with AB 2923, will be required to build to a minimum of seven stories and to provide no more than 0.5 parking spaces per residential unit. https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/00_AB2923_TechGuide_Draft_2020Jun.pdf
The problem for BART and how we conceive of transit oriented housing is the pandemic changed how we live, work, attend meetings and even where we want to live. Working remotely is here to stay and so is attending meetings via zoom. People who work remotely can live anywhere. In fact, Maine, Vermont, Alaska, Newton, Iowa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hamilton, Ohio and Lincoln, Kansas all pay remote workers to relocate into their state and named cities.
BART ridership has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In the most recent data available BART ridership sits at 32% of 2019 levels. BART ridership for the month of May in 2019 was 413,525. In May 2022 it was 132,161.
The ferry service provider Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) was a little better off in April in recapturing ridership reaching a new high of just over 60% of the pre-pandemic level, but that is only through cutting fare cost to compete with and undercut BART to shift riders from BART to the ferry and ferries to Chase Center and Oracle Park to take advantage of sports events. WETA is continuing cutting fares for another year coasting on the American Rescue Plan funding. WETA found through its own survey, that when ferry ticket prices return to “normal” pre-pandemic levels the riders who shifted from BART to the ferry will return to BART. Those returning riders to BART still won’t be more than a drop in the bucket to fill the BART ridership decline. And, WETA will be scrambling when the American Rescue Plan funds run out to cover operating costs.
Pre-pandemic the BUSD Board room would have been overflowing with people waiting in line outside for their turn to speak and BPD counting heads to keep the number inside within the room safety limit requirements. Instead while the mayor said the attendee count of the hybrid meeting (in-person and remote) was over 300, the Board room wasn’t packed, maybe 60 were present per a guess of someone who attended in person. The rest attended via videoconference or teleconference.
The planning of transit oriented development (TOD) has not caught up with this new reality. Even discussions for restoration of the Civic Center buildings include some stuck in the past conceiving of the need for a new large city council chamber.
A number of speakers during the evening stated they were home putting children to bed during the meeting. My evening of attending on zoom aside from the usual taking notes, checking news and emails, included making and eating dinner and putting in an hour on my treadmill.
All this is to frame what could happen with choosing the “master” developer for the BART housing projects. The housing projects at the BART Stations will consist of multiple buildings at each site and there could be a separate developer for each apartment building under the direction of the “master” developer. The selection of the “master” developer is the next big step. There will be input from the City of Berkeley and the agreements between BART and the City of Berkeley will define the qualifications.
BART makes the final selection of the “master” developer. The worry from this corner is that low ridership, the changing post pandemic landscape of working remotely will push the BART Board into seeking market rate housing to bolster their lagging income with the hope that residents living above BART will become heavy BART users.
I have not gone deeply enough into past BART ridership records to see how housing at BART stations affects ridership and what happened by station through the pandemic. The BART ridership reports are easily available going back to 2001. https://www.bart.gov/about/reports/ridership
There was considerable discussion around affordable units. Harrison expressed wanting to ensure that any developer that chose to use the in lieu mitigation, the fee paid to get out of inclusionary affordable housing, that the in lieu fee would go into onsite affordable housing. Stating further that there was no language in the agreements around in lieu mitigation fees and asking the mayor when this would be addressed. Arreguin answered, “good question.”
Wengraf stated she heard El Cerrito was getting 65% affordable housing without a city contribution and wanted to know how. Berkeley is contributing $53,000,000 to affordable housing. BART answered that it is 37% lower income and 12% middle income totaling 49% deed restricted, there are multiple factors and El Cerrito is using modular construction.
The fatally flawed EIR (as described by Thomas Lord - he is correct) was approved with a unanimous vote and used as justification for the council high-rise supporters as an escape valve to vote for the seven-story base, in turn supporting Kesarwani in her reelection bid. The mayor’s supplemental was approved. Though I replayed the meeting end, the final version of the JVP seems a little squishy.
As I’ve been reflecting on the organizing and perseverance of the North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance, the group as a whole and the leaders to keep communication and organizing flowing is nothing less than amazing. They have a lot at stake. It is their neighborhood. This is not to diminish the hard work and engagement of the Friends of Adeline, they too organized and showed up.
The fight isn’t over, but the understory of organizing carries lessons for all. They were up against the funded California YIMBY’s with heavy real estate backing and staff with titles that avoid the word lobbyist. Real estate money funds election campaigns and political action committees (PACs aka dark money) and lobbyists.
After Thursday night I’ve been thinking about close friends living in Southern California who listen to their political talk shows and have plenty of griping to do about what is happening in their city. To my knowledge they have never once attended a city meeting. To their credit they make an occasional phone call or send email on national issues, but when it comes to their own city they are disengaged except for complaining.
Paying attention as I do to city action, there have been many times when community involvement and action ended in failure. The North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance never quit. And, they now have success under their belt to keep going.
What a different country we would have if more of us followed the example of the North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance and Friends of Adeline and engaged in our government instead of believing the nonsense on social media.
There were other meetings this week, but they pale in the shadow of the special council meeting on the BART station housing projects. The Planning Commission did meet, but nothing was decided Wednesday evening.
Don’t forget the state reading of ROE at the Brower Center next Sunday, June 12 at 5 pm and June 16th at the Marsh at 7 pm. I have already signed up for my free ticket. One little nicety is the tickets are through the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley and not evite. Seating is limited so don’t wait. All the details can be found at https://www.aeofberkeley.org/productions/upcoming-shows/378-roe-by-lisa-loomer
As usual a close with my latest read. Through the 100 plus days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is often compared to Churchill, so when The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson published in 2020 on WWII and Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister appeared as available from the library as an audiobook I grabbed it. The description of the book really sums it up best, “The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance, bound a country and a family, together.” Much of the same description of courage in unrelenting horror can be said of Zelenskyy.
The June 2 special City Council meeting on the housing developments on the BART Station parking lots was the big event of the week. The North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance let out a sigh of relief and celebration as the council voted unanimously after midnight in support of limiting the housing projects to a base of seven stories.
The Berkeley Neighbors for Housing and Climate (BNCHA) who rejected the staff recommendation of a seven-story project and pushed the twelve story base project approved by the Planning Commission in a 5 to 4 vote, declared victory that though they lost on their desired base height of 12 stories, they still won on the number of units with a minimum (not maximum) of 75 units per acre and the possibility of still getting to 12 stories through the state density bonus.
The state density bonus AB 2345 allows a developer/builder to exceed any zoning height limitation by reserving a percentage of units for low income households. There are a variety of combinations between the number affordable units and the level of affordability outlined in AB 2345 allowing a developer to exceed any zoning limits. The combination often used and the one of concern here is that by reserving 11% of the units for very low income households the developer receives a 50% award of extra units/height over any zoning restrictions. This could result in an eleven-story building instead of the seven-story limit in the council vote.
For those not immersed in the details of what really happened and what are the problems and potential outcomes, here are some perspectives and analysis.
Mayor Arreguin defined the flow of the evening and the tasks at hand, the vote on the EIR (Environmental Impact Report), the memorandum of agreement (MOA) with BART, defining the zoning and the joint vision and priorities. Arreguin reminded everyone that the first meeting on the BART housing projects was in March 2018.
Arreguin abruptly cut off Councilmember Hahn a number of times in the evening. Hahn submitted a supplemental document with recommended revisions to the Joint Vision and Priorities (JVP). Hahn’s rrevisions provided stronger language with more detail to landscaping with emphasis on tree canopy, wider sidewalks, children’s play area, a tighter breakdown of affordability by percentage of units. Arreguin submitted his own JVP supplemental using the staff’s document and Hahn’s document as a base. Where Arreguin did not remove Hahn’s recommendations he watered them down by adding the words “feasible” or “consider”.
In the first round of council comment prior to public comment, Councilmember Harrison clearly stated her support of the seven-story limit as being the best alternative for climate and the neighborhood, citing the increased GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions from high rise buildings. Councilmember Robinson followed Harrison and countered with his support of the twelve stories as the base height and his argument that there should not be a height limit and that increased height and density was the best climate alternative.
Public comment followed lasting several hours with a heavy majority attempting to persuade council to approve the seven-story height limit. Many made the statement, that they would not vote for anyone who voted for the twelve-story high-rise. This was clearly directed to Councilmember Kesarwani who is up for election in the November.
Through the night, I was doing my imaginary vote counting, trying to guess where each councilmember would land. I was never sure the seven-story limit would win even after Arreguin stated after the close of public comment that he was supporting the seven-story height limit. Arreguin spoke to respecting the public process and the years of work and engagement with the community.
BART is a heavy-rail public transit system which makes the parking lot land on which the housing projects are to be built public land. Even though BART is underground in Berkeley, the land for stations was taken by eminent domain. And, that is the rub for many who spoke in favor of the seven-story limit and 100% affordable housing. They rightly insist public land needs to be used for affordable housing, for the public good not for the profiteering of a for-profit developer/lessee of the public land.
Non-profit affordable housing developers like to keep projects in the sweet spot of four to six stories where the number of affordable units is maximized and the added cost of high-rise construction and high-rise building maintenance is avoided. Construction changes as the building grows taller usually breaking around eight stories calling for substantial bracing (steel) to stabilize the taller structure.
Whoever builds on the Ashby and North Berkeley BART Station sites, to be in compliance with AB 2923, will be required to build to a minimum of seven stories and to provide no more than 0.5 parking spaces per residential unit. https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/00_AB2923_TechGuide_Draft_2020Jun.pdf
The problem for BART and how we conceive of transit oriented housing is the pandemic changed how we live, work, attend meetings and even where we want to live. Working remotely is here to stay and so is attending meetings via zoom. People who work remotely can live anywhere. In fact, Maine, Vermont, Alaska, Newton, Iowa, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hamilton, Ohio and Lincoln, Kansas all pay remote workers to relocate into their state and named cities.
BART ridership has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. In the most recent data available BART ridership sits at 32% of 2019 levels. BART ridership for the month of May in 2019 was 413,525. In May 2022 it was 132,161.
The ferry service provider Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) was a little better off in April in recapturing ridership reaching a new high of just over 60% of the pre-pandemic level, but that is only through cutting fare cost to compete with and undercut BART to shift riders from BART to the ferry and ferries to Chase Center and Oracle Park to take advantage of sports events. WETA is continuing cutting fares for another year coasting on the American Rescue Plan funding. WETA found through its own survey, that when ferry ticket prices return to “normal” pre-pandemic levels the riders who shifted from BART to the ferry will return to BART. Those returning riders to BART still won’t be more than a drop in the bucket to fill the BART ridership decline. And, WETA will be scrambling when the American Rescue Plan funds run out to cover operating costs.
Pre-pandemic the BUSD Board room would have been overflowing with people waiting in line outside for their turn to speak and BPD counting heads to keep the number inside within the room safety limit requirements. Instead while the mayor said the attendee count of the hybrid meeting (in-person and remote) was over 300, the Board room wasn’t packed, maybe 60 were present per a guess of someone who attended in person. The rest attended via videoconference or teleconference.
The planning of transit oriented development (TOD) has not caught up with this new reality. Even discussions for restoration of the Civic Center buildings include some stuck in the past conceiving of the need for a new large city council chamber.
A number of speakers during the evening stated they were home putting children to bed during the meeting. My evening of attending on zoom aside from the usual taking notes, checking news and emails, included making and eating dinner and putting in an hour on my treadmill.
All this is to frame what could happen with choosing the “master” developer for the BART housing projects. The housing projects at the BART Stations will consist of multiple buildings at each site and there could be a separate developer for each apartment building under the direction of the “master” developer. The selection of the “master” developer is the next big step. There will be input from the City of Berkeley and the agreements between BART and the City of Berkeley will define the qualifications.
BART makes the final selection of the “master” developer. The worry from this corner is that low ridership, the changing post pandemic landscape of working remotely will push the BART Board into seeking market rate housing to bolster their lagging income with the hope that residents living above BART will become heavy BART users.
I have not gone deeply enough into past BART ridership records to see how housing at BART stations affects ridership and what happened by station through the pandemic. The BART ridership reports are easily available going back to 2001. https://www.bart.gov/about/reports/ridership
There was considerable discussion around affordable units. Harrison expressed wanting to ensure that any developer that chose to use the in lieu mitigation, the fee paid to get out of inclusionary affordable housing, that the in lieu fee would go into onsite affordable housing. Stating further that there was no language in the agreements around in lieu mitigation fees and asking the mayor when this would be addressed. Arreguin answered, “good question.”
Wengraf stated she heard El Cerrito was getting 65% affordable housing without a city contribution and wanted to know how. Berkeley is contributing $53,000,000 to affordable housing. BART answered that it is 37% lower income and 12% middle income totaling 49% deed restricted, there are multiple factors and El Cerrito is using modular construction.
The fatally flawed EIR (as described by Thomas Lord - he is correct) was approved with a unanimous vote and used as justification for the council high-rise supporters as an escape valve to vote for the seven-story base, in turn supporting Kesarwani in her reelection bid. The mayor’s supplemental was approved. Though I replayed the meeting end, the final version of the JVP seems a little squishy.
As I’ve been reflecting on the organizing and perseverance of the North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance, the group as a whole and the leaders to keep communication and organizing flowing is nothing less than amazing. They have a lot at stake. It is their neighborhood. This is not to diminish the hard work and engagement of the Friends of Adeline, they too organized and showed up.
The fight isn’t over, but the understory of organizing carries lessons for all. They were up against the funded California YIMBY’s with heavy real estate backing and staff with titles that avoid the word lobbyist. Real estate money funds election campaigns and political action committees (PACs aka dark money) and lobbyists.
After Thursday night I’ve been thinking about close friends living in Southern California who listen to their political talk shows and have plenty of griping to do about what is happening in their city. To my knowledge they have never once attended a city meeting. To their credit they make an occasional phone call or send email on national issues, but when it comes to their own city they are disengaged except for complaining.
Paying attention as I do to city action, there have been many times when community involvement and action ended in failure. The North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance never quit. And, they now have success under their belt to keep going.
What a different country we would have if more of us followed the example of the North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance and Friends of Adeline and engaged in our government instead of believing the nonsense on social media.
There were other meetings this week, but they pale in the shadow of the special council meeting on the BART station housing projects. The Planning Commission did meet, but nothing was decided Wednesday evening.
Don’t forget the state reading of ROE at the Brower Center next Sunday, June 12 at 5 pm and June 16th at the Marsh at 7 pm. I have already signed up for my free ticket. One little nicety is the tickets are through the Actors Ensemble of Berkeley and not evite. Seating is limited so don’t wait. All the details can be found at https://www.aeofberkeley.org/productions/upcoming-shows/378-roe-by-lisa-loomer
As usual a close with my latest read. Through the 100 plus days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is often compared to Churchill, so when The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson published in 2020 on WWII and Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister appeared as available from the library as an audiobook I grabbed it. The description of the book really sums it up best, “The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance, bound a country and a family, together.” Much of the same description of courage in unrelenting horror can be said of Zelenskyy.
May 29, 2022
There were a lot of things wrong in the 1950s when I was growing up, redlining, classism, deep racism, segregation, poverty, little opportunity for Blacks or women, abortion was illegal, gays were closeted, McCarthy was ruining lives with his communist conspiracies, but one thing I never had to worry about was being so pulverized by a weapon of war that DNA would need to be used to identify who belonged to the mass of unrecognizable bloody flesh on the floor in a school classroom. And that is because no one could walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15, an assault weapon or similar gun or guns that hold high capacity magazines. There were not more guns than people. There were not weapons of war sold at your local store. There wasn’t an ad “CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED” to buy an assault weapon. https://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/12/gun-ads-bushmaster-mattel/
The problem is the guns and the answer is not turning teachers into marksmen with AR 15s on their desks or slung over their chests. When I hear the phrase, “they’re coming to take your guns away” all I can think is “I wish.”
In Australia in 1996 there was a firearm massacre in Tasmania in which 35 people died. The Australian government responded and united and did just that, they took the guns away removing semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession, roughly 650,000 guns and established strict laws on who could possess a gun. https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback In 2019 after the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, New Zealand banned assault weapons.
Background checks, if even that measure could be passed is not enough. There needs to be a national ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines and access to ammunition needs to be controlled too. That is what we need to be marching for.
Tuesday evening at 2 hours into the City Council meeting item 19 warrantless searches of individuals on parole/probation was up for comment. Twenty-six minutes later, Josh (he gave his full name, but I won’t attempt to spell it) a parent in District 2 wrapped in fear for his children in a pitched voice he spoke in support of warrantless searches saying council was “playing roulette with my kids.” He should be given some leeway. After all, Tuesday was the day of the Uvalde massacre of nineteen children and two teachers. But what is happening in District 2 goes much further.
All other attendees spoke in opposition to warrantless searches. Josh was the only person who spoke in favor of the Droste – Taplin revision to 311.6 upending over a year of review, research and Police Review Commission subcommittee meetings with police department participation to limit searches of parolees, persons on probation to “reasonable suspicion.”
We can assume that some of the planned speakers in support of warrantless searches didn’t show, since Droste started the evening asking the item to be postponed to July 12. However, Tuesday isn’t the only time we’ve heard a resident from District 2 that sounded unhinged with fear driving a demand for more surveillance and increased policing.
The problem is again guns. Warrantless searches don’t decrease crime as we heard from Kitty Calavita representing the Police Accountability Board. The PAB voted unanimously in support of retaining requiring reasonable suspicion to initiate a search. Calavita was clear in the findings and decision process of the PAB. There is no evidence that warrantless searches reduce crime nor is there any evidence that warrantless searches reduce recidivism. In fact, what the PAB found is that in jurisdictions that allow warrantless searches have higher rates of crime.
Calavita countered the circulated false narrative that the search that lead to the Berkeley man convicted of murdering the Cal student Seth Smith could not have been conducted under the existing reasonable suspicion policy. The search was conducted on a tip, reasonable suspicion.
Warrantless searches are about, power, fear and race. Warrantless searches do not facilitate rehabilitation and instead send a message of disrespect for the person subjected to the search and the officers that do it. And as described by Mansoor Id-Deen, President of the Berkeley Branch of the NAACP, warrantless searches are about dehumanization and humiliation of Black men who are imprisoned at 10 times the rate of White men in our system of unequal justice.
There were, of course, other city meetings this last week.
The Police Accountability Board Controlled Equipment Reporting Subcommittee met Monday morning to continue to develop the plan for addressing the Community Safety Ordinance Impact statements, associated equipment policies, the annual equipment use report and the military equipment policy. When I signed in to the meeting, listening to Berkeley Police Captain Rico Rolleri, was like listening to a schoolyard bully determined to throw his weight around. The meeting had barely started, discussion had not even begun when Rolleri started his attack and threats while the PAB members attempted to defuse the situation. I had to leave to attend another meeting so I don’t know if Rolleri ever calmed down.
When I put Rico Rolleri into a google search this is what turned up, 2019 regular pay $197,808.78, overtime pay $539.03, other pay $43,909.16, total pay $242,256.97, benefits $172,498.20, total pay and benefits $414,755.17. That was 2019. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2019/berkeley/rico-rolleri/ I did not see 2020 or 2021.
One has to question, Is the City of Berkeley rewarding bullying behavior? Is this what Berkeley’s Black community is experiencing? Is this anger what drives disparate treatment in Berkeley. Who else is bullied or bullying? I think there is more here to unpack.
Thursday morning the Budget and Finance Committee met and commented on the budget draft from the City Manager. There will be changes, but one thing for sure, climate doesn’t gain much traction. It would be wise to attend the council meeting this coming Tuesday to hear what direction the mayor and councilmembers push and add your own comments.
Thursday evening there were a long list of projects before the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). The feigned ignorance from William Schrader that he just can’t seem to find information on bird safe glass for his eight-story 2440 Shattuck project is getting a bit tiresome, And for that matter so is the inaction of this City and especially the Planning Department, the Mayor, City Council, the City Manager and the Planning Commission.
I have a bumper sticker on my car from the Audubon Society, “Protect the birds and We Protect the Earth.”
In today’s Earthweek: a diary of the planet this message is given under the title Vanishing birds:
“Almost half of all known bird species are suffering population losses from climate change, habitat loss and over exploitation…We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions…”
Up to one billion, 1,000,000,000, birds die from glass collisions annually in the United States. Let that sink in. That is a shocking number. Berkeley is in the North American flyway. And, the fact that this City can’t get it together to require bird safe glass from ground to 75 feet on all sides of buildings is more than irresponsible, it is sickening. The American Bird Conservancy has the model city ordinance ready for the taking. https://tinyurl.com/3243ezkc
Of course, nothing could be required on any project, only suggested, because this city has failed to act.
Next up 2018 Blake was another heart wrenching project, a 6-story multi-unit, 12-unit building pushed up to a one-story house. The neighbors pleaded to ZAB to deny such a tall building next to their little house where they said they had lived for 50 years. Even though there are planned to be two low income units to secure the density bonus and extra height, this looks to be geared to students. All of us living in the formerly redlined areas and along commercial corridors should expect we too could have an unattractive mid-rise as our new neighbor.
The project was approved. And the attempt by Carrie Olson to send it to the Design Review Committee was met with obstruction from Shoshana O’Keefe.
It would be good to listen to Professor Baldwin linked in Becky O’Malley’s editorial “Tracking the UniverCITY in Berkeley.”
Last I finished the book The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family by David Cay Johnston. Some of the corruption under Donald Trump, I already knew, but how he shoveled money and deals into the family coffers and the thieves around him are just staggering. The chapters are short, but the information is incendiary. Few in Trump’s cabinet escape mention. Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnel’s wife earned a whole chapter is how she used her position to enrich her family. As I was working my way through it, I heard about the book I really want to read just published on May 17th, Criminology on Trump by Greg Barak. I heard Barak interviewed. The book description describes Trump as the world’s most successful outlaw who over the course of five decades has been accused of sexual assault, tax evasion, money laundering, non-payment of employees, and the defrauding of tenants, customers, contractors, investors, bankers and charities and yet continues to amass wealth and power. Barak asks why and how?
There is a purely entertaining book on Trump and his cheating, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Reilly.
There were a lot of things wrong in the 1950s when I was growing up, redlining, classism, deep racism, segregation, poverty, little opportunity for Blacks or women, abortion was illegal, gays were closeted, McCarthy was ruining lives with his communist conspiracies, but one thing I never had to worry about was being so pulverized by a weapon of war that DNA would need to be used to identify who belonged to the mass of unrecognizable bloody flesh on the floor in a school classroom. And that is because no one could walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15, an assault weapon or similar gun or guns that hold high capacity magazines. There were not more guns than people. There were not weapons of war sold at your local store. There wasn’t an ad “CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED” to buy an assault weapon. https://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/12/gun-ads-bushmaster-mattel/
The problem is the guns and the answer is not turning teachers into marksmen with AR 15s on their desks or slung over their chests. When I hear the phrase, “they’re coming to take your guns away” all I can think is “I wish.”
In Australia in 1996 there was a firearm massacre in Tasmania in which 35 people died. The Australian government responded and united and did just that, they took the guns away removing semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession, roughly 650,000 guns and established strict laws on who could possess a gun. https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback In 2019 after the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, New Zealand banned assault weapons.
Background checks, if even that measure could be passed is not enough. There needs to be a national ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines and access to ammunition needs to be controlled too. That is what we need to be marching for.
Tuesday evening at 2 hours into the City Council meeting item 19 warrantless searches of individuals on parole/probation was up for comment. Twenty-six minutes later, Josh (he gave his full name, but I won’t attempt to spell it) a parent in District 2 wrapped in fear for his children in a pitched voice he spoke in support of warrantless searches saying council was “playing roulette with my kids.” He should be given some leeway. After all, Tuesday was the day of the Uvalde massacre of nineteen children and two teachers. But what is happening in District 2 goes much further.
All other attendees spoke in opposition to warrantless searches. Josh was the only person who spoke in favor of the Droste – Taplin revision to 311.6 upending over a year of review, research and Police Review Commission subcommittee meetings with police department participation to limit searches of parolees, persons on probation to “reasonable suspicion.”
We can assume that some of the planned speakers in support of warrantless searches didn’t show, since Droste started the evening asking the item to be postponed to July 12. However, Tuesday isn’t the only time we’ve heard a resident from District 2 that sounded unhinged with fear driving a demand for more surveillance and increased policing.
The problem is again guns. Warrantless searches don’t decrease crime as we heard from Kitty Calavita representing the Police Accountability Board. The PAB voted unanimously in support of retaining requiring reasonable suspicion to initiate a search. Calavita was clear in the findings and decision process of the PAB. There is no evidence that warrantless searches reduce crime nor is there any evidence that warrantless searches reduce recidivism. In fact, what the PAB found is that in jurisdictions that allow warrantless searches have higher rates of crime.
Calavita countered the circulated false narrative that the search that lead to the Berkeley man convicted of murdering the Cal student Seth Smith could not have been conducted under the existing reasonable suspicion policy. The search was conducted on a tip, reasonable suspicion.
Warrantless searches are about, power, fear and race. Warrantless searches do not facilitate rehabilitation and instead send a message of disrespect for the person subjected to the search and the officers that do it. And as described by Mansoor Id-Deen, President of the Berkeley Branch of the NAACP, warrantless searches are about dehumanization and humiliation of Black men who are imprisoned at 10 times the rate of White men in our system of unequal justice.
There were, of course, other city meetings this last week.
The Police Accountability Board Controlled Equipment Reporting Subcommittee met Monday morning to continue to develop the plan for addressing the Community Safety Ordinance Impact statements, associated equipment policies, the annual equipment use report and the military equipment policy. When I signed in to the meeting, listening to Berkeley Police Captain Rico Rolleri, was like listening to a schoolyard bully determined to throw his weight around. The meeting had barely started, discussion had not even begun when Rolleri started his attack and threats while the PAB members attempted to defuse the situation. I had to leave to attend another meeting so I don’t know if Rolleri ever calmed down.
When I put Rico Rolleri into a google search this is what turned up, 2019 regular pay $197,808.78, overtime pay $539.03, other pay $43,909.16, total pay $242,256.97, benefits $172,498.20, total pay and benefits $414,755.17. That was 2019. https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2019/berkeley/rico-rolleri/ I did not see 2020 or 2021.
One has to question, Is the City of Berkeley rewarding bullying behavior? Is this what Berkeley’s Black community is experiencing? Is this anger what drives disparate treatment in Berkeley. Who else is bullied or bullying? I think there is more here to unpack.
Thursday morning the Budget and Finance Committee met and commented on the budget draft from the City Manager. There will be changes, but one thing for sure, climate doesn’t gain much traction. It would be wise to attend the council meeting this coming Tuesday to hear what direction the mayor and councilmembers push and add your own comments.
Thursday evening there were a long list of projects before the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). The feigned ignorance from William Schrader that he just can’t seem to find information on bird safe glass for his eight-story 2440 Shattuck project is getting a bit tiresome, And for that matter so is the inaction of this City and especially the Planning Department, the Mayor, City Council, the City Manager and the Planning Commission.
I have a bumper sticker on my car from the Audubon Society, “Protect the birds and We Protect the Earth.”
In today’s Earthweek: a diary of the planet this message is given under the title Vanishing birds:
“Almost half of all known bird species are suffering population losses from climate change, habitat loss and over exploitation…We are now witnessing the first signs of a new wave of extinctions…”
Up to one billion, 1,000,000,000, birds die from glass collisions annually in the United States. Let that sink in. That is a shocking number. Berkeley is in the North American flyway. And, the fact that this City can’t get it together to require bird safe glass from ground to 75 feet on all sides of buildings is more than irresponsible, it is sickening. The American Bird Conservancy has the model city ordinance ready for the taking. https://tinyurl.com/3243ezkc
Of course, nothing could be required on any project, only suggested, because this city has failed to act.
Next up 2018 Blake was another heart wrenching project, a 6-story multi-unit, 12-unit building pushed up to a one-story house. The neighbors pleaded to ZAB to deny such a tall building next to their little house where they said they had lived for 50 years. Even though there are planned to be two low income units to secure the density bonus and extra height, this looks to be geared to students. All of us living in the formerly redlined areas and along commercial corridors should expect we too could have an unattractive mid-rise as our new neighbor.
The project was approved. And the attempt by Carrie Olson to send it to the Design Review Committee was met with obstruction from Shoshana O’Keefe.
It would be good to listen to Professor Baldwin linked in Becky O’Malley’s editorial “Tracking the UniverCITY in Berkeley.”
Last I finished the book The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family by David Cay Johnston. Some of the corruption under Donald Trump, I already knew, but how he shoveled money and deals into the family coffers and the thieves around him are just staggering. The chapters are short, but the information is incendiary. Few in Trump’s cabinet escape mention. Elaine Chao, Mitch McConnel’s wife earned a whole chapter is how she used her position to enrich her family. As I was working my way through it, I heard about the book I really want to read just published on May 17th, Criminology on Trump by Greg Barak. I heard Barak interviewed. The book description describes Trump as the world’s most successful outlaw who over the course of five decades has been accused of sexual assault, tax evasion, money laundering, non-payment of employees, and the defrauding of tenants, customers, contractors, investors, bankers and charities and yet continues to amass wealth and power. Barak asks why and how?
There is a purely entertaining book on Trump and his cheating, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump by Rick Reilly.
May 22, 2022
Watching climate news is like walking into the opening of the book The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. In the India and Pakistan heat wave, birds fell out of the sky from heat stroke. On Tuesday May 18, 2022 the temperature in Santa Rosa was 20°F above normal. As I write there is a heat warning covering the entire east coast and our own temperature predictions for the coming week are 10 to 20 degrees above what used to be normal. The red flag fire warning for counties west of Sacramento begins Monday at 11 am. Grass fires in San Jose and Sonoma are already making news. Saturday night in local news there was a flash of Governor Newsom stating that water rationing is coming.
On the good news front Australians, who are required to vote, threw out the conservatives electing Anthony Albanese largely on climate. If all eligible Americans voted would there be enough of us to throw out the anti-abortion, fascist replacement theory Christian nationalist Republicans? I think so, but the big if is voting and who counts the votes.
The Democrats have some cleaning up to do to elect more progressive voices. Summer Lee Democrat for Congress overcame $2,025,297 from Democratic dark money PAC (Political action Committee) United Democracy Project (UDP) a PAC for the American Israel Public affairs Committee (AIPAC) to defeat Steve Irwin. Jessica Cisneros a progressive Democrat is fighting the same fight against Henry Cuellar an ultra-conservative anti-abortion Democratic Congressman with AIPAC backing in Texas. The election is Tuesday. Meanwhile Mayor Arreguin just wrapped up a Jewish Community Relations Council sponsored trip to Israel.
Sometimes I wonder if the comments made at City meetings even make a difference. The Design Review Committee (DRC) took an interesting turn this week. I carried over the climate crisis to address the Design Review Committee (DRC) with the stark realities mentioned above. The second project on the agenda was 2213 Fourth Street a 5-story parking garage with 415 parking spaces. The neighbors spoke in objection to this huge parking lot next to their homes adding pollution and traffic. I spoke to the issue of how wrong it is in this climate emergency to even be building a parking lot for combustion engine cars especially when the City of Berkeley is eliminating parking from mixed-use buildings (apartment buildings). Erin Diehm spoke to the landscape architect choosing the plant Nandina which is poisonous to birds.
Janet Tam asked the developer about the future of this structure when it was no longer needed for parking. There was no response, but it became part of the longer conversation. The DRC followed its mandate to review projects from the design perspective and added in their motion to be sent to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB), that the approval of the design did not mean approval of the project and ZAB should consider the project use. The DRC also ordered in their motion that Nandina is prohibited from plantings.
The next project 747 (787) Bancroft Way is a 159,143 square foot research and development project one block from Aquatic Park with glass spanning the second, third and fourth floors. The developer planned to use bird safe glass only on the side facing aquatic park. Using the reasoning that birdsafe glass was only indicated on the aquatic park side and inside shades and curtains would protect birds.
Erin Diehm pointed to the architectural plans showing refection of the sky. Birds see the reflection of the sky in the glass, not the curtain or shade behind it and fly into the glass. She described the building as being in the bird flyway and the abundance of birds at Aquatic Park. Mark Schwettmann cited standards for bird safe glass are evolving.
Evolved is the correct word with bird safe glass from ground to 75 feet on all sides. This is the model ordinance from the American Bird Conservancy and the ordinance for New York City.
Charles Kahn lamented that the DRC can only recommend and not require 100% bird safe glass, because the City of Berkeley has not finalized the ordinance.
Which brings us once again to how Berkeley manages to give a show of taking action on climate and the environment while stalling that very same action through referrals where they are left to wither and die. It is now thirty months since the City Council referred the bird safe glass ordinance to the Planning Commission.
There is another failure here. Sustainable Berkeley Coalition was cc‘d in the April 7, 2022 response by Erin Diehm to the Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) prepared by LSA for the the 747 (787) Bancroft research and development project. This was well in advance of the DRC meeting. Diehm’s response is nowhere to be found in the documents with the 747 (787) Bancroft research and development project while the LSA 566 page Initial Study / Mitigated Negative Declaration report is included.
In Diehm’s response, she pointed out the biological richness of Aquatic Park, the gross undercount of bird species and the false statement in the LSA report, “The project site [747 (787) Bancroft] is not located within a migratory wildlife movement corridor”.
I don’t know how responses to the Mitigated Negative Declaration make it into packets for DRC and ZAB members or whether this was a mere oversight from staff, lack of coordination or more fallout from the new website, but it is a lesson that we as citizens need to keep a watchful eye on the doings of the City. Given the inaccurate information in the LSA 566 page report, this is starting to smell like a disinformation document and campaign.
Monday morning at the Council Public Safety, Councilmember Wengraf presented her motion to accept the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission recommendation to enforce parking restrictions in fire zones 2 and 3 (the hills) with the modification to hire an additional parking enforcement officer to do the work. It will now make its way into the list of council referrals for the FY 2023 and FY 2024 budget.
The generation of parking revenue from meters, garage fees and parking enforcement used to be over $10,000,000 per year according to Public Works submissions for the current City budget, but with the pandemic, changing habits, working from home there isn’t enough money generated to cover the cost of the payments on the $40,000,000 bond for the underutilized Center Street Garage, the parking enforcement officers, the parking services manager and the various contracts with parking meter servicers. Wengraf wants parking enforcement in the fire zones to begin immediately. Will community safety prevail over more lucrative parking enforcement sites? We shall see.
Since I was at the Design Review Committee Thursday evening, I don’t know how well parking enforcement was covered in the Wengraf - Hahn Wildfire Preparedness webinar running at the same time.
At the very end of the Council Public Safety Committee, the chair, Councilmember Kesarwani stated there was an item coming from the City Manager on police tools (controlled equipment). It looks like the City Manager is poised to make an end run around the Police Accountability Board with the three councilmembers Kesarwani, Taplin and Wengraf.
The discussion at the end of the Budget and Finance meeting on Thursday morning between Councilmembers Droste and Kesarwani on the Land Use Planning Division fee schedule tells us what to expect this Tuesday evening May 24th at City Council on item 16 under action. Droste and Kesarwani were asking about staff time involved in preparing for a challenge to a project approval and whether community members are charged the full cost of bringing an appeal of an approved project to Council. Charging the public an hourly rate for appealing a zoning approval would essentially make challenging a project prohibitive. And, that seemed to be exactly the point.
Before leaving for the sponsored trip to Israel, Mayor Arreguin emailed the achievement of a decrease in the number of homeless people in Berkeley by 5%. Fewer people living on the street is great news. The real question is how many people assisted into “permanent” housing are still housed one, two, three or more years later. Or, did any homeless cleared from the streets in Berkeley end up in Oakland where the number of homeless grew? How well our programs are doing to keep people housed permanently is an open question. Follow-up for multiple years after an individual or family is housed and reporting back to the Council and community would tell us to what degree programs are successful and what needs more work. I am probably thinking more about these questions, because I just finished The Turnaway Study.
The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having? Or Being Denied? an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster first published in 2020 is available at the Contra Costa and San Francisco libraries. This book is not about the stories of women with late term abortions because of fetal anomalies or a pregnancy threatening their lives. Yet two women in the study who were turned away died of complications of childbirth.
The Turnaway Study is about ordinary women seeking or denied an abortion in 30 clinics in 21 states from all walks of life from all racial, ethnic and religious groups who were followed for five years with interviews every six months and indepth analysis of their responses.
No harm was found from abortion and in fact women who had abortions were more likely to have wanted pregnancies later, they were in better health, able to leave abusive relationships, care for the children they already had and a whole host of positive outcomes. The difference in outcomes for women denied an abortion, validates their reasons for seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy. Sixty percent of women seeking abortions already had children and the worry about being able to care for existing children was validated through interviews and analysis. Poverty was a prevalent problem as was the difficulty of leaving an abusive relationship. The comparison is stark. After listening to the audiobook, I found so much information in The Turnaway Study that I placed an order to buy it.
Women are denied abortions all the time in the U.S. because they can’t afford one, there is no clinic nearby or they discover they are pregnant too late to receive an abortion. Young women with irregular periods or women who continue to have their period during pregnancy are most likely to miss cut off dates. Being required to have an ultrasound had no impact on their decision to have an abortion.
Asa Hutchinson (Republican) Governor of Arkansas was on the Sunday morning show CNN’s State of the Union with Dana Bash grilling him on the Arkansas abortion “trigger law” he signed. The Arkansas 2019 law defines life as beginning at conception with a complete ban on abortion except to save the life of the mother. Defining life as beginning at conception outlaws the morning after pill, the medical abortion pills and many if not most methods of birth control.
While The Turnaway Study did not include little girls who become pregnant, we must not let that fall off the radar. Just this last week the New York Times published an article on the early onset of puberty. Girls as young as 9 and 10 entering puberty. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/science/early-puberty-medical-reason.html There was another article in the Washington Post last March. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/28/early-puberty-pandemic-girls/ What happens to these little girls, a young child, with bodies developing sexually and still physically immature? Do we really want pregnant children in grade school? And, now Florida, Texas and other states in the “red belt” appear to be competing on who can pass the most prohibitive laws censoring education on sex, sexuality, identity and race.
There is a lot a stake this year and in the 2024 elections, especially at the state level where the most restrictive laws are being written. There is no reason to feel secure in California if the Republicans sweep the 2024 elections. They will be poised to pass a national abortion ban.
If demonstrating is in your blood, there is another on access to abortion this coming Thursday May 26th in San Francisco at 12 noon at 24th and Mission. https://riseup4abortionrights.org/3955-2/
The play Roe will be performed right here in Berkeley in the Goldman Theater at the David Brower Center on June 12th at 5 pm and at the Marsh on Thursday, June 16th at 7 pm. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley and Carol Marasovic are putting on these performances. Admission is free.
Watching climate news is like walking into the opening of the book The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. In the India and Pakistan heat wave, birds fell out of the sky from heat stroke. On Tuesday May 18, 2022 the temperature in Santa Rosa was 20°F above normal. As I write there is a heat warning covering the entire east coast and our own temperature predictions for the coming week are 10 to 20 degrees above what used to be normal. The red flag fire warning for counties west of Sacramento begins Monday at 11 am. Grass fires in San Jose and Sonoma are already making news. Saturday night in local news there was a flash of Governor Newsom stating that water rationing is coming.
On the good news front Australians, who are required to vote, threw out the conservatives electing Anthony Albanese largely on climate. If all eligible Americans voted would there be enough of us to throw out the anti-abortion, fascist replacement theory Christian nationalist Republicans? I think so, but the big if is voting and who counts the votes.
The Democrats have some cleaning up to do to elect more progressive voices. Summer Lee Democrat for Congress overcame $2,025,297 from Democratic dark money PAC (Political action Committee) United Democracy Project (UDP) a PAC for the American Israel Public affairs Committee (AIPAC) to defeat Steve Irwin. Jessica Cisneros a progressive Democrat is fighting the same fight against Henry Cuellar an ultra-conservative anti-abortion Democratic Congressman with AIPAC backing in Texas. The election is Tuesday. Meanwhile Mayor Arreguin just wrapped up a Jewish Community Relations Council sponsored trip to Israel.
Sometimes I wonder if the comments made at City meetings even make a difference. The Design Review Committee (DRC) took an interesting turn this week. I carried over the climate crisis to address the Design Review Committee (DRC) with the stark realities mentioned above. The second project on the agenda was 2213 Fourth Street a 5-story parking garage with 415 parking spaces. The neighbors spoke in objection to this huge parking lot next to their homes adding pollution and traffic. I spoke to the issue of how wrong it is in this climate emergency to even be building a parking lot for combustion engine cars especially when the City of Berkeley is eliminating parking from mixed-use buildings (apartment buildings). Erin Diehm spoke to the landscape architect choosing the plant Nandina which is poisonous to birds.
Janet Tam asked the developer about the future of this structure when it was no longer needed for parking. There was no response, but it became part of the longer conversation. The DRC followed its mandate to review projects from the design perspective and added in their motion to be sent to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB), that the approval of the design did not mean approval of the project and ZAB should consider the project use. The DRC also ordered in their motion that Nandina is prohibited from plantings.
The next project 747 (787) Bancroft Way is a 159,143 square foot research and development project one block from Aquatic Park with glass spanning the second, third and fourth floors. The developer planned to use bird safe glass only on the side facing aquatic park. Using the reasoning that birdsafe glass was only indicated on the aquatic park side and inside shades and curtains would protect birds.
Erin Diehm pointed to the architectural plans showing refection of the sky. Birds see the reflection of the sky in the glass, not the curtain or shade behind it and fly into the glass. She described the building as being in the bird flyway and the abundance of birds at Aquatic Park. Mark Schwettmann cited standards for bird safe glass are evolving.
Evolved is the correct word with bird safe glass from ground to 75 feet on all sides. This is the model ordinance from the American Bird Conservancy and the ordinance for New York City.
Charles Kahn lamented that the DRC can only recommend and not require 100% bird safe glass, because the City of Berkeley has not finalized the ordinance.
Which brings us once again to how Berkeley manages to give a show of taking action on climate and the environment while stalling that very same action through referrals where they are left to wither and die. It is now thirty months since the City Council referred the bird safe glass ordinance to the Planning Commission.
There is another failure here. Sustainable Berkeley Coalition was cc‘d in the April 7, 2022 response by Erin Diehm to the Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) prepared by LSA for the the 747 (787) Bancroft research and development project. This was well in advance of the DRC meeting. Diehm’s response is nowhere to be found in the documents with the 747 (787) Bancroft research and development project while the LSA 566 page Initial Study / Mitigated Negative Declaration report is included.
In Diehm’s response, she pointed out the biological richness of Aquatic Park, the gross undercount of bird species and the false statement in the LSA report, “The project site [747 (787) Bancroft] is not located within a migratory wildlife movement corridor”.
I don’t know how responses to the Mitigated Negative Declaration make it into packets for DRC and ZAB members or whether this was a mere oversight from staff, lack of coordination or more fallout from the new website, but it is a lesson that we as citizens need to keep a watchful eye on the doings of the City. Given the inaccurate information in the LSA 566 page report, this is starting to smell like a disinformation document and campaign.
Monday morning at the Council Public Safety, Councilmember Wengraf presented her motion to accept the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission recommendation to enforce parking restrictions in fire zones 2 and 3 (the hills) with the modification to hire an additional parking enforcement officer to do the work. It will now make its way into the list of council referrals for the FY 2023 and FY 2024 budget.
The generation of parking revenue from meters, garage fees and parking enforcement used to be over $10,000,000 per year according to Public Works submissions for the current City budget, but with the pandemic, changing habits, working from home there isn’t enough money generated to cover the cost of the payments on the $40,000,000 bond for the underutilized Center Street Garage, the parking enforcement officers, the parking services manager and the various contracts with parking meter servicers. Wengraf wants parking enforcement in the fire zones to begin immediately. Will community safety prevail over more lucrative parking enforcement sites? We shall see.
Since I was at the Design Review Committee Thursday evening, I don’t know how well parking enforcement was covered in the Wengraf - Hahn Wildfire Preparedness webinar running at the same time.
At the very end of the Council Public Safety Committee, the chair, Councilmember Kesarwani stated there was an item coming from the City Manager on police tools (controlled equipment). It looks like the City Manager is poised to make an end run around the Police Accountability Board with the three councilmembers Kesarwani, Taplin and Wengraf.
The discussion at the end of the Budget and Finance meeting on Thursday morning between Councilmembers Droste and Kesarwani on the Land Use Planning Division fee schedule tells us what to expect this Tuesday evening May 24th at City Council on item 16 under action. Droste and Kesarwani were asking about staff time involved in preparing for a challenge to a project approval and whether community members are charged the full cost of bringing an appeal of an approved project to Council. Charging the public an hourly rate for appealing a zoning approval would essentially make challenging a project prohibitive. And, that seemed to be exactly the point.
Before leaving for the sponsored trip to Israel, Mayor Arreguin emailed the achievement of a decrease in the number of homeless people in Berkeley by 5%. Fewer people living on the street is great news. The real question is how many people assisted into “permanent” housing are still housed one, two, three or more years later. Or, did any homeless cleared from the streets in Berkeley end up in Oakland where the number of homeless grew? How well our programs are doing to keep people housed permanently is an open question. Follow-up for multiple years after an individual or family is housed and reporting back to the Council and community would tell us to what degree programs are successful and what needs more work. I am probably thinking more about these questions, because I just finished The Turnaway Study.
The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having? Or Being Denied? an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster first published in 2020 is available at the Contra Costa and San Francisco libraries. This book is not about the stories of women with late term abortions because of fetal anomalies or a pregnancy threatening their lives. Yet two women in the study who were turned away died of complications of childbirth.
The Turnaway Study is about ordinary women seeking or denied an abortion in 30 clinics in 21 states from all walks of life from all racial, ethnic and religious groups who were followed for five years with interviews every six months and indepth analysis of their responses.
No harm was found from abortion and in fact women who had abortions were more likely to have wanted pregnancies later, they were in better health, able to leave abusive relationships, care for the children they already had and a whole host of positive outcomes. The difference in outcomes for women denied an abortion, validates their reasons for seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy. Sixty percent of women seeking abortions already had children and the worry about being able to care for existing children was validated through interviews and analysis. Poverty was a prevalent problem as was the difficulty of leaving an abusive relationship. The comparison is stark. After listening to the audiobook, I found so much information in The Turnaway Study that I placed an order to buy it.
Women are denied abortions all the time in the U.S. because they can’t afford one, there is no clinic nearby or they discover they are pregnant too late to receive an abortion. Young women with irregular periods or women who continue to have their period during pregnancy are most likely to miss cut off dates. Being required to have an ultrasound had no impact on their decision to have an abortion.
Asa Hutchinson (Republican) Governor of Arkansas was on the Sunday morning show CNN’s State of the Union with Dana Bash grilling him on the Arkansas abortion “trigger law” he signed. The Arkansas 2019 law defines life as beginning at conception with a complete ban on abortion except to save the life of the mother. Defining life as beginning at conception outlaws the morning after pill, the medical abortion pills and many if not most methods of birth control.
While The Turnaway Study did not include little girls who become pregnant, we must not let that fall off the radar. Just this last week the New York Times published an article on the early onset of puberty. Girls as young as 9 and 10 entering puberty. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/science/early-puberty-medical-reason.html There was another article in the Washington Post last March. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/28/early-puberty-pandemic-girls/ What happens to these little girls, a young child, with bodies developing sexually and still physically immature? Do we really want pregnant children in grade school? And, now Florida, Texas and other states in the “red belt” appear to be competing on who can pass the most prohibitive laws censoring education on sex, sexuality, identity and race.
There is a lot a stake this year and in the 2024 elections, especially at the state level where the most restrictive laws are being written. There is no reason to feel secure in California if the Republicans sweep the 2024 elections. They will be poised to pass a national abortion ban.
If demonstrating is in your blood, there is another on access to abortion this coming Thursday May 26th in San Francisco at 12 noon at 24th and Mission. https://riseup4abortionrights.org/3955-2/
The play Roe will be performed right here in Berkeley in the Goldman Theater at the David Brower Center on June 12th at 5 pm and at the Marsh on Thursday, June 16th at 7 pm. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley and Carol Marasovic are putting on these performances. Admission is free.
May 15, 2022
It was exactly one year ago that I wrote in my Activist’s Diary about how rapidly the earth was warming, that the degree of global warming was 0.8°C in 2018 and edging to 1.2°C. On Monday, May 9, 2022 the World Meteorological Organization announced a new warning https://tinyurl.com/2ww4xw27. Steve Newman summarized it in Earthweek this way, “The U.N. weather agency warns that there is now a 50% chance the world will warm past the 1.5°C goal at least briefly by 2026.” This warning is for NOW, not decades in the future.
Remember when lowering CO2 to 350 ppm was a thing? Today atmospheric CO2 was 421.84 ppm. The climate emergency is here. And, yes, it is hard to grasp the seriousness of it with a beautiful weekend like the one we just completed in Berkeley. Catastrophic climate accelerated weather events fall from recent memory when the sky is blue and the air is fresh. How easy it is to push the fires, drought and heatwaves out of our thinking when they happen somewhere else and everything looks so normal when we open the door, but we are in a climate crisis. We are starting the summer dry season with snowpack at 35% of normal. Last week I wrote about the California Coastal Commission instructing Cambria and Los Oso to halt all new water-using development.
The lone agenda item at Monday’s Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee was the proposed Fair Work Week Ordinance. It covers requiring things like advance posting of work schedules, overtime when there is less than 11 hours between work shifts, pay for cancellation and more, the kinds of conditions and protections workers at the lower rungs of the pay scale need. Businesses were well represented among the fifteen speakers. As one might expect they were less than enthused. No action was taken and it was continued to the next meeting.
Tuesday evening at City Council after several speakers opposed reducing the Health Commission to nine positions, Councilmember Hahn withdrew her support and abstained while the mayor and remaining councilmembers voted their approval. The City Manager withdrew using $121,133 of Measure GG Fire Prevention Funds after a question from Councilmember Wengraf and this Activist asked how could we trust how the planned fall ballot measure funds will be used when Measure GG funds for fire prevention are going to new carpeting.
The big items of the evening were Peoples Park and the configuration of bicycle lanes on Hopkins between Gillman and Sutter.
The student housing projects at Peoples’ Park were initially presented well over a year ago by UC Berkeley as including housing units for the homeless as a “benefit” of the project. Now it turns out that homeless housing isn’t a “benefit” after all. The City Manager will apply for $5,000,000 from the State’s competitive Local Housing Trust Fund (LHTF) program and the City of Berkeley has a one-to-one matching funds requirement. So not only is there significant public opposition to UC Berkeley filling People’s Park with student housing instead of building elsewhere, the City of Berkeley, our taxed dollars, will be used for the homeless units’ part of the project. The item passed on consent. Things get messier all the time.
Fifty-two people commented on the Hopkins Corridor Plan and Councilmember Hahn stated she received over 1600 letters. The best comments of the evening on the Hopkins corridor plan were, “People don’t know what it is like to be in a body that is not young” (I didn’t catch the name) and “Life is full of difficulties. It’s the solutions that are the problems.” Shirley Issel
There are long writeups elsewhere, but as I drove over to Monterey Market for my every other week food shopping, I wondered just exactly how well a double direction bike lane on the Monterey Market side of the street will work. It will mean crossing the bike lane to reach the parking lot and twenty-eight fewer spaces on the street. I walked the 1.2 miles once. It is possible, but walking means more trips, tripling the time for each trip when there never seem to be enough hours in the day and bicycling means dodging distracted drivers. And, given my out of practice bicycling skill, being in a narrow bike lane with bikers coming at me in their narrow side seems hazardous at best.
I am all for crosstown car free streets, but Hopkins is complicated, narrow, a bus route, lots of schools nearby, the Monterey Market, shops and no reasonable parallel streets for alternate routes. Parking meters were part of the plan, but are now being referred back for more input and analysis along with residential preferred parking and a signal light at Monterey and Hopkins.
This project in “process” was passed at 12:18 am making zoom a much preferable choice over attending in-person.
Wednesday evening, Kevin Burl from the Xerces Society (thank you Erin Diehm and Gordon Wozniak at the Parks Commission) earned the best meeting presentation of the week. Burl spoke to supporting butterflies and caterpillars and gave us the Xerces Society website www.xerces.org. There is a specific page for California https://www.xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center/california We could have used an entire evening on butterflies. I wish I had a link to give you for the presentation, but like most Berkeley commission meetings it wasn’t recorded.
Points from Burl included, Monarchs hibernate on trees in the middle of groves where they are more protected from winter cold and temperature extremes. Thinning tree groves removes this protection. Butterflies need early spring nectar producing plants when they emerge from hibernation and host plants (milkweed for Monarchs) to lay their eggs. Urbanization, destruction of habitat, herbicides and pesticides like neonicotinoids sprayed on plants or seeds are responsible for the decline of Monarchs and other butterflies. We counter by choosing pesticide free plants wisely from https://www.xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center/california and https://calscape.org/
Before the presentation even began, David Fielder spoke to meetings not being recorded as unacceptable. Minutes are not comprehensive. Fielder chronicled the results of his communication with the City Clerk’s office. There is no prohibition of recording meetings as had been stated previously by City employees. My recall is that statement came from Scott Ferris but it could have come from the commission secretary or another City staff member. To Ferris’s advantage I can’t reference a recording and some of us feel that is why the community Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan meetings were not recorded.
Shirley Dean phoned in (there was a power failure in North Berkeley) her objection to monetizing the Marina. Laurie Capitelli followed Dean’s comments with his own stating, “It’s not often I am in agreement with Shirley Dean, but we are talking about monetizing our parks.” The purpose of the park system is to provide open space. We should not monetize our parks. He went on describing the view from the Marina as world class and most of our parks should be off limits to revenue generation.
The way the City of Berkeley has attacked the Marina is the commercialization decision is made and the public is presented with which arrangement of the commercial enterprises do you like best. Is site A or B better or maybe C, not whether the Marina is even a location to be considered. That is the way it was last month with the Fitness CourtÒ. We have to give Nelson Lam and the Fitness CourtÒ sales rep credit for persisting when this was rejected over a year ago. At that time, it was suggested one of the BART housing projects was a more appropriate location. https://tinyurl.com/2p8b863b
The Budget meeting on Thursday was short with everything on the agenda moved to this coming week except the Auditor’s report on the financial condition of the City. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-audits/city-auditor-reports It is worth reading.
The week ended with marches across the country for reproductive freedom and another mass shooting this time in Buffalo, New York. This was the same week that two Federal Judges appointed by Donald Trump ruled that the 2019 California law prohibiting the sale of long guns and semiautomatic centerfire rifles to anyone under 21 violates the Second Amendment. The lone dissenting vote came from Judge Sidney Stein appointed by Bill Clinton.
One thing that is different this time in the description of this mass shooting is the through line drawn to other mass shootings, White Supremacy and White replacement theory. On April 30, 2022, the New York Times published, “Night after night on Fox, Tucker Carlson weaponizes his viewers’ fears and grievances to create what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news. It is also, by some measures, the most successful” The NYT analyzed more than 1100 episodes and Carlson mainstreaming “replacement” night after night. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/business/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news-takeaways.html
It is unlikely Tucker Carlson will temper his racist rants. Fox pays Carlson $35 million annually for his popular nightly broadcasts and another $6 million for his podcasts.
Carlson isn’t the first Fox show host whose venomous rants are associated with murder. Bill O’Reilly between 2005 to 2009 called the late term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, “Tiller the Baby Killer” repeating it until Dr. George Tiller was murdered during a Sunday morning service at his church, Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31, 2009. Afterwards came the denials that his rhetoric had anything to do with adding fuel to the fire. Nearly eight years and several sexual harassment lawsuits later Fox pushed O’Reilly out on April 19, 2017.
Last week I wrote about The Story of Jane the Legendary Feminist Abortion Service in Chicago. You can hear the author talk about Jane in the Post Reports podcast https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/pregnant-dont-want-to-be-call-jane/
We shouldn’t be surprised that Roe v. Wade is about to fall. The fundamentalist evangelicals have been organizing the anti-abortion movement for decades and Republican politicians stepped in line to use them. In my August 22, 2021 Diary review of the book Jesus and John Wayne I wrote, “…[the] CWA (Concerned Women of America) the evangelical women’s organization with a mission to carry forward the pro-family, anti-feminist cause was far more organized than I realized. While Planned Parenthood has used each erosion of women’s reproductive rights as a fund raiser with never a call to action in the street, members of CWA were reported as 98% having voted, 93% had signed a petition, 77% had boycotted a product or company, 74% had contacted a public official and nearly half had written a letter to the editor.”
This week following up on writings about fundamentalists, evangelicals and abortion, I picked up Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of IT Back by Frank Schaeffer, 2007. The book was fascinating. Frank Schaeffer’s father Francis Schaeffer and his mother Edith were big in the fundamentalist world. Frank describes talking his father into joining the anti-abortion movement and uniting with the Catholics.
Frank eventually left the fundamentalists after seeing them as isolationist, anti-American and antithetical to valuing the arts and literature. It was “Focus on the Family” on TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Company) with Ed Dobson a onetime Moral Majority leader that drove the wedge. Dobson was preaching needing to save America from decadence, corruption and evil. The way to protect children, to keep them from questioning, meant banning books, homeschooling, private spaces where they could indoctrinate their children free from interference.
It was exactly one year ago that I wrote in my Activist’s Diary about how rapidly the earth was warming, that the degree of global warming was 0.8°C in 2018 and edging to 1.2°C. On Monday, May 9, 2022 the World Meteorological Organization announced a new warning https://tinyurl.com/2ww4xw27. Steve Newman summarized it in Earthweek this way, “The U.N. weather agency warns that there is now a 50% chance the world will warm past the 1.5°C goal at least briefly by 2026.” This warning is for NOW, not decades in the future.
Remember when lowering CO2 to 350 ppm was a thing? Today atmospheric CO2 was 421.84 ppm. The climate emergency is here. And, yes, it is hard to grasp the seriousness of it with a beautiful weekend like the one we just completed in Berkeley. Catastrophic climate accelerated weather events fall from recent memory when the sky is blue and the air is fresh. How easy it is to push the fires, drought and heatwaves out of our thinking when they happen somewhere else and everything looks so normal when we open the door, but we are in a climate crisis. We are starting the summer dry season with snowpack at 35% of normal. Last week I wrote about the California Coastal Commission instructing Cambria and Los Oso to halt all new water-using development.
The lone agenda item at Monday’s Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee was the proposed Fair Work Week Ordinance. It covers requiring things like advance posting of work schedules, overtime when there is less than 11 hours between work shifts, pay for cancellation and more, the kinds of conditions and protections workers at the lower rungs of the pay scale need. Businesses were well represented among the fifteen speakers. As one might expect they were less than enthused. No action was taken and it was continued to the next meeting.
Tuesday evening at City Council after several speakers opposed reducing the Health Commission to nine positions, Councilmember Hahn withdrew her support and abstained while the mayor and remaining councilmembers voted their approval. The City Manager withdrew using $121,133 of Measure GG Fire Prevention Funds after a question from Councilmember Wengraf and this Activist asked how could we trust how the planned fall ballot measure funds will be used when Measure GG funds for fire prevention are going to new carpeting.
The big items of the evening were Peoples Park and the configuration of bicycle lanes on Hopkins between Gillman and Sutter.
The student housing projects at Peoples’ Park were initially presented well over a year ago by UC Berkeley as including housing units for the homeless as a “benefit” of the project. Now it turns out that homeless housing isn’t a “benefit” after all. The City Manager will apply for $5,000,000 from the State’s competitive Local Housing Trust Fund (LHTF) program and the City of Berkeley has a one-to-one matching funds requirement. So not only is there significant public opposition to UC Berkeley filling People’s Park with student housing instead of building elsewhere, the City of Berkeley, our taxed dollars, will be used for the homeless units’ part of the project. The item passed on consent. Things get messier all the time.
Fifty-two people commented on the Hopkins Corridor Plan and Councilmember Hahn stated she received over 1600 letters. The best comments of the evening on the Hopkins corridor plan were, “People don’t know what it is like to be in a body that is not young” (I didn’t catch the name) and “Life is full of difficulties. It’s the solutions that are the problems.” Shirley Issel
There are long writeups elsewhere, but as I drove over to Monterey Market for my every other week food shopping, I wondered just exactly how well a double direction bike lane on the Monterey Market side of the street will work. It will mean crossing the bike lane to reach the parking lot and twenty-eight fewer spaces on the street. I walked the 1.2 miles once. It is possible, but walking means more trips, tripling the time for each trip when there never seem to be enough hours in the day and bicycling means dodging distracted drivers. And, given my out of practice bicycling skill, being in a narrow bike lane with bikers coming at me in their narrow side seems hazardous at best.
I am all for crosstown car free streets, but Hopkins is complicated, narrow, a bus route, lots of schools nearby, the Monterey Market, shops and no reasonable parallel streets for alternate routes. Parking meters were part of the plan, but are now being referred back for more input and analysis along with residential preferred parking and a signal light at Monterey and Hopkins.
This project in “process” was passed at 12:18 am making zoom a much preferable choice over attending in-person.
Wednesday evening, Kevin Burl from the Xerces Society (thank you Erin Diehm and Gordon Wozniak at the Parks Commission) earned the best meeting presentation of the week. Burl spoke to supporting butterflies and caterpillars and gave us the Xerces Society website www.xerces.org. There is a specific page for California https://www.xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center/california We could have used an entire evening on butterflies. I wish I had a link to give you for the presentation, but like most Berkeley commission meetings it wasn’t recorded.
Points from Burl included, Monarchs hibernate on trees in the middle of groves where they are more protected from winter cold and temperature extremes. Thinning tree groves removes this protection. Butterflies need early spring nectar producing plants when they emerge from hibernation and host plants (milkweed for Monarchs) to lay their eggs. Urbanization, destruction of habitat, herbicides and pesticides like neonicotinoids sprayed on plants or seeds are responsible for the decline of Monarchs and other butterflies. We counter by choosing pesticide free plants wisely from https://www.xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center/california and https://calscape.org/
Before the presentation even began, David Fielder spoke to meetings not being recorded as unacceptable. Minutes are not comprehensive. Fielder chronicled the results of his communication with the City Clerk’s office. There is no prohibition of recording meetings as had been stated previously by City employees. My recall is that statement came from Scott Ferris but it could have come from the commission secretary or another City staff member. To Ferris’s advantage I can’t reference a recording and some of us feel that is why the community Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan meetings were not recorded.
Shirley Dean phoned in (there was a power failure in North Berkeley) her objection to monetizing the Marina. Laurie Capitelli followed Dean’s comments with his own stating, “It’s not often I am in agreement with Shirley Dean, but we are talking about monetizing our parks.” The purpose of the park system is to provide open space. We should not monetize our parks. He went on describing the view from the Marina as world class and most of our parks should be off limits to revenue generation.
The way the City of Berkeley has attacked the Marina is the commercialization decision is made and the public is presented with which arrangement of the commercial enterprises do you like best. Is site A or B better or maybe C, not whether the Marina is even a location to be considered. That is the way it was last month with the Fitness CourtÒ. We have to give Nelson Lam and the Fitness CourtÒ sales rep credit for persisting when this was rejected over a year ago. At that time, it was suggested one of the BART housing projects was a more appropriate location. https://tinyurl.com/2p8b863b
The Budget meeting on Thursday was short with everything on the agenda moved to this coming week except the Auditor’s report on the financial condition of the City. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-audits/city-auditor-reports It is worth reading.
The week ended with marches across the country for reproductive freedom and another mass shooting this time in Buffalo, New York. This was the same week that two Federal Judges appointed by Donald Trump ruled that the 2019 California law prohibiting the sale of long guns and semiautomatic centerfire rifles to anyone under 21 violates the Second Amendment. The lone dissenting vote came from Judge Sidney Stein appointed by Bill Clinton.
One thing that is different this time in the description of this mass shooting is the through line drawn to other mass shootings, White Supremacy and White replacement theory. On April 30, 2022, the New York Times published, “Night after night on Fox, Tucker Carlson weaponizes his viewers’ fears and grievances to create what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news. It is also, by some measures, the most successful” The NYT analyzed more than 1100 episodes and Carlson mainstreaming “replacement” night after night. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/business/media/tucker-carlson-fox-news-takeaways.html
It is unlikely Tucker Carlson will temper his racist rants. Fox pays Carlson $35 million annually for his popular nightly broadcasts and another $6 million for his podcasts.
Carlson isn’t the first Fox show host whose venomous rants are associated with murder. Bill O’Reilly between 2005 to 2009 called the late term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, “Tiller the Baby Killer” repeating it until Dr. George Tiller was murdered during a Sunday morning service at his church, Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas on May 31, 2009. Afterwards came the denials that his rhetoric had anything to do with adding fuel to the fire. Nearly eight years and several sexual harassment lawsuits later Fox pushed O’Reilly out on April 19, 2017.
Last week I wrote about The Story of Jane the Legendary Feminist Abortion Service in Chicago. You can hear the author talk about Jane in the Post Reports podcast https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/pregnant-dont-want-to-be-call-jane/
We shouldn’t be surprised that Roe v. Wade is about to fall. The fundamentalist evangelicals have been organizing the anti-abortion movement for decades and Republican politicians stepped in line to use them. In my August 22, 2021 Diary review of the book Jesus and John Wayne I wrote, “…[the] CWA (Concerned Women of America) the evangelical women’s organization with a mission to carry forward the pro-family, anti-feminist cause was far more organized than I realized. While Planned Parenthood has used each erosion of women’s reproductive rights as a fund raiser with never a call to action in the street, members of CWA were reported as 98% having voted, 93% had signed a petition, 77% had boycotted a product or company, 74% had contacted a public official and nearly half had written a letter to the editor.”
This week following up on writings about fundamentalists, evangelicals and abortion, I picked up Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of IT Back by Frank Schaeffer, 2007. The book was fascinating. Frank Schaeffer’s father Francis Schaeffer and his mother Edith were big in the fundamentalist world. Frank describes talking his father into joining the anti-abortion movement and uniting with the Catholics.
Frank eventually left the fundamentalists after seeing them as isolationist, anti-American and antithetical to valuing the arts and literature. It was “Focus on the Family” on TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Company) with Ed Dobson a onetime Moral Majority leader that drove the wedge. Dobson was preaching needing to save America from decadence, corruption and evil. The way to protect children, to keep them from questioning, meant banning books, homeschooling, private spaces where they could indoctrinate their children free from interference.
May 8, 2022
I remember reading when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, there were people around the world busy archiving documents especially documents on climate from U.S. government websites and storing the information outside of the country so it could be saved and retrieved.
For over the last year we have been hearing the City of Berkeley was developing a new updated website. We were blithely coasting along like any of the historical documents we might ever need would be there when we wanted.
Today I wanted to find documents from the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC). Because City Council dissolved CEAC it is not a searchable choice in the “Records online,” the place we are supposed to go to in the new city website to find older documents.
Even current information is blocked. In preparing the Activist’s Calendar, the agenda for the Tuesday Closed Council session gave this message: 403 SORRY, PERMISSION DENIED. This is a first. In the past, the agenda items were listed. Closed Council meetings began with public comment on agenda items before going into closed session. This meeting is now cancelled.
Friday, I heard today that City employed legislative aides can’t find the documents they need. I guess there is some comfort that I am not the only one having problems with the acclaimed improved Berkeley City website. The pictures are attractive and I expect some people love them and the new format. The format looks like it is easier for people who do business with the City, not those who are engaged in what the City is doing. Given the choice between colorful pictures and historical records, I’ll take the later.
The most complete accessible list of City of Berkeley meetings going back to July 17, 2017 may now rest in the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html I had started to remove old calendars last year, but fortunately I never had enough time to get past July 17, 2017. None of the links work, but at least it may help to know where to start looking when you submit your public records requests.
It is spring. Birds are nesting in trees, bushes and in protected spaces around our homes. A pair of mourning doves returned again this year to the eave above my porch. And, while we await the hatching and fledging of these clutches, birds are migrating over our heads to northern sites to mate and nest. Erin Diehm sent me this totally cool website https://dashboard.birdcast.info/
Type in any US county and the number of migrating birds pops up along with the species of birds and speed and height of their flight. Amazing!
This can be a reminder to be bird friendly. If you have a cat(s) keep them indoors, turn off outside lights especially any lights that shine up into the sky. Outdoor cats are the biggest killer of birds and uplighting can be disturbing and confusing to migrating birds. Approach yard clean-up and tree trimming cautiously to avoid disturbing nesting birds. And, last choose native plants that support insects especially caterpillars and leave the chemicals on the shelf.
Two of three CalFalcons have hatched. You can watch hatch day Q&A at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKbk4bpHRPs
Nothing much happened at any of the City meetings this last week except at the special council meeting on reimagining public safety Thursday evening.
The Peace and Justice Commission will continue working on their proposal/letter opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a vision for a peaceful future. Councilmember Taplin’s measure on efficiency units at the Land Use Committee was postponed.
The Planning Commission received and commented on the Housing Elements presentation of potential sites for adding 8934 new housing units. No commission action was taken, however, if you live backed up to San Pablo, University, Shattuck, Adeline, Telegraph, near the downtown or in the southside (around and south of UCB, the area bounded by Hearst on the north, MLK on the west, Dwight to Prospect on the south and Prospect on the east) expect a midsize mixed-use apartment building or taller to be your new neighbor. And, expect mixed-use building creep further into neighborhoods.
It is worth looking at the maps of targeted development areas in the presentation to the Planning Commission even if you expect your neighborhood to remain untouched. Pipeline means projects that are in review/process. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-05-04_HE_PC_SitesPoliciesPrograms_PPT.pdf
I remember reading when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, there were people around the world busy archiving documents especially documents on climate from U.S. government websites and storing the information outside of the country so it could be saved and retrieved.
For over the last year we have been hearing the City of Berkeley was developing a new updated website. We were blithely coasting along like any of the historical documents we might ever need would be there when we wanted.
Today I wanted to find documents from the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC). Because City Council dissolved CEAC it is not a searchable choice in the “Records online,” the place we are supposed to go to in the new city website to find older documents.
Even current information is blocked. In preparing the Activist’s Calendar, the agenda for the Tuesday Closed Council session gave this message: 403 SORRY, PERMISSION DENIED. This is a first. In the past, the agenda items were listed. Closed Council meetings began with public comment on agenda items before going into closed session. This meeting is now cancelled.
Friday, I heard today that City employed legislative aides can’t find the documents they need. I guess there is some comfort that I am not the only one having problems with the acclaimed improved Berkeley City website. The pictures are attractive and I expect some people love them and the new format. The format looks like it is easier for people who do business with the City, not those who are engaged in what the City is doing. Given the choice between colorful pictures and historical records, I’ll take the later.
The most complete accessible list of City of Berkeley meetings going back to July 17, 2017 may now rest in the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. https://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html I had started to remove old calendars last year, but fortunately I never had enough time to get past July 17, 2017. None of the links work, but at least it may help to know where to start looking when you submit your public records requests.
It is spring. Birds are nesting in trees, bushes and in protected spaces around our homes. A pair of mourning doves returned again this year to the eave above my porch. And, while we await the hatching and fledging of these clutches, birds are migrating over our heads to northern sites to mate and nest. Erin Diehm sent me this totally cool website https://dashboard.birdcast.info/
Type in any US county and the number of migrating birds pops up along with the species of birds and speed and height of their flight. Amazing!
This can be a reminder to be bird friendly. If you have a cat(s) keep them indoors, turn off outside lights especially any lights that shine up into the sky. Outdoor cats are the biggest killer of birds and uplighting can be disturbing and confusing to migrating birds. Approach yard clean-up and tree trimming cautiously to avoid disturbing nesting birds. And, last choose native plants that support insects especially caterpillars and leave the chemicals on the shelf.
Two of three CalFalcons have hatched. You can watch hatch day Q&A at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKbk4bpHRPs
Nothing much happened at any of the City meetings this last week except at the special council meeting on reimagining public safety Thursday evening.
The Peace and Justice Commission will continue working on their proposal/letter opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a vision for a peaceful future. Councilmember Taplin’s measure on efficiency units at the Land Use Committee was postponed.
The Planning Commission received and commented on the Housing Elements presentation of potential sites for adding 8934 new housing units. No commission action was taken, however, if you live backed up to San Pablo, University, Shattuck, Adeline, Telegraph, near the downtown or in the southside (around and south of UCB, the area bounded by Hearst on the north, MLK on the west, Dwight to Prospect on the south and Prospect on the east) expect a midsize mixed-use apartment building or taller to be your new neighbor. And, expect mixed-use building creep further into neighborhoods.
It is worth looking at the maps of targeted development areas in the presentation to the Planning Commission even if you expect your neighborhood to remain untouched. Pipeline means projects that are in review/process. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2022-05-04_HE_PC_SitesPoliciesPrograms_PPT.pdf
May 8, 2022 Continued
As for what actually happened May 5th at the Special Reimagining Public Safety Council meeting here is the motion:
The motion passed with Arreguin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson, Taplin and Wengraf voting for the measure and Droste and Kesarwani voting in opposition. The substitute motion on the opposing measure from Droste, Kesarwani, Taplin and Wengraf failed.
What does this really mean? Hard to say. There is still the budget process, but overall it looks like more police, moving forward on a non-police mental health team (SCU) for people in a mental health crisis, staffing up dispatch for 911 and non-emergency calls and turfing addressing racial bias and systemic racism to a new department.
Dealing with racism on the job isn’t easy. As a new manager, I quickly learned that high levels of diversity in an organization/company does not guarantee acceptance and understanding. Diversity of the workforce does not make racist behavior, microaggressions magically disappear. Diversity is no guarantee for cross cultural and cross racial work relationships or evolving friendships.
The Mason Tillman Report and Center for Policing Equity Report identified racist practices and problems embedded in the City of Berkeley. Creating a new department, the Office of Race, Equity and Diversity is just a showcase unless supervisors, department heads, chiefs, all the way up to the City Manager, the mayor and councilmembers are willing to look at their own biases and step up to their responsibility to address and establish a no tolerance for the behavior that comes with systemic racism. As long as racist behavior, microaggressions, racist practices in contracting are tolerated without action to end them, then no new number of departments or reorganizing will solve problem for them or us.
We are starting off the dry season with water in short supply and nearly all of California in extreme drought or exceptional drought, the two worst categories. In the eternal let’s build and ignore availability of water, this article from the San Luis Obispo Tribune reports letters from California Coastal Commission to halt all new water-using development including housing development in Los Osos and Cambria. https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article260618467.html
In this Mother’s Day weekend with the pending end of Roe v. Wade heading the news, this Diary finishes with two books The Story of Jane the Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan, 1995 reissued in 2019 (on backorder) and The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America by Thom Hartmann, 2019 (the ebooks and audiobooks for both are available at the San Francisco library).
The Story of Jane is more than how a group of women in Chicago evolved from making connections between women pleading for abortions and the doctors who provided them to learning how to perform abortions themselves. In its four-year history the members of Jane estimated they performed more than 11,000 abortions.
Kaplan writes of the pressure of meeting the needs of women desperate to end their pregnancies. Women called Jane from all walks of life, Black, White, rich, poor, married, single, women with and without children and all ages from young girls to middle age. The book lays bare the tensions of learning to perform abortions, personalities, leadership, families, partners and even the feminist organizations growing at the time. Kaplan describes women recognizing their potential and freedom to make their own decisions and the direction of their lives.
And who were the women of Jane? They were not wild-eyed revolutionaries dressed in motorcycle jackets and combat boots, they were Instead a group of ordinary women. Nick (everyone was given a pseudo name including the author) who taught the women how to perform abortions described them like this, “…they looked too normal, too straight, …This is really strange all these straight women doing this illegal thing.”
California is poised to be a sanctuary for women, but this is a plan that can whither and fall with an uncertain future and a solid majority of five Supreme Court Justices staunchly in opposition to abortion and standing in the extreme right on other issues. This majority of five doesn’t need any other justices to push forward their agenda. As ultra conservative state legislatures write and pass extreme laws prohibiting abortion everything is on the table as these laws work their way to the Supreme Court.
If you look at the Louisiana Department of Health https://ldh.la.gov/page/1036 you wouldn’t know that Louisiana legislators are advancing a bill that would make terminating a pregnancy a homicide.
In The Hidden History of the Supreme Court, Hartmann writes of Mitch McConnell seeing lifetime appointments of Federal judges as more important than legislation in shaping the power structure of the United States. The courts touch every aspect of our lives.
In Hartmann’s short book he chronicles the progression of the Supreme Court to its current state of “supreme” power legislating from the bench. Included are key decisions and descriptions of acts of treason by Presidents Reagan and Nixon. Hartmann describes how McConnell used his power to block President Obama’s appointments to Federal courts (not just Merrick Garland) leaving vacancies for lifetime appointments for President Trump to fill with young ultraconservative judges that will change the direction of the U.S. for years into the future.
As for my guess of who is the draft opinion leaker, my vote goes to Ginni Thomas wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Ginni Thomas has already demonstrated her entanglement with conspiracy theories and all the necessary connections. Clerks have careers at risk that would make leaking come at a huge personal cost, but we shall see.
As for what actually happened May 5th at the Special Reimagining Public Safety Council meeting here is the motion:
- To refer the budget process the City Manager’s Police restaffing proposal as presented in the City Manager Reimagining Public Safety Report. (181 positions, with 5 deferred)
- Refer to the budget process the proposed Dispatch positions in the amount of $926,710 (4 Dispatch Positions, 1 Supervisor)
- Refer to fully fund the Office of Race, Equity and Diversity in the amount of $479,540
- As part of permanent decision on an SCU [Special Care Unit] in FY 25-26 evaluate brining the program internally within the City organization to be staffed by City of Berkeley staff, and also refer for consideration the the MIP launched by the Berkeley Fire Department, in addition to all other ideas.
The motion passed with Arreguin, Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Robinson, Taplin and Wengraf voting for the measure and Droste and Kesarwani voting in opposition. The substitute motion on the opposing measure from Droste, Kesarwani, Taplin and Wengraf failed.
What does this really mean? Hard to say. There is still the budget process, but overall it looks like more police, moving forward on a non-police mental health team (SCU) for people in a mental health crisis, staffing up dispatch for 911 and non-emergency calls and turfing addressing racial bias and systemic racism to a new department.
Dealing with racism on the job isn’t easy. As a new manager, I quickly learned that high levels of diversity in an organization/company does not guarantee acceptance and understanding. Diversity of the workforce does not make racist behavior, microaggressions magically disappear. Diversity is no guarantee for cross cultural and cross racial work relationships or evolving friendships.
The Mason Tillman Report and Center for Policing Equity Report identified racist practices and problems embedded in the City of Berkeley. Creating a new department, the Office of Race, Equity and Diversity is just a showcase unless supervisors, department heads, chiefs, all the way up to the City Manager, the mayor and councilmembers are willing to look at their own biases and step up to their responsibility to address and establish a no tolerance for the behavior that comes with systemic racism. As long as racist behavior, microaggressions, racist practices in contracting are tolerated without action to end them, then no new number of departments or reorganizing will solve problem for them or us.
We are starting off the dry season with water in short supply and nearly all of California in extreme drought or exceptional drought, the two worst categories. In the eternal let’s build and ignore availability of water, this article from the San Luis Obispo Tribune reports letters from California Coastal Commission to halt all new water-using development including housing development in Los Osos and Cambria. https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article260618467.html
In this Mother’s Day weekend with the pending end of Roe v. Wade heading the news, this Diary finishes with two books The Story of Jane the Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan, 1995 reissued in 2019 (on backorder) and The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America by Thom Hartmann, 2019 (the ebooks and audiobooks for both are available at the San Francisco library).
The Story of Jane is more than how a group of women in Chicago evolved from making connections between women pleading for abortions and the doctors who provided them to learning how to perform abortions themselves. In its four-year history the members of Jane estimated they performed more than 11,000 abortions.
Kaplan writes of the pressure of meeting the needs of women desperate to end their pregnancies. Women called Jane from all walks of life, Black, White, rich, poor, married, single, women with and without children and all ages from young girls to middle age. The book lays bare the tensions of learning to perform abortions, personalities, leadership, families, partners and even the feminist organizations growing at the time. Kaplan describes women recognizing their potential and freedom to make their own decisions and the direction of their lives.
And who were the women of Jane? They were not wild-eyed revolutionaries dressed in motorcycle jackets and combat boots, they were Instead a group of ordinary women. Nick (everyone was given a pseudo name including the author) who taught the women how to perform abortions described them like this, “…they looked too normal, too straight, …This is really strange all these straight women doing this illegal thing.”
California is poised to be a sanctuary for women, but this is a plan that can whither and fall with an uncertain future and a solid majority of five Supreme Court Justices staunchly in opposition to abortion and standing in the extreme right on other issues. This majority of five doesn’t need any other justices to push forward their agenda. As ultra conservative state legislatures write and pass extreme laws prohibiting abortion everything is on the table as these laws work their way to the Supreme Court.
If you look at the Louisiana Department of Health https://ldh.la.gov/page/1036 you wouldn’t know that Louisiana legislators are advancing a bill that would make terminating a pregnancy a homicide.
In The Hidden History of the Supreme Court, Hartmann writes of Mitch McConnell seeing lifetime appointments of Federal judges as more important than legislation in shaping the power structure of the United States. The courts touch every aspect of our lives.
In Hartmann’s short book he chronicles the progression of the Supreme Court to its current state of “supreme” power legislating from the bench. Included are key decisions and descriptions of acts of treason by Presidents Reagan and Nixon. Hartmann describes how McConnell used his power to block President Obama’s appointments to Federal courts (not just Merrick Garland) leaving vacancies for lifetime appointments for President Trump to fill with young ultraconservative judges that will change the direction of the U.S. for years into the future.
As for my guess of who is the draft opinion leaker, my vote goes to Ginni Thomas wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Ginni Thomas has already demonstrated her entanglement with conspiracy theories and all the necessary connections. Clerks have careers at risk that would make leaking come at a huge personal cost, but we shall see.
May 1, 2022
There is so much going on it is hard to know where to start and what should percolate through for mention.
The City of Berkeley has turned on the new website. The pictures and font are clean. It is great if you want a parking permit, but if you are looking for a city commission or council committee it is a bit more complicated. If you are planning on joining a meeting do NOT wait until the last minute.
If you use google to find a city webpage as I often do, expect to land in the dreaded “404: Page Not Found WE’RE SORRY, BUT THIS PAGE EITHER HAS BEEN MOVED, DELETED, OR DOES NOT EXIST.”
Don’t give up!
You need to look around the screen. If you landed on a page that hasn’t been “disappeared” there will be possible options. “Your Government” will get you to Boards and Commissions and “City Council” to regular and special meetings. Then you need to keep scanning the Council page to find Council Committees. It is going to be a rough few days while we get used to the new arrangements. If you are on a “disappeared” webpage go to https://berkeleyca.gov/ or cityofberkeley.info to start your search over.
The Budget Committee meetings on April 27, 28, and 29 were video recorded. This is new and hopefully will continue. Not all is perfect, some listings are not up to date, for example the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission comes with “there are no results matching your selection” and some things are just missing like all the reports and documents from the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force (RIPST) webpage. I happened to still have the RIPST open in my browser and copied the list of attachments though the links no longer function and the documents have disappeared into the ether.
Hopefully missing information will be discovered and reconnected. Possibly, I haven’t found the path to its location, but I worry the conversion to the new website cleanses documents from view into records online searches, public records requests or worse.
Outside consultants contracted by Berkeley like https://smartspace.goberkeley.info/ who are planning the pay for parking pilots in residential neighborhoods are still not connected to the City website. You have to know what/who to look for. Smartspace conducted two meetings this last week, but between Eventbrite and so much going on, I couldn’t attend
On to what happened last week.
The only statement of interest from the Monday Agenda Committee was from the Mayor who said he would present his response to Reimagining Public Safety on May 5th. There is no posted special meeting announcement and it is hard to tell if the meeting will actually happen on the stated date with short public notice or if the Mayor will “reschedule” to another time. Short notice seems to be the new habit when there is likely to be a heavy dose of negative comment.
The Zero Waste Commission did have a lengthy discussion that too much of what is put into the recycling bin is not recyclable. The list of unrecyclable plastics was not published and must be requested from the commission secretary. A plan for how to inform the City Council and the public of the problem plastics did not materialize. Until then, we are stuck in wishcycling. The Earthweek: a diary of the planet had a clip that chemical engineers in Texas have developed a new enzyme that will breakdown plastics. It sounds hopeful, but then we don’t have any details or even know if what is left behind is toxic.
At City Council the Surveillance Report was postponed again and joins the Hopkins redesign for May 10th. Councilmember Taplin submitted a supplemental to advance studying the feasibility of a Crisis Stabilization Center and interim plan which was accepted and passed. The surprise of the evening was the Council remanded the 1643 – 1647 California Street project back to ZAB (Zoning adjustment Board). The neighbors were correct, staff did not correctly interpret the Housing Accountability Act something Steven Buckley Planning Department Manager tried to pass off in his comment as a “difference of opinion.”
The City Department Budget presentations kicked off at noon on Wednesday. It was a long three days. Most notable is the volume of vacancies in departments across the City often reported as high as 19% or greater. Despite the reimagining process of planning to relieve the Police Department (BPD) of non-police duties and turning over mental health crisis intervention to mental health professionals, the BPD requested an increase to a whopping 189 sworn officers from somewhere of current staffing in the 150s to 160s. Maybe the rest of us need to read Adam Johnson’s April 3, 2022 editorial in the Chronicle on refunding police. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Refunding-police-isn-t-working-in-17051410.php.
One has to wonder just exactly what is going on with staffing the city. There was the “great resignation” but glaring vacancies preceded the pandemic. The Council is having yet another closed-door meeting with “labor negotiators” and public comment at Council meetings has outright declared that treatment of employees, not implementing contract agreements on pay in a timely manner is impacting the reputation of the City as an employer.
The lengthy discussion on financing the Berkeley Marina brought some very interesting discussion. If you wish to do a little research on the current Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP), development meetings of turning the Marina into an adventure and event enterprise which demolishes habitat, native plants and fragile ecosystems, that webpage with meeting history and plans has also disappeared with the new website.
As it turns out there is no legal requirement that the Marina / Waterfront must be self-supporting, an enterprise fund. The budget process and concocted crisis serves to forward a vision that turning the Marina into an entertainment center will fix the budget problem and bring overflowing oodles of money into the City coffers. The Mayor, Council and Parks and Waterfront Department are pushing hard for that vision and the consultants and developers are enthusiastic supporters with their hands out. Of course, the fact that the events held at the Marina are money losers instead of a revenue stream is conveniently ignored (though events do fatten the police overtime pocket pay).
Councilmember Harrison spoke to the Marina as a place for nature.
There is a divide between those who require endless entertainment to fill their voids and those who wish to maintain a place to escape from endless overload and unwind surrounded by nature, sea breezes and the magnificent views of the bay to rejuvenate their soul.
The Thursday meeting marathon ended with ZAB at 12:05 am. 1151 Grizzly Peak was continued after a lengthy discussion. 2600 Tenth Street with conversion of the media tenant spaces to R&D was moved to May. And, the rest of the meeting was filled with the 6-story, 66-unit mixed-use project at 1201 San Pablo. Sitting in a little house next door or finding your solar completely in shadow is enough to make all but the most entrenched YIMBYs unhappy.
It was little comfort that project owner and David Trachtenberg the architect responded to suggestions from the Design Review Committee and pulled back the project on the east side by 5 feet for more separation, created a stepdown to three floors and will plant a row of trees to add privacy.
We have a tendency not to pay attention to local and state government and in this case until it is literally in our backyard. The push for mid-size and larger developments along transportation and commercial corridors has been in the making for years with legislation to match.
It is probably also lost on these neighbors that Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner voted for this legislation and worse SB 9 and SB 10 and our own city council majority are supporters. Neighborhoods need to look hard when they check their ballots and it would be more beneficial if more neighborhoods engaged before the levers are pulled.
If you tune in to Council meetings you will hear Thomas Lord speak to the City’s appalling lack of response to climate. He is correct and, I would add California has a water problem and the question of carrying capacity for growth is never in the picture. Berkeley Council side-stepped the opportunity to establish objective standards to protect solar.
Each week I include in my Diary the book I just finished reading. This week it was The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth by Kristin Henning, 2021.
I’ve read a long list of books on race and lingering systemic racism. I panned Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence by Michael W. Quinn in prior reviews. It is impossible to take seriously a former Minneapolis Police Officer (23.5 years on the force) extolling the grand promise of EPIC (Ethical Policing is Courageous) as the answer to ending racist policing. Especially when EPIC was supposedly taught in Minneapolis prior to the murder of George Floyd. EPIC is also included as an answer by the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform in their report on Reimagining Public Safety.
Kristin Henning is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a juvenile defense attorney. Rage of Innocence focuses on youth, teenagers, in a way that is most often lost in discussion. Teenagers are impulsive, hang out with friends, make noise, have their own style of attire and music, but in this present culture sagging pants can mean being suspended from school and arrested for Black teens unlike grandparents of their White peers who survived without being jailed for bellbottoms and tie dye shirts. The book chronicles the intersection of youth, police, courts, jails, prisons and the impact of incarceration on families. The book also instructs parents in recognizing the signs of how they and their children may be bullied, manipulated and railroaded into false confessions.
This book focuses on the present in how Black youth are surveilled, policed, criminalized, arrested, detained, imprisoned or even killed for teenage behavior that is dismissed as boys will be boys when it is a White boy. White boys and girls are assumed innocent or just acting out in a way that they will grow out of whereas Black boys and Black girls, who are just as much children are seen as criminals to be feared for the same or similar behavior. Black boys are perceived to be bigger than their actual physical stature and years older than their chronological age and therefore more responsible for their actions than their White peers.
Most of us have probably done stupid things as teenagers and if we are White we might get reined in by our parents, but if we are Black it could mean being arrested, sent to prison as an adult and the end of a promising future. And, being innocent of the accused crime matters less than race where guilt is assumed if the child is Black.
There is a lot packed into Rage of Innocence and it should help all of us look at our own biases no matter what our race or culture.
This might be the end of this review if I hadn’t seen the New York Times banner on my phone “Tucker Carlson has built what might be the most racist show in the history of cable news – and by some measures, the most successful.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party.html
Carlson has embraced Viktor Orban. In fact, he took his show to Hungary for a week. The January 6, 2021 attempted coup is not over, we are in the middle of it with a media host egging it on in his nightly drumbeat warning his viewers, “they inhabit a civilization under siege – by violent Black Lives Matter protesters, diseased immigrants from south of the border stealing their jobs and refugees importing alien cultures. Carlson elevates his viewers as victims of big tech, cultural elites and rising power of Black and brown citizens.
Ignoring or dismissing Carlson’s clarion call is at our own peril. Ben Rhodes writes in his 2021 book After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made asking a Hungarian how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years.
Here are the steps:
1.Win elections through right-wing populism that taps into people’s outrage over the corruption and inequities wrought by unbridled globalization.
2.Enrich corrupt oligarchs who in turn fund your politics.
3.Create a vast partisan propaganda machine.
4.Redraw parliamentary districts to entrench your party in power.
5.Pack the courts with right-wing judges and erode the independence of the rule of law.
6.Keep big business on your side with low taxes and favorable treatment.
7.Demonize your political opponents through social media disinformation.
8.Attack civil society as a tool of George Soros.
9.Cast yourself as the legitimate defender of national security.
10.Wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
11.Offer a sense of belonging for the disaffected masses.
12.Relentlessly attack the Other: immigrants, Muslims, liberal elites.
The American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will meet in Budapest, Hungary May 18, 2022 with Viktor Orban the far-right Prime Minister who was just reelected as a guest speaker.
If this is not enough to set you an edge and into action then listen to the NYT Daily for May 1, 2022 https://tinyurl.com/2nnystcy
There is so much going on it is hard to know where to start and what should percolate through for mention.
The City of Berkeley has turned on the new website. The pictures and font are clean. It is great if you want a parking permit, but if you are looking for a city commission or council committee it is a bit more complicated. If you are planning on joining a meeting do NOT wait until the last minute.
If you use google to find a city webpage as I often do, expect to land in the dreaded “404: Page Not Found WE’RE SORRY, BUT THIS PAGE EITHER HAS BEEN MOVED, DELETED, OR DOES NOT EXIST.”
Don’t give up!
You need to look around the screen. If you landed on a page that hasn’t been “disappeared” there will be possible options. “Your Government” will get you to Boards and Commissions and “City Council” to regular and special meetings. Then you need to keep scanning the Council page to find Council Committees. It is going to be a rough few days while we get used to the new arrangements. If you are on a “disappeared” webpage go to https://berkeleyca.gov/ or cityofberkeley.info to start your search over.
The Budget Committee meetings on April 27, 28, and 29 were video recorded. This is new and hopefully will continue. Not all is perfect, some listings are not up to date, for example the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission comes with “there are no results matching your selection” and some things are just missing like all the reports and documents from the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force (RIPST) webpage. I happened to still have the RIPST open in my browser and copied the list of attachments though the links no longer function and the documents have disappeared into the ether.
Hopefully missing information will be discovered and reconnected. Possibly, I haven’t found the path to its location, but I worry the conversion to the new website cleanses documents from view into records online searches, public records requests or worse.
Outside consultants contracted by Berkeley like https://smartspace.goberkeley.info/ who are planning the pay for parking pilots in residential neighborhoods are still not connected to the City website. You have to know what/who to look for. Smartspace conducted two meetings this last week, but between Eventbrite and so much going on, I couldn’t attend
On to what happened last week.
The only statement of interest from the Monday Agenda Committee was from the Mayor who said he would present his response to Reimagining Public Safety on May 5th. There is no posted special meeting announcement and it is hard to tell if the meeting will actually happen on the stated date with short public notice or if the Mayor will “reschedule” to another time. Short notice seems to be the new habit when there is likely to be a heavy dose of negative comment.
The Zero Waste Commission did have a lengthy discussion that too much of what is put into the recycling bin is not recyclable. The list of unrecyclable plastics was not published and must be requested from the commission secretary. A plan for how to inform the City Council and the public of the problem plastics did not materialize. Until then, we are stuck in wishcycling. The Earthweek: a diary of the planet had a clip that chemical engineers in Texas have developed a new enzyme that will breakdown plastics. It sounds hopeful, but then we don’t have any details or even know if what is left behind is toxic.
At City Council the Surveillance Report was postponed again and joins the Hopkins redesign for May 10th. Councilmember Taplin submitted a supplemental to advance studying the feasibility of a Crisis Stabilization Center and interim plan which was accepted and passed. The surprise of the evening was the Council remanded the 1643 – 1647 California Street project back to ZAB (Zoning adjustment Board). The neighbors were correct, staff did not correctly interpret the Housing Accountability Act something Steven Buckley Planning Department Manager tried to pass off in his comment as a “difference of opinion.”
The City Department Budget presentations kicked off at noon on Wednesday. It was a long three days. Most notable is the volume of vacancies in departments across the City often reported as high as 19% or greater. Despite the reimagining process of planning to relieve the Police Department (BPD) of non-police duties and turning over mental health crisis intervention to mental health professionals, the BPD requested an increase to a whopping 189 sworn officers from somewhere of current staffing in the 150s to 160s. Maybe the rest of us need to read Adam Johnson’s April 3, 2022 editorial in the Chronicle on refunding police. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Refunding-police-isn-t-working-in-17051410.php.
One has to wonder just exactly what is going on with staffing the city. There was the “great resignation” but glaring vacancies preceded the pandemic. The Council is having yet another closed-door meeting with “labor negotiators” and public comment at Council meetings has outright declared that treatment of employees, not implementing contract agreements on pay in a timely manner is impacting the reputation of the City as an employer.
The lengthy discussion on financing the Berkeley Marina brought some very interesting discussion. If you wish to do a little research on the current Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP), development meetings of turning the Marina into an adventure and event enterprise which demolishes habitat, native plants and fragile ecosystems, that webpage with meeting history and plans has also disappeared with the new website.
As it turns out there is no legal requirement that the Marina / Waterfront must be self-supporting, an enterprise fund. The budget process and concocted crisis serves to forward a vision that turning the Marina into an entertainment center will fix the budget problem and bring overflowing oodles of money into the City coffers. The Mayor, Council and Parks and Waterfront Department are pushing hard for that vision and the consultants and developers are enthusiastic supporters with their hands out. Of course, the fact that the events held at the Marina are money losers instead of a revenue stream is conveniently ignored (though events do fatten the police overtime pocket pay).
Councilmember Harrison spoke to the Marina as a place for nature.
There is a divide between those who require endless entertainment to fill their voids and those who wish to maintain a place to escape from endless overload and unwind surrounded by nature, sea breezes and the magnificent views of the bay to rejuvenate their soul.
The Thursday meeting marathon ended with ZAB at 12:05 am. 1151 Grizzly Peak was continued after a lengthy discussion. 2600 Tenth Street with conversion of the media tenant spaces to R&D was moved to May. And, the rest of the meeting was filled with the 6-story, 66-unit mixed-use project at 1201 San Pablo. Sitting in a little house next door or finding your solar completely in shadow is enough to make all but the most entrenched YIMBYs unhappy.
It was little comfort that project owner and David Trachtenberg the architect responded to suggestions from the Design Review Committee and pulled back the project on the east side by 5 feet for more separation, created a stepdown to three floors and will plant a row of trees to add privacy.
We have a tendency not to pay attention to local and state government and in this case until it is literally in our backyard. The push for mid-size and larger developments along transportation and commercial corridors has been in the making for years with legislation to match.
It is probably also lost on these neighbors that Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner voted for this legislation and worse SB 9 and SB 10 and our own city council majority are supporters. Neighborhoods need to look hard when they check their ballots and it would be more beneficial if more neighborhoods engaged before the levers are pulled.
If you tune in to Council meetings you will hear Thomas Lord speak to the City’s appalling lack of response to climate. He is correct and, I would add California has a water problem and the question of carrying capacity for growth is never in the picture. Berkeley Council side-stepped the opportunity to establish objective standards to protect solar.
Each week I include in my Diary the book I just finished reading. This week it was The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth by Kristin Henning, 2021.
I’ve read a long list of books on race and lingering systemic racism. I panned Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence by Michael W. Quinn in prior reviews. It is impossible to take seriously a former Minneapolis Police Officer (23.5 years on the force) extolling the grand promise of EPIC (Ethical Policing is Courageous) as the answer to ending racist policing. Especially when EPIC was supposedly taught in Minneapolis prior to the murder of George Floyd. EPIC is also included as an answer by the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform in their report on Reimagining Public Safety.
Kristin Henning is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a juvenile defense attorney. Rage of Innocence focuses on youth, teenagers, in a way that is most often lost in discussion. Teenagers are impulsive, hang out with friends, make noise, have their own style of attire and music, but in this present culture sagging pants can mean being suspended from school and arrested for Black teens unlike grandparents of their White peers who survived without being jailed for bellbottoms and tie dye shirts. The book chronicles the intersection of youth, police, courts, jails, prisons and the impact of incarceration on families. The book also instructs parents in recognizing the signs of how they and their children may be bullied, manipulated and railroaded into false confessions.
This book focuses on the present in how Black youth are surveilled, policed, criminalized, arrested, detained, imprisoned or even killed for teenage behavior that is dismissed as boys will be boys when it is a White boy. White boys and girls are assumed innocent or just acting out in a way that they will grow out of whereas Black boys and Black girls, who are just as much children are seen as criminals to be feared for the same or similar behavior. Black boys are perceived to be bigger than their actual physical stature and years older than their chronological age and therefore more responsible for their actions than their White peers.
Most of us have probably done stupid things as teenagers and if we are White we might get reined in by our parents, but if we are Black it could mean being arrested, sent to prison as an adult and the end of a promising future. And, being innocent of the accused crime matters less than race where guilt is assumed if the child is Black.
There is a lot packed into Rage of Innocence and it should help all of us look at our own biases no matter what our race or culture.
This might be the end of this review if I hadn’t seen the New York Times banner on my phone “Tucker Carlson has built what might be the most racist show in the history of cable news – and by some measures, the most successful.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-republican-party.html
Carlson has embraced Viktor Orban. In fact, he took his show to Hungary for a week. The January 6, 2021 attempted coup is not over, we are in the middle of it with a media host egging it on in his nightly drumbeat warning his viewers, “they inhabit a civilization under siege – by violent Black Lives Matter protesters, diseased immigrants from south of the border stealing their jobs and refugees importing alien cultures. Carlson elevates his viewers as victims of big tech, cultural elites and rising power of Black and brown citizens.
Ignoring or dismissing Carlson’s clarion call is at our own peril. Ben Rhodes writes in his 2021 book After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made asking a Hungarian how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years.
Here are the steps:
1.Win elections through right-wing populism that taps into people’s outrage over the corruption and inequities wrought by unbridled globalization.
2.Enrich corrupt oligarchs who in turn fund your politics.
3.Create a vast partisan propaganda machine.
4.Redraw parliamentary districts to entrench your party in power.
5.Pack the courts with right-wing judges and erode the independence of the rule of law.
6.Keep big business on your side with low taxes and favorable treatment.
7.Demonize your political opponents through social media disinformation.
8.Attack civil society as a tool of George Soros.
9.Cast yourself as the legitimate defender of national security.
10.Wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
11.Offer a sense of belonging for the disaffected masses.
12.Relentlessly attack the Other: immigrants, Muslims, liberal elites.
The American Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will meet in Budapest, Hungary May 18, 2022 with Viktor Orban the far-right Prime Minister who was just reelected as a guest speaker.
If this is not enough to set you an edge and into action then listen to the NYT Daily for May 1, 2022 https://tinyurl.com/2nnystcy
April 24, 2022
When I picked up my iPhone this morning checking the news banners, NPR caught my attention with birds in North America are in trouble. The article reminds us if birds are in decline, the ecosystems are in decline and our own health is tied to this shared environment. NPR lists eight actions 1) reduce habitat loss and degradation, grow native plants (calscape.org will help you choose), 2) reduce pesticide use (better yet eliminate pesticides, birds need those bugs for food and buy plants that are not pretreated with neonicotinoids), 3) purchase bird friendly products (like bird friendly coffee), 4) advocate for bird-friendly environmental policies and expect the same from elected and appointed officials, 5) reduce bird deaths, keep your cat indoors, 6) make windows more visible to birds (install bird safe glass, or add window film with dots or lines https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/products-database/, use exterior screens), 7) turn off lights you are not using especially at night, 8) if you have a bird feeder clean it regularly to prevent spread of disease.
Bill Shrader part of the Austin Group introduced 2440 Shattuck, The Lair, to the Design Review Committee and proudly showed off the planned green wall of plants on the exterior and interior at the lobby entry. Erin Diehm responded the interior plants will attract birds who will crash into the wall of glass and asked if bird safe glass will be used. Shrader answered bird safe glass is new and he will check into it. He didn’t want dead birds by the entrance to his building.
Bird safe glass is not new, San Francisco has had an ordinance in place for over a decade. It is just Berkeley that can’t get it together and has left the Bird Safe Ordinance languishing at the Planning Commission.
When Shrader was asked about the statement to seek exception to the prohibition of natural gas, all-electric building ordinance, he said the Office of Economic Development was advising this action. I have long had questions about the integrity of voices within the Office of Economic Development and as well as the Planning Department. This only adds more confirmation to what I have already observed.
As for number two in the list to save birds reduce pesticides, a friend who will remain unnamed confessed to me that when she saw black spots on the milkweed she planted to save Monarch butterflies she sprayed the plants with bug killer, killing the hatching baby monarch caterpillars. Sometime later she expressed she was going to use herbicide to kill the plants growing between the cracks in the driveway. I asked how is it that if she cared so much about her little two year old grandnephew how could she use these toxic chemicals if she wanted to leave a world in which that precious toddler could survive?
We need to reorient how we view the world and how our actions foster health or speed extinction.
Tuesday was a heavy council day starting with a morning budget meeting in which the Budget Manager didn’t include the $1.5 million for the Building Electrification and Just Transition Program to the AAO budget sheet. A surprise, but no surprise the Budget Manager is new and responding to climate and the environment is always at the bottom if it is mentioned at all on anything trickling down from the City Manager’s office.
One hundred fifty attended the evening Council worksession which lasted until 11:45 pm on Fire Department Standards and Community Risk Assessment Study and the Ashby and North Berkeley Housing Projects.
The Fire Department study is presented in easy to view charts and graphs and closes with recommendations which can be viewed in a couple of minutes. Recommendations: 911 dispatch times must shorten to best practices, the city needs six full-time ambulances, the city needs to implement a non-fire unit alternative response team for non-acute, non-911 medical calls and mental health patients need their own appropriate clinical response. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2022/04_Apr/City_Council__04-19-2022_-_Special_(WS)_Meeting_Agenda.aspx.
The mayor stated his introduction to the BART housing projects with the statement that the Planning Commission voted (5 to 4) for the 12-story and above project design against staff recommendations and the Community Advisory Group. Fifty-seven people commented and there is a very very long list of letters with the usual divide between mid-size 7-story supporters and the tall 12-story and more advocates. There were lots of questions from councilmembers which were left unanswered about the state density bonus, including how funding for affordable housing and affordable unit credits may end up benefitting for-profit developers while reducing their share of required affordable units. There was also the question of density bonuses and height. There will be a follow-up meeting on May 31 with a council vote.
The City Manager’s response to the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform recommendations did come to pass on Thursday evening. The public meeting announcement and documents didn’t go up until 5 pm on Tuesday, two days before the special council meeting, not even making the 72-hour posting for non-emergency meetings. The document dump of over 600 pages with sufficient repetition, historical notices, council actions, previous studies and no analysis puts off even the most robust reader.
As far as “reimagine” there was little, but the evening and documents were filled with buzz words. The response included add more police, hire more consultants with some to analyze beats and staffing, move the school crossing guards into BerkDOT a new Berkeley Department of Transportation with a new added deputy director and a repetition of the standing request to have a 24/7 mobile crisis unit.
No action was taken and the Mayor didn’t sound happy with the direction saying he would be bringing back a response.
The City Manager is asking for $12,452,169 additional funding and even that carries the appearance of fuzzy accounting. Voting for fattening the police budget comes with smiling pictures of uniformed officers and whoever is running for election plus all those Berkeley Police Association (police union) mailers arriving in our mailboxes come election time. Or, the be afraid of crime mailers for anyone who dares to question all that financing.
One lingering question for me is why are school crossing guards even in the police department in the first place instead of part of the school district, B.U.S.D.
What is proven to reduce crime is investing in community services. While a mobile crisis team is desperately needed, so too is a safe place to take people. Berkeley could have a crisis stabilization program with a center if actual reimagining was on the table. There are functioning crisis stabilization centers that Berkeley can use as a model including the Deschutes Stabilization Center in Bend, Oregon.
The budget meetings arrive with intensity this coming week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That will tell us a lot more of what direction Berkeley is headed.
When I moved to Berkeley, the selection of theaters for viewing independent and foreign film felt endless. Soon all that will be left is the theater at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. There is the Regal United Artists, of course, but that seems more like a collection of shows for teenage boys.
There is something very special about watching film on the big screen in a theater a handheld device or even a 65” TV if you have one (mine is 22”) can’t replace. Time has moved on and the pandemic speeded up the process. The California on Kittredge is closed. The Shattuck Cinemas will be torn down for an 8-story student housing project at 2065 Kittredge. It was the last project reviewed Thursday evening by the Design Review Committee.
Even the making of film is threatened. This coming week the Zoning Adjustment Board will consider and likely approve changing four existing media tenant spaces to research and development. It looks like Chris Barlow Wareham Development owner of 2600 Tenth Street is finally getting his way. From what I’ve read and heard raising rents and the City’s heavy hand over the years is setting the stage for yet another cultural and talent loss.
There is more money to be made in research and development so we can expect the artisans to be pushed out of West Berkeley with the developers and City leaders cheering the change while they fill the air with their hollow rhetoric of how much they care.
Monday was tax day. Rutger Bregman was someone I had never heard of until I picked up the book Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter Goodman. Bregman was invited to speak at Davos in January 2019 and never invited back and this is why, he said,
“This is my first time at Davos and I find it quite a bewildering experience to be honest. I mean 1500 private jets have flown in here to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about how we’re wrecking the planet. I hear people talking the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency, but then almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance right? And, of the rich just not paying their fair share. It feels as if I’m at a fire fighters conference and no one is allowed to speak about water. This is not rocket science. We can talk for a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes…but come on, we’ve got to be talking about taxes. That’s it, taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion…10 years ago, the World Economic Forum asked the question what must industry do to prevent a broad social backlash? The answer is very simple, Just stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes…just two days ago there was a billionaire in here, Michael Dell. And he asked a question like, name me one country where a top marginal tax rate of 70% has actually worked? And, you know, I’m a historian, the United States, that’s where it has actually worked, in the 1950s during Republican President Eisenhower, the war veteran. The top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was 91% for people like Michael Dell…the top estate tax for people like Michael Dell was more than 70%”
Goodman writes, Davos man has looted the treasury leaving other strategies to secure votes such as demonizing immigrants. We can add creating fear with critical race theory, book censorship, demonizing supporters of the LBGTQ community and designating parents of transgender youth as child abusers. There are the pedophile conspiracies too.
If you pick up Davos Man you will see familiar names like Marc Benioff – Salesforce, Jeff Bezos – Amazon, Stephen Schwarzman – Blackstone, Larry Fink – BlackRock, Jamie Dimon – JPChase. Goodman reminds us Americans have stared down Robber Barons before. It is time to do it again. We wouldn’t be struggling over affordable housing if BlackStone and BlackRock weren’t gobbling up housing and turning it into rentals and billionaires weren’t escaping paying their fair share of taxes.
There is a waitlist for Davos Man at the San Francisco and Contra Costa libraries.
When I picked up my iPhone this morning checking the news banners, NPR caught my attention with birds in North America are in trouble. The article reminds us if birds are in decline, the ecosystems are in decline and our own health is tied to this shared environment. NPR lists eight actions 1) reduce habitat loss and degradation, grow native plants (calscape.org will help you choose), 2) reduce pesticide use (better yet eliminate pesticides, birds need those bugs for food and buy plants that are not pretreated with neonicotinoids), 3) purchase bird friendly products (like bird friendly coffee), 4) advocate for bird-friendly environmental policies and expect the same from elected and appointed officials, 5) reduce bird deaths, keep your cat indoors, 6) make windows more visible to birds (install bird safe glass, or add window film with dots or lines https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/products-database/, use exterior screens), 7) turn off lights you are not using especially at night, 8) if you have a bird feeder clean it regularly to prevent spread of disease.
Bill Shrader part of the Austin Group introduced 2440 Shattuck, The Lair, to the Design Review Committee and proudly showed off the planned green wall of plants on the exterior and interior at the lobby entry. Erin Diehm responded the interior plants will attract birds who will crash into the wall of glass and asked if bird safe glass will be used. Shrader answered bird safe glass is new and he will check into it. He didn’t want dead birds by the entrance to his building.
Bird safe glass is not new, San Francisco has had an ordinance in place for over a decade. It is just Berkeley that can’t get it together and has left the Bird Safe Ordinance languishing at the Planning Commission.
When Shrader was asked about the statement to seek exception to the prohibition of natural gas, all-electric building ordinance, he said the Office of Economic Development was advising this action. I have long had questions about the integrity of voices within the Office of Economic Development and as well as the Planning Department. This only adds more confirmation to what I have already observed.
As for number two in the list to save birds reduce pesticides, a friend who will remain unnamed confessed to me that when she saw black spots on the milkweed she planted to save Monarch butterflies she sprayed the plants with bug killer, killing the hatching baby monarch caterpillars. Sometime later she expressed she was going to use herbicide to kill the plants growing between the cracks in the driveway. I asked how is it that if she cared so much about her little two year old grandnephew how could she use these toxic chemicals if she wanted to leave a world in which that precious toddler could survive?
We need to reorient how we view the world and how our actions foster health or speed extinction.
Tuesday was a heavy council day starting with a morning budget meeting in which the Budget Manager didn’t include the $1.5 million for the Building Electrification and Just Transition Program to the AAO budget sheet. A surprise, but no surprise the Budget Manager is new and responding to climate and the environment is always at the bottom if it is mentioned at all on anything trickling down from the City Manager’s office.
One hundred fifty attended the evening Council worksession which lasted until 11:45 pm on Fire Department Standards and Community Risk Assessment Study and the Ashby and North Berkeley Housing Projects.
The Fire Department study is presented in easy to view charts and graphs and closes with recommendations which can be viewed in a couple of minutes. Recommendations: 911 dispatch times must shorten to best practices, the city needs six full-time ambulances, the city needs to implement a non-fire unit alternative response team for non-acute, non-911 medical calls and mental health patients need their own appropriate clinical response. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2022/04_Apr/City_Council__04-19-2022_-_Special_(WS)_Meeting_Agenda.aspx.
The mayor stated his introduction to the BART housing projects with the statement that the Planning Commission voted (5 to 4) for the 12-story and above project design against staff recommendations and the Community Advisory Group. Fifty-seven people commented and there is a very very long list of letters with the usual divide between mid-size 7-story supporters and the tall 12-story and more advocates. There were lots of questions from councilmembers which were left unanswered about the state density bonus, including how funding for affordable housing and affordable unit credits may end up benefitting for-profit developers while reducing their share of required affordable units. There was also the question of density bonuses and height. There will be a follow-up meeting on May 31 with a council vote.
The City Manager’s response to the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform recommendations did come to pass on Thursday evening. The public meeting announcement and documents didn’t go up until 5 pm on Tuesday, two days before the special council meeting, not even making the 72-hour posting for non-emergency meetings. The document dump of over 600 pages with sufficient repetition, historical notices, council actions, previous studies and no analysis puts off even the most robust reader.
As far as “reimagine” there was little, but the evening and documents were filled with buzz words. The response included add more police, hire more consultants with some to analyze beats and staffing, move the school crossing guards into BerkDOT a new Berkeley Department of Transportation with a new added deputy director and a repetition of the standing request to have a 24/7 mobile crisis unit.
No action was taken and the Mayor didn’t sound happy with the direction saying he would be bringing back a response.
The City Manager is asking for $12,452,169 additional funding and even that carries the appearance of fuzzy accounting. Voting for fattening the police budget comes with smiling pictures of uniformed officers and whoever is running for election plus all those Berkeley Police Association (police union) mailers arriving in our mailboxes come election time. Or, the be afraid of crime mailers for anyone who dares to question all that financing.
One lingering question for me is why are school crossing guards even in the police department in the first place instead of part of the school district, B.U.S.D.
What is proven to reduce crime is investing in community services. While a mobile crisis team is desperately needed, so too is a safe place to take people. Berkeley could have a crisis stabilization program with a center if actual reimagining was on the table. There are functioning crisis stabilization centers that Berkeley can use as a model including the Deschutes Stabilization Center in Bend, Oregon.
The budget meetings arrive with intensity this coming week on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That will tell us a lot more of what direction Berkeley is headed.
When I moved to Berkeley, the selection of theaters for viewing independent and foreign film felt endless. Soon all that will be left is the theater at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. There is the Regal United Artists, of course, but that seems more like a collection of shows for teenage boys.
There is something very special about watching film on the big screen in a theater a handheld device or even a 65” TV if you have one (mine is 22”) can’t replace. Time has moved on and the pandemic speeded up the process. The California on Kittredge is closed. The Shattuck Cinemas will be torn down for an 8-story student housing project at 2065 Kittredge. It was the last project reviewed Thursday evening by the Design Review Committee.
Even the making of film is threatened. This coming week the Zoning Adjustment Board will consider and likely approve changing four existing media tenant spaces to research and development. It looks like Chris Barlow Wareham Development owner of 2600 Tenth Street is finally getting his way. From what I’ve read and heard raising rents and the City’s heavy hand over the years is setting the stage for yet another cultural and talent loss.
There is more money to be made in research and development so we can expect the artisans to be pushed out of West Berkeley with the developers and City leaders cheering the change while they fill the air with their hollow rhetoric of how much they care.
Monday was tax day. Rutger Bregman was someone I had never heard of until I picked up the book Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World by Peter Goodman. Bregman was invited to speak at Davos in January 2019 and never invited back and this is why, he said,
“This is my first time at Davos and I find it quite a bewildering experience to be honest. I mean 1500 private jets have flown in here to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about how we’re wrecking the planet. I hear people talking the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency, but then almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance right? And, of the rich just not paying their fair share. It feels as if I’m at a fire fighters conference and no one is allowed to speak about water. This is not rocket science. We can talk for a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes…but come on, we’ve got to be talking about taxes. That’s it, taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion…10 years ago, the World Economic Forum asked the question what must industry do to prevent a broad social backlash? The answer is very simple, Just stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes…just two days ago there was a billionaire in here, Michael Dell. And he asked a question like, name me one country where a top marginal tax rate of 70% has actually worked? And, you know, I’m a historian, the United States, that’s where it has actually worked, in the 1950s during Republican President Eisenhower, the war veteran. The top marginal tax rate in the U.S. was 91% for people like Michael Dell…the top estate tax for people like Michael Dell was more than 70%”
Goodman writes, Davos man has looted the treasury leaving other strategies to secure votes such as demonizing immigrants. We can add creating fear with critical race theory, book censorship, demonizing supporters of the LBGTQ community and designating parents of transgender youth as child abusers. There are the pedophile conspiracies too.
If you pick up Davos Man you will see familiar names like Marc Benioff – Salesforce, Jeff Bezos – Amazon, Stephen Schwarzman – Blackstone, Larry Fink – BlackRock, Jamie Dimon – JPChase. Goodman reminds us Americans have stared down Robber Barons before. It is time to do it again. We wouldn’t be struggling over affordable housing if BlackStone and BlackRock weren’t gobbling up housing and turning it into rentals and billionaires weren’t escaping paying their fair share of taxes.
There is a waitlist for Davos Man at the San Francisco and Contra Costa libraries.
April 17, 2022
City meetings were light this week and two were cancelled and rescheduled. The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission will be April 27 and the Council Worksession of the City Manager’s response to Reimagining Public Safety is supposed to happen April 21 though it is not posted.
April 14th the evening we were supposed to hear the response to the presentations on reimagining public safety, Chris Hayes started off his evening show with the questions, “What is policing for? What do we want policing to do? What does safety in this country look like?”
Those questions are the framing that was missing from a year of community meetings with the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the consultants the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) though they picked at them in pieces. The consultants gave the City a final report filled with acronyms, EPIC (Ethical Policing is Courageous), ABLE (Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement), HALO (Highly Accountable Learning Organization) to “fix” policing in Berkeley under the banner of “Reduce, Improve, Reinvest.”
It always felt at the community meetings that the consultants never broke through the defensive protective shell around the police department and meeting agendas were controlled to produce predetermined results. Whether that was the limit of what the consultants had to offer or whether micromanagement flowing from the City Manager’s office stalled a deep dive is unknown to members of the public like me, however, I sense it is the later.
When the yearlong process was rolling to the end, the Reimaging Public Safety Task Force was told in absolute direct terms in full view of the public, they were to format their report as a response to the consultants (not an independent assessment). The task force did their real work in their subcommittee meetings and that is what we saw in their blistering response to the NICJR Report at the March 10th special council meeting. The task force final 149 page report and four and a half hour meeting gives this warning in the letter to the community, “…if this process focuses too narrowly on internal police policies and protocols… [and] neglects to address the multi-dimensional inequity that creates patterns of crime, violence, poverty and social disconnection – then it will fail.” Revised material (Supp 2)
As we await the City Manager’s response to Reimagining Public Safety, policing issues before council Tuesday evening began with Councilmember Taplin’s Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model and other applicable community engagement models. Several residents from District 2 spoke in support with anxious voices of gunfire in their neighborhood and their fear for themselves and their children. Others expressed opposition with concern that this policing model will be a return to saturation policing a throwback to the long ugly history of the war on drugs and looking at every person of color as a criminal. Others said in support the Berkeley Police were doing a fine job. The flex team passed on consent.
Council moved on to the City Auditor’s report on the use of overtime in the Berkeley Police Department and the lack of contracts with outside entities. An example of both overtime and lack of contracts is staffing uniformed officers at the Fourth Street Apple store. There is no contract with Apple, not terms, not conditions, not even a set billing rate. According to Police Chief Louis who extolled the benefit of providing security for Apple, the Corporate Headquarters call in a request. And according to the audit, officers choose and signup for overtime from postings hanging on a cork board. A process which only gains importance as there is no apparent control over the number of overtime shifts for any one officer or which overtime opportunities get picked off first. Parking a police vehicle in front of Apple and standing nearby watching shoppers certainly gives the appearance of cushy overtime versus being in the bicycle patrol or patrolling a neighborhood.
There were lots of questions and comments from councilmembers regarding the auditor’s report. Harrison as did others commented on the toll on officers of working endless overtime shifts. Kesarwani stated that all work for outside entities like Apple should cease immediately until there were contracts in place and then backed off that reasonable request. Harrison asked about bike patrols with the looming question are uniformed Berkeley Police acting as a security officers for Apple instead of being in the bike patrol for the downtown? The Mayor asked about the timing to have contracts in place and the content of the contracts coming before council. The City Manager said that the content, the conditions of contracts was completely within her purview not council.
The current billing for security services according to Chief Louis is for the officer assigned at that officer’s overtime pay rate. It does not include overhead, equipment, vehicle costs or the cost of replacement for other assignments. When payment is made by outside entities it is credited to the City general fund and not tied to the police overtime account. This maneuver makes for slushy accounting and at the same time sets up the Police Department to demand a bigger budget. And, because the Police Chief neglects to include the total cost of staffing outside entities, the City is not properly reimbursed.
The council voted to accept the auditor’s report and requested for the City Manager to report back by September 29, 2022 on the status of recommendations and every six months thereafter and set a goal of September for the City Attorney, City Manager and Police Department to have contracts in place. Goals have a habit of sliding as do requests for reports and the basic question of “ What do we want Berkeley Police to do?“ remains unanswered.
In Chris Hayes’ segment on policing, Hayes showed a chart of declining success in solving cases of the crime of murder as now being down to 54 percent nationwide.
Over the years in all the crime reports from the Berkeley Police Chief to City Council, I never heard the success rate for solving those crimes. And, for all the bluster around the importance of surveillance to deter and solve crime that also isn’t included; something we might want to ask on April 26th when the surveillance report is presented to council.
The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee (FITES) addressed one topic Wednesday afternoon regulating plastic bags. There was good attendance with representatives from the Bowl and Monterey Market, enthusiastic UCB students supporting Beyond Plastics, but Martin Bourque from the Ecology Center had the most telling comment. He said they eliminated plastic bags at the Farmers’ Markets years ago. When Councilmember Harrison asked about the process, Bourque said they provided notices well in advance, but found it wasn’t until implementation that people pay attention.
At the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission when Nancy Radar saw she didn’t have the votes, she pulled her proposal to use Measure FF funds for vegetation management and the removal of Eucalyptus trees on private property. Commissioner Paul Degenkolb had expressed his feeling the property owner is responsible and said, “Every time something comes up as a property owner I have to pay.” He went on to say Monterey Pines are native trees and he saw the Monterey Pine go up like a torch and the Eucalyptus next to it didn’t burn. Commissioner Weldon Bradstreet was concerned that using Measure FF funds on private property would “poison the well for future city funding.”
One phrase you may have heard me say over and over is people age at different rates. Some people are old at 50 and others young at 90. There are so many factors that go into aging, genetics, lifestyle, environment, exercise and what we put into our bodies. Bob Williams made the front page of the Chronicle sports section, still golfing and mentally sharp at age 100. Then there is yet another report that Dianne Feinstein who turns 89 in June as no longer mentally fit to serve.
Some of you reading this like me have seen someone we know deteriorating mentally. I remember joining friends who told me their mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s. For the first minutes of greetings and exchanges she was able to pull off a perfectly normal, engaging, coherent interaction, but as the afternoon wore on the decline was obvious. Even people who are in deep mental decline will have a brief moment when the synapses connect and glimmers of their former selves shines through.
Feinstein’s response to the latest article was she is fine with no plans to step down. As mental decline progresses the ability of the person to recognize it also slips away. This is difficult. Her term doesn’t end until January 2025 and as the saying goes in a 50/50 senate we need all hands on deck fully capable of doing the job.
Last Saturday afternoon as my walk partner and I were crossing Center Street the group marching toward us was chanting, “Abortion on demand without apology.” It is the same chant I heard in 2013 from another group that was traveling around the country where access to abortion was threatened. 2013 was the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade and the year I had t-shirts printed for volunteers of the national juried art exhibition Choice with “Make 2013 the last year women lose more rights than we gain.” It was a burst of optimism and call to action that never happened. It was a time when young women couldn’t imagine losing access to a right they always had and shamed for using it. In these nine years later, women are being trampled with a wave of anti-abortion laws.
When I turn on the television and see women leading in so many fields that were out of reach when I was a child, it brings a sense of pride and joy. There was no access to reliable birth control when I was young and it will be again if the most extreme have their way. Thirty-nine is the average number of child-bearing years between onset of menstruation and menopause. As a teenager I saw friends’ dreams crushed by pregnancy, lives almost lost with illegal abortions and my own life hanging on edge worrying that each late period would be an unwanted pregnancy.
With Roe v Wade hanging by a thread and likely to die this June, I picked up the audiobook The Family Roe: An American Story by Joshua Prager. Prager said in the author’s note that he spent eleven years researching and writing the book he wanted to write.
The Family Roe tells the story of Roe v. Wade through the lives of Norma McCorvey, her three daughters, McCorvey’s partners, family, friends, the attorneys, and the prolife activists who exploited Norma to bolster their cause and condemned her life as a Lesbian. There is good reason why The Family Roe is listed as the 2021 finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, one of NPR's Best Books of 2021, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021, one of TIME's 100.
My walk partner’s newly married nephew sent her a text a few weeks ago, he had his vasectomy. Not everyone wants or needs to be a parent. Losing access to abortion has real consequences for women. Women who live in states / areas where birth control and abortion are easily accessible are in better health, have higher earnings and face less discrimination.
No matter what happens in June it is not the end. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan published by the University of Chicago Press in 1995 is in my reading stack. When I finish it, I have to track down the woman who loaned it to me.
City meetings were light this week and two were cancelled and rescheduled. The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission will be April 27 and the Council Worksession of the City Manager’s response to Reimagining Public Safety is supposed to happen April 21 though it is not posted.
April 14th the evening we were supposed to hear the response to the presentations on reimagining public safety, Chris Hayes started off his evening show with the questions, “What is policing for? What do we want policing to do? What does safety in this country look like?”
Those questions are the framing that was missing from a year of community meetings with the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the consultants the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) though they picked at them in pieces. The consultants gave the City a final report filled with acronyms, EPIC (Ethical Policing is Courageous), ABLE (Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement), HALO (Highly Accountable Learning Organization) to “fix” policing in Berkeley under the banner of “Reduce, Improve, Reinvest.”
It always felt at the community meetings that the consultants never broke through the defensive protective shell around the police department and meeting agendas were controlled to produce predetermined results. Whether that was the limit of what the consultants had to offer or whether micromanagement flowing from the City Manager’s office stalled a deep dive is unknown to members of the public like me, however, I sense it is the later.
When the yearlong process was rolling to the end, the Reimaging Public Safety Task Force was told in absolute direct terms in full view of the public, they were to format their report as a response to the consultants (not an independent assessment). The task force did their real work in their subcommittee meetings and that is what we saw in their blistering response to the NICJR Report at the March 10th special council meeting. The task force final 149 page report and four and a half hour meeting gives this warning in the letter to the community, “…if this process focuses too narrowly on internal police policies and protocols… [and] neglects to address the multi-dimensional inequity that creates patterns of crime, violence, poverty and social disconnection – then it will fail.” Revised material (Supp 2)
As we await the City Manager’s response to Reimagining Public Safety, policing issues before council Tuesday evening began with Councilmember Taplin’s Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model and other applicable community engagement models. Several residents from District 2 spoke in support with anxious voices of gunfire in their neighborhood and their fear for themselves and their children. Others expressed opposition with concern that this policing model will be a return to saturation policing a throwback to the long ugly history of the war on drugs and looking at every person of color as a criminal. Others said in support the Berkeley Police were doing a fine job. The flex team passed on consent.
Council moved on to the City Auditor’s report on the use of overtime in the Berkeley Police Department and the lack of contracts with outside entities. An example of both overtime and lack of contracts is staffing uniformed officers at the Fourth Street Apple store. There is no contract with Apple, not terms, not conditions, not even a set billing rate. According to Police Chief Louis who extolled the benefit of providing security for Apple, the Corporate Headquarters call in a request. And according to the audit, officers choose and signup for overtime from postings hanging on a cork board. A process which only gains importance as there is no apparent control over the number of overtime shifts for any one officer or which overtime opportunities get picked off first. Parking a police vehicle in front of Apple and standing nearby watching shoppers certainly gives the appearance of cushy overtime versus being in the bicycle patrol or patrolling a neighborhood.
There were lots of questions and comments from councilmembers regarding the auditor’s report. Harrison as did others commented on the toll on officers of working endless overtime shifts. Kesarwani stated that all work for outside entities like Apple should cease immediately until there were contracts in place and then backed off that reasonable request. Harrison asked about bike patrols with the looming question are uniformed Berkeley Police acting as a security officers for Apple instead of being in the bike patrol for the downtown? The Mayor asked about the timing to have contracts in place and the content of the contracts coming before council. The City Manager said that the content, the conditions of contracts was completely within her purview not council.
The current billing for security services according to Chief Louis is for the officer assigned at that officer’s overtime pay rate. It does not include overhead, equipment, vehicle costs or the cost of replacement for other assignments. When payment is made by outside entities it is credited to the City general fund and not tied to the police overtime account. This maneuver makes for slushy accounting and at the same time sets up the Police Department to demand a bigger budget. And, because the Police Chief neglects to include the total cost of staffing outside entities, the City is not properly reimbursed.
The council voted to accept the auditor’s report and requested for the City Manager to report back by September 29, 2022 on the status of recommendations and every six months thereafter and set a goal of September for the City Attorney, City Manager and Police Department to have contracts in place. Goals have a habit of sliding as do requests for reports and the basic question of “ What do we want Berkeley Police to do?“ remains unanswered.
In Chris Hayes’ segment on policing, Hayes showed a chart of declining success in solving cases of the crime of murder as now being down to 54 percent nationwide.
Over the years in all the crime reports from the Berkeley Police Chief to City Council, I never heard the success rate for solving those crimes. And, for all the bluster around the importance of surveillance to deter and solve crime that also isn’t included; something we might want to ask on April 26th when the surveillance report is presented to council.
The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee (FITES) addressed one topic Wednesday afternoon regulating plastic bags. There was good attendance with representatives from the Bowl and Monterey Market, enthusiastic UCB students supporting Beyond Plastics, but Martin Bourque from the Ecology Center had the most telling comment. He said they eliminated plastic bags at the Farmers’ Markets years ago. When Councilmember Harrison asked about the process, Bourque said they provided notices well in advance, but found it wasn’t until implementation that people pay attention.
At the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission when Nancy Radar saw she didn’t have the votes, she pulled her proposal to use Measure FF funds for vegetation management and the removal of Eucalyptus trees on private property. Commissioner Paul Degenkolb had expressed his feeling the property owner is responsible and said, “Every time something comes up as a property owner I have to pay.” He went on to say Monterey Pines are native trees and he saw the Monterey Pine go up like a torch and the Eucalyptus next to it didn’t burn. Commissioner Weldon Bradstreet was concerned that using Measure FF funds on private property would “poison the well for future city funding.”
One phrase you may have heard me say over and over is people age at different rates. Some people are old at 50 and others young at 90. There are so many factors that go into aging, genetics, lifestyle, environment, exercise and what we put into our bodies. Bob Williams made the front page of the Chronicle sports section, still golfing and mentally sharp at age 100. Then there is yet another report that Dianne Feinstein who turns 89 in June as no longer mentally fit to serve.
Some of you reading this like me have seen someone we know deteriorating mentally. I remember joining friends who told me their mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s. For the first minutes of greetings and exchanges she was able to pull off a perfectly normal, engaging, coherent interaction, but as the afternoon wore on the decline was obvious. Even people who are in deep mental decline will have a brief moment when the synapses connect and glimmers of their former selves shines through.
Feinstein’s response to the latest article was she is fine with no plans to step down. As mental decline progresses the ability of the person to recognize it also slips away. This is difficult. Her term doesn’t end until January 2025 and as the saying goes in a 50/50 senate we need all hands on deck fully capable of doing the job.
Last Saturday afternoon as my walk partner and I were crossing Center Street the group marching toward us was chanting, “Abortion on demand without apology.” It is the same chant I heard in 2013 from another group that was traveling around the country where access to abortion was threatened. 2013 was the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade and the year I had t-shirts printed for volunteers of the national juried art exhibition Choice with “Make 2013 the last year women lose more rights than we gain.” It was a burst of optimism and call to action that never happened. It was a time when young women couldn’t imagine losing access to a right they always had and shamed for using it. In these nine years later, women are being trampled with a wave of anti-abortion laws.
When I turn on the television and see women leading in so many fields that were out of reach when I was a child, it brings a sense of pride and joy. There was no access to reliable birth control when I was young and it will be again if the most extreme have their way. Thirty-nine is the average number of child-bearing years between onset of menstruation and menopause. As a teenager I saw friends’ dreams crushed by pregnancy, lives almost lost with illegal abortions and my own life hanging on edge worrying that each late period would be an unwanted pregnancy.
With Roe v Wade hanging by a thread and likely to die this June, I picked up the audiobook The Family Roe: An American Story by Joshua Prager. Prager said in the author’s note that he spent eleven years researching and writing the book he wanted to write.
The Family Roe tells the story of Roe v. Wade through the lives of Norma McCorvey, her three daughters, McCorvey’s partners, family, friends, the attorneys, and the prolife activists who exploited Norma to bolster their cause and condemned her life as a Lesbian. There is good reason why The Family Roe is listed as the 2021 finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, one of NPR's Best Books of 2021, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021, one of TIME's 100.
My walk partner’s newly married nephew sent her a text a few weeks ago, he had his vasectomy. Not everyone wants or needs to be a parent. Losing access to abortion has real consequences for women. Women who live in states / areas where birth control and abortion are easily accessible are in better health, have higher earnings and face less discrimination.
No matter what happens in June it is not the end. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan published by the University of Chicago Press in 1995 is in my reading stack. When I finish it, I have to track down the woman who loaned it to me.
April 10, 2022
Back on page A17 in the April 10, 2022 edition of the East Bay Times under the header of Economic Divide is “California’s shrinking population could result in big consequences”. Further down into the article is the quote from Public Policy Institute of California (a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank) demographer Hans Johnson’s new analysis:
“California appears to be on the verge of a new demographic era, one in which population declines characterize the state…Lower levels of international migration, declining birth rates, and increases in deaths all play a role. But the primary driver of the state’s population loss over the past couple years has been the result of California residents moving to other states…The state’s high cost of living, driven almost solely by comparatively high housing costs, remains an ongoing public policy challenge – one that needs resolution if the state is to be a place of opportunity for all of its residents.”
A shortage of housing and the command to build is what is heard over and over. How much housing is needed starts with projections from the California Department of Finance, which are turned over to the Housing and Community Development (HCD) which in turn were divvied up to regional and local areas. For the Bay Area it ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) of which Mayor Jesse Arreguin is President that assigned Berkeley with 8934 units. And, that is broken down further according to housing needs to 2446 units (27%) are to be for extremely low and very low-income households, 1408 units (16%) for low income households, 1416 units (16%) for moderate income households and 3664 units (41%) for above moderate income households also known as market rate or whatever the owner choses to charge for rent.
The high cost of housing in Berkeley is real and it often brings forth the phrase, I can’t afford or my child can’t afford to live in Berkeley” And, it is repeated as if there is no other place to live. One thing the pandemic has demonstrated is there are jobs that can be done from anywhere and if that is the case there are options. Here is one listed last Monday that I know of as I stayed there pre-pandemic on a trip; 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 2684 square feet, in perfect move-in condition on 0.28 acres, one block from a nature reserve, in an excellent public school district with student diversity that can be easily seen in class pictures in a Chicago suburb listed for $475,000.
A house like that isn’t Berkeley. Berkeley is where the Community Advisory Group invested nearly two years to develop a joint vision and priorities for the transit oriented mixed-use, multi-unit housing projects sited for the BART Ashby and North Berkeley parking lots. Their vision would be larger 7-story buildings toward Ashby and Adeline and the Ohlone Greenway with stepdown buildings toward the neighborhoods. A taller 12 story complex was included as an alternative (alternatives are required in the EIR - Environmental Impact Report). The 12 story alternative was rejected by the City because it did not include the project design and development standards, program priorities and open space elements.
Not everyone is convinced that the Department of Finance has got the numbers right when it comes to the amount of needed housing. That was the subject of the press release of the California State Auditor’s Report published in the April 3rd edition of the Planet.
Banners advertising vacant units in the downtown never seem to come down. Elana Auerbach summed it up in her letter to the Planning Commission that according to the 2020 Census, Berkeley has a 9% vacancy rate with 4700 vacant units. That fits the call that it is not housing that is needed it housing that people can afford in the broader context not just affordable housing as defined by HUD though that is sorely needed too.
The long-awaited public hearing at the Planning Commission on the two BART projects was Wednesday April 6th.
The response to the projects fell into two camps and each had their sample letter which was copied and sent over and over. The talking points were repeated at the public hearing. Neighbors of the North Berkeley BART Station and the North Berkeley BART Neighbors Association requested a maximum of 7 stories (the minimum stories set by BART) and maximizing affordable housing. South Berkeley was less vocal, but made their desire clear for affordable housing as the highest priority. The neighborhood seven story request was the same as the City recommendation. The YIMBYs and build tall crowd pushed the minimum of 12 stories with recommending going higher with denser taller housing as the answer to climate.
The neighbors asked for a complex that was in scale to the neighborhood of single-family homes. The build it tall countered that it was the residential neighborhood that was out of scale not their desired 12 story tower as the minimum height.
After public comment closed, the Planning Commission Chair Elisa Mikiten called for a round of general comments to begin the conversation, but conversation and general comment was not on the mind of Ben Gould, the substitute commissioner for District 2, who jumped quickly to motion for the YIMBY supported 12-story alternative over the City staff recommended 7-story maximum. Mikiten tried to bring it back, adding that developers could apply for a density bonus that could bring a 7 story to 12 and a 12`story to 18 stories. The YIMBYs won for 12 and above in a 5 to 4 vote.
The next evening the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) established a right of return preference policy for new affordable housing created via the City’s Housing Trust Fund and Below Market Rate programs. Even though Blacks have suffered displacement disproportionally in Berkeley, meeting discussion included that legally the right of return cannot be race based and therefore needed criteria independent of race. The HAC approved the following criteria for right of return policy. Displacement due to eminent domain for BART construction was the first (highest) priority, separate lottery. That was followed with a preference of one point given for each of the following conditions: displacement from Berkeley due to foreclosure since 2005, families with children, homeless or at risk of homelessness, ties to redlined areas, ties to redlined areas – historical, displaced from Berkeley due to eviction within the past seven years.
The next step is scheduled for May 31st when City Council will consider the Planning Commission outcome. Hopefully the policy from the HAC will be considered the same evening.
At the WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) meeting on Thursday afternoon, the Board voted to “receive” (not accept) the Berkeley Ferry Service Plan. After reading the documents and attending the meeting, I have some takeaways from the Ferry Pier business plan and ferry service in general. WETA and the ferry service cannot survive without substantial subsidies.
The recent WETA current ridership survey found ticket price was a very important factor for 59% of respondents in choosing the ferry. It was the pandemic additional subsidies to fares making the ferry less costly and competitive with BART, less costly than TransBay bus and driving that brought these riders to the ferry. Through survey comments if fares returned to pre-pandemic levels which still doesn’t come close to covering operational costs (WETA’s minimum is for fares to cover 40% of operating cost), riders would return to other modes of transportation.
From reviewing the WETA balance sheet of actual revenue and expenses, fares so far this year contribute 15.4% to covering operating costs. The Board voted to continue the pandemic reduced fares which were due to expire in June 2022 for another year.
It is important to remember that the WETA ferry service between Berkeley and San Francisco was presented as the way to pay for a new / replacement pier. Berkeley would pick up the cost of extending the new pier for recreational use beyond what was needed for ferry service. That cost was portrayed as minor given all the proposed activity and revenue that would come with the ferry.
The Berkeley Ferry Service Plan paints a different picture, one that includes determining a permanent source to subsidize ferry service not just the capital expenditures to build the infrastructure and purchase the ferries. The Berkeley share of capital costs is described with the nebulous phrase “…costs borne by WETA and the City of Berkeley will be determined at a future date…”
The Berkeley Ferry Service Plan states, “It is not expected that the City of Berkeley will subsidize operations of the ferry service from its General Fund. However, local (City) funding sources may also be established, similar to the funding provided by a local property tax charged in the Bay Farm Island or a portion of Contra Costa County sales tax revenue for the Richmond service…One option could include a Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) surcharge on hotel night stays in the Marina that would reinvest in the Berkeley waterfront and support maintenance of the pier and shared parking facilities.”
It should be noted that the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission submitted a proposal in 2021 to City Council for the TOT surcharge to be allocated to the troubled Marina fund instead of the general fund. The City Manager and City Council opposed assigning the TOT collected at the Marina to the Marina.
There were other troubling inclusions in the service Plan. The catchment area for ridership is the one to two mile radius around terminals, which leaves Berkeley challenged for future ridership. It is one mile from the terminal to the freeway. The Service Plan assumes shuttle service will be required. WETA has no electric zero-emission vessels, no electric vessel experience and “reliable cost information for zero-emission vessels is limited”.
The Berkeley Ferry Service Plan read like a document to support decisions that have already been made. Everyone needs to recognize ferry rider or not, residents of Berkeley will need to step up and add to other subsidizes to keep the proposed Berkeley ferry service afloat once it starts.
This week I finished Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice. The author Tony Messenger, columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, chronicles how the lives of poor are ruined because they are unable to pay fines, court fees for minor infractions. Punishment for nonpayment can lead to driver’s license suspensions and escalate into arrest warrants and languishing in jail because of inability to pay and make bail. Then in some jurisdictions, the poor are charged room and board for each day in jail. All of it spirals into lost jobs, lost housing, forever debt and, of course, it impacts family and children.
Messenger’s dogged reporting brought occasional relief to the punished and most important changes in the law. Messenger reminds us that legislative wins aren’t permanent (something we see with Roe vs Wade and the Supreme Court). A watchful eye must always continue as those fines and court fees were used to bolster salaries, retirement packages, expand law enforcement and pay for military policing equipment.
At the Saturday Berkeley Neighborhoods Council Andy Johnson described the residential parking meter plan in residential zones as a solution in search of a problem. It seems the City plan to put parking meters in residential neighborhoods hasn’t gone away. And, why would it when another consultant has been hired to head it up and there is a company behind him to collect the management fees? The program is Smart Space and if you go to the website you can fill out the survey https://smartspace.goberkeley.info/.
As I listened to the discussion, I wondered who would be most harmed by the plan and considered it was probably those on the lower rungs of the income ladder.
I haven’t seen any estimates on how much the City expects to gain from residential parking fees and tickets and whether those estimates will cover the cost of the consultants and the parking management company that comes with the program. We can always search for it in the upcoming budget meetings.
I wonder if the City Auditor will ever total up for us just how much the City of Berkeley spends on consultants.
Finally, if we are going to squeeze the gardener, the housecleaner, the caregiver, the family visitor for parking fees in residential neighborhoods, can parking enforcement please ticket the illegally parked cars in the fire zones.
Back on page A17 in the April 10, 2022 edition of the East Bay Times under the header of Economic Divide is “California’s shrinking population could result in big consequences”. Further down into the article is the quote from Public Policy Institute of California (a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank) demographer Hans Johnson’s new analysis:
“California appears to be on the verge of a new demographic era, one in which population declines characterize the state…Lower levels of international migration, declining birth rates, and increases in deaths all play a role. But the primary driver of the state’s population loss over the past couple years has been the result of California residents moving to other states…The state’s high cost of living, driven almost solely by comparatively high housing costs, remains an ongoing public policy challenge – one that needs resolution if the state is to be a place of opportunity for all of its residents.”
A shortage of housing and the command to build is what is heard over and over. How much housing is needed starts with projections from the California Department of Finance, which are turned over to the Housing and Community Development (HCD) which in turn were divvied up to regional and local areas. For the Bay Area it ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) of which Mayor Jesse Arreguin is President that assigned Berkeley with 8934 units. And, that is broken down further according to housing needs to 2446 units (27%) are to be for extremely low and very low-income households, 1408 units (16%) for low income households, 1416 units (16%) for moderate income households and 3664 units (41%) for above moderate income households also known as market rate or whatever the owner choses to charge for rent.
The high cost of housing in Berkeley is real and it often brings forth the phrase, I can’t afford or my child can’t afford to live in Berkeley” And, it is repeated as if there is no other place to live. One thing the pandemic has demonstrated is there are jobs that can be done from anywhere and if that is the case there are options. Here is one listed last Monday that I know of as I stayed there pre-pandemic on a trip; 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 2684 square feet, in perfect move-in condition on 0.28 acres, one block from a nature reserve, in an excellent public school district with student diversity that can be easily seen in class pictures in a Chicago suburb listed for $475,000.
A house like that isn’t Berkeley. Berkeley is where the Community Advisory Group invested nearly two years to develop a joint vision and priorities for the transit oriented mixed-use, multi-unit housing projects sited for the BART Ashby and North Berkeley parking lots. Their vision would be larger 7-story buildings toward Ashby and Adeline and the Ohlone Greenway with stepdown buildings toward the neighborhoods. A taller 12 story complex was included as an alternative (alternatives are required in the EIR - Environmental Impact Report). The 12 story alternative was rejected by the City because it did not include the project design and development standards, program priorities and open space elements.
Not everyone is convinced that the Department of Finance has got the numbers right when it comes to the amount of needed housing. That was the subject of the press release of the California State Auditor’s Report published in the April 3rd edition of the Planet.
Banners advertising vacant units in the downtown never seem to come down. Elana Auerbach summed it up in her letter to the Planning Commission that according to the 2020 Census, Berkeley has a 9% vacancy rate with 4700 vacant units. That fits the call that it is not housing that is needed it housing that people can afford in the broader context not just affordable housing as defined by HUD though that is sorely needed too.
The long-awaited public hearing at the Planning Commission on the two BART projects was Wednesday April 6th.
The response to the projects fell into two camps and each had their sample letter which was copied and sent over and over. The talking points were repeated at the public hearing. Neighbors of the North Berkeley BART Station and the North Berkeley BART Neighbors Association requested a maximum of 7 stories (the minimum stories set by BART) and maximizing affordable housing. South Berkeley was less vocal, but made their desire clear for affordable housing as the highest priority. The neighborhood seven story request was the same as the City recommendation. The YIMBYs and build tall crowd pushed the minimum of 12 stories with recommending going higher with denser taller housing as the answer to climate.
The neighbors asked for a complex that was in scale to the neighborhood of single-family homes. The build it tall countered that it was the residential neighborhood that was out of scale not their desired 12 story tower as the minimum height.
After public comment closed, the Planning Commission Chair Elisa Mikiten called for a round of general comments to begin the conversation, but conversation and general comment was not on the mind of Ben Gould, the substitute commissioner for District 2, who jumped quickly to motion for the YIMBY supported 12-story alternative over the City staff recommended 7-story maximum. Mikiten tried to bring it back, adding that developers could apply for a density bonus that could bring a 7 story to 12 and a 12`story to 18 stories. The YIMBYs won for 12 and above in a 5 to 4 vote.
The next evening the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) established a right of return preference policy for new affordable housing created via the City’s Housing Trust Fund and Below Market Rate programs. Even though Blacks have suffered displacement disproportionally in Berkeley, meeting discussion included that legally the right of return cannot be race based and therefore needed criteria independent of race. The HAC approved the following criteria for right of return policy. Displacement due to eminent domain for BART construction was the first (highest) priority, separate lottery. That was followed with a preference of one point given for each of the following conditions: displacement from Berkeley due to foreclosure since 2005, families with children, homeless or at risk of homelessness, ties to redlined areas, ties to redlined areas – historical, displaced from Berkeley due to eviction within the past seven years.
The next step is scheduled for May 31st when City Council will consider the Planning Commission outcome. Hopefully the policy from the HAC will be considered the same evening.
At the WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) meeting on Thursday afternoon, the Board voted to “receive” (not accept) the Berkeley Ferry Service Plan. After reading the documents and attending the meeting, I have some takeaways from the Ferry Pier business plan and ferry service in general. WETA and the ferry service cannot survive without substantial subsidies.
The recent WETA current ridership survey found ticket price was a very important factor for 59% of respondents in choosing the ferry. It was the pandemic additional subsidies to fares making the ferry less costly and competitive with BART, less costly than TransBay bus and driving that brought these riders to the ferry. Through survey comments if fares returned to pre-pandemic levels which still doesn’t come close to covering operational costs (WETA’s minimum is for fares to cover 40% of operating cost), riders would return to other modes of transportation.
From reviewing the WETA balance sheet of actual revenue and expenses, fares so far this year contribute 15.4% to covering operating costs. The Board voted to continue the pandemic reduced fares which were due to expire in June 2022 for another year.
It is important to remember that the WETA ferry service between Berkeley and San Francisco was presented as the way to pay for a new / replacement pier. Berkeley would pick up the cost of extending the new pier for recreational use beyond what was needed for ferry service. That cost was portrayed as minor given all the proposed activity and revenue that would come with the ferry.
The Berkeley Ferry Service Plan paints a different picture, one that includes determining a permanent source to subsidize ferry service not just the capital expenditures to build the infrastructure and purchase the ferries. The Berkeley share of capital costs is described with the nebulous phrase “…costs borne by WETA and the City of Berkeley will be determined at a future date…”
The Berkeley Ferry Service Plan states, “It is not expected that the City of Berkeley will subsidize operations of the ferry service from its General Fund. However, local (City) funding sources may also be established, similar to the funding provided by a local property tax charged in the Bay Farm Island or a portion of Contra Costa County sales tax revenue for the Richmond service…One option could include a Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) surcharge on hotel night stays in the Marina that would reinvest in the Berkeley waterfront and support maintenance of the pier and shared parking facilities.”
It should be noted that the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission submitted a proposal in 2021 to City Council for the TOT surcharge to be allocated to the troubled Marina fund instead of the general fund. The City Manager and City Council opposed assigning the TOT collected at the Marina to the Marina.
There were other troubling inclusions in the service Plan. The catchment area for ridership is the one to two mile radius around terminals, which leaves Berkeley challenged for future ridership. It is one mile from the terminal to the freeway. The Service Plan assumes shuttle service will be required. WETA has no electric zero-emission vessels, no electric vessel experience and “reliable cost information for zero-emission vessels is limited”.
The Berkeley Ferry Service Plan read like a document to support decisions that have already been made. Everyone needs to recognize ferry rider or not, residents of Berkeley will need to step up and add to other subsidizes to keep the proposed Berkeley ferry service afloat once it starts.
This week I finished Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice. The author Tony Messenger, columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, chronicles how the lives of poor are ruined because they are unable to pay fines, court fees for minor infractions. Punishment for nonpayment can lead to driver’s license suspensions and escalate into arrest warrants and languishing in jail because of inability to pay and make bail. Then in some jurisdictions, the poor are charged room and board for each day in jail. All of it spirals into lost jobs, lost housing, forever debt and, of course, it impacts family and children.
Messenger’s dogged reporting brought occasional relief to the punished and most important changes in the law. Messenger reminds us that legislative wins aren’t permanent (something we see with Roe vs Wade and the Supreme Court). A watchful eye must always continue as those fines and court fees were used to bolster salaries, retirement packages, expand law enforcement and pay for military policing equipment.
At the Saturday Berkeley Neighborhoods Council Andy Johnson described the residential parking meter plan in residential zones as a solution in search of a problem. It seems the City plan to put parking meters in residential neighborhoods hasn’t gone away. And, why would it when another consultant has been hired to head it up and there is a company behind him to collect the management fees? The program is Smart Space and if you go to the website you can fill out the survey https://smartspace.goberkeley.info/.
As I listened to the discussion, I wondered who would be most harmed by the plan and considered it was probably those on the lower rungs of the income ladder.
I haven’t seen any estimates on how much the City expects to gain from residential parking fees and tickets and whether those estimates will cover the cost of the consultants and the parking management company that comes with the program. We can always search for it in the upcoming budget meetings.
I wonder if the City Auditor will ever total up for us just how much the City of Berkeley spends on consultants.
Finally, if we are going to squeeze the gardener, the housecleaner, the caregiver, the family visitor for parking fees in residential neighborhoods, can parking enforcement please ticket the illegally parked cars in the fire zones.
April 3, 2022
I’ve pulled out the bucket to catch water in the shower while my neighbor is watering his roses. It is April 2nd the snowpack is 38% of normal for this time of year and the drought map is already showing the entire state of California in drought with large swaths in severe drought (orange) and extreme drought (red). https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ In fact, looking at the drought map, half the country looks to be in trouble and the dry season for the west has just started.
Denial seems to be the skill that most of us do best.
As much as I prefer the convenience of walking over to my computer instead of hauling off to a meeting in person, connecting with others is lost as is knowing who is in the zoom room audience at city meetings. If the special Design Review Committee (DRC) this week had been in person there are a lot of questions I would have asked the neighbors who will be backed up to 1201 – 1205 San Pablo at Harrison. The neighbors did not object to construction on the empty corner lot, they welcomed it, but it is the height and size of the project in preliminary design review that left them asking for relief. The little 800 square foot house next door will be dwarfed by the new 6-story building sitting just a few feet from its small yard.
I would have liked to ask did they know about the City’s plans to fill the San Pablo corridor with mid-size mixed-use (the description of apartments atop a ground floor of commercial space like restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores) apartment buildings? Did they know when they asked if any of the mature trees on San Pablo would be removed by the project that the city foresters favor planting smaller non-native imported trees. The same non-native trees that don’t support the insects birds need to feed their hatching young?
Charles Kahn explained to the neighbors, the DRC can’t stop the project. Then one of the neighbors challenged the DRC to do more. With that came recommendations from another member to step back the upper floors on the west by decreasing the number of bedrooms in those units. It would be a more pleasant compromise if the developer is willing. As for the trees on San Pablo, they will not be affected at least by this project.
There are going to be many more of these projects and the five very low-income units out of 66 in this building will hardly make a dent in the desperate need for affordable housing. This leads to the presentation by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project at the March 22 City Council meeting.
The first in the list of their key findings is: “Upzoning [dividing lots or putting more housing on a single lot] can lead to speculation, increased land values, and displacement. By the same token, upzoning has not led to greater racial integration and opportunities for vulnerable communities. Upzoning alone is unlikely to make housing affordable to those most in need in Berkeley and make Berkeley’s housing market more equitable.”
Some of the conclusions are familiar. Patrick Condon, urban designer, planner, professor and author of Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land who previously as a planner was a steadfast supporter of densification as the answer to affordable housing. That lasted until he took a hard look at what happened in Vancouver. Upzoning/densification increases the value of the land which in turn increases the cost of the house or condo or apartment that sits on top of it.
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project outlined their recommendations in the presentation and their report which start with protecting the vulnerable areas of West and South Berkeley by directing future upzoning to North and Southeast Berkeley; adopting anti-speculation measures with community ownership, land trusts, housing cooperatives, TOPA, transfer and vacancy taxes; increasing production of affordable housing by adjusting the city’s affordable housing mitigation fee and much more. You can read the presentation, summary and full report at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2022/03_Mar/City_Council__03-22-2022_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx under Preliminary Matters.
Mayor Arreguin looked like a climate denier feverously seeking a counter opinion as upzoning is touted as the answer to creating more affordable housing by putting more housing on a single lot and more duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes into neighborhoods. These smaller multi-unit buildings are also known as the “missing middle” and supposed to be the be the missing middle of affordability. If one follows sales, tearing down a single-family home and building three in the same space provides three houses each at a million dollar plus, not three $400,000 houses.
Arreguin responded to the presentation with: “…I may reach out to Professor Chapple and see if they want to present. Which actually has a different conclusion and that’s building housing for people of all income levels does reduce the pressure for those higher income renters … and that’s why opinion is that all of the approaches to building housing is what we need in the city and we’re dealing with significant deficit of housing for people of all income levels of Berkeley including rental and ownership…”
There are many who would argue that there is no shortage of market rate (luxury priced) rental property. It is housing that people can afford and the designated low income, very low income and extremely low income housing that is in very short supply.
Chapple is one of the Urban Displacement Project Leads. And scanning through documents the conclusions are not dissimilar from many of those from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. It is unclear that Arreguin will receive the counter opinion he seems to seek, but we shall see.
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project identified West Berkeley as the area of greatest gentrification with the highest rent increases and highest displacement of People of Color by Whites. This is the same area where the reported shootings are occurring, primarily in District 2, Councilmember Taplin’s District. Taplin’s Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model was the big draw for comment at the Agenda and Rules Committee.
Residents of District 2 and the hills called in to support the Flex Team and Berkeley Police. Betsy Morris who is known for her activism with the Gray Panthers said hearing about policing in Berkeley was like hearing about two different police departments and two different cities.
Mansour Id-Deen, President of the Berkeley NAACP, responded with:
“I’m calling in opposition to item 27 [Flex Team Polcing] I think it’s a bad idea, I think the Berkeley Police Department in 2022, does not have the responsibility of the Berkeley police Department in the 1980s when we had the Drug Task Force. The Drug Task Force was horrible for our community and former Police Chief Meehan worked with the community and eliminated the Drug Task force. If this new entity is anything like the Drug Task Force it will not be a positive thing for the community in Berkeley. A few days ago, here in South Berkeley on Harmon and Adeline, [District 3] there were a so-called shooting, no one ever found out any information about it, but the City of Berkeley Police Department had seventeen units here in a small block in South Berkeley, seventeen units, so I don’t think that we have, I think that the Police Department itself have an adequate number of officers. I think we should look within the Police department and see how we can reallocate the police and not have so many come to one incident. It’s ridiculous to block the whole street for hours. I just see this suppression force, I know you renamed it. It’s going to work in conjunction with the so-called hotspots that’s been discussed in the City of Berkeley. I think we need to have more conversation.”
Councilmember Kate Harrison who was serving as an alternate (Wengraf and Hahn were unavailable) to the committee on Monday recommended moving the proposed Police Flex Team off the consent calendar to action for discussion. Arreguin refused. That makes five councilmembers in support of the Flex Team. Wengraf, Kesarwani and Droste have already signed on as co-sponsors. The council now has a solid majority in favor of increased policing and increasing the police share of the city budget will likely follow in June. We all should know who is likely to suffer with increased policing which some fear will be saturation policing and it isn’t the vocal gentrifiers.
The seventeen units described by Id-Deen is ridiculous. It is the same kind of response my walk partner and I saw some months ago with 10 units standing around an empty crashed parking enforcement vehicle at Ohlone Park.
In hospitals when we hear the code blue call (the announcement of a patient in the throes of a life-threatening emergency), we all run to assist and then quickly sort out who is needed and the rest of us get out of the way and go back to our assignments. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform never pierced the protective circle around where and how police officers are assigned. The closest we have is the City Auditor’s review of overtime assignments which will be presented on April 12th.
The Zero Waste Commission was cancelled for lack of a quorum and I missed too much of the Police Accountability Board meeting to give an adequate report. At the last minute I decided to attend the Vision 2050 Community meeting. It was the same presentation I had heard at a number of the city commission meetings. After subtracting the city representatives and presenters there were about 30 public attendees. The surprise was how few questions were asked.
The public attendees requested that instead of one big ballot initiative that it be broken up into several ballot initiatives with designation for what would be funded. The little I’ve gleaned is the position that the only way to get anything passed is to do a giant ballot measure with everything lumped together, so we, the voters, will approve the whole package to get the small piece we want.
I did not speak, but after attending lots of budget meetings and seeing how things are maneuvered around I stand with the people who want a ballot initiative with specific designations not squishy wishful language. If you missed this last Wednesday, there are three more scheduled community meetings April 6, 13 and 20 https://www.berkeleyvision2050.org/ to ask questions and share your opinion.
This week the House passed a bill to limit the out of pocket cost of insulin to $35 per month for people with health insurance now it goes to the Senate where it is likely to die. The real problem is the monopoly lock on the pricing of insulin by the drug companies. A vial of insulin costs $2.00 to around $6 to produce, but the cost to the person who needs it can run up to several hundred dollars. The stranglehold on drug pricing is just one of the many topics Senator Amy Klobuchar covered in Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age. The book with 625 pages is pretty heavy reading, for one library cycle. If you opt for the audiobook, you will miss all the cartoons, drawings and charts in the ebook. Beside big pharma, Klobuchar has plenty to say about META, Google, Amazon, and how these tech giants need to be reined in.
I’ve pulled out the bucket to catch water in the shower while my neighbor is watering his roses. It is April 2nd the snowpack is 38% of normal for this time of year and the drought map is already showing the entire state of California in drought with large swaths in severe drought (orange) and extreme drought (red). https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ In fact, looking at the drought map, half the country looks to be in trouble and the dry season for the west has just started.
Denial seems to be the skill that most of us do best.
As much as I prefer the convenience of walking over to my computer instead of hauling off to a meeting in person, connecting with others is lost as is knowing who is in the zoom room audience at city meetings. If the special Design Review Committee (DRC) this week had been in person there are a lot of questions I would have asked the neighbors who will be backed up to 1201 – 1205 San Pablo at Harrison. The neighbors did not object to construction on the empty corner lot, they welcomed it, but it is the height and size of the project in preliminary design review that left them asking for relief. The little 800 square foot house next door will be dwarfed by the new 6-story building sitting just a few feet from its small yard.
I would have liked to ask did they know about the City’s plans to fill the San Pablo corridor with mid-size mixed-use (the description of apartments atop a ground floor of commercial space like restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores) apartment buildings? Did they know when they asked if any of the mature trees on San Pablo would be removed by the project that the city foresters favor planting smaller non-native imported trees. The same non-native trees that don’t support the insects birds need to feed their hatching young?
Charles Kahn explained to the neighbors, the DRC can’t stop the project. Then one of the neighbors challenged the DRC to do more. With that came recommendations from another member to step back the upper floors on the west by decreasing the number of bedrooms in those units. It would be a more pleasant compromise if the developer is willing. As for the trees on San Pablo, they will not be affected at least by this project.
There are going to be many more of these projects and the five very low-income units out of 66 in this building will hardly make a dent in the desperate need for affordable housing. This leads to the presentation by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project at the March 22 City Council meeting.
The first in the list of their key findings is: “Upzoning [dividing lots or putting more housing on a single lot] can lead to speculation, increased land values, and displacement. By the same token, upzoning has not led to greater racial integration and opportunities for vulnerable communities. Upzoning alone is unlikely to make housing affordable to those most in need in Berkeley and make Berkeley’s housing market more equitable.”
Some of the conclusions are familiar. Patrick Condon, urban designer, planner, professor and author of Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land who previously as a planner was a steadfast supporter of densification as the answer to affordable housing. That lasted until he took a hard look at what happened in Vancouver. Upzoning/densification increases the value of the land which in turn increases the cost of the house or condo or apartment that sits on top of it.
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project outlined their recommendations in the presentation and their report which start with protecting the vulnerable areas of West and South Berkeley by directing future upzoning to North and Southeast Berkeley; adopting anti-speculation measures with community ownership, land trusts, housing cooperatives, TOPA, transfer and vacancy taxes; increasing production of affordable housing by adjusting the city’s affordable housing mitigation fee and much more. You can read the presentation, summary and full report at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2022/03_Mar/City_Council__03-22-2022_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx under Preliminary Matters.
Mayor Arreguin looked like a climate denier feverously seeking a counter opinion as upzoning is touted as the answer to creating more affordable housing by putting more housing on a single lot and more duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes into neighborhoods. These smaller multi-unit buildings are also known as the “missing middle” and supposed to be the be the missing middle of affordability. If one follows sales, tearing down a single-family home and building three in the same space provides three houses each at a million dollar plus, not three $400,000 houses.
Arreguin responded to the presentation with: “…I may reach out to Professor Chapple and see if they want to present. Which actually has a different conclusion and that’s building housing for people of all income levels does reduce the pressure for those higher income renters … and that’s why opinion is that all of the approaches to building housing is what we need in the city and we’re dealing with significant deficit of housing for people of all income levels of Berkeley including rental and ownership…”
There are many who would argue that there is no shortage of market rate (luxury priced) rental property. It is housing that people can afford and the designated low income, very low income and extremely low income housing that is in very short supply.
Chapple is one of the Urban Displacement Project Leads. And scanning through documents the conclusions are not dissimilar from many of those from the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project. It is unclear that Arreguin will receive the counter opinion he seems to seek, but we shall see.
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project identified West Berkeley as the area of greatest gentrification with the highest rent increases and highest displacement of People of Color by Whites. This is the same area where the reported shootings are occurring, primarily in District 2, Councilmember Taplin’s District. Taplin’s Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model was the big draw for comment at the Agenda and Rules Committee.
Residents of District 2 and the hills called in to support the Flex Team and Berkeley Police. Betsy Morris who is known for her activism with the Gray Panthers said hearing about policing in Berkeley was like hearing about two different police departments and two different cities.
Mansour Id-Deen, President of the Berkeley NAACP, responded with:
“I’m calling in opposition to item 27 [Flex Team Polcing] I think it’s a bad idea, I think the Berkeley Police Department in 2022, does not have the responsibility of the Berkeley police Department in the 1980s when we had the Drug Task Force. The Drug Task Force was horrible for our community and former Police Chief Meehan worked with the community and eliminated the Drug Task force. If this new entity is anything like the Drug Task Force it will not be a positive thing for the community in Berkeley. A few days ago, here in South Berkeley on Harmon and Adeline, [District 3] there were a so-called shooting, no one ever found out any information about it, but the City of Berkeley Police Department had seventeen units here in a small block in South Berkeley, seventeen units, so I don’t think that we have, I think that the Police Department itself have an adequate number of officers. I think we should look within the Police department and see how we can reallocate the police and not have so many come to one incident. It’s ridiculous to block the whole street for hours. I just see this suppression force, I know you renamed it. It’s going to work in conjunction with the so-called hotspots that’s been discussed in the City of Berkeley. I think we need to have more conversation.”
Councilmember Kate Harrison who was serving as an alternate (Wengraf and Hahn were unavailable) to the committee on Monday recommended moving the proposed Police Flex Team off the consent calendar to action for discussion. Arreguin refused. That makes five councilmembers in support of the Flex Team. Wengraf, Kesarwani and Droste have already signed on as co-sponsors. The council now has a solid majority in favor of increased policing and increasing the police share of the city budget will likely follow in June. We all should know who is likely to suffer with increased policing which some fear will be saturation policing and it isn’t the vocal gentrifiers.
The seventeen units described by Id-Deen is ridiculous. It is the same kind of response my walk partner and I saw some months ago with 10 units standing around an empty crashed parking enforcement vehicle at Ohlone Park.
In hospitals when we hear the code blue call (the announcement of a patient in the throes of a life-threatening emergency), we all run to assist and then quickly sort out who is needed and the rest of us get out of the way and go back to our assignments. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform never pierced the protective circle around where and how police officers are assigned. The closest we have is the City Auditor’s review of overtime assignments which will be presented on April 12th.
The Zero Waste Commission was cancelled for lack of a quorum and I missed too much of the Police Accountability Board meeting to give an adequate report. At the last minute I decided to attend the Vision 2050 Community meeting. It was the same presentation I had heard at a number of the city commission meetings. After subtracting the city representatives and presenters there were about 30 public attendees. The surprise was how few questions were asked.
The public attendees requested that instead of one big ballot initiative that it be broken up into several ballot initiatives with designation for what would be funded. The little I’ve gleaned is the position that the only way to get anything passed is to do a giant ballot measure with everything lumped together, so we, the voters, will approve the whole package to get the small piece we want.
I did not speak, but after attending lots of budget meetings and seeing how things are maneuvered around I stand with the people who want a ballot initiative with specific designations not squishy wishful language. If you missed this last Wednesday, there are three more scheduled community meetings April 6, 13 and 20 https://www.berkeleyvision2050.org/ to ask questions and share your opinion.
This week the House passed a bill to limit the out of pocket cost of insulin to $35 per month for people with health insurance now it goes to the Senate where it is likely to die. The real problem is the monopoly lock on the pricing of insulin by the drug companies. A vial of insulin costs $2.00 to around $6 to produce, but the cost to the person who needs it can run up to several hundred dollars. The stranglehold on drug pricing is just one of the many topics Senator Amy Klobuchar covered in Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age. The book with 625 pages is pretty heavy reading, for one library cycle. If you opt for the audiobook, you will miss all the cartoons, drawings and charts in the ebook. Beside big pharma, Klobuchar has plenty to say about META, Google, Amazon, and how these tech giants need to be reined in.
March 27, 2022
The media says all the Democrats will hold together to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, but I’ll breathe easier after the full Senate vote is over. The Republicans stooped to a new level of ugliness this week with lots of grandstanding which has been described as a test for which issues, really attacks and outrage will work best at getting out their base to vote.
At the bottom of much of this is race, racism and resentment that a Black woman could be superbly qualified, obviously better qualified than the pathetic show of Republican inquisitors vying for soundbites. But what is the cost of this ginned up outrage, not just to Ketanji Brown Jackson, but to the country?
Barbara F. Walter tells us generating outrage is not benign and social media is an accelerant in creating instability. She notes the global shift away from democracy has tracked with the expansion of the internet and social media. Social media platforms have opened up unmitigated, unregulated pathways to spread misinformation (erroneous), disinformation (deliberately misleading), conspiracy theories, trolls, bots, demagogues and to give anti-democratic agents a place to gain traction.
The social media platforms’ business model to make money is to keep people engaged and what gets the most likes and engagement is fear over calm, falsehood over truth, outrage over empathy and the more incendiary the more traction.
The top article on the Sunday print edition of the Chronicle was “Foreign spammers fuel U.S. discord” about how fake Facebook accounts sell gear and in turn lead followers to believe they are in a larger movement. Social media not only draws people down into outlandish disinformation silos through recommendation engines it connects them reinforcing beliefs in conspiracies and fanatical ideologies. QAnon continues and now we’re learning Ginin Thomas the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas believes in this stuff.
Anocracy was a word I had never heard before I picked up the book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter. Walter has been studying civil wars since 1990 and joined the Political Instability Task Force (founded in 1994) in 2017. It is anocracies that are at risk of civil war. An Anocracy is a country that is neither a full democracy or a full autocracy.
It was recognizing the risks in her own country, our country, the United States that we are an anocracy that is the driver of the book. It isn’t just the slide from a full democracy i.e. voter suppression, gerrymandering, expansion of executive power, corruption, that tips the scale, add factionalism. Factionalism is when groups organize around race, ethnicity or religion. The most dangerous factions are once dominant groups that are facing decline in status and super factions, groups organized around race or ethnicity and religion.
Walter draws from research the actions that pull countries away from sliding into civil war. She ends the book with recommendations including taking away the social media bullhorn through regulation.
There are pieces to her recommendations that stalled and sank in the Senate like voting rights, election integrity, ending gerrymandering, improving public services and government effectiveness. She favors getting rid of the electoral college and demonstrating good government through expanding social services, investing in safety nets, affordable housing, public schools, parks, recreation, the arts and health care. Improving living conditions takes away grievances that give extremists air to grow and expand their reach as does equal and impartial application of the rule of law.
All this brings framing and reflection to the week. I recommend reading the entire book. The recommendations of how to stop civil wars from happening lose importance and impact without understanding and seeing the warning signs along the way and that is what starting at the beginning of the book and reading it all the way through will give you.
There is concern that Councilmember Taplin’s agenda item Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model and other applicable community engagement models will turn into the old drug war crime suppression unit, saturation policing. Stop-and-frisk was determined to violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution in 2013, but the association with those tactics seems to be a better description of concerns over SARA.
This coupled with the Auditor’s Report on police overtime, the City Manager’s intention to expand the police force to 181 officers, Edward Opton’s comments Thursday evening, the police chief saying illegally parked cars in fire zones can’t be ticketed without expanding the parking enforcement budget leaves much to question in the direction Berkeley is headed.
Edward Opton noted in his report out at the Mental Health Commission on Thursday as a member of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force that the Berkeley Police were well represented (the attendees we couldn’t see on zoom) at every meeting. And, there was never any expression of a desire or willingness or need for change from BPD.
In follow-up to the presentations on March 10th from the Reimagining Public safety Task Force and the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, the City staff are coming back with their analysis and proposals on April 14th according to Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services. She will be presenting the plan for a Special Care Unit that evening.
It is spring and that means budgets. Where will the money be allocated for the next budget cycle? Will it go to more policing or services? The recent shootings in District 2 would lead the vote for policing. Reimagining Public Safety Task Force has handed in their recommendations for services and so would I.
The March 22nd City Council 4 pm special meeting was on the Implementation of Redistricting Plan for City Council District Boundaries. While gerrymandering is alive and well in other parts of the country, California uses independent redistricting commissions. Carol Marasovic chose to draw attention to the comment from the Independent Redistricting Commission Chair Elisabeth Watson, “…we did not rely on consultants to review public input or provide guidance…” and Carol followed with “…we don’t need to pay costly consultants all the time to go into a protracted process in order to achieve results…”
We do have a lot of talent in Berkeley and not everything should result in another contract with consultants, but Ben Bartlett’s $350,000 budget referral which passed on consent for a consultant to Facilitate a Community Process to Design and implement a Local Reparations Plan does need expertise. Leadership matters and recent consultant choices would suggest there needs to be a better selection process.
It was the presentation on Neighborhood Electrification & Gas Pruning (identifying small neighborhood blocks to electrify and prune/remove the gas line) that prompted Thomas Lord to comment at the Energy Commission.
Out of all the things that were said this week it was his words summarizing the challenge before us to cut our dependence on fossil fuels that keeps coming back. He said quite simply if we are going to get off fossil fuels in our buildings by 2045 (the goal set by CPUC and Governor Newsom), we need to electrify 4 to 5 units every single work day starting right now. Thomas Lord started with 30,000 (rough estimate from PG&E and Councilmember Kate Harrison’s office for the number of units to electrify in Berkeley) and a six-day work week.
While the task before Berkeley sounds insurmountable, Ithaca, New York a city about ¼ the population of Berkeley actually voted November 3, 2021 to decarbonize (electrify) every single building by 2030. Their count is 6000 buildings.
For all the bloviating at the March 15th Council meeting about how we don’t need to protect rooftop solar, because Berkeley is getting 100% renewable energy from EBCE. Ben Paulos Chair of the Energy Commission followed up this week as he (proudly) told the commissioners of his comments at City Council on rooftop solar as of marginal benefit and it is much more important to build housing. Which prompted my comment that for the very first time I was glad to see the merging of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) and the Energy Commission into the Climate and Energy Commission.
There was another conversation this week that stuck with me. On Friday at demonstration supporting Ukraine in Civic Center Park, I ran into Kathy Dervin, Co-Chair of 350 Bay Area Legislative Committee. We spoke briefly about the state of affairs in Berkeley, really the sad state and the word she used that stuck is what the city should be and isn’t, “transformative”.
Transformative is what doesn’t fit with Ben Paulos and Matthew Lewis (the YIMBY Lewis) and others that rooftop solar and building housing are incompatible. That 100% renewable has to come from somewhere. I challenge that the only way to have solar is to cover open space with solar farms, acres of solar panels at some distant location to be distributed into the grid.
We are already covering what feels like every foot of space in Berkeley with buildings. Why are we not wrapping those very same buildings with solar cells? Transformative are the developers who are doing just that. There is a 15-story net-zero energy high-rise under construction in Seattle with rainwater capture, reclaimed graywater and 27 out of 112 units as affordable. Solar energy isn’t new. What is old is not being able to see how to incorporate solar energy into new construction so we can cover open space with forests and habitat and all the other things we need for survival of the planet. There is a lot that can be done if we look beyond city borders for innovation. https://www.greenbuildermedia.com/blog/seattle-breaks-ground-on-net-zero-high-rise
The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission discussion of removal of Eucalyptus on 98 private properties using public FF Funds continued this week without resolution.
Saturday was the Dedication of Brickyard Cove at McLaughlin Eastshore Park. The sun was shining and the views of the bay were spectacular. Former Mayor Shirley Dean was in the audience, my historian of choice. Did the speakers (Elizabeth Echols – elected member to East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors, State Senator Nancy Skinner, Mayor and former Assemblyman Tom Bates, Loni Hancock former Mayor and State Senator, Mayor Arreguin) get the history of the shoreline parks movement right? Partly was the answer! When Tom Bates was in the State Assembly he did secure the funding to purchase the land, but two people who pursued with vigor the movement for shoreline parks and founded Urban Care were never mentioned, Rosalind and Albert Lapawsky.
It is because of unrelenting activism to save the bay from being filled and the shoreline covered with a shopping center, we are able to feel the bay breezes, walk the new trails and watch the meadow larks flutter over open space. Brickyard Cove is the land that was once a Berkeley City dump. Norman La Force captures the history in “Creating the Eastshore State Park an Activist History”. https://eastshorepark.org/dev/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CESP_history.pdf
The last speaker Robert Cheasty, Executive Director for Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP) wasn’t staying close enough to the microphone, so I lost about half of what he said, though I know as a Board Member of CESP it included adding Point Molate to the shoreline parks.
The media says all the Democrats will hold together to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, but I’ll breathe easier after the full Senate vote is over. The Republicans stooped to a new level of ugliness this week with lots of grandstanding which has been described as a test for which issues, really attacks and outrage will work best at getting out their base to vote.
At the bottom of much of this is race, racism and resentment that a Black woman could be superbly qualified, obviously better qualified than the pathetic show of Republican inquisitors vying for soundbites. But what is the cost of this ginned up outrage, not just to Ketanji Brown Jackson, but to the country?
Barbara F. Walter tells us generating outrage is not benign and social media is an accelerant in creating instability. She notes the global shift away from democracy has tracked with the expansion of the internet and social media. Social media platforms have opened up unmitigated, unregulated pathways to spread misinformation (erroneous), disinformation (deliberately misleading), conspiracy theories, trolls, bots, demagogues and to give anti-democratic agents a place to gain traction.
The social media platforms’ business model to make money is to keep people engaged and what gets the most likes and engagement is fear over calm, falsehood over truth, outrage over empathy and the more incendiary the more traction.
The top article on the Sunday print edition of the Chronicle was “Foreign spammers fuel U.S. discord” about how fake Facebook accounts sell gear and in turn lead followers to believe they are in a larger movement. Social media not only draws people down into outlandish disinformation silos through recommendation engines it connects them reinforcing beliefs in conspiracies and fanatical ideologies. QAnon continues and now we’re learning Ginin Thomas the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas believes in this stuff.
Anocracy was a word I had never heard before I picked up the book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by Barbara F. Walter. Walter has been studying civil wars since 1990 and joined the Political Instability Task Force (founded in 1994) in 2017. It is anocracies that are at risk of civil war. An Anocracy is a country that is neither a full democracy or a full autocracy.
It was recognizing the risks in her own country, our country, the United States that we are an anocracy that is the driver of the book. It isn’t just the slide from a full democracy i.e. voter suppression, gerrymandering, expansion of executive power, corruption, that tips the scale, add factionalism. Factionalism is when groups organize around race, ethnicity or religion. The most dangerous factions are once dominant groups that are facing decline in status and super factions, groups organized around race or ethnicity and religion.
Walter draws from research the actions that pull countries away from sliding into civil war. She ends the book with recommendations including taking away the social media bullhorn through regulation.
There are pieces to her recommendations that stalled and sank in the Senate like voting rights, election integrity, ending gerrymandering, improving public services and government effectiveness. She favors getting rid of the electoral college and demonstrating good government through expanding social services, investing in safety nets, affordable housing, public schools, parks, recreation, the arts and health care. Improving living conditions takes away grievances that give extremists air to grow and expand their reach as does equal and impartial application of the rule of law.
All this brings framing and reflection to the week. I recommend reading the entire book. The recommendations of how to stop civil wars from happening lose importance and impact without understanding and seeing the warning signs along the way and that is what starting at the beginning of the book and reading it all the way through will give you.
There is concern that Councilmember Taplin’s agenda item Community Policing: Flex Team for Problem-Oriented Policing Under the Scanning, Analysis, Response and Assessment (SARA) Model and other applicable community engagement models will turn into the old drug war crime suppression unit, saturation policing. Stop-and-frisk was determined to violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution in 2013, but the association with those tactics seems to be a better description of concerns over SARA.
This coupled with the Auditor’s Report on police overtime, the City Manager’s intention to expand the police force to 181 officers, Edward Opton’s comments Thursday evening, the police chief saying illegally parked cars in fire zones can’t be ticketed without expanding the parking enforcement budget leaves much to question in the direction Berkeley is headed.
Edward Opton noted in his report out at the Mental Health Commission on Thursday as a member of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force that the Berkeley Police were well represented (the attendees we couldn’t see on zoom) at every meeting. And, there was never any expression of a desire or willingness or need for change from BPD.
In follow-up to the presentations on March 10th from the Reimagining Public safety Task Force and the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, the City staff are coming back with their analysis and proposals on April 14th according to Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services. She will be presenting the plan for a Special Care Unit that evening.
It is spring and that means budgets. Where will the money be allocated for the next budget cycle? Will it go to more policing or services? The recent shootings in District 2 would lead the vote for policing. Reimagining Public Safety Task Force has handed in their recommendations for services and so would I.
The March 22nd City Council 4 pm special meeting was on the Implementation of Redistricting Plan for City Council District Boundaries. While gerrymandering is alive and well in other parts of the country, California uses independent redistricting commissions. Carol Marasovic chose to draw attention to the comment from the Independent Redistricting Commission Chair Elisabeth Watson, “…we did not rely on consultants to review public input or provide guidance…” and Carol followed with “…we don’t need to pay costly consultants all the time to go into a protracted process in order to achieve results…”
We do have a lot of talent in Berkeley and not everything should result in another contract with consultants, but Ben Bartlett’s $350,000 budget referral which passed on consent for a consultant to Facilitate a Community Process to Design and implement a Local Reparations Plan does need expertise. Leadership matters and recent consultant choices would suggest there needs to be a better selection process.
It was the presentation on Neighborhood Electrification & Gas Pruning (identifying small neighborhood blocks to electrify and prune/remove the gas line) that prompted Thomas Lord to comment at the Energy Commission.
Out of all the things that were said this week it was his words summarizing the challenge before us to cut our dependence on fossil fuels that keeps coming back. He said quite simply if we are going to get off fossil fuels in our buildings by 2045 (the goal set by CPUC and Governor Newsom), we need to electrify 4 to 5 units every single work day starting right now. Thomas Lord started with 30,000 (rough estimate from PG&E and Councilmember Kate Harrison’s office for the number of units to electrify in Berkeley) and a six-day work week.
While the task before Berkeley sounds insurmountable, Ithaca, New York a city about ¼ the population of Berkeley actually voted November 3, 2021 to decarbonize (electrify) every single building by 2030. Their count is 6000 buildings.
For all the bloviating at the March 15th Council meeting about how we don’t need to protect rooftop solar, because Berkeley is getting 100% renewable energy from EBCE. Ben Paulos Chair of the Energy Commission followed up this week as he (proudly) told the commissioners of his comments at City Council on rooftop solar as of marginal benefit and it is much more important to build housing. Which prompted my comment that for the very first time I was glad to see the merging of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) and the Energy Commission into the Climate and Energy Commission.
There was another conversation this week that stuck with me. On Friday at demonstration supporting Ukraine in Civic Center Park, I ran into Kathy Dervin, Co-Chair of 350 Bay Area Legislative Committee. We spoke briefly about the state of affairs in Berkeley, really the sad state and the word she used that stuck is what the city should be and isn’t, “transformative”.
Transformative is what doesn’t fit with Ben Paulos and Matthew Lewis (the YIMBY Lewis) and others that rooftop solar and building housing are incompatible. That 100% renewable has to come from somewhere. I challenge that the only way to have solar is to cover open space with solar farms, acres of solar panels at some distant location to be distributed into the grid.
We are already covering what feels like every foot of space in Berkeley with buildings. Why are we not wrapping those very same buildings with solar cells? Transformative are the developers who are doing just that. There is a 15-story net-zero energy high-rise under construction in Seattle with rainwater capture, reclaimed graywater and 27 out of 112 units as affordable. Solar energy isn’t new. What is old is not being able to see how to incorporate solar energy into new construction so we can cover open space with forests and habitat and all the other things we need for survival of the planet. There is a lot that can be done if we look beyond city borders for innovation. https://www.greenbuildermedia.com/blog/seattle-breaks-ground-on-net-zero-high-rise
The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission discussion of removal of Eucalyptus on 98 private properties using public FF Funds continued this week without resolution.
Saturday was the Dedication of Brickyard Cove at McLaughlin Eastshore Park. The sun was shining and the views of the bay were spectacular. Former Mayor Shirley Dean was in the audience, my historian of choice. Did the speakers (Elizabeth Echols – elected member to East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors, State Senator Nancy Skinner, Mayor and former Assemblyman Tom Bates, Loni Hancock former Mayor and State Senator, Mayor Arreguin) get the history of the shoreline parks movement right? Partly was the answer! When Tom Bates was in the State Assembly he did secure the funding to purchase the land, but two people who pursued with vigor the movement for shoreline parks and founded Urban Care were never mentioned, Rosalind and Albert Lapawsky.
It is because of unrelenting activism to save the bay from being filled and the shoreline covered with a shopping center, we are able to feel the bay breezes, walk the new trails and watch the meadow larks flutter over open space. Brickyard Cove is the land that was once a Berkeley City dump. Norman La Force captures the history in “Creating the Eastshore State Park an Activist History”. https://eastshorepark.org/dev/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CESP_history.pdf
The last speaker Robert Cheasty, Executive Director for Citizens for East Shore Parks (CESP) wasn’t staying close enough to the microphone, so I lost about half of what he said, though I know as a Board Member of CESP it included adding Point Molate to the shoreline parks.
March 20, 2022
I have a little catching up to do having taken a holiday from writing last weekend.
I had lunch with friends this last week who live just across the Bay in San Rafael. The husband used to live in Berkeley and both were curious about local Berkeley politics. I described what I knew of the incident at the Berkeley Drop-In Center, four police with guns drawn, handcuffing the program manager and keeping him on the ground even after it was determined, that he didn’t have a gun, just a phone.
The incident didn’t fit with their image of Berkeley as the bastion of liberal politics, but as I described to them Berkeley has changed with the high price of housing and gentrification or maybe it hasn’t. I was pretty shocked when I started attending City Council in 2014 and saw firsthand the in your face racism.
I finished two books this week A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes and White Space Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality by Sheryll Cashin. Both books cover similar territory, the familiar story that if you are Black, non-white your experience with policing is different than if you are white, although some might argue that being poor White or poor White and homeless isn’t much better. Even though this isn’t new information for many of us, the books are still worth reading.
Hayes focuses mostly on the difference in who, what, where and how policing is performed and law is applied based on race and neighborhood. How Black neighborhoods are treated like an occupied colony. Cashin goes deeper into history and the broader impacts and describes, “The Hood is a place of confinement, an enclosure, with surveillance, disinvestment, and dislocation from opportunity created through federal and local policy”. Cashin writes a lot about education financing. Cashin also covers that police are more likely to use force in a majority Black neighborhood and an integrated police force is no guarantee of ending biased policing.
Looking at old census data back to 1940, the highest percentage of Black residents in Berkeley was in 1970 at 23.5%. Now it is 7.8%. In the Amber 2 map, the council redistricting map which will be before council at 4 pm Tuesday, March 22 the neighborhoods with the highest percent of Blacks are still the formerly redlined areas with District 2 as the highest with 18% Blacks. District 5 is 2% and Districts 6,7 and 8 are 3% Black.
Listening to the public comment following the presentations on Reimagining Public Safety from the National Institute on Criminal Justice Reform and the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force on March 10, 2022 at the council special meeting, it was like listening to two different cities with two different experiences. There is a certain amount of fear expressed from District 2, a gentrifying area and accolades for policing from the hills. The hills where police turn a “blind eye” to illegally parked cars per councilmember Wengraf at the Public Safety Policy Committee versus the flats where parking enforcement is dutifully carried out.
Parking enforcement in fire zones (the hills) as requested by the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission is complicated according to District 6 Councilmember Wengraf and can’t be enforced according to Police Chief Louis without increasing the budget allocation to expand parking enforcement.
The Berkeley Drop-In Center incident was in District 3, 15% Black. Where according to one public speaker at another meeting, the incident was started by a caller seeing a phone as a gun. We can all be grateful that as traumatic as the incident was for everyone involved, in Berkeley the police only pulled their guns, no one fired them.
Part of the Reimagining Public Safety and the disparate policing found through the Center for Policing Equity Report in 2018 is Mayor Arreguin’s vision to create BerkDOT a Berkeley Department of Transportation to offload traffic enforcement and traffic stops from Berkeley Police. At the Transportation Commission Thursday evening March 17, BerkDOT was described as moving parking enforcement and school crossing guards into the new BerkDOT. The commission chair Karen Parolek gave her support which can best be described as enthusiastic for the plan to hire a consultant for $250,000 to develop the program. Which leads to another question, just how much does Berkeley spend on consultants? My opinion on the matter is all this rearranging just adds layers of administration and diverts spending away from services that are so badly needed by the vulnerable in our community. And, it doesn’t get to the root of the problem.
Parking is an issue that comes up over and over. The housing projects planned for the BART parking lots will leave only 85 parking spaces at Ashby BART and 200 spaces at North Berkeley BART. The survey of BART riders found most do not drive to the station and one proposed solution at the public meeting was those who do drive could park at the underutilized Center Street lot which badly needs users to offset construction and operating debt and expenses. The walk to the Downtown BART is short. Other options are being explored. It will be several years before the projects break ground so no immediate change is in the offing for drivers.
The changes to Hopkins Street to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety will happen much sooner. You can see the plans at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Hopkins/. Basically, the Sutter to The Alameda section will have a bicycle lane on each side of the street. Where Hopkins narrows crossing The Alameda toward the Bay down to the Hopkins and Gilman intersection both bicycle lanes (east and west bound) will move to the south side, the park, school and Monterey Market side of the street. Answers to public questions were thoughtful.
The March 15 special council meeting on the Housing Element and Residential Objective Standards dropped some interesting facts. No change in zoning is needed to meet the new Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) requirements of adding 8934 units and the average time from project approval to pulling the building permit is 3 years.
The first public speaker on housing and zoning was Matthew Lewis, the Matthew Lewis on California YIMBY staff, the Director of Communications https://cayimby.org/staff/ who should be registered as a lobbyist, who stated he would happily have the solar on his roof blocked, because Berkeley has opted up to 100% renewable with East Bay Community Energy therefore his solar doesn’t matter in decarbonization. Several public speakers made similar comments. The justification for protecting solar access was well outlined in the Planet and in public comment by Rob Wrenn. It fell on deaf ears as Councilmembers Kesarwani, Taplin, Droste, Robinson and Mayor Arreguin dismissed such calls and gave their support for lifting the cap on tall buildings in the downtown. Ben Bartlett was the only councilmember to speak in support of protecting rooftop solar. Wengraf avoided the topic of solar completely and Hahn and Harrison were absent.
Droste also bemoaned the open space requirements as adding to building expense. The whole city would be better off if the requirement for open space was a contribution to support our parks and especially the marina than a balcony hanging off a building or a rooftop with planters instead of solar.
The 3 years piece of information as the average time from approval of a project to the application for a permit may slip by those who aren’t deep into project approvals. The YIMBY build everywhere group blames Nimbyism (not in my back yard) for blocking projects. If they were actually watching and attending meetings they would know only a handful of projects are appealed and in they end they are almost always unanimously approved.
The real solution to getting multi-unit housing projects built is to enforce the lapse permit section of the zoning code though I would really support changing the time limit from one year to two years. If the lapsed permit was enforced instead of turning a blind eye to entitled/approved projects that sit without proceeding to a building permit, that would naturally select developers who want to build and rein in the speculators.
This is the Zoning Code BMC 23.404.060
C. Time Limits
2. Expiration of Permit
a. The Zoning Officer may declare a permit lapsed if it is not exercised within one year of its issuance, except as provided in Paragraph (b) below.
b. A permit authorizing construction may not be declared lapsed if the applicant has applied for a building permit or has made a substantial good faith effort to obtain a building permit and begin construction.
Hill Street Realty the developer for 2211 Harold Way never built anything. They were speculators and wasted seven years of public and staff time for a doomed project that was poorly designed and couldn’t be built. Those of us protesting the project tried in so many ways to inform, but we were dismissed. After all, how could ordinary citizens do a better job of reading architectural plans and financials than city planners, ZAB commissioners, DRC committee members and city council. We were right of course. The criticism of the project seismic study was right too. It was water that brought the plans down, the ground water that citizens warned would be a problem.
There are some other meetings that might have slipped your attention. The Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan wasn’t posted to the City Community Calendar until sometime Monday for the Wednesday, March 16 evening meeting. These public meetings never have video or audio recordings. By contrast the last three Hopkins Street meetings were recorded. It doesn’t take a conspiratorial mind to conclude either the city staff and directors involved are completely disorganized or the intent is to deliberately give short notice to limit attendance. The March 16th meeting consisted of: these are our three alternatives for development, which one do you like best? https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BMASP/ I couldn’t stay, so I can’t say how it ended.
The March 16th EBMUD presentation “Searching for the Sewage Signal” searching for COVID in wastewater was recorded and should be posted this week, maybe by the time you pick up this Diary. https://ebmud.com/about-us/education-resources/water-wednesday
The CDC is tracking SARS-CoV-2 RNA in sewage https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance. If you look at the map of the US the Bay Area is looking good with decreasing COVID-19 RNA found in wastewater, but I wouldn’t visit San Benito which is the red hotspot in northern California. The pandemic isn’t over yet, but if we pay attention, keep up with our vaccines including boosters and keep that N95/KN94 handy we can certainly reduce our risks.
I have a little catching up to do having taken a holiday from writing last weekend.
I had lunch with friends this last week who live just across the Bay in San Rafael. The husband used to live in Berkeley and both were curious about local Berkeley politics. I described what I knew of the incident at the Berkeley Drop-In Center, four police with guns drawn, handcuffing the program manager and keeping him on the ground even after it was determined, that he didn’t have a gun, just a phone.
The incident didn’t fit with their image of Berkeley as the bastion of liberal politics, but as I described to them Berkeley has changed with the high price of housing and gentrification or maybe it hasn’t. I was pretty shocked when I started attending City Council in 2014 and saw firsthand the in your face racism.
I finished two books this week A Colony in a Nation by Chris Hayes and White Space Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality by Sheryll Cashin. Both books cover similar territory, the familiar story that if you are Black, non-white your experience with policing is different than if you are white, although some might argue that being poor White or poor White and homeless isn’t much better. Even though this isn’t new information for many of us, the books are still worth reading.
Hayes focuses mostly on the difference in who, what, where and how policing is performed and law is applied based on race and neighborhood. How Black neighborhoods are treated like an occupied colony. Cashin goes deeper into history and the broader impacts and describes, “The Hood is a place of confinement, an enclosure, with surveillance, disinvestment, and dislocation from opportunity created through federal and local policy”. Cashin writes a lot about education financing. Cashin also covers that police are more likely to use force in a majority Black neighborhood and an integrated police force is no guarantee of ending biased policing.
Looking at old census data back to 1940, the highest percentage of Black residents in Berkeley was in 1970 at 23.5%. Now it is 7.8%. In the Amber 2 map, the council redistricting map which will be before council at 4 pm Tuesday, March 22 the neighborhoods with the highest percent of Blacks are still the formerly redlined areas with District 2 as the highest with 18% Blacks. District 5 is 2% and Districts 6,7 and 8 are 3% Black.
Listening to the public comment following the presentations on Reimagining Public Safety from the National Institute on Criminal Justice Reform and the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force on March 10, 2022 at the council special meeting, it was like listening to two different cities with two different experiences. There is a certain amount of fear expressed from District 2, a gentrifying area and accolades for policing from the hills. The hills where police turn a “blind eye” to illegally parked cars per councilmember Wengraf at the Public Safety Policy Committee versus the flats where parking enforcement is dutifully carried out.
Parking enforcement in fire zones (the hills) as requested by the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission is complicated according to District 6 Councilmember Wengraf and can’t be enforced according to Police Chief Louis without increasing the budget allocation to expand parking enforcement.
The Berkeley Drop-In Center incident was in District 3, 15% Black. Where according to one public speaker at another meeting, the incident was started by a caller seeing a phone as a gun. We can all be grateful that as traumatic as the incident was for everyone involved, in Berkeley the police only pulled their guns, no one fired them.
Part of the Reimagining Public Safety and the disparate policing found through the Center for Policing Equity Report in 2018 is Mayor Arreguin’s vision to create BerkDOT a Berkeley Department of Transportation to offload traffic enforcement and traffic stops from Berkeley Police. At the Transportation Commission Thursday evening March 17, BerkDOT was described as moving parking enforcement and school crossing guards into the new BerkDOT. The commission chair Karen Parolek gave her support which can best be described as enthusiastic for the plan to hire a consultant for $250,000 to develop the program. Which leads to another question, just how much does Berkeley spend on consultants? My opinion on the matter is all this rearranging just adds layers of administration and diverts spending away from services that are so badly needed by the vulnerable in our community. And, it doesn’t get to the root of the problem.
Parking is an issue that comes up over and over. The housing projects planned for the BART parking lots will leave only 85 parking spaces at Ashby BART and 200 spaces at North Berkeley BART. The survey of BART riders found most do not drive to the station and one proposed solution at the public meeting was those who do drive could park at the underutilized Center Street lot which badly needs users to offset construction and operating debt and expenses. The walk to the Downtown BART is short. Other options are being explored. It will be several years before the projects break ground so no immediate change is in the offing for drivers.
The changes to Hopkins Street to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety will happen much sooner. You can see the plans at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Hopkins/. Basically, the Sutter to The Alameda section will have a bicycle lane on each side of the street. Where Hopkins narrows crossing The Alameda toward the Bay down to the Hopkins and Gilman intersection both bicycle lanes (east and west bound) will move to the south side, the park, school and Monterey Market side of the street. Answers to public questions were thoughtful.
The March 15 special council meeting on the Housing Element and Residential Objective Standards dropped some interesting facts. No change in zoning is needed to meet the new Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) requirements of adding 8934 units and the average time from project approval to pulling the building permit is 3 years.
The first public speaker on housing and zoning was Matthew Lewis, the Matthew Lewis on California YIMBY staff, the Director of Communications https://cayimby.org/staff/ who should be registered as a lobbyist, who stated he would happily have the solar on his roof blocked, because Berkeley has opted up to 100% renewable with East Bay Community Energy therefore his solar doesn’t matter in decarbonization. Several public speakers made similar comments. The justification for protecting solar access was well outlined in the Planet and in public comment by Rob Wrenn. It fell on deaf ears as Councilmembers Kesarwani, Taplin, Droste, Robinson and Mayor Arreguin dismissed such calls and gave their support for lifting the cap on tall buildings in the downtown. Ben Bartlett was the only councilmember to speak in support of protecting rooftop solar. Wengraf avoided the topic of solar completely and Hahn and Harrison were absent.
Droste also bemoaned the open space requirements as adding to building expense. The whole city would be better off if the requirement for open space was a contribution to support our parks and especially the marina than a balcony hanging off a building or a rooftop with planters instead of solar.
The 3 years piece of information as the average time from approval of a project to the application for a permit may slip by those who aren’t deep into project approvals. The YIMBY build everywhere group blames Nimbyism (not in my back yard) for blocking projects. If they were actually watching and attending meetings they would know only a handful of projects are appealed and in they end they are almost always unanimously approved.
The real solution to getting multi-unit housing projects built is to enforce the lapse permit section of the zoning code though I would really support changing the time limit from one year to two years. If the lapsed permit was enforced instead of turning a blind eye to entitled/approved projects that sit without proceeding to a building permit, that would naturally select developers who want to build and rein in the speculators.
This is the Zoning Code BMC 23.404.060
C. Time Limits
2. Expiration of Permit
a. The Zoning Officer may declare a permit lapsed if it is not exercised within one year of its issuance, except as provided in Paragraph (b) below.
b. A permit authorizing construction may not be declared lapsed if the applicant has applied for a building permit or has made a substantial good faith effort to obtain a building permit and begin construction.
Hill Street Realty the developer for 2211 Harold Way never built anything. They were speculators and wasted seven years of public and staff time for a doomed project that was poorly designed and couldn’t be built. Those of us protesting the project tried in so many ways to inform, but we were dismissed. After all, how could ordinary citizens do a better job of reading architectural plans and financials than city planners, ZAB commissioners, DRC committee members and city council. We were right of course. The criticism of the project seismic study was right too. It was water that brought the plans down, the ground water that citizens warned would be a problem.
There are some other meetings that might have slipped your attention. The Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan wasn’t posted to the City Community Calendar until sometime Monday for the Wednesday, March 16 evening meeting. These public meetings never have video or audio recordings. By contrast the last three Hopkins Street meetings were recorded. It doesn’t take a conspiratorial mind to conclude either the city staff and directors involved are completely disorganized or the intent is to deliberately give short notice to limit attendance. The March 16th meeting consisted of: these are our three alternatives for development, which one do you like best? https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BMASP/ I couldn’t stay, so I can’t say how it ended.
The March 16th EBMUD presentation “Searching for the Sewage Signal” searching for COVID in wastewater was recorded and should be posted this week, maybe by the time you pick up this Diary. https://ebmud.com/about-us/education-resources/water-wednesday
The CDC is tracking SARS-CoV-2 RNA in sewage https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance. If you look at the map of the US the Bay Area is looking good with decreasing COVID-19 RNA found in wastewater, but I wouldn’t visit San Benito which is the red hotspot in northern California. The pandemic isn’t over yet, but if we pay attention, keep up with our vaccines including boosters and keep that N95/KN94 handy we can certainly reduce our risks.
March 6, 2022
It was a very full week and the survival of Ukraine and the Ukrainians hangs over everything changing minute by minute and hour by hour. It looks like Putin has decided that since the Ukrainians didn’t lay down and welcome the invasion, he will rain down massive destruction until there is nothing left to save. The “Z” on everything Russian presumably representing Zelensky is chilling.
Locally a lot happened. I heard at the Community for a Cultural Civic Center on Monday that my accidental misreading of a meeting date and publishing that the Civic Arts Commission Visioning Subcommittee was meeting again generated a barrage of pushback from City staff. That clears up where the pressure to stop community planning is generated. The seismic cost estimates are in with $24 million for the Maudelle Shirek Building and $20 million for the Veterans Memorial Building. These estimates include finishing only for the seismic retrofits and not finishing, painting, etc for the rest of the buildings. We did not receive the water intrusion cost report. The presentation to council is scheduled for March 22.
As probably many already heard, the Independent Redistricting Commission voted unanimously in support of the Amber 2 map. Seventeen members of the public attended the zoom meeting and nine spoke. No one opposed the Amber 2 map. There are a few more formalities to step through and the subcommittee is busy finishing their report. The meeting ended at 7:20 pm early enough to catch the Zero Waste Commission.
Zero Waste is actually a laudable goal, but attending meetings doesn’t give me any sense that the commission current leadership will get us there. This week I picked up an article that the world is on track to fill the oceans with so much plastic it will outweigh marine life by 2050. I commented that the commission update on plastic recycling was not helpful to me as a resident. We need direction in what to do.
We need more ordinary people appointees to the Zero Waste Commission to offset the two who dominate and shut down input from others. Steven Sherman, District 1 appointee, insisted he shouldn’t have to pay for weekly garbage pick-up, because he doesn’t generate enough garbage for weekly pickup. Rather than turning the laborers who do refuse collection into policing who does and doesn’t put out their garbage can for pickup, this could have turned into a teachable moment in how to educate the community in waste reduction especially since we are doing rather poorly in getting to that zero waste target. Maybe this call out by name will change the focus from self to community. We can hope.
The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) took back action on plastic bags from the Zero Waste Commission. That is a good thing. Councilmember Kate Harrison is the FITES Chair and at the Wednesday meeting she spoke to working with Berkeley Bowl to bring ideas forward.
Number eleven in the Planning Commission agenda was the Approach to Bird Safe Berkeley Requirements. The presentation by Zoe Covello, Assistant Planner, as described last week centered around problematic local ordinances. It was obvious that most (not all – several had been following the issue) of the commissioners did not read the letters from the public nor did it appear they looked independently at the declining bird populations or the American Bird Conservancy website. Commissioners did ask for the science. When Glenn Phillips, the Executive Director of Golden Gate Audubon gave his credentials as a science expert and then proceeded to comment, he was cut off.
This should be a lesson, as important as letters are as documentation to an issue, don’t expect them to be read. Showing up still matters even when experts are stymied from presenting facts and the science.
Ben Gould who was the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) Chair when the proposed CEAC Bird Safe Ordinance was sent to Council reminded everyone that it was written over 3 years ago. Then he stated that the American Bird Conservancy model ordinance should be used.
We think of skyscrapers of being the killer of birds, but the threat of reflective glass and surfaces starts from the ground up. And, that is exactly what we heard from Erin Diehm who has been on the issue of bird safe glass, bird safe features and dark skies on multiple fronts.
Those of us who attended and spoke hope we made an impact and the “Approach to Bird Safe Requirements” will come back with the American Bird Conservancy model as the base with a citywide requirement for 100% of the buildings from the ground up. Even with several commissioners supportive, we can’t expect that action without public pressure. The Planning Commission staff made it very clear that it is the City Manager who determines what is a priority and when staff will return with a finalized version.
If the City Manager ever comes out pushing for aggressive climate and environmental action, I will need a cupboard full of smelling salts to bring me back from fainting.
Several of us regularly attend the Design Review Committee reminding committee members not to let the importance of native plants and habitat slip off the radar and highlighting problem landscape plans that fall below the needed minimum of 70%. There is, of course, more to just picking native plants, some do a better job to support ecosystems and that is where Calscape https://calscape.org/ comes to help.
I missed the ceremony for the Urban Forestry Tree Planting Grant at James Kenny Park. There hasn’t been any noticeable success in gaining support from forestry to plant native trees. As I learned over the last several years planting non-native trees and plants threatens the survival of native species of plants and animals. When enough native plants are replaced with imported exotics, a tipping point is reached and the ecosystem starts to collapse.
On the same day as the tree planting ceremony, the New York Times published https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/03/climate/biodiversity-map.html an article with a map of the places in the “…lower 48 states most likely to have plants and animals at high risk of global extinction…California has the most imperiled biodiversity of any state in the contiguous United States.” When we fill our land with non-native plants as is happening with most of the trees put into the ground by the City of Berkeley, we are contributing to the problem. The same is true when we take home non-natives for our yards and gardens.
It was a very full week and the survival of Ukraine and the Ukrainians hangs over everything changing minute by minute and hour by hour. It looks like Putin has decided that since the Ukrainians didn’t lay down and welcome the invasion, he will rain down massive destruction until there is nothing left to save. The “Z” on everything Russian presumably representing Zelensky is chilling.
Locally a lot happened. I heard at the Community for a Cultural Civic Center on Monday that my accidental misreading of a meeting date and publishing that the Civic Arts Commission Visioning Subcommittee was meeting again generated a barrage of pushback from City staff. That clears up where the pressure to stop community planning is generated. The seismic cost estimates are in with $24 million for the Maudelle Shirek Building and $20 million for the Veterans Memorial Building. These estimates include finishing only for the seismic retrofits and not finishing, painting, etc for the rest of the buildings. We did not receive the water intrusion cost report. The presentation to council is scheduled for March 22.
As probably many already heard, the Independent Redistricting Commission voted unanimously in support of the Amber 2 map. Seventeen members of the public attended the zoom meeting and nine spoke. No one opposed the Amber 2 map. There are a few more formalities to step through and the subcommittee is busy finishing their report. The meeting ended at 7:20 pm early enough to catch the Zero Waste Commission.
Zero Waste is actually a laudable goal, but attending meetings doesn’t give me any sense that the commission current leadership will get us there. This week I picked up an article that the world is on track to fill the oceans with so much plastic it will outweigh marine life by 2050. I commented that the commission update on plastic recycling was not helpful to me as a resident. We need direction in what to do.
We need more ordinary people appointees to the Zero Waste Commission to offset the two who dominate and shut down input from others. Steven Sherman, District 1 appointee, insisted he shouldn’t have to pay for weekly garbage pick-up, because he doesn’t generate enough garbage for weekly pickup. Rather than turning the laborers who do refuse collection into policing who does and doesn’t put out their garbage can for pickup, this could have turned into a teachable moment in how to educate the community in waste reduction especially since we are doing rather poorly in getting to that zero waste target. Maybe this call out by name will change the focus from self to community. We can hope.
The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) took back action on plastic bags from the Zero Waste Commission. That is a good thing. Councilmember Kate Harrison is the FITES Chair and at the Wednesday meeting she spoke to working with Berkeley Bowl to bring ideas forward.
Number eleven in the Planning Commission agenda was the Approach to Bird Safe Berkeley Requirements. The presentation by Zoe Covello, Assistant Planner, as described last week centered around problematic local ordinances. It was obvious that most (not all – several had been following the issue) of the commissioners did not read the letters from the public nor did it appear they looked independently at the declining bird populations or the American Bird Conservancy website. Commissioners did ask for the science. When Glenn Phillips, the Executive Director of Golden Gate Audubon gave his credentials as a science expert and then proceeded to comment, he was cut off.
This should be a lesson, as important as letters are as documentation to an issue, don’t expect them to be read. Showing up still matters even when experts are stymied from presenting facts and the science.
Ben Gould who was the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) Chair when the proposed CEAC Bird Safe Ordinance was sent to Council reminded everyone that it was written over 3 years ago. Then he stated that the American Bird Conservancy model ordinance should be used.
We think of skyscrapers of being the killer of birds, but the threat of reflective glass and surfaces starts from the ground up. And, that is exactly what we heard from Erin Diehm who has been on the issue of bird safe glass, bird safe features and dark skies on multiple fronts.
Those of us who attended and spoke hope we made an impact and the “Approach to Bird Safe Requirements” will come back with the American Bird Conservancy model as the base with a citywide requirement for 100% of the buildings from the ground up. Even with several commissioners supportive, we can’t expect that action without public pressure. The Planning Commission staff made it very clear that it is the City Manager who determines what is a priority and when staff will return with a finalized version.
If the City Manager ever comes out pushing for aggressive climate and environmental action, I will need a cupboard full of smelling salts to bring me back from fainting.
Several of us regularly attend the Design Review Committee reminding committee members not to let the importance of native plants and habitat slip off the radar and highlighting problem landscape plans that fall below the needed minimum of 70%. There is, of course, more to just picking native plants, some do a better job to support ecosystems and that is where Calscape https://calscape.org/ comes to help.
I missed the ceremony for the Urban Forestry Tree Planting Grant at James Kenny Park. There hasn’t been any noticeable success in gaining support from forestry to plant native trees. As I learned over the last several years planting non-native trees and plants threatens the survival of native species of plants and animals. When enough native plants are replaced with imported exotics, a tipping point is reached and the ecosystem starts to collapse.
On the same day as the tree planting ceremony, the New York Times published https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/03/climate/biodiversity-map.html an article with a map of the places in the “…lower 48 states most likely to have plants and animals at high risk of global extinction…California has the most imperiled biodiversity of any state in the contiguous United States.” When we fill our land with non-native plants as is happening with most of the trees put into the ground by the City of Berkeley, we are contributing to the problem. The same is true when we take home non-natives for our yards and gardens.
Here is the link to check out SARS-CoV-1 RNA Levels in Wastewater in the United States from the CDC. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance Whether the presence and amount of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater is increasing or decreasing is a leading indicator of the direction COVID-19 will take in the community. If you go to the map you will see big gaps in where SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater is being measured. Fortunately for us there are lots of sites in and around the Bay area and our dots are blue indicating declining presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater.
The coming week is filled with proposals, reports, meetings and a press conference on policing. One of the recommendations from the National Institute for Criminal Justice (NICJR) is Guaranteed Income or Universal Basic Income for families living in poverty. The report is using pre-pandemic statistics as that is all that is available, but it is still alarming that in this highly educated rich city where the median “sold” home price is now $1.6 million so many are living in poverty, 19.1%. The rate of poverty for Alameda County is 14.1%.
I finished the book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliot, 2021. It is a hard read and very much worth your time. I wanted so much for Dasani, the homeless eleven-year-old whose life we follow until she is nineteen to break the cycle of poverty, but the story of Dasani is real life. The ties to family even a very dysfunctional one are strong much stronger than opportunity which comes with the price of leaving a known identity, siblings and life behind. One of the reviews I read after I finished by Erika Taylor said of the book “… [it] is sure to linger after the last page is turned.” And, that is so true.
What do we do differently as a society? We see the homeless in the street, the parks, their tents and want to turn away, but rarely do most of us see homelessness, poverty, hunger, through the eyes of a child.
Giving cash with no strings attached to low-income mothers with newborns was the last segment featured on Saturday’s PBS Newshour. The New York City guaranteed income program is “The Bridge Project”. Referenced in the segment though not by name was the just published “Baby’s First Years” the study to understand how poverty reduction affects child development by giving a low-income mother $333 a month versus $20 per month https://www.babysfirstyears.com/
The Planning Commission held a public hearing on amendments to Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements on Wednesday evening followed with the same material at the Housing Advisory Commission on Thursday evening. Both commissions listened and responded as if there is ample open land to build affordable housing in this 10 ½ square miles of ground we call Berkeley. Not even all of the 10 ½ square miles is buildable. There is the Hayward fault, slide areas and high fire zones on the east and liquefaction and a future of rising sea level and groundwater on the west.
While the law has changed and cities can require units for low income households in market rate housing (inclusionary housing), neither commission did so. That should leave one wondering just exactly how will Berkeley meet the requirement for 43% or 3854 of the 8934 units to be built between 2023 – 2031 to be for extremely low and low-income households. Both commissions accepted the staff recommended fee structure by square foot instead of per unit and the fee amount despite a healthy showing of housing developers insisting on lower fees and exceptions at the Planning Commission.
I have yet to see plans for six, seven and eight story multi-use projects pop up in District 5 along the Berkeley commercial corridor like Solano from Curtis to The Alameda. There is, of course, the price of land and zoning, but spreading moderate density housing with inclusionary units throughout the entire city not just the formerly redlined areas would be an interesting move. Maybe that is a better approach to changing the face of Berkeley and biased policing than surveillance and programs with a sting of “stop and frisk” for South and West Berkeley. Which brings us to the February 2 incident at the Berkeley Drop-in Center.
The attached letter (with private citizen emails removed, public officials remain) describing what happened on February 2, 2022 to the Program Manager at the Berkeley Drop-in Center was forwarded to me. There is a Press Conference scheduled for 4 pm Monday and you can bet I will be tuned into zoom to watch it. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82998271252?pwd=TW5pUFVYNHorLzYwZXlwTUJTeDRWZz09
EMAIL LETTER
From: Katrina Killian <kkillian@acnetmhc.org>
To: mayor@cityofberkeley.info
Cc: Warhuus, Lisa <lwarhuus@cityofberkeley.info>; BBartlett@cityofberkeley.info; jlouis@cityofberkeley.info; council@cityofberkeley.info; Rep.Barbara.Lee@mail.house.gov; keith.carson@acgov.org
Sent: Fri, Mar 4, 2022 1:28 pm
Subject: The Berkeley Drop-In Center Manager Detained at Gunpoint by Berkeley Police while putting up Black History Month Decorations Amidst Berkeley granting Center for non-police crisis response.
Honorable Mayor Jesse Arreguín –
We are writing to you, as we have received no response from the city thus far concerning the traumatic event that took place a month ago, on February 2, 2022. First to our representative, Honorable Ben Barlett, who joined us via Zoom to offer his sympathies. We also contacted Dr. Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health, Housing, and Human Services, who we are currently negotiating the Specialized Care Unit Bridge Services contract (Specification No. 22-11472- C) to provide Peer-Run non-police crisis response.
We request an immediate meeting with you, Mr. Mayor, Madam City Manager, Police Chief Jennifer Louis, and Dr. Lisa Wuurhus. The reason for our request is that on February 2nd, 2022 Jorge, Program Manager of the Berkeley Drop-In Center, a young Black father, was detained at gunpoint by Berkeley police officers. He recounts the incident as, “brutalizing, shaming, traumatizing and completely unnecessary” He says it “felt like they wanted to kill me.”
The Berkeley Drop-In Center (BDIC), is the longest-running program of the Alameda County Network of Mental Health Clients (ACNMHC), and the building itself has been a hub of community service for more than 40 years. ACNMHC is one of the oldest Peer-run agencies in the nation, founded more than 30 years ago, and we are 100% staffed by folx with lived experience with mental health challenges, and experiences with substance use experience, homelessness, incarceration, and the child welfare system. We serve thousands of people each year and are on the ground supporting the folx who have been pushed at the margins, primarily BIMPOC adults.
He was finishing putting up the last of Black History Month decorations when more than four police officers “approached [him] from behind with their guns out, they did not announce they were the police.” He was extremely terrified saying “because I had my black phone in my hand and knew if I made one move too quickly – I was just visualizing myself getting shot if I made the wrong move.”
“I announced myself as the Berkeley Drop-In Center Program Manager, and they patted me down and it was evident I did not have a gun. By this time the Staff and the community came out saying that I worked here and was not doing anything wrong. Still, more officers continued to arrive and they kept me on the ground, handcuffed, for more than 15 minutes, knowing I had no gun, knowing that I was the Program Manager. I’m so confused that why after knowing I had no gun, they kept me detained, in handcuffs, and on the ground, and why more police officers continued to arrive” Following the incident, the Center had to close for several days to recuperate and ACNMHC had to hire trauma healers to support them moving forward. The Center contacted city officials, with no response.
We are also calling for a Press Conference on Monday, March 7th, 2022 at 4:00 pm PT via Zoom (link to join) to inform the community and our allies of the continued actions of the Berkeley Police Department in matters of how it treats Black and other Folx of Color in our community.
There have been continued efforts in the community emphasizing the ongoing need to reimagine and reform the Berkeley police department for higher public safety, including ending racial profiling, creating the Berkeley Police Accountability Board, Berkeley Reimagining Task Force for Public Saftey and Police. While this work is ongoing and the Berkeley police department is aware of the efforts being made to make it the best police department in the nation, the behaviors of our officers have not changed.
We are very concerned for the safety of the staff members of the organizations who have been and continue to work on these efforts directly tied to community safety. We stand in solidarity with Jorge Colon, his family, and all marginalized people who continue to fear for their lives every day, just while doing their jobs.
We are all committed to The Berkeley Drop-In Center located in South Berkeley and all efforts to make our community safer. Please make the effort to immediately schedule this meeting with us, at which I will be joined by Jorge Colon (Program Manager BDIC), Janavi Dhyani (Director of Operations), boona cheema (Vice-Chair, Reimaging Task Force and ACNMHC Board Member), and Gigi Crowder (Executive Director of NAMI, and ACNMHC Consultant).
In solidarity with you in search of equity and justice,
Katrina Killian
Katrina Killian, Executive Director
Alameda County Network of Mental Health Clients
3238 Adeline Street, Berkeley Ca 94703
The coming week is filled with proposals, reports, meetings and a press conference on policing. One of the recommendations from the National Institute for Criminal Justice (NICJR) is Guaranteed Income or Universal Basic Income for families living in poverty. The report is using pre-pandemic statistics as that is all that is available, but it is still alarming that in this highly educated rich city where the median “sold” home price is now $1.6 million so many are living in poverty, 19.1%. The rate of poverty for Alameda County is 14.1%.
I finished the book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliot, 2021. It is a hard read and very much worth your time. I wanted so much for Dasani, the homeless eleven-year-old whose life we follow until she is nineteen to break the cycle of poverty, but the story of Dasani is real life. The ties to family even a very dysfunctional one are strong much stronger than opportunity which comes with the price of leaving a known identity, siblings and life behind. One of the reviews I read after I finished by Erika Taylor said of the book “… [it] is sure to linger after the last page is turned.” And, that is so true.
What do we do differently as a society? We see the homeless in the street, the parks, their tents and want to turn away, but rarely do most of us see homelessness, poverty, hunger, through the eyes of a child.
Giving cash with no strings attached to low-income mothers with newborns was the last segment featured on Saturday’s PBS Newshour. The New York City guaranteed income program is “The Bridge Project”. Referenced in the segment though not by name was the just published “Baby’s First Years” the study to understand how poverty reduction affects child development by giving a low-income mother $333 a month versus $20 per month https://www.babysfirstyears.com/
The Planning Commission held a public hearing on amendments to Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements on Wednesday evening followed with the same material at the Housing Advisory Commission on Thursday evening. Both commissions listened and responded as if there is ample open land to build affordable housing in this 10 ½ square miles of ground we call Berkeley. Not even all of the 10 ½ square miles is buildable. There is the Hayward fault, slide areas and high fire zones on the east and liquefaction and a future of rising sea level and groundwater on the west.
While the law has changed and cities can require units for low income households in market rate housing (inclusionary housing), neither commission did so. That should leave one wondering just exactly how will Berkeley meet the requirement for 43% or 3854 of the 8934 units to be built between 2023 – 2031 to be for extremely low and low-income households. Both commissions accepted the staff recommended fee structure by square foot instead of per unit and the fee amount despite a healthy showing of housing developers insisting on lower fees and exceptions at the Planning Commission.
I have yet to see plans for six, seven and eight story multi-use projects pop up in District 5 along the Berkeley commercial corridor like Solano from Curtis to The Alameda. There is, of course, the price of land and zoning, but spreading moderate density housing with inclusionary units throughout the entire city not just the formerly redlined areas would be an interesting move. Maybe that is a better approach to changing the face of Berkeley and biased policing than surveillance and programs with a sting of “stop and frisk” for South and West Berkeley. Which brings us to the February 2 incident at the Berkeley Drop-in Center.
The attached letter (with private citizen emails removed, public officials remain) describing what happened on February 2, 2022 to the Program Manager at the Berkeley Drop-in Center was forwarded to me. There is a Press Conference scheduled for 4 pm Monday and you can bet I will be tuned into zoom to watch it. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82998271252?pwd=TW5pUFVYNHorLzYwZXlwTUJTeDRWZz09
EMAIL LETTER
From: Katrina Killian <kkillian@acnetmhc.org>
To: mayor@cityofberkeley.info
Cc: Warhuus, Lisa <lwarhuus@cityofberkeley.info>; BBartlett@cityofberkeley.info; jlouis@cityofberkeley.info; council@cityofberkeley.info; Rep.Barbara.Lee@mail.house.gov; keith.carson@acgov.org
Sent: Fri, Mar 4, 2022 1:28 pm
Subject: The Berkeley Drop-In Center Manager Detained at Gunpoint by Berkeley Police while putting up Black History Month Decorations Amidst Berkeley granting Center for non-police crisis response.
Honorable Mayor Jesse Arreguín –
We are writing to you, as we have received no response from the city thus far concerning the traumatic event that took place a month ago, on February 2, 2022. First to our representative, Honorable Ben Barlett, who joined us via Zoom to offer his sympathies. We also contacted Dr. Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health, Housing, and Human Services, who we are currently negotiating the Specialized Care Unit Bridge Services contract (Specification No. 22-11472- C) to provide Peer-Run non-police crisis response.
We request an immediate meeting with you, Mr. Mayor, Madam City Manager, Police Chief Jennifer Louis, and Dr. Lisa Wuurhus. The reason for our request is that on February 2nd, 2022 Jorge, Program Manager of the Berkeley Drop-In Center, a young Black father, was detained at gunpoint by Berkeley police officers. He recounts the incident as, “brutalizing, shaming, traumatizing and completely unnecessary” He says it “felt like they wanted to kill me.”
The Berkeley Drop-In Center (BDIC), is the longest-running program of the Alameda County Network of Mental Health Clients (ACNMHC), and the building itself has been a hub of community service for more than 40 years. ACNMHC is one of the oldest Peer-run agencies in the nation, founded more than 30 years ago, and we are 100% staffed by folx with lived experience with mental health challenges, and experiences with substance use experience, homelessness, incarceration, and the child welfare system. We serve thousands of people each year and are on the ground supporting the folx who have been pushed at the margins, primarily BIMPOC adults.
He was finishing putting up the last of Black History Month decorations when more than four police officers “approached [him] from behind with their guns out, they did not announce they were the police.” He was extremely terrified saying “because I had my black phone in my hand and knew if I made one move too quickly – I was just visualizing myself getting shot if I made the wrong move.”
“I announced myself as the Berkeley Drop-In Center Program Manager, and they patted me down and it was evident I did not have a gun. By this time the Staff and the community came out saying that I worked here and was not doing anything wrong. Still, more officers continued to arrive and they kept me on the ground, handcuffed, for more than 15 minutes, knowing I had no gun, knowing that I was the Program Manager. I’m so confused that why after knowing I had no gun, they kept me detained, in handcuffs, and on the ground, and why more police officers continued to arrive” Following the incident, the Center had to close for several days to recuperate and ACNMHC had to hire trauma healers to support them moving forward. The Center contacted city officials, with no response.
We are also calling for a Press Conference on Monday, March 7th, 2022 at 4:00 pm PT via Zoom (link to join) to inform the community and our allies of the continued actions of the Berkeley Police Department in matters of how it treats Black and other Folx of Color in our community.
There have been continued efforts in the community emphasizing the ongoing need to reimagine and reform the Berkeley police department for higher public safety, including ending racial profiling, creating the Berkeley Police Accountability Board, Berkeley Reimagining Task Force for Public Saftey and Police. While this work is ongoing and the Berkeley police department is aware of the efforts being made to make it the best police department in the nation, the behaviors of our officers have not changed.
We are very concerned for the safety of the staff members of the organizations who have been and continue to work on these efforts directly tied to community safety. We stand in solidarity with Jorge Colon, his family, and all marginalized people who continue to fear for their lives every day, just while doing their jobs.
We are all committed to The Berkeley Drop-In Center located in South Berkeley and all efforts to make our community safer. Please make the effort to immediately schedule this meeting with us, at which I will be joined by Jorge Colon (Program Manager BDIC), Janavi Dhyani (Director of Operations), boona cheema (Vice-Chair, Reimaging Task Force and ACNMHC Board Member), and Gigi Crowder (Executive Director of NAMI, and ACNMHC Consultant).
In solidarity with you in search of equity and justice,
Katrina Killian
Katrina Killian, Executive Director
Alameda County Network of Mental Health Clients
3238 Adeline Street, Berkeley Ca 94703
February 27, 2022
The largest typeface today on the front page of the SF Chronicle is: “$1.1 million Berkeley renovation nightmare.” Friends of Adeline is not mentioned by name, but without their support and involvement, Leonard Powell would be just one more elderly Black homeowner in a gentrifying area caught in receivership and an unrelenting city.
How does a renovation bill on a house near the Ashby BART Station run up to $1.1 million with the City of Berkeley at the bottom of it? Berkeley should have found a way out of this mess years ago instead of continuing the legal battle against Mr. Powell. None of this makes any sense unless the goal from the beginning was to take away Mr. Powell’s house. Since this started with the Berkeley Police Department and the City Attorney’s office, maybe that is the first place to look, but there are plenty of City hands in the pot or maybe more aptly the plot.
The twenty-seven-month wait is nearly over for the Bird Safe Glass and Dark Skies Ordinance at least that is the hope. The Bird Safe Ordinance is #11 on the March 2nd Planning Commission agenda as a “discussion” item. This long wait could be a plus if Zoe Covello, Assistant Planner starts with the model legislation from the American Bird Conservancy https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/model-ordinance/.
The model for legislation was written in December 2020 a little over a year after the Bird Safe ordinance proposal from CEAC was referred by City Council to the Planning Commission. Unfortunately, Covello’s presentation of options starts with problematic ordinances from neighboring cities that might have looked innovative years ago, but contain too many exceptions at a time when bird populations are in staggering decline https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/ To compound this problem, it looks like the recommendation may be guidelines instead of mandatory compliance with an ordinance.
Having attended years of Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meetings, I can tell you for a fact, voluntary guidelines do not work. It is a very rare exception for a developer to commit to Bird safe glass and in those two rare instances observed in the recent past, the commitment from Bayer and 600 Addison was limited to the west facing facades not 100/100/100 as recommended by the American Bird Conservancy. The 100/100/100 stands for the first 100 feet ground to 100 feet high, 100% bird safe glass and 100% of the building.
The most significant outcome of Tuesday’s Agenda and Rules Committee is that neither Keith May, Disaster and Fire Safety Commission Secretary, and Khin Chin, Office of Emergency Services, who staff the commission nor commissioners knew that the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission recommendation finally made it to a City Council draft agenda. So of course, they weren’t present to support their measure that Council direct the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) to enforce existing Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) parking restrictions in all Fire Zones.
No one will see the recommendation for parking enforcement in fire zones at the council meeting on March 8th because the Agenda Committee members Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn took it off the agenda and sent the recommendation on a detour to the Public Safety Committee.
Parking on narrow winding roads in the hillside fire zones has been a problem for decades with hand wringing, declarations and failure to act every year I can remember. The surprise was that the two councilmembers who just gave presentations on the fire danger in the hills for the ADU ordinance would send a parking enforcement recommendation in fire zones to a committee. Can those meter maid cars even make it up into the hills?
Henry DeNero from the Hillside Fire Safety Group https://www.berkeleyhillsidefiresafety.org/ gave a presentation to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on the fire danger from Eucalyptus trees with a map of Eucalyptus Groves in Berkeley including groves on private property. DeNero requested the use of Measure FF funds on private and public property for clean-up of ground debris and stripping Eucalyptus bark to 15 ft on the tree trunk over the next three years followed with complete Eucalyptus tree removal.
Commissioner former Mayor Shirley Dean asked for an opinion of the fire danger from the Berkeley Fire Department (BFD) members staffing the meeting to which the response was that BPD does not comment on the species of trees per instruction from the City. Commissioner Dean asked if the BFD in their Vegetation Management Inspections could prioritize the mapped Eucalyptus groves. It seems that doesn’t fit the vegetation inspections either. No decisions were made except to bring back further discussion of the Eucalyptus at the next commission meeting.
The largest typeface today on the front page of the SF Chronicle is: “$1.1 million Berkeley renovation nightmare.” Friends of Adeline is not mentioned by name, but without their support and involvement, Leonard Powell would be just one more elderly Black homeowner in a gentrifying area caught in receivership and an unrelenting city.
How does a renovation bill on a house near the Ashby BART Station run up to $1.1 million with the City of Berkeley at the bottom of it? Berkeley should have found a way out of this mess years ago instead of continuing the legal battle against Mr. Powell. None of this makes any sense unless the goal from the beginning was to take away Mr. Powell’s house. Since this started with the Berkeley Police Department and the City Attorney’s office, maybe that is the first place to look, but there are plenty of City hands in the pot or maybe more aptly the plot.
The twenty-seven-month wait is nearly over for the Bird Safe Glass and Dark Skies Ordinance at least that is the hope. The Bird Safe Ordinance is #11 on the March 2nd Planning Commission agenda as a “discussion” item. This long wait could be a plus if Zoe Covello, Assistant Planner starts with the model legislation from the American Bird Conservancy https://abcbirds.org/glass-collisions/model-ordinance/.
The model for legislation was written in December 2020 a little over a year after the Bird Safe ordinance proposal from CEAC was referred by City Council to the Planning Commission. Unfortunately, Covello’s presentation of options starts with problematic ordinances from neighboring cities that might have looked innovative years ago, but contain too many exceptions at a time when bird populations are in staggering decline https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/ To compound this problem, it looks like the recommendation may be guidelines instead of mandatory compliance with an ordinance.
Having attended years of Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meetings, I can tell you for a fact, voluntary guidelines do not work. It is a very rare exception for a developer to commit to Bird safe glass and in those two rare instances observed in the recent past, the commitment from Bayer and 600 Addison was limited to the west facing facades not 100/100/100 as recommended by the American Bird Conservancy. The 100/100/100 stands for the first 100 feet ground to 100 feet high, 100% bird safe glass and 100% of the building.
The most significant outcome of Tuesday’s Agenda and Rules Committee is that neither Keith May, Disaster and Fire Safety Commission Secretary, and Khin Chin, Office of Emergency Services, who staff the commission nor commissioners knew that the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission recommendation finally made it to a City Council draft agenda. So of course, they weren’t present to support their measure that Council direct the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) to enforce existing Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) parking restrictions in all Fire Zones.
No one will see the recommendation for parking enforcement in fire zones at the council meeting on March 8th because the Agenda Committee members Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn took it off the agenda and sent the recommendation on a detour to the Public Safety Committee.
Parking on narrow winding roads in the hillside fire zones has been a problem for decades with hand wringing, declarations and failure to act every year I can remember. The surprise was that the two councilmembers who just gave presentations on the fire danger in the hills for the ADU ordinance would send a parking enforcement recommendation in fire zones to a committee. Can those meter maid cars even make it up into the hills?
Henry DeNero from the Hillside Fire Safety Group https://www.berkeleyhillsidefiresafety.org/ gave a presentation to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on the fire danger from Eucalyptus trees with a map of Eucalyptus Groves in Berkeley including groves on private property. DeNero requested the use of Measure FF funds on private and public property for clean-up of ground debris and stripping Eucalyptus bark to 15 ft on the tree trunk over the next three years followed with complete Eucalyptus tree removal.
Commissioner former Mayor Shirley Dean asked for an opinion of the fire danger from the Berkeley Fire Department (BFD) members staffing the meeting to which the response was that BPD does not comment on the species of trees per instruction from the City. Commissioner Dean asked if the BFD in their Vegetation Management Inspections could prioritize the mapped Eucalyptus groves. It seems that doesn’t fit the vegetation inspections either. No decisions were made except to bring back further discussion of the Eucalyptus at the next commission meeting.
The Tuesday evening City Council meeting looked like it would run on forever with one UCB student speaking after another to express their support for the Southside Complete Streets Plan. The item had been moved from “Action” to “Consent” for approval, but that did not stop the continuous stream of speakers to add their support. It was one of those meetings where I wish we had the old rules in place where an item on the consent calendar would be pulled to action when the fourth speaker stood up to comment even if every speaker was in favor of the item. There was no opposition. There was the repeated request to end automobile traffic on Telegraph between Dwight and campus.
The report from the Berkeley Police Interim Chief on the implementation of the Fair and Impartial Policing Task Force Recommendations and the year-end Crime and Collision data was moved to the March 8th council meeting.
Thursday morning at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting Sharon Friedrichsen, the new Budget Manager spoke to posting budgets so that questions could be sent in advance of meetings giving staff time to research answers. This would be a very welcome complete turnaround from current practice of last minute/last hour posting.
Also, under discussion was police recruiting. Hearing the City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley plan to expand the Berkeley Police Department to 181 officers was quite a shock when the presentation of findings and recommendations from the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) and the Reimagining Public Safety Task force is still more than a week away. The nationwide search for a new police chief is ongoing. Despite these facts, there seems to be a rush to stack the deck and brush aside any counter recommendations. In fact, there will be an analysis and report from the City arriving at some unspecified time after the NICJR and Task Force presentations on March 10th.
It is interesting how the reputation of artists and Donald Trump spillover into public art in Berkeley. The poem ‘In This Place’ by Amanda Gorman, the same Youth Poet Laureate who read ‘The Hill We Climb’ at President Biden’s inauguration will be on the Durant side of 2352 Shattuck the Logan Park building. Amanda Gorman has conditioned the commissioning of her poem on approval of an exception to the existing public art policy. The Civic Arts Commission Chair Lisa Bullwinkel read the conditions from the agreement and explained should there be a change in the reputation of the ownership of the building that would reflect poorly on the artist Amanda Gorman, she could request that the poem be removed from the building and donated to the city for placement at another location. This stems from artists wanting to disassociate themselves and their artwork from buildings where the Trump name appears. The Arts Commission voted unanimously in support of the requested policy exception for Amanda Gorman.
I took advantage of the President’s Holiday and did something I have never done, I tuned into what is supposed to be the most popular cable news shows. It was in full throttle Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity on Monday night. To contemplate that the most popular shows are a world where praise for authoritarians is peddled along with misinformation, fear and racism is profoundly disturbing.
People with a steady diet of rightwing media live in an alternate universe. And, this leads to this week’s books.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury published in 1953 is back on the banned book list which is so interesting since it is about book burning and censorship. The history of Fahrenheit 451 by Jonathan R. Eller and Ray Bradbury’s comments decades after publication that come with the 60th Anniversary edition are just as interesting if not more so than the novel. Bradbury discusses requests to rewrite the story and how words and lines removed or replaced for school audiences is also censorship. Bradbury has a passage in the novel of the forever wars. Something we thought we might finally live without until this week’s invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
On Tuesday, the podcast “Why is this Happening” ran an updated episode with Dr. Izzy Lowell, who runs Queer Med, a private clinic that specializes in health care for trans youth and adults. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/treating-trans-youth-with-dr-izzy-lowell/id1382983397?i=1000551858078
Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt, published in 2015 about the transitioning of the transgender youth Nicole Maines, her family, and public response was our February book club reading choice. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/10/19/becoming-nicole/ The very next day after our book club meeting Governor Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to launch inquiries into parents and medical providers of transgender children, charging that treatment of trans youth is child abuse. Not to be outdone by Texas, the Florida House passed HB1557 the anti-LGBTQ bill dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The furor over Critical Race Theory, the classroom, banning books, anti-LGBTQ laws, voter suppression and gas pump stickers “blame Biden” for high gas prices, tells us where the 2022 elections are going. One caller on talk radio suggested we should be carrying our sharpies and cross out Biden and write Trump and Putin on those “blame” stickers.
The report from the Berkeley Police Interim Chief on the implementation of the Fair and Impartial Policing Task Force Recommendations and the year-end Crime and Collision data was moved to the March 8th council meeting.
Thursday morning at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting Sharon Friedrichsen, the new Budget Manager spoke to posting budgets so that questions could be sent in advance of meetings giving staff time to research answers. This would be a very welcome complete turnaround from current practice of last minute/last hour posting.
Also, under discussion was police recruiting. Hearing the City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley plan to expand the Berkeley Police Department to 181 officers was quite a shock when the presentation of findings and recommendations from the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) and the Reimagining Public Safety Task force is still more than a week away. The nationwide search for a new police chief is ongoing. Despite these facts, there seems to be a rush to stack the deck and brush aside any counter recommendations. In fact, there will be an analysis and report from the City arriving at some unspecified time after the NICJR and Task Force presentations on March 10th.
It is interesting how the reputation of artists and Donald Trump spillover into public art in Berkeley. The poem ‘In This Place’ by Amanda Gorman, the same Youth Poet Laureate who read ‘The Hill We Climb’ at President Biden’s inauguration will be on the Durant side of 2352 Shattuck the Logan Park building. Amanda Gorman has conditioned the commissioning of her poem on approval of an exception to the existing public art policy. The Civic Arts Commission Chair Lisa Bullwinkel read the conditions from the agreement and explained should there be a change in the reputation of the ownership of the building that would reflect poorly on the artist Amanda Gorman, she could request that the poem be removed from the building and donated to the city for placement at another location. This stems from artists wanting to disassociate themselves and their artwork from buildings where the Trump name appears. The Arts Commission voted unanimously in support of the requested policy exception for Amanda Gorman.
I took advantage of the President’s Holiday and did something I have never done, I tuned into what is supposed to be the most popular cable news shows. It was in full throttle Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity on Monday night. To contemplate that the most popular shows are a world where praise for authoritarians is peddled along with misinformation, fear and racism is profoundly disturbing.
People with a steady diet of rightwing media live in an alternate universe. And, this leads to this week’s books.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury published in 1953 is back on the banned book list which is so interesting since it is about book burning and censorship. The history of Fahrenheit 451 by Jonathan R. Eller and Ray Bradbury’s comments decades after publication that come with the 60th Anniversary edition are just as interesting if not more so than the novel. Bradbury discusses requests to rewrite the story and how words and lines removed or replaced for school audiences is also censorship. Bradbury has a passage in the novel of the forever wars. Something we thought we might finally live without until this week’s invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
On Tuesday, the podcast “Why is this Happening” ran an updated episode with Dr. Izzy Lowell, who runs Queer Med, a private clinic that specializes in health care for trans youth and adults. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/treating-trans-youth-with-dr-izzy-lowell/id1382983397?i=1000551858078
Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nutt, published in 2015 about the transitioning of the transgender youth Nicole Maines, her family, and public response was our February book club reading choice. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/10/19/becoming-nicole/ The very next day after our book club meeting Governor Abbott ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to launch inquiries into parents and medical providers of transgender children, charging that treatment of trans youth is child abuse. Not to be outdone by Texas, the Florida House passed HB1557 the anti-LGBTQ bill dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
The furor over Critical Race Theory, the classroom, banning books, anti-LGBTQ laws, voter suppression and gas pump stickers “blame Biden” for high gas prices, tells us where the 2022 elections are going. One caller on talk radio suggested we should be carrying our sharpies and cross out Biden and write Trump and Putin on those “blame” stickers.
February 20, 2022
Just exactly what is going on with the mayor? How does a meeting get posted as closed and then at the nearly last minute become public? As of Sunday, February 20 the City Council posted agenda page still lists that 9 am Friday, February 18, 2022 meeting as closed. This was the council vote on whether to side with UC to increase student enrollment, “Authorize Amicus Curae Support of Petition for Review in Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods v. The Regents of the University of California (American Campus Communities).” There are lots of people unhappy with the housing situation in Berkeley and the ever expanding UCB admissions is at the center of it. Did the mayor fear he couldn’t pull off a unanimous vote in closed session?
I didn’t get the quote from former Mayor Shirley Dean exactly word for word last week. It was even stronger than I remembered it. She corrected me, “Redistricting is always political.” The Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) is trying awfully hard to be independent. They spent months going over regulations and responsibilities before starting on the maps. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a swirl of politics underneath the submitted maps, letters and public comment at hearings.
I became so engrossed reading the letters to the IRC everything else came to a standstill except the pressure cooker on the stove which finally forced me to tear myself away as the beans turned into burned charcoal. To find the letters is a little complicated as you need to scroll down to the bottom of the IRC webpage https://www.cityofberkeley.info/irc/ to “Public Submission of Proposed Maps” and click on “Submitted Community of Interest Forms.” That opens a dropbox page and the letters “communications” are the very last two items. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x6p2q96if60elap/AAAWJQgxUMSskuG1AKbMZ-n7a?dl=0
The Amber map was always the heavy favorite going back to the first four, Amber, Blue, Maroon, Orange. After the borders were moved between District 3 and 8 to reunite the historical South Berkeley to create Amber 2 in the final round, the public response was overwhelmingly in favor of the Amber 2 map at both the Thursday evening and Saturday morning public hearings and in the emails.
There were several emails and one speaker Chimey Lee who wanted to see the border between District 3 and District 4 moved back to Blake. Another speaker Andy Katz who also wrote a long letter requested three blocks (one is the swimming pool) moved out of District 7 into District 4. Historically and in Amber (1), and Amber 2 the three blocks are in District 7. Ben Gould closed his 40-page letter with he wasn’t seeking office in the foreseeable future.
The commission Chair Elisabeth Watson has been superb with encouraging discussion while some of us are on the edge of our chairs awaiting the outcome. Moving the District 3 boundary back to Dwight couldn’t be done without removing other blocks/sections from the District 3.
Commissioner Rhodes, who is on the commission map subcommittee used the analogy, that making tweaks, moving boundaries, here and there is like pulling the thread on a sweater, soon the whole thing unravels. There is overwhelming support for the Amber 2 map as it is. Changes can’t be made without making other groups dissatisfied.
Chair Watson initially made a motion to move the three blocks requested by Andy Katz and then withdrew it after hearing no substantial reason for making that change. The number of people represented by a single council member also came into the picture.
What many of us didn’t know at the time, I learned later, that moving the blocks requested by Andy Katz would have moved Councilmember Robinson out of District 7 into District 4 and pitted him against Councilmember Harrison in the upcoming fall election. Although where council members live is not to be considered, it is a relief that the overwhelming favorite map Amber 2 as it is leaves every council member in their current district.
The IRC voted to eliminate the Violet map. It is not supported. They also decided to make no changes to Amber 2 and to delay the final vote on the remaining Amber 2 map until February 28th when the full commission is in attendance. My count was five of the commissioners could not attend the extra Saturday meeting. Alternates were called in to make a quorum.
Tuesday evening was a special City Council worksession on Homeless and Mental Health Systems and Services in Berkeley. As usual the mayor fell all over himself as did councilmembers in praise of the report and staff work. I can’t say from reading the report and listening to the presentation that I feel I really have a better grasp of the services provided. What was at the center of the evening was the sharp contrast from community members’ descriptions of what they observed in the treatment of the homeless and the glowing staff reports.
Through all of it, this statement from a speaker several weeks ago on housing stays with me, “Shelter solves your sleeping problem, housing solves your homelessness problem.” There are not enough shelter beds for the homeless on our streets and the gap between income and the cost of housing keeps growing. And, how can anyone be healthy mentally being shooed from one place to another, let alone those who are already suffering with mental illness?
Last week I mentioned the book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodall, 2017. Today when I looked at Earthweek: a diary of the planet, in the Chronicle it said “Sea level rise is accelerating along the U.S. Coast and is expected to bring an additional hike of up to 12 inches by 2050 according to NOAA study…”
There was another piece in Earthweek that caught my attention, “Pharma pollution Active pharmaceutical ingredients that are being flushed into the world’s rivers in sewage are a ‘global threat to environmental and human health’…” Some months ago I attended an EBMUD Wastewater Treatment Plant webinar and asked about pharmaceutical pollution in sewage and if pharmaceuticals were removed in the treatment plant processing of sewage before it is released into the Bay. The answer was, No. EBMUD has no way to remove the pharmaceuticals.
Not that sewage has ever been anywhere near the top of my list of things to track, the CDC is now publishing the data on the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater which is a better indicator of increasing or decreasing COVID-19 in the community than testing. I’ve signed up. https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/surveillance/wastewater-surveillance/wastewater-surveillance.html Will let you know more next time.
Last, I finished Unthinkable by Jamie Raskin. There is a lot in the book. I didn’t know that Jamie Raskin as Maryland State Senator introduced legislation that made Maryland the first state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If you are not familiar with the National Popular Vote Compact you can read all about it at https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/. California signed on in 2011. When enough states sign the popular vote compact to reach 270, the presidential election will be won by who received the most votes. Right now, the total is 195.
There are quotes in the book from Nancy Pelosi showing her quick wit that had me laughing out loud. I will never think of Nancy Pelosi in the same way.
The loss of Jamie Raskin’s son is heartbreaking. It brings depression and suicide right to the forefront. The isolation from COVID-19 has made mental health so much harder sustain for those who are already having difficulty.
While Tommy Raskin did not have COVID-19 and it is not mentioned in the book, a large peer reviewed study just released from Washington University in St. Louis found COVID-19 survivors (serious and mild infections) face increased mental health risks. “…one of the leading hypotheses is that the virus can enter the brain and disturb cellular and neuron pathways, leading to mental health disorders” https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/943601.
Just exactly what is going on with the mayor? How does a meeting get posted as closed and then at the nearly last minute become public? As of Sunday, February 20 the City Council posted agenda page still lists that 9 am Friday, February 18, 2022 meeting as closed. This was the council vote on whether to side with UC to increase student enrollment, “Authorize Amicus Curae Support of Petition for Review in Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods v. The Regents of the University of California (American Campus Communities).” There are lots of people unhappy with the housing situation in Berkeley and the ever expanding UCB admissions is at the center of it. Did the mayor fear he couldn’t pull off a unanimous vote in closed session?
I didn’t get the quote from former Mayor Shirley Dean exactly word for word last week. It was even stronger than I remembered it. She corrected me, “Redistricting is always political.” The Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) is trying awfully hard to be independent. They spent months going over regulations and responsibilities before starting on the maps. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a swirl of politics underneath the submitted maps, letters and public comment at hearings.
I became so engrossed reading the letters to the IRC everything else came to a standstill except the pressure cooker on the stove which finally forced me to tear myself away as the beans turned into burned charcoal. To find the letters is a little complicated as you need to scroll down to the bottom of the IRC webpage https://www.cityofberkeley.info/irc/ to “Public Submission of Proposed Maps” and click on “Submitted Community of Interest Forms.” That opens a dropbox page and the letters “communications” are the very last two items. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x6p2q96if60elap/AAAWJQgxUMSskuG1AKbMZ-n7a?dl=0
The Amber map was always the heavy favorite going back to the first four, Amber, Blue, Maroon, Orange. After the borders were moved between District 3 and 8 to reunite the historical South Berkeley to create Amber 2 in the final round, the public response was overwhelmingly in favor of the Amber 2 map at both the Thursday evening and Saturday morning public hearings and in the emails.
There were several emails and one speaker Chimey Lee who wanted to see the border between District 3 and District 4 moved back to Blake. Another speaker Andy Katz who also wrote a long letter requested three blocks (one is the swimming pool) moved out of District 7 into District 4. Historically and in Amber (1), and Amber 2 the three blocks are in District 7. Ben Gould closed his 40-page letter with he wasn’t seeking office in the foreseeable future.
The commission Chair Elisabeth Watson has been superb with encouraging discussion while some of us are on the edge of our chairs awaiting the outcome. Moving the District 3 boundary back to Dwight couldn’t be done without removing other blocks/sections from the District 3.
Commissioner Rhodes, who is on the commission map subcommittee used the analogy, that making tweaks, moving boundaries, here and there is like pulling the thread on a sweater, soon the whole thing unravels. There is overwhelming support for the Amber 2 map as it is. Changes can’t be made without making other groups dissatisfied.
Chair Watson initially made a motion to move the three blocks requested by Andy Katz and then withdrew it after hearing no substantial reason for making that change. The number of people represented by a single council member also came into the picture.
What many of us didn’t know at the time, I learned later, that moving the blocks requested by Andy Katz would have moved Councilmember Robinson out of District 7 into District 4 and pitted him against Councilmember Harrison in the upcoming fall election. Although where council members live is not to be considered, it is a relief that the overwhelming favorite map Amber 2 as it is leaves every council member in their current district.
The IRC voted to eliminate the Violet map. It is not supported. They also decided to make no changes to Amber 2 and to delay the final vote on the remaining Amber 2 map until February 28th when the full commission is in attendance. My count was five of the commissioners could not attend the extra Saturday meeting. Alternates were called in to make a quorum.
Tuesday evening was a special City Council worksession on Homeless and Mental Health Systems and Services in Berkeley. As usual the mayor fell all over himself as did councilmembers in praise of the report and staff work. I can’t say from reading the report and listening to the presentation that I feel I really have a better grasp of the services provided. What was at the center of the evening was the sharp contrast from community members’ descriptions of what they observed in the treatment of the homeless and the glowing staff reports.
Through all of it, this statement from a speaker several weeks ago on housing stays with me, “Shelter solves your sleeping problem, housing solves your homelessness problem.” There are not enough shelter beds for the homeless on our streets and the gap between income and the cost of housing keeps growing. And, how can anyone be healthy mentally being shooed from one place to another, let alone those who are already suffering with mental illness?
Last week I mentioned the book, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodall, 2017. Today when I looked at Earthweek: a diary of the planet, in the Chronicle it said “Sea level rise is accelerating along the U.S. Coast and is expected to bring an additional hike of up to 12 inches by 2050 according to NOAA study…”
There was another piece in Earthweek that caught my attention, “Pharma pollution Active pharmaceutical ingredients that are being flushed into the world’s rivers in sewage are a ‘global threat to environmental and human health’…” Some months ago I attended an EBMUD Wastewater Treatment Plant webinar and asked about pharmaceutical pollution in sewage and if pharmaceuticals were removed in the treatment plant processing of sewage before it is released into the Bay. The answer was, No. EBMUD has no way to remove the pharmaceuticals.
Not that sewage has ever been anywhere near the top of my list of things to track, the CDC is now publishing the data on the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater which is a better indicator of increasing or decreasing COVID-19 in the community than testing. I’ve signed up. https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/surveillance/wastewater-surveillance/wastewater-surveillance.html Will let you know more next time.
Last, I finished Unthinkable by Jamie Raskin. There is a lot in the book. I didn’t know that Jamie Raskin as Maryland State Senator introduced legislation that made Maryland the first state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If you are not familiar with the National Popular Vote Compact you can read all about it at https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/. California signed on in 2011. When enough states sign the popular vote compact to reach 270, the presidential election will be won by who received the most votes. Right now, the total is 195.
There are quotes in the book from Nancy Pelosi showing her quick wit that had me laughing out loud. I will never think of Nancy Pelosi in the same way.
The loss of Jamie Raskin’s son is heartbreaking. It brings depression and suicide right to the forefront. The isolation from COVID-19 has made mental health so much harder sustain for those who are already having difficulty.
While Tommy Raskin did not have COVID-19 and it is not mentioned in the book, a large peer reviewed study just released from Washington University in St. Louis found COVID-19 survivors (serious and mild infections) face increased mental health risks. “…one of the leading hypotheses is that the virus can enter the brain and disturb cellular and neuron pathways, leading to mental health disorders” https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/943601.
February 13, 2022
I’ve been wanting to see the film Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, directed by Emily and Sarah Kunstler. Who We Are wasn’t showing at the Shattuck, the California is closed, so I made my way over to AMC in Emeryville for the Monday matinee. There were only three of us in the theater. The film was outstanding and I will watch it again when it’s available for home viewing. No one checked my vaccine card, but then so few of us were in the building it was hardly going to be a super-spreader event.
Pre-pandemic I used to love going to the documentary films at the Shattuck Cinemas. And, I wasn’t the only one. When we were petitioning to save the Shattuck Cinemas, much to our surprise 60% of the 275,000 – 300,000 patrons came from out of town with regular movie goers from Vallejo, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Orinda and closer in Oakland, Emeryville, El Cerrito. The Shattuck Cinemas with its ten theaters used to be the economic engine of the downtown. The future looks to be student housing, coffee shops and eyes fixated on the device in hand.
District 4 with the downtown is already heavily renters 79% or 78.63% to be more exact before rounding. It will be even more student dense in the years ahead with all the construction including 2065 Kittredge a student housing project tip toeing into the city planning cycle for the Shattuck Cinemas site. Of course, redistricting is based on the 2020 Census not the apartments under construction and yet to be filled.
The Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) will be holding public hearings on the two maps Amber 2 and Violet this coming Thursday, February 17 at 6 pm and Saturday, February 19 at 10 am. It is a real nail-biter for those of us living in District 4 and it should be for the entire city. It is District 4 that is being carved up to create the alternative Violet map with two student districts. Of course, carving up and realigning District 4 doesn’t end there. In my lengthy separate description, you can see how the Violet two student district map forces new boundaries in Districts 3, 5 and 6. The boundaries on District 7, the current student district also move.
It is interesting that the most vocal attendee, Ben Gould, at the last meeting pushing for two student districts which would gerrymander Kate Harrison out of District 4 ran against and lost resoundingly to Kate Harrison in 2016 and 2018. The IRC is mandated by Regulation, “Districts shall not be drawn for the purpose of favoring or discriminating against an incumbent, political candidate or political party.” In the discussion of the new maps and the independence and responsiveness of the IRC at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meeting on Saturday our former mayor Shirley Dean said, “redistricting is never not political.”
There are others who demand that one solid UCB student district is not representative enough. There is no perfect map that can fit everyone’s desires and still fit in the constraints dictated by equalizing the population across the council districts. I expect the two student district proponents and those with a more nefarious goal will corral speakers to show up. I just hope the rest of us can prevail with the selection of Amber 2.
At the Agenda and Rules Committee on Tuesday, Councilmember Wengraf commented on all the transportation items coming from Councilmember Taplin and asked how these were being reviewed in total not one by one. Another catching attention was Councilmember Kesarwani’s submission on paving when council just approved a city-wide paving plan. Hahn asked, what should be the process? Should every councilmember be submitting paving requests? The City Manager Williams-Ridley didn’t have an answer and said she would look in to it. Most of us don’t need to be told of the poor condition of Berkeley streets, we are surrounded by it.
March 31 is the anticipated date to resume in-person commission meetings though after that announcement, discussion moved to examining the possibilities for hybrid commission meetings not just city council.
Tuesday evening was the regular City Council meeting and it started off with city employees calling (zooming) in to inform the public and put the issue before council that the City of Berkeley is failing to fulfill the employee agreements on pay and benefits. This relates to the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA) which changes the way CalPERS retirement and health benefits are applied. The contracts were signed back in July 2021 with SEIU Local 1021 Community Services and Part-Time Recreation Activity Leaders and Maintenance and Clerical Chapters. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Human_Resources/Home/Union_Agreements_and_Employee_Manuals.aspx
Something is really wrong with this picture. It is almost seven months and the city administration still can’t get it together to pay City employees according to signed contracts. I wonder if Dee Williams-Ridley who as City Manager is responsible is having as much trouble receiving her $84,732 / 28.11% raise or did her raise start on time on November 14, 2021 retroactive to two days before the November 16, 2021 council vote.
It seems the City Manager was expecting to hear from employees as La Tanya Bellow was paraded out with a chart to display (that was not published) to declare how hard the city is working to resolve these problems.
There have been increasing problems with getting meeting announcements, agendas and documents posted in time for commission meetings and discussions. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force could not review the report they are preparing for the March 10 council worksession, because the revised document that the Vice-Chair Boona Chema wanted to share for discussion wasn’t posted in time for the public, therefore the task force was prevented from discussing it. What a mess for the task force to land in with a looming deadline and a pile of work to complete.
Other meetings have been cancelled and rescheduled because announcements weren’t made public in the required time frame. Commission mergers add to the problem with new webpages. The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission had to be cancelled last week and rescheduled this week.
There is probably a certain amount of bliss in being unengaged in city politics until it all comes crashing down. The failing streets, city frontline staff not being paid according to contract, meetings not being properly publicly posted on time should be a warning sign.
I’ve been reading Jamie Raskin’s book Unthinkable. Jamie Raskin writes about his start in politics in 2006 and one of his early campaign rallies. A woman came up to him after his speech and said that gay marriage was never going to happen and he shouldn’t talk about it, it made him sound extreme and not in the political center. He writes he said to her: “Thank you so much for saying that to me, because it makes me realize that it is not my ambition to be in the political center, which blows around with the wind. It is my ambition to be in the moral center and to bring the political center to us…”
Raskin said so well what I think about when I watch our city council. One person stands out as having that moral center, my councilmember Kate Harrison. For many of the rest, (not all) that center is empty until it is filled with ambition that shifts in the wind.
Looking at the drought map for California, climate and weather, it looks like we are going to be praying for the water to come. The book The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodall, 2017 isn’t about rain. The book is about sea level rise and we just keep building like it will never happen even though with each passing year the evidence is harder to ignore. Some of us remember the architects for 600 Addison when asked about sea level rise and their building, said they just couldn’t imagine it.
Shirley Dean has said in her own words how the requirement to add 8,934 dwelling units in Berkeley defies common sense. Berkeley is a city of 10.5 square miles of land with liquefaction and sea level rise on the west side and the fault line, slide area and fire zones on the east side.
It is interesting how rarely these hazards enter the discussion at the Design Review Committee and Zoning Adjustment Board. Pre-pandemic when I used to occasionally drop in on for sale open houses, I don’t remember seeing any warning of which or how many hazard zones the house sat in. If you have never looked at the City of Berkeley Fire Zone map, the time is overdue. Here is the link: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_(new_site_map_walk-through)/Level_3_-_General/Berkeley%20Fire%20Zone%20Map.pdf Leave to Berkeley to get the colors expressing risk mixed up. Zones 2 and 3 are the very high fire hazard zones with 3 being the absolute worst are outlined in blue and amber. The area outlined in red is the lowest risk, although if fire actual starts in the hills and the wind is blowing hard from the east those of us in the flats need to be ready to leave.
Here is the real picture, I went to the website in the map Bryce Nesbit displayed at City Council during the ADU discussion and vote on January 25, 2022, Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation, https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/ When it comes up you get the whole state and then zoom in. Yellow is the fault zone, blue is the slide zone and green is the area of liquefaction. Just to make it easy here is the screen shot.
I’ve been wanting to see the film Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, directed by Emily and Sarah Kunstler. Who We Are wasn’t showing at the Shattuck, the California is closed, so I made my way over to AMC in Emeryville for the Monday matinee. There were only three of us in the theater. The film was outstanding and I will watch it again when it’s available for home viewing. No one checked my vaccine card, but then so few of us were in the building it was hardly going to be a super-spreader event.
Pre-pandemic I used to love going to the documentary films at the Shattuck Cinemas. And, I wasn’t the only one. When we were petitioning to save the Shattuck Cinemas, much to our surprise 60% of the 275,000 – 300,000 patrons came from out of town with regular movie goers from Vallejo, Santa Rosa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Orinda and closer in Oakland, Emeryville, El Cerrito. The Shattuck Cinemas with its ten theaters used to be the economic engine of the downtown. The future looks to be student housing, coffee shops and eyes fixated on the device in hand.
District 4 with the downtown is already heavily renters 79% or 78.63% to be more exact before rounding. It will be even more student dense in the years ahead with all the construction including 2065 Kittredge a student housing project tip toeing into the city planning cycle for the Shattuck Cinemas site. Of course, redistricting is based on the 2020 Census not the apartments under construction and yet to be filled.
The Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) will be holding public hearings on the two maps Amber 2 and Violet this coming Thursday, February 17 at 6 pm and Saturday, February 19 at 10 am. It is a real nail-biter for those of us living in District 4 and it should be for the entire city. It is District 4 that is being carved up to create the alternative Violet map with two student districts. Of course, carving up and realigning District 4 doesn’t end there. In my lengthy separate description, you can see how the Violet two student district map forces new boundaries in Districts 3, 5 and 6. The boundaries on District 7, the current student district also move.
It is interesting that the most vocal attendee, Ben Gould, at the last meeting pushing for two student districts which would gerrymander Kate Harrison out of District 4 ran against and lost resoundingly to Kate Harrison in 2016 and 2018. The IRC is mandated by Regulation, “Districts shall not be drawn for the purpose of favoring or discriminating against an incumbent, political candidate or political party.” In the discussion of the new maps and the independence and responsiveness of the IRC at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meeting on Saturday our former mayor Shirley Dean said, “redistricting is never not political.”
There are others who demand that one solid UCB student district is not representative enough. There is no perfect map that can fit everyone’s desires and still fit in the constraints dictated by equalizing the population across the council districts. I expect the two student district proponents and those with a more nefarious goal will corral speakers to show up. I just hope the rest of us can prevail with the selection of Amber 2.
At the Agenda and Rules Committee on Tuesday, Councilmember Wengraf commented on all the transportation items coming from Councilmember Taplin and asked how these were being reviewed in total not one by one. Another catching attention was Councilmember Kesarwani’s submission on paving when council just approved a city-wide paving plan. Hahn asked, what should be the process? Should every councilmember be submitting paving requests? The City Manager Williams-Ridley didn’t have an answer and said she would look in to it. Most of us don’t need to be told of the poor condition of Berkeley streets, we are surrounded by it.
March 31 is the anticipated date to resume in-person commission meetings though after that announcement, discussion moved to examining the possibilities for hybrid commission meetings not just city council.
Tuesday evening was the regular City Council meeting and it started off with city employees calling (zooming) in to inform the public and put the issue before council that the City of Berkeley is failing to fulfill the employee agreements on pay and benefits. This relates to the California Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA) which changes the way CalPERS retirement and health benefits are applied. The contracts were signed back in July 2021 with SEIU Local 1021 Community Services and Part-Time Recreation Activity Leaders and Maintenance and Clerical Chapters. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Human_Resources/Home/Union_Agreements_and_Employee_Manuals.aspx
Something is really wrong with this picture. It is almost seven months and the city administration still can’t get it together to pay City employees according to signed contracts. I wonder if Dee Williams-Ridley who as City Manager is responsible is having as much trouble receiving her $84,732 / 28.11% raise or did her raise start on time on November 14, 2021 retroactive to two days before the November 16, 2021 council vote.
It seems the City Manager was expecting to hear from employees as La Tanya Bellow was paraded out with a chart to display (that was not published) to declare how hard the city is working to resolve these problems.
There have been increasing problems with getting meeting announcements, agendas and documents posted in time for commission meetings and discussions. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force could not review the report they are preparing for the March 10 council worksession, because the revised document that the Vice-Chair Boona Chema wanted to share for discussion wasn’t posted in time for the public, therefore the task force was prevented from discussing it. What a mess for the task force to land in with a looming deadline and a pile of work to complete.
Other meetings have been cancelled and rescheduled because announcements weren’t made public in the required time frame. Commission mergers add to the problem with new webpages. The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission had to be cancelled last week and rescheduled this week.
There is probably a certain amount of bliss in being unengaged in city politics until it all comes crashing down. The failing streets, city frontline staff not being paid according to contract, meetings not being properly publicly posted on time should be a warning sign.
I’ve been reading Jamie Raskin’s book Unthinkable. Jamie Raskin writes about his start in politics in 2006 and one of his early campaign rallies. A woman came up to him after his speech and said that gay marriage was never going to happen and he shouldn’t talk about it, it made him sound extreme and not in the political center. He writes he said to her: “Thank you so much for saying that to me, because it makes me realize that it is not my ambition to be in the political center, which blows around with the wind. It is my ambition to be in the moral center and to bring the political center to us…”
Raskin said so well what I think about when I watch our city council. One person stands out as having that moral center, my councilmember Kate Harrison. For many of the rest, (not all) that center is empty until it is filled with ambition that shifts in the wind.
Looking at the drought map for California, climate and weather, it looks like we are going to be praying for the water to come. The book The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodall, 2017 isn’t about rain. The book is about sea level rise and we just keep building like it will never happen even though with each passing year the evidence is harder to ignore. Some of us remember the architects for 600 Addison when asked about sea level rise and their building, said they just couldn’t imagine it.
Shirley Dean has said in her own words how the requirement to add 8,934 dwelling units in Berkeley defies common sense. Berkeley is a city of 10.5 square miles of land with liquefaction and sea level rise on the west side and the fault line, slide area and fire zones on the east side.
It is interesting how rarely these hazards enter the discussion at the Design Review Committee and Zoning Adjustment Board. Pre-pandemic when I used to occasionally drop in on for sale open houses, I don’t remember seeing any warning of which or how many hazard zones the house sat in. If you have never looked at the City of Berkeley Fire Zone map, the time is overdue. Here is the link: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_(new_site_map_walk-through)/Level_3_-_General/Berkeley%20Fire%20Zone%20Map.pdf Leave to Berkeley to get the colors expressing risk mixed up. Zones 2 and 3 are the very high fire hazard zones with 3 being the absolute worst are outlined in blue and amber. The area outlined in red is the lowest risk, although if fire actual starts in the hills and the wind is blowing hard from the east those of us in the flats need to be ready to leave.
Here is the real picture, I went to the website in the map Bryce Nesbit displayed at City Council during the ADU discussion and vote on January 25, 2022, Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation, https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/ When it comes up you get the whole state and then zoom in. Yellow is the fault zone, blue is the slide zone and green is the area of liquefaction. Just to make it easy here is the screen shot.
February 6, 2022
I can’t ever remember City Council canceling an entire week of meetings for Chinese New Year, but that is what happened this last week.
As promised last week, I watched the January 27th video of the Council worksession on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act) which ran the same time as the meeting on redistricting, housing elements, and four others. Mayor Arreguin gave his presentation and then opened public comment.
About halfway in to public comment I lost count of the “for and against.” At that point it was 19 in support and 23 opposed to TOPA. One speaker described supporting TOPA as wishful thinking of what might happen. Each iteration of TOPA carries more exemptions and a heavier footprint from property owners and qualified nonprofits which can become the owners in the TOPA buy not the tenants.
The first councilmember to speak after public comment was Kesarwani who expressed her opposition to TOPA. She said she would support requiring a presale notification to tenants. Notification details weren’t spelled out, but something to counter what happens now when the first notification to tenants of a building for sale is the planting of a sale sign in front or that a sale has already happened and a new owner is taking over.
I expect by the time TOPA is done very few situations will qualify, but we shall see as the rewriting continues. As it stands now counting the council votes from meeting comments, Councilmembers Kesarwani and Droste are opposed to TOPA. Councilmember Wengraf has reservations and was opposed to the qualified nonprofit becoming the owners of a building and not the tenants. Arreguin will have support from Councilmembers Hahn, Harrison and Robinson. Councilmembers Bartlett and Taplin are a toss-up. The concern there is how property is passed/sold in the Black community to extended family members to build wealth. (Whites have built wealth through property ownership for generations). Droste expressed concerns around non-conforming families not qualifying for exemptions.
This all segues into the presentation by Commissioner Anthony Carrasco at the Wednesday evening Homeless Panel of Experts Commission from the report by A.Carrasco, D.Jones and T.Song on ending family homelessness. Boring down to the cause of homelessness Carrasco pointed to, it is a mismatch between income and the cost of housing. He continued real estate speculation especially foreign real estate speculators with all-cash transactions outbid local home buyers and drive up housing costs. Most startling in the report is the increase in speculative buying and the target of detached single-family houses and townhouses.
In TOPA, a single-family home rental is exempted if the owner has only one rental in Berkeley, which gives property owners that have multiple holdings in other cities a pass unless they are listed as a LLC on that Berkeley property.
The report also proposes a tiered transfer tax with raising the transfer tax on properties of over $2,000,000 to 5%.You can read the report pages 6-18 at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Clerk/Level_3_-_Commissions/Full%20Agenda%20Package%20and%20Supplemental%20Materials%20-%202.2.22.pdf
There has long been a push in Berkeley for 24/7 mental health crisis intervention unit. The other Wednesday evening Homeless Panel of Experts Commission presentation was by Holly Harris, Program Manager Deschutes County Stabilization Center. What was interesting is that Deschutes County is operating a 24/7 mental health crisis center providing up to 23 hours of care for an individual. The average stay is 10 hours. Ms. Harris described a positive relationship with law enforcement where the sheriff actually asked for such a service. That is such a different tone from what I hear from Berkeley Police Department leadership, but maybe there will be a different stance at the scheduled March 15 council worksession on homelessness and mental health services.
It is a shame the presentation by Ms. Harris was not recorded. I did find a recording that was made when the Deschutes County Stabilization Center was just opening in June 2020 before it was 24/7. The interview still gives you a picture of services at the center in Bend Oregon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLXTst3Zrtw. At the time of the interview they were gearing up hiring and waiting for announcement of grant monies (that did arrive) for operation of 24/7 services.
Thursday afternoon was WETA’s (Water Emergency Transport Authority) first “hybrid” meeting so it was harder to keep track of who was talking, but the message is the same as at previous meetings, ridership is down. The most notable statement from the WETA meeting was from the Board Chair, “We’re going to need more financial support from the public.” Staff stated when asked that projections of ridership for new services use pre-pandemic numbers. Careful listening makes one wonder how useful those projections are for the future. There was talk of needing to inspire workers to go back to the office [to generate commuter riders]. Board member Moyer said companies are not mandating return to the office, because it will increase resignations. The plan for the Berkeley Ferry service is scheduled for presentation at the March WETA meeting.
Maybe we will all end up loving the pier and ferry when it arrives and even use it once in a while, but according to WETA Board meetings we should expect to empty our pockets, pocketbooks and wallets to have it.
I’ve started to catch up on my book reading. All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles, 2021 is definitely a favorite describing the resilience and perseverance of Black women. This review has a picture of Ashley’s Sack. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/06/tiya-miles-new-book-explores-enslaved-family-history/
As I read the history of slavery through the eyes of Black women, I thought a lot about the present book banning in school libraries, classroom instruction and lectures on race, racism, slavery and genocide in other parts of our country. Of course, the current run to censorship doesn’t stop there.
This country has always been about a mythical past and White supremacy runs right through it.
And then, I heard about this, “A Tale of Two Theaters” in the journal Alta. “…the Black Repertory Group struggles and Berkeley Repertory Theatre thrives…” https://www.altaonline.com/culture/a38403159/black-repertory-ishmael-reed/ I am not surprised about the Berkeley Repertory Theatre gaining special funding and privilege. I’ve seen it through attending city meetings and heard complaints about it with arts funding going to the Berkeley Rep at the expense of other arts in the Berkeley community. But, a crowbar break-in to the Black Repertory Group Theatre by the city? Someone couldn’t have made a phone call? What happened and is happening to the Black Repertory Group requires more than some choreographed explanation/excuse that is likely to be served up to us. And, this brings us back to equity and what are the values of this city of ours anyway.
There is another book I finished this week that ties into Berkeley business Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence 3rd Edition by Michael W. Quinn, 2016. The National Institutes of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) draft report includes recommendations for training officers in intervening when another officer uses excessive force or engages in other unsavory, unethical or illegal behavior. Both the NICJR report and this book fail in addressing the role of leadership within police departments.
Another among the many NICJR report recommendations is creating a “Progressive Police Academy built on adult learning concepts and focused on helping recruits develop the psychological skills and values necessary to perform their complex and stressful jobs in a manner that reflects the guardian mentality.” The report continues naming the police academies where most Berkeley Police receive training, the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office Academy Training Center, Sacramento Police Academy, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office Justice Training Center, and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Academy Training Center as “…paramilitary in structure, potentially instilling the warrior mentality…” not guardian mentality.
NICJR held a community meeting this week. After a very brief introduction, they sent us into zoom breakout groups and used a “sticker” program to submit comments instead of discussion. Then the meeting abruptly ended 30 minutes early at 1 ½ hours. I wondered, is this all the NICJR consultants hired with $300,000 of city money have to offer? I am anxious to see the task force final report.
Reimagining Public Safety is supposed to come to us on March 10 according to NICJR and the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force though nothing has appeared on any council schedule. Each is preparing their own report and the task force will be reviewing their draft this coming Thursday, February 10 at 6 pm.
I can’t ever remember City Council canceling an entire week of meetings for Chinese New Year, but that is what happened this last week.
As promised last week, I watched the January 27th video of the Council worksession on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act) which ran the same time as the meeting on redistricting, housing elements, and four others. Mayor Arreguin gave his presentation and then opened public comment.
About halfway in to public comment I lost count of the “for and against.” At that point it was 19 in support and 23 opposed to TOPA. One speaker described supporting TOPA as wishful thinking of what might happen. Each iteration of TOPA carries more exemptions and a heavier footprint from property owners and qualified nonprofits which can become the owners in the TOPA buy not the tenants.
The first councilmember to speak after public comment was Kesarwani who expressed her opposition to TOPA. She said she would support requiring a presale notification to tenants. Notification details weren’t spelled out, but something to counter what happens now when the first notification to tenants of a building for sale is the planting of a sale sign in front or that a sale has already happened and a new owner is taking over.
I expect by the time TOPA is done very few situations will qualify, but we shall see as the rewriting continues. As it stands now counting the council votes from meeting comments, Councilmembers Kesarwani and Droste are opposed to TOPA. Councilmember Wengraf has reservations and was opposed to the qualified nonprofit becoming the owners of a building and not the tenants. Arreguin will have support from Councilmembers Hahn, Harrison and Robinson. Councilmembers Bartlett and Taplin are a toss-up. The concern there is how property is passed/sold in the Black community to extended family members to build wealth. (Whites have built wealth through property ownership for generations). Droste expressed concerns around non-conforming families not qualifying for exemptions.
This all segues into the presentation by Commissioner Anthony Carrasco at the Wednesday evening Homeless Panel of Experts Commission from the report by A.Carrasco, D.Jones and T.Song on ending family homelessness. Boring down to the cause of homelessness Carrasco pointed to, it is a mismatch between income and the cost of housing. He continued real estate speculation especially foreign real estate speculators with all-cash transactions outbid local home buyers and drive up housing costs. Most startling in the report is the increase in speculative buying and the target of detached single-family houses and townhouses.
In TOPA, a single-family home rental is exempted if the owner has only one rental in Berkeley, which gives property owners that have multiple holdings in other cities a pass unless they are listed as a LLC on that Berkeley property.
The report also proposes a tiered transfer tax with raising the transfer tax on properties of over $2,000,000 to 5%.You can read the report pages 6-18 at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Clerk/Level_3_-_Commissions/Full%20Agenda%20Package%20and%20Supplemental%20Materials%20-%202.2.22.pdf
There has long been a push in Berkeley for 24/7 mental health crisis intervention unit. The other Wednesday evening Homeless Panel of Experts Commission presentation was by Holly Harris, Program Manager Deschutes County Stabilization Center. What was interesting is that Deschutes County is operating a 24/7 mental health crisis center providing up to 23 hours of care for an individual. The average stay is 10 hours. Ms. Harris described a positive relationship with law enforcement where the sheriff actually asked for such a service. That is such a different tone from what I hear from Berkeley Police Department leadership, but maybe there will be a different stance at the scheduled March 15 council worksession on homelessness and mental health services.
It is a shame the presentation by Ms. Harris was not recorded. I did find a recording that was made when the Deschutes County Stabilization Center was just opening in June 2020 before it was 24/7. The interview still gives you a picture of services at the center in Bend Oregon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLXTst3Zrtw. At the time of the interview they were gearing up hiring and waiting for announcement of grant monies (that did arrive) for operation of 24/7 services.
Thursday afternoon was WETA’s (Water Emergency Transport Authority) first “hybrid” meeting so it was harder to keep track of who was talking, but the message is the same as at previous meetings, ridership is down. The most notable statement from the WETA meeting was from the Board Chair, “We’re going to need more financial support from the public.” Staff stated when asked that projections of ridership for new services use pre-pandemic numbers. Careful listening makes one wonder how useful those projections are for the future. There was talk of needing to inspire workers to go back to the office [to generate commuter riders]. Board member Moyer said companies are not mandating return to the office, because it will increase resignations. The plan for the Berkeley Ferry service is scheduled for presentation at the March WETA meeting.
Maybe we will all end up loving the pier and ferry when it arrives and even use it once in a while, but according to WETA Board meetings we should expect to empty our pockets, pocketbooks and wallets to have it.
I’ve started to catch up on my book reading. All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles, 2021 is definitely a favorite describing the resilience and perseverance of Black women. This review has a picture of Ashley’s Sack. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/06/tiya-miles-new-book-explores-enslaved-family-history/
As I read the history of slavery through the eyes of Black women, I thought a lot about the present book banning in school libraries, classroom instruction and lectures on race, racism, slavery and genocide in other parts of our country. Of course, the current run to censorship doesn’t stop there.
This country has always been about a mythical past and White supremacy runs right through it.
And then, I heard about this, “A Tale of Two Theaters” in the journal Alta. “…the Black Repertory Group struggles and Berkeley Repertory Theatre thrives…” https://www.altaonline.com/culture/a38403159/black-repertory-ishmael-reed/ I am not surprised about the Berkeley Repertory Theatre gaining special funding and privilege. I’ve seen it through attending city meetings and heard complaints about it with arts funding going to the Berkeley Rep at the expense of other arts in the Berkeley community. But, a crowbar break-in to the Black Repertory Group Theatre by the city? Someone couldn’t have made a phone call? What happened and is happening to the Black Repertory Group requires more than some choreographed explanation/excuse that is likely to be served up to us. And, this brings us back to equity and what are the values of this city of ours anyway.
There is another book I finished this week that ties into Berkeley business Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence 3rd Edition by Michael W. Quinn, 2016. The National Institutes of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) draft report includes recommendations for training officers in intervening when another officer uses excessive force or engages in other unsavory, unethical or illegal behavior. Both the NICJR report and this book fail in addressing the role of leadership within police departments.
Another among the many NICJR report recommendations is creating a “Progressive Police Academy built on adult learning concepts and focused on helping recruits develop the psychological skills and values necessary to perform their complex and stressful jobs in a manner that reflects the guardian mentality.” The report continues naming the police academies where most Berkeley Police receive training, the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office Academy Training Center, Sacramento Police Academy, Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office Justice Training Center, and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Academy Training Center as “…paramilitary in structure, potentially instilling the warrior mentality…” not guardian mentality.
NICJR held a community meeting this week. After a very brief introduction, they sent us into zoom breakout groups and used a “sticker” program to submit comments instead of discussion. Then the meeting abruptly ended 30 minutes early at 1 ½ hours. I wondered, is this all the NICJR consultants hired with $300,000 of city money have to offer? I am anxious to see the task force final report.
Reimagining Public Safety is supposed to come to us on March 10 according to NICJR and the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force though nothing has appeared on any council schedule. Each is preparing their own report and the task force will be reviewing their draft this coming Thursday, February 10 at 6 pm.
January 30, 2022
What a week! There is so much to write about I will have trouble keeping this down to a readable length. And, I can’t even cover all of the hot meetings as there were too many running at the same time. The recordings aren’t up yet on the Thursday Council TOPA meeting and then there are the meetings where the record button is never touched. Plus, you will have to read my response to the mayor who wasn’t too happy with what I wrote about him last week.
The week of meetings started Monday with the Community for a Cultural Civic Center and the report on the water intrusion study. The cost of repairs for water leaks and water damage at the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings is in.
Maudelle Shirek (Old City Hall) is $1,480,947, and the Veterans Building is 1,918,262--a total of $3,399,210. This is just for a new roof and repairing leaks throughout the buildings. There may be additional costs like the Civic Arts fee, and we will have to ask about the cost of windows, since dry rot in the windows and frames is extensive. This will likely fall into a balance between being true to historical design or to switching to double pane. Maintenance is not included. The cost estimate for the seismic stabilization for both buildings is still in process, and that is just to bring the level to “Damage Control”, where everyone gets out safely and the building is repairable. https://berkeleycccc.org/what-were-about
There are still rumblings from people who claim that housing can be built on top of the Veterans’ Building. Swords to Plowshares already rejected such a proposal some time ago, since to take on such a task would require building a “bridge” over the building on which to put the housing, a very expensive proposition. If housing at the Veterans Building is or becomes the priority, that is a very different plan (I am not in that subcommittee). In that situation, my take from the seismic discussions is that we would be looking at something similar to the complex at the northeast corner of Shattuck and University where the buildings were gutted to a shell.
The Turtle Island Monument, which turns the Civic Center Park fountain into a garden, has been turned over to PGA Architects https://www.pgaarchitects.co.za/ for final design.
Last Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting dragged on until 12:50 am. The Surveillance Technology Report was moved to March 22, 2022. The evening wasn’t helped by adding the lengthy presentation of the 2021 COVID-19 Response Report to the agenda.
City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley gave a heaping dose of praise to City staff for their response to COVID-19. When the presentation ended and public comment began, City employees described their dissatisfaction with how they are not notified when exposed to COVID at work, how the ventilation at 1947 Center Street is still a problem (first noted by city employees at council in 2020), how there is no partnership with labor, how City employees are required to be on site when they could perform their work more safely off site, and their comments closed with a request to “judge us on our activity not our presence.” This was quickly followed with the clean-up put in the hands of the Director of Human Resources La Tanya Bellows. The entire show from start to finish was 98 minutes.
Next came the Street Maintenance and Rehabilitation Policy and Five-Year Paving Plan. The vote fell unanimously on the “equity” plan which has a stronger focus on residential than arterials. Looking at the diagrams from the agenda, it still doesn’t look like much will get fixed.
The evening finished with unbelievable drama. Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn partnered in presenting an amendment to the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Ordinance to address public safety in high severity fire zones. The amendment limits the size, setbacks and number of ADUs that could be added to a lot in the City of Berkeley high fire risk zones. Included is prohibition of rooftop decks and of intrusion into a four-foot setback. Discussion and voting required multiple extensions to the regular closing time.
Wengraf started with listing fires in the hills. The fires of 1923 and 1991 aren’t the only fires in the Berkeley Hills though. You can read about them here: https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2019/september-17-1923-day-berkeley-burned There were also fires in the 1970s (37 homes) and the 1980s (38 homes).
There is a clause in the SB 9 legislation signed by the Governor in 2021 that eliminates single-family residential zones statewide and provides for increasing density without discretionary review or hearings, with few exceptions. The exception most concerning here allows for limiting housing development if “…the housing development project would have a specific, adverse impact…upon public health and safety…” https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB9&showamends=true
Hahn gave the best, most thorough, understandable presentation that I’ve seen since she was elected to council. Wengraf showed a 2-minute recording from the 1991 Berkeley Hills fire of people stuck in a traffic jam abandoning their cars to escape on foot with the fire billowing behind them. Twenty-five people didn’t make it out and died in that fire.
After all the presentations, public testimony, council discussion, and after 12:30 am Councilmember Kesarwani made a substitute motion, seconded by Droste, to throw out the proposed Wengraf/Hahn public safety amendment to the ADU ordinance for high risk fire zones and to use the same ADU ordinance that was passed for the city flats at the previous council meeting. The discussion was chaotic, but the motion initially passed with Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Robinson and Droste voting for it and Harrison, Hahn Wengraf and Arreguin voting against. After the total was announced, with the clock ticking off the last seconds of the meeting, Bartlett said he thought he had voted the wrong way and requested a vote to reconsider.
Kesarwani, Harrison and Droste had left when another vote was taken to extend the meeting once more, to 12:50 am. The vote to reconsider passed, and the vote on the Kesarwani/Droste substitute motion was retaken, with Kesarwani, Taplin, Robinson and Droste voting yes and Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Wengraf and Arreguin voting no. The main motion (Hahn/Harrison with the Wengraf and Hahn public safety amendments) prevailed at about 12:49 am with Kesarwani, Taplin, Robinson and Droste ultimately acquiescing and joining with the majority to record it as unanimous.
Thursday, the evening of meetings dueling for attention, I attended the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting. It was another late night that didn’t end until 11:20 pm. The commissioners listened intently and responded to public comment. The Amber draft map was the overwhelming favorite. The Blue, Orange and Maroon maps were eliminated. The united waterfront as one district was dropped.
There will be 2 -3 new draft maps available to the public and committee for scrutiny on February 10th. The next meeting is February 17. An extra meeting is scheduled for Saturday, February 19. The time was not determined, but is likely to be 10 am.
The Amber map is to remain the same with corrections as requested by the public/South Berkeley to the boundary between District 3 and District 8 to unify the Ashby BART station site to include the Ed Roberts campus in District 3. The corrected Amber map would also realign the District 3 boundary to include more of South Berkeley, so that the NAACP and St. Paul A.M.E. Church would be in District 3. The new border is likely to be Shattuck.
Using the Amber map as the bas, a second new map and possibly a third map will be created with two student districts and including the corrections to District 3 as above.
The commission vote on the final map will be February 28.
I received an email from Mayor Arreguin. He wasn’t too happy with what I wrote about him in my January 22 Activist’s Diary. You will get the details so keep reading. Just in case you never read my Activist’s Calendar to the end, I always include scheduled worksessions and unscheduled workshops and presentations.
For those who haven’t heard of TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), the subject of these emails, it is this: When a building is going up for sale, TOPA gives the tenants living in it notice and the first right to purchase the building. There are more details and conditions than this broad summary.
After the TOPA meeting recording is posted I will watch it and report on it in next week’s Activist’s Diary. There has been a strong pushback from property owners and developers and I would expect they showed up Thursday as they have in the past.
Here is his email, plus verfication from Sarah Scruggs. My response follows the emails.
[from]Jesse Arreguin: Kelly, I want to respond to this statement in your recent "A Berkeley Activist's Diary":
All of this brings us to the next question: Why did Mayor Arreguin decide to schedule a special meeting, the council work session on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), at the very same time as the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting? This looks very much like a deliberate act to dilute the response to TOPA by splitting concerned citizens between TOPA and redistricting. There wasn’t even a whiff of a special meeting on TOPA at the last Agenda and Rules Committee meeting, where dates of work sessions were reviewed. All of this leaves a very unpleasant taste.
Contrary to what people may think, there is no grand conspiracy to undermine TOPA on my part. Trust me I want people to be at both meetings.
I did announce at a prior Agenda and Rules Committee meeting that we would be calling a special meeting on January 27th to hold a work session on TOPA. You may not have heard me say it and I am sorry it was not clear.
Additionally the TOPA Working Group has been doing outreach for weeks on this date. This date was arrived at in consultation with the TOPA Working Group. I did alert the City Manager and City Clerk of this date and was not informed of any potential conflicts when we originally calendared this date. It is also unfortunate that City staff scheduled multiple important meetings on the same date.
We settled on this date in December and it has been promoted by email, social media and through flyering. I have cced Sarah Scruggs from NCLT and the TOPA Working Group to confirm this.
Mayor Jesse Arreguin
************************************************************
From:Sarah Scruggs, Northern California Land Trust
Hi Kelly, The Mayor is correct. Since December, the TOPA Working Group has been sending updates via email about the January 27 TOPA work session to organizations that have endorsed TOPA, as well as individuals that have sent emails in support of TOPA during our past email actions. Apologies that you did not receive the information and happy to add you to the email list. Attached are the flyers that have been passed out around town.
Response
My source of information is city meetings and city records so whatever discussions and negotiations were going on inside or outside of city hall there wasn’t any notice to the public of the January 27 worksession on TOPA until it appeared in the Agenda and Rules packet published on the Committee homepage sometime on Thursday, January 20, 2021. The content of the special January 27 meeting was also listed on the City Council Agenda Index webpage with a document dated January 20, 2022. I picked up the notices on Friday January 21 when I went through city meetings to prepare the Activist’s Calendar for the week of January 23 – January 30, 2022 and commented in my Activist’s Diary January 22, 2022 edition.
The City Council 2022 Meeting Schedules adopted on January 18, 2022 lists worksessions on January 20, February 15, March 15, April 19, June 21, and July 19. There is no listing of a January 27, 2022 worksession, a meeting date that Mayor Arreguin states in his email was settled in December. He blames others for scheduling meetings in the same evening of January 27.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Meeting_Schedule.aspx
Arreguin states he announced the TOPA worksession at a prior Agenda and Rules Committee meeting. Even though I attended the January 4, 2022, January 10, 2022 and January 24, 2022 Agenda and Rules Committee, I listened to the recordings for an announcement of the January 27, 2022 worksession on TOPA. There was no mention at either the January 4 or January 10 meeting. There was only a reference to the published worksession calendar in the packet on January 24, 2022 with no verbal mention of TOPA. There is not documentation of either a scheduled or planned to be scheduled worksession on TOPA in any Agenda and Rules Committee agendas prior to the January 20th packet. There is also nothing in the minutes of the Agenda meetings of either a scheduled or planned to be scheduled worksession on TOPA going back to May 10, 2021.
I also looked through the emails from Mayor@CityofBerkeley.info The emails used to send us announcements, alerts, information. The January 26, 2022 email includes, COVID booster requirements, Redistricting, Omicron, New Hotel, Tonga Tsunami, Public Input on Recruiting the Director for the Police Accountability Board. There is nothing on TOPA. The January 15 email includes only a call for input on the Paving Plan. The January 12 email is the announcement of the MLK Jr Breakfast, The January 6 and 8 emails are on COVID and protection from Omicron.
The December 23, 2021 email from the Mayor is a recap of all the successes of the year with much on housing, but there is no mention of TOPA finally making it out of the Land Use, Housing and Economic Development Committee on May 20, 2021 with a positive qualified recommendation.
At the May 20, 2021 Land Use Committee, the motion began with “Recommendation to: 1. Send the item to the full Council incorporating the Mayor’s May 20, 2021 amendments…”
Many of us have been wondering what happened to TOPA. This has been a long haul for tenants seeking passage of TOPA and it isn’t over. TOPA first appeared in the Agenda and Rules packet on February 24, 2020 and from there it was referred to the Land Use Committee.
I would hope that no one is bullied into being paraded out to take the fall, because in this case as chair of the Agenda and Rules Committee, Mayor Arreguin had plenty of opportunity prior to January 20, 2022 to correct any omission of a planned meeting on TOPA for January 27. Arreguin also had months to add TOPA to the list of worksessions/workshops to be scheduled. The mayor also had the months between the end of May and December and certainly from September 2021 on to schedule a worksession on TOPA or bring it directly to council for a vote.
Arreguin has been mayor and chaired the Agenda Committee since 2016. He was a councilmember before that. Arreguin is the author of TOPA. He knows how the City system works. He should also know by now that I pay attention and he will know now that I do my homework and far too often I don’t clean up my emails.
If all this gets to better city meeting planning and posting of future meetings than this has made my day a better one. There is much work still to be done.
In closing my latest reading, The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang who lives right here in Berkeley. I love books that challenge my thinking and give a different perspective. Most of my reading on race and racism up to this point has focused on African Americans and the genocide of the indigenous People in America. Caspian writes about who and what is “White” : his search for self identity as the son of Korean immigrants and as an Asian man in America and father of a bi-racial daughter. Caspian challenges the lumping of Asians together as one group when there are so many different cultures and perspectives. I thought a lot about another challenge to “lumping” of cultures together, the time when I saw the first iteration of Culture Clash in AmeriCA. I can’t remember the year, but google has it as 2002.
What a week! There is so much to write about I will have trouble keeping this down to a readable length. And, I can’t even cover all of the hot meetings as there were too many running at the same time. The recordings aren’t up yet on the Thursday Council TOPA meeting and then there are the meetings where the record button is never touched. Plus, you will have to read my response to the mayor who wasn’t too happy with what I wrote about him last week.
The week of meetings started Monday with the Community for a Cultural Civic Center and the report on the water intrusion study. The cost of repairs for water leaks and water damage at the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings is in.
Maudelle Shirek (Old City Hall) is $1,480,947, and the Veterans Building is 1,918,262--a total of $3,399,210. This is just for a new roof and repairing leaks throughout the buildings. There may be additional costs like the Civic Arts fee, and we will have to ask about the cost of windows, since dry rot in the windows and frames is extensive. This will likely fall into a balance between being true to historical design or to switching to double pane. Maintenance is not included. The cost estimate for the seismic stabilization for both buildings is still in process, and that is just to bring the level to “Damage Control”, where everyone gets out safely and the building is repairable. https://berkeleycccc.org/what-were-about
There are still rumblings from people who claim that housing can be built on top of the Veterans’ Building. Swords to Plowshares already rejected such a proposal some time ago, since to take on such a task would require building a “bridge” over the building on which to put the housing, a very expensive proposition. If housing at the Veterans Building is or becomes the priority, that is a very different plan (I am not in that subcommittee). In that situation, my take from the seismic discussions is that we would be looking at something similar to the complex at the northeast corner of Shattuck and University where the buildings were gutted to a shell.
The Turtle Island Monument, which turns the Civic Center Park fountain into a garden, has been turned over to PGA Architects https://www.pgaarchitects.co.za/ for final design.
Last Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting dragged on until 12:50 am. The Surveillance Technology Report was moved to March 22, 2022. The evening wasn’t helped by adding the lengthy presentation of the 2021 COVID-19 Response Report to the agenda.
City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley gave a heaping dose of praise to City staff for their response to COVID-19. When the presentation ended and public comment began, City employees described their dissatisfaction with how they are not notified when exposed to COVID at work, how the ventilation at 1947 Center Street is still a problem (first noted by city employees at council in 2020), how there is no partnership with labor, how City employees are required to be on site when they could perform their work more safely off site, and their comments closed with a request to “judge us on our activity not our presence.” This was quickly followed with the clean-up put in the hands of the Director of Human Resources La Tanya Bellows. The entire show from start to finish was 98 minutes.
Next came the Street Maintenance and Rehabilitation Policy and Five-Year Paving Plan. The vote fell unanimously on the “equity” plan which has a stronger focus on residential than arterials. Looking at the diagrams from the agenda, it still doesn’t look like much will get fixed.
The evening finished with unbelievable drama. Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn partnered in presenting an amendment to the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Ordinance to address public safety in high severity fire zones. The amendment limits the size, setbacks and number of ADUs that could be added to a lot in the City of Berkeley high fire risk zones. Included is prohibition of rooftop decks and of intrusion into a four-foot setback. Discussion and voting required multiple extensions to the regular closing time.
Wengraf started with listing fires in the hills. The fires of 1923 and 1991 aren’t the only fires in the Berkeley Hills though. You can read about them here: https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2019/september-17-1923-day-berkeley-burned There were also fires in the 1970s (37 homes) and the 1980s (38 homes).
There is a clause in the SB 9 legislation signed by the Governor in 2021 that eliminates single-family residential zones statewide and provides for increasing density without discretionary review or hearings, with few exceptions. The exception most concerning here allows for limiting housing development if “…the housing development project would have a specific, adverse impact…upon public health and safety…” https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB9&showamends=true
Hahn gave the best, most thorough, understandable presentation that I’ve seen since she was elected to council. Wengraf showed a 2-minute recording from the 1991 Berkeley Hills fire of people stuck in a traffic jam abandoning their cars to escape on foot with the fire billowing behind them. Twenty-five people didn’t make it out and died in that fire.
After all the presentations, public testimony, council discussion, and after 12:30 am Councilmember Kesarwani made a substitute motion, seconded by Droste, to throw out the proposed Wengraf/Hahn public safety amendment to the ADU ordinance for high risk fire zones and to use the same ADU ordinance that was passed for the city flats at the previous council meeting. The discussion was chaotic, but the motion initially passed with Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Robinson and Droste voting for it and Harrison, Hahn Wengraf and Arreguin voting against. After the total was announced, with the clock ticking off the last seconds of the meeting, Bartlett said he thought he had voted the wrong way and requested a vote to reconsider.
Kesarwani, Harrison and Droste had left when another vote was taken to extend the meeting once more, to 12:50 am. The vote to reconsider passed, and the vote on the Kesarwani/Droste substitute motion was retaken, with Kesarwani, Taplin, Robinson and Droste voting yes and Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Wengraf and Arreguin voting no. The main motion (Hahn/Harrison with the Wengraf and Hahn public safety amendments) prevailed at about 12:49 am with Kesarwani, Taplin, Robinson and Droste ultimately acquiescing and joining with the majority to record it as unanimous.
Thursday, the evening of meetings dueling for attention, I attended the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting. It was another late night that didn’t end until 11:20 pm. The commissioners listened intently and responded to public comment. The Amber draft map was the overwhelming favorite. The Blue, Orange and Maroon maps were eliminated. The united waterfront as one district was dropped.
There will be 2 -3 new draft maps available to the public and committee for scrutiny on February 10th. The next meeting is February 17. An extra meeting is scheduled for Saturday, February 19. The time was not determined, but is likely to be 10 am.
The Amber map is to remain the same with corrections as requested by the public/South Berkeley to the boundary between District 3 and District 8 to unify the Ashby BART station site to include the Ed Roberts campus in District 3. The corrected Amber map would also realign the District 3 boundary to include more of South Berkeley, so that the NAACP and St. Paul A.M.E. Church would be in District 3. The new border is likely to be Shattuck.
Using the Amber map as the bas, a second new map and possibly a third map will be created with two student districts and including the corrections to District 3 as above.
The commission vote on the final map will be February 28.
I received an email from Mayor Arreguin. He wasn’t too happy with what I wrote about him in my January 22 Activist’s Diary. You will get the details so keep reading. Just in case you never read my Activist’s Calendar to the end, I always include scheduled worksessions and unscheduled workshops and presentations.
For those who haven’t heard of TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), the subject of these emails, it is this: When a building is going up for sale, TOPA gives the tenants living in it notice and the first right to purchase the building. There are more details and conditions than this broad summary.
After the TOPA meeting recording is posted I will watch it and report on it in next week’s Activist’s Diary. There has been a strong pushback from property owners and developers and I would expect they showed up Thursday as they have in the past.
Here is his email, plus verfication from Sarah Scruggs. My response follows the emails.
[from]Jesse Arreguin: Kelly, I want to respond to this statement in your recent "A Berkeley Activist's Diary":
All of this brings us to the next question: Why did Mayor Arreguin decide to schedule a special meeting, the council work session on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), at the very same time as the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting? This looks very much like a deliberate act to dilute the response to TOPA by splitting concerned citizens between TOPA and redistricting. There wasn’t even a whiff of a special meeting on TOPA at the last Agenda and Rules Committee meeting, where dates of work sessions were reviewed. All of this leaves a very unpleasant taste.
Contrary to what people may think, there is no grand conspiracy to undermine TOPA on my part. Trust me I want people to be at both meetings.
I did announce at a prior Agenda and Rules Committee meeting that we would be calling a special meeting on January 27th to hold a work session on TOPA. You may not have heard me say it and I am sorry it was not clear.
Additionally the TOPA Working Group has been doing outreach for weeks on this date. This date was arrived at in consultation with the TOPA Working Group. I did alert the City Manager and City Clerk of this date and was not informed of any potential conflicts when we originally calendared this date. It is also unfortunate that City staff scheduled multiple important meetings on the same date.
We settled on this date in December and it has been promoted by email, social media and through flyering. I have cced Sarah Scruggs from NCLT and the TOPA Working Group to confirm this.
Mayor Jesse Arreguin
************************************************************
From:Sarah Scruggs, Northern California Land Trust
Hi Kelly, The Mayor is correct. Since December, the TOPA Working Group has been sending updates via email about the January 27 TOPA work session to organizations that have endorsed TOPA, as well as individuals that have sent emails in support of TOPA during our past email actions. Apologies that you did not receive the information and happy to add you to the email list. Attached are the flyers that have been passed out around town.
Response
My source of information is city meetings and city records so whatever discussions and negotiations were going on inside or outside of city hall there wasn’t any notice to the public of the January 27 worksession on TOPA until it appeared in the Agenda and Rules packet published on the Committee homepage sometime on Thursday, January 20, 2021. The content of the special January 27 meeting was also listed on the City Council Agenda Index webpage with a document dated January 20, 2022. I picked up the notices on Friday January 21 when I went through city meetings to prepare the Activist’s Calendar for the week of January 23 – January 30, 2022 and commented in my Activist’s Diary January 22, 2022 edition.
The City Council 2022 Meeting Schedules adopted on January 18, 2022 lists worksessions on January 20, February 15, March 15, April 19, June 21, and July 19. There is no listing of a January 27, 2022 worksession, a meeting date that Mayor Arreguin states in his email was settled in December. He blames others for scheduling meetings in the same evening of January 27.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Meeting_Schedule.aspx
Arreguin states he announced the TOPA worksession at a prior Agenda and Rules Committee meeting. Even though I attended the January 4, 2022, January 10, 2022 and January 24, 2022 Agenda and Rules Committee, I listened to the recordings for an announcement of the January 27, 2022 worksession on TOPA. There was no mention at either the January 4 or January 10 meeting. There was only a reference to the published worksession calendar in the packet on January 24, 2022 with no verbal mention of TOPA. There is not documentation of either a scheduled or planned to be scheduled worksession on TOPA in any Agenda and Rules Committee agendas prior to the January 20th packet. There is also nothing in the minutes of the Agenda meetings of either a scheduled or planned to be scheduled worksession on TOPA going back to May 10, 2021.
I also looked through the emails from Mayor@CityofBerkeley.info The emails used to send us announcements, alerts, information. The January 26, 2022 email includes, COVID booster requirements, Redistricting, Omicron, New Hotel, Tonga Tsunami, Public Input on Recruiting the Director for the Police Accountability Board. There is nothing on TOPA. The January 15 email includes only a call for input on the Paving Plan. The January 12 email is the announcement of the MLK Jr Breakfast, The January 6 and 8 emails are on COVID and protection from Omicron.
The December 23, 2021 email from the Mayor is a recap of all the successes of the year with much on housing, but there is no mention of TOPA finally making it out of the Land Use, Housing and Economic Development Committee on May 20, 2021 with a positive qualified recommendation.
At the May 20, 2021 Land Use Committee, the motion began with “Recommendation to: 1. Send the item to the full Council incorporating the Mayor’s May 20, 2021 amendments…”
Many of us have been wondering what happened to TOPA. This has been a long haul for tenants seeking passage of TOPA and it isn’t over. TOPA first appeared in the Agenda and Rules packet on February 24, 2020 and from there it was referred to the Land Use Committee.
I would hope that no one is bullied into being paraded out to take the fall, because in this case as chair of the Agenda and Rules Committee, Mayor Arreguin had plenty of opportunity prior to January 20, 2022 to correct any omission of a planned meeting on TOPA for January 27. Arreguin also had months to add TOPA to the list of worksessions/workshops to be scheduled. The mayor also had the months between the end of May and December and certainly from September 2021 on to schedule a worksession on TOPA or bring it directly to council for a vote.
Arreguin has been mayor and chaired the Agenda Committee since 2016. He was a councilmember before that. Arreguin is the author of TOPA. He knows how the City system works. He should also know by now that I pay attention and he will know now that I do my homework and far too often I don’t clean up my emails.
If all this gets to better city meeting planning and posting of future meetings than this has made my day a better one. There is much work still to be done.
In closing my latest reading, The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang who lives right here in Berkeley. I love books that challenge my thinking and give a different perspective. Most of my reading on race and racism up to this point has focused on African Americans and the genocide of the indigenous People in America. Caspian writes about who and what is “White” : his search for self identity as the son of Korean immigrants and as an Asian man in America and father of a bi-racial daughter. Caspian challenges the lumping of Asians together as one group when there are so many different cultures and perspectives. I thought a lot about another challenge to “lumping” of cultures together, the time when I saw the first iteration of Culture Clash in AmeriCA. I can’t remember the year, but google has it as 2002.
January 22, 2022
This was an ugly week in so many ways, with occasional bright spots. It finished with the flickering of lights, howling wind and then nothing but darkness at midnight Friday.
We lost on getting voting rights passed, thanks to Senators Sinema and Manchin, but the nooses around the Trump business , the Trump family and layers of the planned coup, including the “former guy”, looked to be getting tighter. It is hard to tell if we will come out of the divide between those of us who want to live in a multi-cultural democracy and those driven by maintaining White supremacy with autocracy bellowed across airwaves and social media as the answer. Of course, the lust for power, conspiracies, greed and cultish adoration for Donald Trump is right at the center of it.
The risks at hand should never be underestimated. Some of us are still on pins and needles wondering if the Department of Justice will step up to the plate.
The biggest unpleasant redistricting surprise in Berkeley was that an open house to present the new redistricting draft maps was announced sometime late last Friday to be held the following day, (Saturday, January 22, 2022) at the Northbrae Church from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Included in the post was the announcement of a second in-person open house at the South Berkeley Senior Center on Monday,January 24, from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm.
Just why such an announcement would go out late Friday needs some explanation. One would think that such planning had been in the works for more than a few hours on Friday. And, it certainly deserves more than popping up on the community calendar. The email string about which I received from a neighbor started at 20:31 or 8:31 pm on Friday night.
I can say this week that I am again made dizzy this time looking at the four draft redistricting maps, so I made a chart of each and added the descriptions of the neighborhoods compiled by BCA (Berkeley Citizens Action – an organization familiar with neighborhood identities). The distribution of race and renters and home owners in each proposed map is quite interesting.
Regardings the four draft maps (Amber, Blue, Maroon, Orange): Two create a second student district instead of just one. And to create those second student districts, the Blue and Maroon maps drive a spear into District 4, the district I live in. District 7, represented by incumbent Councilmember Rigel Robinson, is the current student super majority district. In the draft Blue and Maroon maps, District 4 is gerrymandered into two of the draft versions to create a second student district.
For a little refresher, there was such an uproar over the redrawing of the council districts after the 2010 census that Berkeley residents successfully gained signatures for a referendum. The whole mess after months of wrangling was finally settled in December 2014.
This time, with efforts to create a second student district at the expense of existing neighborhoods, one has to ask if this would fall under the prohibition in Line (k) of the California elections code:
“(k) The commission shall not draw districts for the purpose of favoring or discriminating against a political party or an incumbent or political candidate.”
Besides being a hit on District 4, adding a second student district panders to a group that hasn’t shown much interest in local elections, if one looks to the turnout for 2018. I couldn’t find the percent of registered voters or voter eligible residents in each district for 2018, but looking at the total votes cast in Berkeley election history District 7 had a pretty poor showing, with only 2,795 votes cast compared to District 1 (7,845), District 4 (5,447) and District 8 (6,523).
Consider that districts were drawn to relatively equal populations, and in that student population there wouldn’t be many children under the age of 18 living with their voting age parents to dilute the number of eligible voters. District 7 also had the lowest voter turnout in 2020.
If the Blue and Maroon maps are thrown out, that leaves us with the Amber and Orange maps.
The Amber map is closest to existing districts with corrections to reunite neighborhoods that were divided in 2014. The Orange map creates a unified waterfront, West Berkeley District. We need to hear from West Berkeley residents regarding their preference between being split between Districts 1 and 2 or being united.
The Orange and Amber maps are also the most reasonable acknowledgement of the high fire danger areas in the hills. The majority student district is maintained. Keeping District 4 together in the Amber and Orange maps maintains a vital healthy mix there.
The drop-dead date to finalize the new district map is March 16, 2022. That may sound like a long way off, but that day will be here in a flash. The time to get involved is right now. The next Independent Redistricting Commission meeting is this coming Thursday, January 27 at 6 pm. You can review the draft maps at https://redistricting-commission-berkeley.hub.arcgis.com/ (use the IRC Public Meetings button for meeting links or go to the Activist’s Calendar).
All of this brings us to the next question: Why did Mayor Arreguin decide to schedule a special meeting, the council work session on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), at the very same time as the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting? This looks very much like a deliberate act to dilute the response to TOPA by splitting concerned citizens between TOPA and redistricting. There wasn’t even a whiff of a special meeting on TOPA at the last Agenda and Rules Committee meeting, where dates of work sessions were reviewed. All of this leaves a very unpleasant taste.
For a little good news, the council voted on January 18th to maintain the Zero Waste Commission as a single free-standing commission and to merge just two commissions, Community Environmental Advisory Commission and the Energy Commission, into the new Climate and Environment Commission. The council also voted to reject merging the Community Health Commission and the Sugar Sweetened Beverage Panel of Experts. On the first round of votes for the two measures Councilmembers Droste (who authored the merging) and co-sponsors Kesarwani and Robinson voted for the mergers (3 to 6) as they proposed. When they failed to gain support, they came around to vote with the majority in a final 9 to 0.
At the Land Use Committee meeting on Thursday, it was revealed that Councilmember Taplin’s proposal to streamline toxic remediation at manufacturing sites was for the benefit of the Pacific Steel Casting Company site in West Berkeley. Pacific Steel closed in 2017, and the site, which has toxic contamination, has been dormant. I am not privy to who and what is planned for the takeover of this site, but I have been watching the push to undo the West Berkeley Plan with protections for artists.
Anyone who is concerned about living over or spending considerable time at work on top of a capped toxic site in an area like West Berkeley, with sea level rise and ground water not far below, should watch the presentation by Kristina Hill, associate professor at UC Berkeley, at the beginning of the Sea Level Rise and Shoreline Contamination Regional Workshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM4YydPBV3A . The response by Grant Cope from the State of California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) in the panel at the end of the second day should also be noted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAqnKY9dx6U
There was another double scheduling of meetings on Thursday evening, but this was a conflict that has no nefarious undertones, just too much going on at once. I started off with Reimaging Public Safety Community Meeting for Districts 3 and 4 and then left to watch the City Council’s special meeting on infrastructure.
The Reimagining Public Safety Community meeting was up to 26 total participants at one point and then dropped to 23 before I left. Of that total, I counted seven co-hosts all associated with the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) and recognized two city staff names. I called around the next day to see if I missed anything and heard these comments, “if you want to get out of the decision you hire consultants to do it” and another describing the presenters as sounding like “androids reading from their report” and the content as “capitalism run amok.” Maybe these comments made public will improve the next community meeting scheduled for February.
I was asked to review a book on policing, the 3rd edition of Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence by Michael W. Quinn, 2016. Not having power for nearly all of Saturday really set me behind. You will read more about that next week after adding my observations from the Reimaging Public Safety Task Force discussion and critique of the NICJR Report this coming Monday evening meeting.
Review and discussion of the movie “Don’t Look Up” are popping up everywhere including in the PBS Newshour on Thursday evening. It is a must see. If you don’t have Netflix , sign-up or find a friend with Netflix.
As I listened in darkness to the howling wind, I kept thinking this is what the future of climate catastrophe brings. I was lucky with the thousands of others without power that it wasn’t 10° or eventlasting days without safe drinking water and all else that can run amok with loss of power. Even though this weekend ended brightly, we need to face what’s ahead. Climate is the comet headed straight at us.
Our continued inaction and denial will leave our children, grandchildren and the next generations with an earth that is uninhabitable. Already we are living through superstorms and climate refugees are converging on country borders worldwide. There will be more, and that brings us to our book club selection for January The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here by Hope Jahren, 2020.
Jahren has a wonderful way of pulling together the story of more of everything not with hammering us with dismal portrayals of the future, but instead describing where we are and giving us much to think about. The first comments in book club were how they loved the book. We each had chapters that grabbed us. I loved the chapter on aquafarming – fish and energy including moving around.
The Story of More is available at the library. This is one case where I liked the book so much, I bought a copy.
This was an ugly week in so many ways, with occasional bright spots. It finished with the flickering of lights, howling wind and then nothing but darkness at midnight Friday.
We lost on getting voting rights passed, thanks to Senators Sinema and Manchin, but the nooses around the Trump business , the Trump family and layers of the planned coup, including the “former guy”, looked to be getting tighter. It is hard to tell if we will come out of the divide between those of us who want to live in a multi-cultural democracy and those driven by maintaining White supremacy with autocracy bellowed across airwaves and social media as the answer. Of course, the lust for power, conspiracies, greed and cultish adoration for Donald Trump is right at the center of it.
The risks at hand should never be underestimated. Some of us are still on pins and needles wondering if the Department of Justice will step up to the plate.
The biggest unpleasant redistricting surprise in Berkeley was that an open house to present the new redistricting draft maps was announced sometime late last Friday to be held the following day, (Saturday, January 22, 2022) at the Northbrae Church from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Included in the post was the announcement of a second in-person open house at the South Berkeley Senior Center on Monday,January 24, from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm.
Just why such an announcement would go out late Friday needs some explanation. One would think that such planning had been in the works for more than a few hours on Friday. And, it certainly deserves more than popping up on the community calendar. The email string about which I received from a neighbor started at 20:31 or 8:31 pm on Friday night.
I can say this week that I am again made dizzy this time looking at the four draft redistricting maps, so I made a chart of each and added the descriptions of the neighborhoods compiled by BCA (Berkeley Citizens Action – an organization familiar with neighborhood identities). The distribution of race and renters and home owners in each proposed map is quite interesting.
Regardings the four draft maps (Amber, Blue, Maroon, Orange): Two create a second student district instead of just one. And to create those second student districts, the Blue and Maroon maps drive a spear into District 4, the district I live in. District 7, represented by incumbent Councilmember Rigel Robinson, is the current student super majority district. In the draft Blue and Maroon maps, District 4 is gerrymandered into two of the draft versions to create a second student district.
For a little refresher, there was such an uproar over the redrawing of the council districts after the 2010 census that Berkeley residents successfully gained signatures for a referendum. The whole mess after months of wrangling was finally settled in December 2014.
This time, with efforts to create a second student district at the expense of existing neighborhoods, one has to ask if this would fall under the prohibition in Line (k) of the California elections code:
“(k) The commission shall not draw districts for the purpose of favoring or discriminating against a political party or an incumbent or political candidate.”
Besides being a hit on District 4, adding a second student district panders to a group that hasn’t shown much interest in local elections, if one looks to the turnout for 2018. I couldn’t find the percent of registered voters or voter eligible residents in each district for 2018, but looking at the total votes cast in Berkeley election history District 7 had a pretty poor showing, with only 2,795 votes cast compared to District 1 (7,845), District 4 (5,447) and District 8 (6,523).
Consider that districts were drawn to relatively equal populations, and in that student population there wouldn’t be many children under the age of 18 living with their voting age parents to dilute the number of eligible voters. District 7 also had the lowest voter turnout in 2020.
If the Blue and Maroon maps are thrown out, that leaves us with the Amber and Orange maps.
The Amber map is closest to existing districts with corrections to reunite neighborhoods that were divided in 2014. The Orange map creates a unified waterfront, West Berkeley District. We need to hear from West Berkeley residents regarding their preference between being split between Districts 1 and 2 or being united.
The Orange and Amber maps are also the most reasonable acknowledgement of the high fire danger areas in the hills. The majority student district is maintained. Keeping District 4 together in the Amber and Orange maps maintains a vital healthy mix there.
The drop-dead date to finalize the new district map is March 16, 2022. That may sound like a long way off, but that day will be here in a flash. The time to get involved is right now. The next Independent Redistricting Commission meeting is this coming Thursday, January 27 at 6 pm. You can review the draft maps at https://redistricting-commission-berkeley.hub.arcgis.com/ (use the IRC Public Meetings button for meeting links or go to the Activist’s Calendar).
All of this brings us to the next question: Why did Mayor Arreguin decide to schedule a special meeting, the council work session on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), at the very same time as the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting? This looks very much like a deliberate act to dilute the response to TOPA by splitting concerned citizens between TOPA and redistricting. There wasn’t even a whiff of a special meeting on TOPA at the last Agenda and Rules Committee meeting, where dates of work sessions were reviewed. All of this leaves a very unpleasant taste.
For a little good news, the council voted on January 18th to maintain the Zero Waste Commission as a single free-standing commission and to merge just two commissions, Community Environmental Advisory Commission and the Energy Commission, into the new Climate and Environment Commission. The council also voted to reject merging the Community Health Commission and the Sugar Sweetened Beverage Panel of Experts. On the first round of votes for the two measures Councilmembers Droste (who authored the merging) and co-sponsors Kesarwani and Robinson voted for the mergers (3 to 6) as they proposed. When they failed to gain support, they came around to vote with the majority in a final 9 to 0.
At the Land Use Committee meeting on Thursday, it was revealed that Councilmember Taplin’s proposal to streamline toxic remediation at manufacturing sites was for the benefit of the Pacific Steel Casting Company site in West Berkeley. Pacific Steel closed in 2017, and the site, which has toxic contamination, has been dormant. I am not privy to who and what is planned for the takeover of this site, but I have been watching the push to undo the West Berkeley Plan with protections for artists.
Anyone who is concerned about living over or spending considerable time at work on top of a capped toxic site in an area like West Berkeley, with sea level rise and ground water not far below, should watch the presentation by Kristina Hill, associate professor at UC Berkeley, at the beginning of the Sea Level Rise and Shoreline Contamination Regional Workshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM4YydPBV3A . The response by Grant Cope from the State of California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) in the panel at the end of the second day should also be noted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAqnKY9dx6U
There was another double scheduling of meetings on Thursday evening, but this was a conflict that has no nefarious undertones, just too much going on at once. I started off with Reimaging Public Safety Community Meeting for Districts 3 and 4 and then left to watch the City Council’s special meeting on infrastructure.
The Reimagining Public Safety Community meeting was up to 26 total participants at one point and then dropped to 23 before I left. Of that total, I counted seven co-hosts all associated with the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) and recognized two city staff names. I called around the next day to see if I missed anything and heard these comments, “if you want to get out of the decision you hire consultants to do it” and another describing the presenters as sounding like “androids reading from their report” and the content as “capitalism run amok.” Maybe these comments made public will improve the next community meeting scheduled for February.
I was asked to review a book on policing, the 3rd edition of Walking with the Devil: The Police Code of Silence by Michael W. Quinn, 2016. Not having power for nearly all of Saturday really set me behind. You will read more about that next week after adding my observations from the Reimaging Public Safety Task Force discussion and critique of the NICJR Report this coming Monday evening meeting.
Review and discussion of the movie “Don’t Look Up” are popping up everywhere including in the PBS Newshour on Thursday evening. It is a must see. If you don’t have Netflix , sign-up or find a friend with Netflix.
As I listened in darkness to the howling wind, I kept thinking this is what the future of climate catastrophe brings. I was lucky with the thousands of others without power that it wasn’t 10° or eventlasting days without safe drinking water and all else that can run amok with loss of power. Even though this weekend ended brightly, we need to face what’s ahead. Climate is the comet headed straight at us.
Our continued inaction and denial will leave our children, grandchildren and the next generations with an earth that is uninhabitable. Already we are living through superstorms and climate refugees are converging on country borders worldwide. There will be more, and that brings us to our book club selection for January The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here by Hope Jahren, 2020.
Jahren has a wonderful way of pulling together the story of more of everything not with hammering us with dismal portrayals of the future, but instead describing where we are and giving us much to think about. The first comments in book club were how they loved the book. We each had chapters that grabbed us. I loved the chapter on aquafarming – fish and energy including moving around.
The Story of More is available at the library. This is one case where I liked the book so much, I bought a copy.
January 16, 2022
This was a week of national news that ties in close to home.
As I write the voting rights bills look to be dead thanks to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin leaving gerrymandering and voter suppression alive and well. Closer to home, the Berkeley Independent Redistricting Commission met last Monday, January 10th.
Berkeley just like the rest of the country is looking at the fallout of the 2020 Census population changes and redrawing voting district boundaries to equalize population. We had until November 15, 2021 to submit redistricting maps for Berkeley City Council and I’ve been flipping back and forth between the 29 submitted maps until I feel dizzy. https://redistricting-commission-berkeley.hub.arcgis.com/ And, even though I attended the Monday meeting, I watched the video again before writing just to make sure I am accurate in my comments.
By January 20th staff with three commissioners will create or choose five maps using the following criteria for every map: 1) Prioritize communities of interest (neighborhoods), 2) Follow major thoroughfares, 3) Correct accommodations for councilmembers (in the current map from 2010 there is a bulb out in District 4 north of Cedar-Arreguin and another in District 7 east of Telegraph to Hillegass-Worthington), 4) include a student district. The commission requested that the five maps include a map with a West Berkeley district, a map with two student districts, and a map that aligns with the topography of the hills/fire zones/transit areas. Other considerations a map that is more representative and diverse and a map with minor changes recognizing neighborhoods.
During the discussion of submitted maps and comments, Commissioner Choy stated that the comments regarding the BNC map looked to be the same, copied. Since BNC is the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council representing neighborhoods across the entire city with multiple contributions, it would be expected to have multiple people submitting similar comments.
Greg Magofna commented on his map, “…the map that I submitted is very neutral…” Neutral is a hard pill to swallow since Magofna lost his candidate bid for council in 2018 and submitted a map that looks to advantage him if he runs again in 2022. I tried my own hand at redrawing district boundaries with Maptitude achieving what would be classified as minor changes with a 1% total variation in population among the eight districts. The maximum allowed deviation is 10%. My map isn’t in the running so to speak, but it was a good experience doing it.
Not enough happened at Monday’s Agenda Committee to take up any space and if we are lucky the January 25th Council meeting agenda will stay short, a much desired change from this coming Tuesday. The January 18th council agenda is so long it looks like an all-nighter with lots of important stuff like adopt-a-spot, parking [fee] referrals for the marina and Gilman and Lorin commercial districts, paving plan, merger of the Health Commission and Sugar Sweetened Beverages and merger of the Energy Commission, Zero Waste Commission and Community Environmental Advisory Commission.
The referrals on parking will come back later, but it looks like the effort from the city manager’s office is to kill the adopt-a-spot proposal. The Adopt-a-Spot Program Development Recommendation is to fund two fulltime volunteer coordinators. Diane Ross-Lesch who worked on the Traffic Circle Task Force attended our neighborhood meeting Saturday. When I heard there are well over two hundred community volunteers for native plant pollinator gardens in our parks, traffic circles, storm drains and the other projects mentioned in the recommendation, the plea for volunteer coordinators is obvious. I am hoping after council and the city manager hear how successful volunteerism has become, they will find their way clear to approve the recommendation now.
As for the commission mergers, I am baffled why during a pandemic the Health Commission was not allowed to meet but once and why during the climate emergency we are all living in, the council has decided this is the time to cut the expertise of three commissions with twenty-seven people to one commission with nine.
Thursday, when I heard the news of Stewart Rhodes founder of the “far-right” militia the Oath Keepers and ten other co-conspirators charged with seditious conspiracy for their wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, I kept thinking back to the first time I heard of the “far-right” militia the Oath Keepers. It was in relation to Berkeley Police participation in Urban Shield terrorist training exercises organized by the Alameda County Sheriff, Gregory Ahern and the presence of the Oath Keepers in a booth next to the Sheriff’s booth.
In the January 13, 2022 release from the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs announcement of “Leader of Oath Keepers and 10 Other Individuals Indicted in Federal Court for Seditious Conspiracy and Other Offenses Related to U.S. Capitol Breach,” the description of the Oath Keepers in Justice News included: “…Though the Oath Keepers will accept anyone as members, they explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel…” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-oath-keepers-and-10-other-individuals-indicted-federal-court-seditious-conspiracy-and
Back in 2017 and 2018 there was an all-out effort to convince City Council to withdraw from Urban Shield. At the special meeting on July 23, 2018 on Urban Shield public testimony covered the close association between the Sheriff’s Office and the Oath Keepers, racist paraphernalia sold at the event, racist toned training exercises and warned of the White Supremacist extremism presence. The community lost when Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Wengraf, Maio, Droste and Hahn voted for Urban Shield. Councilmembers Harrison, Davila, Bartlett and Worthington voted in opposition.
The Alameda County Supervisors took a much harder look and used their control over budget to end Urban Shield.
The Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) met Wednesday. Becoming a Bee City is dead from staff pushback and not enough excitement. They also tabled (no further action) on the tobacco waste litter program.
In a surprising move at the Zoning adjustment Board, the action on whether to legalize two accessory dwellings at 1151 Grizzly Peak was postponed to gather more information. At least one of the accessory dwellings will be required to move. The decision is whether it should be moved north or south. The decision on the appeal to block the change of use from media production to research and development at 2600 Tenth Street was also postponed.
The City of Berkeley is deep into planning with WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) to provide ferry service to Berkeley and for WETA to pay for part [300 feet] of a new pier at the Berkeley marina as part of the package. At the WETA meeting on Thursday, it was announced that ferry ridership is not meeting projections. People are not going back to the office, not commuting in the numbers expected. Drop in commuter ridership below projections fits with articles and notices of companies staying remote and closing offices. Karin Kimbrough, Chief Economist at Linkedin gave similar news on 60 minutes in the segment on jobs and the “great resignation” stating pre-pandemic 1 out of 67 jobs was remote. Now it is 1 of 7.
January 11, 2022 was the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay Prison. On November 7, 2021, I introduced two books with: “I wish these two books were required reading for every adult American then maybe we would finally see Guantanamo closed and the military budget slashed
The books are: Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and found in Guantanamo by Mansoor Adayfi and The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock.
Mansoor Adayfi describes so well what we really need to know about the kidnapping and sale of innocent men and boys for the monetary awards from the CIA and the imprisonment and torture that followed. What happened to the men held in Guantanamo under the banner of fighting terrorism isn’t just a blight, it is a horrific prison. Reading even a few chapters of The Afghanistan Papers is blistering.
The title of the book I finished this week encapsulates how I feel and think about reading, Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin, 2021. This lovely book introduces us to the author, the teachings of her father, Black culture and the remarkable literature of Black authors and poets. Griffin takes us down the path of her own joy in her discovery of Black authors, poets and artists. Now I have an even longer reading list for the coming year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/10/read-until-you-understand/
This was a week of national news that ties in close to home.
As I write the voting rights bills look to be dead thanks to Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin leaving gerrymandering and voter suppression alive and well. Closer to home, the Berkeley Independent Redistricting Commission met last Monday, January 10th.
Berkeley just like the rest of the country is looking at the fallout of the 2020 Census population changes and redrawing voting district boundaries to equalize population. We had until November 15, 2021 to submit redistricting maps for Berkeley City Council and I’ve been flipping back and forth between the 29 submitted maps until I feel dizzy. https://redistricting-commission-berkeley.hub.arcgis.com/ And, even though I attended the Monday meeting, I watched the video again before writing just to make sure I am accurate in my comments.
By January 20th staff with three commissioners will create or choose five maps using the following criteria for every map: 1) Prioritize communities of interest (neighborhoods), 2) Follow major thoroughfares, 3) Correct accommodations for councilmembers (in the current map from 2010 there is a bulb out in District 4 north of Cedar-Arreguin and another in District 7 east of Telegraph to Hillegass-Worthington), 4) include a student district. The commission requested that the five maps include a map with a West Berkeley district, a map with two student districts, and a map that aligns with the topography of the hills/fire zones/transit areas. Other considerations a map that is more representative and diverse and a map with minor changes recognizing neighborhoods.
During the discussion of submitted maps and comments, Commissioner Choy stated that the comments regarding the BNC map looked to be the same, copied. Since BNC is the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council representing neighborhoods across the entire city with multiple contributions, it would be expected to have multiple people submitting similar comments.
Greg Magofna commented on his map, “…the map that I submitted is very neutral…” Neutral is a hard pill to swallow since Magofna lost his candidate bid for council in 2018 and submitted a map that looks to advantage him if he runs again in 2022. I tried my own hand at redrawing district boundaries with Maptitude achieving what would be classified as minor changes with a 1% total variation in population among the eight districts. The maximum allowed deviation is 10%. My map isn’t in the running so to speak, but it was a good experience doing it.
Not enough happened at Monday’s Agenda Committee to take up any space and if we are lucky the January 25th Council meeting agenda will stay short, a much desired change from this coming Tuesday. The January 18th council agenda is so long it looks like an all-nighter with lots of important stuff like adopt-a-spot, parking [fee] referrals for the marina and Gilman and Lorin commercial districts, paving plan, merger of the Health Commission and Sugar Sweetened Beverages and merger of the Energy Commission, Zero Waste Commission and Community Environmental Advisory Commission.
The referrals on parking will come back later, but it looks like the effort from the city manager’s office is to kill the adopt-a-spot proposal. The Adopt-a-Spot Program Development Recommendation is to fund two fulltime volunteer coordinators. Diane Ross-Lesch who worked on the Traffic Circle Task Force attended our neighborhood meeting Saturday. When I heard there are well over two hundred community volunteers for native plant pollinator gardens in our parks, traffic circles, storm drains and the other projects mentioned in the recommendation, the plea for volunteer coordinators is obvious. I am hoping after council and the city manager hear how successful volunteerism has become, they will find their way clear to approve the recommendation now.
As for the commission mergers, I am baffled why during a pandemic the Health Commission was not allowed to meet but once and why during the climate emergency we are all living in, the council has decided this is the time to cut the expertise of three commissions with twenty-seven people to one commission with nine.
Thursday, when I heard the news of Stewart Rhodes founder of the “far-right” militia the Oath Keepers and ten other co-conspirators charged with seditious conspiracy for their wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, I kept thinking back to the first time I heard of the “far-right” militia the Oath Keepers. It was in relation to Berkeley Police participation in Urban Shield terrorist training exercises organized by the Alameda County Sheriff, Gregory Ahern and the presence of the Oath Keepers in a booth next to the Sheriff’s booth.
In the January 13, 2022 release from the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs announcement of “Leader of Oath Keepers and 10 Other Individuals Indicted in Federal Court for Seditious Conspiracy and Other Offenses Related to U.S. Capitol Breach,” the description of the Oath Keepers in Justice News included: “…Though the Oath Keepers will accept anyone as members, they explicitly focus on recruiting current and former military, law enforcement and first-responder personnel…” https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-oath-keepers-and-10-other-individuals-indicted-federal-court-seditious-conspiracy-and
Back in 2017 and 2018 there was an all-out effort to convince City Council to withdraw from Urban Shield. At the special meeting on July 23, 2018 on Urban Shield public testimony covered the close association between the Sheriff’s Office and the Oath Keepers, racist paraphernalia sold at the event, racist toned training exercises and warned of the White Supremacist extremism presence. The community lost when Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Wengraf, Maio, Droste and Hahn voted for Urban Shield. Councilmembers Harrison, Davila, Bartlett and Worthington voted in opposition.
The Alameda County Supervisors took a much harder look and used their control over budget to end Urban Shield.
The Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) met Wednesday. Becoming a Bee City is dead from staff pushback and not enough excitement. They also tabled (no further action) on the tobacco waste litter program.
In a surprising move at the Zoning adjustment Board, the action on whether to legalize two accessory dwellings at 1151 Grizzly Peak was postponed to gather more information. At least one of the accessory dwellings will be required to move. The decision is whether it should be moved north or south. The decision on the appeal to block the change of use from media production to research and development at 2600 Tenth Street was also postponed.
The City of Berkeley is deep into planning with WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) to provide ferry service to Berkeley and for WETA to pay for part [300 feet] of a new pier at the Berkeley marina as part of the package. At the WETA meeting on Thursday, it was announced that ferry ridership is not meeting projections. People are not going back to the office, not commuting in the numbers expected. Drop in commuter ridership below projections fits with articles and notices of companies staying remote and closing offices. Karin Kimbrough, Chief Economist at Linkedin gave similar news on 60 minutes in the segment on jobs and the “great resignation” stating pre-pandemic 1 out of 67 jobs was remote. Now it is 1 of 7.
January 11, 2022 was the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay Prison. On November 7, 2021, I introduced two books with: “I wish these two books were required reading for every adult American then maybe we would finally see Guantanamo closed and the military budget slashed
The books are: Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and found in Guantanamo by Mansoor Adayfi and The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock.
Mansoor Adayfi describes so well what we really need to know about the kidnapping and sale of innocent men and boys for the monetary awards from the CIA and the imprisonment and torture that followed. What happened to the men held in Guantanamo under the banner of fighting terrorism isn’t just a blight, it is a horrific prison. Reading even a few chapters of The Afghanistan Papers is blistering.
The title of the book I finished this week encapsulates how I feel and think about reading, Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin, 2021. This lovely book introduces us to the author, the teachings of her father, Black culture and the remarkable literature of Black authors and poets. Griffin takes us down the path of her own joy in her discovery of Black authors, poets and artists. Now I have an even longer reading list for the coming year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/09/10/read-until-you-understand/
January 9, 2022
The return to city meetings from the winter break was slow with a mostly quiet week. The secretary for the Public Works Commission did not get the agenda posted or at least functionally posted to meet the 72-hour notice requirement. The Public Works Commission meeting was canceled and rescheduled for this coming week and the agenda is still not posted. In fact, the agenda for the Public Works Commission has always been held to the last minute for all the years I have been pulling together the Activist’s Calendar.
The soon to be dissolved and merged Peace and Justice Commission voted to support the Assembly Bill introduced by Assembly Member Luz Rivas to require science instruction in climate change. The proposed Commission Resolution will be reworded to reflect that BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) already includes instruction in climate change.
The first public comment Thursday evening at the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meeting suggested that the Task Force should hear from the homeless service providers that gave presentations to the Homeless Commission on Wednesday evening and then lamented being unable to attend that meeting and posed the question, really a statement of; why aren’t all city [public] meetings on zoom recorded. I certainly agree.
Commission meeting minutes by enlarge tell nothing of what happened other than votes taken. Rarely is there any hint of discussion. Public comment is discarded and lost as is the history of meeting content beyond a vote. Also lost is the look at future councilmembers, candidates for assembly, senate, representatives and the ideologues who are organizing at the local level.
As for the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, the “Rec” button was not highlighted, but all the previous meetings have been recorded and posted. The evening discussion and action was the review of the report from the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR). The Task Force took issue with nearly every NICJR recommendation ranging from outright rejection, to modification to request for further analysis. Task Force member and vice-chair Boona Cheema summed up the report best, calling the NICJR Report a “shell game” and “it is not reimagining just moving the pieces.” A subcommittee was formed to compile all of the Task Force comments and recommendations into a separate report for review at the next meeting January 24, 2022.
The Agenda Committee met Tuesday to review the draft for the January 18th City Council regular meeting. There were two items on parking proposed as a referral to the City Manager. One is for charging for parking at the Marina and the other is to “Establish a Framework for Parking Benefits in the Lorin and Gilman Commercial Districts.”
My neighbor and I have been walking together for exercise most days for almost nine years. Friday was a destination walk with several stops. I stood outside while my walk partner was inside shopping at Trader Joes. Two nearly empty buses went by one with two passengers and the other with four. The City Council is fixated on getting us out of our cars (and rightly so) to reduce GHG emissions and the theory for the basis of their actions is charging for parking, taking away parking spaces and removing parking from multi-unit housing will push us out of our cars and into mass transit. Is it working? It doesn’t look like it.
The problem with buses is they don’t get us to where we want to go and the response to low ridership is AC Transit reduces stops and service resulting in the opposite of what is needed: reliable, efficient and frequent transit service. There seem to be more cars than ever and during that wait outside, a shopper with a big bag of groceries got into the Lyft that arrived as she walked to the curb. Lyft and Uber offer so much convenience, they actually take passengers away from mass transit.
Councilmember Harrison submitted a proposal for free AC transit on Sundays tied to restoring service to make the bridge and interrupt the cycle of driving. https://www.dailycal.org/2021/11/14/free-ac-transit-proposal-passes-council-faces-uncertain-future/ The proposal got as far as being thrown into the mix of referrals for mid-year budget spending and that is where it died.
The last time I got on a bus was in 2018 in Berlin. Berlin like so many cities outside of the U.S. has an interconnected transit system that meets all of the criteria, reliable, efficient and frequent. Only a handful of cities in the U.S. have an interconnected transit system. Of course, I wasn’t cooking so that trip to the grocery wasn’t needed, but I could get everywhere. And, there were trains. There are so many things we need to reduce our impact on this precious planet we call earth. Will taking away parking without creating and adding a transit system get us out of our cars? I don’t think so, but I like to be proven wrong. I also doubt that the heavily subsidized ferries, a most polluting mode of transportation will transform commuting.
I always wonder who reads the Activist’s Calendar and then I received this email comment in reference to item 15 in the January 18 City Council agenda “salary adjustment for Department Heads of Finance, Human resources, IT, Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, Planning, Public Works and Fire Chief from maximum $20,987 to $21,432.”
“I find this somewhat surprising, especially for the public sector? Used to be they made up for lower pay via retirement ‘golden handcuffs’? $275K per year? Trickle down works?
As you might guess, if you have been reading the Activist’s Diary, I got a little more reading done during the break, not as much as I planned. I came up one book short of my goal, but then my final selection of 2021 was Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon, 962 pages or as an audiobook 41 hours and published in 2012. It was an article in the New York Times about the book being banned in China and blacklisted in Texas that perked my attention and I leaped in without reading any content reviews. Far from the Tree covers how families do or don’t accommodate children with physical, mental and social disabilities and differences and the disagreements that evolve over care, medical treatment and becoming a parent. It is thought provoking with chapters devoted to the deaf, dwarfs, Down’s Syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple disabilities, prodigy, rape, crime and transgender. Through it, Solomon writes of being gay, rejection, bullying and search for identity and family.
Am I glad I read it even though some days it felt like a marathon? Absolutely.
I also read There is Nothing for You Here by Fiona Hill and Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could by Adam Schiff.
Fiona Hill ties together similarities between the loss of jobs and decline of the working class in Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Hill gives a much deeper and personal description of the discontent, disruption and rage we see here in the U.S. than the other books I read over the last year. Hill’s book is definitely worth reading though I kind of wish I had picked up the audiobook instead of the ebook to hear Fiona Hill read it.
A phase you will often hear from me on aging is: “People Age at Different Rates.” Adam Schiff in Midnight in Washington completed the circle on the failure of Robert Mueller III as he described how sorry he was that he insisted that Mueller testify before Congress. Schiff described Mueller as a shell of the man he used to know and how after watching how easily Mueller became flummoxed in the Judiciary Committee in the morning the House Intelligence Committee completely rewrote their questions. Questions became yes or no and referenced pages in the report that Mueller could use to answer. There is a lot more in Schiff’s book, but this is the section that stuck for me especially as I found an audio version of the Mueller Report when it was released in 2019 and listened to the entire report while I swam laps at the Y.
Last, if you haven’t watched the Netflix film, Don’t Look Up, put it on your list.
The return to city meetings from the winter break was slow with a mostly quiet week. The secretary for the Public Works Commission did not get the agenda posted or at least functionally posted to meet the 72-hour notice requirement. The Public Works Commission meeting was canceled and rescheduled for this coming week and the agenda is still not posted. In fact, the agenda for the Public Works Commission has always been held to the last minute for all the years I have been pulling together the Activist’s Calendar.
The soon to be dissolved and merged Peace and Justice Commission voted to support the Assembly Bill introduced by Assembly Member Luz Rivas to require science instruction in climate change. The proposed Commission Resolution will be reworded to reflect that BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) already includes instruction in climate change.
The first public comment Thursday evening at the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meeting suggested that the Task Force should hear from the homeless service providers that gave presentations to the Homeless Commission on Wednesday evening and then lamented being unable to attend that meeting and posed the question, really a statement of; why aren’t all city [public] meetings on zoom recorded. I certainly agree.
Commission meeting minutes by enlarge tell nothing of what happened other than votes taken. Rarely is there any hint of discussion. Public comment is discarded and lost as is the history of meeting content beyond a vote. Also lost is the look at future councilmembers, candidates for assembly, senate, representatives and the ideologues who are organizing at the local level.
As for the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, the “Rec” button was not highlighted, but all the previous meetings have been recorded and posted. The evening discussion and action was the review of the report from the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR). The Task Force took issue with nearly every NICJR recommendation ranging from outright rejection, to modification to request for further analysis. Task Force member and vice-chair Boona Cheema summed up the report best, calling the NICJR Report a “shell game” and “it is not reimagining just moving the pieces.” A subcommittee was formed to compile all of the Task Force comments and recommendations into a separate report for review at the next meeting January 24, 2022.
The Agenda Committee met Tuesday to review the draft for the January 18th City Council regular meeting. There were two items on parking proposed as a referral to the City Manager. One is for charging for parking at the Marina and the other is to “Establish a Framework for Parking Benefits in the Lorin and Gilman Commercial Districts.”
My neighbor and I have been walking together for exercise most days for almost nine years. Friday was a destination walk with several stops. I stood outside while my walk partner was inside shopping at Trader Joes. Two nearly empty buses went by one with two passengers and the other with four. The City Council is fixated on getting us out of our cars (and rightly so) to reduce GHG emissions and the theory for the basis of their actions is charging for parking, taking away parking spaces and removing parking from multi-unit housing will push us out of our cars and into mass transit. Is it working? It doesn’t look like it.
The problem with buses is they don’t get us to where we want to go and the response to low ridership is AC Transit reduces stops and service resulting in the opposite of what is needed: reliable, efficient and frequent transit service. There seem to be more cars than ever and during that wait outside, a shopper with a big bag of groceries got into the Lyft that arrived as she walked to the curb. Lyft and Uber offer so much convenience, they actually take passengers away from mass transit.
Councilmember Harrison submitted a proposal for free AC transit on Sundays tied to restoring service to make the bridge and interrupt the cycle of driving. https://www.dailycal.org/2021/11/14/free-ac-transit-proposal-passes-council-faces-uncertain-future/ The proposal got as far as being thrown into the mix of referrals for mid-year budget spending and that is where it died.
The last time I got on a bus was in 2018 in Berlin. Berlin like so many cities outside of the U.S. has an interconnected transit system that meets all of the criteria, reliable, efficient and frequent. Only a handful of cities in the U.S. have an interconnected transit system. Of course, I wasn’t cooking so that trip to the grocery wasn’t needed, but I could get everywhere. And, there were trains. There are so many things we need to reduce our impact on this precious planet we call earth. Will taking away parking without creating and adding a transit system get us out of our cars? I don’t think so, but I like to be proven wrong. I also doubt that the heavily subsidized ferries, a most polluting mode of transportation will transform commuting.
I always wonder who reads the Activist’s Calendar and then I received this email comment in reference to item 15 in the January 18 City Council agenda “salary adjustment for Department Heads of Finance, Human resources, IT, Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, Planning, Public Works and Fire Chief from maximum $20,987 to $21,432.”
“I find this somewhat surprising, especially for the public sector? Used to be they made up for lower pay via retirement ‘golden handcuffs’? $275K per year? Trickle down works?
As you might guess, if you have been reading the Activist’s Diary, I got a little more reading done during the break, not as much as I planned. I came up one book short of my goal, but then my final selection of 2021 was Far from the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon, 962 pages or as an audiobook 41 hours and published in 2012. It was an article in the New York Times about the book being banned in China and blacklisted in Texas that perked my attention and I leaped in without reading any content reviews. Far from the Tree covers how families do or don’t accommodate children with physical, mental and social disabilities and differences and the disagreements that evolve over care, medical treatment and becoming a parent. It is thought provoking with chapters devoted to the deaf, dwarfs, Down’s Syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple disabilities, prodigy, rape, crime and transgender. Through it, Solomon writes of being gay, rejection, bullying and search for identity and family.
Am I glad I read it even though some days it felt like a marathon? Absolutely.
I also read There is Nothing for You Here by Fiona Hill and Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could by Adam Schiff.
Fiona Hill ties together similarities between the loss of jobs and decline of the working class in Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Hill gives a much deeper and personal description of the discontent, disruption and rage we see here in the U.S. than the other books I read over the last year. Hill’s book is definitely worth reading though I kind of wish I had picked up the audiobook instead of the ebook to hear Fiona Hill read it.
A phase you will often hear from me on aging is: “People Age at Different Rates.” Adam Schiff in Midnight in Washington completed the circle on the failure of Robert Mueller III as he described how sorry he was that he insisted that Mueller testify before Congress. Schiff described Mueller as a shell of the man he used to know and how after watching how easily Mueller became flummoxed in the Judiciary Committee in the morning the House Intelligence Committee completely rewrote their questions. Questions became yes or no and referenced pages in the report that Mueller could use to answer. There is a lot more in Schiff’s book, but this is the section that stuck for me especially as I found an audio version of the Mueller Report when it was released in 2019 and listened to the entire report while I swam laps at the Y.
Last, if you haven’t watched the Netflix film, Don’t Look Up, put it on your list.
December 18, 2021
Glynda Glover, 82, from Kentucky had this to say about her uninhabitable apartment and being in a shelter, “I’ll stay here until we get back to whatever normal is, and I don’t know what normal is anymore.” (as reported in the WP)
It is December. When I was growing up in the Midwest at this time of year we would have snow on the ground and definitely be in our warm winter clothes with temperatures at or below freezing. When I pulled up the news on Wednesday, December 15th I was shocked to see the first ever recorded December tornado in Minnesota. It hit the tiny town Hartland about 15 miles from a childhood friend. And, the temperature was in the mid 60’s. This wasn’t the end of the climate fueled events on Wednesday. There were 21 tornados across Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin with five confirmed dead. There were hurricane gale winds that caused wildfires in Kansas and dust storms in Colorado that reduced visibility to zero. This was after the Tuesday evening City Council meeting, but this is no excuse for council, because look at what happened before Tuesday evening.
It was the Friday, December 10, 2021 before the final Berkeley City Council meeting of the year that a Quad-State Tornado crossed four states in four hours, lofted debris up to 38,000 feet in the air, with reports of people in Ohio finding old family photos in their yards and on their cars that blew out of demolished homes in Kentucky. The death count keeps climbing, but by Tuesday it was estimated as over 70 with 100 still missing. There were at least 30 tornados Friday evening into Saturday including initial reports that one traveled over 220 miles across Kentucky. Another hit the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois and killed six people.
These super storms occurred with just a little over 1°C of global warming over pre-industrial levels. If these are the kind of storms we get with 1°C of warming, what happens when we cross 1.5°C of warming or what if we blow by 1.5°C and the temperature rise keeps climbing? Do we ignore greenhouse gas emissions and standby as we watch CO2 continue to rise, now at 416.67 ppm? The climate fueled super storms of the last week are not, of course, the only climate fueled extreme events of the last year. There were the wildfires, the heat dome over the northwest this last summer that killed over 1000. The heat dome that reached Lytton, British Columbia which burned to the ground after hitting 121°F. There are the atmospheric river rain storms and flash floods and mud slides.
With all this, how is it that the Berkeley City Council could NOT find $200,000 Tuesday evening in their mid-year budget allocation the Annual Appropriation Ordinance (AAO) to kickstart a climate project?
Councilmember Harrison was asking for just $200,000, the amount staff requested to start organizing the Pilot Existing Building Electrification.
You might ask why does it even matter? The answer is, we are living right now in a climate emergency crisis, no action is too small and when cities act and others follow it gets big. The ban on natural gas in new construction that Kate Harrison ushered through council July 16, 2019 started a movement that has spread beyond the Bay Area and held up in court. We could be doing the same with building electrification, but instead this city with a mayor that declared on November 30, 2021 the importance of responding to climate has once again put this project that was first presented in 2019 on hold. Oh, Mayor Arreguin said it will be a priority in May, but actions speak louder than the bluster of words.
Starting with a defined pilot, this one of $1,500,000 for building electrification is the way to start. The problem isn’t finding the dollars in the budget to fund the building electrification, the problem is the will to do it. And, that is where this mayor Jesse Arreguin, this city manager Dee Williams-Ridley, and Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani, Terry Taplin, Ben Bartlett, Sophie Hahn, Susan Wengraf, Rigel Robinson and Lori Droste all failed.
Rather than getting too far into the budget weeds and fuzzy accounting, Andrea Mullarkey, Berkeley Librarian sums it all up so clearly in her public comment at the beginning of Video Part 2, December 14. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx
Councilmembers threw in one wrench after another and some were noticeably silent like Ben Bartlett, Terry Taplin and Rigel Robinson. Kesarwani opined on how there is too much uncertainty and precedence that a previously funded project that didn’t move forward shouldn’t be unfunded. Hahn wanted to understand the numbers and had nothing else to say.
Arreguin asked about the $200,000 allocated to the Civic Center which Harrison quickly agreed to postponing. And, then a round began on the Civic Center from the uninformed who have not attended the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meetings. The uninformed have not heard the presentations by Marc Steyer, SE from Tipping Engineering on their seismic study and Elmar Kapfer from Public works on the progress of the water intrusion study.
Gehl was the firm hired to assess the condition and needs of Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and Veterans Building and pocketed $375,000 without ever doing the seismic or water intrusion studies. Gehl did produce a lengthy report and flowery vision, but not the needed studies. That was left to the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) and Public Works to clean up. Eleanor Hollander, who was the City project manager assigned to work with Gehl, has not attended the CCCC meetings.
The $200,000 according to Hollander is for further design work. Progressing on design is really premature without the Tipping seismic studies of both buildings and those studies offer opportunities of additional space. The Veterans Building is more unstable than Maudelle Shirek. The water intrusion study found the roof on Maudelle Shirek must be replaced. Repairing the roof was considered and discarded, because of the condition and design of the roof. These studies, findings and proposals are now progressing to cost estimates.
Wengraf opined over the Civic Center buildings as demolition through neglect and imagining housing built on top of the Veterans Building. Adding housing on top is out of the Veterans is out of the question and has already been rejected by the Veterans even before this most recent report.
Actually, the whole Gehl vision should be categorized as demolition by design. The recommendation to the City Council of which Eleanor Hollander was a part was to bring the Civic Center buildings to the Seismic Performance Level of Life Safety (LS).
Life Safety: The building does not collapse. Life threatening falling hazards are mitigated. Egress routes are maintained out of the building. The building could be severely damaged and may be beyond repair after the event.
Not only did Gehl use old material instead of contracting current seismic studies, but Gehl did not consider the intermediate level of seismic performance which is to stabilize the buildings so not only are routes to exit the building maintained, but also building damage is repairable. The repair may take weeks to months, but whatever has been invested and that amounts to millions even for the bare-bones life safety is not a total loss.
In the end, after hours of discussion and public comments, action on climate lost.
Wednesday evening, I attended the Friends of Nature zoom organized by Erin Diehm with Scott Ferris Director of Parks, Waterfront and Recreation presenting the Berkeley 2050 plan. I’ve heard several 2050 presentations as part of commission meeting agendas, but the Friends of Nature group questions and comments were very different. The real takeaway was planning for and integrating nature needs to be at the front end not an afterthought.
Robin Grossinger from the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), emphasized science-based decision making in choosing trees and urban planning and referenced SFEI work with the City of San Jose. San Jose is just one of multiple SFEI projects on the Peninsula. Re-Oaking Silicon Valley is another. https://www.sfei.org/projects/re-oaking
Scott Ferris mentioned the grant for tree planting in Berkeley then someone stated the tree plantings she had seen in Berkeley are pistache. Pistache may be drought tolerant, but they are non-native and do not support local species. Pistache would not fit what Robin Grossinger emphasized, basing choices in science, science that encompasses ecological health, biodiversity.
I thought of the article I received from Kieron Slaughter, Chief Community Development Officer, Office of Economic Development, How Planning for Birds Makes Our Communities and Economies Healthier. https://www.planning.org/planning/2021/summer/how-planning-for-birds-makes-our-communities-and-economies-healthier/
I can’t report on Wednesday’s Independent Redistricting Commission, the Planning Commission Zoning Ordinance Revision Project (ZORP) or the goBerkeley SmartSpace Community meeting as too much was scheduled at the same time and I attended a presentation by Kristina Hill on sea level rise and groundwater.
Thursday evening at the Design Review Committee (DRC) the only project for review was 600 Addison Berkeley Commons research and development campus. The developers have done a lot to improve the project from the first submission. It will be 100% native plants except on the back wall next to the railroad tracks. Erin Diehm spoke to not using pesticides and no neonicotinoids. https://xerces.org/pesticides/understanding-neonicotinoids Diehm’s information was accepted into the final conditions for the project.
Steve Finacom was intent on speaking to the proximity of 600 Addison to Aquatic Park and sea level rise (SLR). Steve asked me in my opening comments on what is predicted for Berkeley. I answered Kristina Hill’s presentation was not specific to Berkeley, but SLR planning is now for 3 feet by 2050 and 10.5 feet by 2100. Steve kept pressing the development team on SLR and their planning. They are building to the known flood zone (for 2021). The trees and buildings have been moved up to a higher elevation on the site and then they stated they couldn’t imagine SLR where they would be underwater.
The bigger question of the developers was what did they expect to happen when water comes lapping at their doors? Does the City come to the rescue? Heavy rains already make Bolivar drive and Aquatic Park a walking in water experience, flooding is here. Other DRC members voiced SLR wasn’t within the DRC purview. Another climate question left on the table for the City.
If you have a burning need to go over any old commission agendas or minutes get them now. Anne Burns, DRC Secretary informed us that in January the new websites will be activated for the commissions and all of the prior meeting records will be moved to Records Online (not the easiest to navigate).
Science fiction is far from my usual genre of reading, but a friend suggested the climate themed The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It was a real push to get through it in a week. The timing was a fitting choice given the climate fueled extreme weather events of the last week. It seemed whenever I put down the book there was more news on another catastrophic climate charged event or another article on accelerated melting of the glaciers in Antarctica. That with our city council’s failure to act on the request to fund the climate pilot electrification project makes The Ministry For the Future a very fitting read.
Last week I closed my Diary with the book Empire of Pain, Purdue Pharma and how the Sackler’s had slipped billions into their greedy pockets and Purdue Pharma their privately held drug company, the maker of oxycontin, declared bankruptcy. There was a turn of events this week on December 16, 2021. The bankruptcy settlement provision to grant the Sackler family members immunity was thrown out. If you read Empire of Pain, you will be enormously pleased that the Sackler’s are not off the hook, but, of course, there are appeals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/16/purdue-pharma-sackler-ruling/
Glynda Glover, 82, from Kentucky had this to say about her uninhabitable apartment and being in a shelter, “I’ll stay here until we get back to whatever normal is, and I don’t know what normal is anymore.” (as reported in the WP)
It is December. When I was growing up in the Midwest at this time of year we would have snow on the ground and definitely be in our warm winter clothes with temperatures at or below freezing. When I pulled up the news on Wednesday, December 15th I was shocked to see the first ever recorded December tornado in Minnesota. It hit the tiny town Hartland about 15 miles from a childhood friend. And, the temperature was in the mid 60’s. This wasn’t the end of the climate fueled events on Wednesday. There were 21 tornados across Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin with five confirmed dead. There were hurricane gale winds that caused wildfires in Kansas and dust storms in Colorado that reduced visibility to zero. This was after the Tuesday evening City Council meeting, but this is no excuse for council, because look at what happened before Tuesday evening.
It was the Friday, December 10, 2021 before the final Berkeley City Council meeting of the year that a Quad-State Tornado crossed four states in four hours, lofted debris up to 38,000 feet in the air, with reports of people in Ohio finding old family photos in their yards and on their cars that blew out of demolished homes in Kentucky. The death count keeps climbing, but by Tuesday it was estimated as over 70 with 100 still missing. There were at least 30 tornados Friday evening into Saturday including initial reports that one traveled over 220 miles across Kentucky. Another hit the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois and killed six people.
These super storms occurred with just a little over 1°C of global warming over pre-industrial levels. If these are the kind of storms we get with 1°C of warming, what happens when we cross 1.5°C of warming or what if we blow by 1.5°C and the temperature rise keeps climbing? Do we ignore greenhouse gas emissions and standby as we watch CO2 continue to rise, now at 416.67 ppm? The climate fueled super storms of the last week are not, of course, the only climate fueled extreme events of the last year. There were the wildfires, the heat dome over the northwest this last summer that killed over 1000. The heat dome that reached Lytton, British Columbia which burned to the ground after hitting 121°F. There are the atmospheric river rain storms and flash floods and mud slides.
With all this, how is it that the Berkeley City Council could NOT find $200,000 Tuesday evening in their mid-year budget allocation the Annual Appropriation Ordinance (AAO) to kickstart a climate project?
Councilmember Harrison was asking for just $200,000, the amount staff requested to start organizing the Pilot Existing Building Electrification.
You might ask why does it even matter? The answer is, we are living right now in a climate emergency crisis, no action is too small and when cities act and others follow it gets big. The ban on natural gas in new construction that Kate Harrison ushered through council July 16, 2019 started a movement that has spread beyond the Bay Area and held up in court. We could be doing the same with building electrification, but instead this city with a mayor that declared on November 30, 2021 the importance of responding to climate has once again put this project that was first presented in 2019 on hold. Oh, Mayor Arreguin said it will be a priority in May, but actions speak louder than the bluster of words.
Starting with a defined pilot, this one of $1,500,000 for building electrification is the way to start. The problem isn’t finding the dollars in the budget to fund the building electrification, the problem is the will to do it. And, that is where this mayor Jesse Arreguin, this city manager Dee Williams-Ridley, and Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani, Terry Taplin, Ben Bartlett, Sophie Hahn, Susan Wengraf, Rigel Robinson and Lori Droste all failed.
Rather than getting too far into the budget weeds and fuzzy accounting, Andrea Mullarkey, Berkeley Librarian sums it all up so clearly in her public comment at the beginning of Video Part 2, December 14. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx
Councilmembers threw in one wrench after another and some were noticeably silent like Ben Bartlett, Terry Taplin and Rigel Robinson. Kesarwani opined on how there is too much uncertainty and precedence that a previously funded project that didn’t move forward shouldn’t be unfunded. Hahn wanted to understand the numbers and had nothing else to say.
Arreguin asked about the $200,000 allocated to the Civic Center which Harrison quickly agreed to postponing. And, then a round began on the Civic Center from the uninformed who have not attended the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meetings. The uninformed have not heard the presentations by Marc Steyer, SE from Tipping Engineering on their seismic study and Elmar Kapfer from Public works on the progress of the water intrusion study.
Gehl was the firm hired to assess the condition and needs of Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and Veterans Building and pocketed $375,000 without ever doing the seismic or water intrusion studies. Gehl did produce a lengthy report and flowery vision, but not the needed studies. That was left to the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) and Public Works to clean up. Eleanor Hollander, who was the City project manager assigned to work with Gehl, has not attended the CCCC meetings.
The $200,000 according to Hollander is for further design work. Progressing on design is really premature without the Tipping seismic studies of both buildings and those studies offer opportunities of additional space. The Veterans Building is more unstable than Maudelle Shirek. The water intrusion study found the roof on Maudelle Shirek must be replaced. Repairing the roof was considered and discarded, because of the condition and design of the roof. These studies, findings and proposals are now progressing to cost estimates.
Wengraf opined over the Civic Center buildings as demolition through neglect and imagining housing built on top of the Veterans Building. Adding housing on top is out of the Veterans is out of the question and has already been rejected by the Veterans even before this most recent report.
Actually, the whole Gehl vision should be categorized as demolition by design. The recommendation to the City Council of which Eleanor Hollander was a part was to bring the Civic Center buildings to the Seismic Performance Level of Life Safety (LS).
Life Safety: The building does not collapse. Life threatening falling hazards are mitigated. Egress routes are maintained out of the building. The building could be severely damaged and may be beyond repair after the event.
Not only did Gehl use old material instead of contracting current seismic studies, but Gehl did not consider the intermediate level of seismic performance which is to stabilize the buildings so not only are routes to exit the building maintained, but also building damage is repairable. The repair may take weeks to months, but whatever has been invested and that amounts to millions even for the bare-bones life safety is not a total loss.
In the end, after hours of discussion and public comments, action on climate lost.
Wednesday evening, I attended the Friends of Nature zoom organized by Erin Diehm with Scott Ferris Director of Parks, Waterfront and Recreation presenting the Berkeley 2050 plan. I’ve heard several 2050 presentations as part of commission meeting agendas, but the Friends of Nature group questions and comments were very different. The real takeaway was planning for and integrating nature needs to be at the front end not an afterthought.
Robin Grossinger from the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), emphasized science-based decision making in choosing trees and urban planning and referenced SFEI work with the City of San Jose. San Jose is just one of multiple SFEI projects on the Peninsula. Re-Oaking Silicon Valley is another. https://www.sfei.org/projects/re-oaking
Scott Ferris mentioned the grant for tree planting in Berkeley then someone stated the tree plantings she had seen in Berkeley are pistache. Pistache may be drought tolerant, but they are non-native and do not support local species. Pistache would not fit what Robin Grossinger emphasized, basing choices in science, science that encompasses ecological health, biodiversity.
I thought of the article I received from Kieron Slaughter, Chief Community Development Officer, Office of Economic Development, How Planning for Birds Makes Our Communities and Economies Healthier. https://www.planning.org/planning/2021/summer/how-planning-for-birds-makes-our-communities-and-economies-healthier/
I can’t report on Wednesday’s Independent Redistricting Commission, the Planning Commission Zoning Ordinance Revision Project (ZORP) or the goBerkeley SmartSpace Community meeting as too much was scheduled at the same time and I attended a presentation by Kristina Hill on sea level rise and groundwater.
Thursday evening at the Design Review Committee (DRC) the only project for review was 600 Addison Berkeley Commons research and development campus. The developers have done a lot to improve the project from the first submission. It will be 100% native plants except on the back wall next to the railroad tracks. Erin Diehm spoke to not using pesticides and no neonicotinoids. https://xerces.org/pesticides/understanding-neonicotinoids Diehm’s information was accepted into the final conditions for the project.
Steve Finacom was intent on speaking to the proximity of 600 Addison to Aquatic Park and sea level rise (SLR). Steve asked me in my opening comments on what is predicted for Berkeley. I answered Kristina Hill’s presentation was not specific to Berkeley, but SLR planning is now for 3 feet by 2050 and 10.5 feet by 2100. Steve kept pressing the development team on SLR and their planning. They are building to the known flood zone (for 2021). The trees and buildings have been moved up to a higher elevation on the site and then they stated they couldn’t imagine SLR where they would be underwater.
The bigger question of the developers was what did they expect to happen when water comes lapping at their doors? Does the City come to the rescue? Heavy rains already make Bolivar drive and Aquatic Park a walking in water experience, flooding is here. Other DRC members voiced SLR wasn’t within the DRC purview. Another climate question left on the table for the City.
If you have a burning need to go over any old commission agendas or minutes get them now. Anne Burns, DRC Secretary informed us that in January the new websites will be activated for the commissions and all of the prior meeting records will be moved to Records Online (not the easiest to navigate).
Science fiction is far from my usual genre of reading, but a friend suggested the climate themed The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It was a real push to get through it in a week. The timing was a fitting choice given the climate fueled extreme weather events of the last week. It seemed whenever I put down the book there was more news on another catastrophic climate charged event or another article on accelerated melting of the glaciers in Antarctica. That with our city council’s failure to act on the request to fund the climate pilot electrification project makes The Ministry For the Future a very fitting read.
Last week I closed my Diary with the book Empire of Pain, Purdue Pharma and how the Sackler’s had slipped billions into their greedy pockets and Purdue Pharma their privately held drug company, the maker of oxycontin, declared bankruptcy. There was a turn of events this week on December 16, 2021. The bankruptcy settlement provision to grant the Sackler family members immunity was thrown out. If you read Empire of Pain, you will be enormously pleased that the Sackler’s are not off the hook, but, of course, there are appeals. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/16/purdue-pharma-sackler-ruling/
December 11, 2021
Where will the money come from? While City Council dismissed public concerns, they fell all over themselves Tuesday evening, December 7th in their enthusiasm over the prospect of the Berkeley Pier and Ferry. The idea of a ferry and new pier sounds so absolutely wonderful and WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) and City staff are full of inventions of success.
Where will the money come from? Will Berkeley have its own version of “build the wall,” build the pier and WETA will pay for it? That has been how the Pier-Ferry has been sold to us and maybe WETA will pick up the tab and Mayor Arreguin will turn out to be the hero. I think that is his plan, but attending the WETA meetings as I did again this last Thursday there is an undercurrent of a different picture.
Thursday afternoon, I didn’t see any familiar names at the WETA (Water Emergency Transport Authority) meeting other than the WETA staff who presented the “feasibility study” at the Tuesday evening Berkeley council meeting when the question, “Where will the money come from?” was asked.
WETA survives on substantial subsidies. Monique Moyer, WETA Board Member Director noted that a tech survey showed no plans to return workers to offices any time soon. Also noted, in the future WETA won’t have control over the cost of fares. Funding was brought up over and over with one reference to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio funding the gap for NYC ferry service to continue. Stable funding / subsidies is an ongoing issue.
The assumption seems to be that WETA has the funds. Maybe WETA will find a way to cobble together the financing for their strategic vision, they are putting their lobbyist on it, but reading the strategic plan and the WETA 2050 Business Plan Phase One Summary the pieces don’t quite fit together. https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/weta/files/weta-public/publications/Service_Visions_Business_Plan_Phase_1_Report.pdf
The WETA 2050 Business Plan Phase One Summary suggests smaller more nimble vessels and a long list of problems like “ferries are one of the most polluting systems there is…” cost may be an obstacle to eco-friendly vessels, “…most facilities are inaccessible, hard to get to and don’t have good transit connections or transit services...” There were other issues especially around the premise of ferry service and equity, like the high cost of ferry service versus social equity, current terminal locations and transit connections versus where low-income people are actually coming and going.
I think of the state of disrepair of the street in front of my house and so many in Berkeley as Berkeley’s answer to permeable paving. The Director of Public Works has different plans and he has been making the rounds to the commissions for a ballot initiative to restore and replace Berkeley’s aging failing infrastructure. The question is if we agree to open our pockets and pay for infrastructure where will that money go, to streets, sustainable infrastructure or vanity projects?
The agreement between WETA and Berkeley is targeted for closed session. Hope is not a solution, but that is all we have when it comes to Arreguin’s negotiating skills and that is where I don’t have much confidence.
There were a few other meetings on my list this week. I tuned into the final Ashby and North Berkeley BART Community Advisory Group meeting on Monday. It felt like so much in Berkeley, thank you for your hours of volunteering, now we will do what we planned. From June 8, 2020 to December 6, 2021 the BART Community Advisory Group (CAG) website has 29 meetings listed. Willie Philips summed it up best, “this process has been disappointing, it has not reached those people who are most likely to be affected…”
Wednesday, there were too many meetings scheduled simultaneously and I am sorry to have missed Jim McGrath’s Parks and Waterfront Commission meeting resignation statement. I hope someone recorded it or better yet maybe Jim will share it.
The meeting I did attend was the Le Conte, BNC, CENA meeting on goBerkeley Smart Space. https://smartspace.goberkeley.info/ This is a Parking management program with a $950,000 grant (per attendee) that ends the 2-hour “free” parking in Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) select areas and charges a parking fee. Gordon Hansen, Berkeley Transportation Planner proposed that charging an hourly fee for parking from 8 am to 7 pm and allowing paid parking for up to eight hours would drive down greenhouse gases (GHG) by ending people moving their cars every two hours - cold starts (which uses more fuel) and pushing mass transit (buses) as the answer. One responder informed Hansen that a cold start is when a car has been sitting for at least 12 hours not 2 hours and to measure that supposed GHG saving requires very sophisticated equipment. Another attendee complained that the bus mass transit answer is removing two neighborhood bus stops. There are two meetings on SmartSpace this coming week on Wednesday and Thursday, you might just want to go to the website to register with Eventbrite for the links.
The Budget and Finance meeting was Thursday morning. No decisions were made and one can easily see on the proposed list that fixed cameras won $1,330,000 (with ongoing costs not included) out over the pilot electrification project $1,500,000. Policing wins, response to climate loses. The final Budget meeting before the council vote is Monday morning at 9 am.
This coming Tuesday afternoon, December 14th at 4 pm is the special council meeting with agenda item 7 Resolution to Accept the Surveillance Technology Report for Automatic License Plate Readers, GPS Tackers, Body worn Cameras and the Street Level Imagery Project. The problem with the report is that there is no information as to how successful the surveillance technology was in preventing crime, solving crimes or changing behavior. Wouldn’t we want to know if all this investment worked?
Thursday evening was the Housing Element Update for council. This is the State mandated process to plan for adding 8,934 units in the next eight-year cycle starting in 2023. The division is quite apparent between the protect solar and the opposition with the underlying message that rooftop solar is a tactic to stop density. Mayor Arreguin gave a rather testy response to protecting older rent controlled housing. Councilmember Bartlett had the best comment, “no rich people commute to work.”
Objective Standards for multi-unit and mixed-use residential projects will be the subject of Planning Commission Zoning Ordinance Revision Project (ZORP) Wednesday evening December 15th. It will be one of the diminishing opportunities to provide input.
Of the whole week of meetings, I was looking forward to the non-city two-day event, Sea Level Rise and Shoreline Contamination Regional Workshop and Kristina Hill, associate professor at UC Berkeley. Hill focused on the impact of sea level rise (SLR) on groundwater. As sea level rises so does groundwater. When rising groundwater is added to the picture the impact of rising sea level is considerably greater. With “capping” as the cheapest, easiest solution to toxic land contamination, rising groundwater underneath the “cap” is a serious public threat, leeching toxins from the site and vapor intrusion.
Astra Zeneca in Richmond is one such toxic site where up to 4000 housing units are planned to sit on top of it. There are other sites around the bay where housing exists or is planned. Ms. Terrie Green from Marin City Climate Resilience & Health Justice was very vocal regarding the contamination and suffering in Marin City for decades.
When Hill suggested there should be a local moratorium on building housing on top of these sites, one attendee suggested this just amounted to NINBYISM. The build everywhere seem to show up everywhere. Grant Cope from DTSC (Department of Toxic Substances Control) when pushed on how DTSC would respond to the new information on rising groundwater and intrusion into contaminated sites, he side-stepped answers and did not respond with the desired solution that maybe decisions need to be reconsidered.
Each week as I write the Activist Diary I include whatever book I’ve just finished. This week it was Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. The City of Berkeley voted in closed session on November 30 to opt into the nationwide settlement agreements to remediate and abate the impacts of the opioid crisis. Not listed in that settlement is payout by the Sackler’s family privately held pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma was tightly managed by the Sackler family, the drug company that started the opioid crisis through aggressive marketing of chronic pain as the undertreated medical diagnosis and extolling oxycontin as the non-addictive answer. The Sackler’s declared the “addicted” in derogatory terms as having personality disorders, habitual drug abusers and slipped billions into their greedy pockets and declared bankruptcy. Empire of Pain is a very interesting read especially the marketing of oxycontin. but you might need an extra dose of blood pressure medicine to get through it. The part I liked best is the direct actions by Nan Goldin and the group she formed P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addition Intervention Now).
Purdue Pharma was dissolved in September 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/health/purdue-sacklers-opioids-settlement.html
The book that I reviewed on November 20, 2021 After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes keeps coming back into view. Number 5 on the list of how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from a democracy to autocracy in the span of ten years is: “Pack the courts with right-wing judges and erode the independence of the rule of law.”
Ruth Marcus wrote on November 28th the opinion essay in the Washington Post, “The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/28/supreme-court-decisions-abortion-guns-religious-freedom-loom/
Was it just Friday, December 10th that the Supreme Court decision on Texas Senate Bill 8 – the Texas Heartbeat Act was announced? I had to check three times it feels like weeks ago. The radicalization has started and as Ruth Marcus wrote with six conservative Supreme Court Justices, compromise is off the table, so too is apparently stare decisis.
Where will the money come from? While City Council dismissed public concerns, they fell all over themselves Tuesday evening, December 7th in their enthusiasm over the prospect of the Berkeley Pier and Ferry. The idea of a ferry and new pier sounds so absolutely wonderful and WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) and City staff are full of inventions of success.
Where will the money come from? Will Berkeley have its own version of “build the wall,” build the pier and WETA will pay for it? That has been how the Pier-Ferry has been sold to us and maybe WETA will pick up the tab and Mayor Arreguin will turn out to be the hero. I think that is his plan, but attending the WETA meetings as I did again this last Thursday there is an undercurrent of a different picture.
Thursday afternoon, I didn’t see any familiar names at the WETA (Water Emergency Transport Authority) meeting other than the WETA staff who presented the “feasibility study” at the Tuesday evening Berkeley council meeting when the question, “Where will the money come from?” was asked.
WETA survives on substantial subsidies. Monique Moyer, WETA Board Member Director noted that a tech survey showed no plans to return workers to offices any time soon. Also noted, in the future WETA won’t have control over the cost of fares. Funding was brought up over and over with one reference to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio funding the gap for NYC ferry service to continue. Stable funding / subsidies is an ongoing issue.
The assumption seems to be that WETA has the funds. Maybe WETA will find a way to cobble together the financing for their strategic vision, they are putting their lobbyist on it, but reading the strategic plan and the WETA 2050 Business Plan Phase One Summary the pieces don’t quite fit together. https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/weta/files/weta-public/publications/Service_Visions_Business_Plan_Phase_1_Report.pdf
The WETA 2050 Business Plan Phase One Summary suggests smaller more nimble vessels and a long list of problems like “ferries are one of the most polluting systems there is…” cost may be an obstacle to eco-friendly vessels, “…most facilities are inaccessible, hard to get to and don’t have good transit connections or transit services...” There were other issues especially around the premise of ferry service and equity, like the high cost of ferry service versus social equity, current terminal locations and transit connections versus where low-income people are actually coming and going.
I think of the state of disrepair of the street in front of my house and so many in Berkeley as Berkeley’s answer to permeable paving. The Director of Public Works has different plans and he has been making the rounds to the commissions for a ballot initiative to restore and replace Berkeley’s aging failing infrastructure. The question is if we agree to open our pockets and pay for infrastructure where will that money go, to streets, sustainable infrastructure or vanity projects?
The agreement between WETA and Berkeley is targeted for closed session. Hope is not a solution, but that is all we have when it comes to Arreguin’s negotiating skills and that is where I don’t have much confidence.
There were a few other meetings on my list this week. I tuned into the final Ashby and North Berkeley BART Community Advisory Group meeting on Monday. It felt like so much in Berkeley, thank you for your hours of volunteering, now we will do what we planned. From June 8, 2020 to December 6, 2021 the BART Community Advisory Group (CAG) website has 29 meetings listed. Willie Philips summed it up best, “this process has been disappointing, it has not reached those people who are most likely to be affected…”
Wednesday, there were too many meetings scheduled simultaneously and I am sorry to have missed Jim McGrath’s Parks and Waterfront Commission meeting resignation statement. I hope someone recorded it or better yet maybe Jim will share it.
The meeting I did attend was the Le Conte, BNC, CENA meeting on goBerkeley Smart Space. https://smartspace.goberkeley.info/ This is a Parking management program with a $950,000 grant (per attendee) that ends the 2-hour “free” parking in Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) select areas and charges a parking fee. Gordon Hansen, Berkeley Transportation Planner proposed that charging an hourly fee for parking from 8 am to 7 pm and allowing paid parking for up to eight hours would drive down greenhouse gases (GHG) by ending people moving their cars every two hours - cold starts (which uses more fuel) and pushing mass transit (buses) as the answer. One responder informed Hansen that a cold start is when a car has been sitting for at least 12 hours not 2 hours and to measure that supposed GHG saving requires very sophisticated equipment. Another attendee complained that the bus mass transit answer is removing two neighborhood bus stops. There are two meetings on SmartSpace this coming week on Wednesday and Thursday, you might just want to go to the website to register with Eventbrite for the links.
The Budget and Finance meeting was Thursday morning. No decisions were made and one can easily see on the proposed list that fixed cameras won $1,330,000 (with ongoing costs not included) out over the pilot electrification project $1,500,000. Policing wins, response to climate loses. The final Budget meeting before the council vote is Monday morning at 9 am.
This coming Tuesday afternoon, December 14th at 4 pm is the special council meeting with agenda item 7 Resolution to Accept the Surveillance Technology Report for Automatic License Plate Readers, GPS Tackers, Body worn Cameras and the Street Level Imagery Project. The problem with the report is that there is no information as to how successful the surveillance technology was in preventing crime, solving crimes or changing behavior. Wouldn’t we want to know if all this investment worked?
Thursday evening was the Housing Element Update for council. This is the State mandated process to plan for adding 8,934 units in the next eight-year cycle starting in 2023. The division is quite apparent between the protect solar and the opposition with the underlying message that rooftop solar is a tactic to stop density. Mayor Arreguin gave a rather testy response to protecting older rent controlled housing. Councilmember Bartlett had the best comment, “no rich people commute to work.”
Objective Standards for multi-unit and mixed-use residential projects will be the subject of Planning Commission Zoning Ordinance Revision Project (ZORP) Wednesday evening December 15th. It will be one of the diminishing opportunities to provide input.
Of the whole week of meetings, I was looking forward to the non-city two-day event, Sea Level Rise and Shoreline Contamination Regional Workshop and Kristina Hill, associate professor at UC Berkeley. Hill focused on the impact of sea level rise (SLR) on groundwater. As sea level rises so does groundwater. When rising groundwater is added to the picture the impact of rising sea level is considerably greater. With “capping” as the cheapest, easiest solution to toxic land contamination, rising groundwater underneath the “cap” is a serious public threat, leeching toxins from the site and vapor intrusion.
Astra Zeneca in Richmond is one such toxic site where up to 4000 housing units are planned to sit on top of it. There are other sites around the bay where housing exists or is planned. Ms. Terrie Green from Marin City Climate Resilience & Health Justice was very vocal regarding the contamination and suffering in Marin City for decades.
When Hill suggested there should be a local moratorium on building housing on top of these sites, one attendee suggested this just amounted to NINBYISM. The build everywhere seem to show up everywhere. Grant Cope from DTSC (Department of Toxic Substances Control) when pushed on how DTSC would respond to the new information on rising groundwater and intrusion into contaminated sites, he side-stepped answers and did not respond with the desired solution that maybe decisions need to be reconsidered.
Each week as I write the Activist Diary I include whatever book I’ve just finished. This week it was Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe. The City of Berkeley voted in closed session on November 30 to opt into the nationwide settlement agreements to remediate and abate the impacts of the opioid crisis. Not listed in that settlement is payout by the Sackler’s family privately held pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. Purdue Pharma was tightly managed by the Sackler family, the drug company that started the opioid crisis through aggressive marketing of chronic pain as the undertreated medical diagnosis and extolling oxycontin as the non-addictive answer. The Sackler’s declared the “addicted” in derogatory terms as having personality disorders, habitual drug abusers and slipped billions into their greedy pockets and declared bankruptcy. Empire of Pain is a very interesting read especially the marketing of oxycontin. but you might need an extra dose of blood pressure medicine to get through it. The part I liked best is the direct actions by Nan Goldin and the group she formed P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addition Intervention Now).
Purdue Pharma was dissolved in September 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/health/purdue-sacklers-opioids-settlement.html
The book that I reviewed on November 20, 2021 After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes keeps coming back into view. Number 5 on the list of how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from a democracy to autocracy in the span of ten years is: “Pack the courts with right-wing judges and erode the independence of the rule of law.”
Ruth Marcus wrote on November 28th the opinion essay in the Washington Post, “The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/28/supreme-court-decisions-abortion-guns-religious-freedom-loom/
Was it just Friday, December 10th that the Supreme Court decision on Texas Senate Bill 8 – the Texas Heartbeat Act was announced? I had to check three times it feels like weeks ago. The radicalization has started and as Ruth Marcus wrote with six conservative Supreme Court Justices, compromise is off the table, so too is apparently stare decisis.
December 4, 2021
There is a lot to cover.
Monday was the first Agenda Committee meeting that I can recall Councilmember Wengraf missing in all the years I have attended. Wengraf certainly deserved a day off for post- Thanksgiving travel especially since she planned well in advance so the meeting could be covered by the committee alternate. I just hope Wengraf never misses another.
Wengraf had one request; that amendments to the ADU Ordinance be given priority. What slipped off the radar was the reason for the request; ensuring Berkeley’s ADU Ordinance is in place when the new State laws go into effect on January 1, 2022. Councilmember Hahn did manage to stave off postponement but the reason was never uttered and the ADU amendments sunk to positions 46 and 47 on the final agenda. Councilmember Droste who covered for Wengraf kept reminding everyone she didn’t know the Agenda Committee process, which made me wonder how she escaped that lesson in her seven years on council.
Scott Ferris’s “companion” submission to the Parks and Waterfront Commission Adopt-a-Spot proposal successfully pushed that out of the mid-year budget consideration placing all the coordination work back on the backs of the community volunteers.
Tuesday night at city council proved to be most interesting. Barely into the public comment on Councilmember Taplin’s Budget Referral with co-sponsors Droste and Wengraf for Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) as a community safety improvement, someone announced a study of the City of Piedmont’s $600,000 purchase of 39 license plate readers as useless. https://www.cehrp.org/piedmont-license-plate-reader-analysis-shows-99-97-of-data-collected-is-useless/ and another “Automated License Plate Readers: A Study in Failure” https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=13893
Setting aside all the potential issues around collecting and saving recordings of personal habits, the ALPRs don’t even catch criminals. This should be a concern to the constituents of District 2 who so desperately want an end to gunfire in their neighborhood. ALPRs are an expensive investment in a technology that doesn’t work which is a take away from programs that can work. All this information didn’t stop council from approving ALPRs in a 7 to 2 vote to be considered in the December budget process. Harrison voted no and Hahn abstained.
The budget referral for a pilot project of Existing Building Electrification by Councilmember Harrison with co-sponsor Councilmember Bartlett is the competing big-ticket item for the mid-year (AAO) budget allocations. The Building Electrification was item 21 on the consent calendar. Councilmembers Taplin, Droste, and Kesawani all asked to pull it to action and proceeded to try and sink it. In the end, the pilot project was passed into the budget process with a 7 to 2 vote with Kesarwani and Droste abstaining.
As I observed the comments, discussion, final vote and read for the first time the review of the failure of ALPRS, it made me think of all the useless Pentagon expenditures, approved by senators and representatives too afraid of being called weak on defense to vote no. Here in Berkeley there is another dimension to voting no to the ALPRs, the power of the Berkeley Police Association. I also wondered why ALPRs were even on the agenda in the first place when Berkeley has a task force of experts and community representatives devoting hours of work in the commission on Reimagining Public Safety.
We will get a view of the council direction and city pressures on ALPRs Thursday morning, December 9 at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting.
The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force met Thursday evening with Nikki Jones PhD in Sociology and Criminology from UC Berkeley as the speaker for the evening. Jones presented findings from “ride alongs” (riding along with a police officer through a shift) and the discussions with officers that followed. The finding was that officers believed certain neighborhoods and certain people needed more aggressive policing. This more aggressive handling was viewed as being a “good” officer. Finally, I thought we are getting to the heart of the matter of biased policing. I was so impressed with Jones’ presentation on policing behavior, that I ordered one of her books.
After the presentation, the task force took up the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) Report (analysis and recommendations). Task force members gave a stinging rebuke of the report and revision, describing NICJR as just inserting Berkeley into their standard report. Members stated their comments and responses were not included in the revised version concluding the task force must submit a completely separate response of findings and recommendations.
There were six attendees at Thursday’s meeting. Only two of us commented, Carol Morasavic and me. Without seeing the other attendees, we don’t know who was there, staff, BPD, and/or interested residents? Regardless, it is disappointing to have such poor attendance and gives a reason why the City Manager can give such a rosy report on the task force meetings when watching is something very different.
Despite the mayor’s strong stand on climate Tuesday evening, item 7 on the December 14th council agenda the City of Berkeley’s 2022 Legislative Platform doesn’t list climate as a priority – it is buried in the Sustainability and Environment Section.
In the legislative platform, we can also see where Dr. Eleanor Ramsey’s November 16, 2021 presentation on Study to Achieve Equity in City Contracting with the conclusion of “Evidence of Intentional Discrimination Systemic Practices” landed. Equity is completely absent from the Legislative Platform section of Economic Development.
Following city council and commission meetings as I do, it is a relief to see a meeting cancelled, but there is more to December 2nd than just a chance cancellation. The Land Use Committee had just one agenda item and it was from Councilmember Taplin. The information I have gleaned is that Taplin cancelled at the last minute causing the meeting cancellation and this is a pattern. Taplin stiffed the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) on Wednesday when his item the Native Plant Ordinance was on the agenda.
When the Berkeley voters approved raising the mayor and council salaries to a level that would resemble a living wage, did we not expect that they would fulfill their council responsibilities? The City Council Policy Committees are a council responsibility and the mayor and councilmembers all have committee assignments. As a member of FITES, Councilmember Taplin has a show rate of 50%. Taplin failed to attend six of the twelve FITES meetings and at least one more meeting was cancelled when Taplin wouldn’t be present for his agenda item.
The discussion and questioning that I have come to expect from watching FITES is often absent in other committees and items slip by without in-depth review and ordinance development. That supposedly was the purpose for creating the policy committees in the first place.
Taplin has been turning out an inordinate amount of council items and referrals for ordinances; more than what I would expect of a new councilmember learning the ropes. When items come up, Taplin frequently appears as tightly scripted. It’s hard to know sitting on the outside what exactly is going on, but it bears watching.
There is another item that bears watching. The pier-ferry feasibility study is on the Tuesday, December 7th council special meeting agenda. It should be interesting how council sees making the numbers match the decision they have already made to cover the cost of $93 million plus $32 million for electric ferries if Berkeley is actually committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
On to books: When I ordered Absolute Convictions, My Father, a City and the Conflict That divided America by Eyal Press it was because, I was so taken with Press’s book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. I was not thinking I would be finishing a book written in 2006 about the anti-abortion movement, abortion providers Drs. Barnett Slepian and Shalom Press in Buffalo, New York and the assassin of Dr. Slepian, the day before the Supreme Court would hear arguments in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The case that is asking the justices to overturn Roe vs Wade and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey.
I know exactly where I stand on abortion. I was the exhibitions chair for NCWCA (Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art) in 2013 when NCWCA celebrated forty years of Roe vs. Wade with the national juried exhibition, “Choice, An Art Exhibition of Women’s Reproductive Rights.” Through that experience I learned to speak publicly and write about my own abortions. And, I learned something else. I learned of women who had always had access to birth control and always had the right to make whatever choice they wished about pregnancy and how they could not conceive of never not having that right. A life dominated with access to only illegal abortions was so far out of their frame of reference, they couldn’t imagine it.
Eyal Press is thorough with much of the book focused on what he learned from meeting and interviewing leaders in Operation Rescue and the anti-abortion movement. Press was so nonjudgmental in his descriptions, that I was never sure what direction Press would take as the book progressed. A particularly interesting section referenced Kathleen Puckett Ph.D. in clinical psychology whose area of expertise is “lone wolf terrorists.” Slepian’s assassin fit this mold.
Absolute Convictions is out of print and not in our libraries. If anyone wants to borrow my copy with its yellowed pages send me an email.
I tried to get through the print edition of A Very Stable Genius by Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonnig without much success and switched to the audiobook which I finished in a couple of days. As I listened to the descriptions of Trump’s behavior, the tantrums, the rages I wondered have we forgotten how bad it was?
It certainly seems like too much of the public has forgotten the chaos four years of Trump wrought and the mess President Biden was left to clean up looking at Biden’s approval rating and the sycophants lapping at Trump’s door. Take a hard look at the steps to autocracy listed in the November 20th review of After the Fall. We all have work to do.
There is a lot to cover.
Monday was the first Agenda Committee meeting that I can recall Councilmember Wengraf missing in all the years I have attended. Wengraf certainly deserved a day off for post- Thanksgiving travel especially since she planned well in advance so the meeting could be covered by the committee alternate. I just hope Wengraf never misses another.
Wengraf had one request; that amendments to the ADU Ordinance be given priority. What slipped off the radar was the reason for the request; ensuring Berkeley’s ADU Ordinance is in place when the new State laws go into effect on January 1, 2022. Councilmember Hahn did manage to stave off postponement but the reason was never uttered and the ADU amendments sunk to positions 46 and 47 on the final agenda. Councilmember Droste who covered for Wengraf kept reminding everyone she didn’t know the Agenda Committee process, which made me wonder how she escaped that lesson in her seven years on council.
Scott Ferris’s “companion” submission to the Parks and Waterfront Commission Adopt-a-Spot proposal successfully pushed that out of the mid-year budget consideration placing all the coordination work back on the backs of the community volunteers.
Tuesday night at city council proved to be most interesting. Barely into the public comment on Councilmember Taplin’s Budget Referral with co-sponsors Droste and Wengraf for Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) as a community safety improvement, someone announced a study of the City of Piedmont’s $600,000 purchase of 39 license plate readers as useless. https://www.cehrp.org/piedmont-license-plate-reader-analysis-shows-99-97-of-data-collected-is-useless/ and another “Automated License Plate Readers: A Study in Failure” https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=13893
Setting aside all the potential issues around collecting and saving recordings of personal habits, the ALPRs don’t even catch criminals. This should be a concern to the constituents of District 2 who so desperately want an end to gunfire in their neighborhood. ALPRs are an expensive investment in a technology that doesn’t work which is a take away from programs that can work. All this information didn’t stop council from approving ALPRs in a 7 to 2 vote to be considered in the December budget process. Harrison voted no and Hahn abstained.
The budget referral for a pilot project of Existing Building Electrification by Councilmember Harrison with co-sponsor Councilmember Bartlett is the competing big-ticket item for the mid-year (AAO) budget allocations. The Building Electrification was item 21 on the consent calendar. Councilmembers Taplin, Droste, and Kesawani all asked to pull it to action and proceeded to try and sink it. In the end, the pilot project was passed into the budget process with a 7 to 2 vote with Kesarwani and Droste abstaining.
As I observed the comments, discussion, final vote and read for the first time the review of the failure of ALPRS, it made me think of all the useless Pentagon expenditures, approved by senators and representatives too afraid of being called weak on defense to vote no. Here in Berkeley there is another dimension to voting no to the ALPRs, the power of the Berkeley Police Association. I also wondered why ALPRs were even on the agenda in the first place when Berkeley has a task force of experts and community representatives devoting hours of work in the commission on Reimagining Public Safety.
We will get a view of the council direction and city pressures on ALPRs Thursday morning, December 9 at the Budget and Finance Committee meeting.
The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force met Thursday evening with Nikki Jones PhD in Sociology and Criminology from UC Berkeley as the speaker for the evening. Jones presented findings from “ride alongs” (riding along with a police officer through a shift) and the discussions with officers that followed. The finding was that officers believed certain neighborhoods and certain people needed more aggressive policing. This more aggressive handling was viewed as being a “good” officer. Finally, I thought we are getting to the heart of the matter of biased policing. I was so impressed with Jones’ presentation on policing behavior, that I ordered one of her books.
After the presentation, the task force took up the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) Report (analysis and recommendations). Task force members gave a stinging rebuke of the report and revision, describing NICJR as just inserting Berkeley into their standard report. Members stated their comments and responses were not included in the revised version concluding the task force must submit a completely separate response of findings and recommendations.
There were six attendees at Thursday’s meeting. Only two of us commented, Carol Morasavic and me. Without seeing the other attendees, we don’t know who was there, staff, BPD, and/or interested residents? Regardless, it is disappointing to have such poor attendance and gives a reason why the City Manager can give such a rosy report on the task force meetings when watching is something very different.
Despite the mayor’s strong stand on climate Tuesday evening, item 7 on the December 14th council agenda the City of Berkeley’s 2022 Legislative Platform doesn’t list climate as a priority – it is buried in the Sustainability and Environment Section.
In the legislative platform, we can also see where Dr. Eleanor Ramsey’s November 16, 2021 presentation on Study to Achieve Equity in City Contracting with the conclusion of “Evidence of Intentional Discrimination Systemic Practices” landed. Equity is completely absent from the Legislative Platform section of Economic Development.
Following city council and commission meetings as I do, it is a relief to see a meeting cancelled, but there is more to December 2nd than just a chance cancellation. The Land Use Committee had just one agenda item and it was from Councilmember Taplin. The information I have gleaned is that Taplin cancelled at the last minute causing the meeting cancellation and this is a pattern. Taplin stiffed the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) on Wednesday when his item the Native Plant Ordinance was on the agenda.
When the Berkeley voters approved raising the mayor and council salaries to a level that would resemble a living wage, did we not expect that they would fulfill their council responsibilities? The City Council Policy Committees are a council responsibility and the mayor and councilmembers all have committee assignments. As a member of FITES, Councilmember Taplin has a show rate of 50%. Taplin failed to attend six of the twelve FITES meetings and at least one more meeting was cancelled when Taplin wouldn’t be present for his agenda item.
The discussion and questioning that I have come to expect from watching FITES is often absent in other committees and items slip by without in-depth review and ordinance development. That supposedly was the purpose for creating the policy committees in the first place.
Taplin has been turning out an inordinate amount of council items and referrals for ordinances; more than what I would expect of a new councilmember learning the ropes. When items come up, Taplin frequently appears as tightly scripted. It’s hard to know sitting on the outside what exactly is going on, but it bears watching.
There is another item that bears watching. The pier-ferry feasibility study is on the Tuesday, December 7th council special meeting agenda. It should be interesting how council sees making the numbers match the decision they have already made to cover the cost of $93 million plus $32 million for electric ferries if Berkeley is actually committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
On to books: When I ordered Absolute Convictions, My Father, a City and the Conflict That divided America by Eyal Press it was because, I was so taken with Press’s book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. I was not thinking I would be finishing a book written in 2006 about the anti-abortion movement, abortion providers Drs. Barnett Slepian and Shalom Press in Buffalo, New York and the assassin of Dr. Slepian, the day before the Supreme Court would hear arguments in Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The case that is asking the justices to overturn Roe vs Wade and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey.
I know exactly where I stand on abortion. I was the exhibitions chair for NCWCA (Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art) in 2013 when NCWCA celebrated forty years of Roe vs. Wade with the national juried exhibition, “Choice, An Art Exhibition of Women’s Reproductive Rights.” Through that experience I learned to speak publicly and write about my own abortions. And, I learned something else. I learned of women who had always had access to birth control and always had the right to make whatever choice they wished about pregnancy and how they could not conceive of never not having that right. A life dominated with access to only illegal abortions was so far out of their frame of reference, they couldn’t imagine it.
Eyal Press is thorough with much of the book focused on what he learned from meeting and interviewing leaders in Operation Rescue and the anti-abortion movement. Press was so nonjudgmental in his descriptions, that I was never sure what direction Press would take as the book progressed. A particularly interesting section referenced Kathleen Puckett Ph.D. in clinical psychology whose area of expertise is “lone wolf terrorists.” Slepian’s assassin fit this mold.
Absolute Convictions is out of print and not in our libraries. If anyone wants to borrow my copy with its yellowed pages send me an email.
I tried to get through the print edition of A Very Stable Genius by Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonnig without much success and switched to the audiobook which I finished in a couple of days. As I listened to the descriptions of Trump’s behavior, the tantrums, the rages I wondered have we forgotten how bad it was?
It certainly seems like too much of the public has forgotten the chaos four years of Trump wrought and the mess President Biden was left to clean up looking at Biden’s approval rating and the sycophants lapping at Trump’s door. Take a hard look at the steps to autocracy listed in the November 20th review of After the Fall. We all have work to do.
November 27, 2021
What happens at city council and the commissions really does matter and there is a lot on the plate between now and when council starts their winter recess on December 15th. December 14th council will vote on the mid-year budget allocations.
I finally listened to the Mayor’s “The 2021 State of the City.” From the flow of the recording, it appears Alex Savidge was given the list of talking points AKA questions. Rachel Swan managed to squeeze in six times between the friendly questions from Savidge and responses from Arreguin. Since I didn’t see it live and the recording was posted a week later, I don’t know if any of Swan’s questions were edited out, but what I did hear from Swan was more in tune with what I would expect from a reporter.
From Arreguin’s comments in the state of the city there will be more spending on surveillance technologies and more hiring of police in Berkeley’s future. Arreguin stated some hiring has already started and then covered himself with the right number is yet to be decided. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force asked from the first meeting I attended if they were “window dressing.” Watching how Berkeley functions and task force meetings, I think the task force got it right, but we will soon see if their input makes it past city scrubbing.
The meetings I am watching this coming week are: the Sunday Equity Summit on Receivership, Tuesday Council on automated license plate readers, Wednesday FITES on GHG emissions and native plants and Thursday Reimagining Public Safety on what happens with the removal of [policing] “history” from the final report. The unnamed person(s) described only as “city staff” requesting the removal of “history” from the final report on Reimagining Public Safety can only be from one (or maybe all) of three people, the city manager, the interim police chief and/or the mayor.
What happens at city council and the commissions really does matter and there is a lot on the plate between now and when council starts their winter recess on December 15th. December 14th council will vote on the mid-year budget allocations.
I finally listened to the Mayor’s “The 2021 State of the City.” From the flow of the recording, it appears Alex Savidge was given the list of talking points AKA questions. Rachel Swan managed to squeeze in six times between the friendly questions from Savidge and responses from Arreguin. Since I didn’t see it live and the recording was posted a week later, I don’t know if any of Swan’s questions were edited out, but what I did hear from Swan was more in tune with what I would expect from a reporter.
From Arreguin’s comments in the state of the city there will be more spending on surveillance technologies and more hiring of police in Berkeley’s future. Arreguin stated some hiring has already started and then covered himself with the right number is yet to be decided. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force asked from the first meeting I attended if they were “window dressing.” Watching how Berkeley functions and task force meetings, I think the task force got it right, but we will soon see if their input makes it past city scrubbing.
The meetings I am watching this coming week are: the Sunday Equity Summit on Receivership, Tuesday Council on automated license plate readers, Wednesday FITES on GHG emissions and native plants and Thursday Reimagining Public Safety on what happens with the removal of [policing] “history” from the final report. The unnamed person(s) described only as “city staff” requesting the removal of “history” from the final report on Reimagining Public Safety can only be from one (or maybe all) of three people, the city manager, the interim police chief and/or the mayor.
November 20, 2021
Bringing race home. Race, racism is our country’s history. Racism is front and center in the trial of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia, in the Charlottesville civil trial over the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. Racism is tangential to the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse and his acquittal.
Critical Race Theory was used to whip parents and voters into a frenzy in the Virginia Governor’s election. Racism plays into the fights over social spending, national health care. Racism defines where people live and who is pushed out with gentrification. And, then there is the pure economic racism, not just what is paid, but who gets the contracts.
The first hour Tuesday evening, November 16, 2021 at Berkeley City Council was a lesson in institutional systemic racism Berkeley style. Dr. Eleanor Ramsey from MasonTillman slowly and methodically built the foundation and then showed slide after slide of the findings of the City of Berkeley practices. It was an eye-popping, jaw dropping analysis of who receives contracts from the City of Berkeley and who doesn’t. It wasn’t the Black owned business. The Hispanic businesses did only a touch better than the nothing that was dished out to the Black owned businesses. You can watch it all by choosing the webcast for 11/16 at 6:00 pm. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx
The MasonTillman analysis of the City of Berkeley contracts concluding finding is Intentional Discrimination Systemic Practices. Let that sink in.
Councilmember Ben Bartlett who authored the measure to secure the study (item 34 January 24, 2017) with co-sponsors Cheryl Davila and Kris Worthington said the findings confirmed what he heard over and over when he ran for office.
The MasonTillman presentation is not attached to last Tuesday’s agenda and there was comment that the report is in the hands of the city. I hope that doesn’t mean it will be scrubbed before we see it.
I did attend the first hour of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meeting Thursday evening when the task force was informed that city staff [unnamed] have requested the removal of the “History” section of the NICJR (National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform) Report stating that it is inaccurate. Members of the task force vocalized their outrage stating that the history [of policing in Berkeley] is the reason for the task force.
After attending many of the Public Safety Task Force meetings, removing the history section smacks of more city “scrubbing.” There are other ways of handling any purported discrepancies. Has no one heard of footnotes? But as task force members have so clearly asked from the beginning are they “window dressing.”
Withholding information is not new. There was a fight to withhold the report of disparate treatment of people of color by Berkeley Police in the Center for Policing Equity Report of 2018.
Once again it comes back to race and intentional discrimination. It should be no surprise to anyone when you see the chart of “Priorities for Berkeley’s city government” with Equity as the least important. It is the chart that has been posted at the top of the Berkeley Daily Planet front page. Climate didn’t rate much higher.
Councilmember Droste complimented the city manager for five department heads of color, but as former Councilmember Davila said so succinctly, “…Sadly not all skin folk are kin folk” pointing to the fact that under this Black City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley and senior managers of color, discrimination didn’t end. Williams-Ridley officially started March 9, 2016 the first year studied by MasonTillman. One could excuse the city manager for her first year, but what about all the rest of the years? And now that we are clearly informed of the discrimination, should contracts include ethnicity and should existing contracts just be extended as they appear to be.
The raises for senior management were on the November 16th consent calendar. The City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley was granted her $84,732 / 28.11% raise to a salary of $386,160 with no one from council abstaining or voting no.
Public comment on the raises and consent calendar starts at 2:08:21 into the meeting webcast. I spoke just before Charles Clark stating that a 2% raise not a 28.11% raise was appropriate. You can fast forward the webcast from the MasonTillman Equity presentation to 2:20:16 – 2:22:09 to hear Charles Clark.
“I am Charles Clark a resident of District 6, I actually support the raises for senior city management, items 5 and 12 but that support comes with two criticisms and a caution some of which you have already heard, first why are you looking at Palo Alto, but not cities like Alameda, San Leandro, Antioch, Walnut Creek and Fairfield. If you want a small rich city why not Piedmont? The sample seems rigged to conclude that Berkeley’s managers are underpaid. And, I’ll tell you rigged samples don’t tell you, don’t command respect. Second why can’t the item say in so many words the city manager will be getting a 28% raise so that her current $301,000 salary will increase to $386,000 per year. You know the Alameda County Grand Jury critizied that same lack of directness in measure JJ which this council authored last year to raise your own salaries 75% without saying so directly which brings me to my caution. If you want compensation like Palo Alto, then I want roads like Palo Alto. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission told us just this month that Palo Alto’s pavement condition index is 84. While Berkeley’s is only 58 and you know this year’s paving report told us that 1/5 of our street miles are in failed condition. With raises like the ones you will approve tonight with my support such failure is not an option. The caution is Taco Bell performance at French Laundry prices is unacceptable.”
The Agenda and Rules Committee met Monday and from Mayor Arreguin’s comments, don’t be surprised to experience some trickery around item 27 the Surveillance Technology Report and item 28 the ALPR – Automated License Plate Reader budget referral. There was discussion at the Agenda committee that the Action calendar for the November 30th council meeting was very full and they might not get through all of it. Arreguin stated he could call a special meeting with only 24 hours notice and pondered December 13th.
The strategy on controversial items is all too often, schedule the item as the last of the evening, make people sit through an entire 5 hour plus meeting and then continue the item. Or, if enough people have given up and left the meeting, take up the controversial item around midnight when the objectors have gone to bed. In this case it looks like Arreguin’s intent is continue the report and ALPR, call a special full council meeting on short notice and then a special budget meeting the next day followed with a full council regular meeting that evening on December 14th to approve the AAO (mid-year budget cycle spending) and fund ALPR. On these kinds of forecasts, I really like to be proven wrong.
Two of us have been attending the Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meetings for months to educate and push for native plants, permeable paving, bird safe glass and dark skies. Charles Kahn, architect on ZAB and DRC, has really taken this in. Thursday, we saw a little more progress, but it is so hard for people to let go of what they have always believed and the way they have always worked.
Douglas Tallamy in his books Bringing Nature Home, Nature’s Best Hope and The Nature of Oaks explains so well the relationships of plants, insects and birds. It was reading one of his books and then watching one of the many youtube presentations/lectures that put it all together for me. Maybe in this coming week of holidays and no meetings you can set aside a little time to watch Tallamy and reflect on what we all might do to make a place for nature and a place for nurture in our lives.
Please put these into your holiday plans:
Restoring the Little Things that Run the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7-jzL40zQ
Nature’s Best Hope: Conservation That starts in Your Yard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAzDP0wQI78
In closing I’ve been busy. I just finished two lovely non-fiction books by Hope Jahren, Lab Girl published in 2016 and The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here published in 2020. Hope Jahren is a geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Norway. I grew up not far from where Jahren was born, Austin, MN and even have a picture of myself with my friend Susan from our tour of the Spam Museum in Austin. The Austin Hormel meat packing plant is mentioned in both books. There is so much more she gives us to think about and not just women in science and the funding of science in her first book. Her second book is a provocative look at climate.
The third book is After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes published in June 2021. Rhodes writes he asked a Hungarian how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years. As I read this section I couldn’t stop thinking about Fox host Tucker Carlson broadcasting from Hungary with Viktor Orban.
Here are the steps and they may sound way too familiar:
The three libraries I use for ebooks and audiobooks are Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco.
Bringing race home. Race, racism is our country’s history. Racism is front and center in the trial of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery in Glynn County, Georgia, in the Charlottesville civil trial over the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. Racism is tangential to the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse and his acquittal.
Critical Race Theory was used to whip parents and voters into a frenzy in the Virginia Governor’s election. Racism plays into the fights over social spending, national health care. Racism defines where people live and who is pushed out with gentrification. And, then there is the pure economic racism, not just what is paid, but who gets the contracts.
The first hour Tuesday evening, November 16, 2021 at Berkeley City Council was a lesson in institutional systemic racism Berkeley style. Dr. Eleanor Ramsey from MasonTillman slowly and methodically built the foundation and then showed slide after slide of the findings of the City of Berkeley practices. It was an eye-popping, jaw dropping analysis of who receives contracts from the City of Berkeley and who doesn’t. It wasn’t the Black owned business. The Hispanic businesses did only a touch better than the nothing that was dished out to the Black owned businesses. You can watch it all by choosing the webcast for 11/16 at 6:00 pm. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx
The MasonTillman analysis of the City of Berkeley contracts concluding finding is Intentional Discrimination Systemic Practices. Let that sink in.
Councilmember Ben Bartlett who authored the measure to secure the study (item 34 January 24, 2017) with co-sponsors Cheryl Davila and Kris Worthington said the findings confirmed what he heard over and over when he ran for office.
The MasonTillman presentation is not attached to last Tuesday’s agenda and there was comment that the report is in the hands of the city. I hope that doesn’t mean it will be scrubbed before we see it.
I did attend the first hour of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meeting Thursday evening when the task force was informed that city staff [unnamed] have requested the removal of the “History” section of the NICJR (National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform) Report stating that it is inaccurate. Members of the task force vocalized their outrage stating that the history [of policing in Berkeley] is the reason for the task force.
After attending many of the Public Safety Task Force meetings, removing the history section smacks of more city “scrubbing.” There are other ways of handling any purported discrepancies. Has no one heard of footnotes? But as task force members have so clearly asked from the beginning are they “window dressing.”
Withholding information is not new. There was a fight to withhold the report of disparate treatment of people of color by Berkeley Police in the Center for Policing Equity Report of 2018.
Once again it comes back to race and intentional discrimination. It should be no surprise to anyone when you see the chart of “Priorities for Berkeley’s city government” with Equity as the least important. It is the chart that has been posted at the top of the Berkeley Daily Planet front page. Climate didn’t rate much higher.
Councilmember Droste complimented the city manager for five department heads of color, but as former Councilmember Davila said so succinctly, “…Sadly not all skin folk are kin folk” pointing to the fact that under this Black City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley and senior managers of color, discrimination didn’t end. Williams-Ridley officially started March 9, 2016 the first year studied by MasonTillman. One could excuse the city manager for her first year, but what about all the rest of the years? And now that we are clearly informed of the discrimination, should contracts include ethnicity and should existing contracts just be extended as they appear to be.
The raises for senior management were on the November 16th consent calendar. The City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley was granted her $84,732 / 28.11% raise to a salary of $386,160 with no one from council abstaining or voting no.
Public comment on the raises and consent calendar starts at 2:08:21 into the meeting webcast. I spoke just before Charles Clark stating that a 2% raise not a 28.11% raise was appropriate. You can fast forward the webcast from the MasonTillman Equity presentation to 2:20:16 – 2:22:09 to hear Charles Clark.
“I am Charles Clark a resident of District 6, I actually support the raises for senior city management, items 5 and 12 but that support comes with two criticisms and a caution some of which you have already heard, first why are you looking at Palo Alto, but not cities like Alameda, San Leandro, Antioch, Walnut Creek and Fairfield. If you want a small rich city why not Piedmont? The sample seems rigged to conclude that Berkeley’s managers are underpaid. And, I’ll tell you rigged samples don’t tell you, don’t command respect. Second why can’t the item say in so many words the city manager will be getting a 28% raise so that her current $301,000 salary will increase to $386,000 per year. You know the Alameda County Grand Jury critizied that same lack of directness in measure JJ which this council authored last year to raise your own salaries 75% without saying so directly which brings me to my caution. If you want compensation like Palo Alto, then I want roads like Palo Alto. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission told us just this month that Palo Alto’s pavement condition index is 84. While Berkeley’s is only 58 and you know this year’s paving report told us that 1/5 of our street miles are in failed condition. With raises like the ones you will approve tonight with my support such failure is not an option. The caution is Taco Bell performance at French Laundry prices is unacceptable.”
The Agenda and Rules Committee met Monday and from Mayor Arreguin’s comments, don’t be surprised to experience some trickery around item 27 the Surveillance Technology Report and item 28 the ALPR – Automated License Plate Reader budget referral. There was discussion at the Agenda committee that the Action calendar for the November 30th council meeting was very full and they might not get through all of it. Arreguin stated he could call a special meeting with only 24 hours notice and pondered December 13th.
The strategy on controversial items is all too often, schedule the item as the last of the evening, make people sit through an entire 5 hour plus meeting and then continue the item. Or, if enough people have given up and left the meeting, take up the controversial item around midnight when the objectors have gone to bed. In this case it looks like Arreguin’s intent is continue the report and ALPR, call a special full council meeting on short notice and then a special budget meeting the next day followed with a full council regular meeting that evening on December 14th to approve the AAO (mid-year budget cycle spending) and fund ALPR. On these kinds of forecasts, I really like to be proven wrong.
Two of us have been attending the Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meetings for months to educate and push for native plants, permeable paving, bird safe glass and dark skies. Charles Kahn, architect on ZAB and DRC, has really taken this in. Thursday, we saw a little more progress, but it is so hard for people to let go of what they have always believed and the way they have always worked.
Douglas Tallamy in his books Bringing Nature Home, Nature’s Best Hope and The Nature of Oaks explains so well the relationships of plants, insects and birds. It was reading one of his books and then watching one of the many youtube presentations/lectures that put it all together for me. Maybe in this coming week of holidays and no meetings you can set aside a little time to watch Tallamy and reflect on what we all might do to make a place for nature and a place for nurture in our lives.
Please put these into your holiday plans:
Restoring the Little Things that Run the World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7-jzL40zQ
Nature’s Best Hope: Conservation That starts in Your Yard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAzDP0wQI78
In closing I’ve been busy. I just finished two lovely non-fiction books by Hope Jahren, Lab Girl published in 2016 and The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where We Go from Here published in 2020. Hope Jahren is a geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Norway. I grew up not far from where Jahren was born, Austin, MN and even have a picture of myself with my friend Susan from our tour of the Spam Museum in Austin. The Austin Hormel meat packing plant is mentioned in both books. There is so much more she gives us to think about and not just women in science and the funding of science in her first book. Her second book is a provocative look at climate.
The third book is After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes published in June 2021. Rhodes writes he asked a Hungarian how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years. As I read this section I couldn’t stop thinking about Fox host Tucker Carlson broadcasting from Hungary with Viktor Orban.
Here are the steps and they may sound way too familiar:
- Win elections through right-wing populism that taps into people’s outrage over the corruption and inequities wrought by unbridled globalization.
- Enrich corrupt oligarchs who in turn fund your politics.
- Create a vast partisan propaganda machine.
- Redraw parliamentary districts to entrench your party in power.
- Pack the courts with right-wing judges and erode the independence of the rule of law.
- Keep big business on your side with low taxes and favorable treatment.
- Demonize your political opponents through social media disinformation.
- Attack civil society as a tool of George Soros.
- Cast yourself as the legitimate defender of national security.
- Wrap the whole project in a Christian nationalist message that taps into the longing for a great past.
- Offer a sense of belonging for the disaffected masses.
- Relentlessly attack the Other: immigrants, Muslims, liberal elites.
The three libraries I use for ebooks and audiobooks are Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco.
November 14, 2021
A Diary is supposed to just flow, but I find this week I keep starting over to describe what happened at the three meetings of consequence I did attend and being thankful that the Veterans Holiday meant the last city meetings ended on Wednesday.
The commissions are still trying to figure out what to do with their unfinished work and what the loss of their expertise will mean as commissions are merged, commissioners are dumped and expertise is lost and how those who remain will take on new responsibilities in areas in which they have little to no experience or knowledge. Cutting the commissions in half also means cutting half of the commissioners. Some commissioners at every meeting where the mergers enters discussion, express their surprise and dismay that their councilmembers did not seek their input and show no interest in hearing it.
When the opportunity arose at the Parks and Waterfront Commission merger discussion, I gave my observations and opinion in blunt terms grounding my comments with: “I have read every commission and board agenda for years and attended every public meeting on the merging of commissions.” I responded to Gordon Wozniak’s comment that council had looked at merging commissions years ago and then reversed course and stopped with, “this is not the same council.”
I wasn’t at my computer so I couldn’t give the dates included here, but stated the stage was set to dismantle the commissions when the City Manager gave her presentation at the Agenda committee on the creation of council policy committees in the summer of 2018 and council finalized the creation of six council policy committees December 11, 2018. I told the Parks Commission council wasn’t interested in their input. In fact, in my observation and opinion, council considers commissions a nuisance.
While I didn’t say it Wednesday, commissions bring forward information and actions, that the mayor, council and the city manager don’t want to hear or enact. If you read the agendas and watch the council meetings that observation is confirmed repeatedly. That brings us to the Parks and Waterfront discussion on the Pier – Ferry meetings. One of the commissioners who attended the last Pier-Ferry meeting related that nearly every attendee found fault with the plans and the mayor brushed them off with stating they weren’t representative of Berkeley.
It’s more like most of Berkeley isn’t paying attention. There is already too much on their plate in this upside-down pandemic world to care. As long as this boondoggle is paid for by someone else and never hits their wallet, it is sort of a fanciful idea. Never mind that travel by ferry is inefficient, costly and ferries burn the dirtiest fossil fuels. An all-electric ferry is according to presentations $16,000,000 and WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) has none.
I stated the decision has been made and it is Scott Ferris’s job to line up the paperwork to make it match the decision. When Scott Ferris said the Pier-Ferry service would be discussed by council in closed session on the 7th [December], Jim McGrath responded in disbelief in the inappropriateness of shutting out the public. McGrath also pointed out that wave analysis was totally wrong (a big deal for ferries when underestimated).
The other meeting, I attended on Wednesday was way more positive, the Southside Complete Streets online open house. I found myself on the same side as Shane Kyrpata and most of the other members of the breakout group as we went through the proposals. We all went beyond the proposal for Telegraph and stated it should be closed to cars and limited to pedestrians, biking, transit, include trees and probably restricted hours for deliveries. When I disagreed with other members it was over the width of sidewalks. Everyone else was a bicyclist. I was the only walker. As someone who walks nearly everywhere, sidewalks all over this city are too narrow. You can still comment at https://berkeleysouthsidecompletestreets.org/
The last meeting to cover is the November 9th city council meeting.
It was nice to have a lighter week, but as the Tuesday evening council meeting dragged on and on, I checked the news banners from the Washington Post and found the summary of recent research on increased heart disease and bedtime. The best bedtime is between 10 pm and 11 pm. Going to bed after 11 pm is associated with increased risk of heart disease especially for women. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/09/sleep-bedtime-cardiovascular-disease-health/ the study https://academic.oup.com/ehjdh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ehjdh/ztab088/6423198
Planning agendas and ending meetings so everyone gets a good night of sleep would mean those items that are pushed to the wee hours to minimize public comment and scrutiny would see the “light of the evening.” The mayor’s action to kill the “Rights of Nature” referral at the October 26 council meeting was at approximately 12:05 am. You wouldn’t know it happened just from reading the annotated agenda. Only four of us had hung on to comment.
This week it was the Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows that landed after 11 pm. Homeowners with solar have been righteously concerned that new construction would block their solar panels from sunlight. The proposal from Hahn, Arreguin, Harrison and Wengraf only addressed providing some protection to properties backed up to buildings along commercial corridors and nothing for homeowners in residential areas. The alternate proposal from Droste , Kesarwani and Taplin considers the impact on solar only when it is greater than a 50% loss. Since residential solar has been limited to what is needed for the household, that means a 50% loss, 50% of the solar panels are useless.
So, after weeks and months and years of failing to define objective standards for buildings, failing to define rooftop solar protections, just shy of 5 hours and 45 minutes into the meeting (well after 11 pm) Councilmember Taplin moved to “table” the objective standards item. Arreguin initially abstained and then changed his vote to yes to join Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Hahn, Robinson, Wengraf and Droste to end discussion and end establishing any standards at all. Councilmember Harrison abstained.
For all the effort from the City of Berkeley Sustainability to encourage residents to invest and adopt rooftop solar, the mayor and the council majority just killed it. There is only one councilmember who consistently stands for climate action, the lone member to abstain, Kate Harrison.
There will be something before the Planning Commission and Council next year, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. There is a mindset in Berkeley that wants to maintain the aura of a progressive city while kicking actual action to the curb.
This failure to protect solar in Berkeley falls into the backdrop of a failed COP26 (Conference of the Parties – the 26th time countries – 197 – that have gathered to agree on an environmental pact). No wonder climate action is such a failure. We can’t even get solar protections in Berkeley. This is so counter to the announcement from the University of California Irvine, “Wind and solar could power the world’s major countries most of the time.” Storage and non-fossil fuel sources could fill the rest. https://news.uci.edu/2021/11/05/wind-and-solar-could-power-the-worlds-major-countries-most-of-the-time/
The confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. crossed another million in just 12 days on November 13, 2021 to total 47 million. Those of us who follow the numbers know this is an undercount especially with home testing that is never added to the confirmed tally (unless they show up for medical care). The incidence of new cases is going the wrong direction, up
We need to figure out how to live with COVID perpetually at our doorstep. As a surge in one part of the country dissipates the virus takes hold in a new location. The virus keeps finding weak spots and that isn’t too hard with the pockets of the unvaccinated and the scattering of vaccinated who generated enough immunity from the vaccine to weaken the impact of a COVID infection, but not enough immunity to fend it off completely, “breakthrough” COVID.
In closing, the story of inmate firefighters filled the front section of the November 14th San Francisco Chronicle.
A Diary is supposed to just flow, but I find this week I keep starting over to describe what happened at the three meetings of consequence I did attend and being thankful that the Veterans Holiday meant the last city meetings ended on Wednesday.
The commissions are still trying to figure out what to do with their unfinished work and what the loss of their expertise will mean as commissions are merged, commissioners are dumped and expertise is lost and how those who remain will take on new responsibilities in areas in which they have little to no experience or knowledge. Cutting the commissions in half also means cutting half of the commissioners. Some commissioners at every meeting where the mergers enters discussion, express their surprise and dismay that their councilmembers did not seek their input and show no interest in hearing it.
When the opportunity arose at the Parks and Waterfront Commission merger discussion, I gave my observations and opinion in blunt terms grounding my comments with: “I have read every commission and board agenda for years and attended every public meeting on the merging of commissions.” I responded to Gordon Wozniak’s comment that council had looked at merging commissions years ago and then reversed course and stopped with, “this is not the same council.”
I wasn’t at my computer so I couldn’t give the dates included here, but stated the stage was set to dismantle the commissions when the City Manager gave her presentation at the Agenda committee on the creation of council policy committees in the summer of 2018 and council finalized the creation of six council policy committees December 11, 2018. I told the Parks Commission council wasn’t interested in their input. In fact, in my observation and opinion, council considers commissions a nuisance.
While I didn’t say it Wednesday, commissions bring forward information and actions, that the mayor, council and the city manager don’t want to hear or enact. If you read the agendas and watch the council meetings that observation is confirmed repeatedly. That brings us to the Parks and Waterfront discussion on the Pier – Ferry meetings. One of the commissioners who attended the last Pier-Ferry meeting related that nearly every attendee found fault with the plans and the mayor brushed them off with stating they weren’t representative of Berkeley.
It’s more like most of Berkeley isn’t paying attention. There is already too much on their plate in this upside-down pandemic world to care. As long as this boondoggle is paid for by someone else and never hits their wallet, it is sort of a fanciful idea. Never mind that travel by ferry is inefficient, costly and ferries burn the dirtiest fossil fuels. An all-electric ferry is according to presentations $16,000,000 and WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) has none.
I stated the decision has been made and it is Scott Ferris’s job to line up the paperwork to make it match the decision. When Scott Ferris said the Pier-Ferry service would be discussed by council in closed session on the 7th [December], Jim McGrath responded in disbelief in the inappropriateness of shutting out the public. McGrath also pointed out that wave analysis was totally wrong (a big deal for ferries when underestimated).
The other meeting, I attended on Wednesday was way more positive, the Southside Complete Streets online open house. I found myself on the same side as Shane Kyrpata and most of the other members of the breakout group as we went through the proposals. We all went beyond the proposal for Telegraph and stated it should be closed to cars and limited to pedestrians, biking, transit, include trees and probably restricted hours for deliveries. When I disagreed with other members it was over the width of sidewalks. Everyone else was a bicyclist. I was the only walker. As someone who walks nearly everywhere, sidewalks all over this city are too narrow. You can still comment at https://berkeleysouthsidecompletestreets.org/
The last meeting to cover is the November 9th city council meeting.
It was nice to have a lighter week, but as the Tuesday evening council meeting dragged on and on, I checked the news banners from the Washington Post and found the summary of recent research on increased heart disease and bedtime. The best bedtime is between 10 pm and 11 pm. Going to bed after 11 pm is associated with increased risk of heart disease especially for women. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/09/sleep-bedtime-cardiovascular-disease-health/ the study https://academic.oup.com/ehjdh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ehjdh/ztab088/6423198
Planning agendas and ending meetings so everyone gets a good night of sleep would mean those items that are pushed to the wee hours to minimize public comment and scrutiny would see the “light of the evening.” The mayor’s action to kill the “Rights of Nature” referral at the October 26 council meeting was at approximately 12:05 am. You wouldn’t know it happened just from reading the annotated agenda. Only four of us had hung on to comment.
This week it was the Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows that landed after 11 pm. Homeowners with solar have been righteously concerned that new construction would block their solar panels from sunlight. The proposal from Hahn, Arreguin, Harrison and Wengraf only addressed providing some protection to properties backed up to buildings along commercial corridors and nothing for homeowners in residential areas. The alternate proposal from Droste , Kesarwani and Taplin considers the impact on solar only when it is greater than a 50% loss. Since residential solar has been limited to what is needed for the household, that means a 50% loss, 50% of the solar panels are useless.
So, after weeks and months and years of failing to define objective standards for buildings, failing to define rooftop solar protections, just shy of 5 hours and 45 minutes into the meeting (well after 11 pm) Councilmember Taplin moved to “table” the objective standards item. Arreguin initially abstained and then changed his vote to yes to join Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Hahn, Robinson, Wengraf and Droste to end discussion and end establishing any standards at all. Councilmember Harrison abstained.
For all the effort from the City of Berkeley Sustainability to encourage residents to invest and adopt rooftop solar, the mayor and the council majority just killed it. There is only one councilmember who consistently stands for climate action, the lone member to abstain, Kate Harrison.
There will be something before the Planning Commission and Council next year, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. There is a mindset in Berkeley that wants to maintain the aura of a progressive city while kicking actual action to the curb.
This failure to protect solar in Berkeley falls into the backdrop of a failed COP26 (Conference of the Parties – the 26th time countries – 197 – that have gathered to agree on an environmental pact). No wonder climate action is such a failure. We can’t even get solar protections in Berkeley. This is so counter to the announcement from the University of California Irvine, “Wind and solar could power the world’s major countries most of the time.” Storage and non-fossil fuel sources could fill the rest. https://news.uci.edu/2021/11/05/wind-and-solar-could-power-the-worlds-major-countries-most-of-the-time/
The confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. crossed another million in just 12 days on November 13, 2021 to total 47 million. Those of us who follow the numbers know this is an undercount especially with home testing that is never added to the confirmed tally (unless they show up for medical care). The incidence of new cases is going the wrong direction, up
We need to figure out how to live with COVID perpetually at our doorstep. As a surge in one part of the country dissipates the virus takes hold in a new location. The virus keeps finding weak spots and that isn’t too hard with the pockets of the unvaccinated and the scattering of vaccinated who generated enough immunity from the vaccine to weaken the impact of a COVID infection, but not enough immunity to fend it off completely, “breakthrough” COVID.
In closing, the story of inmate firefighters filled the front section of the November 14th San Francisco Chronicle.
November 7, 2021
I missed more meetings than I attended this week and even with o 0ne snafu I really have to thank the City Clerks’ office for their quick posting of meeting minutes and presentations often up in just a day. I wish we could have the same kind of posting from the commissions, but those are getting further and further out, definitely not within the two-week requirement passed by city council.
Monday morning, the council Public Safety Committee approved the budget referral for Councilmember Taplin’s Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR). Whoever is doing the documents coming out of Taplin’s office deserves recognition as the ALPR presentation is really quite good and worth the few minutes it takes to scroll through it. The other agenda items were continued. It will be interesting to listen to the pitch on resuming the Red-light program as I heard at the McGee Spaulding Neighbors in Action meeting that these cameras actually increase accidents when drivers slam on the breaks in moving traffic to avoid a red light penalty.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Public_Safety.aspx
I missed the November 1, 2021 Agenda and Rules Committee meeting and could not satisfy my curiosity as to what justification Mayor Arreguin gave for the enormous raise from $301,428 to $386,160 for Dee Williams-Ridley the City Manager. The meeting recording titled 11-1-2021 is actually July 12, 2021. I am really wondering what the City Manager has done to earn a 28.11% raise. From my view of tracking Berkeley since November 2014, I can’t say that Berkeley is better off since Dee Williams-Ridley was hired as City Manager March 9, 2016.
The Mayor used a chart of 13 cities to justify raising the city manager salary. If Arreguin had really looked at his chart he would have seen that Berkeley is the smallest in physical square miles and 11th in a list of thirteen in population in his list. That certainly doesn’t justify boosting a salary that will place the Berkeley City Manager ‘s salary as 3rd from the highest above city managers with much larger responsibility.
As far as I can tell from Arreguin’s record, he has never done anything as an adult other than be a councilmember or mayor. It’s not that I believe the sales pitch that government should be run like a business, but I do believe that broad life experiences make for better more honest politicians especially when that politician has employable skills other than elected office or as a lobbyist to elected officials. The kind of dependence that comes from not having other employable skills is not good for us or him. Watching council as I do makes actions appear as the next coveted elected office is more important than the present.
That still leaves the question as to what can possibly justify a 28.11% raise. Is this just so some people can trot around spouting their importance and place by the size of their salary? And, the mayor can raise his importance by the high salary of the City Manager. I’m not opposed to paying salary to someone who has demonstrated their worth, but Berkeley is not in a leading position.
For those of us who attended the Public Works Commission meetings and follow the equipment replacement orders in the city council agendas it is obvious someone was coasting in their job prior to the arrival of Liam Garland in July 2020. From all appearances he walked into a mess. We need to look no further than the condition of our city streets as an example. All of those needed neglected repairs are now going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and we as citizens will be facing the decision in how to respond to the planned ballot measure in 2022 to finance the work.
Given the state of affairs of city infrastructure, where was our city manager as things were falling apart. Was she not paying attention or was she choosing to ignore the situation. How did it get so bad that not even one street was repaved in 2018. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/12/06/berkeley-wont-pave-any-streets-in-2018-pavement-continues-to-deteriorate
There could be a positive side if we take this fumbling and turn it into an opportunity to put climate and the environment as our top priority and look outward to other cities and the world for twenty-first century innovation. If we are going to add density with more buildings then we need to “green” the streets. Why aren’t we considering planting trees in the street as a barrier between bike lanes and transit and cars. Trees are better as a barrier than curbs. Trees clean the air, give us oxygen, slow traffic, counter heat island effect (heat thrown off buildings and pavement). And, if we choose trees thoughtfully by how many species they sustain in addition to drought tolerance, we support ecosystems and habitat for nature. Milan has a goal to plant 3 million trees by 2030. If the goal is as our council has voted to reduce parking and cars, then streets offer great opportunity. But can Berkeley city government look to the future instead of the past?
Ithaca, New York just voted to decarbonize every building in the city. Ithaca is starting with electrifying city buildings and then moving on to every remaining building, the entire city. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/11/03/ithaca-new-york-decarbonize-electrify/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main&crl8_id=48151be1-3e0a-4d97-8ca5-c264e9794457
Pittsburg passed a Dark Sky ordinance. https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/september/light-pollution-ordinance.html
Berkeley can’t even finish implementing a bird safe glass ordinance passed by council November 12, 2019. And what is the manager doing to ensure this important piece of legislation is implemented? This an even sadder note after picking up today’s SF Chronicle and reading Earthweek that the soundscape of birds is quieter and less diverse over the past 25 years as bird populations plummet. Nearly 3 billion birds have disappeared from North America since 1970. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/#:~:text=The%20first%2Dever%20comprehensive%20assessment,among%20birds%20in%20every%20biome.
The is so much that could be done with leadership and elected officials that look to a future for the planet instead of their careers. Just look to the National Wildlife Federation’s Blog and other cities. https://blog.nwf.org/2019/09/native-plant-challenge-calling-all-cities-to-plant-native/
The great sadness I have for Berkeley is seeing the clinging to old history when Berkeley was a leader some 50 years ago and a mindset that hovers in the same period. It’s a lot to overcome for those who are trying to move into the future.
This brings us to the Thursday special council meeting to establish council priorities for the 2023-2024 budget process. The meeting which drove Thomas Lord to write about the climate emergency. When I got home and tuned into the meeting, this was on the screen with the consultant talking:
Climate and the environment was 7th out of nine in priority. Councilmember Harrison spoke that if this meant spending more money on policing she had a lot of concerns. Councilmember Hahn said climate is an existential threat. Councilmember Wengraf said everything should be filtered through equity and climate and that she didn’t like silos, everything is interrelated. Councilmember Taplin said he supported the priorities. Councilmember Robinson said he appreciated the process. Councilmember Droste was bubbling over with enthusiasm for the process.
Where does this leave Berkeley? With a council majority, city management and consultants who don’t see climate and the environment as a priority. It certainly explains why there is so much empty rhetoric and Mayor Arreguin killed the rights of nature.
Arreguin tried to clean up the city image after the Thursday debacle with the Friday evening 5:49 pm constant contact mass emailing declaring climate as a crisis and extolling Berkeley’s “greening” actions on climate. Greenwashing is more like it. Greenwashing is when something is presented as being “green” but is just empty show. Berkeley would be nowhere without Councilmember Harrison carrying the city through the natural gas ban in new construction. And, that was an enormous effort where a team of experts so large in number lined up to speak at the July 2019 council meeting making the ban impossible to block.
In the email, Arreguin tries to make it sound like he initiated the Deep Green Building Initiative. Hahn gathered the community experts who put the initiative together. My role in the committee was to give input as to what was needed to see it implemented. I opposed the initiative as being voluntary saying no developer would participate and none have. Hahn said making standards required would never get passed by council. Watching council, she was right and changing council players in the intervening years doesn’t make aggressive action on climate and the environment look any brighter. The Energy Commission saw BESO (Building Emissions Saving Ordinance) as needing a major overhaul, again it was limited by what city council and city administration will tolerate. What we got is slight improvement.
The Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday held a hearing on the BART housing projects at the Ashby and North Berkeley stations, but took no action.
I like to close with my latest reading. I wish these two books were required reading for every adult American then maybe we would finally see Guantanamo closed and the military budget slashed.
I heard Mansoor Adayfi interviewed September 27, 2021 on Democracy Now shortly after the publication of his book Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and found in Guantanamo. The interview is an introduction, but nowhere near the power of hearing his words. I chose the audiobook when Mansoor Adayfi described why it was so important to him to have a woman narrator and not a man. It was men who kidnapped and sold him to the CIA when he was 18. It was men who tortured him, men who imprisoned him. It was women who treated him nicely. https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/27/mansoor_adayfi_guantanamo_book
I followed Adayfi’s book with the Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock. If I had any doubts which I didn’t that we needed to end the Afghanistan war, this book would settle it. All the corruption fostered by American money, the complete incompetence, the arrogance, the list is long. I finished the audiobook, but if you even listen to the first quarter or first half, I would be surprised if you weren’t frankly appalled by what was found in the “lessons learned” through the freedom of information act. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/05/the-afghanistan-papers-review-craig-whitlock-washington-post
Both books were published in August 2021 and are available through the San Francisco library.
Now that you have made it to the end of the Diary, please check the Activist’s calendar for deadlines and complete the city surveys.
I missed more meetings than I attended this week and even with o 0ne snafu I really have to thank the City Clerks’ office for their quick posting of meeting minutes and presentations often up in just a day. I wish we could have the same kind of posting from the commissions, but those are getting further and further out, definitely not within the two-week requirement passed by city council.
Monday morning, the council Public Safety Committee approved the budget referral for Councilmember Taplin’s Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR). Whoever is doing the documents coming out of Taplin’s office deserves recognition as the ALPR presentation is really quite good and worth the few minutes it takes to scroll through it. The other agenda items were continued. It will be interesting to listen to the pitch on resuming the Red-light program as I heard at the McGee Spaulding Neighbors in Action meeting that these cameras actually increase accidents when drivers slam on the breaks in moving traffic to avoid a red light penalty.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Public_Safety.aspx
I missed the November 1, 2021 Agenda and Rules Committee meeting and could not satisfy my curiosity as to what justification Mayor Arreguin gave for the enormous raise from $301,428 to $386,160 for Dee Williams-Ridley the City Manager. The meeting recording titled 11-1-2021 is actually July 12, 2021. I am really wondering what the City Manager has done to earn a 28.11% raise. From my view of tracking Berkeley since November 2014, I can’t say that Berkeley is better off since Dee Williams-Ridley was hired as City Manager March 9, 2016.
The Mayor used a chart of 13 cities to justify raising the city manager salary. If Arreguin had really looked at his chart he would have seen that Berkeley is the smallest in physical square miles and 11th in a list of thirteen in population in his list. That certainly doesn’t justify boosting a salary that will place the Berkeley City Manager ‘s salary as 3rd from the highest above city managers with much larger responsibility.
As far as I can tell from Arreguin’s record, he has never done anything as an adult other than be a councilmember or mayor. It’s not that I believe the sales pitch that government should be run like a business, but I do believe that broad life experiences make for better more honest politicians especially when that politician has employable skills other than elected office or as a lobbyist to elected officials. The kind of dependence that comes from not having other employable skills is not good for us or him. Watching council as I do makes actions appear as the next coveted elected office is more important than the present.
That still leaves the question as to what can possibly justify a 28.11% raise. Is this just so some people can trot around spouting their importance and place by the size of their salary? And, the mayor can raise his importance by the high salary of the City Manager. I’m not opposed to paying salary to someone who has demonstrated their worth, but Berkeley is not in a leading position.
For those of us who attended the Public Works Commission meetings and follow the equipment replacement orders in the city council agendas it is obvious someone was coasting in their job prior to the arrival of Liam Garland in July 2020. From all appearances he walked into a mess. We need to look no further than the condition of our city streets as an example. All of those needed neglected repairs are now going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and we as citizens will be facing the decision in how to respond to the planned ballot measure in 2022 to finance the work.
Given the state of affairs of city infrastructure, where was our city manager as things were falling apart. Was she not paying attention or was she choosing to ignore the situation. How did it get so bad that not even one street was repaved in 2018. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/12/06/berkeley-wont-pave-any-streets-in-2018-pavement-continues-to-deteriorate
There could be a positive side if we take this fumbling and turn it into an opportunity to put climate and the environment as our top priority and look outward to other cities and the world for twenty-first century innovation. If we are going to add density with more buildings then we need to “green” the streets. Why aren’t we considering planting trees in the street as a barrier between bike lanes and transit and cars. Trees are better as a barrier than curbs. Trees clean the air, give us oxygen, slow traffic, counter heat island effect (heat thrown off buildings and pavement). And, if we choose trees thoughtfully by how many species they sustain in addition to drought tolerance, we support ecosystems and habitat for nature. Milan has a goal to plant 3 million trees by 2030. If the goal is as our council has voted to reduce parking and cars, then streets offer great opportunity. But can Berkeley city government look to the future instead of the past?
Ithaca, New York just voted to decarbonize every building in the city. Ithaca is starting with electrifying city buildings and then moving on to every remaining building, the entire city. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/11/03/ithaca-new-york-decarbonize-electrify/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main&crl8_id=48151be1-3e0a-4d97-8ca5-c264e9794457
Pittsburg passed a Dark Sky ordinance. https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/september/light-pollution-ordinance.html
Berkeley can’t even finish implementing a bird safe glass ordinance passed by council November 12, 2019. And what is the manager doing to ensure this important piece of legislation is implemented? This an even sadder note after picking up today’s SF Chronicle and reading Earthweek that the soundscape of birds is quieter and less diverse over the past 25 years as bird populations plummet. Nearly 3 billion birds have disappeared from North America since 1970. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/#:~:text=The%20first%2Dever%20comprehensive%20assessment,among%20birds%20in%20every%20biome.
The is so much that could be done with leadership and elected officials that look to a future for the planet instead of their careers. Just look to the National Wildlife Federation’s Blog and other cities. https://blog.nwf.org/2019/09/native-plant-challenge-calling-all-cities-to-plant-native/
The great sadness I have for Berkeley is seeing the clinging to old history when Berkeley was a leader some 50 years ago and a mindset that hovers in the same period. It’s a lot to overcome for those who are trying to move into the future.
This brings us to the Thursday special council meeting to establish council priorities for the 2023-2024 budget process. The meeting which drove Thomas Lord to write about the climate emergency. When I got home and tuned into the meeting, this was on the screen with the consultant talking:
Climate and the environment was 7th out of nine in priority. Councilmember Harrison spoke that if this meant spending more money on policing she had a lot of concerns. Councilmember Hahn said climate is an existential threat. Councilmember Wengraf said everything should be filtered through equity and climate and that she didn’t like silos, everything is interrelated. Councilmember Taplin said he supported the priorities. Councilmember Robinson said he appreciated the process. Councilmember Droste was bubbling over with enthusiasm for the process.
Where does this leave Berkeley? With a council majority, city management and consultants who don’t see climate and the environment as a priority. It certainly explains why there is so much empty rhetoric and Mayor Arreguin killed the rights of nature.
Arreguin tried to clean up the city image after the Thursday debacle with the Friday evening 5:49 pm constant contact mass emailing declaring climate as a crisis and extolling Berkeley’s “greening” actions on climate. Greenwashing is more like it. Greenwashing is when something is presented as being “green” but is just empty show. Berkeley would be nowhere without Councilmember Harrison carrying the city through the natural gas ban in new construction. And, that was an enormous effort where a team of experts so large in number lined up to speak at the July 2019 council meeting making the ban impossible to block.
In the email, Arreguin tries to make it sound like he initiated the Deep Green Building Initiative. Hahn gathered the community experts who put the initiative together. My role in the committee was to give input as to what was needed to see it implemented. I opposed the initiative as being voluntary saying no developer would participate and none have. Hahn said making standards required would never get passed by council. Watching council, she was right and changing council players in the intervening years doesn’t make aggressive action on climate and the environment look any brighter. The Energy Commission saw BESO (Building Emissions Saving Ordinance) as needing a major overhaul, again it was limited by what city council and city administration will tolerate. What we got is slight improvement.
The Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday held a hearing on the BART housing projects at the Ashby and North Berkeley stations, but took no action.
I like to close with my latest reading. I wish these two books were required reading for every adult American then maybe we would finally see Guantanamo closed and the military budget slashed.
I heard Mansoor Adayfi interviewed September 27, 2021 on Democracy Now shortly after the publication of his book Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and found in Guantanamo. The interview is an introduction, but nowhere near the power of hearing his words. I chose the audiobook when Mansoor Adayfi described why it was so important to him to have a woman narrator and not a man. It was men who kidnapped and sold him to the CIA when he was 18. It was men who tortured him, men who imprisoned him. It was women who treated him nicely. https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/27/mansoor_adayfi_guantanamo_book
I followed Adayfi’s book with the Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock. If I had any doubts which I didn’t that we needed to end the Afghanistan war, this book would settle it. All the corruption fostered by American money, the complete incompetence, the arrogance, the list is long. I finished the audiobook, but if you even listen to the first quarter or first half, I would be surprised if you weren’t frankly appalled by what was found in the “lessons learned” through the freedom of information act. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/05/the-afghanistan-papers-review-craig-whitlock-washington-post
Both books were published in August 2021 and are available through the San Francisco library.
Now that you have made it to the end of the Diary, please check the Activist’s calendar for deadlines and complete the city surveys.
October 23, 2021
One of the side benefits of the changes forced by the pandemic is an international conference planned to take place in London could be watched live from home. I finished the week with attending the international virtual conference Half-Earth Day. The Half-Earth Project® started with Edward O. Wilson and his premise that to save the bulk of biodiversity including ourselves, we need to conserve half the land and sea. https://www.half-earthproject.org/
Conserving half the earth for biodiversity is a laudable goal, one that sadly I don’t see going very far. For heaven’s sake we can’t even get developers to come to ZAB (Zoning Adjustment Board) and DRC (Design Review Committee) with a landscape plan that is predominantly locally native plants or to install bird safe glass or to stop planning patios with methane burning fire pits.
Calling methane “natural gas” doesn’t make it any less toxic to the environment or your kitchen for that matter. And, all those projects in the works before the implementation of the natural gas ban in new construction passed by city council July 23, 2019 can still do what they wish. ZAB (Zoning Adjustment Board) and DRC (Design Review Committee) can only request.
As for bird safe glass, nothing has changed since I last wrote. The bird safe glass ordinance passed by council November 12, 2019 was referred to the Planning Commission where the ordinance languishes 2nd from the bottom of a long to do list with no priority awaiting Planning Commission approval. That is before the ordinance takes a tour through the city manager’s office and then it can be implemented.
I confess to being a bit cranky at DRC Thursday evening when I started my first public comment with: Why do we month after month have to speak to the same issues, choosing native plants and bird safe glass? The two projects before DRC for final review Thursday evening have been in the works since 2016 and 2018. Both projects, 2902 Adeline and 1951 Shattuck insisted the fire pits were a desired amenity to keep. Cody Fornari, the developer and CEO of Realtex for 2902 Adeline did not express even a whiff of interest in bird safe glass.
The second project for final review was a twelve-story glass dominant residential tower at 1951 Shattuck. It’s not clear when the property was sold to Grosvenor Americas, but the traditional style from 2014 went away with the new owner project design.
A representative from the Audubon Society Board spoke to both projects on improving safety for birds. With the bird safe glass ordinance buried deep in the dark, the DRC Committee could only request not enforce bird safe glass. The developer for 1951 Shattuck did state they were familiar with the San Francisco bird safe glass ordinance and would be using glass with a film at the top of the building and would be using a method to improve the safety of the glass railings on the balconies. None of the rest of the building would contain bird safe glass.
A predominant glass building with glass corners near trees and glass balcony enclosures are a real hazard for birds, so is reflective glass in low and mid-rise buildings. Somehow, I missed the full story that Lux one of the two peregrine falcons born at the UC Campanile in 2017 died slamming into glass in a balcony enclosure one week after it learned how to fly.
At the end of the DRC meeting Charles Kahn asked the DRC Secretary Anne Burns if there isn’t a list given to developers with the things that will come up in design like native plants, bird safe glass. Since there is no list and the topic of a list was not on the agenda, Kahn asked for the making of a list to be added to the next meeting agenda.
Berkeley could have a leading bird safe glass ordinance far better than the 2011 San Francisco ordinance, but like so much that seems to happen in this city, Mayor Arreguin finds a way to look progressive while actual action comes up empty. There are other cities and mayors to watch and candidates with real commitment for the future. Mayor Peduto of Pittsburgh, PA led that city through passing Dark Sky legislation in August.
Forty-two people attended the Tuesday evening City Council special meeting on the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) Crime Report. Since the meeting is virtual and we can’t see who is logged in to zoom, it is unknown to the public if the reason for the small number of speakers is because most of the attendees were members of BPD or just members of the public who were there to listen and not speak. The presentation and video are all available online. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx.
When blacks are only 8% of the Berkeley population and 43.07% were subjected to Use of Force while whites are 50% of Berkeley population and logged as 26.22% of the incidences of Use of Force, it doesn’t look like much has changed in regard to biased policing.
Arreguin took the lead in responding to the BPD presentation and public comment by stating at 1:27:12 in the meeting video that he wanted to address his concern in decreased staffing stating: “that we’re seeing a huge decrease in staffing in the department…I believe that we can have adequate staffing in our police department…and we can invest in alternative responders that are being explored through the reimagining process…I don’t think those are mutually exclusive…”
Having attended many of the city Budget & Finance Policy Committee meetings, I can see where the allocation to alternatives will go after attending to the BPD budget. On something as important as reimagining public safety, I would love to be surprised and proven wrong.
The number of sworn officers is now at 152 which is 1 officer per 818 residents or 12.22 per 10,000 residents (2020 census). I was curious after the mayor’s statements just how does Berkeley compare in the number of officers to population and what I found is the number of officers per population across the nation is anywhere from 4.2 per 10,000 in Lincoln, California to 68.7 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, though most listings in California vary from 9 to 14 per 10,000. San Francisco is a California outlier with 26.4. You could spend all night scrolling through this list https://www.governing.com/archive/police-officers-per-capita-rates-employment-for-city-departments.html Berkeley with a smaller population and more officers was at 14 when the chart was compiled.
City Council approved a $270,000 contract with NICJR to oversee the community process for a reimagining of public safety in Berkeley. I haven’t heard much of anything that is a “reimagining.” There have been a lot of presentations from BPD seeming to defend what they already do with not a speck that I can think of from attending task force meetings that gives way to alternative approaches (other than what comes out of the frustrated mouths of task force members). The NICJR final report will be completed any day and turned over to the City Manager. It is unclear when the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force will see it, but we will know more after their next meeting at 5 pm Wednesday.
In the meantime, Criminal Injustice is an excel podcast on Criminal Justice Reform and the Law. I highly recommend the October 19, 2021 podcast. You might even want to take a tour through the archives. http://www.criminalinjusticepodcast.com/blog/2021/10/18/146-public-defense-and-criminal-justice-reform
California seems to be in the throes of recall fever. Chesa Boudin, San Francisco District Attorney is now on the block. Since I moved from San Francisco to Berkeley thirty-one years ago I haven’t been tracking San Francisco politics, but it was interesting to read in an SFGate analysis that San Francisco with 26.4 sworn officers per 10,000 (2016 count) solves only 10% of the crimes. In all the tallies and charts, what percent of crimes are solved by BPD in Berkeley wasn’t part of the BPD Crime Report on Tuesday night.
The Wednesday FITES (Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability) Committee meeting with the Native and Drought Resistant Plants and Landscaping Ordinance Referral on the agenda was canceled.
The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton is a book that should be on everyone’s reading list. It was on mine this week. Any sort of summary can’t do justice to the depth of the story of an innocent man living his adult life on death row. Our criminal justice system should give us a lot to think about. I read Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row a collection of essays by Tessie Castillo with contributions by: Michael J. Braxton, Lyle May, Terry Robinson, George Wilkerson, earlier this year. That book is a harder read.
Maybe 2022 is the year I finally visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.
One of the side benefits of the changes forced by the pandemic is an international conference planned to take place in London could be watched live from home. I finished the week with attending the international virtual conference Half-Earth Day. The Half-Earth Project® started with Edward O. Wilson and his premise that to save the bulk of biodiversity including ourselves, we need to conserve half the land and sea. https://www.half-earthproject.org/
Conserving half the earth for biodiversity is a laudable goal, one that sadly I don’t see going very far. For heaven’s sake we can’t even get developers to come to ZAB (Zoning Adjustment Board) and DRC (Design Review Committee) with a landscape plan that is predominantly locally native plants or to install bird safe glass or to stop planning patios with methane burning fire pits.
Calling methane “natural gas” doesn’t make it any less toxic to the environment or your kitchen for that matter. And, all those projects in the works before the implementation of the natural gas ban in new construction passed by city council July 23, 2019 can still do what they wish. ZAB (Zoning Adjustment Board) and DRC (Design Review Committee) can only request.
As for bird safe glass, nothing has changed since I last wrote. The bird safe glass ordinance passed by council November 12, 2019 was referred to the Planning Commission where the ordinance languishes 2nd from the bottom of a long to do list with no priority awaiting Planning Commission approval. That is before the ordinance takes a tour through the city manager’s office and then it can be implemented.
I confess to being a bit cranky at DRC Thursday evening when I started my first public comment with: Why do we month after month have to speak to the same issues, choosing native plants and bird safe glass? The two projects before DRC for final review Thursday evening have been in the works since 2016 and 2018. Both projects, 2902 Adeline and 1951 Shattuck insisted the fire pits were a desired amenity to keep. Cody Fornari, the developer and CEO of Realtex for 2902 Adeline did not express even a whiff of interest in bird safe glass.
The second project for final review was a twelve-story glass dominant residential tower at 1951 Shattuck. It’s not clear when the property was sold to Grosvenor Americas, but the traditional style from 2014 went away with the new owner project design.
A representative from the Audubon Society Board spoke to both projects on improving safety for birds. With the bird safe glass ordinance buried deep in the dark, the DRC Committee could only request not enforce bird safe glass. The developer for 1951 Shattuck did state they were familiar with the San Francisco bird safe glass ordinance and would be using glass with a film at the top of the building and would be using a method to improve the safety of the glass railings on the balconies. None of the rest of the building would contain bird safe glass.
A predominant glass building with glass corners near trees and glass balcony enclosures are a real hazard for birds, so is reflective glass in low and mid-rise buildings. Somehow, I missed the full story that Lux one of the two peregrine falcons born at the UC Campanile in 2017 died slamming into glass in a balcony enclosure one week after it learned how to fly.
At the end of the DRC meeting Charles Kahn asked the DRC Secretary Anne Burns if there isn’t a list given to developers with the things that will come up in design like native plants, bird safe glass. Since there is no list and the topic of a list was not on the agenda, Kahn asked for the making of a list to be added to the next meeting agenda.
Berkeley could have a leading bird safe glass ordinance far better than the 2011 San Francisco ordinance, but like so much that seems to happen in this city, Mayor Arreguin finds a way to look progressive while actual action comes up empty. There are other cities and mayors to watch and candidates with real commitment for the future. Mayor Peduto of Pittsburgh, PA led that city through passing Dark Sky legislation in August.
Forty-two people attended the Tuesday evening City Council special meeting on the Berkeley Police Department (BPD) Crime Report. Since the meeting is virtual and we can’t see who is logged in to zoom, it is unknown to the public if the reason for the small number of speakers is because most of the attendees were members of BPD or just members of the public who were there to listen and not speak. The presentation and video are all available online. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx.
When blacks are only 8% of the Berkeley population and 43.07% were subjected to Use of Force while whites are 50% of Berkeley population and logged as 26.22% of the incidences of Use of Force, it doesn’t look like much has changed in regard to biased policing.
Arreguin took the lead in responding to the BPD presentation and public comment by stating at 1:27:12 in the meeting video that he wanted to address his concern in decreased staffing stating: “that we’re seeing a huge decrease in staffing in the department…I believe that we can have adequate staffing in our police department…and we can invest in alternative responders that are being explored through the reimagining process…I don’t think those are mutually exclusive…”
Having attended many of the city Budget & Finance Policy Committee meetings, I can see where the allocation to alternatives will go after attending to the BPD budget. On something as important as reimagining public safety, I would love to be surprised and proven wrong.
The number of sworn officers is now at 152 which is 1 officer per 818 residents or 12.22 per 10,000 residents (2020 census). I was curious after the mayor’s statements just how does Berkeley compare in the number of officers to population and what I found is the number of officers per population across the nation is anywhere from 4.2 per 10,000 in Lincoln, California to 68.7 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, though most listings in California vary from 9 to 14 per 10,000. San Francisco is a California outlier with 26.4. You could spend all night scrolling through this list https://www.governing.com/archive/police-officers-per-capita-rates-employment-for-city-departments.html Berkeley with a smaller population and more officers was at 14 when the chart was compiled.
City Council approved a $270,000 contract with NICJR to oversee the community process for a reimagining of public safety in Berkeley. I haven’t heard much of anything that is a “reimagining.” There have been a lot of presentations from BPD seeming to defend what they already do with not a speck that I can think of from attending task force meetings that gives way to alternative approaches (other than what comes out of the frustrated mouths of task force members). The NICJR final report will be completed any day and turned over to the City Manager. It is unclear when the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force will see it, but we will know more after their next meeting at 5 pm Wednesday.
In the meantime, Criminal Injustice is an excel podcast on Criminal Justice Reform and the Law. I highly recommend the October 19, 2021 podcast. You might even want to take a tour through the archives. http://www.criminalinjusticepodcast.com/blog/2021/10/18/146-public-defense-and-criminal-justice-reform
California seems to be in the throes of recall fever. Chesa Boudin, San Francisco District Attorney is now on the block. Since I moved from San Francisco to Berkeley thirty-one years ago I haven’t been tracking San Francisco politics, but it was interesting to read in an SFGate analysis that San Francisco with 26.4 sworn officers per 10,000 (2016 count) solves only 10% of the crimes. In all the tallies and charts, what percent of crimes are solved by BPD in Berkeley wasn’t part of the BPD Crime Report on Tuesday night.
The Wednesday FITES (Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability) Committee meeting with the Native and Drought Resistant Plants and Landscaping Ordinance Referral on the agenda was canceled.
The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton is a book that should be on everyone’s reading list. It was on mine this week. Any sort of summary can’t do justice to the depth of the story of an innocent man living his adult life on death row. Our criminal justice system should give us a lot to think about. I read Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row a collection of essays by Tessie Castillo with contributions by: Michael J. Braxton, Lyle May, Terry Robinson, George Wilkerson, earlier this year. That book is a harder read.
Maybe 2022 is the year I finally visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.
October 16, 2021
On Monday, Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I opened my email to see this note from James McFadden:
This "Berkeley Together" effort seems more like an attempt to divide Berkeley -- perhaps they should be renamed "Berkeley Divided." The most privileged are organizing to get an exemption from development -- assuming loss of local zoning control is ok as long as it doesn't impact them. It looks like the hill people are throwing the flats under the development bus rather than forming a united front to fight this developer grab of power and neoliberal deregulation/disempowerment of cities.
There was a time when I might have felt the same knee jerk reaction, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how climate change and climate catastrophes are going to change where and how we live. This morning my first podcast of the day was “The Daily” from the New York Times “Which towns are worth saving” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/podcasts/the-daily/climate-crisis-resilience.html We might extend that to which parts of towns should be abandoned and when is retreat the best choice?
My niece and I talked not so long ago about how we are going to see climate refugees from within our own country as parts of the US become uninhabitable. How many times should an area be rebuilt? Or, should there even be expansion in cities like Phoenix with a future like 118° on June 17th. Homeowners in the hills are finding it ever more difficult to secure fire insurance. When the hills burn again as they likely will despite our efforts to prevent such an event, should they be rebuilt. At the very least should we be putting more people in an area where they may be trapped, unable to evacuate as in the Berkeley Oakland Hills fire in 1991 where 25 people died. The opposite side of the city will be impacted by sea level rise with a best scenario now 10 feet not 6 feet.
We may find that as our elected recoil from having to say the dreaded word “retreat” it will be the insurance companies that assess the risk and drive the response.
Tuesday started with a demonstration of the online mapping tool for redistricting. There were only four of us attending so we got a very special demonstration with all of our questions answered by Mark Numainville, City Clerk. The results of the 2020 census show shifts in population sufficient to require redrawing the city council districts. It is unlikely that the district borders will change very much, but I am set on submitting at least one if not more versions before the deadline on November 15th. There will be another demonstration on Thursday, October 21 at 5 pm. Check the Activist’s Calendar for the links.
I missed the agenda committee and went to the minutes and audio-recording. The City Manager was given 60 days to write a companion report on the Adopt-a-Spot budget referral which means it won’t be considered until next June instead of November. Scott Ferris will be the actual author of the companion report per his own statements so soon we will see what he really thinks of the work of the Parks and Waterfront Commission. Councilmember Taplin pulled his proposed ordinance for punitive damages for unauthorized removal of coastal oaks and tree replacement requirements.
I’ve been writing for weeks on ecosystems, biodiversity and the importance of oaks as keystone plants in supporting hundreds of species of insects. We should be choosing which plants go in the ground by how many species they support not just drought tolerance. Although I have no inside information on what happened my suspicion is that development pressure and objections from the city foresters are at the bottom of this pushing the withdrawal of an ordinance with real teeth. This brings us to 1915 Berryman where the new owner plans to demolish the existing structure and construct an eleven-unit four-story building. Five coastal oaks are reported as being removed without authorization and six remain. There is a petition to be signed to require protections of the remaining oaks during construction at 1231 Bonita (drop by to sign 10 – 5 pm Monday and 12 – 6 pm Tuesday).
The evening city council meeting started 1 ½ hours late. The preceding closed session contained only two items, the hiring of the new fire chief which has already been announced and the evaluation of the City Manager. I certainly wish I knew what generated a discussion that pushed the council meeting to start at 7:30 pm. Objective building standards were put off until October 26th along with several other items.
It was Taplin’s and Kesarwani’s budget referral item 20 on consent for $500,000 for security cameras in the public right of way that was the subject of considerable public and council comment. We could hear the distress from the residents of District 2 who described gunfire and supported the installation of cameras as the answer convinced that if cameras are present, gunfire will cease. The opposition came from the public who were concerned about increasing surveillance, who and what entities will have access to recordings, how the recordings will be used and how long recordings will be retained. Harrison and Hahn tried to insert some controls over regulating the surveillance, but Taplin and Kesarwani would not budge.
Monitoring two city meetings running simultaneously doesn’t work very well, but I still tried on Wednesday to monitor the Homeless Commission and the Parks and Waterfront Commission. Peter Radu the City Homeless Services Coordinator was present for a Q&A with the commission on the enforcement of the sidewalk and RV ordinances. That took up nearly the entire meeting. The presentation with charts of the number of homeless participants in Roomkey – 44, Horizon – 33, Emergency Choice Vouchers – 43 and Continuous Care Permanent Housing – 381 was displayed at the meeting, but not posted for further review. There were more questions than answers. I left feeling that the homeless will soon be chased again from one place to another.
At Parks when item 14. Native Species Planting in Berkeley came up for discussion, Scott Ferris said there wasn’t a referral. Brennan Cox spoke saying none of this was necessary as there are already laws requiring drought tolerant plants native and “Native Adaptive.” https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Energy_and_Sustainable_Development/Water_Efficient_Landscape.aspx If you have watched any of the Douglas Tallamy videos that I have posted week after week or read any of his books, then you would know that “Native Adaptive” means imported plants (often called exotics) from other parts of the world that can be drought tolerant, but do nothing to support native pollinators, native species. The answer is in Nature’s Best Hope A New Approach to Conservation that starts in your yard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAzDP0wQI78
Without milkweed for Monarch caterpillars to eat there are no Monarch butterflies. Without the pipevine plant there is no food for pipevine caterpillars and no native pipevine swallowtail butterflies. Monarchs may winter on the invasive Eucalyptus, but when spring comes the Monarch lays its eggs on milkweed and the caterpillar will feed and grow and pupate and become a Monarch butterfly only if there is milkweed. This same relationship (insect and host plant) is repeated over and over in nature. Insects and plants have evolved together over thousands of years. Bringing in a drought tolerant plant from another part of the world doesn’t make it a host plant and calling the imported plant “Native Adaptive” doesn’t make it a host plant either. We need to fill our yards, gardens, open space with predominately native plants and no more than 30% as non-native that native adaptive.
There is nothing important to say about the Thursday Reimagining Public Safety meeting except watch next time.
I happened to snag one of the last two copies at Pegasus of On Tyranny Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century Graphic Edition by Timothy Snyder illustrated by Nora Krug, 2021. The graphic edition is exceptional giving us a condensed European history and pulling in Trump without ever printing his name. Being an artist in my limited free hours, I loved the illustrations. This is a book I will look at again and again.
The other book I completed this week was Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee, 2019. After watching Frances Haugen on 60 Minutes, I was looking for more on Facebook. Too much of the book was McNamee writing about McNamee. Despite all that, it was a warning and in-depth probe into the very real damaging and dangerous impacts of Facebook into people’s lives, society, culture and governments. McNamee goes into detail of algorithms, Cambridge Analytica, and how personal data is used to hook users into staying on the platform and influencing behavior/outcomes.
Once you start understanding the algorithms, how people are influenced, propagandized, frightened, angered then it isn’t hard to follow the outcome of health officers, election officers and school board members threatened. This is the poisonous side of a platform that allows families and friends to send pictures and greetings to each other. “Move Fast and Break Things” says it all. McNamee advises throw out Alexa and never use Facebook to sign onto anything.
In closing, if you read the analysis of masks and respirators in Part 1 and Part 2 in CIDRAP then you will know why this is my go to source on COVID.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/10/commentary-what-can-masks-do-part-1-science-behind-covid-19-protection
On Monday, Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I opened my email to see this note from James McFadden:
This "Berkeley Together" effort seems more like an attempt to divide Berkeley -- perhaps they should be renamed "Berkeley Divided." The most privileged are organizing to get an exemption from development -- assuming loss of local zoning control is ok as long as it doesn't impact them. It looks like the hill people are throwing the flats under the development bus rather than forming a united front to fight this developer grab of power and neoliberal deregulation/disempowerment of cities.
There was a time when I might have felt the same knee jerk reaction, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how climate change and climate catastrophes are going to change where and how we live. This morning my first podcast of the day was “The Daily” from the New York Times “Which towns are worth saving” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/podcasts/the-daily/climate-crisis-resilience.html We might extend that to which parts of towns should be abandoned and when is retreat the best choice?
My niece and I talked not so long ago about how we are going to see climate refugees from within our own country as parts of the US become uninhabitable. How many times should an area be rebuilt? Or, should there even be expansion in cities like Phoenix with a future like 118° on June 17th. Homeowners in the hills are finding it ever more difficult to secure fire insurance. When the hills burn again as they likely will despite our efforts to prevent such an event, should they be rebuilt. At the very least should we be putting more people in an area where they may be trapped, unable to evacuate as in the Berkeley Oakland Hills fire in 1991 where 25 people died. The opposite side of the city will be impacted by sea level rise with a best scenario now 10 feet not 6 feet.
We may find that as our elected recoil from having to say the dreaded word “retreat” it will be the insurance companies that assess the risk and drive the response.
Tuesday started with a demonstration of the online mapping tool for redistricting. There were only four of us attending so we got a very special demonstration with all of our questions answered by Mark Numainville, City Clerk. The results of the 2020 census show shifts in population sufficient to require redrawing the city council districts. It is unlikely that the district borders will change very much, but I am set on submitting at least one if not more versions before the deadline on November 15th. There will be another demonstration on Thursday, October 21 at 5 pm. Check the Activist’s Calendar for the links.
I missed the agenda committee and went to the minutes and audio-recording. The City Manager was given 60 days to write a companion report on the Adopt-a-Spot budget referral which means it won’t be considered until next June instead of November. Scott Ferris will be the actual author of the companion report per his own statements so soon we will see what he really thinks of the work of the Parks and Waterfront Commission. Councilmember Taplin pulled his proposed ordinance for punitive damages for unauthorized removal of coastal oaks and tree replacement requirements.
I’ve been writing for weeks on ecosystems, biodiversity and the importance of oaks as keystone plants in supporting hundreds of species of insects. We should be choosing which plants go in the ground by how many species they support not just drought tolerance. Although I have no inside information on what happened my suspicion is that development pressure and objections from the city foresters are at the bottom of this pushing the withdrawal of an ordinance with real teeth. This brings us to 1915 Berryman where the new owner plans to demolish the existing structure and construct an eleven-unit four-story building. Five coastal oaks are reported as being removed without authorization and six remain. There is a petition to be signed to require protections of the remaining oaks during construction at 1231 Bonita (drop by to sign 10 – 5 pm Monday and 12 – 6 pm Tuesday).
The evening city council meeting started 1 ½ hours late. The preceding closed session contained only two items, the hiring of the new fire chief which has already been announced and the evaluation of the City Manager. I certainly wish I knew what generated a discussion that pushed the council meeting to start at 7:30 pm. Objective building standards were put off until October 26th along with several other items.
It was Taplin’s and Kesarwani’s budget referral item 20 on consent for $500,000 for security cameras in the public right of way that was the subject of considerable public and council comment. We could hear the distress from the residents of District 2 who described gunfire and supported the installation of cameras as the answer convinced that if cameras are present, gunfire will cease. The opposition came from the public who were concerned about increasing surveillance, who and what entities will have access to recordings, how the recordings will be used and how long recordings will be retained. Harrison and Hahn tried to insert some controls over regulating the surveillance, but Taplin and Kesarwani would not budge.
Monitoring two city meetings running simultaneously doesn’t work very well, but I still tried on Wednesday to monitor the Homeless Commission and the Parks and Waterfront Commission. Peter Radu the City Homeless Services Coordinator was present for a Q&A with the commission on the enforcement of the sidewalk and RV ordinances. That took up nearly the entire meeting. The presentation with charts of the number of homeless participants in Roomkey – 44, Horizon – 33, Emergency Choice Vouchers – 43 and Continuous Care Permanent Housing – 381 was displayed at the meeting, but not posted for further review. There were more questions than answers. I left feeling that the homeless will soon be chased again from one place to another.
At Parks when item 14. Native Species Planting in Berkeley came up for discussion, Scott Ferris said there wasn’t a referral. Brennan Cox spoke saying none of this was necessary as there are already laws requiring drought tolerant plants native and “Native Adaptive.” https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Energy_and_Sustainable_Development/Water_Efficient_Landscape.aspx If you have watched any of the Douglas Tallamy videos that I have posted week after week or read any of his books, then you would know that “Native Adaptive” means imported plants (often called exotics) from other parts of the world that can be drought tolerant, but do nothing to support native pollinators, native species. The answer is in Nature’s Best Hope A New Approach to Conservation that starts in your yard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAzDP0wQI78
Without milkweed for Monarch caterpillars to eat there are no Monarch butterflies. Without the pipevine plant there is no food for pipevine caterpillars and no native pipevine swallowtail butterflies. Monarchs may winter on the invasive Eucalyptus, but when spring comes the Monarch lays its eggs on milkweed and the caterpillar will feed and grow and pupate and become a Monarch butterfly only if there is milkweed. This same relationship (insect and host plant) is repeated over and over in nature. Insects and plants have evolved together over thousands of years. Bringing in a drought tolerant plant from another part of the world doesn’t make it a host plant and calling the imported plant “Native Adaptive” doesn’t make it a host plant either. We need to fill our yards, gardens, open space with predominately native plants and no more than 30% as non-native that native adaptive.
There is nothing important to say about the Thursday Reimagining Public Safety meeting except watch next time.
I happened to snag one of the last two copies at Pegasus of On Tyranny Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century Graphic Edition by Timothy Snyder illustrated by Nora Krug, 2021. The graphic edition is exceptional giving us a condensed European history and pulling in Trump without ever printing his name. Being an artist in my limited free hours, I loved the illustrations. This is a book I will look at again and again.
The other book I completed this week was Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee, 2019. After watching Frances Haugen on 60 Minutes, I was looking for more on Facebook. Too much of the book was McNamee writing about McNamee. Despite all that, it was a warning and in-depth probe into the very real damaging and dangerous impacts of Facebook into people’s lives, society, culture and governments. McNamee goes into detail of algorithms, Cambridge Analytica, and how personal data is used to hook users into staying on the platform and influencing behavior/outcomes.
Once you start understanding the algorithms, how people are influenced, propagandized, frightened, angered then it isn’t hard to follow the outcome of health officers, election officers and school board members threatened. This is the poisonous side of a platform that allows families and friends to send pictures and greetings to each other. “Move Fast and Break Things” says it all. McNamee advises throw out Alexa and never use Facebook to sign onto anything.
In closing, if you read the analysis of masks and respirators in Part 1 and Part 2 in CIDRAP then you will know why this is my go to source on COVID.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/10/commentary-what-can-masks-do-part-1-science-behind-covid-19-protection
October 9, 2021
I start out each week committed to writing up meetings as they occur only to end the weekend scrambling to finish the diary before the next week starts.
Elmar from Public Works related at the Telegraph/Channing Restroom Community meeting on Monday the challenge of finding a flat location for the Portland Loo and settled on two possible sites. The Portland Loo is a stand-alone pre-fabricated public restroom with a flushable toilet and an external hand-washing station https://portlandloo.com/
One of the two sites is at Haste and Telegraph in the street in front of the mural “A Peoples History of Telegraph Avenue” on the Amoeba Music building. With the Loo’s substantial height of 8 ½ feet and length 10 ½ feet it would obstruct the view of this classic mural designed by Osha Neumann, painted with O’Brien Thiele, Janet Kranzberg, David Galvez and many others in 1976. The mural was enlarged in 1999 and most recently restored in 2020. https://berkeleyplaques.org/plaque/telegraph-avenue/
The other location on Channing just west of Telegraph was met with resistance by Framer’s Workshop. The Framer’s Workshop owners envision that the plumbed public restroom would be a magnet for flies that would find their way down to the Framer’s Workshop entrance like flies from the porta potty that was once near their business. This location also has a mural, but the considerably smaller mural is on a two-story wall and does not possess the historical recognition given to “A Peoples History of Telegraph Avenue.”
If there is absolutely no other location, my vote is for the Channing site and saving the History of Telegraph Avenue Mural. Osha Neumann is probably more widely known by council and city employees for defending the homeless than for his mural art. I hope that doesn’t influence a city decision. I emailed ugonzalez@cityofberkeley.info If you wish to voice your opinion on the location of the Portland Loo then email ugonzalez@cityofberkeley.info by 6 pm Monday October 11. I will also will try emailing the Director of Public Works, Liam Garland.
Monday evening was the first Peace and Justice Commission meeting since the beginning of the pandemic. The council referral, the Rights of Nature a new concept to most people was the last agenda item at a meeting that was already hitting the wall, an inopportune time to take up a complicated concept that few understood. https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/what-are-rights-of-nature/
Commissioner Rita Maran, appointed by Linda Maio in 2016, was completely opposed to any rights given to nature convinced that nature would reverse the hard fought human rights. The explanation given by George Lipmann did not touch on how the Rights of Nature has been the legal path to stop the polluting of rivers, clean up the mess and assign damages. These are very things that cause death and devastating illness not just to animals and ecosystems, but also people, most often BIPOC.
In 2008, Ecuador was the first nation to give rights to nature when it ratified Articles 71-74 of the Ecuadorian Constitution granting the environment the inalienable right to exist, persist and be respected. It was a battle before and ever since. Some may recall the 2013 decision against Chevron with a fine of $9.5 billion, which Chevron has refused to pay.
Here in Berkeley, the Rights of Nature has been a bumpy road as I noted in the April 3, 2021 Activist’s Diary. Mayor Arreguin boxed himself into a corner when he declared his opposition to the rights of nature at the agenda committee and needed a way out. The path became the Peace and Justice Commission referral where it will be tied up for months until the commission is merged and it dies. A fuller story is here: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-04-03/article/49114?headline=A-Berkeley-Activist-s-Diary--Kelly-Hammargren
This leads into my personal transformation and broader view. It was the 2018 IPCC interim report on holding temperature rise to 1.5°C and the February 2019 Guardian article “Plummeting insect numbers threaten the collapse of nature” that shook me out of any remaining complacency. Earlier this year hungry for something different to read, I picked up the Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy at Pegasus. I followed that with his earlier book Bringing Nature Home. It was Douglas Tallamy that carried me out of, “what is the big deal about native plants” to “this is so easy” we can restore nature and ecosystems one yard, one garden at a time. All we need is to replace our imported exotic plants with native plants. And, if we don’t have yards and gardens we can make room for pots of native plants.
Douglas Tallamy was interviewed on KPFA Friday, October 8th at 1 pm (Interview starts at 5 minutes and speed is adjustable – I do 1.25) https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=365520. Tallamy is so positive. He is speaking in-person in San Rafael on October 27th at 7 pm https://dominican.extendedsession.com/douglas-tallamy/. If you miss all those, my favorite video is Douglas Tallamy in Lancaster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJbP0yA0gc
This brings us to FITES, Thursday’s Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee and Councilmember Taplin’s Native and Drought Resistance Plants and Landscaping Ordinance referral. It definitely felt like a set-up when Councilmember Robinson invited city arborist Dan Gallagher and Parks Director Scott Ferris to speak and then followed the invitation with a chat that they could meet offline. Taplin was absent. Robinson has expressed little interest in trees in prior meetings except as a nuisance (trees get in the way of biking) and the city arborists don’t believe in native plants and trees as illustrated by non-native trees being planted throughout the city including at the restored North Berkeley Senior Center.
Tuesday evening was the special council meeting to vote on the waiver of the Sanctuary City Ordinance for the $6.5 million lease with Motorola. Council justified not getting competitive bids by making reference to a problem Oakland had with another equipment provider some 7 years ago. Setting aside the issues with Motorola Solutions contracting with ICE, it still seems $6.5 million is an awfully large contract to skip the step of a competitive bid. The other agenda item Interim Regulations proposed by the Police Accountability Board (PAB) were passed with amendments and deferring how testimony is taken until the required legal process is completed. Taplin’s substitute motion to require witnesses to have permission to make a complaint was rejected. The PAB meets Wednesday, October 13 at 7 pm with Interim Regulations on the agenda.
The Land Use Policy committee met Thursday on Taplin’s Affordable Housing Overlay. It was quite surprising how little Taplin had to say about the measure he submitted. Councilmember Hahn in her usual manner carried on and on and modified some of the language, but essentially it passed out of committee with little change and the motion was ready when they realized they had completely ignored public comment, of course, public comment had no influence on what was already in the works.
You didn’t miss anything by skipping the council’s Public Safety Committee. Both agenda items including the Automated License Plate Readers budget referral from Councilmember Taplin with co-sponsors Wengraf and Droste were continued to a future meeting without action.
If you watched the Mayor’s town hall you can tell your conspiracy minded friends in Berkeley that the reason they haven’t yet contracted COVID-19 isn’t because of Ivermectin and/or whatever other questionable stuff they put in their mouths, it is because 93% of us (those of us eligible for vaccination) in Berkeley did fulfill our civic duty, accepted responsibility to protect our own health and theirs and got vaccinated.
I started Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America by Sarah Kendzoir as an audiobook, but there is so much research and information going back to money laundered Russian cash purchases of Trump Tower condos in the 1980s that this is better as a book in hand or ebook. It is mind boggling just to track all the corruption and interconnections. The book hits hard on Mueller and the Mueller report disappointing as it was, but still worth reading. The tell all books and even revelations from the judiciary committee are a soft touch compared to the scathing indictment from Kendzoir.
I start out each week committed to writing up meetings as they occur only to end the weekend scrambling to finish the diary before the next week starts.
Elmar from Public Works related at the Telegraph/Channing Restroom Community meeting on Monday the challenge of finding a flat location for the Portland Loo and settled on two possible sites. The Portland Loo is a stand-alone pre-fabricated public restroom with a flushable toilet and an external hand-washing station https://portlandloo.com/
One of the two sites is at Haste and Telegraph in the street in front of the mural “A Peoples History of Telegraph Avenue” on the Amoeba Music building. With the Loo’s substantial height of 8 ½ feet and length 10 ½ feet it would obstruct the view of this classic mural designed by Osha Neumann, painted with O’Brien Thiele, Janet Kranzberg, David Galvez and many others in 1976. The mural was enlarged in 1999 and most recently restored in 2020. https://berkeleyplaques.org/plaque/telegraph-avenue/
The other location on Channing just west of Telegraph was met with resistance by Framer’s Workshop. The Framer’s Workshop owners envision that the plumbed public restroom would be a magnet for flies that would find their way down to the Framer’s Workshop entrance like flies from the porta potty that was once near their business. This location also has a mural, but the considerably smaller mural is on a two-story wall and does not possess the historical recognition given to “A Peoples History of Telegraph Avenue.”
If there is absolutely no other location, my vote is for the Channing site and saving the History of Telegraph Avenue Mural. Osha Neumann is probably more widely known by council and city employees for defending the homeless than for his mural art. I hope that doesn’t influence a city decision. I emailed ugonzalez@cityofberkeley.info If you wish to voice your opinion on the location of the Portland Loo then email ugonzalez@cityofberkeley.info by 6 pm Monday October 11. I will also will try emailing the Director of Public Works, Liam Garland.
Monday evening was the first Peace and Justice Commission meeting since the beginning of the pandemic. The council referral, the Rights of Nature a new concept to most people was the last agenda item at a meeting that was already hitting the wall, an inopportune time to take up a complicated concept that few understood. https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/what-are-rights-of-nature/
Commissioner Rita Maran, appointed by Linda Maio in 2016, was completely opposed to any rights given to nature convinced that nature would reverse the hard fought human rights. The explanation given by George Lipmann did not touch on how the Rights of Nature has been the legal path to stop the polluting of rivers, clean up the mess and assign damages. These are very things that cause death and devastating illness not just to animals and ecosystems, but also people, most often BIPOC.
In 2008, Ecuador was the first nation to give rights to nature when it ratified Articles 71-74 of the Ecuadorian Constitution granting the environment the inalienable right to exist, persist and be respected. It was a battle before and ever since. Some may recall the 2013 decision against Chevron with a fine of $9.5 billion, which Chevron has refused to pay.
Here in Berkeley, the Rights of Nature has been a bumpy road as I noted in the April 3, 2021 Activist’s Diary. Mayor Arreguin boxed himself into a corner when he declared his opposition to the rights of nature at the agenda committee and needed a way out. The path became the Peace and Justice Commission referral where it will be tied up for months until the commission is merged and it dies. A fuller story is here: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-04-03/article/49114?headline=A-Berkeley-Activist-s-Diary--Kelly-Hammargren
This leads into my personal transformation and broader view. It was the 2018 IPCC interim report on holding temperature rise to 1.5°C and the February 2019 Guardian article “Plummeting insect numbers threaten the collapse of nature” that shook me out of any remaining complacency. Earlier this year hungry for something different to read, I picked up the Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy at Pegasus. I followed that with his earlier book Bringing Nature Home. It was Douglas Tallamy that carried me out of, “what is the big deal about native plants” to “this is so easy” we can restore nature and ecosystems one yard, one garden at a time. All we need is to replace our imported exotic plants with native plants. And, if we don’t have yards and gardens we can make room for pots of native plants.
Douglas Tallamy was interviewed on KPFA Friday, October 8th at 1 pm (Interview starts at 5 minutes and speed is adjustable – I do 1.25) https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=365520. Tallamy is so positive. He is speaking in-person in San Rafael on October 27th at 7 pm https://dominican.extendedsession.com/douglas-tallamy/. If you miss all those, my favorite video is Douglas Tallamy in Lancaster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJbP0yA0gc
This brings us to FITES, Thursday’s Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee and Councilmember Taplin’s Native and Drought Resistance Plants and Landscaping Ordinance referral. It definitely felt like a set-up when Councilmember Robinson invited city arborist Dan Gallagher and Parks Director Scott Ferris to speak and then followed the invitation with a chat that they could meet offline. Taplin was absent. Robinson has expressed little interest in trees in prior meetings except as a nuisance (trees get in the way of biking) and the city arborists don’t believe in native plants and trees as illustrated by non-native trees being planted throughout the city including at the restored North Berkeley Senior Center.
Tuesday evening was the special council meeting to vote on the waiver of the Sanctuary City Ordinance for the $6.5 million lease with Motorola. Council justified not getting competitive bids by making reference to a problem Oakland had with another equipment provider some 7 years ago. Setting aside the issues with Motorola Solutions contracting with ICE, it still seems $6.5 million is an awfully large contract to skip the step of a competitive bid. The other agenda item Interim Regulations proposed by the Police Accountability Board (PAB) were passed with amendments and deferring how testimony is taken until the required legal process is completed. Taplin’s substitute motion to require witnesses to have permission to make a complaint was rejected. The PAB meets Wednesday, October 13 at 7 pm with Interim Regulations on the agenda.
The Land Use Policy committee met Thursday on Taplin’s Affordable Housing Overlay. It was quite surprising how little Taplin had to say about the measure he submitted. Councilmember Hahn in her usual manner carried on and on and modified some of the language, but essentially it passed out of committee with little change and the motion was ready when they realized they had completely ignored public comment, of course, public comment had no influence on what was already in the works.
You didn’t miss anything by skipping the council’s Public Safety Committee. Both agenda items including the Automated License Plate Readers budget referral from Councilmember Taplin with co-sponsors Wengraf and Droste were continued to a future meeting without action.
If you watched the Mayor’s town hall you can tell your conspiracy minded friends in Berkeley that the reason they haven’t yet contracted COVID-19 isn’t because of Ivermectin and/or whatever other questionable stuff they put in their mouths, it is because 93% of us (those of us eligible for vaccination) in Berkeley did fulfill our civic duty, accepted responsibility to protect our own health and theirs and got vaccinated.
I started Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America by Sarah Kendzoir as an audiobook, but there is so much research and information going back to money laundered Russian cash purchases of Trump Tower condos in the 1980s that this is better as a book in hand or ebook. It is mind boggling just to track all the corruption and interconnections. The book hits hard on Mueller and the Mueller report disappointing as it was, but still worth reading. The tell all books and even revelations from the judiciary committee are a soft touch compared to the scathing indictment from Kendzoir.
October 2, 2021
Last Monday feels like a month ago. When it comes to water and the drought last Monday was a year ago as the California water year runs from October 1 through September 30. We are starting out from a grim spot and unless this new “water year” happens to be the occasional wet year in a future that with climate change is expected to be perpetual drought. We are in a heap of trouble. In my neighborhood walks, I see way too many wilting, dying and dead trees. Nearly all of California is in the two worst drought categories, exceptional and extreme drought. This has not stopped, the legislature, the governor, ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) of which Mayor Arreguin is the president from planning for adding 441,000 housing units to the bay area and changing zoning law for increasing density across the State with the passage and signing of SB 9 and SB 10.
As for COVID-19, I’ve been keeping a table with the number of days it took to add another million documented new cases of infection and the crossing of each 100,000 deaths. The table is at the end of this Diary. My preferred update on the state of the pandemic is Michael Osterholm’s weekly podcast which he usually starts with saying he is scraping the mud off his crystal ball. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars
Monday started with the Council Public Safety Committee. Councilmember Wengraf’s recommendation that the Safety Committee work on Councilmember Taplin’s Ghost Gun ordinance turned into an unnecessary detour as it was sent back to council to be referred to the City Attorney.
Tuesday the Council Land Use Committee met for the sole purpose of extending the date of Taplin’s Affordable Housing Overlay proposal. The affordable housing overlay proposal will be taken up again this coming week on Thursday morning. As council has been so concerned about combining commissions to save staff time, a look at their own practices could use some scrutiny.
The Tuesday evening council meeting took an unexpected turn on two items with a flood of public commenters giving objections to item 23 and item 18. Item 18, the $6,500,000 7-year lease agreement with Motorola grew objections over encryption that will limit information picked up by police dispatch scanners and that Motorola is a major contractor with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Item 18 did pass on consent with modifications limiting when the encrypted channel could be used. Harrison and Bartlett voted No and Hahn abstained. Because Berkeley is a Sanctuary City prohibiting cooperation with ICE, at the special council meeting Tuesday evening, council will vote on a waiver to the Sanctuary City Ordinance to enter a contract with Motorola.
Item 23 was Taplin’s proposal to limit commercial trucks over 3 tons on West Berkeley at-risk residential streets and bikeways. Despite City insistence that the amendment to Berkeley Municipal Code 14.56.070 was only affecting commercial vehicles. Public speakers stating objections reported those living in RVs in the area were already receiving warnings to leave.
There is a problem with commercial trucks detouring through neighborhoods and delivery trucks clogging the streets, but the other side of this is the RV dwellers who are trying to stop their fall through the bottom of the housing crisis. According to the census nearly 20% of the people in Berkeley live in poverty. That is around 24,000 people living in poverty. Even the $15 hourly wage is only $31,200 for a fulltime worker. That isn’t much to survive in a city that sports houses with a median price of over $1,000,000. And, units affordable to those at the bottom of the income ladder have all but disappeared. There is no romance to living each day wondering if today’s RV shelter will still exist tomorrow.
Wednesday evening at the Police Accountability Board the agenda item Training: Police Department patrol responsibilities; Field Training Officer program by Frank Landru took up a big chunk of the meeting. You can watch Landru describe the patrol officer’s job followed with the description of the 18-week training program for new employees. Fast forward to 1:16:15 in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWKUXFC1a18. The presentation ends at 2:15:09 with questions. All new hires are required to complete the 18-week training regardless of years of experience. Landru reported a 75% - 80% successful training completion rate.
The video for the Thursday evening Reimagining Public Safety Task Force isn’t posted yet on the website https://www.cityofberkeley.info/RIPST.aspx so I can’t check if I actually heard correctly that NICJR (National Institute for Criminal Justice) was recommending a new police academy as the solution for reimagining public safety. A proposal for a Berkeley police academy was rejected by the council Public Safety Committee months ago as financially infeasible. The meeting sunk into the all too common problems and deficiencies of NICJR cited by the task force members. The task force is not given reports and information in advance and expected to make decisions with a 5- minute presentation, zero attention has been paid to looking at Berkeley Municipal code and what should be decriminalized or eliminated, it is never clear who is in charge and who in the city will take over and why are they not in attendance, why is the focus on calls and there was more. There weren’t answers. And, when it comes to reimagining, there doesn’t appear to be any reimagining in any corner of the police department. Let it settle in that the City Council authorized $300,000 for this.
The week ended with the Independent Redistricting Commission Saturday afternoon. The entire public meeting was devoted to how to submit maps for the new city council districts. Each district must have a population of around 15,554 with a variation of no more than 1556 or 10%. The deadline for submission is November 15, 2021 at midnight. You can access the meeting video, maps and links through the commission website. Printed maps can also be picked up at the City Clerk’s office.
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CABERKE/bulletins/2f41053
Californians successfully crushed Larry Elder‘s bid to replace Governor Newsom in the recall election, but how many of us knew that Steven Miller the white nationalist in the Trump administration was as a Santa Monica high schooler a frequent caller into the Larry Elder show. I certainly didn’t. Larry Elder is described as a mentor to Miller in the book Hate Monger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda by Jean Guerrero. Miller was according to the book also coached by David Horowitz. The book paints an ugly picture of the work of Stephen Miller which should be no surprise. Miller, Trump’s speech writer, was behind the Muslim ban and child separation at the border.
I can’t seem to get enough of reading about American decay, corruption and the racism that brought us to Trump. The other book I finished was Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff. It reads more like gossip. Wolff takes us through the last year, the election, January 6th and Trump leaving the White House and settling in to Mar-a-Lago as his home. I don’t think I will ever understand how someone as delusional and volatile as Trump is to so many a charismatic leader.
In the September 25 Activist Diary, I recommended the book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. The author Eyal Press was interviewed by Chris Hayes in his weekly podcast Why is this happening. It is worth a listen. https://www.stitcher.com/show/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/episode/dirty-work-with-eyal-press-200233267
Last Monday feels like a month ago. When it comes to water and the drought last Monday was a year ago as the California water year runs from October 1 through September 30. We are starting out from a grim spot and unless this new “water year” happens to be the occasional wet year in a future that with climate change is expected to be perpetual drought. We are in a heap of trouble. In my neighborhood walks, I see way too many wilting, dying and dead trees. Nearly all of California is in the two worst drought categories, exceptional and extreme drought. This has not stopped, the legislature, the governor, ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) of which Mayor Arreguin is the president from planning for adding 441,000 housing units to the bay area and changing zoning law for increasing density across the State with the passage and signing of SB 9 and SB 10.
As for COVID-19, I’ve been keeping a table with the number of days it took to add another million documented new cases of infection and the crossing of each 100,000 deaths. The table is at the end of this Diary. My preferred update on the state of the pandemic is Michael Osterholm’s weekly podcast which he usually starts with saying he is scraping the mud off his crystal ball. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars
Monday started with the Council Public Safety Committee. Councilmember Wengraf’s recommendation that the Safety Committee work on Councilmember Taplin’s Ghost Gun ordinance turned into an unnecessary detour as it was sent back to council to be referred to the City Attorney.
Tuesday the Council Land Use Committee met for the sole purpose of extending the date of Taplin’s Affordable Housing Overlay proposal. The affordable housing overlay proposal will be taken up again this coming week on Thursday morning. As council has been so concerned about combining commissions to save staff time, a look at their own practices could use some scrutiny.
The Tuesday evening council meeting took an unexpected turn on two items with a flood of public commenters giving objections to item 23 and item 18. Item 18, the $6,500,000 7-year lease agreement with Motorola grew objections over encryption that will limit information picked up by police dispatch scanners and that Motorola is a major contractor with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Item 18 did pass on consent with modifications limiting when the encrypted channel could be used. Harrison and Bartlett voted No and Hahn abstained. Because Berkeley is a Sanctuary City prohibiting cooperation with ICE, at the special council meeting Tuesday evening, council will vote on a waiver to the Sanctuary City Ordinance to enter a contract with Motorola.
Item 23 was Taplin’s proposal to limit commercial trucks over 3 tons on West Berkeley at-risk residential streets and bikeways. Despite City insistence that the amendment to Berkeley Municipal Code 14.56.070 was only affecting commercial vehicles. Public speakers stating objections reported those living in RVs in the area were already receiving warnings to leave.
There is a problem with commercial trucks detouring through neighborhoods and delivery trucks clogging the streets, but the other side of this is the RV dwellers who are trying to stop their fall through the bottom of the housing crisis. According to the census nearly 20% of the people in Berkeley live in poverty. That is around 24,000 people living in poverty. Even the $15 hourly wage is only $31,200 for a fulltime worker. That isn’t much to survive in a city that sports houses with a median price of over $1,000,000. And, units affordable to those at the bottom of the income ladder have all but disappeared. There is no romance to living each day wondering if today’s RV shelter will still exist tomorrow.
Wednesday evening at the Police Accountability Board the agenda item Training: Police Department patrol responsibilities; Field Training Officer program by Frank Landru took up a big chunk of the meeting. You can watch Landru describe the patrol officer’s job followed with the description of the 18-week training program for new employees. Fast forward to 1:16:15 in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWKUXFC1a18. The presentation ends at 2:15:09 with questions. All new hires are required to complete the 18-week training regardless of years of experience. Landru reported a 75% - 80% successful training completion rate.
The video for the Thursday evening Reimagining Public Safety Task Force isn’t posted yet on the website https://www.cityofberkeley.info/RIPST.aspx so I can’t check if I actually heard correctly that NICJR (National Institute for Criminal Justice) was recommending a new police academy as the solution for reimagining public safety. A proposal for a Berkeley police academy was rejected by the council Public Safety Committee months ago as financially infeasible. The meeting sunk into the all too common problems and deficiencies of NICJR cited by the task force members. The task force is not given reports and information in advance and expected to make decisions with a 5- minute presentation, zero attention has been paid to looking at Berkeley Municipal code and what should be decriminalized or eliminated, it is never clear who is in charge and who in the city will take over and why are they not in attendance, why is the focus on calls and there was more. There weren’t answers. And, when it comes to reimagining, there doesn’t appear to be any reimagining in any corner of the police department. Let it settle in that the City Council authorized $300,000 for this.
The week ended with the Independent Redistricting Commission Saturday afternoon. The entire public meeting was devoted to how to submit maps for the new city council districts. Each district must have a population of around 15,554 with a variation of no more than 1556 or 10%. The deadline for submission is November 15, 2021 at midnight. You can access the meeting video, maps and links through the commission website. Printed maps can also be picked up at the City Clerk’s office.
https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CABERKE/bulletins/2f41053
Californians successfully crushed Larry Elder‘s bid to replace Governor Newsom in the recall election, but how many of us knew that Steven Miller the white nationalist in the Trump administration was as a Santa Monica high schooler a frequent caller into the Larry Elder show. I certainly didn’t. Larry Elder is described as a mentor to Miller in the book Hate Monger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda by Jean Guerrero. Miller was according to the book also coached by David Horowitz. The book paints an ugly picture of the work of Stephen Miller which should be no surprise. Miller, Trump’s speech writer, was behind the Muslim ban and child separation at the border.
I can’t seem to get enough of reading about American decay, corruption and the racism that brought us to Trump. The other book I finished was Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff. It reads more like gossip. Wolff takes us through the last year, the election, January 6th and Trump leaving the White House and settling in to Mar-a-Lago as his home. I don’t think I will ever understand how someone as delusional and volatile as Trump is to so many a charismatic leader.
In the September 25 Activist Diary, I recommended the book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. The author Eyal Press was interviewed by Chris Hayes in his weekly podcast Why is this happening. It is worth a listen. https://www.stitcher.com/show/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/episode/dirty-work-with-eyal-press-200233267
September 25, 2021
The success of the week was at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meeting. There are two of us who have been attending regularly educating ZAB on habitat, native plants, bird safe glass, down lighting, bird migration, ecosystems, keystone plants, heat island effect, permeable paving and more. We haven’t made a dent with the Berkeley Planning Department staff, but ZAB is responding and Thursday evening we had a big success with 2015 Blake. The up lighting was caught and changed to downlighting, the balance of exotic non-native plants was reversed with a threshold of 80% native plants and the project will come back to DRC (Design Review Committee) on EV charging stations (ZAB request) and the bird safe glass.
There are three things that contributed to this success, 1) persisting in educating ZAB at meeting after meeting for months, 2) a willingness of ZAB members to listen and 3) cooperation from the developer. On the last piece, Mark Rhoades is on this project and he should know better than to bring a project with up lighting and non-native plants.
It is not enough to speak up once or twice or write an occasional letter. Making change requires persistent follow through. Success can never be taken for granted and sustaining forward motion requires paying attention.
It is hard to know what is in the heads of the Planning Department staff, but one thing for certain is that no matter how many meetings we attend, no matter what we present, they are unmoved to act in any different way than they always have. From all appearances it is a narrow world without vision.
The mayor and council are a harder nut to crack. Without Kate Harrison we would not have a natural gas ban in new buildings. And, Terry Taplin is picking up the mantle on native plants. That gives hope, but it leaves the mayor and six councilmembers who have been more about rhetoric and appearances than actual action.
For all the hand wringing on fire risk and fire prevention in the hills, the City of Berkeley has yet to enforce parking restrictions in the fire zones to ensure there is a clear path for fire trucks and crews to reach the fires when they come and for residents to evacuate. This was the subject of the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on Wednesday evening. The parking enforcers need to make it up to the hills to start passing out parking tickets and those tickets need to appear year-round not just on high fire days. The item received unanimous approval, but will the City act?
The other item that was continued to the next meeting for the purpose of finalizing the wording was about limiting the addition of new housing in high fire zones. With the passage of SB 9 and SB 10 and finding places for 8934 new dwelling units, it is unclear if these would open high risk fire areas to more construction. It would seem foolish to put more people in the areas of the 1991 Oakland Berkeley Firestorm where 25 people died or the area of the Berkeley 1923 fire, but that is exactly what has transpired over the years. The firestorms of the present decade burn hotter and faster than anything seen in the past. Under the current conditions an uncontrolled fire in the hills, the urban wildland interface can quickly grow to engulf large areas of Berkeley, even all of it according to our former Fire Chief Brannigan.
On the natural gas ban, I had an interesting conversation with a friend about replacing her stove. She did not know that she was burning methane in her kitchen. She isn’t the only one. Too many people know methane is bad, but have been lulled into thinking the “natural gas” fed to their stove and the other big appliances like the water heater and furnace is something different, “natural” and not toxic to their household, the environment and the climate. Will we ever move past the propaganda from the fossil fuel industry and successful marketing?
Tuesday evening was the presentation to council on the Housing Element AKA how the consultants will go about creating a plan for adding 8934 new units of housing in Berkeley between 2023 and 2031 with 2446 very low income units, 1408 low income units, 1416 moderate income units and 3664 market rate units. Berkeley has a history of overbuilding market rate (better known for price gouging students and residents) and underbuilding affordable housing.
If you are unfamiliar with how eligibility for affordable housing is determined this should help: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BHA/Home/Payment_Standards,_Income_Limits,_and_Utility_Allowance.aspx
The number of units is based on an expected growth of 45% and assigned by ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments). Mayor Arreguin is the ABAG President and chair of the committee that developed the assignment of units. It was surprising to see in the list of participants in the creation and assignment of unit allocations members of the aggressive pro-development groups. With Arreguin as the chair and president of ABAG, one has to wonder who invited the lobbyists. As expected while other cities are submitting objections, Berkeley is not.
In the Housing Element presentation there was not one even one tiny drop of attention to the impact on the environment, local climate, heat island effect, habitat or ecosystems. There was no attention as to any consideration of how the plan for additional housing could be planned to coexist with nature. It appears that it will be up to the public and it will take more than the question poised to council by an attendee and left unanswered, “where will the water come from?”
After a summer break the Community for a Cultural Civic Center met Monday. There was a short review of the Tipping Structural Engineering assessment which provides seismically resilient structures at a substantially lower cost than the Gehl proposals. Gehl was the consulting group hired by the City for $375,000 to create a Civic Center plan that included the restoration of the Maudelle Shirik and Veterans Building. At the October meeting the group will formulate a recommendation for Council. The Council worksession for the Civic Center is listed as unscheduled with a likely date in early 2022.
The Thursday morning Budget and Finance Committee meeting covered one subject, allocating the marina Double Tree hotel tax to the Marina Fund. The Parks and Waterfront Chair Gordon Wozniak gave a thoughtful presentation followed by an amazing slide show by Erin Diehm on biodiversity. Did you know there are aps to identify and record observed species of birds, insects, plants and more with iNaturalist and eBird? I didn’t. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Clerk/Marina%20TOT%20presentation%202.pdf
In the end, the City Manager wants the transfer tax/hotel tax from the Double Tree to stay in the general fund and not to be allocated to the marina. She formulated the motion. The final: qualified negative (to allocating the transfer tax to the Marina fund) and a referral back to the Budget and Finance Committee to discuss and develop alternative revenue measures/streams for the marina including a reserve and to look at other approaches.
In closing, there are some books that should just be required reading. At book club on Wednesday that was the agreement on The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder who may be better known outside of academic circles for On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. I have another required reading recommendation, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press, 2021. Dirty Work challenges the reader to think about the jobs that we as a society want done and our attitudes toward the workers who do them. For example, when putting our fork into a piece of meat or dishing out the food for one of our meat loving pets, we do our best not to think about the killing and butchering of animals in meatpacking plants and the toll on the workers who do the killing and butchering.
Last weekend when it was finally confirmed after lots of rumbling that those killed in the U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan were all civilians and seven were children, I was reading the section in Dirty Work on drone operators. When the use of drones as warfare first became public, I remember hearing speculation that to the drone operators the actual task was merely like playing video games. Drone operators in Dirty Work paint a different picture of being haunted by the strikes. One description was a strike that killed the suspected adult terrorist and spared a child only to see on the screen the little child trying to put the pieces of the parent back together as if that would make them whole and come alive.
The book goes further in the triple pain to the workers, the trauma of the job itself, being trapped by poverty or residency status into the job and the scorn from the public.
At times, if we are to grow, we need to leave our comfort zones and challenge our thinking.
The success of the week was at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) meeting. There are two of us who have been attending regularly educating ZAB on habitat, native plants, bird safe glass, down lighting, bird migration, ecosystems, keystone plants, heat island effect, permeable paving and more. We haven’t made a dent with the Berkeley Planning Department staff, but ZAB is responding and Thursday evening we had a big success with 2015 Blake. The up lighting was caught and changed to downlighting, the balance of exotic non-native plants was reversed with a threshold of 80% native plants and the project will come back to DRC (Design Review Committee) on EV charging stations (ZAB request) and the bird safe glass.
There are three things that contributed to this success, 1) persisting in educating ZAB at meeting after meeting for months, 2) a willingness of ZAB members to listen and 3) cooperation from the developer. On the last piece, Mark Rhoades is on this project and he should know better than to bring a project with up lighting and non-native plants.
It is not enough to speak up once or twice or write an occasional letter. Making change requires persistent follow through. Success can never be taken for granted and sustaining forward motion requires paying attention.
It is hard to know what is in the heads of the Planning Department staff, but one thing for certain is that no matter how many meetings we attend, no matter what we present, they are unmoved to act in any different way than they always have. From all appearances it is a narrow world without vision.
The mayor and council are a harder nut to crack. Without Kate Harrison we would not have a natural gas ban in new buildings. And, Terry Taplin is picking up the mantle on native plants. That gives hope, but it leaves the mayor and six councilmembers who have been more about rhetoric and appearances than actual action.
For all the hand wringing on fire risk and fire prevention in the hills, the City of Berkeley has yet to enforce parking restrictions in the fire zones to ensure there is a clear path for fire trucks and crews to reach the fires when they come and for residents to evacuate. This was the subject of the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on Wednesday evening. The parking enforcers need to make it up to the hills to start passing out parking tickets and those tickets need to appear year-round not just on high fire days. The item received unanimous approval, but will the City act?
The other item that was continued to the next meeting for the purpose of finalizing the wording was about limiting the addition of new housing in high fire zones. With the passage of SB 9 and SB 10 and finding places for 8934 new dwelling units, it is unclear if these would open high risk fire areas to more construction. It would seem foolish to put more people in the areas of the 1991 Oakland Berkeley Firestorm where 25 people died or the area of the Berkeley 1923 fire, but that is exactly what has transpired over the years. The firestorms of the present decade burn hotter and faster than anything seen in the past. Under the current conditions an uncontrolled fire in the hills, the urban wildland interface can quickly grow to engulf large areas of Berkeley, even all of it according to our former Fire Chief Brannigan.
On the natural gas ban, I had an interesting conversation with a friend about replacing her stove. She did not know that she was burning methane in her kitchen. She isn’t the only one. Too many people know methane is bad, but have been lulled into thinking the “natural gas” fed to their stove and the other big appliances like the water heater and furnace is something different, “natural” and not toxic to their household, the environment and the climate. Will we ever move past the propaganda from the fossil fuel industry and successful marketing?
Tuesday evening was the presentation to council on the Housing Element AKA how the consultants will go about creating a plan for adding 8934 new units of housing in Berkeley between 2023 and 2031 with 2446 very low income units, 1408 low income units, 1416 moderate income units and 3664 market rate units. Berkeley has a history of overbuilding market rate (better known for price gouging students and residents) and underbuilding affordable housing.
If you are unfamiliar with how eligibility for affordable housing is determined this should help: https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BHA/Home/Payment_Standards,_Income_Limits,_and_Utility_Allowance.aspx
The number of units is based on an expected growth of 45% and assigned by ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments). Mayor Arreguin is the ABAG President and chair of the committee that developed the assignment of units. It was surprising to see in the list of participants in the creation and assignment of unit allocations members of the aggressive pro-development groups. With Arreguin as the chair and president of ABAG, one has to wonder who invited the lobbyists. As expected while other cities are submitting objections, Berkeley is not.
In the Housing Element presentation there was not one even one tiny drop of attention to the impact on the environment, local climate, heat island effect, habitat or ecosystems. There was no attention as to any consideration of how the plan for additional housing could be planned to coexist with nature. It appears that it will be up to the public and it will take more than the question poised to council by an attendee and left unanswered, “where will the water come from?”
After a summer break the Community for a Cultural Civic Center met Monday. There was a short review of the Tipping Structural Engineering assessment which provides seismically resilient structures at a substantially lower cost than the Gehl proposals. Gehl was the consulting group hired by the City for $375,000 to create a Civic Center plan that included the restoration of the Maudelle Shirik and Veterans Building. At the October meeting the group will formulate a recommendation for Council. The Council worksession for the Civic Center is listed as unscheduled with a likely date in early 2022.
The Thursday morning Budget and Finance Committee meeting covered one subject, allocating the marina Double Tree hotel tax to the Marina Fund. The Parks and Waterfront Chair Gordon Wozniak gave a thoughtful presentation followed by an amazing slide show by Erin Diehm on biodiversity. Did you know there are aps to identify and record observed species of birds, insects, plants and more with iNaturalist and eBird? I didn’t. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Clerk/Marina%20TOT%20presentation%202.pdf
In the end, the City Manager wants the transfer tax/hotel tax from the Double Tree to stay in the general fund and not to be allocated to the marina. She formulated the motion. The final: qualified negative (to allocating the transfer tax to the Marina fund) and a referral back to the Budget and Finance Committee to discuss and develop alternative revenue measures/streams for the marina including a reserve and to look at other approaches.
In closing, there are some books that should just be required reading. At book club on Wednesday that was the agreement on The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder who may be better known outside of academic circles for On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. I have another required reading recommendation, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America by Eyal Press, 2021. Dirty Work challenges the reader to think about the jobs that we as a society want done and our attitudes toward the workers who do them. For example, when putting our fork into a piece of meat or dishing out the food for one of our meat loving pets, we do our best not to think about the killing and butchering of animals in meatpacking plants and the toll on the workers who do the killing and butchering.
Last weekend when it was finally confirmed after lots of rumbling that those killed in the U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan were all civilians and seven were children, I was reading the section in Dirty Work on drone operators. When the use of drones as warfare first became public, I remember hearing speculation that to the drone operators the actual task was merely like playing video games. Drone operators in Dirty Work paint a different picture of being haunted by the strikes. One description was a strike that killed the suspected adult terrorist and spared a child only to see on the screen the little child trying to put the pieces of the parent back together as if that would make them whole and come alive.
The book goes further in the triple pain to the workers, the trauma of the job itself, being trapped by poverty or residency status into the job and the scorn from the public.
At times, if we are to grow, we need to leave our comfort zones and challenge our thinking.
September 18, 2021 - Notes from the editor
Now that the recall is over and a sigh of relief in the outcome is in order, we can put our focus on the other ballot, KPFA. KPFA is having a station board election and the deadline will arrive on October 15, 2021. To vote in this election you must have donated to KPFA between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. If you donated and cannot find your electronic ballot the website https://www.kpfaprotectors.org/ (the candidates I am supporting) has the information and links.
The Agenda committee on Monday was as usual poorly attended with the Mayor and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn sifting through the draft for the September 28th regular council meeting. Taplin’s proposed ordinance requiring plant materials to be native to Berkeley and Northern California and drought tolerant was referred to the FITES Committee (facilities, infrastructure, transportation, environment and sustainability).
I never really thought much about native plants (except what was the big deal) until a neighbor and I started a swimming routine and walked to and from our homes in the McGee Spaulding neighborhood to the Downtown Y. She would talk about pollinators and habitat and point out how the yards on the way were filled with flowers and devoid of bees and butterflies. I learned about host plants (i.e. monarch caterpillars only feed on milkweed), that with native plants little bites out of leaves was a good thing, that oaks are a keystone plant supporting 300 or more species and that Ginkos supported nothing, a dead zone for habitat. There was one house with a large California native pipevine. We would stop on the way home and watch the pipevine caterpillars chewing away on the plant. The pipevine never needed trimming to control its expansive growth as the lively caterpillars would keep it in check. That was until the owner decided on a new fence and had the pipevine cut down to a stump. The black and orange pipevine caterpillars and the iridescent blue and black butterflies are gone. All we have left is pictures. https://www.nps.gov/articles/california-pipevine-swallowtail.htm
My journey in appreciating native plants continued with picking up the writings of Douglas Tallamy and Edward O. Wilson. Most of all I’ve grown to understand just why these points by Edward O. Wilson are so critical to our future, “Insects are the little things that run the world.” “If insects were to vanish so would nearly all the flowering plants and the food webs they support. This loss in turn, would cause the extinction of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals: in effect, nearly all terrestrial animal life.”
Many of us have been taught that bugs are bad, to be afraid and hate the little crawly things and that we must buy the pesticides on the garden store shelves to kill them. We’re taught native plants are weeds and to fill our yards with exotic plants from places other than here. Exotic non-native plants that create a food desert to native pollinators. An analogy to non-native plants to pollinators is like serving a child kerosene instead of food. Even the subject of the book I summarize at the end of this Diary is about our species damaging local ecology and the destruction it wrought.
One plant, one yard doesn’t seem like much, but when we multiply that over and over across our neighborhoods, our cities, our state, our nation, our planet it is a cascade of destruction. We can look to this as contributing to the loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the last 50 years, the disappearance of insects, the decline of the Monarchs and so many other species.
It doesn’t have to be this way. My neighbor, friend and swim partner has filled her yard with native plants. It is delightful as birds, butterflies, skippers, caterpillars and a wide variety of native bees discovered it. This is what Tallamy teaches us.
It was one of Tallamy’s graduate students that pulled together a study of nesting chickadees and tallied how many caterpillars were needed to feed the babies until they fledged the nest. The tally was 6000 to 9000 caterpillars. Think about that when about 96% of all baby birds need caterpillars as their diet. If I was to guess from looking at this neighborhood probably 90% of it supports not even one caterpillar. Crows will eat just about anything which gives good reason why that population keeps expanding and song birds are in small numbers. The feeders with seeds in our yards will attract adult birds, but most baby birds can’t digest seeds.
You may wonder why I write week after week on the environment, habitat, ecosystems and climate. I am trying to bring you along, to pique your interest in creating an environment that supports our local ecosystems. I know it is a big stretch. And, this grounding brings us to the rest of the city meetings.
At the Tuesday council meeting the Objective Standards and the Baseline Zoning Ordinance were rolled over to the September 28th. If you have rooftop solar and live in an area that may be the site of mixed use apartment buildings which is pretty much everywhere with the signing of SB 9 and SB 10, then you should care about Objective Standards. In the standards up for a vote, a new tall apartment building next door can shadow up to 50% of your solar without any accommodation or design modification. In a city that claims to be concerned about resilience and climate this should be pretty appalling. It is item 33 in the agenda for the 28th. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/09_Sep/City_Council__09-28-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
You have another opportunity to dig into the Baseline Zoning Ordinance. The thickness of the document 532 pages is overwhelming. A suggestion is to use this link to the “readable” version (476 pages) review the table of contents and then go to the pages that affect your neighborhood and the things you care about.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Land_Use_Division/Att%201%20Exhibit%20A%20-%20Baseline%20Zoning%20Ordinance.pdf,
Not one of these documents gives any attention to the environment, habitat or ecosystems. The bills passed by our legislature completely ignore the environment other than density as the beginning and end to solve GHG emissions. There is absolutely no consideration to creating corridors to connect to larger open spaces like parks where ecosystems can thrive. There is not one thought to preserving trees and a total absence to understanding heat island effect when trees are removed and land is covered with buildings and hardscape. That alone can increase local temperature by 10° to 20°. Buildings, sidewalks and patios add to water runoff if and when rain arrives exacerbating the impact of drought rather than recharging the underlying land.
At the Transportation Commission on Thursday evening, Farid Javandel spoke about trees as though they are an inconvenience to be cutdown without a second thought.
The Human Welfare & Community Action Commission was canceled due to a lack of quorum and the Council Land Use Policy Committee meeting was cancelled without a listed reason although SB 9 and SB 10 might be somewhere in the background. I was planning to comment on the only listed item, Councilmember Taplin’s affordable housing overlay. In Taplin’s proposal, he does not define the percentage of housing affordable to each income level and especially moderate income (80% - 120% of AMI - area median income), the number of years the housing must be affordable 55 years, longer or in perpetuity, and there is nothing on green building, permeable paving, space/corridors between hardscape to support urban biodiversity/ecosystems. If this comes back again, I’ll need to update the chart posted in the Planet on March 14, 2020 adding the impact of SB 9 and SB 10 and including any modifications from Taplin. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-03-14/article/49067?headline=Affordable-Housing-Overlays-Cambridge-vs.-Berkeley--Kelly-Hammargren
This week’s book was Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, 2021. Fiction is not my usual fair although many of the political books released this year make me wish they were fiction. Four Winds has been on the lucky day shelf of ebooks at the Berkeley library and came highly recommended by my sister. The novel is about the dust bowl, the migration to California, the wretched conditions of the migrant camps, the search for work and ends with union organizing by members of the American Communist Party. A close friend of my husband, Sylvia Thompson, who passed away in 2012 was a member of the American Communist Party and was a union organizer in North Carolina in the early 1940s. She had stories about the dangers of organizing and being chased out of towns.
In the author’s note, Hannah makes reference to the 2008 recession. I think more about the climate and environmental disasters that have and will continue into the future forcing migration within the U.S. Climate migrants from outside the U.S. are already at our doorstep and they were described in the same ways by the Trump administration as in the book on the dust bowl lazy, dirty, infected criminals who burden the economy.
This novel has renewed my interest to find the collection of essays by Red Diaper Babies (it is somewhere on a shelf or in a stack of books) and finish it. Berkeley has been a city with many Red Diaper Babies and that may be a significant contributor to the local progressive history.
Now that the recall is over and a sigh of relief in the outcome is in order, we can put our focus on the other ballot, KPFA. KPFA is having a station board election and the deadline will arrive on October 15, 2021. To vote in this election you must have donated to KPFA between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. If you donated and cannot find your electronic ballot the website https://www.kpfaprotectors.org/ (the candidates I am supporting) has the information and links.
The Agenda committee on Monday was as usual poorly attended with the Mayor and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn sifting through the draft for the September 28th regular council meeting. Taplin’s proposed ordinance requiring plant materials to be native to Berkeley and Northern California and drought tolerant was referred to the FITES Committee (facilities, infrastructure, transportation, environment and sustainability).
I never really thought much about native plants (except what was the big deal) until a neighbor and I started a swimming routine and walked to and from our homes in the McGee Spaulding neighborhood to the Downtown Y. She would talk about pollinators and habitat and point out how the yards on the way were filled with flowers and devoid of bees and butterflies. I learned about host plants (i.e. monarch caterpillars only feed on milkweed), that with native plants little bites out of leaves was a good thing, that oaks are a keystone plant supporting 300 or more species and that Ginkos supported nothing, a dead zone for habitat. There was one house with a large California native pipevine. We would stop on the way home and watch the pipevine caterpillars chewing away on the plant. The pipevine never needed trimming to control its expansive growth as the lively caterpillars would keep it in check. That was until the owner decided on a new fence and had the pipevine cut down to a stump. The black and orange pipevine caterpillars and the iridescent blue and black butterflies are gone. All we have left is pictures. https://www.nps.gov/articles/california-pipevine-swallowtail.htm
My journey in appreciating native plants continued with picking up the writings of Douglas Tallamy and Edward O. Wilson. Most of all I’ve grown to understand just why these points by Edward O. Wilson are so critical to our future, “Insects are the little things that run the world.” “If insects were to vanish so would nearly all the flowering plants and the food webs they support. This loss in turn, would cause the extinction of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals: in effect, nearly all terrestrial animal life.”
Many of us have been taught that bugs are bad, to be afraid and hate the little crawly things and that we must buy the pesticides on the garden store shelves to kill them. We’re taught native plants are weeds and to fill our yards with exotic plants from places other than here. Exotic non-native plants that create a food desert to native pollinators. An analogy to non-native plants to pollinators is like serving a child kerosene instead of food. Even the subject of the book I summarize at the end of this Diary is about our species damaging local ecology and the destruction it wrought.
One plant, one yard doesn’t seem like much, but when we multiply that over and over across our neighborhoods, our cities, our state, our nation, our planet it is a cascade of destruction. We can look to this as contributing to the loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the last 50 years, the disappearance of insects, the decline of the Monarchs and so many other species.
It doesn’t have to be this way. My neighbor, friend and swim partner has filled her yard with native plants. It is delightful as birds, butterflies, skippers, caterpillars and a wide variety of native bees discovered it. This is what Tallamy teaches us.
It was one of Tallamy’s graduate students that pulled together a study of nesting chickadees and tallied how many caterpillars were needed to feed the babies until they fledged the nest. The tally was 6000 to 9000 caterpillars. Think about that when about 96% of all baby birds need caterpillars as their diet. If I was to guess from looking at this neighborhood probably 90% of it supports not even one caterpillar. Crows will eat just about anything which gives good reason why that population keeps expanding and song birds are in small numbers. The feeders with seeds in our yards will attract adult birds, but most baby birds can’t digest seeds.
You may wonder why I write week after week on the environment, habitat, ecosystems and climate. I am trying to bring you along, to pique your interest in creating an environment that supports our local ecosystems. I know it is a big stretch. And, this grounding brings us to the rest of the city meetings.
At the Tuesday council meeting the Objective Standards and the Baseline Zoning Ordinance were rolled over to the September 28th. If you have rooftop solar and live in an area that may be the site of mixed use apartment buildings which is pretty much everywhere with the signing of SB 9 and SB 10, then you should care about Objective Standards. In the standards up for a vote, a new tall apartment building next door can shadow up to 50% of your solar without any accommodation or design modification. In a city that claims to be concerned about resilience and climate this should be pretty appalling. It is item 33 in the agenda for the 28th. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/09_Sep/City_Council__09-28-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
You have another opportunity to dig into the Baseline Zoning Ordinance. The thickness of the document 532 pages is overwhelming. A suggestion is to use this link to the “readable” version (476 pages) review the table of contents and then go to the pages that affect your neighborhood and the things you care about.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Land_Use_Division/Att%201%20Exhibit%20A%20-%20Baseline%20Zoning%20Ordinance.pdf,
Not one of these documents gives any attention to the environment, habitat or ecosystems. The bills passed by our legislature completely ignore the environment other than density as the beginning and end to solve GHG emissions. There is absolutely no consideration to creating corridors to connect to larger open spaces like parks where ecosystems can thrive. There is not one thought to preserving trees and a total absence to understanding heat island effect when trees are removed and land is covered with buildings and hardscape. That alone can increase local temperature by 10° to 20°. Buildings, sidewalks and patios add to water runoff if and when rain arrives exacerbating the impact of drought rather than recharging the underlying land.
At the Transportation Commission on Thursday evening, Farid Javandel spoke about trees as though they are an inconvenience to be cutdown without a second thought.
The Human Welfare & Community Action Commission was canceled due to a lack of quorum and the Council Land Use Policy Committee meeting was cancelled without a listed reason although SB 9 and SB 10 might be somewhere in the background. I was planning to comment on the only listed item, Councilmember Taplin’s affordable housing overlay. In Taplin’s proposal, he does not define the percentage of housing affordable to each income level and especially moderate income (80% - 120% of AMI - area median income), the number of years the housing must be affordable 55 years, longer or in perpetuity, and there is nothing on green building, permeable paving, space/corridors between hardscape to support urban biodiversity/ecosystems. If this comes back again, I’ll need to update the chart posted in the Planet on March 14, 2020 adding the impact of SB 9 and SB 10 and including any modifications from Taplin. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-03-14/article/49067?headline=Affordable-Housing-Overlays-Cambridge-vs.-Berkeley--Kelly-Hammargren
This week’s book was Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, 2021. Fiction is not my usual fair although many of the political books released this year make me wish they were fiction. Four Winds has been on the lucky day shelf of ebooks at the Berkeley library and came highly recommended by my sister. The novel is about the dust bowl, the migration to California, the wretched conditions of the migrant camps, the search for work and ends with union organizing by members of the American Communist Party. A close friend of my husband, Sylvia Thompson, who passed away in 2012 was a member of the American Communist Party and was a union organizer in North Carolina in the early 1940s. She had stories about the dangers of organizing and being chased out of towns.
In the author’s note, Hannah makes reference to the 2008 recession. I think more about the climate and environmental disasters that have and will continue into the future forcing migration within the U.S. Climate migrants from outside the U.S. are already at our doorstep and they were described in the same ways by the Trump administration as in the book on the dust bowl lazy, dirty, infected criminals who burden the economy.
This novel has renewed my interest to find the collection of essays by Red Diaper Babies (it is somewhere on a shelf or in a stack of books) and finish it. Berkeley has been a city with many Red Diaper Babies and that may be a significant contributor to the local progressive history.
September 19, 2021
Now that the recall is over and a sigh of relief in the outcome is in order, we can put our focus on the other ballot, KPFA. KPFA is having a station board election and the deadline will arrive on October 15, 2021. To vote in this election you must have donated to KPFA between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. If you donated and cannot find your electronic ballot the website https://www.kpfaprotectors.org/ (the candidates I am supporting) has the information and links.
The Agenda committee on Monday was as usual poorly attended with the Mayor and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn sifting through the draft for the September 28th regular council meeting. Taplin’s proposed ordinance requiring plant materials to be native to Berkeley and Northern California and drought tolerant was referred to the FITES Committee (facilities, infrastructure, transportation, environment and sustainability).
I never really thought much about native plants (except what was the big deal) until a neighbor and I started a swimming routine and walked to and from our homes in the McGee Spaulding neighborhood to the Downtown Y. She would talk about pollinators and habitat and point out how the yards on the way were filled with flowers and devoid of bees and butterflies. I learned about host plants (i.e. monarch caterpillars only feed on milkweed), that with native plants little bites out of leaves was a good thing, that oaks are a keystone plant supporting 300 or more species and that Ginkos supported nothing, a dead zone for habitat. There was one house with a large California native pipevine. We would stop on the way home and watch the pipevine caterpillars chewing away on the plant. The pipevine never needed trimming to control its expansive growth as the lively caterpillars would keep it in check. That was until the owner decided on a new fence and had the pipevine cut down to a stump. The black and orange pipevine caterpillars and the iridescent blue and black butterflies are gone. All we have left is pictures. https://www.nps.gov/articles/california-pipevine-swallowtail.htm
My journey in appreciating native plants continued with picking up the writings of Douglas Tallamy and Edward O. Wilson. Most of all I’ve grown to understand just why these points by Edward O. Wilson are so critical to our future, “Insects are the little things that run the world.” “If insects were to vanish so would nearly all the flowering plants and the food webs they support. This loss in turn, would cause the extinction of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals: in effect, nearly all terrestrial animal life.”
Many of us have been taught that bugs are bad, to be afraid and hate the little crawly things and that we must buy the pesticides on the garden store shelves to kill them. We’re taught native plants are weeds and to fill our yards with exotic plants from places other than here. Exotic non-native plants that create a food desert to native pollinators. An analogy to non-native plants to pollinators is like serving a child kerosene instead of food. Even the subject of the book I summarize at the end of this Diary is about our species damaging local ecology and the destruction it wrought.
One plant, one yard doesn’t seem like much, but when we multiply that over and over across our neighborhoods, our cities, our state, our nation, our planet it is a cascade of destruction. We can look to this as contributing to the loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the last 50 years, the disappearance of insects, the decline of the Monarchs and so many other species.
It doesn’t have to be this way. My neighbor, friend and swim partner has filled her yard with native plants. It is delightful as birds, butterflies, skippers, caterpillars and a wide variety of native bees discovered it. This is what Tallamy teaches us.
It was one of Tallamy’s graduate students that pulled together a study of nesting chickadees and tallied how many caterpillars were needed to feed the babies until they fledged the nest. The tally was 6000 to 9000 caterpillars. Think about that when about 96% of all baby birds need caterpillars as their diet. If I was to guess from looking at this neighborhood probably 90% of it supports not even one caterpillar. Crows will eat just about anything which gives good reason why that population keeps expanding and song birds are in small numbers. The feeders with seeds in our yards will attract adult birds, but most baby birds can’t digest seeds.
You may wonder why I write week after week on the environment, habitat, ecosystems and climate. I am trying to bring you along, to pique your interest in creating an environment that supports our local ecosystems. I know it is a big stretch. And, this grounding brings us to the rest of the city meetings.
At the Tuesday council meeting the Objective Standards and the Baseline Zoning Ordinance were rolled over to the September 28th. If you have rooftop solar and live in an area that may be the site of mixed use apartment buildings which is pretty much everywhere with the signing of SB 9 and SB 10, then you should care about Objective Standards. In the standards up for a vote, a new tall apartment building next door can shadow up to 50% of your solar without any accommodation or design modification. In a city that claims to be concerned about resilience and climate this should be pretty appalling. It is item 33 in the agenda for the 28th. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/09_Sep/City_Council__09-28-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
You have another opportunity to dig into the Baseline Zoning Ordinance. The thickness of the document 532 pages is overwhelming. A suggestion is to use this link to the “readable” version (476 pages) review the table of contents and then go to the pages that affect your neighborhood and the things you care about.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Land_Use_Division/Att%201%20Exhibit%20A%20-%20Baseline%20Zoning%20Ordinance.pdf,
Not one of these documents gives any attention to the environment, habitat or ecosystems. The bills passed by our legislature completely ignore the environment other than density as the beginning and end to solve GHG emissions. There is absolutely no consideration to creating corridors to connect to larger open spaces like parks where ecosystems can thrive. There is not one thought to preserving trees and a total absence to understanding heat island effect when trees are removed and land is covered with buildings and hardscape. That alone can increase local temperature by 10° to 20°. Buildings, sidewalks and patios add to water runoff if and when rain arrives exacerbating the impact of drought rather than recharging the underlying land.
At the Transportation Commission on Thursday evening, Farid Javandel spoke about trees as though they are an inconvenience to be cutdown without a second thought.
The Human Welfare & Community Action Commission was canceled due to a lack of quorum and the Council Land Use Policy Committee meeting was cancelled without a listed reason although SB 9 and SB 10 might be somewhere in the background. I was planning to comment on the only listed item, Councilmember Taplin’s affordable housing overlay. In Taplin’s proposal, he does not define the percentage of housing affordable to each income level and especially moderate income (80% - 120% of AMI - area median income), the number of years the housing must be affordable 55 years, longer or in perpetuity, and there is nothing on green building, permeable paving, space/corridors between hardscape to support urban biodiversity/ecosystems. If this comes back again, I’ll need to update the chart posted in the Planet on March 14, 2020 adding the impact of SB 9 and SB 10 and including any modifications from Taplin. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-03-14/article/49067?headline=Affordable-Housing-Overlays-Cambridge-vs.-Berkeley--Kelly-Hammargren
This week’s book was Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, 2021. Fiction is not my usual fair although many of the political books released this year make me wish they were fiction. Four Winds has been on the lucky day shelf of ebooks at the Berkeley library and came highly recommended by my sister. The novel is about the dust bowl, the migration to California, the wretched conditions of the migrant camps, the search for work and ends with union organizing by members of the American Communist Party. A close friend of my husband, Sylvia Thompson, who passed away in 2012 was a member of the American Communist Party and was a union organizer in North Carolina in the early 1940s. She had stories about the dangers of organizing and being chased out of towns.
In the author’s note, Hannah makes reference to the 2008 recession. I think more about the climate and environmental disasters that have and will continue into the future forcing migration within the U.S. Climate migrants from outside the U.S. are already at our doorstep and they were described in the same ways by the Trump administration as in the book on the dust bowl lazy, dirty, infected criminals who burden the economy.
This novel has renewed my interest to find the collection of essays by Red Diaper Babies (it is somewhere on a shelf or in a stack of books) and finish it. Berkeley has been a city with many Red Diaper Babies and that may be a significant contributor to the local progressive history.
Now that the recall is over and a sigh of relief in the outcome is in order, we can put our focus on the other ballot, KPFA. KPFA is having a station board election and the deadline will arrive on October 15, 2021. To vote in this election you must have donated to KPFA between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. If you donated and cannot find your electronic ballot the website https://www.kpfaprotectors.org/ (the candidates I am supporting) has the information and links.
The Agenda committee on Monday was as usual poorly attended with the Mayor and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn sifting through the draft for the September 28th regular council meeting. Taplin’s proposed ordinance requiring plant materials to be native to Berkeley and Northern California and drought tolerant was referred to the FITES Committee (facilities, infrastructure, transportation, environment and sustainability).
I never really thought much about native plants (except what was the big deal) until a neighbor and I started a swimming routine and walked to and from our homes in the McGee Spaulding neighborhood to the Downtown Y. She would talk about pollinators and habitat and point out how the yards on the way were filled with flowers and devoid of bees and butterflies. I learned about host plants (i.e. monarch caterpillars only feed on milkweed), that with native plants little bites out of leaves was a good thing, that oaks are a keystone plant supporting 300 or more species and that Ginkos supported nothing, a dead zone for habitat. There was one house with a large California native pipevine. We would stop on the way home and watch the pipevine caterpillars chewing away on the plant. The pipevine never needed trimming to control its expansive growth as the lively caterpillars would keep it in check. That was until the owner decided on a new fence and had the pipevine cut down to a stump. The black and orange pipevine caterpillars and the iridescent blue and black butterflies are gone. All we have left is pictures. https://www.nps.gov/articles/california-pipevine-swallowtail.htm
My journey in appreciating native plants continued with picking up the writings of Douglas Tallamy and Edward O. Wilson. Most of all I’ve grown to understand just why these points by Edward O. Wilson are so critical to our future, “Insects are the little things that run the world.” “If insects were to vanish so would nearly all the flowering plants and the food webs they support. This loss in turn, would cause the extinction of reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals: in effect, nearly all terrestrial animal life.”
Many of us have been taught that bugs are bad, to be afraid and hate the little crawly things and that we must buy the pesticides on the garden store shelves to kill them. We’re taught native plants are weeds and to fill our yards with exotic plants from places other than here. Exotic non-native plants that create a food desert to native pollinators. An analogy to non-native plants to pollinators is like serving a child kerosene instead of food. Even the subject of the book I summarize at the end of this Diary is about our species damaging local ecology and the destruction it wrought.
One plant, one yard doesn’t seem like much, but when we multiply that over and over across our neighborhoods, our cities, our state, our nation, our planet it is a cascade of destruction. We can look to this as contributing to the loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the last 50 years, the disappearance of insects, the decline of the Monarchs and so many other species.
It doesn’t have to be this way. My neighbor, friend and swim partner has filled her yard with native plants. It is delightful as birds, butterflies, skippers, caterpillars and a wide variety of native bees discovered it. This is what Tallamy teaches us.
It was one of Tallamy’s graduate students that pulled together a study of nesting chickadees and tallied how many caterpillars were needed to feed the babies until they fledged the nest. The tally was 6000 to 9000 caterpillars. Think about that when about 96% of all baby birds need caterpillars as their diet. If I was to guess from looking at this neighborhood probably 90% of it supports not even one caterpillar. Crows will eat just about anything which gives good reason why that population keeps expanding and song birds are in small numbers. The feeders with seeds in our yards will attract adult birds, but most baby birds can’t digest seeds.
You may wonder why I write week after week on the environment, habitat, ecosystems and climate. I am trying to bring you along, to pique your interest in creating an environment that supports our local ecosystems. I know it is a big stretch. And, this grounding brings us to the rest of the city meetings.
At the Tuesday council meeting the Objective Standards and the Baseline Zoning Ordinance were rolled over to the September 28th. If you have rooftop solar and live in an area that may be the site of mixed use apartment buildings which is pretty much everywhere with the signing of SB 9 and SB 10, then you should care about Objective Standards. In the standards up for a vote, a new tall apartment building next door can shadow up to 50% of your solar without any accommodation or design modification. In a city that claims to be concerned about resilience and climate this should be pretty appalling. It is item 33 in the agenda for the 28th. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/09_Sep/City_Council__09-28-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
You have another opportunity to dig into the Baseline Zoning Ordinance. The thickness of the document 532 pages is overwhelming. A suggestion is to use this link to the “readable” version (476 pages) review the table of contents and then go to the pages that affect your neighborhood and the things you care about.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Land_Use_Division/Att%201%20Exhibit%20A%20-%20Baseline%20Zoning%20Ordinance.pdf,
Not one of these documents gives any attention to the environment, habitat or ecosystems. The bills passed by our legislature completely ignore the environment other than density as the beginning and end to solve GHG emissions. There is absolutely no consideration to creating corridors to connect to larger open spaces like parks where ecosystems can thrive. There is not one thought to preserving trees and a total absence to understanding heat island effect when trees are removed and land is covered with buildings and hardscape. That alone can increase local temperature by 10° to 20°. Buildings, sidewalks and patios add to water runoff if and when rain arrives exacerbating the impact of drought rather than recharging the underlying land.
At the Transportation Commission on Thursday evening, Farid Javandel spoke about trees as though they are an inconvenience to be cutdown without a second thought.
The Human Welfare & Community Action Commission was canceled due to a lack of quorum and the Council Land Use Policy Committee meeting was cancelled without a listed reason although SB 9 and SB 10 might be somewhere in the background. I was planning to comment on the only listed item, Councilmember Taplin’s affordable housing overlay. In Taplin’s proposal, he does not define the percentage of housing affordable to each income level and especially moderate income (80% - 120% of AMI - area median income), the number of years the housing must be affordable 55 years, longer or in perpetuity, and there is nothing on green building, permeable paving, space/corridors between hardscape to support urban biodiversity/ecosystems. If this comes back again, I’ll need to update the chart posted in the Planet on March 14, 2020 adding the impact of SB 9 and SB 10 and including any modifications from Taplin. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-03-14/article/49067?headline=Affordable-Housing-Overlays-Cambridge-vs.-Berkeley--Kelly-Hammargren
This week’s book was Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, 2021. Fiction is not my usual fair although many of the political books released this year make me wish they were fiction. Four Winds has been on the lucky day shelf of ebooks at the Berkeley library and came highly recommended by my sister. The novel is about the dust bowl, the migration to California, the wretched conditions of the migrant camps, the search for work and ends with union organizing by members of the American Communist Party. A close friend of my husband, Sylvia Thompson, who passed away in 2012 was a member of the American Communist Party and was a union organizer in North Carolina in the early 1940s. She had stories about the dangers of organizing and being chased out of towns.
In the author’s note, Hannah makes reference to the 2008 recession. I think more about the climate and environmental disasters that have and will continue into the future forcing migration within the U.S. Climate migrants from outside the U.S. are already at our doorstep and they were described in the same ways by the Trump administration as in the book on the dust bowl lazy, dirty, infected criminals who burden the economy.
This novel has renewed my interest to find the collection of essays by Red Diaper Babies (it is somewhere on a shelf or in a stack of books) and finish it. Berkeley has been a city with many Red Diaper Babies and that may be a significant contributor to the local progressive history.
August 15, 2021
Between council on recess and the usual August slowdown, the report on city meetings will be short. As for everything else, this week was boiling over. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released AR6 (Sixth Assessment Report). The UN warns that global heating is at “code red” for humanity and the cause is unequivocal – it is us. July was the hottest month ever recorded. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#FullReport
As I reached for the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, there was a lot on my mind, the films: Elysium and The Biggest Little Farm, the seminars forecasting perpetual drought for the western U.S. with occasional wet years, the articles on climate and the environment, the slowing of the gulf stream (the overturning circulation of the Atlantic Ocean) heading toward collapse, the wobbling of the jet stream, the loss of insects and wildlife, superstorms, floods and fires, an obscure mention on glacier melting and earthquakes and, of course, my reading, the books: The Sixth Extinction, Under a White Sky, Ishmael, The Uninhabitable Earth, The Nature of Oaks, Bringing Nature Home, Half-Earth Our Planet’s Fight for Life, We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast and Midnight in Chernobyl.
I’ve seen less in the news than I expected of the dire warnings coming from AR6. Instead, we’re wrapped in saving the economy of endless consumerism as the mantle to carry. We are the earth’s most destructive species, pilfering the earth’s resources for our immediate pleasure with little regard for our impact, our own future or that of our children.
The best forecast for the future requires immediate action to bring GHG (Green House Gas) emissions to zero. So much is already baked in, that even with immediate action, the climate forecast is continued warming for the next 30 years with more intense superstorms, floods, drought, heat events and fires than we already see. If the world responds with immediate action, the IPCC forecast is climate change can after the next 30 years be expected to slow and stabilize. Without aggressive action, we are headed for the cliff of exponential heating reaching a level when much of the earth will be uninhabitable for our species and many others.
We sit in various camps, sometimes shifting from one to another: denial, willful ignorance, technology can fix it, it won’t affect me, what I do won’t make any difference, China pollutes more than the U.S., it’s not my responsibility, the government needs to fix it, no government is going to tell me what to do, or maybe the “God will save us.” You might have your own list of why and how we continue on a path of destruction.
I know the conscious changes I make in my own life won’t save the planet, but I feel better for doing them. If others joined me, it wouldn’t be everything we need to do, but we could make a difference and right there in personal actions is voting. You don’t even need postage for your recall mail-in ballot.
Newsom is less than perfect, but failing to vote at all or failing to vote no on the recall could give us Larry Elder, a progun, anti-abortion, climate denier. At this moment, Elder, the right-wing talk-show host who is the leading contender, stands for “individual freedom” in opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. Elder, who is Black, denies systemic racism and blames disintegration of two parent families and the absence of Black fathers as the source of societal problems.
The other action that should be on everyone’s mind is how the California Assembly will vote on SB 9 and SB 10. We need to do our part here too, call 916.319.2115 or 510.286.1400 and write Buffy wicks to vote NO on SB 9 and 10. https://a15.asmdc.org/email-assemblymember-wicks
Please also write the CA Assembly Appropriation Committee https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/
SB 9 and SB 10 do not include even the tiniest shred of attention to climate and the environment. These bills ride under the banner of “greenwashing” (fake sustainability) and are about over-riding any local zoning, splitting single family home lots and covering the lots with up to 14 units eliminating space for trees and the cool sheltering of their canopies. This leaves us with hard surfaces like sidewalks, driveways and buildings that soak up and hold heat thereby changing the local climate. And, should rain ever arrive all these hard surfaces increase water runoff instead of recharging the ground.
These bills do nothing for affordable housing. A curious mind would be picking up Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick M. Condon, 2020 and The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown, 2021. Home ownership is how families build wealth. It is why Southern California neighborhoods of color are fighting so hard to stop these bills.
The week closed with the release of the Census Report. In between these bookends is the continuing acceleration of COVID-19 infections due to the Delta variant. It was COVID and bad behavior that filled the air waves.
I hope you are managing to avoid catching the delta COVID. Remember that if you are vaccinated and catch COVID you are still contagious and being contagious may mean giving COVID to children younger than 12 who are not eligible to be vaccinated. And, while children usually do not get seriously ill, they can end up in an ICU on a ventilator.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-14/kids-covid-hospitalization-rates
Cotton/homemade/cloth masks or bandanas and gators just don’t do the job we need for the very contagious delta variant. These facial coverings might be okay for a quick run into a grocery or picking up takeout, but real protection comes with N95 and KN95. The N95 and KN95 give hours upon hours protection, are widely available and can be used over and over until they get dirty. There are even KN95 masks for children. If you can’t find a comfortable N95 or KN95, the CDC has a whole section on how to improve the protection from the surgical/procedure masks our next best choice. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/mask-fit-and-filtration.html Johnston Medical stocks the surgical pleated style mask for children, but you can order KN95 for children online. https://www.johnstonmedicalsupply.com/
If you don’t care about yourself, don’t care about your family or neighbors, don’t care about children, just keep in mind if you have a pet at home, your cat or dog can catch COVID from you.
On to city meetings
Monday was a special meeting of the council Public Safety Committee with one item from Councilmember Terry Taplin prohibiting Ghost Guns. It was listed as a referral to the city manager, but Councilmember Wengraf quickly picked up that a fully completed ordinance should come to the committee for review and markup before going to the full council for a vote. A referral would just sit in the city manager’s spreadsheet of things to do. Councilmember Kesarwani on the other hand proposed a motion to move the item forward as a referral. It’s hard to know if Kesarwani isn’t paying attention or just doesn’t understand how council and council committees function. It’s a mystery. In the end, Taplin will bring back an ordinance.
Tuesday evening was the Pier-Ferry workshop #2. Jim McGrath and I were called “heavy hitters” in the breakout meeting with our comments and questions. Despite what the Pier-Ferry team says, the decision has been made. It would be a complete shock for the momentum to stop at this point. There has never been a merging of the proposed pier-ferry designs and recreation. McGrath shared the mapping wind surfers have done by carrying GPS devices, which was the only way we could see it despite his statement that these have been sent to the team. McGrath also reminded the team of measure L which requires a public vote when recreation/park areas are impacted.
Wednesday was the Parks Commission. The revision of the Ashby/I80 Interchange will be a vast improvement. Adopt-a-Spot received unanimous support and will move forward to council.
The last meeting, I attended I learned of at the last minute, a meet up of the California Native Plant Society Yerba Buena Group with David Ackerly, professor in the departments of Integrative Biology and Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, speaking on Climate Change and Future of Biodiversity Conservation in California. His focus is trees. What was interesting were the pictures of the changing mix of oaks and pine. With warming the native oaks which are more tolerant to heat and drought increased in density while pines in the same area declined. It was the response of nature not human intervention.
As always, a close with my latest reading. A friend called me a “reading machine.” I’ve been reading Douglas Tallamy’s books on restoring native habitat and watching his YouTube videos. Tallamy often quotes Edward O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world…” With that encouragement, I picked up Half-Earth Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson, 2016. As one who is doesn’t feel elderly, but falls in that category, I love it when people continue to contribute and share a lifetime of knowledge. Wilson, who is still alive and active wrote Half-Earth when he was 87 (born 6/10/1929).
As I read Half-Earth, I thought of the game giant jenga that was played at the wedding party “groom’s dinner.” Tallamy poses the question, does an ecosystem depend on the health and presence of the “keystone” like the oak or is an ecosystem like jenga where blocks can be pulled one by one, until so many pieces are pulled the tower collapses?
In this book Wilson gives weight to the organisms we don’t see and that leaving little plots of nature here and there can’t sustain ecosystems.
On and in the earth and the seas, there is still so much to learn and discover.
Between council on recess and the usual August slowdown, the report on city meetings will be short. As for everything else, this week was boiling over. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released AR6 (Sixth Assessment Report). The UN warns that global heating is at “code red” for humanity and the cause is unequivocal – it is us. July was the hottest month ever recorded. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#FullReport
As I reached for the IPCC Summary for Policymakers, there was a lot on my mind, the films: Elysium and The Biggest Little Farm, the seminars forecasting perpetual drought for the western U.S. with occasional wet years, the articles on climate and the environment, the slowing of the gulf stream (the overturning circulation of the Atlantic Ocean) heading toward collapse, the wobbling of the jet stream, the loss of insects and wildlife, superstorms, floods and fires, an obscure mention on glacier melting and earthquakes and, of course, my reading, the books: The Sixth Extinction, Under a White Sky, Ishmael, The Uninhabitable Earth, The Nature of Oaks, Bringing Nature Home, Half-Earth Our Planet’s Fight for Life, We are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast and Midnight in Chernobyl.
I’ve seen less in the news than I expected of the dire warnings coming from AR6. Instead, we’re wrapped in saving the economy of endless consumerism as the mantle to carry. We are the earth’s most destructive species, pilfering the earth’s resources for our immediate pleasure with little regard for our impact, our own future or that of our children.
The best forecast for the future requires immediate action to bring GHG (Green House Gas) emissions to zero. So much is already baked in, that even with immediate action, the climate forecast is continued warming for the next 30 years with more intense superstorms, floods, drought, heat events and fires than we already see. If the world responds with immediate action, the IPCC forecast is climate change can after the next 30 years be expected to slow and stabilize. Without aggressive action, we are headed for the cliff of exponential heating reaching a level when much of the earth will be uninhabitable for our species and many others.
We sit in various camps, sometimes shifting from one to another: denial, willful ignorance, technology can fix it, it won’t affect me, what I do won’t make any difference, China pollutes more than the U.S., it’s not my responsibility, the government needs to fix it, no government is going to tell me what to do, or maybe the “God will save us.” You might have your own list of why and how we continue on a path of destruction.
I know the conscious changes I make in my own life won’t save the planet, but I feel better for doing them. If others joined me, it wouldn’t be everything we need to do, but we could make a difference and right there in personal actions is voting. You don’t even need postage for your recall mail-in ballot.
Newsom is less than perfect, but failing to vote at all or failing to vote no on the recall could give us Larry Elder, a progun, anti-abortion, climate denier. At this moment, Elder, the right-wing talk-show host who is the leading contender, stands for “individual freedom” in opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. Elder, who is Black, denies systemic racism and blames disintegration of two parent families and the absence of Black fathers as the source of societal problems.
The other action that should be on everyone’s mind is how the California Assembly will vote on SB 9 and SB 10. We need to do our part here too, call 916.319.2115 or 510.286.1400 and write Buffy wicks to vote NO on SB 9 and 10. https://a15.asmdc.org/email-assemblymember-wicks
Please also write the CA Assembly Appropriation Committee https://apro.assembly.ca.gov/
SB 9 and SB 10 do not include even the tiniest shred of attention to climate and the environment. These bills ride under the banner of “greenwashing” (fake sustainability) and are about over-riding any local zoning, splitting single family home lots and covering the lots with up to 14 units eliminating space for trees and the cool sheltering of their canopies. This leaves us with hard surfaces like sidewalks, driveways and buildings that soak up and hold heat thereby changing the local climate. And, should rain ever arrive all these hard surfaces increase water runoff instead of recharging the ground.
These bills do nothing for affordable housing. A curious mind would be picking up Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick M. Condon, 2020 and The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown, 2021. Home ownership is how families build wealth. It is why Southern California neighborhoods of color are fighting so hard to stop these bills.
The week closed with the release of the Census Report. In between these bookends is the continuing acceleration of COVID-19 infections due to the Delta variant. It was COVID and bad behavior that filled the air waves.
I hope you are managing to avoid catching the delta COVID. Remember that if you are vaccinated and catch COVID you are still contagious and being contagious may mean giving COVID to children younger than 12 who are not eligible to be vaccinated. And, while children usually do not get seriously ill, they can end up in an ICU on a ventilator.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-14/kids-covid-hospitalization-rates
Cotton/homemade/cloth masks or bandanas and gators just don’t do the job we need for the very contagious delta variant. These facial coverings might be okay for a quick run into a grocery or picking up takeout, but real protection comes with N95 and KN95. The N95 and KN95 give hours upon hours protection, are widely available and can be used over and over until they get dirty. There are even KN95 masks for children. If you can’t find a comfortable N95 or KN95, the CDC has a whole section on how to improve the protection from the surgical/procedure masks our next best choice. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/mask-fit-and-filtration.html Johnston Medical stocks the surgical pleated style mask for children, but you can order KN95 for children online. https://www.johnstonmedicalsupply.com/
If you don’t care about yourself, don’t care about your family or neighbors, don’t care about children, just keep in mind if you have a pet at home, your cat or dog can catch COVID from you.
On to city meetings
Monday was a special meeting of the council Public Safety Committee with one item from Councilmember Terry Taplin prohibiting Ghost Guns. It was listed as a referral to the city manager, but Councilmember Wengraf quickly picked up that a fully completed ordinance should come to the committee for review and markup before going to the full council for a vote. A referral would just sit in the city manager’s spreadsheet of things to do. Councilmember Kesarwani on the other hand proposed a motion to move the item forward as a referral. It’s hard to know if Kesarwani isn’t paying attention or just doesn’t understand how council and council committees function. It’s a mystery. In the end, Taplin will bring back an ordinance.
Tuesday evening was the Pier-Ferry workshop #2. Jim McGrath and I were called “heavy hitters” in the breakout meeting with our comments and questions. Despite what the Pier-Ferry team says, the decision has been made. It would be a complete shock for the momentum to stop at this point. There has never been a merging of the proposed pier-ferry designs and recreation. McGrath shared the mapping wind surfers have done by carrying GPS devices, which was the only way we could see it despite his statement that these have been sent to the team. McGrath also reminded the team of measure L which requires a public vote when recreation/park areas are impacted.
Wednesday was the Parks Commission. The revision of the Ashby/I80 Interchange will be a vast improvement. Adopt-a-Spot received unanimous support and will move forward to council.
The last meeting, I attended I learned of at the last minute, a meet up of the California Native Plant Society Yerba Buena Group with David Ackerly, professor in the departments of Integrative Biology and Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley, speaking on Climate Change and Future of Biodiversity Conservation in California. His focus is trees. What was interesting were the pictures of the changing mix of oaks and pine. With warming the native oaks which are more tolerant to heat and drought increased in density while pines in the same area declined. It was the response of nature not human intervention.
As always, a close with my latest reading. A friend called me a “reading machine.” I’ve been reading Douglas Tallamy’s books on restoring native habitat and watching his YouTube videos. Tallamy often quotes Edward O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world…” With that encouragement, I picked up Half-Earth Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O. Wilson, 2016. As one who is doesn’t feel elderly, but falls in that category, I love it when people continue to contribute and share a lifetime of knowledge. Wilson, who is still alive and active wrote Half-Earth when he was 87 (born 6/10/1929).
As I read Half-Earth, I thought of the game giant jenga that was played at the wedding party “groom’s dinner.” Tallamy poses the question, does an ecosystem depend on the health and presence of the “keystone” like the oak or is an ecosystem like jenga where blocks can be pulled one by one, until so many pieces are pulled the tower collapses?
In this book Wilson gives weight to the organisms we don’t see and that leaving little plots of nature here and there can’t sustain ecosystems.
On and in the earth and the seas, there is still so much to learn and discover.
August 7, 2021
I’m back from “unmasked” land where even though the drought is spreading into the north Midwest, the grass is still green and the crops look healthy in the fields. The air was a different story as the Canadian fires covered Minnesota in a blanket of heavy smoke with the air quality index passing 150 into the very unhealthy zone. And yes, it was a lovely wedding.
There is so much more to cover than wondering which side of the miracle I will land, coming through a large gathering of the vaccinated and endless partying with no one turning up COVID positive or coming up COVID positive as a breakthrough infection with absolutely no symptoms. The answer came today, COVID negative.
While rumors are still swirling that COVID started in a Chinese lab, it might be of interest that this week’s SF Chronicle “Earthweek: a diary of a planet” reports that coronavirus antibodies were found in wild free-range deer. The USDA study and published summary “Questions and Answers: Results of Study on SARS-CoV-2 in White-Tailed Deer.” carry special meaning for me after reading Spillover by David Quammen and The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (two books I highly recommend). https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/one_health/downloads/qa-covid-white-tailed-deer-study.pdf
As for COVID the day I flew to Minnesota I had to change planes in Dallas where the daily tally of new cases was pushing 12,000. The airport was packed, social distancing was a fantasy, at least 50% had no mask or wore their mask as a chin diaper, there were no quiet corners and I found myself surrounded by people who were coughing. When asked about my trip, I answered with, “If Texas wants to secede, let them go” If you decide to fly anywhere, expect delays and the delta variant to be floating nearby.
It is terrific that we reached 50% of the US as fully vaccinated. That leaves the unvaccinated somewhere around 160,000,000 including children under 12 and my sister’s brother-in-law, Tom.
Tom cozied up to me after the wedding. When I asked about his vaccine status, he threw out the “I don’t want to put anything extra into my body.” I’ve known Tom for nearly 60 years so I took the liberty of telling him not being vaccinated was just stupid, followed with he was watching too much Fox and didn’t he know that the vaccine makes you magnetic (I’m still waiting) and you’ll be injected with a chip (we are already tracked everywhere). I couldn’t remember the other conspiracies that fill the media so I stopped there.
The justification of declining vaccination as something extra isn’t a belief limited to the uneducated. It is also soaked up by the highly educated like Tom who has a string of advance degrees to follow his name. A momentary conversation or reason doesn’t shake these beliefs. They also belie the toxic stuff we quite willingly put into our mouths and pass into our bodies.
I heard more talking points from my airplane neighbor Gene during the 3 ½ hour Minnesota Phoenix leg of the journey home. Gene said he did get vaccinated, but as might be expected in a lengthy conversation between an Arizona owner of a business that manufactures diesel engine parts and this Berkeley activist, we were on different sides of nearly every issue. He declared climate change was just weather and strode on the mantra of individual choices. I did achieve agreement that individual actions do have public ramifications by using the example of drunk driving.
Then I happened to ask Gene what he liked to read and recommended The Fifth Risk and Premonition by Michael Lewis. Gene hadn’t read Lewis’s last two books yet, but listens to his podcasts and declared Lewis as his favorite author. Lewis is for me like art, the more art I see the more artists and artworks I love, the more books I read, the longer my list of favorite authors grows. Michael Lewis is on that favorites list.
Monday we will see the IPCC’s landmark report. Here is a peek from Simon Lewis professor of global change science at University College London, “What we need to keep in mind is that we all live in places that have built up over decades and centuries to cope well with a given climate. The really, really scary thing about the climate crisis is that every single achievement of every human society on Earth occurred under a climate that no longer exists…The pressure is on for world leaders to agree both detailed and achievable plans to cut emissions now, and plans to adapt to climate impacts, when they meet in Glasgow in November.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/08/worlds-climate-scientists-to-issue-stark-warning-over-global-heating-threat
On to City meetings and how not to get things done.
Did I miss something while I was out of town for five days? Mendocino is running out of water. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/07/california-drought-water-mendocino-tourism The Oroville Dam is shutdown, because the water levels are too low to drive the six-turbine Edward Hyatt Power Plant, the Bay Area is in exceptional drought and the entire area is not under mandatory water rationing. The July 28th Water and Drought community meeting was more of the usual with little new insight, no rationing requirements and only modest actions.
As for Council, 3 ½ years and still nothing? Item 28 on the July 27, 2021 City Council agenda, Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows from the Joint Subcommittee for the Implementation of State Housing Laws (JSISHL) was punted again, this time to September 14, 2021.
It was January 23, 2018 when the Mayor Arreguin’s resolution to create the JSISHL subcommittee was passed. The subcommittee of council appointees convened from April 17, 2018 to July 22, 2020. Attention to the environment and climate in developing standards failed as only one member, Thomas Lord supported this as a priority. With no real agreement reached on objective standards, the July 22, 2020 report landed back on the council agenda March 23, 2021. Arreguin responded that night with,
“…I do feel that this needs a lot more development, so I would like to bring forward some additional research and ideas that my office has been working on before we send something to the Planning Commission, so my recommendation was that we move item 17 to the consent calendar for the purposes of sending it to the Agenda and Rules Committee while I’m working on trying to bring forward a proposal. I think that the subcommittee’s recommendations were a good start, but were incomplete…”
Arreguin’s ideas never materialized at least not publicly. July 27, 2021 ended with the usual, hire a consultant to deliver the desired results, especially when the appointed subcommittee didn’t do the job for you. With this like so much else under Mayor Arreguin’s tenure, one has to wonder if it will ever get done and who profits in the meantime. The table is the staff projected timeline.
Next Steps for Objective Density, Design and Shadow Standards Recommendations
Timeframe
General Task
Summer 2021
Refer to City Manager to move three recommendations forward
Fall 2021
Staff to analyze recommendations in advance of commission meetings
Winter 2021
Planning Commission and Design Review Committee provide input
Spring 2022
Staff develop zoning language
Summer 2022
Planning Commission and Council hold public hearings and adopt standards
On August 4, 2021 at the Commission on Disability, the July fire false alarm at the Amistad House was brought forward through public comment. Elevators in multi-floor buildings are programmed everywhere to shut down when a fire alarm is activated leaving anyone who is disabled and unable to navigate stairs stuck waiting until help arrives to carry them out. There needs to be a better solution. Those who were wheelchair and assistive device dependent thought they were trapped in a burning building until news of the false alarm reached them.
The new Best Western on the corner of Sacramento and University planned two hotel rooms on the ground floor, but put one of the rooms for a disabled person on the 2nd floor and the other on the 3rd floor. While I brought up the foolishness of this planning, ZAB declined to request a change which was perfectly possible. I have long advocated unsuccessfully for disabled units on the ground floor of buildings instead of vacant commercial. While any able-bodied person can suffer from a disabling accident or develop a disabling disease, it is long past time to change planning thinking on place making for the disabled living and visiting the Berkeley community.
This is long already and ends with one more request: PLEASE go to the Activist’s Calendar and sign up for the Wildfire Workshop and watch the videos.
Reading recommendations: I have two more besides The Fifth Risk and Premonition. If you are looking for a novel to buoy you through travel delays and hours in transit, Stacy Abrams, the politician, the founder of Fair Fight Action writes novels in her spare time. While Justice Sleeps (e-book available thru the Berkeley library) is just the kind of fantastical story that is perfect for mindless diversion on a travel day fraught with delays.
The more important read is: Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism published in 2020. Applebaum writes of people she knows, colleagues, who are embracing authoritarianism. This book couldn’t be more prescient as news of Tucker Carlson’s week in Hungary and admiration for Viktor Orban fills the air waves. The entirety of Carlson’s visit encircles rejection of America’s racial diversity and multicultural democracy.
I’m back from “unmasked” land where even though the drought is spreading into the north Midwest, the grass is still green and the crops look healthy in the fields. The air was a different story as the Canadian fires covered Minnesota in a blanket of heavy smoke with the air quality index passing 150 into the very unhealthy zone. And yes, it was a lovely wedding.
There is so much more to cover than wondering which side of the miracle I will land, coming through a large gathering of the vaccinated and endless partying with no one turning up COVID positive or coming up COVID positive as a breakthrough infection with absolutely no symptoms. The answer came today, COVID negative.
While rumors are still swirling that COVID started in a Chinese lab, it might be of interest that this week’s SF Chronicle “Earthweek: a diary of a planet” reports that coronavirus antibodies were found in wild free-range deer. The USDA study and published summary “Questions and Answers: Results of Study on SARS-CoV-2 in White-Tailed Deer.” carry special meaning for me after reading Spillover by David Quammen and The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (two books I highly recommend). https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animal_health/one_health/downloads/qa-covid-white-tailed-deer-study.pdf
As for COVID the day I flew to Minnesota I had to change planes in Dallas where the daily tally of new cases was pushing 12,000. The airport was packed, social distancing was a fantasy, at least 50% had no mask or wore their mask as a chin diaper, there were no quiet corners and I found myself surrounded by people who were coughing. When asked about my trip, I answered with, “If Texas wants to secede, let them go” If you decide to fly anywhere, expect delays and the delta variant to be floating nearby.
It is terrific that we reached 50% of the US as fully vaccinated. That leaves the unvaccinated somewhere around 160,000,000 including children under 12 and my sister’s brother-in-law, Tom.
Tom cozied up to me after the wedding. When I asked about his vaccine status, he threw out the “I don’t want to put anything extra into my body.” I’ve known Tom for nearly 60 years so I took the liberty of telling him not being vaccinated was just stupid, followed with he was watching too much Fox and didn’t he know that the vaccine makes you magnetic (I’m still waiting) and you’ll be injected with a chip (we are already tracked everywhere). I couldn’t remember the other conspiracies that fill the media so I stopped there.
The justification of declining vaccination as something extra isn’t a belief limited to the uneducated. It is also soaked up by the highly educated like Tom who has a string of advance degrees to follow his name. A momentary conversation or reason doesn’t shake these beliefs. They also belie the toxic stuff we quite willingly put into our mouths and pass into our bodies.
I heard more talking points from my airplane neighbor Gene during the 3 ½ hour Minnesota Phoenix leg of the journey home. Gene said he did get vaccinated, but as might be expected in a lengthy conversation between an Arizona owner of a business that manufactures diesel engine parts and this Berkeley activist, we were on different sides of nearly every issue. He declared climate change was just weather and strode on the mantra of individual choices. I did achieve agreement that individual actions do have public ramifications by using the example of drunk driving.
Then I happened to ask Gene what he liked to read and recommended The Fifth Risk and Premonition by Michael Lewis. Gene hadn’t read Lewis’s last two books yet, but listens to his podcasts and declared Lewis as his favorite author. Lewis is for me like art, the more art I see the more artists and artworks I love, the more books I read, the longer my list of favorite authors grows. Michael Lewis is on that favorites list.
Monday we will see the IPCC’s landmark report. Here is a peek from Simon Lewis professor of global change science at University College London, “What we need to keep in mind is that we all live in places that have built up over decades and centuries to cope well with a given climate. The really, really scary thing about the climate crisis is that every single achievement of every human society on Earth occurred under a climate that no longer exists…The pressure is on for world leaders to agree both detailed and achievable plans to cut emissions now, and plans to adapt to climate impacts, when they meet in Glasgow in November.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/08/worlds-climate-scientists-to-issue-stark-warning-over-global-heating-threat
On to City meetings and how not to get things done.
Did I miss something while I was out of town for five days? Mendocino is running out of water. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/07/california-drought-water-mendocino-tourism The Oroville Dam is shutdown, because the water levels are too low to drive the six-turbine Edward Hyatt Power Plant, the Bay Area is in exceptional drought and the entire area is not under mandatory water rationing. The July 28th Water and Drought community meeting was more of the usual with little new insight, no rationing requirements and only modest actions.
As for Council, 3 ½ years and still nothing? Item 28 on the July 27, 2021 City Council agenda, Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows from the Joint Subcommittee for the Implementation of State Housing Laws (JSISHL) was punted again, this time to September 14, 2021.
It was January 23, 2018 when the Mayor Arreguin’s resolution to create the JSISHL subcommittee was passed. The subcommittee of council appointees convened from April 17, 2018 to July 22, 2020. Attention to the environment and climate in developing standards failed as only one member, Thomas Lord supported this as a priority. With no real agreement reached on objective standards, the July 22, 2020 report landed back on the council agenda March 23, 2021. Arreguin responded that night with,
“…I do feel that this needs a lot more development, so I would like to bring forward some additional research and ideas that my office has been working on before we send something to the Planning Commission, so my recommendation was that we move item 17 to the consent calendar for the purposes of sending it to the Agenda and Rules Committee while I’m working on trying to bring forward a proposal. I think that the subcommittee’s recommendations were a good start, but were incomplete…”
Arreguin’s ideas never materialized at least not publicly. July 27, 2021 ended with the usual, hire a consultant to deliver the desired results, especially when the appointed subcommittee didn’t do the job for you. With this like so much else under Mayor Arreguin’s tenure, one has to wonder if it will ever get done and who profits in the meantime. The table is the staff projected timeline.
Next Steps for Objective Density, Design and Shadow Standards Recommendations
Timeframe
General Task
Summer 2021
Refer to City Manager to move three recommendations forward
Fall 2021
Staff to analyze recommendations in advance of commission meetings
Winter 2021
Planning Commission and Design Review Committee provide input
Spring 2022
Staff develop zoning language
Summer 2022
Planning Commission and Council hold public hearings and adopt standards
On August 4, 2021 at the Commission on Disability, the July fire false alarm at the Amistad House was brought forward through public comment. Elevators in multi-floor buildings are programmed everywhere to shut down when a fire alarm is activated leaving anyone who is disabled and unable to navigate stairs stuck waiting until help arrives to carry them out. There needs to be a better solution. Those who were wheelchair and assistive device dependent thought they were trapped in a burning building until news of the false alarm reached them.
The new Best Western on the corner of Sacramento and University planned two hotel rooms on the ground floor, but put one of the rooms for a disabled person on the 2nd floor and the other on the 3rd floor. While I brought up the foolishness of this planning, ZAB declined to request a change which was perfectly possible. I have long advocated unsuccessfully for disabled units on the ground floor of buildings instead of vacant commercial. While any able-bodied person can suffer from a disabling accident or develop a disabling disease, it is long past time to change planning thinking on place making for the disabled living and visiting the Berkeley community.
This is long already and ends with one more request: PLEASE go to the Activist’s Calendar and sign up for the Wildfire Workshop and watch the videos.
Reading recommendations: I have two more besides The Fifth Risk and Premonition. If you are looking for a novel to buoy you through travel delays and hours in transit, Stacy Abrams, the politician, the founder of Fair Fight Action writes novels in her spare time. While Justice Sleeps (e-book available thru the Berkeley library) is just the kind of fantastical story that is perfect for mindless diversion on a travel day fraught with delays.
The more important read is: Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism published in 2020. Applebaum writes of people she knows, colleagues, who are embracing authoritarianism. This book couldn’t be more prescient as news of Tucker Carlson’s week in Hungary and admiration for Viktor Orban fills the air waves. The entirety of Carlson’s visit encircles rejection of America’s racial diversity and multicultural democracy.
July 25, 2021
Where to begin? City Council voted Tuesday evening to extend the COVID-19 emergency to October 1, 2021, an action that makes a lot of sense given that the number of recorded daily new cases is skyrocketing even here in California. The other pieces to the City Council COVID vote is that meetings will continue as remote, new legislation is at a standstill and the stranglehold on commissions will continue.
Back to where to begin, I was almost done with this edition of the Activist’s Diary when I took a glance at Earthweek by Steve Newman in today’s San Francisco Chronicle for the week ending Friday, July 23. I’ve been cutting these out of the paper and collecting them for some time. I can’t say why I started, but today seeing what I already know in print was startling. The title has always been, “Earthweek: a diary of the planet.” Today it is “Earthweek: Diary of a Changing World.” That title change was followed by:
“Atmospheric experts concede that they were shocked by the intensity of recent European floods and the North American heat dome, saying their computer models are not yet able to project such extremes. Some scientists say the next official predictions due out in August by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] will already be outdated when released because of the rapidly intensifying climate emergency. Extreme weather events are now happening with greater frequency.”
My reading for this last week was The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum. Like nearly all the books I pick up, I am fascinated by the content and this one was so interesting, because of the extreme weather events we are living through and the computers we carry around in our phones. I have a list of cities on my iPhone where my friends and family live that I can check in an instant for air quality, visibility and, of course, the weather, but were the floods in Europe predicted?
Yes, I found an article by Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology, University of Reading (the University of Reading is described in the book) stating that she predicted the flooding, but I think like the problem stated by Steve Newman that computer models are not up to the job neither is our comprehension of the climate extremes and weather events we face. https://theconversation.com/europes-catastrophic-flooding-was-forecast-well-in-advance-what-went-so-wrong-164818
We are in a rapidly intensifying emergency, but we are acting as if that emergency is still off into some distant future like the end of this century or beyond. If the European floods, northwest heat dome, fires that burn so hot that they create their own weather and extreme and exceptional droughts are what we get at 1.2°C of temperature rise what happens when we cross 1.5°C in a couple of years?
The California Senate Bills SB 9 (author Toni Atkins) and SB 10 (author Scott Wiener) coming up for a vote have not one shred of attention to the environment and climate. These housing bills supported by Nancy Skinner and Buffy Wicks are the dream of real estate developers and California YIMBY. It is as though the only thing that matters is building everywhere for an explosion of population and the desired spending that follows to fill the campaign coffers.
I think about a statement years ago from a friend H. Roger Smith, “We can’t continue to cover our farmland with housing and expect to survive as a nation.” I don’t think H was into bugs, but there is another quote that has been on my mind from the biologist Edward O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world.” Wilson is quoted by Douglas W. Tallamy with the following in many of his talks available on YouTube.
“If, insects were to disappear most flowering plants would go extinct, that would change the physical structure and energy flow of most terrestrial habitats, which would cause the collapse of the food webs that support amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The biosphere would rot due to the loss of insect decomposters. Humanity would be doomed.”
Tallamy isn’t all doom and gloom. He gives us a way out and writes and speaks about the path to follow to restore habitat and ecosystems.
Building housing needs to be balanced with providing connected open green space for biodiversity and space for the insects that run the world. That open green space cannot be filled with ornamental non-native plants and the bug spray needs to stay on the shelf. We can’t build lot line to lot line or leave a little strip between hardscape and buildings with no regard for biodiversity and ecosystems and expect to survive as a species.
If you are not already converted to planting natives and using what space you have for native plants then it is time to pick up a Tallamy book and start with these YouTube videos: How Gardening with Native Plants Helps Wildlife, CA Focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKe0UzqazuU and Bringing Nature Home to Lancaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJbP0yA0gc
This coming Tuesday item 28 in the council agenda is: Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows. Mayor Arreguin said at the Agenda and Rules Committee on July 12th that he would be submitting a Supplemental. Another of the usual Arreguin M.O.s. Submit something at the last minute that no one has had time to read and digest and expect a majority vote from the faithful who are too timid, cowered or lacking in backbone to stand against it.
I wouldn’t hold my breath that Arreguin will come up with anything that considers the environment, biodiversity, ecosystems or how density, lot coverage, hardscape can actually change local climate through heat island effect and exacerbate the critical state of the drought with water runoff and loss of trees and insects. Arreguin from all appearances seems to be driven by ambition. Doing real work to address things like the environment and climate just get in the way.
Addressing climate and the environment means delivering bad news and that is something politicians are loath to do. Look at all the hand wringing Councilmember Wengraf has done over the years around fire. Will all those winding narrow roads in the hills ever get red paint to prohibit street parking? Councilmember Hahn for all her protestations of caring about climate is an unreliable vote. Councilmember Droste is already deep in the California YIMBY build, build, build cult. Councilmember Taplin is doing better than I expected, but it was real estate PAC money and support from Arreguin and Hahn that put him into office. He appears to be holding steadfast to the myth that building more housing will make it affordable. Taplin like Robinson need to read Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick Condon.
Finding someone who actually comprehends the climate emergency and integrates it into consistent action is hard to find. Only one member of council stands out, Kate Harrison. I wish she was our mayor.
I remember when I first woke up to climate and got involved in the anti-fracking movement. I was walking with Cate Leger and Kathy Dervin. All three of us were on our way to Kathy’s plug-in hybrid Prius for a trip to Sacramento to speak at hearing on fracking. Kathy was talking about not wanting to give up her natural gas stove and Cate, the architect with a focus on green architecture, turned to Kathy in an insistent way and said, “get over it.” Cate lives in a compact all electric house with solar and barrels for water collection.
I finally ditched burning methane in my kitchen, my water heater and house in 2019. Natural gas is METHANE. You may be horrified about methane leaks from oil wells or bubbling up from thawing permafrost, but do you think when you turn on that gas stove you are burning toxic methane in your kitchen?
This should be enough to stew over. Rather than crawling under the covers and trying to hide, compel yourself to act, go through the Activist’s Calendar, pick your meetings to attend, show up and comment.
I can say from experience, it is way easier to go on zoom than to arrive in person, although it was always more interesting to watch the room. I usually have a heavy list of city meetings and this week is no different. Besides council on Tuesday, there is Zero Waste on Monday, Energy Commission and the meeting on water and drought on Wednesday and Reimagining Public Safety on Thursday.
And, pick up the challenge from Douglas Tallamy. He has convinced me. I’m putting my plan together to pull up non-natives.
As for COVID, it is looking more and more like Laurie Garrett, the author of the 1994 best seller The Coming Plague, had it right when she said over a year ago that her best-case scenario was 36 months in predicting how long the pandemic would last. It is looking more like COVID will be with us for a very, very long time.
Where to begin? City Council voted Tuesday evening to extend the COVID-19 emergency to October 1, 2021, an action that makes a lot of sense given that the number of recorded daily new cases is skyrocketing even here in California. The other pieces to the City Council COVID vote is that meetings will continue as remote, new legislation is at a standstill and the stranglehold on commissions will continue.
Back to where to begin, I was almost done with this edition of the Activist’s Diary when I took a glance at Earthweek by Steve Newman in today’s San Francisco Chronicle for the week ending Friday, July 23. I’ve been cutting these out of the paper and collecting them for some time. I can’t say why I started, but today seeing what I already know in print was startling. The title has always been, “Earthweek: a diary of the planet.” Today it is “Earthweek: Diary of a Changing World.” That title change was followed by:
“Atmospheric experts concede that they were shocked by the intensity of recent European floods and the North American heat dome, saying their computer models are not yet able to project such extremes. Some scientists say the next official predictions due out in August by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] will already be outdated when released because of the rapidly intensifying climate emergency. Extreme weather events are now happening with greater frequency.”
My reading for this last week was The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum. Like nearly all the books I pick up, I am fascinated by the content and this one was so interesting, because of the extreme weather events we are living through and the computers we carry around in our phones. I have a list of cities on my iPhone where my friends and family live that I can check in an instant for air quality, visibility and, of course, the weather, but were the floods in Europe predicted?
Yes, I found an article by Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology, University of Reading (the University of Reading is described in the book) stating that she predicted the flooding, but I think like the problem stated by Steve Newman that computer models are not up to the job neither is our comprehension of the climate extremes and weather events we face. https://theconversation.com/europes-catastrophic-flooding-was-forecast-well-in-advance-what-went-so-wrong-164818
We are in a rapidly intensifying emergency, but we are acting as if that emergency is still off into some distant future like the end of this century or beyond. If the European floods, northwest heat dome, fires that burn so hot that they create their own weather and extreme and exceptional droughts are what we get at 1.2°C of temperature rise what happens when we cross 1.5°C in a couple of years?
The California Senate Bills SB 9 (author Toni Atkins) and SB 10 (author Scott Wiener) coming up for a vote have not one shred of attention to the environment and climate. These housing bills supported by Nancy Skinner and Buffy Wicks are the dream of real estate developers and California YIMBY. It is as though the only thing that matters is building everywhere for an explosion of population and the desired spending that follows to fill the campaign coffers.
I think about a statement years ago from a friend H. Roger Smith, “We can’t continue to cover our farmland with housing and expect to survive as a nation.” I don’t think H was into bugs, but there is another quote that has been on my mind from the biologist Edward O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world.” Wilson is quoted by Douglas W. Tallamy with the following in many of his talks available on YouTube.
“If, insects were to disappear most flowering plants would go extinct, that would change the physical structure and energy flow of most terrestrial habitats, which would cause the collapse of the food webs that support amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The biosphere would rot due to the loss of insect decomposters. Humanity would be doomed.”
Tallamy isn’t all doom and gloom. He gives us a way out and writes and speaks about the path to follow to restore habitat and ecosystems.
Building housing needs to be balanced with providing connected open green space for biodiversity and space for the insects that run the world. That open green space cannot be filled with ornamental non-native plants and the bug spray needs to stay on the shelf. We can’t build lot line to lot line or leave a little strip between hardscape and buildings with no regard for biodiversity and ecosystems and expect to survive as a species.
If you are not already converted to planting natives and using what space you have for native plants then it is time to pick up a Tallamy book and start with these YouTube videos: How Gardening with Native Plants Helps Wildlife, CA Focus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKe0UzqazuU and Bringing Nature Home to Lancaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJbP0yA0gc
This coming Tuesday item 28 in the council agenda is: Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows. Mayor Arreguin said at the Agenda and Rules Committee on July 12th that he would be submitting a Supplemental. Another of the usual Arreguin M.O.s. Submit something at the last minute that no one has had time to read and digest and expect a majority vote from the faithful who are too timid, cowered or lacking in backbone to stand against it.
I wouldn’t hold my breath that Arreguin will come up with anything that considers the environment, biodiversity, ecosystems or how density, lot coverage, hardscape can actually change local climate through heat island effect and exacerbate the critical state of the drought with water runoff and loss of trees and insects. Arreguin from all appearances seems to be driven by ambition. Doing real work to address things like the environment and climate just get in the way.
Addressing climate and the environment means delivering bad news and that is something politicians are loath to do. Look at all the hand wringing Councilmember Wengraf has done over the years around fire. Will all those winding narrow roads in the hills ever get red paint to prohibit street parking? Councilmember Hahn for all her protestations of caring about climate is an unreliable vote. Councilmember Droste is already deep in the California YIMBY build, build, build cult. Councilmember Taplin is doing better than I expected, but it was real estate PAC money and support from Arreguin and Hahn that put him into office. He appears to be holding steadfast to the myth that building more housing will make it affordable. Taplin like Robinson need to read Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick Condon.
Finding someone who actually comprehends the climate emergency and integrates it into consistent action is hard to find. Only one member of council stands out, Kate Harrison. I wish she was our mayor.
I remember when I first woke up to climate and got involved in the anti-fracking movement. I was walking with Cate Leger and Kathy Dervin. All three of us were on our way to Kathy’s plug-in hybrid Prius for a trip to Sacramento to speak at hearing on fracking. Kathy was talking about not wanting to give up her natural gas stove and Cate, the architect with a focus on green architecture, turned to Kathy in an insistent way and said, “get over it.” Cate lives in a compact all electric house with solar and barrels for water collection.
I finally ditched burning methane in my kitchen, my water heater and house in 2019. Natural gas is METHANE. You may be horrified about methane leaks from oil wells or bubbling up from thawing permafrost, but do you think when you turn on that gas stove you are burning toxic methane in your kitchen?
This should be enough to stew over. Rather than crawling under the covers and trying to hide, compel yourself to act, go through the Activist’s Calendar, pick your meetings to attend, show up and comment.
I can say from experience, it is way easier to go on zoom than to arrive in person, although it was always more interesting to watch the room. I usually have a heavy list of city meetings and this week is no different. Besides council on Tuesday, there is Zero Waste on Monday, Energy Commission and the meeting on water and drought on Wednesday and Reimagining Public Safety on Thursday.
And, pick up the challenge from Douglas Tallamy. He has convinced me. I’m putting my plan together to pull up non-natives.
As for COVID, it is looking more and more like Laurie Garrett, the author of the 1994 best seller The Coming Plague, had it right when she said over a year ago that her best-case scenario was 36 months in predicting how long the pandemic would last. It is looking more like COVID will be with us for a very, very long time.
July 17, 2021
This feels like a week to pour a glass of wine, pick up a mindless book and eat chocolate. That is as long as there is water left to grow the grapes and the crop doesn’t cook in a heat dome and the tiny chocolate midge insects survive to pollinate the cocoa plant. The drought map https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ looks worse each week and unless we can learn to appreciate the critical importance of insects and their host plants a lot more is at risk than just chocolate. Summer has barely started. The west is burning and so is Siberia. The flood waters in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are starting to recede and we are supposed to be on watch for lightening. As for mindless books, there is no shortage, but I can’t seem to pull my head out of the books on politics and the environment.
Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning just published a new book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. Their other book A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America was loaned to me by a friend pre-pandemic. I guess it’s time to get past page 53 in A Very Stable Genius so I can pick up their newest work. While I am into finishing projects started, I need to put the pictures of the Trump family and their enablers into my artwork, “an American Icon The Real Welfare Queens Found.”
The talk all week in my usual string of podcasts has been how close we were to a successful coup and how we should think of January 6th as a warm up, a beginning and not an end. I agree with that analysis. I felt differently back in 1983 when I met my future husband and we would get into political discussions. He warned over and over that the US democracy was headed in the direction of collapse. Over the years, I always disagreed, but that was then and this is now. With what is happening on the voting rights front, I am beginning to wonder whether our country will hold together as democracy or even hold together as a union of states for the long term.
In the midst of all the depressing headlines, the Civic Arts Commission had some good news. The onsite public art for the Logan Park building, the new mixed-use project under construction at 2352 Shattuck will be a poem by Amanda Gorman. Amanda Gorman is the young poet who captured our attention at the inauguration. It will be another work, not “The Hill We Climb” which she read at President Biden’s Inauguration.
With the City of Berkeley winning in Superior Court as announced on July 9, the relationship between the UC Regents and our City Council lead by Mayor Arreguin is feeling less like collaboration and instead that the eight votes for an agreement with UC came from collaborators. The court win put the City of Berkeley in a prime position of leverage to seek real mitigation to addressing the impacts of UC’s boundless expansion of student enrollment. From all appearances that leverage was tossed for what appears to be a settlement that will impress the uninformed, especially those who keep their noses in national politics and ignore that local politics has more impact on daily life.
We will not know the content of the full agreement until after the Regents’ meeting this coming week, but two facts make me uneasy: 1) Arreguin anxiously put out a press release Wednesday morning after he declared at council Tuesday evening that no action had been taken during closed session. This felt very much like trying to get out a story line before a misdeed was discovered. 2) Councilmember Harrison was reported to have voted against it. Harrison, the only councilmember with actual backbone, knows a bad deal when she sees it. Harrison also cares more about housing and climate than to give up on those issues for an enticing dangle of money.
If you have not read the July 9, 2021 order from Judge Brad Seligman here it is:
“SBN’s [Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods] petition for writ of mandate is GRANTED. The City of Berkeley’s petition for writ of mandate is GRANTED. SBN and Berkeley shall meet and confer to draft a proposed judgement and form of writ consistent with this Order and shall jointly file the proposed judgement and form of writ within 10 court days of service of notice of entry of this order.”
The City and SBN won on three points, really four points, because Judge Seligman wrote that UC could not study the impact of enrollment by using an “Updated Baseline.” In plain language, UC used the actual “unbounded” excess enrollment which was approximately 7500 more students than the commitment UC made to the City of Berkeley in the previous 2005 agreement that student enrollment would stabilize at 33,450 students. The number of students enrolled at UC over and above what was planned has impacted housing through displacement, gentrification and homelessness and increased the cost to the city to provide services like policing, fire and emergency medical services and public health.
The Court response to increased noise to residential neighborhoods was: “The Court cannot find substantial evidence in the record supporting FSEIR’s conclusion [UC conclusion in the final supplemental environmental impact report] that a further marginal increase in student enrollment would not exacerbate noise issues or have a cumulative impacts.”
As for impact of the Upper Hearst Development on nearby historical resources, the Court determined, “…There is no evidence that the addition of a new building would have a material impact on the historical significance of the nearby historical structures…”
The whole purpose of redoing the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) is to identify impacts and then establish a plan to mitigate/address the impacts. The City of Berkeley under the direction of Mayor Arreguin with seven councilmembers agreed to drop the lawsuits and not to engage in a future lawsuit over the new UC Long Range Development Plan. The city thereby gave up when it had the most leverage.
Money greases the wheels. The more students that are enrolled, the more students there will be to pack into apartments to meet the rents and push out existing tenants. With the news that UC plans to increase tuition, that packing might just be a little tighter.
For those not tracking city operations, the settlement of $82.6 million over 16 years will sound like a fantastic deal which is what I expect the mayor is counting on. For the rest of us, the impact on our environment, local climate, housing and our pocket book as we pay out more for services and to put a roof over our head will be felt for a long time.
The council summer recess can’t come soon enough.
You might ask, “did I read anything this last week?” The answer is yes, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon. This is the book Rosa Brooks finished writing before joining the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The DC MPD culminated in her latest book, Tangled Up in Blue Policing the American City. Brooks covers a lot of thought provoking ground in How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything including the use of drones, the blurring of what is war and what is peace in the war on terror and another book Duck! Rabbit!.
This feels like a week to pour a glass of wine, pick up a mindless book and eat chocolate. That is as long as there is water left to grow the grapes and the crop doesn’t cook in a heat dome and the tiny chocolate midge insects survive to pollinate the cocoa plant. The drought map https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ looks worse each week and unless we can learn to appreciate the critical importance of insects and their host plants a lot more is at risk than just chocolate. Summer has barely started. The west is burning and so is Siberia. The flood waters in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are starting to recede and we are supposed to be on watch for lightening. As for mindless books, there is no shortage, but I can’t seem to pull my head out of the books on politics and the environment.
Philip Rucker and Carol Leoning just published a new book I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. Their other book A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America was loaned to me by a friend pre-pandemic. I guess it’s time to get past page 53 in A Very Stable Genius so I can pick up their newest work. While I am into finishing projects started, I need to put the pictures of the Trump family and their enablers into my artwork, “an American Icon The Real Welfare Queens Found.”
The talk all week in my usual string of podcasts has been how close we were to a successful coup and how we should think of January 6th as a warm up, a beginning and not an end. I agree with that analysis. I felt differently back in 1983 when I met my future husband and we would get into political discussions. He warned over and over that the US democracy was headed in the direction of collapse. Over the years, I always disagreed, but that was then and this is now. With what is happening on the voting rights front, I am beginning to wonder whether our country will hold together as democracy or even hold together as a union of states for the long term.
In the midst of all the depressing headlines, the Civic Arts Commission had some good news. The onsite public art for the Logan Park building, the new mixed-use project under construction at 2352 Shattuck will be a poem by Amanda Gorman. Amanda Gorman is the young poet who captured our attention at the inauguration. It will be another work, not “The Hill We Climb” which she read at President Biden’s Inauguration.
With the City of Berkeley winning in Superior Court as announced on July 9, the relationship between the UC Regents and our City Council lead by Mayor Arreguin is feeling less like collaboration and instead that the eight votes for an agreement with UC came from collaborators. The court win put the City of Berkeley in a prime position of leverage to seek real mitigation to addressing the impacts of UC’s boundless expansion of student enrollment. From all appearances that leverage was tossed for what appears to be a settlement that will impress the uninformed, especially those who keep their noses in national politics and ignore that local politics has more impact on daily life.
We will not know the content of the full agreement until after the Regents’ meeting this coming week, but two facts make me uneasy: 1) Arreguin anxiously put out a press release Wednesday morning after he declared at council Tuesday evening that no action had been taken during closed session. This felt very much like trying to get out a story line before a misdeed was discovered. 2) Councilmember Harrison was reported to have voted against it. Harrison, the only councilmember with actual backbone, knows a bad deal when she sees it. Harrison also cares more about housing and climate than to give up on those issues for an enticing dangle of money.
If you have not read the July 9, 2021 order from Judge Brad Seligman here it is:
“SBN’s [Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods] petition for writ of mandate is GRANTED. The City of Berkeley’s petition for writ of mandate is GRANTED. SBN and Berkeley shall meet and confer to draft a proposed judgement and form of writ consistent with this Order and shall jointly file the proposed judgement and form of writ within 10 court days of service of notice of entry of this order.”
The City and SBN won on three points, really four points, because Judge Seligman wrote that UC could not study the impact of enrollment by using an “Updated Baseline.” In plain language, UC used the actual “unbounded” excess enrollment which was approximately 7500 more students than the commitment UC made to the City of Berkeley in the previous 2005 agreement that student enrollment would stabilize at 33,450 students. The number of students enrolled at UC over and above what was planned has impacted housing through displacement, gentrification and homelessness and increased the cost to the city to provide services like policing, fire and emergency medical services and public health.
The Court response to increased noise to residential neighborhoods was: “The Court cannot find substantial evidence in the record supporting FSEIR’s conclusion [UC conclusion in the final supplemental environmental impact report] that a further marginal increase in student enrollment would not exacerbate noise issues or have a cumulative impacts.”
As for impact of the Upper Hearst Development on nearby historical resources, the Court determined, “…There is no evidence that the addition of a new building would have a material impact on the historical significance of the nearby historical structures…”
The whole purpose of redoing the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) is to identify impacts and then establish a plan to mitigate/address the impacts. The City of Berkeley under the direction of Mayor Arreguin with seven councilmembers agreed to drop the lawsuits and not to engage in a future lawsuit over the new UC Long Range Development Plan. The city thereby gave up when it had the most leverage.
Money greases the wheels. The more students that are enrolled, the more students there will be to pack into apartments to meet the rents and push out existing tenants. With the news that UC plans to increase tuition, that packing might just be a little tighter.
For those not tracking city operations, the settlement of $82.6 million over 16 years will sound like a fantastic deal which is what I expect the mayor is counting on. For the rest of us, the impact on our environment, local climate, housing and our pocket book as we pay out more for services and to put a roof over our head will be felt for a long time.
The council summer recess can’t come soon enough.
You might ask, “did I read anything this last week?” The answer is yes, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon. This is the book Rosa Brooks finished writing before joining the DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The DC MPD culminated in her latest book, Tangled Up in Blue Policing the American City. Brooks covers a lot of thought provoking ground in How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything including the use of drones, the blurring of what is war and what is peace in the war on terror and another book Duck! Rabbit!.
July 11, 2021
If you want to appreciate how California SB 9 and SB 10 will change the local climates go out on a warm day and stand on the sidewalk in the bright sunshine and then walk into the shade under the canopy of a Western Sycamore or large majestic oak. It’s hard to miss the difference between the cooling of majestic trees and the heat that radiates from sidewalk baked in a full sun. Add in buildings that collect and radiate heat and you have the “heat island effect.”
Trees need space to grow. Eliminating green space by covering land with buildings that soak up heat is the future Toni Atkins and Scott Weiner in SB 9 and Scott Weiner in SB 10 have planned for us. It’s not a good one and it looks like Buffy Wicks will vote for this. Let’s remember our own councilmembers Bartlett, Droste, Kesarwani, Taplin and Mayor Arreguin all declared their allegiance to SB 9 on June 15th by refusing to support a letter to the State legislature in opposition to SB 9.
The week after the 4th of July was light in meetings. I attended only two of the nine I listed in my weekly Activist’s Calendar.
If I had listened to the Thom Hartmann podcast from July 6 and let the end of the CDC recording of breakthrough of COVID infections except in cases of hospitalization or death sink in before the Saturday outdoors birthday party, I might have reconsidered. The party was over food so, of course, no one had on masks. We were all vaccinated so that was reassuring.
What we know is the incidence of COVID across the country and even here in California has nearly doubled in the last two weeks. https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ What we don’t know is what percent are breakthrough infections and what percent of breakthrough infections result in long haulers syndrome. We don’t have good statistics on the incidence of long haulers syndrome in people who are unvaccinated. I’ve seen reports ranging from 10% to 33%. UC Davis gives an alarming incidence of long haulers syndrome, “More than one in four COVID-19 patients develop long-haul symptoms lasting for months – even if they had mild cases…” https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/newsroom/studies-show-long-haul-covid-19-afflicts-1-in-4-covid-19-patients-regardless-of-severity/2021/03#:~:text=Doctors%20have%20been%20estimating%20one,since%20February%20confirm%20that%20range.
What we also know now is that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne and catching COVID through touching some object is very unlikely, though washing our hands is still a very good idea. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253578
I did hear a lot at the birthday party how people are sick of zoom and anxious to be meeting in person. In much the same breath no one was looking forward to all the time lost in travel. I seem to be in the minority here. I happen to like zoom. I do understand that for some a stable network and possession of a working computer is an issue, but meetings in person limit attendance too to those who are physically able and have the means to travel to the location.
The Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) met Wednesday on one item an ordinance to regulate plastic bags at retail and food service establishments. I don’t know about you, but I am drowning in plastic bags. The ordinance is a good beginning, but there is so much more to do to get the presence of plastic everywhere under control. No vote was taken. One more FITES meeting is planned before council goes on recess July 28th.
For weeks now, I have been attending Zoning Adjustment Board and Design Review Committee meetings to request projects require bird safe glass, dark skies and planned landscapes include native plants only to realize that I have missed the most import part of the message on native plants. It all came together when I saw the announcement “Control Garden Pests Naturally” with pictures of leaves with bites out of them offered through the Ecology Center. I sent off my email along with some references:
“The sign of a successful gardener is a garden with a minimum of 70% native plants and plants with bites taken out of those leaves. If we only go so far as putting native plants in our yards, but then kill the bugs they support, we are breaking apart the ecosystem we sought to create.
Whether bugs on plants are killed with pesticides or killed with so called “natural” non-toxic pest control techniques, we are still disrupting ecosystems and putting the survival of birds and other species at risk by taking away their food. Bugs are food for birds. Even hummingbirds need caterpillars to feed their nestlings…”
Caterpillar: It’s What’s for Dinner https://nestwatch.org/connect/news/caterpillar-its-whats-for-dinner/
Over 2.9 billion birds have disappeared in North America since 1970. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/
Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2023989118
A better webinar would be “How to get over hating bugs and loving them as food for birds.” Another could be “Getting rid of ornamental plants and gardening for songbirds and pollinators.”
Two years ago, I used to stop at Allston Way between McKinley and Grant on my walk home from the Y to watch the dozens of pipevine caterpillars crawling and chewing the soft leaves of the pipevine. The pipevine plant and pipevine caterpillar have evolved together so that without that specific native plant there are no pipevine swallowtail butterflies. The vine was cut down to a stump to make way for a new fence and though it has started to come back I saw only one pipevine caterpillar this year.
It is not just Monsanto, roundup and the other herbicides and pesticides that is killing off insects and contributing to that 2.9 million missing birds. We can look in the mirror. It doesn’t have to end this way and that is the message of my favorite webinars from Douglas Tallamy. If we just cut lawns by half, plant native plants, keep our hands off the bug spray and let nature take hold, we can turn the loss of insects and birds around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHURaRv78QY
Bayer Healthcare, LLC which purchased Monsanto June 7, 2018 is making the rounds of city meetings to promote the proposed 30 year Development Agreement with the City of Berkeley and their suggested significant community benefits. A number of people called in to the Zoning Adjustment Board meeting Thursday night to say the offered benefits were inadequate including Loni Hancock, former Berkeley Mayor. I said there were others who could speak better to community benefits and asked that as the purchaser of Monsanto, that they plant demonstration gardens of native plants that grow and support insects without the use of Round-up. Bayer is on the docket again this week at the Planning Commission (significant community benefits) on Wednesday and the Design Review Committee (project design) on Thursday.
In closing, Nikole Hannah-Jones created quite a stir as one of the journalists with the 1619 Project examining how slavery has shaped America. Some on the political right have been whipped into hysteria over the 1619 Project and critical race theory. Critical race theory was created four decades ago by legal scholars as: ”an academic framework for examining how racism is embedded in America’s laws and institutions.” It is doubtful that any of those peddling the frenzy of misinformation would be interested in reading our book club choice The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.
In September 2019 when I spent an entire day in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, I was looking for the section on redlining and the history Rothstein covered so well. There was a lot on the slave ships and culture, but redlining was relegated to a flat file tucked away nearly out of sight. It is an amazing absence of attention to the laws and institutions which have had such a huge impact in preventing Black families from creating wealth through home ownership. And, property value, property taxes make the difference in the quality of schools.
My request for work of another woman who created quite a stir in her time came through from the Oakland Public Library as an audiobook, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was first published as a 40 week series in The National Era an abolitionist periodical in 1851 and then in a two volume book March 20,1852. The parallels in the banning of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the attempts to discredit Nikole Hannah-Jones, and censure the 1619 Project and critical race theory demonstrates we have a long way to go in coming to grips with our history and addressing racism.
If you want to appreciate how California SB 9 and SB 10 will change the local climates go out on a warm day and stand on the sidewalk in the bright sunshine and then walk into the shade under the canopy of a Western Sycamore or large majestic oak. It’s hard to miss the difference between the cooling of majestic trees and the heat that radiates from sidewalk baked in a full sun. Add in buildings that collect and radiate heat and you have the “heat island effect.”
Trees need space to grow. Eliminating green space by covering land with buildings that soak up heat is the future Toni Atkins and Scott Weiner in SB 9 and Scott Weiner in SB 10 have planned for us. It’s not a good one and it looks like Buffy Wicks will vote for this. Let’s remember our own councilmembers Bartlett, Droste, Kesarwani, Taplin and Mayor Arreguin all declared their allegiance to SB 9 on June 15th by refusing to support a letter to the State legislature in opposition to SB 9.
The week after the 4th of July was light in meetings. I attended only two of the nine I listed in my weekly Activist’s Calendar.
If I had listened to the Thom Hartmann podcast from July 6 and let the end of the CDC recording of breakthrough of COVID infections except in cases of hospitalization or death sink in before the Saturday outdoors birthday party, I might have reconsidered. The party was over food so, of course, no one had on masks. We were all vaccinated so that was reassuring.
What we know is the incidence of COVID across the country and even here in California has nearly doubled in the last two weeks. https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ What we don’t know is what percent are breakthrough infections and what percent of breakthrough infections result in long haulers syndrome. We don’t have good statistics on the incidence of long haulers syndrome in people who are unvaccinated. I’ve seen reports ranging from 10% to 33%. UC Davis gives an alarming incidence of long haulers syndrome, “More than one in four COVID-19 patients develop long-haul symptoms lasting for months – even if they had mild cases…” https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/newsroom/studies-show-long-haul-covid-19-afflicts-1-in-4-covid-19-patients-regardless-of-severity/2021/03#:~:text=Doctors%20have%20been%20estimating%20one,since%20February%20confirm%20that%20range.
What we also know now is that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne and catching COVID through touching some object is very unlikely, though washing our hands is still a very good idea. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253578
I did hear a lot at the birthday party how people are sick of zoom and anxious to be meeting in person. In much the same breath no one was looking forward to all the time lost in travel. I seem to be in the minority here. I happen to like zoom. I do understand that for some a stable network and possession of a working computer is an issue, but meetings in person limit attendance too to those who are physically able and have the means to travel to the location.
The Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) met Wednesday on one item an ordinance to regulate plastic bags at retail and food service establishments. I don’t know about you, but I am drowning in plastic bags. The ordinance is a good beginning, but there is so much more to do to get the presence of plastic everywhere under control. No vote was taken. One more FITES meeting is planned before council goes on recess July 28th.
For weeks now, I have been attending Zoning Adjustment Board and Design Review Committee meetings to request projects require bird safe glass, dark skies and planned landscapes include native plants only to realize that I have missed the most import part of the message on native plants. It all came together when I saw the announcement “Control Garden Pests Naturally” with pictures of leaves with bites out of them offered through the Ecology Center. I sent off my email along with some references:
“The sign of a successful gardener is a garden with a minimum of 70% native plants and plants with bites taken out of those leaves. If we only go so far as putting native plants in our yards, but then kill the bugs they support, we are breaking apart the ecosystem we sought to create.
Whether bugs on plants are killed with pesticides or killed with so called “natural” non-toxic pest control techniques, we are still disrupting ecosystems and putting the survival of birds and other species at risk by taking away their food. Bugs are food for birds. Even hummingbirds need caterpillars to feed their nestlings…”
Caterpillar: It’s What’s for Dinner https://nestwatch.org/connect/news/caterpillar-its-whats-for-dinner/
Over 2.9 billion birds have disappeared in North America since 1970. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/
Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2023989118
A better webinar would be “How to get over hating bugs and loving them as food for birds.” Another could be “Getting rid of ornamental plants and gardening for songbirds and pollinators.”
Two years ago, I used to stop at Allston Way between McKinley and Grant on my walk home from the Y to watch the dozens of pipevine caterpillars crawling and chewing the soft leaves of the pipevine. The pipevine plant and pipevine caterpillar have evolved together so that without that specific native plant there are no pipevine swallowtail butterflies. The vine was cut down to a stump to make way for a new fence and though it has started to come back I saw only one pipevine caterpillar this year.
It is not just Monsanto, roundup and the other herbicides and pesticides that is killing off insects and contributing to that 2.9 million missing birds. We can look in the mirror. It doesn’t have to end this way and that is the message of my favorite webinars from Douglas Tallamy. If we just cut lawns by half, plant native plants, keep our hands off the bug spray and let nature take hold, we can turn the loss of insects and birds around. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHURaRv78QY
Bayer Healthcare, LLC which purchased Monsanto June 7, 2018 is making the rounds of city meetings to promote the proposed 30 year Development Agreement with the City of Berkeley and their suggested significant community benefits. A number of people called in to the Zoning Adjustment Board meeting Thursday night to say the offered benefits were inadequate including Loni Hancock, former Berkeley Mayor. I said there were others who could speak better to community benefits and asked that as the purchaser of Monsanto, that they plant demonstration gardens of native plants that grow and support insects without the use of Round-up. Bayer is on the docket again this week at the Planning Commission (significant community benefits) on Wednesday and the Design Review Committee (project design) on Thursday.
In closing, Nikole Hannah-Jones created quite a stir as one of the journalists with the 1619 Project examining how slavery has shaped America. Some on the political right have been whipped into hysteria over the 1619 Project and critical race theory. Critical race theory was created four decades ago by legal scholars as: ”an academic framework for examining how racism is embedded in America’s laws and institutions.” It is doubtful that any of those peddling the frenzy of misinformation would be interested in reading our book club choice The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.
In September 2019 when I spent an entire day in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, I was looking for the section on redlining and the history Rothstein covered so well. There was a lot on the slave ships and culture, but redlining was relegated to a flat file tucked away nearly out of sight. It is an amazing absence of attention to the laws and institutions which have had such a huge impact in preventing Black families from creating wealth through home ownership. And, property value, property taxes make the difference in the quality of schools.
My request for work of another woman who created quite a stir in her time came through from the Oakland Public Library as an audiobook, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was first published as a 40 week series in The National Era an abolitionist periodical in 1851 and then in a two volume book March 20,1852. The parallels in the banning of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the attempts to discredit Nikole Hannah-Jones, and censure the 1619 Project and critical race theory demonstrates we have a long way to go in coming to grips with our history and addressing racism.
July 3, 2021
Last Monday night June 28, I tuned into the interview by Chris Hayes with Governor Jay Inslee from the State of Washington and heard Inslee say in regard to the heat wave in the north west and the drought, “this is the beginning of a permanent emergency.”
I know the permafrost is thawing releasing methane, the melting of glaciers is accelerating, Siberia has heat waves, the warnings of a heating planet come with increasing intensity and yet despite all this the fact that a little town in Canada, far to our north, could be hotter than Palm Springs in the California desert is still a shock. That is exactly what happened when Lytton, Canada hit 121.3°F on Tuesday before it burned to the ground on Wednesday. The cause of that fire is still unknown.
The big event of City Council for the week was passing the budget on Tuesday evening for FY2022 (July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022). It was weeks of budget meetings that felt like they went nowhere with endless piles of documents and presentations to weed through including the 484 page budget booklet. In the end thanks to the unrelenting work of Councilmember Harrison, climate finally got a seat at the table. Without Harrison’s persistence at the budget meetings in the morning and at council Tuesday evening, the funding requested by Public Works to begin EV (electric vehicle) charging station infrastructure work would not have been allocated. The final was $300,000 now with the remaining $850,000 to be allocated in November.
One has to wonder where our City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley is on responding to climate. For a city that claimed to care about climate with the declaration of a climate emergency in June 2018 and a goal to transition from fossil fuel vehicles to an electric fleet by 2030, it didn’t feel like there was recognition of a climate emergency when the initial allocation to climate in the budget presented by the City Manager started as $20,000 for BESO (Building Energy Saving Ordinance https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BESO/). Everything else was deferred.
The transition of the Berkeley city fleet off fossil fuels to an EV fleet can’t happen without the infrastructure of charging stations to support it. San Diego looks to be way ahead of Berkeley with transitioning to an electric fleet. San Diego purchased an EV Streetsweeper last year according to the Parade magazine that comes with the Sunday paper. I’m not sure if this is the brand, but the Globalsweeper https://globalsweeper.com/ looks pretty impressive.
There’s another piece to Public Works that I started noticing. I’ve been reviewing the council agendas for over six years and what I see in requests from new Director of Public Works looks like a lot of “catch up.” All of us experience the poor condition of our streets and that raises another question of just what was the practice of maintaining the infrastructure of the city including the city buildings prior to July 13, 2020 when Liam Garland was hired as Director of Public Works. I would suggest we look up the chain of responsibility in how the city is managed.
The effort to cut the budget allocation to policing through transfer to other services like the Special Care Unit (SCU - Mental Health – Crisis Intervention) and BerkDOT (Berkeley Department of Transportation) ended more as a holding pattern. Both of these programs are still in the development stage. The argument put forward for maintaining the police budget is that reimagining is still in transition.
The main event at the Wednesday evening Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meeting was the Police Department Overview. There was information that was new at least to me like the probationary period of a new hire is two years and that the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Basic Police Academy is accepted by the Berkeley Police Department. Dan Lindheim noted that the City of Oakland does not hire from the Alameda County Academy. I was hoping for more detail in what training was provided in the two year probationary period especially after reading Tangled Up in Blue Policing the American City by Rosa Brooks. What we got was the presentation posted on the task force website. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/RIPST.aspx
I can’t think about Alameda County Sheriff Ahern without associating him with the photos I saw of the Oathkeepers booth with an Alameda County Sheriff’s Office canopy over it at the Urban Shield exercises [terrorist response training] https://www.facebook.com/StopUrbanShield/.
I was part of the community that asked council to end Berkeley Police participation in Urban Shield. We lost 5 to 4 on July 24, 2018 with the mayor holding the deciding vote with councilmembers Maio, Hahn, Droste, and Wengraf in favor of Urban Shield. Councilmembers Bartlett, Davila, Harrison, and Worthington voted in opposition. The Alameda County Supervisors ended Urban Shield in 2019, but the memory still lingers especially after the Oathkeepers’ role in the January 6 insurrection.
The point is, there was a divide on policing long before the killing of George Floyd, the formation of the Fair and Impartial Policing Task Force and now the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force. And, trust is not likely to form when Deputy City Manager David White says as he did at the Wednesday task force meeting that the City Manager, Deputy City Manager, City Attorney, the Fire Chief, and Health, Housing & Community Services (HHCS) Director have been meeting every week on the SCU. When I was allowed to speak as a member of the public, I said I thought this kind of planning was supposed to come from the task force. Why then was there an administrative group meeting separately? White followed up that these meetings were just coordination planning.
The task force meetings always feel orchestrated to a predetermined end.
In closing, even before reading Dry Spring by Chris Wood I added the drought map https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ to my Thursday task list. The book, the map and the news are all pretty grim when it comes to water. Dry Spring was published in 2008 and Chris Wood was far more optimistic about the future response to drought than what has actually transpired. We still use clean drinkable water to flush our toilets.
Bill Maher asked in his new rules monologue if we are asking coal miners to stop mining coal why are we not asking almond farmers to stop growing almonds. 81% of the world’s almonds are grown in California. To grow one almond requires 1.1 gallons of water and to grow a pound takes 1,900 gallons of water.
Last Monday night June 28, I tuned into the interview by Chris Hayes with Governor Jay Inslee from the State of Washington and heard Inslee say in regard to the heat wave in the north west and the drought, “this is the beginning of a permanent emergency.”
I know the permafrost is thawing releasing methane, the melting of glaciers is accelerating, Siberia has heat waves, the warnings of a heating planet come with increasing intensity and yet despite all this the fact that a little town in Canada, far to our north, could be hotter than Palm Springs in the California desert is still a shock. That is exactly what happened when Lytton, Canada hit 121.3°F on Tuesday before it burned to the ground on Wednesday. The cause of that fire is still unknown.
The big event of City Council for the week was passing the budget on Tuesday evening for FY2022 (July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2022). It was weeks of budget meetings that felt like they went nowhere with endless piles of documents and presentations to weed through including the 484 page budget booklet. In the end thanks to the unrelenting work of Councilmember Harrison, climate finally got a seat at the table. Without Harrison’s persistence at the budget meetings in the morning and at council Tuesday evening, the funding requested by Public Works to begin EV (electric vehicle) charging station infrastructure work would not have been allocated. The final was $300,000 now with the remaining $850,000 to be allocated in November.
One has to wonder where our City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley is on responding to climate. For a city that claimed to care about climate with the declaration of a climate emergency in June 2018 and a goal to transition from fossil fuel vehicles to an electric fleet by 2030, it didn’t feel like there was recognition of a climate emergency when the initial allocation to climate in the budget presented by the City Manager started as $20,000 for BESO (Building Energy Saving Ordinance https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BESO/). Everything else was deferred.
The transition of the Berkeley city fleet off fossil fuels to an EV fleet can’t happen without the infrastructure of charging stations to support it. San Diego looks to be way ahead of Berkeley with transitioning to an electric fleet. San Diego purchased an EV Streetsweeper last year according to the Parade magazine that comes with the Sunday paper. I’m not sure if this is the brand, but the Globalsweeper https://globalsweeper.com/ looks pretty impressive.
There’s another piece to Public Works that I started noticing. I’ve been reviewing the council agendas for over six years and what I see in requests from new Director of Public Works looks like a lot of “catch up.” All of us experience the poor condition of our streets and that raises another question of just what was the practice of maintaining the infrastructure of the city including the city buildings prior to July 13, 2020 when Liam Garland was hired as Director of Public Works. I would suggest we look up the chain of responsibility in how the city is managed.
The effort to cut the budget allocation to policing through transfer to other services like the Special Care Unit (SCU - Mental Health – Crisis Intervention) and BerkDOT (Berkeley Department of Transportation) ended more as a holding pattern. Both of these programs are still in the development stage. The argument put forward for maintaining the police budget is that reimagining is still in transition.
The main event at the Wednesday evening Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meeting was the Police Department Overview. There was information that was new at least to me like the probationary period of a new hire is two years and that the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Basic Police Academy is accepted by the Berkeley Police Department. Dan Lindheim noted that the City of Oakland does not hire from the Alameda County Academy. I was hoping for more detail in what training was provided in the two year probationary period especially after reading Tangled Up in Blue Policing the American City by Rosa Brooks. What we got was the presentation posted on the task force website. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/RIPST.aspx
I can’t think about Alameda County Sheriff Ahern without associating him with the photos I saw of the Oathkeepers booth with an Alameda County Sheriff’s Office canopy over it at the Urban Shield exercises [terrorist response training] https://www.facebook.com/StopUrbanShield/.
I was part of the community that asked council to end Berkeley Police participation in Urban Shield. We lost 5 to 4 on July 24, 2018 with the mayor holding the deciding vote with councilmembers Maio, Hahn, Droste, and Wengraf in favor of Urban Shield. Councilmembers Bartlett, Davila, Harrison, and Worthington voted in opposition. The Alameda County Supervisors ended Urban Shield in 2019, but the memory still lingers especially after the Oathkeepers’ role in the January 6 insurrection.
The point is, there was a divide on policing long before the killing of George Floyd, the formation of the Fair and Impartial Policing Task Force and now the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force. And, trust is not likely to form when Deputy City Manager David White says as he did at the Wednesday task force meeting that the City Manager, Deputy City Manager, City Attorney, the Fire Chief, and Health, Housing & Community Services (HHCS) Director have been meeting every week on the SCU. When I was allowed to speak as a member of the public, I said I thought this kind of planning was supposed to come from the task force. Why then was there an administrative group meeting separately? White followed up that these meetings were just coordination planning.
The task force meetings always feel orchestrated to a predetermined end.
In closing, even before reading Dry Spring by Chris Wood I added the drought map https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ to my Thursday task list. The book, the map and the news are all pretty grim when it comes to water. Dry Spring was published in 2008 and Chris Wood was far more optimistic about the future response to drought than what has actually transpired. We still use clean drinkable water to flush our toilets.
Bill Maher asked in his new rules monologue if we are asking coal miners to stop mining coal why are we not asking almond farmers to stop growing almonds. 81% of the world’s almonds are grown in California. To grow one almond requires 1.1 gallons of water and to grow a pound takes 1,900 gallons of water.
June 27, 2021
The week started with a roundtable discussion Sunday evening on TOPA the Tenants Opportunity Purchase Act. I was surprised by the slick mailers in opposition to TOPA that were shared on zoom during the discussion. TOPA was passed out of the Land Use Policy Committee May 20 with Councilmembers Hahn and Robinson voting yes and Droste voting no. If I had to take a guess on the outcome, TOPA has not shown up in any draft council agendas making it look like the opposition is the winner. Of course, the city is in full throttle to finishing the budget by Tuesday evening. If TOPA does happen to squeak by in a vote later this year, I doubt it will benefit more than a handful of tenants.
There were two budget meetings this last week and it doesn’t feel like the City is any further along. Most of the public commenters spoke to the union contract negotiations. At the Thursday meeting Councilmember Harrison said according to her calculations the police are 35% of the budget and there is an increase of $8,000,000 for FY2022. Harrison stated she was not happy with a “flat” police budget, but recognizes this is a year of transition. An increase is not okay. If that is how it stays, then she cannot vote for the budget. This is money that won’t be available for other services.
The next budget meeting on Monday at 9 am will be the telling one when the mayor reveals his proposal for FY2022.
One of the books I read this last week was Tangled Up in Blue Policing the American City by Rosa Brooks. Brooks, who is a Professor of Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center, joined the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) as a volunteer reserve police officer for four years before writing Tangled Up in Blue. Reserve officers are sworn members of the MPD and have the same training, certification and responsibilities as traditional police officers. In the book Brooks gives depth to the training and experiences that can’t be covered in this brief interview, but the interview still gives a glimpse into the problems. https://wamu.org/story/21/03/30/dc-gw-law-professor-police-officer-book/
Even before reading Tangled Up in Blue, I was thinking about how the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force seems to be circling around reorganizing with the initiation of the Special Care Unit (SCU) for the mentally ill and creating a new Department of Transportation – BerkDOT without ever touching the core issue: biased policing and the underlying causation. I’ve written previously how the meetings feel orchestrated to achieve a predetermined end. The next meeting of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force is Wednesday evening at 6 pm with the main agenda item: police department overview.
Councilmember Bartlett authored with co-sponsors Mayor Arreguin and Councilmember Davila the Safety for All: The George Floyd Community Safety Act – Development of a Progressive Police Academy. It was referred to the Public Safety Committee June 16, 2020 and withdrawn December 7, 2020 as financially infeasible.
After reading Tangled Up in Blue, I wonder how much of the training of our police is the same as what Rosa Brooks experienced at MPD or if our police have a program like the one created between MPD and Georgetown University after a change in leadership at MPD and out of what Brooks found missing. Is there a forum for current events like the death of George Floyd, Tamar Rice, racism, biased policing?
Community meeting #3 for the Ashby and North Berkeley BART Station Planning was Saturday and followed the Monday BART Community Advisory Group (CAG) meeting. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/bartplanning/ I asked the questions: What has really been gained by the CAG meetings? and What would prevent city council from throwing out the CAG and Community recommendations as was done with the Adeline Corridor Plan? The answer from Alisa Shen wasn’t very satisfactory. She said she couldn’t predict what council will do; there are tradeoffs: financial and space. Also, decisions will include BART and council.
The last meeting to mention, not the last attended is the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) Thursday evening. After weeks of speaking up on native plants and bird safe glass, ZAB and Design Review Committee (DRC) are coming along. Bird safe glass was brought up again with the 2000 University 8-story mixed use building. Charles Kahn said he was looking into it and maybe council will have to take action. I informed Kahn that council has already voted.
Council passed the bird safe glass ordinance November 12, 2019, but Berkeley’s convoluted process means that the ordinance passed in 2019 still has hoops to jump through like Planning Commission before it actually hits the books as a requirement. The Planning Commission in its great wisdom or loss of it, put the bird safe ordinance/construction under miscellaneous #54 as NR (not ranked) with no staff assigned. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Commissions/Commission_for_Planning/2021-03-17_%20PC_%20Item%209.pdf
San Francisco implemented a bird safe glass ordinance in 2011, Oakland 2013, Richmond 2016 and Alameda 2018. https://goldengateaudubon.org/conservation/make-the-city-safe-for-wildlife/standards-for-bird-safe-buildings/ Birds in Berkeley will continue to lose their lives unnecessarily in collisions with transparent or reflective glass. Interesting how Arreguin has time to promote himself in an interview national TV with Lester Holt, but here at home he is mayor of a city that can’t manage in 19 months to get the bird safe glass dark skies ordinance implemented.
In closing, there were three other books I finished this week. Crimson Letters Voices from Death Row by Tessie Castillo with contributions by: Michael J. Braxton, Lyle May, Terry Robinson, George Wilkerson is a collection of essays. Tessie Castillo is a journalist who taught a journaling class to death row inmates in North Carolina until in May 2014 when she wrote an editorial in the Raleigh News & Observer; after which she was quickly dismissed. Castillo continued to exchange letters with the prisoners resulting in the collection Crimson Letters Voices from Death Row where they write about their lives of dysfunction, poverty, drugs, virtues and failings and evolution to self-reflection.
You can find reviews of Premonition by Michael Lewis everywhere including the SF Chron pink section May 23 – 29. In response to a friend who complained that one of his heroes was not included; not everyone can be covered in 320 pages. I had trouble putting the book down. It kept me up until 4 am at least one morning.
Last is The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. I’m losing count of all the books I’ve read on race. This morning I turned on State of the Union to pass the time of my morning workout. Mitt Romney was being questioned about teaching Critical Race Theory. Romney responded with, parents should determine what their children are taught.
How will we ever move forward in a country that is forever trying to bury the ugly truths? Then I thought about the conversation with a neighbor just a few blocks away on Tuesday morning. Somehow in our casual chat, she told me her 92-year old mother had just sold the family home in the San Pablo Park district. I let out an “oh no!” and told her about the Berkeley council vote to eliminate single family homes as exclusionary and racist. The neighbor, Juanita, is Black and she let out an exclamation of disbelief. She had me laughing with her discourse on apartment living, but it is no laughing matter when an industry uses race to swell its profits.
As I walked away, I thought about the three of us, two Blacks and me, standing on the corner chatting, jumping from one subject to another during the power outage while PG&E replaced a rotted transformer pole was all so pleasant. The Sum of Us is about what we gain together and what we lose through racism.
The week started with a roundtable discussion Sunday evening on TOPA the Tenants Opportunity Purchase Act. I was surprised by the slick mailers in opposition to TOPA that were shared on zoom during the discussion. TOPA was passed out of the Land Use Policy Committee May 20 with Councilmembers Hahn and Robinson voting yes and Droste voting no. If I had to take a guess on the outcome, TOPA has not shown up in any draft council agendas making it look like the opposition is the winner. Of course, the city is in full throttle to finishing the budget by Tuesday evening. If TOPA does happen to squeak by in a vote later this year, I doubt it will benefit more than a handful of tenants.
There were two budget meetings this last week and it doesn’t feel like the City is any further along. Most of the public commenters spoke to the union contract negotiations. At the Thursday meeting Councilmember Harrison said according to her calculations the police are 35% of the budget and there is an increase of $8,000,000 for FY2022. Harrison stated she was not happy with a “flat” police budget, but recognizes this is a year of transition. An increase is not okay. If that is how it stays, then she cannot vote for the budget. This is money that won’t be available for other services.
The next budget meeting on Monday at 9 am will be the telling one when the mayor reveals his proposal for FY2022.
One of the books I read this last week was Tangled Up in Blue Policing the American City by Rosa Brooks. Brooks, who is a Professor of Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center, joined the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) as a volunteer reserve police officer for four years before writing Tangled Up in Blue. Reserve officers are sworn members of the MPD and have the same training, certification and responsibilities as traditional police officers. In the book Brooks gives depth to the training and experiences that can’t be covered in this brief interview, but the interview still gives a glimpse into the problems. https://wamu.org/story/21/03/30/dc-gw-law-professor-police-officer-book/
Even before reading Tangled Up in Blue, I was thinking about how the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force seems to be circling around reorganizing with the initiation of the Special Care Unit (SCU) for the mentally ill and creating a new Department of Transportation – BerkDOT without ever touching the core issue: biased policing and the underlying causation. I’ve written previously how the meetings feel orchestrated to achieve a predetermined end. The next meeting of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force is Wednesday evening at 6 pm with the main agenda item: police department overview.
Councilmember Bartlett authored with co-sponsors Mayor Arreguin and Councilmember Davila the Safety for All: The George Floyd Community Safety Act – Development of a Progressive Police Academy. It was referred to the Public Safety Committee June 16, 2020 and withdrawn December 7, 2020 as financially infeasible.
After reading Tangled Up in Blue, I wonder how much of the training of our police is the same as what Rosa Brooks experienced at MPD or if our police have a program like the one created between MPD and Georgetown University after a change in leadership at MPD and out of what Brooks found missing. Is there a forum for current events like the death of George Floyd, Tamar Rice, racism, biased policing?
Community meeting #3 for the Ashby and North Berkeley BART Station Planning was Saturday and followed the Monday BART Community Advisory Group (CAG) meeting. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/bartplanning/ I asked the questions: What has really been gained by the CAG meetings? and What would prevent city council from throwing out the CAG and Community recommendations as was done with the Adeline Corridor Plan? The answer from Alisa Shen wasn’t very satisfactory. She said she couldn’t predict what council will do; there are tradeoffs: financial and space. Also, decisions will include BART and council.
The last meeting to mention, not the last attended is the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) Thursday evening. After weeks of speaking up on native plants and bird safe glass, ZAB and Design Review Committee (DRC) are coming along. Bird safe glass was brought up again with the 2000 University 8-story mixed use building. Charles Kahn said he was looking into it and maybe council will have to take action. I informed Kahn that council has already voted.
Council passed the bird safe glass ordinance November 12, 2019, but Berkeley’s convoluted process means that the ordinance passed in 2019 still has hoops to jump through like Planning Commission before it actually hits the books as a requirement. The Planning Commission in its great wisdom or loss of it, put the bird safe ordinance/construction under miscellaneous #54 as NR (not ranked) with no staff assigned. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Commissions/Commission_for_Planning/2021-03-17_%20PC_%20Item%209.pdf
San Francisco implemented a bird safe glass ordinance in 2011, Oakland 2013, Richmond 2016 and Alameda 2018. https://goldengateaudubon.org/conservation/make-the-city-safe-for-wildlife/standards-for-bird-safe-buildings/ Birds in Berkeley will continue to lose their lives unnecessarily in collisions with transparent or reflective glass. Interesting how Arreguin has time to promote himself in an interview national TV with Lester Holt, but here at home he is mayor of a city that can’t manage in 19 months to get the bird safe glass dark skies ordinance implemented.
In closing, there were three other books I finished this week. Crimson Letters Voices from Death Row by Tessie Castillo with contributions by: Michael J. Braxton, Lyle May, Terry Robinson, George Wilkerson is a collection of essays. Tessie Castillo is a journalist who taught a journaling class to death row inmates in North Carolina until in May 2014 when she wrote an editorial in the Raleigh News & Observer; after which she was quickly dismissed. Castillo continued to exchange letters with the prisoners resulting in the collection Crimson Letters Voices from Death Row where they write about their lives of dysfunction, poverty, drugs, virtues and failings and evolution to self-reflection.
You can find reviews of Premonition by Michael Lewis everywhere including the SF Chron pink section May 23 – 29. In response to a friend who complained that one of his heroes was not included; not everyone can be covered in 320 pages. I had trouble putting the book down. It kept me up until 4 am at least one morning.
Last is The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. I’m losing count of all the books I’ve read on race. This morning I turned on State of the Union to pass the time of my morning workout. Mitt Romney was being questioned about teaching Critical Race Theory. Romney responded with, parents should determine what their children are taught.
How will we ever move forward in a country that is forever trying to bury the ugly truths? Then I thought about the conversation with a neighbor just a few blocks away on Tuesday morning. Somehow in our casual chat, she told me her 92-year old mother had just sold the family home in the San Pablo Park district. I let out an “oh no!” and told her about the Berkeley council vote to eliminate single family homes as exclusionary and racist. The neighbor, Juanita, is Black and she let out an exclamation of disbelief. She had me laughing with her discourse on apartment living, but it is no laughing matter when an industry uses race to swell its profits.
As I walked away, I thought about the three of us, two Blacks and me, standing on the corner chatting, jumping from one subject to another during the power outage while PG&E replaced a rotted transformer pole was all so pleasant. The Sum of Us is about what we gain together and what we lose through racism.
June 19, 2021
It was back in 2014 when it all started, a small group of DSA members asked to help canvass for Tony Thurmond. I would meet them for coffee, “the sanity café” socialize, talk politics and discuss canvassing. How I ended up as a campaign canvass lead with not one drop of political campaign experience is a much longer story. One day I floated the idea of starting a political book club. I realized I wasn’t reading and thought starting a book club would give me the push I needed plus this was a group that had been politically engaged for decades. Little did I know how starting this book club would change my life in so many ways.
I was listening to The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee, February 2021 as I cleaned up the kitchen before sitting back down at the computer to reflect on the last week and finish this column. Chapter 4 was playing on the 1933 Home Owners Loan Corporation, redlining, FHA loans facilitating White home ownership while preventing Blacks from the same privileges and subprime mortgages. I kept hitting the pause as I stopped to make notes in my reading journal to record quotes like, “What is racism without greed?” I mention this as it is the lead into what happened this last week.
When the mail arrived on Tuesday there were two “I want to buy your house” postcards promising no commission, no costs, AS-IS, and cash offer. Later the book Dry Spring the Coming Water Crisis of North America by Chris Wood arrived. This was all before the back to back special and regular city council meetings.
The supposed value of the house my nephew called “two bedroom no bath” (the bathroom is 5’3” by 9’) and the neighborhood my sister called “funky,” is off the charts ridiculous. My house sits in the formerly redlined district of Berkeley. I didn’t know this when I bought the house in 1990, but when I called the agent who had handled my car insurance and the house I sold in Sacramento, he told me Farmers didn’t insure this zip code, 94703. I was so naïve that it was years before I put this altogether.
Months on zoom and pandemic restrictions have demonstrated how little being in a particular location matters. I’ve lived in nine different cities, northern and southern California and the Midwest. What drew me to this city is on the block to disappear, but it isn’t just Berkeley, it is all across the State as the real estate investor industry has captured the legislature, the governor, staff and six members of our local city council. The lure of financing campaigns and lobbyists using the frame of eliminating racist exclusionary zoning gives way to justifying trickle-down economics and destroying neighborhoods with densification.
At Council Tuesday evening, Alfred Twu stated that Republicans opposed SB 9 implying that anyone who opposed SB 9 should be horrified to be associated with Republicans or is otherwise a deep seated racist. SB 9 is one of several bills floating through the State Senate and Assembly on housing that removes local control and densifies cities with no regard to the environmental impacts. The front buyers and flippers are scouring neighborhoods for sellers while these bills are probably giving developers “wet dreams.”
It wasn’t long ago that I was on a statewide call listening to a Black home owner from Altadena lamenting that the homes Black families had worked so hard to purchase and the neighborhoods they had built were now all on the chopping block if SB 9 and like bills passed. Anyone who is paying attention grasps the difficulty of Black families to create wealth. And, how once again their neighborhoods are the target. The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown drives the point home.
Mayor Arreguin and five council members Droste, Kesarwani, Robinson, Taplin and Bartlett all declared their allegiance to SB 9 to unfettered development. Bartlett should know better. I doubt any of them have read Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick Condon (free download - https://justicelandandthecity.blogspot.com/p/download-sick-city-pdf.html)
or watched his presentation, https://www.livablecalifornia.org/vancouver-smartest-planner-prof-patrick-condon-calls-california-upzoning-a-costly-mistake-2-6-21/, but then why would they. These days the response to any challenge is to dismiss it and run to your corner for reinforcement. It reminds me of denying climate change. If one looks hard enough, a crackpot denier with fancy degrees can be found.
As for being on the same side as Republican legislators, I remember volunteering to help Hollister activists gather ballot signatures in 2014 to block fracking in San Benito County. Republicans signed the ballot initiative because blocking fracking would put an end to lateral drilling under their farm land which would remove all control from land owners. The left, all of us knee jerk environmentalists, opposed fracking because of the pollution of ground water and impact on climate change. We were all going in the same direction just starting from different points.
SB 9 removes local control over zoning and piles on multiples of small unit housing projects, the kind that often escape affordable housing requirements. SB 10 prohibits future council members from reversing zoning changes regardless of what impacts are identified. The target is the neighborhoods where land is the cheapest and profit the easiest. If you guessed poorer neighborhoods and neighborhoods with higher percentages of home owners and occupants of POC (people of color) you hit BINGO.
There are also restrictions on parking for buildings within ½ mile of transit which is fine if you are young, healthy with no children, but not good for older Americans. The May 2021 issue of Nutrition Action quoted from JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) that one in four women over the age of 65 is unable to walk just two to three blocks at a stretch. That certainly is far less than ½ mile.
I oppose SB 9 for a whole host of reasons described better by others https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/, but mostly because of the environmental impacts. All these bills and even the Sierra club ignore the importance of cities as creating a refuge, urban habitat, a reservoir for biodiversity. Covering our urban land from lot line to lot line with buildings and hardscape has a terrible devastating impact on water, climate and biodiversity. If rain ever comes, all this hardscape will just result in runoff rather than recharging the ground.
I had a conversation earlier today with a leader in the Sierra Club, a fighter on environmental issues who admitted to never thinking about urban habitat. I’m not letting it drop there. We will be talking again. It is up to all of us to reassess our thinking and look at the larger picture and stop the silo that comes from “smart growth,” “infill,” and “single family homes as racist and exclusionary.” All these terms and phrases are meant to close down exploring the larger impacts of actions.
As for the rest of the meetings of the week, I missed most of them. Too many were scheduled at the same time. I did make the 4 pm Tuesday council meeting where the vote was unanimous to merge commissions. Animal Care will be folded into Parks Commission. Public Works and Transportation will be combined. Zero waste will be broken apart with the transfer station component going to Public Works/Transportation and the recycling going to the merged CEAC (Community Environmental Advisory Commission) and Energy Commission. They also voted to explore merging the Aging and Disability Commissions as they decided that the issues of aging are really disabilities.
The Transportation Commission did meet Thursday evening and they pointed out problems with the BerkDOT planning.
The one positive outcome of the entire week was BCDC the San Francisco Conservation and Development Commission. Despite pressure from the chair, Zachary Wasserman, an attorney, who makes his living from real estate deals and commissioner Tom Butts, Mayor of Richmond, the commission postponed for four months consideration of the Proposed Bay Map Amendment to allow a dense housing development at Point Molate. https://bcdc.ca.gov/cm/2021/06-17-Meeting-Summary.html
In closing, I finished West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary. When Ansary, an American who grew up in Afghanistan, heard talk show callers the day after 911 declaring how Afghanistan should be bombed into the stone age, Ansary wrote an anguished email to friends that was forwarded so many times, it circulated the world. The book includes the email and his personal memoir. This is not an author or book I would have found on my own and am so grateful for book club. Twenty years of war and US occupation of Afghanistan is coming to a close, but closure for the Afghans is a long way off. West of Kubal, East of New York published in 2002 is still relevant. Ansary gave me an appreciation of a culture that is so distant from my own.
It was back in 2014 when it all started, a small group of DSA members asked to help canvass for Tony Thurmond. I would meet them for coffee, “the sanity café” socialize, talk politics and discuss canvassing. How I ended up as a campaign canvass lead with not one drop of political campaign experience is a much longer story. One day I floated the idea of starting a political book club. I realized I wasn’t reading and thought starting a book club would give me the push I needed plus this was a group that had been politically engaged for decades. Little did I know how starting this book club would change my life in so many ways.
I was listening to The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee, February 2021 as I cleaned up the kitchen before sitting back down at the computer to reflect on the last week and finish this column. Chapter 4 was playing on the 1933 Home Owners Loan Corporation, redlining, FHA loans facilitating White home ownership while preventing Blacks from the same privileges and subprime mortgages. I kept hitting the pause as I stopped to make notes in my reading journal to record quotes like, “What is racism without greed?” I mention this as it is the lead into what happened this last week.
When the mail arrived on Tuesday there were two “I want to buy your house” postcards promising no commission, no costs, AS-IS, and cash offer. Later the book Dry Spring the Coming Water Crisis of North America by Chris Wood arrived. This was all before the back to back special and regular city council meetings.
The supposed value of the house my nephew called “two bedroom no bath” (the bathroom is 5’3” by 9’) and the neighborhood my sister called “funky,” is off the charts ridiculous. My house sits in the formerly redlined district of Berkeley. I didn’t know this when I bought the house in 1990, but when I called the agent who had handled my car insurance and the house I sold in Sacramento, he told me Farmers didn’t insure this zip code, 94703. I was so naïve that it was years before I put this altogether.
Months on zoom and pandemic restrictions have demonstrated how little being in a particular location matters. I’ve lived in nine different cities, northern and southern California and the Midwest. What drew me to this city is on the block to disappear, but it isn’t just Berkeley, it is all across the State as the real estate investor industry has captured the legislature, the governor, staff and six members of our local city council. The lure of financing campaigns and lobbyists using the frame of eliminating racist exclusionary zoning gives way to justifying trickle-down economics and destroying neighborhoods with densification.
At Council Tuesday evening, Alfred Twu stated that Republicans opposed SB 9 implying that anyone who opposed SB 9 should be horrified to be associated with Republicans or is otherwise a deep seated racist. SB 9 is one of several bills floating through the State Senate and Assembly on housing that removes local control and densifies cities with no regard to the environmental impacts. The front buyers and flippers are scouring neighborhoods for sellers while these bills are probably giving developers “wet dreams.”
It wasn’t long ago that I was on a statewide call listening to a Black home owner from Altadena lamenting that the homes Black families had worked so hard to purchase and the neighborhoods they had built were now all on the chopping block if SB 9 and like bills passed. Anyone who is paying attention grasps the difficulty of Black families to create wealth. And, how once again their neighborhoods are the target. The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown drives the point home.
Mayor Arreguin and five council members Droste, Kesarwani, Robinson, Taplin and Bartlett all declared their allegiance to SB 9 to unfettered development. Bartlett should know better. I doubt any of them have read Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick Condon (free download - https://justicelandandthecity.blogspot.com/p/download-sick-city-pdf.html)
or watched his presentation, https://www.livablecalifornia.org/vancouver-smartest-planner-prof-patrick-condon-calls-california-upzoning-a-costly-mistake-2-6-21/, but then why would they. These days the response to any challenge is to dismiss it and run to your corner for reinforcement. It reminds me of denying climate change. If one looks hard enough, a crackpot denier with fancy degrees can be found.
As for being on the same side as Republican legislators, I remember volunteering to help Hollister activists gather ballot signatures in 2014 to block fracking in San Benito County. Republicans signed the ballot initiative because blocking fracking would put an end to lateral drilling under their farm land which would remove all control from land owners. The left, all of us knee jerk environmentalists, opposed fracking because of the pollution of ground water and impact on climate change. We were all going in the same direction just starting from different points.
SB 9 removes local control over zoning and piles on multiples of small unit housing projects, the kind that often escape affordable housing requirements. SB 10 prohibits future council members from reversing zoning changes regardless of what impacts are identified. The target is the neighborhoods where land is the cheapest and profit the easiest. If you guessed poorer neighborhoods and neighborhoods with higher percentages of home owners and occupants of POC (people of color) you hit BINGO.
There are also restrictions on parking for buildings within ½ mile of transit which is fine if you are young, healthy with no children, but not good for older Americans. The May 2021 issue of Nutrition Action quoted from JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) that one in four women over the age of 65 is unable to walk just two to three blocks at a stretch. That certainly is far less than ½ mile.
I oppose SB 9 for a whole host of reasons described better by others https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/, but mostly because of the environmental impacts. All these bills and even the Sierra club ignore the importance of cities as creating a refuge, urban habitat, a reservoir for biodiversity. Covering our urban land from lot line to lot line with buildings and hardscape has a terrible devastating impact on water, climate and biodiversity. If rain ever comes, all this hardscape will just result in runoff rather than recharging the ground.
I had a conversation earlier today with a leader in the Sierra Club, a fighter on environmental issues who admitted to never thinking about urban habitat. I’m not letting it drop there. We will be talking again. It is up to all of us to reassess our thinking and look at the larger picture and stop the silo that comes from “smart growth,” “infill,” and “single family homes as racist and exclusionary.” All these terms and phrases are meant to close down exploring the larger impacts of actions.
As for the rest of the meetings of the week, I missed most of them. Too many were scheduled at the same time. I did make the 4 pm Tuesday council meeting where the vote was unanimous to merge commissions. Animal Care will be folded into Parks Commission. Public Works and Transportation will be combined. Zero waste will be broken apart with the transfer station component going to Public Works/Transportation and the recycling going to the merged CEAC (Community Environmental Advisory Commission) and Energy Commission. They also voted to explore merging the Aging and Disability Commissions as they decided that the issues of aging are really disabilities.
The Transportation Commission did meet Thursday evening and they pointed out problems with the BerkDOT planning.
The one positive outcome of the entire week was BCDC the San Francisco Conservation and Development Commission. Despite pressure from the chair, Zachary Wasserman, an attorney, who makes his living from real estate deals and commissioner Tom Butts, Mayor of Richmond, the commission postponed for four months consideration of the Proposed Bay Map Amendment to allow a dense housing development at Point Molate. https://bcdc.ca.gov/cm/2021/06-17-Meeting-Summary.html
In closing, I finished West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary. When Ansary, an American who grew up in Afghanistan, heard talk show callers the day after 911 declaring how Afghanistan should be bombed into the stone age, Ansary wrote an anguished email to friends that was forwarded so many times, it circulated the world. The book includes the email and his personal memoir. This is not an author or book I would have found on my own and am so grateful for book club. Twenty years of war and US occupation of Afghanistan is coming to a close, but closure for the Afghans is a long way off. West of Kubal, East of New York published in 2002 is still relevant. Ansary gave me an appreciation of a culture that is so distant from my own.
June 14, 2021
Writing about city events reminds me of when my husband and I joined a plein air painting group lead by Anthony Holdsworth. We would be out all day and the direction and shape of the shadows would continue to change as the day wore on. Anthony would tell us to pick a point to plant the shadows and paint. The news keeps moving, changing as I write.
At the June 14 budget meeting, the Interim Police Chief Lewis requested $400,000 for two data analysts. Edward Opton, JD, PhD who is a member of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force responded during public comment with this:
“I want to comment on two aspects of the morning agenda one is the location of additional data analysts within the police department, this would be a mistake. A ground principle of social science research is that when you are doing research that will have an effect or could have an effect on employment and budgeting of a department, you do not locate the analyst within that department. I have never seen an analysis of a business or a government from an analyst that was located within a department produce recommendations or data which would justify reducing employment or the budget of that department. The analyst needs to be independent of the department or departments which he or she is working. The other thing I want to address is the overtime pay for police who deal with people who are homeless. This is contrary to what I thought was going to be dealt with more by mental health workers. Police who are visiting people who are homeless have the power to arrest them, send them to Santa Rita, put them in mental hospitals. If you are a homeless person you are going to be very wary of accepting any assistance from the police or giving them any information. That is not true if you are a mental health worker, so adding more police to deal with the homeless is a mistake and quite contrary to the plan of reimagining. Thank you”
The mayor has declared his support in the FY2022 budget for a SCU, a Special Care Unit for meeting the needs of the mentally ill through skilled mental health workers instead of police, but this isn’t the end of the kind of change that is desired and defined by the Fair and Impartial Policing Task Force and is now the work of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force.
It looks like Reimagining Public Safety is hitting a wall. The last meeting was five hours. Attendance and participation are dropping. To me, the presentation last Thursday evening of the New and Emerging Models Final Report from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) was a big nothing. I got more out of the Criminal Injustice podcast #136 Police Reform from a Rare Perspective, an interview with Karol V. Mason and the attached report the Future of Public Safety from John Jay College of Criminal Justice than anything I have heard from NICJR. And, that is interesting since NICJR participated as a resource for the Future of Public Safety report. http://www.criminalinjusticepodcast.com/blog/2021/05/11/136-police-reform-rare-perspective
It seems like the outcome for the Task Force has already been decided and the direction of the meetings is being orchestrated to meet the predetermined timeframe and outcome with “quick” fixes like reorganizing and show performances like a town hall. This was a worry of task force members from the beginning. At the 2nd meeting on March 11, Edward Opton called the task force a “Public Relations Window Dressing.” You can read more in the March 14 Activist Diary, but the real question is it possible for city management and council to listen? https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-03-14/article/49062?headline=An-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-3-14--Kelly-Hammargren
The Town Hall Monday evening June 14 with Kate Harrison on RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) got into the details of how the State of California arrived at needing 441,176 new housing units over the next 8 ½ years. There weren’t any solutions about how to undo estimates of a greatly expanding population when population is shrinking or how to correct computing errors in housing needs. It did help to piece together how Berkeley was assigned 8,934 housing units. Some cities are appealing, but that is unlikely to happen in Berkeley with our mayor as President of ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments).
Other questions were answered. Is existing city density considered in housing allocations? Answer: No. Is open space, green space, (nature) considered in allocations? Answer: No. The perspective is only the number of housing units. The environment is not part of the picture.
While Dr. Gab Layton was giving her presentation, I was busy taking notes and didn’t see what was happening in the “chat” until after it was shut down. Trump is sidelined for the present, but the kind of nastiness and bullying he unleashed hasn’t left and it invaded the town hall RHNA chat. Followers of the California YIMBY ideology are beginning to feel more like a cult.
The Town Hall was the perfect companion to the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council June 12th meeting on RHNA with panelists Mayor Arreguin, President of ABAG, Brad Paul, ABAG Deputy Director and Steven Buckley, Land Use Planning Manager. There were no answers from the panel in how we are going to add 8,934 housing units with the current infrastructure, impending water shortages from drought or how housing gets spread around with the hills being a high fire zone. The non-answer was on the order of we’ll have to look at that. Developing San Pablo Avenue was mentioned a number of times as was developing objective standards which would settle if developments blocking sun to solar units are prohibited.
When Brad Paul from ABAG was asked about the forecast for population growth when the early census report shows California in actual population decline, he first countered that it was mostly people leaving San Francisco and Silicon Valley for places that were less expensive in the East Bay and Sacramento with space like parks for young families.
Brad Paul avoided saying the forbidden word, “yards.” Houses with yards is the real desired space by young families of all races and ethnicities. That is the thing, houses with yards, that is being taken away by the bills now up for votes in the State Legislature like SB 8, 9, 10, 478 and 1322 and supported by Nancy Skinner and Buffy Wicks. Rumor has it that the mayor and some of the council members have crawled in bed with the demolish and cover the ground with development movement and will be voting against item 35 Tuesday evening instead of aligning with Councilmembers Wengraf and Harrison to oppose SB 9. That sounds backwards, but item 35 is a resolution in opposition to SB 9.
When pressed further on population, Brad Paul excused the projections as a 30 year forecast. He emphasized housing needs are reassessed every eight years. Note, that opportunity for correction is too late for the damage in the near term.
With continued pressure on population decline, he stated the expectation is that growth will come from immigration. At least that was a more honest answer. As the planet continues to heat, more and more areas are going to become unlivable. We could be part of that. The Bay Area and much of California is classified as D4=exceptional drought, which is the most serious category. For reference, D2 is severe drought and D3 is extreme drought. The west has a water problem. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Then Brad Paul spoke about the great appearance of an artificial lawn, which was my entrance into making space for nature and the importance of native plants and urban habitat. Steven Buckley’s statement about the city being attentive to native plants was a display of ignorance. Projects typically come to Planning ZAB and DRC with landscape plans filled with ornamental non-native plants. Berkeley is filling the flats with non-native trees. New young Gingko trees are everywhere.
Next time you look at a Ginkgo tree keep this in mind: filling the city with Ginkgos is for birds, butterflies, pollinators the same as setting the table for your children with a meal of gasoline. There are resources to do better, but it seems ignorance is easier. https://calscape.org/
The brightest spot of the entire last week was the virtual Green Home Tour. In the final Q&A, the panelists recommended the place to start electrification is with your water heater. If you have a gas water heater that is close to 10 years old, you are definitely in need of checking out the green home tour and electrification. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/electrification/
In closing, my latest read is Where Law Ends Inside the Mueller Investigation by Andrew Weisman. I was glued to it from the beginning. The fact that I listened to the entire Mueller report in one-hour bites with my underwater audio while swimming laps at the Y may have something to do with it. Weisman gave detail to the internal workings of the investigations and finished with the gaps in what was left undone. Mueller made choices and because of his choices we were left with many unanswered questions.
“…Although there may have been consequences to his decision to do so, Mueller was in fact free to conduct a financial investigation of the president; free to make a finding of obstruction; and free to subpoena the president. And when Mueller was authorized to testify before Congress, he was free to provide critique of the Barr “summary” and to use that opportunity to educate the public as to his findings regarding the conduct of the president – as he chose to do with respect to Russian interference.”
I remember the letdown I felt when the Mueller Report was released. Because of Mueller’s failures to do a complete investigation as Weisman disclosed, we were left with a lawless white house, an unrestrained president and a cult of Trump followers.
Was Trump the aberration and Biden the future or is Biden the aberration and authoritarianism the future. That is the question the Europeans are asking themselves and so must we. So far Merrick Garland does not look to be the Attorney General we need to lead this country through a house cleaning, but we will see.
Writing about city events reminds me of when my husband and I joined a plein air painting group lead by Anthony Holdsworth. We would be out all day and the direction and shape of the shadows would continue to change as the day wore on. Anthony would tell us to pick a point to plant the shadows and paint. The news keeps moving, changing as I write.
At the June 14 budget meeting, the Interim Police Chief Lewis requested $400,000 for two data analysts. Edward Opton, JD, PhD who is a member of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force responded during public comment with this:
“I want to comment on two aspects of the morning agenda one is the location of additional data analysts within the police department, this would be a mistake. A ground principle of social science research is that when you are doing research that will have an effect or could have an effect on employment and budgeting of a department, you do not locate the analyst within that department. I have never seen an analysis of a business or a government from an analyst that was located within a department produce recommendations or data which would justify reducing employment or the budget of that department. The analyst needs to be independent of the department or departments which he or she is working. The other thing I want to address is the overtime pay for police who deal with people who are homeless. This is contrary to what I thought was going to be dealt with more by mental health workers. Police who are visiting people who are homeless have the power to arrest them, send them to Santa Rita, put them in mental hospitals. If you are a homeless person you are going to be very wary of accepting any assistance from the police or giving them any information. That is not true if you are a mental health worker, so adding more police to deal with the homeless is a mistake and quite contrary to the plan of reimagining. Thank you”
The mayor has declared his support in the FY2022 budget for a SCU, a Special Care Unit for meeting the needs of the mentally ill through skilled mental health workers instead of police, but this isn’t the end of the kind of change that is desired and defined by the Fair and Impartial Policing Task Force and is now the work of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force.
It looks like Reimagining Public Safety is hitting a wall. The last meeting was five hours. Attendance and participation are dropping. To me, the presentation last Thursday evening of the New and Emerging Models Final Report from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) was a big nothing. I got more out of the Criminal Injustice podcast #136 Police Reform from a Rare Perspective, an interview with Karol V. Mason and the attached report the Future of Public Safety from John Jay College of Criminal Justice than anything I have heard from NICJR. And, that is interesting since NICJR participated as a resource for the Future of Public Safety report. http://www.criminalinjusticepodcast.com/blog/2021/05/11/136-police-reform-rare-perspective
It seems like the outcome for the Task Force has already been decided and the direction of the meetings is being orchestrated to meet the predetermined timeframe and outcome with “quick” fixes like reorganizing and show performances like a town hall. This was a worry of task force members from the beginning. At the 2nd meeting on March 11, Edward Opton called the task force a “Public Relations Window Dressing.” You can read more in the March 14 Activist Diary, but the real question is it possible for city management and council to listen? https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-03-14/article/49062?headline=An-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-3-14--Kelly-Hammargren
The Town Hall Monday evening June 14 with Kate Harrison on RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) got into the details of how the State of California arrived at needing 441,176 new housing units over the next 8 ½ years. There weren’t any solutions about how to undo estimates of a greatly expanding population when population is shrinking or how to correct computing errors in housing needs. It did help to piece together how Berkeley was assigned 8,934 housing units. Some cities are appealing, but that is unlikely to happen in Berkeley with our mayor as President of ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments).
Other questions were answered. Is existing city density considered in housing allocations? Answer: No. Is open space, green space, (nature) considered in allocations? Answer: No. The perspective is only the number of housing units. The environment is not part of the picture.
While Dr. Gab Layton was giving her presentation, I was busy taking notes and didn’t see what was happening in the “chat” until after it was shut down. Trump is sidelined for the present, but the kind of nastiness and bullying he unleashed hasn’t left and it invaded the town hall RHNA chat. Followers of the California YIMBY ideology are beginning to feel more like a cult.
The Town Hall was the perfect companion to the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council June 12th meeting on RHNA with panelists Mayor Arreguin, President of ABAG, Brad Paul, ABAG Deputy Director and Steven Buckley, Land Use Planning Manager. There were no answers from the panel in how we are going to add 8,934 housing units with the current infrastructure, impending water shortages from drought or how housing gets spread around with the hills being a high fire zone. The non-answer was on the order of we’ll have to look at that. Developing San Pablo Avenue was mentioned a number of times as was developing objective standards which would settle if developments blocking sun to solar units are prohibited.
When Brad Paul from ABAG was asked about the forecast for population growth when the early census report shows California in actual population decline, he first countered that it was mostly people leaving San Francisco and Silicon Valley for places that were less expensive in the East Bay and Sacramento with space like parks for young families.
Brad Paul avoided saying the forbidden word, “yards.” Houses with yards is the real desired space by young families of all races and ethnicities. That is the thing, houses with yards, that is being taken away by the bills now up for votes in the State Legislature like SB 8, 9, 10, 478 and 1322 and supported by Nancy Skinner and Buffy Wicks. Rumor has it that the mayor and some of the council members have crawled in bed with the demolish and cover the ground with development movement and will be voting against item 35 Tuesday evening instead of aligning with Councilmembers Wengraf and Harrison to oppose SB 9. That sounds backwards, but item 35 is a resolution in opposition to SB 9.
When pressed further on population, Brad Paul excused the projections as a 30 year forecast. He emphasized housing needs are reassessed every eight years. Note, that opportunity for correction is too late for the damage in the near term.
With continued pressure on population decline, he stated the expectation is that growth will come from immigration. At least that was a more honest answer. As the planet continues to heat, more and more areas are going to become unlivable. We could be part of that. The Bay Area and much of California is classified as D4=exceptional drought, which is the most serious category. For reference, D2 is severe drought and D3 is extreme drought. The west has a water problem. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Then Brad Paul spoke about the great appearance of an artificial lawn, which was my entrance into making space for nature and the importance of native plants and urban habitat. Steven Buckley’s statement about the city being attentive to native plants was a display of ignorance. Projects typically come to Planning ZAB and DRC with landscape plans filled with ornamental non-native plants. Berkeley is filling the flats with non-native trees. New young Gingko trees are everywhere.
Next time you look at a Ginkgo tree keep this in mind: filling the city with Ginkgos is for birds, butterflies, pollinators the same as setting the table for your children with a meal of gasoline. There are resources to do better, but it seems ignorance is easier. https://calscape.org/
The brightest spot of the entire last week was the virtual Green Home Tour. In the final Q&A, the panelists recommended the place to start electrification is with your water heater. If you have a gas water heater that is close to 10 years old, you are definitely in need of checking out the green home tour and electrification. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/electrification/
In closing, my latest read is Where Law Ends Inside the Mueller Investigation by Andrew Weisman. I was glued to it from the beginning. The fact that I listened to the entire Mueller report in one-hour bites with my underwater audio while swimming laps at the Y may have something to do with it. Weisman gave detail to the internal workings of the investigations and finished with the gaps in what was left undone. Mueller made choices and because of his choices we were left with many unanswered questions.
“…Although there may have been consequences to his decision to do so, Mueller was in fact free to conduct a financial investigation of the president; free to make a finding of obstruction; and free to subpoena the president. And when Mueller was authorized to testify before Congress, he was free to provide critique of the Barr “summary” and to use that opportunity to educate the public as to his findings regarding the conduct of the president – as he chose to do with respect to Russian interference.”
I remember the letdown I felt when the Mueller Report was released. Because of Mueller’s failures to do a complete investigation as Weisman disclosed, we were left with a lawless white house, an unrestrained president and a cult of Trump followers.
Was Trump the aberration and Biden the future or is Biden the aberration and authoritarianism the future. That is the question the Europeans are asking themselves and so must we. So far Merrick Garland does not look to be the Attorney General we need to lead this country through a house cleaning, but we will see.
May 30, 2021 - Notes from the editor
There is a lot converging, the arrival of summer, the City budget, severe drought consuming much of the west https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ and of course politics.
My week started with the screening of the film Invisible Hand about Grants Township, Pennsylvania which adopted a Home Rule Charter (local constitution) in 2015 banning fracking waste water injection wells and recognizing the rights of nature. The Rights of Nature movement holds that a river or watershed or ecosystem shall be granted personhood in the court of law and be provided with legal standing to defend itself, that nature holds inalienable rights. https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/what-are-rights-of-nature/
Only one Berkeley council member requested registration to the Rights of Nature film, Kate Harrison. In the Q&A with the directors Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic, Harrison commented that her council colleagues sat in stunned silence [March 30,2021] that nature could have rights and that people would be able to sue on that.
“Stunned silence” is not a shock as recognizing being a part of nature rather than the master of it would be a paradigm shift. It would lay to question the twisted logic justifying covering the city with cement and hardscape and garden centers filled with alien plants threatening local ecosystems. I am making my own adjustments in my thinking about the ecosystem in which we live. My recent readings of Douglas W. Tallamy are charting a new course.
Tallamy closes his book Bringing Nature Home How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants so clearly:
“I have attempted to make several points in this book, but they all converge on a common theme: we humans have disrupted natural habitats in so many ways and in so many places that the future of our nation’s biodiversity is dim unless we start to share the places in which we live - our cities and, to an even greater extent our suburbs-with the plants and animals that evolved there…If we continue to landscape predominantly with alien plants that are toxic to insects...we may witness extinction on a scale that exceeds what occurred when a meteor struck the Yucatan peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous period.” (the mass extinction that ended age of the dinosaurs) [emphasis added]
As a resolution, the rights of nature would have been an aspirational statement tied to number 7 in the City of Berkeley Strategic Plan Long-Term Goals, “Be a global leader in addressing climate change, advancing environmental justice, and protecting the environment.”
Looking at the Gehl plan for the Civic Center Park and surroundings, I have to wonder if any of it considers local ecosystems. Gehl is the consulting group hired for $370,000 to develop a plan for Maudelle Shirek -old city hall, the Veterans Building and Civic Center Park. We should hope that Item 13 in the June 1 council agenda $200,000 for the Civic Center plan isn’t more money down the hole of consultants that failed to do the most critical piece of their assignment, a current thorough seismic assessment of the Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) and the Veterans Center.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) received the preliminary seismic report from Tipping Engineering May 20th. That assessment happened because of two people, Kelly Hammargren and John Caner. Kelly found the holes in the Gehl seismic review and initiated the conversation. John Caner picked up the ball from there and made all the contacts and connections even raised matching money that resulted in Tipping Engineering performing the seismic studies. This was a big lift to fill the gap left by the generously paid consultants.
Nature doesn’t have any standing in the mass of housing bills grabbing our attention over the last weeks and days like the Scott Wiener and Toni Atkins Senate Bill 9 which removes local control, does not add affordable housing and instead encourages speculation and gentrification, SB 10 opens neighborhoods to unchecked demolition and speculation, SB 478 which allows 2 – 10 units on tiny lots of 1200 sq ft, SB 55 prohibits development in high-fire hazard severity areas, but allows bigger multi-unit buildings in fire-prone areas. Our own Nancy Skinner has her hands-on SB 8 which slashes public hearings and extends previous bill 330 which was supposed to sunset and SB 290 which cuts down affordability requirements in Density Bonus law,
All of these “build” bills come with denial of extreme drought capturing most of California and exceptional drought the step beyond extreme covering large swaths of the State including the Bay Area. We can expect with another year of fires and remote work the lure of flocking to densely packed overpriced housing may wane even slide as covered in this article from the Star Tribune in Minnesota https://www.startribune.com/scramble-for-twin-cities-houses-faces-additional-challenge-out-of-state-buyers/600057698/
All of this demolition and building means the loss of green space, habitat, trees and tree canopy which is so necessary to mitigate heat island affect and provide habitat. Ginkgo trees are alien to our environment, support less than five species, are appearing as new plantings in the flats and take up land space from trees that support native species. Next time you go to a garden center ask for California local native plants and then ask how many and what species of insects, birds and pollinators each plant supports as you make your choices. Better yet check https://calscape.org/ before you shop.
Commissions – the Saga of shrinking the number of commissions continues
While it looks like an impossible uphill climb with Droste, Kesarwani, Robinson and Arreguin signing on and Hahn giving her nod of approval at the Agenda committee, we should not stand by and let the reorganization of the commissions move forward on June 15 without resistance. This is not to say there is no need for improvement. Just like everywhere in life, the accomplishments of the commissions have a great deal to do with the membership and leadership matters.
Droste narrowed her reorganizing focus on the cost of staff time and ignored the expertise and contributions of commissioners. The most troublesome recommendations are:
The Commission on Climate and the Environment which merges the Zero Waste Commission, the Energy Commission, the Community Environment Advisory Commission and the Animal Care Commission. All but the Animal Care Commission have turned out significant environmental work that would be impossible to manage in subcommittees with a master 18 member commission. This would increase and complicate staff time and risk the loss of key experts. Zero Waste is heavily involved with the Transfer Station. The Energy Commission is key to the city’s commitment to electrification and becoming fossil free.
The Public Works and Transportation Commission merges two commissions which do have overlap, but are currently involved in major projects. Instead of merging there should be periodic joint meetings where there is overlap. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and BerkDOT is about a new Transportation Department. The Public Works Commission has saved the city thousands of dollars in consultants to develop a paving plan and utility undergrounding plan.
The Sugar Sweetened Beverage Panel of Experts (SSBPE) focuses on grants and spending from the sugar sweetened beverage tax. It is, of course, related to health, but the mission is defined and limited. Rather than merging the SSBPE with the Community Health Commission the SSBPE meeting schedule should be on an as needed basis.
Merging the Peace, Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission leaves to question how will the mandated review of block grants be completed and the fulfillment of representatives of the poor be accomplished and will this merging actually attain the supposed outcome of efficiency and cost savings or instead create complicated layers of subcommittees and increase staff time to sort it out. The other question is where does the ongoing work of Fair and Impartial Policing and Reimagining Public Safety Task Force reside. The work of these task forces and addressing systemic racism is not change that is accomplished in an election cycle or accomplished within an artificial deadline.
The last piece of this already long diary is the city budget. You will have an opportunity to hear the mayor’s budget townhall on June 8 at 5:30 pm https://www.jessearreguin.com/, but I would suggest you set aside time to take your own look in small bites. The 484 page FY 2022 budget comes with lots of explanations that are a huge and welcome change even though the length of it and fragmented sections requiring lots of back and forth reading makes me want to shut down and pick up one of my more interesting books in the ever-growing stack. If you expected a major cut in the police budget it is not there. There is a lot converging, the arrival of summer, the City budget, severe drought consuming much of the west https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ and of course politics.
My week started with the screening of the film Invisible Hand about Grants Township, Pennsylvania which adopted a Home Rule Charter (local constitution) in 2015 banning fracking waste water injection wells and recognizing the rights of nature. The Rights of Nature movement holds that a river or watershed or ecosystem shall be granted personhood in the court of law and be provided with legal standing to defend itself, that nature holds inalienable rights. https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/what-are-rights-of-nature/
Only one Berkeley council member requested registration to the Rights of Nature film, Kate Harrison. In the Q&A with the directors Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic, Harrison commented that her council colleagues sat in stunned silence [March 30,2021] that nature could have rights and that people would be able to sue on that.
“Stunned silence” is not a shock as recognizing being a part of nature rather than the master of it would be a paradigm shift. It would lay to question the twisted logic justifying covering the city with cement and hardscape and garden centers filled with alien plants threatening local ecosystems. I am making my own adjustments in my thinking about the ecosystem in which we live. My recent readings of Douglas W. Tallamy are charting a new course.
Tallamy closes his book Bringing Nature Home How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants so clearly:
“I have attempted to make several points in this book, but they all converge on a common theme: we humans have disrupted natural habitats in so many ways and in so many places that the future of our nation’s biodiversity is dim unless we start to share the places in which we live - our cities and, to an even greater extent our suburbs-with the plants and animals that evolved there…If we continue to landscape predominantly with alien plants that are toxic to insects...we may witness extinction on a scale that exceeds what occurred when a meteor struck the Yucatan peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous period.” (the mass extinction that ended age of the dinosaurs) [emphasis added]
As a resolution, the rights of nature would have been an aspirational statement tied to number 7 in the City of Berkeley Strategic Plan Long-Term Goals, “Be a global leader in addressing climate change, advancing environmental justice, and protecting the environment.”
Looking at the Gehl plan for the Civic Center Park and surroundings, I have to wonder if any of it considers local ecosystems. Gehl is the consulting group hired for $370,000 to develop a plan for Maudelle Shirek -old city hall, the Veterans Building and Civic Center Park. We should hope that Item 13 in the June 1 council agenda $200,000 for the Civic Center plan isn’t more money down the hole of consultants that failed to do the most critical piece of their assignment, a current thorough seismic assessment of the Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) and the Veterans Center.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) received the preliminary seismic report from Tipping Engineering May 20th. That assessment happened because of two people, Kelly Hammargren and John Caner. Kelly found the holes in the Gehl seismic review and initiated the conversation. John Caner picked up the ball from there and made all the contacts and connections even raised matching money that resulted in Tipping Engineering performing the seismic studies. This was a big lift to fill the gap left by the generously paid consultants.
Nature doesn’t have any standing in the mass of housing bills grabbing our attention over the last weeks and days like the Scott Wiener and Toni Atkins Senate Bill 9 which removes local control, does not add affordable housing and instead encourages speculation and gentrification, SB 10 opens neighborhoods to unchecked demolition and speculation, SB 478 which allows 2 – 10 units on tiny lots of 1200 sq ft, SB 55 prohibits development in high-fire hazard severity areas, but allows bigger multi-unit buildings in fire-prone areas. Our own Nancy Skinner has her hands-on SB 8 which slashes public hearings and extends previous bill 330 which was supposed to sunset and SB 290 which cuts down affordability requirements in Density Bonus law,
All of these “build” bills come with denial of extreme drought capturing most of California and exceptional drought the step beyond extreme covering large swaths of the State including the Bay Area. We can expect with another year of fires and remote work the lure of flocking to densely packed overpriced housing may wane even slide as covered in this article from the Star Tribune in Minnesota https://www.startribune.com/scramble-for-twin-cities-houses-faces-additional-challenge-out-of-state-buyers/600057698/
All of this demolition and building means the loss of green space, habitat, trees and tree canopy which is so necessary to mitigate heat island affect and provide habitat. Ginkgo trees are alien to our environment, support less than five species, are appearing as new plantings in the flats and take up land space from trees that support native species. Next time you go to a garden center ask for California local native plants and then ask how many and what species of insects, birds and pollinators each plant supports as you make your choices. Better yet check https://calscape.org/ before you shop.
Commissions – the Saga of shrinking the number of commissions continues
While it looks like an impossible uphill climb with Droste, Kesarwani, Robinson and Arreguin signing on and Hahn giving her nod of approval at the Agenda committee, we should not stand by and let the reorganization of the commissions move forward on June 15 without resistance. This is not to say there is no need for improvement. Just like everywhere in life, the accomplishments of the commissions have a great deal to do with the membership and leadership matters.
Droste narrowed her reorganizing focus on the cost of staff time and ignored the expertise and contributions of commissioners. The most troublesome recommendations are:
The Commission on Climate and the Environment which merges the Zero Waste Commission, the Energy Commission, the Community Environment Advisory Commission and the Animal Care Commission. All but the Animal Care Commission have turned out significant environmental work that would be impossible to manage in subcommittees with a master 18 member commission. This would increase and complicate staff time and risk the loss of key experts. Zero Waste is heavily involved with the Transfer Station. The Energy Commission is key to the city’s commitment to electrification and becoming fossil free.
The Public Works and Transportation Commission merges two commissions which do have overlap, but are currently involved in major projects. Instead of merging there should be periodic joint meetings where there is overlap. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and BerkDOT is about a new Transportation Department. The Public Works Commission has saved the city thousands of dollars in consultants to develop a paving plan and utility undergrounding plan.
The Sugar Sweetened Beverage Panel of Experts (SSBPE) focuses on grants and spending from the sugar sweetened beverage tax. It is, of course, related to health, but the mission is defined and limited. Rather than merging the SSBPE with the Community Health Commission the SSBPE meeting schedule should be on an as needed basis.
Merging the Peace, Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission leaves to question how will the mandated review of block grants be completed and the fulfillment of representatives of the poor be accomplished and will this merging actually attain the supposed outcome of efficiency and cost savings or instead create complicated layers of subcommittees and increase staff time to sort it out. The other question is where does the ongoing work of Fair and Impartial Policing and Reimagining Public Safety Task Force reside. The work of these task forces and addressing systemic racism is not change that is accomplished in an election cycle or accomplished within an artificial deadline.
The last piece of this already long diary is the city budget. You will have an opportunity to hear the mayor’s budget townhall on June 8 at 5:30 pm https://www.jessearreguin.com/, but I would suggest you set aside time to take your own look in small bites. The 484 page FY 2022 budget comes with lots of explanations that are a huge and welcome change even though the length of it and fragmented sections requiring lots of back and forth reading makes me want to shut down and pick up one of my more interesting books in the ever-growing stack. If you expected a major cut in the police budget it is not there. (link to budget)
Revised Material (Supp 3)
Presentation
I like to close with what I’m reading. There are two books I read some time ago that fit perfectly with international and national news: (1) Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen, 2012. Spillover reads like a mystery novel. I read it pre-pandemic and was glued to it from the very first chapter. The book follows researchers as they track down the source of new mysterious infectious diseases. (2) Last Sunday the New York Times featured an article on declining population. I’m with Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth by Alan Weisman, 2013. Weisman writes the case for why we need a decline in population to save the planet and how to get there.
My latest read and loan from the Berkeley Library is Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzel, 2019. I highly recommend it.
I like to close with what I’m reading. There are two books I read some time ago that fit perfectly with international and national news: (1) Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen, 2012. Spillover reads like a mystery novel. I read it pre-pandemic and was glued to it from the very first chapter. The book follows researchers as they track down the source of new mysterious infectious diseases. (2) Last Sunday the New York Times featured an article on declining population. I’m with Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth by Alan Weisman, 2013. Weisman writes the case for why we need a decline in population to save the planet and how to get there.
My latest read and loan from the Berkeley Library is Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzel, 2019. I highly recommend it.
There is a lot converging, the arrival of summer, the City budget, severe drought consuming much of the west https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ and of course politics.
My week started with the screening of the film Invisible Hand about Grants Township, Pennsylvania which adopted a Home Rule Charter (local constitution) in 2015 banning fracking waste water injection wells and recognizing the rights of nature. The Rights of Nature movement holds that a river or watershed or ecosystem shall be granted personhood in the court of law and be provided with legal standing to defend itself, that nature holds inalienable rights. https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/what-are-rights-of-nature/
Only one Berkeley council member requested registration to the Rights of Nature film, Kate Harrison. In the Q&A with the directors Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic, Harrison commented that her council colleagues sat in stunned silence [March 30,2021] that nature could have rights and that people would be able to sue on that.
“Stunned silence” is not a shock as recognizing being a part of nature rather than the master of it would be a paradigm shift. It would lay to question the twisted logic justifying covering the city with cement and hardscape and garden centers filled with alien plants threatening local ecosystems. I am making my own adjustments in my thinking about the ecosystem in which we live. My recent readings of Douglas W. Tallamy are charting a new course.
Tallamy closes his book Bringing Nature Home How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants so clearly:
“I have attempted to make several points in this book, but they all converge on a common theme: we humans have disrupted natural habitats in so many ways and in so many places that the future of our nation’s biodiversity is dim unless we start to share the places in which we live - our cities and, to an even greater extent our suburbs-with the plants and animals that evolved there…If we continue to landscape predominantly with alien plants that are toxic to insects...we may witness extinction on a scale that exceeds what occurred when a meteor struck the Yucatan peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous period.” (the mass extinction that ended age of the dinosaurs) [emphasis added]
As a resolution, the rights of nature would have been an aspirational statement tied to number 7 in the City of Berkeley Strategic Plan Long-Term Goals, “Be a global leader in addressing climate change, advancing environmental justice, and protecting the environment.”
Looking at the Gehl plan for the Civic Center Park and surroundings, I have to wonder if any of it considers local ecosystems. Gehl is the consulting group hired for $370,000 to develop a plan for Maudelle Shirek -old city hall, the Veterans Building and Civic Center Park. We should hope that Item 13 in the June 1 council agenda $200,000 for the Civic Center plan isn’t more money down the hole of consultants that failed to do the most critical piece of their assignment, a current thorough seismic assessment of the Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) and the Veterans Center.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) received the preliminary seismic report from Tipping Engineering May 20th. That assessment happened because of two people, Kelly Hammargren and John Caner. Kelly found the holes in the Gehl seismic review and initiated the conversation. John Caner picked up the ball from there and made all the contacts and connections even raised matching money that resulted in Tipping Engineering performing the seismic studies. This was a big lift to fill the gap left by the generously paid consultants.
Nature doesn’t have any standing in the mass of housing bills grabbing our attention over the last weeks and days like the Scott Wiener and Toni Atkins Senate Bill 9 which removes local control, does not add affordable housing and instead encourages speculation and gentrification, SB 10 opens neighborhoods to unchecked demolition and speculation, SB 478 which allows 2 – 10 units on tiny lots of 1200 sq ft, SB 55 prohibits development in high-fire hazard severity areas, but allows bigger multi-unit buildings in fire-prone areas. Our own Nancy Skinner has her hands-on SB 8 which slashes public hearings and extends previous bill 330 which was supposed to sunset and SB 290 which cuts down affordability requirements in Density Bonus law,
All of these “build” bills come with denial of extreme drought capturing most of California and exceptional drought the step beyond extreme covering large swaths of the State including the Bay Area. We can expect with another year of fires and remote work the lure of flocking to densely packed overpriced housing may wane even slide as covered in this article from the Star Tribune in Minnesota https://www.startribune.com/scramble-for-twin-cities-houses-faces-additional-challenge-out-of-state-buyers/600057698/
All of this demolition and building means the loss of green space, habitat, trees and tree canopy which is so necessary to mitigate heat island affect and provide habitat. Ginkgo trees are alien to our environment, support less than five species, are appearing as new plantings in the flats and take up land space from trees that support native species. Next time you go to a garden center ask for California local native plants and then ask how many and what species of insects, birds and pollinators each plant supports as you make your choices. Better yet check https://calscape.org/ before you shop.
Commissions – the Saga of shrinking the number of commissions continues
While it looks like an impossible uphill climb with Droste, Kesarwani, Robinson and Arreguin signing on and Hahn giving her nod of approval at the Agenda committee, we should not stand by and let the reorganization of the commissions move forward on June 15 without resistance. This is not to say there is no need for improvement. Just like everywhere in life, the accomplishments of the commissions have a great deal to do with the membership and leadership matters.
Droste narrowed her reorganizing focus on the cost of staff time and ignored the expertise and contributions of commissioners. The most troublesome recommendations are:
The Commission on Climate and the Environment which merges the Zero Waste Commission, the Energy Commission, the Community Environment Advisory Commission and the Animal Care Commission. All but the Animal Care Commission have turned out significant environmental work that would be impossible to manage in subcommittees with a master 18 member commission. This would increase and complicate staff time and risk the loss of key experts. Zero Waste is heavily involved with the Transfer Station. The Energy Commission is key to the city’s commitment to electrification and becoming fossil free.
The Public Works and Transportation Commission merges two commissions which do have overlap, but are currently involved in major projects. Instead of merging there should be periodic joint meetings where there is overlap. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and BerkDOT is about a new Transportation Department. The Public Works Commission has saved the city thousands of dollars in consultants to develop a paving plan and utility undergrounding plan.
The Sugar Sweetened Beverage Panel of Experts (SSBPE) focuses on grants and spending from the sugar sweetened beverage tax. It is, of course, related to health, but the mission is defined and limited. Rather than merging the SSBPE with the Community Health Commission the SSBPE meeting schedule should be on an as needed basis.
Merging the Peace, Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission leaves to question how will the mandated review of block grants be completed and the fulfillment of representatives of the poor be accomplished and will this merging actually attain the supposed outcome of efficiency and cost savings or instead create complicated layers of subcommittees and increase staff time to sort it out. The other question is where does the ongoing work of Fair and Impartial Policing and Reimagining Public Safety Task Force reside. The work of these task forces and addressing systemic racism is not change that is accomplished in an election cycle or accomplished within an artificial deadline.
The last piece of this already long diary is the city budget. You will have an opportunity to hear the mayor’s budget townhall on June 8 at 5:30 pm https://www.jessearreguin.com/, but I would suggest you set aside time to take your own look in small bites. The 484 page FY 2022 budget comes with lots of explanations that are a huge and welcome change even though the length of it and fragmented sections requiring lots of back and forth reading makes me want to shut down and pick up one of my more interesting books in the ever-growing stack. If you expected a major cut in the police budget it is not there. There is a lot converging, the arrival of summer, the City budget, severe drought consuming much of the west https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ and of course politics.
My week started with the screening of the film Invisible Hand about Grants Township, Pennsylvania which adopted a Home Rule Charter (local constitution) in 2015 banning fracking waste water injection wells and recognizing the rights of nature. The Rights of Nature movement holds that a river or watershed or ecosystem shall be granted personhood in the court of law and be provided with legal standing to defend itself, that nature holds inalienable rights. https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/what-are-rights-of-nature/
Only one Berkeley council member requested registration to the Rights of Nature film, Kate Harrison. In the Q&A with the directors Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic, Harrison commented that her council colleagues sat in stunned silence [March 30,2021] that nature could have rights and that people would be able to sue on that.
“Stunned silence” is not a shock as recognizing being a part of nature rather than the master of it would be a paradigm shift. It would lay to question the twisted logic justifying covering the city with cement and hardscape and garden centers filled with alien plants threatening local ecosystems. I am making my own adjustments in my thinking about the ecosystem in which we live. My recent readings of Douglas W. Tallamy are charting a new course.
Tallamy closes his book Bringing Nature Home How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants so clearly:
“I have attempted to make several points in this book, but they all converge on a common theme: we humans have disrupted natural habitats in so many ways and in so many places that the future of our nation’s biodiversity is dim unless we start to share the places in which we live - our cities and, to an even greater extent our suburbs-with the plants and animals that evolved there…If we continue to landscape predominantly with alien plants that are toxic to insects...we may witness extinction on a scale that exceeds what occurred when a meteor struck the Yucatan peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous period.” (the mass extinction that ended age of the dinosaurs) [emphasis added]
As a resolution, the rights of nature would have been an aspirational statement tied to number 7 in the City of Berkeley Strategic Plan Long-Term Goals, “Be a global leader in addressing climate change, advancing environmental justice, and protecting the environment.”
Looking at the Gehl plan for the Civic Center Park and surroundings, I have to wonder if any of it considers local ecosystems. Gehl is the consulting group hired for $370,000 to develop a plan for Maudelle Shirek -old city hall, the Veterans Building and Civic Center Park. We should hope that Item 13 in the June 1 council agenda $200,000 for the Civic Center plan isn’t more money down the hole of consultants that failed to do the most critical piece of their assignment, a current thorough seismic assessment of the Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) and the Veterans Center.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) received the preliminary seismic report from Tipping Engineering May 20th. That assessment happened because of two people, Kelly Hammargren and John Caner. Kelly found the holes in the Gehl seismic review and initiated the conversation. John Caner picked up the ball from there and made all the contacts and connections even raised matching money that resulted in Tipping Engineering performing the seismic studies. This was a big lift to fill the gap left by the generously paid consultants.
Nature doesn’t have any standing in the mass of housing bills grabbing our attention over the last weeks and days like the Scott Wiener and Toni Atkins Senate Bill 9 which removes local control, does not add affordable housing and instead encourages speculation and gentrification, SB 10 opens neighborhoods to unchecked demolition and speculation, SB 478 which allows 2 – 10 units on tiny lots of 1200 sq ft, SB 55 prohibits development in high-fire hazard severity areas, but allows bigger multi-unit buildings in fire-prone areas. Our own Nancy Skinner has her hands-on SB 8 which slashes public hearings and extends previous bill 330 which was supposed to sunset and SB 290 which cuts down affordability requirements in Density Bonus law,
All of these “build” bills come with denial of extreme drought capturing most of California and exceptional drought the step beyond extreme covering large swaths of the State including the Bay Area. We can expect with another year of fires and remote work the lure of flocking to densely packed overpriced housing may wane even slide as covered in this article from the Star Tribune in Minnesota https://www.startribune.com/scramble-for-twin-cities-houses-faces-additional-challenge-out-of-state-buyers/600057698/
All of this demolition and building means the loss of green space, habitat, trees and tree canopy which is so necessary to mitigate heat island affect and provide habitat. Ginkgo trees are alien to our environment, support less than five species, are appearing as new plantings in the flats and take up land space from trees that support native species. Next time you go to a garden center ask for California local native plants and then ask how many and what species of insects, birds and pollinators each plant supports as you make your choices. Better yet check https://calscape.org/ before you shop.
Commissions – the Saga of shrinking the number of commissions continues
While it looks like an impossible uphill climb with Droste, Kesarwani, Robinson and Arreguin signing on and Hahn giving her nod of approval at the Agenda committee, we should not stand by and let the reorganization of the commissions move forward on June 15 without resistance. This is not to say there is no need for improvement. Just like everywhere in life, the accomplishments of the commissions have a great deal to do with the membership and leadership matters.
Droste narrowed her reorganizing focus on the cost of staff time and ignored the expertise and contributions of commissioners. The most troublesome recommendations are:
The Commission on Climate and the Environment which merges the Zero Waste Commission, the Energy Commission, the Community Environment Advisory Commission and the Animal Care Commission. All but the Animal Care Commission have turned out significant environmental work that would be impossible to manage in subcommittees with a master 18 member commission. This would increase and complicate staff time and risk the loss of key experts. Zero Waste is heavily involved with the Transfer Station. The Energy Commission is key to the city’s commitment to electrification and becoming fossil free.
The Public Works and Transportation Commission merges two commissions which do have overlap, but are currently involved in major projects. Instead of merging there should be periodic joint meetings where there is overlap. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and BerkDOT is about a new Transportation Department. The Public Works Commission has saved the city thousands of dollars in consultants to develop a paving plan and utility undergrounding plan.
The Sugar Sweetened Beverage Panel of Experts (SSBPE) focuses on grants and spending from the sugar sweetened beverage tax. It is, of course, related to health, but the mission is defined and limited. Rather than merging the SSBPE with the Community Health Commission the SSBPE meeting schedule should be on an as needed basis.
Merging the Peace, Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission leaves to question how will the mandated review of block grants be completed and the fulfillment of representatives of the poor be accomplished and will this merging actually attain the supposed outcome of efficiency and cost savings or instead create complicated layers of subcommittees and increase staff time to sort it out. The other question is where does the ongoing work of Fair and Impartial Policing and Reimagining Public Safety Task Force reside. The work of these task forces and addressing systemic racism is not change that is accomplished in an election cycle or accomplished within an artificial deadline.
The last piece of this already long diary is the city budget. You will have an opportunity to hear the mayor’s budget townhall on June 8 at 5:30 pm https://www.jessearreguin.com/, but I would suggest you set aside time to take your own look in small bites. The 484 page FY 2022 budget comes with lots of explanations that are a huge and welcome change even though the length of it and fragmented sections requiring lots of back and forth reading makes me want to shut down and pick up one of my more interesting books in the ever-growing stack. If you expected a major cut in the police budget it is not there. (link to budget)
Revised Material (Supp 3)
Presentation
I like to close with what I’m reading. There are two books I read some time ago that fit perfectly with international and national news: (1) Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen, 2012. Spillover reads like a mystery novel. I read it pre-pandemic and was glued to it from the very first chapter. The book follows researchers as they track down the source of new mysterious infectious diseases. (2) Last Sunday the New York Times featured an article on declining population. I’m with Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth by Alan Weisman, 2013. Weisman writes the case for why we need a decline in population to save the planet and how to get there.
My latest read and loan from the Berkeley Library is Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzel, 2019. I highly recommend it.
I like to close with what I’m reading. There are two books I read some time ago that fit perfectly with international and national news: (1) Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen, 2012. Spillover reads like a mystery novel. I read it pre-pandemic and was glued to it from the very first chapter. The book follows researchers as they track down the source of new mysterious infectious diseases. (2) Last Sunday the New York Times featured an article on declining population. I’m with Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth by Alan Weisman, 2013. Weisman writes the case for why we need a decline in population to save the planet and how to get there.
My latest read and loan from the Berkeley Library is Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzel, 2019. I highly recommend it.
May 23, 2021
The Berkeley Public Library Board of Library Trustees will be voting this Wednesday, May 26th on the FY 2022 tax rate for funding the provision of Library Services. The proposed rate is $0.2402 per sq ft for dwelling units and $0.3632 per sq ft for industrial, commercial and institutional buildings. I calculated that I pay about $270 for library services. With reading at least a book a week and sometimes two, I’m already seeing the return on investment in our local libraries. Out of the 27 books I’ve read since January 1, twenty-five were from the library.
In my last Diary (May 8th) I ended with a quote from Stuart Stevens and recommendations of three books: It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. I think of these books as the cornerstone for framing how to view the removal of Liz Cheney from her leadership position, the January 6 insurrection, the refusal of Kevin McCarthy to support a commission investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, the rush of voting suppression laws and the vow by Mitch McConnell to block President Biden’s entire agenda. I highly recommend all three. They are all available from Bay Area libraries. If you did not read the May 8th Activist’s Diary here is the link: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-05-09/article/49179?headline=An-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-May-8--Kelly-Hammargren
Applebaum said it in the title of her book, the seductive lure of authoritarianism. Ziblatt and Levitsky in How Democracies Die wrote that a politician that displays even one of these four characteristics should be cause for concern: 1) disrespects norms, rejects the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, 4) indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, the press. With Trump we hit the jackpot, he displayed all four. There are others behind Trump vying for power that are just as dangerous to our democracy if not more so.
I do not feel as confident as some of the TV pundits and commenters that this country will ride out the turmoil with an intact democracy at the end. From all angles, Trump has completely taken over the Republican party. It’s hard for us standing on the outside to understand how Trump became a cult that has infected not just the unhinged, but people we thought to be sane. There is much for concern especially as long as Joe Manchin and fellow Democratic travelers cling to a belief that the GOP still cares about democracy and bipartisanship, the filibuster stands and the voting rights bills languish and die.
The lure of power is very tempting. The drumbeat to authoritarianism continues to grow fanned by Fox and like media outlets. When someone tells you a politician has no core but ambition, believe them. Personally, there is a 2014 campaign I wish I had worked on and a 2016 campaign in which I devoted hours of work that I now wish I had sat out.
The May 25th council meeting is just around the corner. At Agenda and Rules Policy Committee planning for the May 25th regular council meeting. The Councilmember Droste proposal to pare down the commissions by 50% under the guise of post COVID budget recovery finally made it to the full council agenda. Mayor Arreguin said that at the May 25 Council meeting he would move the Commission reorganization (item 41 in the May 25 final agenda) to consent to be rescheduled to June 15. Take a hard look at the plan and start putting your comments together. After attending all the meetings through this process, I can’t help but think of the Grover Norquist quote and replacing government with commissions, “I don't want to abolish government [Commissions]. I simply want to reduce it [them] to the size where I can drag it [them] into the bathroom and drown it [them] in the bathtub.”
The more I watch our city government, the more I see as opportunity squandered. It is not within my nature to give up and nature is the key word. The more I learn, the more disappointed I am in the leadership of the City of Berkeley especially in the Planning Department, City Council and City Manager. Instead of beefing up the commissions to be innovative, the city council is careening toward gutting them all under the banner of saving money. It doesn’t stop there.
The May 18th special council meeting item 1 was Systems Realignment. This is all about a process for submitting “major” legislation with charts and committees, reviews and loops to jump through. Arreguin seems to be totally enthralled. There was push back from other councilmembers. Harrison went through a list of all the things that would not have happened if council accepts this kind of structure. And, looking in that seems to be the point. I had been wondering what the point was of the 82 pages of duplicative, disorganized, undated list of 504 referrals to the city manager that is attached to the agenda committee and other packets. Now I know, it is so the city manager can whine about it at council meetings and offsites and use it to squelch new ordinances. The mayor can also use it to make the council look progressive and then push passed ordinances onto a list where they will languish and die like the Bird Safe Ordinance.
At the May 11 council meeting, James McFadden summed up the city response to the climate crisis perfectly, “ I noticed there are toothless items with a pro-environment slant, I thank the council for the pro-environment slant, but I think we ought to have something of substance…where Berkeley is doing more than cheerleading.. like banning all plastic containers for takeout food…[instead of] feel good that does nothing.
Arreguin responded with the council passed a ban on single use plastic food containers in 2019. The problem is, of course, that there continues to be lots of single use plastic. In fact, my walk partner picked up sushi takeout in single use plastic just this week. Item 6 on the Zero Waste Commission agenda for Monday, May 24 should be interesting as it is an update from staff on the status of the single use foodware and litter reduction ordinance.
Our City Auditor Jenny Wong has been making the rounds presenting Data Analysis of the City of Berkeley’s Police Response. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Auditor/Home/Audit_Reports.aspx The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force heard it first, then council on May 11 and this Thursday is the Mental Health Commission’s turn. Here is the key. The audit found the same biased policing studying 2015 – 2019 as the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) looking at 2012 - 2016. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CPEDraftInterimReport.aspx Note that there is an overlap of two years 2015 and 2016. The one shortfall of the Auditor’s report is the Auditor should have been given more time to gather data so the beat/location of police stops and calls could be plotted.
There was supposed to be action on the findings of biased policing following the CPE report release in 2017. Those of us who attended the June 27, 2017 city council meeting will remember the resistance of making the CPE report public or even available to council. The important information from the audit is that nothing seems to have changed. If you are Black or Brown in Berkeley you will have a different experience with Berkeley Police than if you are White.
I’ve been attending the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meetings. The task force is a committed group and they are really digging in to the reimagining process. Peeling off some of the police calls to other service providers is important. Someone in a mental health crisis needs a mental health professional not a police person with guns. The same for the homeless person who needs social services support not a police person with guns.
An update on the progress of developing a Special Care Unit for mental health calls will be presented to the Mental Health Commission Thursday, May 27.
The bottom line is what are we doing to deal with the core issue that results in biased policing. Will the reimagining process bring any more than moving the flags around as Dan Lindheim questioned at the last task force meeting. Lindheim stated he has been through many reorganizations and looking at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/faculty-and-impact/faculty/daniel-n-lindheim he has the experience to pose that question.
As a White person with White Privilege, I don’t know what it is like to live with daily microaggressions. I don’t know what it feels like to be questioned when entering my own home as happened to a Black friend in Berkeley, followed through stores, stopped when I did nothing wrong, have to give the “talk” to a son or daughter. What I can do is listen, observe, record, educate myself in our long ugly history that continues to this day, monitor my own behavior and step-in.
As I have mentioned previously, I belong to a book club with a focus on politics, race and climate and I do a lot of reading outside of book club. Other book club members liked White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo. I thought Debbie Irving’s Waking Up White was better at pointing out what I call everyday racism, the microaggressions and actions to take to counter them. Both of these books built on our previous selections: White Rage, Just Mercy, The Color of Law, Between the World and Me, Dog Whistle Politics, African American and Latinx History of the United States, The Warmth of Other Suns, Caste and One Person No Vote.
There is much to do and if the early responses to the Rights of Nature film Invisible Hand that I arranged with the support of Sustainable Berkeley Coalition and Berkeley Citizens Action is any indication, we will have a little more on our plate.
If you managed to reach the end of this lengthy Diary, thank you. This was a long one.
The Berkeley Public Library Board of Library Trustees will be voting this Wednesday, May 26th on the FY 2022 tax rate for funding the provision of Library Services. The proposed rate is $0.2402 per sq ft for dwelling units and $0.3632 per sq ft for industrial, commercial and institutional buildings. I calculated that I pay about $270 for library services. With reading at least a book a week and sometimes two, I’m already seeing the return on investment in our local libraries. Out of the 27 books I’ve read since January 1, twenty-five were from the library.
In my last Diary (May 8th) I ended with a quote from Stuart Stevens and recommendations of three books: It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump by Stuart Stevens, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum and How Democracies Die by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky. I think of these books as the cornerstone for framing how to view the removal of Liz Cheney from her leadership position, the January 6 insurrection, the refusal of Kevin McCarthy to support a commission investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, the rush of voting suppression laws and the vow by Mitch McConnell to block President Biden’s entire agenda. I highly recommend all three. They are all available from Bay Area libraries. If you did not read the May 8th Activist’s Diary here is the link: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-05-09/article/49179?headline=An-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-May-8--Kelly-Hammargren
Applebaum said it in the title of her book, the seductive lure of authoritarianism. Ziblatt and Levitsky in How Democracies Die wrote that a politician that displays even one of these four characteristics should be cause for concern: 1) disrespects norms, rejects the democratic rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) tolerates or encourages violence, 4) indicates a willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, the press. With Trump we hit the jackpot, he displayed all four. There are others behind Trump vying for power that are just as dangerous to our democracy if not more so.
I do not feel as confident as some of the TV pundits and commenters that this country will ride out the turmoil with an intact democracy at the end. From all angles, Trump has completely taken over the Republican party. It’s hard for us standing on the outside to understand how Trump became a cult that has infected not just the unhinged, but people we thought to be sane. There is much for concern especially as long as Joe Manchin and fellow Democratic travelers cling to a belief that the GOP still cares about democracy and bipartisanship, the filibuster stands and the voting rights bills languish and die.
The lure of power is very tempting. The drumbeat to authoritarianism continues to grow fanned by Fox and like media outlets. When someone tells you a politician has no core but ambition, believe them. Personally, there is a 2014 campaign I wish I had worked on and a 2016 campaign in which I devoted hours of work that I now wish I had sat out.
The May 25th council meeting is just around the corner. At Agenda and Rules Policy Committee planning for the May 25th regular council meeting. The Councilmember Droste proposal to pare down the commissions by 50% under the guise of post COVID budget recovery finally made it to the full council agenda. Mayor Arreguin said that at the May 25 Council meeting he would move the Commission reorganization (item 41 in the May 25 final agenda) to consent to be rescheduled to June 15. Take a hard look at the plan and start putting your comments together. After attending all the meetings through this process, I can’t help but think of the Grover Norquist quote and replacing government with commissions, “I don't want to abolish government [Commissions]. I simply want to reduce it [them] to the size where I can drag it [them] into the bathroom and drown it [them] in the bathtub.”
The more I watch our city government, the more I see as opportunity squandered. It is not within my nature to give up and nature is the key word. The more I learn, the more disappointed I am in the leadership of the City of Berkeley especially in the Planning Department, City Council and City Manager. Instead of beefing up the commissions to be innovative, the city council is careening toward gutting them all under the banner of saving money. It doesn’t stop there.
The May 18th special council meeting item 1 was Systems Realignment. This is all about a process for submitting “major” legislation with charts and committees, reviews and loops to jump through. Arreguin seems to be totally enthralled. There was push back from other councilmembers. Harrison went through a list of all the things that would not have happened if council accepts this kind of structure. And, looking in that seems to be the point. I had been wondering what the point was of the 82 pages of duplicative, disorganized, undated list of 504 referrals to the city manager that is attached to the agenda committee and other packets. Now I know, it is so the city manager can whine about it at council meetings and offsites and use it to squelch new ordinances. The mayor can also use it to make the council look progressive and then push passed ordinances onto a list where they will languish and die like the Bird Safe Ordinance.
At the May 11 council meeting, James McFadden summed up the city response to the climate crisis perfectly, “ I noticed there are toothless items with a pro-environment slant, I thank the council for the pro-environment slant, but I think we ought to have something of substance…where Berkeley is doing more than cheerleading.. like banning all plastic containers for takeout food…[instead of] feel good that does nothing.
Arreguin responded with the council passed a ban on single use plastic food containers in 2019. The problem is, of course, that there continues to be lots of single use plastic. In fact, my walk partner picked up sushi takeout in single use plastic just this week. Item 6 on the Zero Waste Commission agenda for Monday, May 24 should be interesting as it is an update from staff on the status of the single use foodware and litter reduction ordinance.
Our City Auditor Jenny Wong has been making the rounds presenting Data Analysis of the City of Berkeley’s Police Response. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Auditor/Home/Audit_Reports.aspx The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force heard it first, then council on May 11 and this Thursday is the Mental Health Commission’s turn. Here is the key. The audit found the same biased policing studying 2015 – 2019 as the Center for Policing Equity (CPE) looking at 2012 - 2016. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CPEDraftInterimReport.aspx Note that there is an overlap of two years 2015 and 2016. The one shortfall of the Auditor’s report is the Auditor should have been given more time to gather data so the beat/location of police stops and calls could be plotted.
There was supposed to be action on the findings of biased policing following the CPE report release in 2017. Those of us who attended the June 27, 2017 city council meeting will remember the resistance of making the CPE report public or even available to council. The important information from the audit is that nothing seems to have changed. If you are Black or Brown in Berkeley you will have a different experience with Berkeley Police than if you are White.
I’ve been attending the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force meetings. The task force is a committed group and they are really digging in to the reimagining process. Peeling off some of the police calls to other service providers is important. Someone in a mental health crisis needs a mental health professional not a police person with guns. The same for the homeless person who needs social services support not a police person with guns.
An update on the progress of developing a Special Care Unit for mental health calls will be presented to the Mental Health Commission Thursday, May 27.
The bottom line is what are we doing to deal with the core issue that results in biased policing. Will the reimagining process bring any more than moving the flags around as Dan Lindheim questioned at the last task force meeting. Lindheim stated he has been through many reorganizations and looking at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/faculty-and-impact/faculty/daniel-n-lindheim he has the experience to pose that question.
As a White person with White Privilege, I don’t know what it is like to live with daily microaggressions. I don’t know what it feels like to be questioned when entering my own home as happened to a Black friend in Berkeley, followed through stores, stopped when I did nothing wrong, have to give the “talk” to a son or daughter. What I can do is listen, observe, record, educate myself in our long ugly history that continues to this day, monitor my own behavior and step-in.
As I have mentioned previously, I belong to a book club with a focus on politics, race and climate and I do a lot of reading outside of book club. Other book club members liked White Fragility by Robin DeAngelo. I thought Debbie Irving’s Waking Up White was better at pointing out what I call everyday racism, the microaggressions and actions to take to counter them. Both of these books built on our previous selections: White Rage, Just Mercy, The Color of Law, Between the World and Me, Dog Whistle Politics, African American and Latinx History of the United States, The Warmth of Other Suns, Caste and One Person No Vote.
There is much to do and if the early responses to the Rights of Nature film Invisible Hand that I arranged with the support of Sustainable Berkeley Coalition and Berkeley Citizens Action is any indication, we will have a little more on our plate.
If you managed to reach the end of this lengthy Diary, thank you. This was a long one.
April 17, 2021 - Notes from the editor for the week of April 11 - April 17, 2021
Some years ago, Harry Brill said to me local politics weren’t very interesting as it was just real estate. A lot has changed in the years in between then and now.
Real estate and land use are big issues. Those of us who care about open space, biodiversity, climate and urban habitat are horrified by state legislation to strip cities of local control. Add in the resolutions and ordinances coming from our own mayor and council. There is an obvious disconnect between density, covering land, climate and the environmental impacts. The other real estate piece is the complete denial that deregulation of zoning brings on an investor feeding frenzy. If this isn’t enough add UC Berkeley’s plans.
The meeting of the week with the highest attendance was Tuesday’s special city council meeting on the UC Berkeley Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) draft environmental impact report (DEIR). https://lrdp.berkeley.edu/environmental-review The deadline to respond to UC is Wednesday, April 21 at 5 pm. It came as a surprise why council would wait until a week before the deadline for a presentation by staff and council comment and questions when the LRDP 45 day review period started March 8.
It was obvious the Sophie Hahn had read the 1000 page document as she started through her list of comments. This was one time I really wanted to hear what she had to say, but the mayor cut her off to go to public comment.
While many in the zoom audience (there were over 70 logged in) spoke against the projects in People’s Park and Walnut Street, everyone was reminded that public comments need to be sent to UC Berkeley. The email is planning@berkeley.edu with “Draft EIR Comments:2021 LRDP and Housing Projects #1 and #2” in the subject line.
The list of deficiencies in the DEIR is long with the document described as 1000 pages of nothing. Here are key points: Mills College is closing and reuse of the campus by UCB was not considered, People’s Park as a historic resource and open space will be lost with 60 mature trees removed, controlled rent units in the building on Walnut will be lost, the impact of increased in UCB enrollment is ignored, the DEIR considers only impact to UCB campus not the adjacent community, demolition is a given, there are no plans to return the archeological resources stolen and held by UCB to Native Americans, the development at People’s Park (Strawberry Creek) was a major village site, UCB uses the City of Berkeley fire department services, the impact of building in high risk fire zones was not included, there is no fire evacuation plan, the addition of parking and traffic is unacceptable, there is no labor agreement for construction,.
Monday afternoon was the Agenda and Rules Committee meeting with the task of planning the April 27th city council regular meeting. One item that didn’t receive any attention that should be on everyone’s radar is that reserving $40 million from Measure O bond funds for transit-oriented housing over the Ashby and North Berkeley BART stations achieves only 35% affordable housing at each BART station. The agenda item states a new community process and new bond measure would be needed to get above 35%.
The most poorly attended meeting of the week was the Personnel Board on Monday evening. None of the job descriptions being reviewed were available to the public as the packet was sent only to board members and not posted. My comment was direct to the impropriety of not posting the job descriptions for the public. While I did receive a copy from Dana d’Angelo, Assistant Management Analyst the following day, it was too late to provide comment. The packet still is not posted for the public to read.
Much to my surprise and disappointment not one person from the Police Review Commission (PRC) joined the meeting to comment on the Director of Police Accountability position. Of course, they didn’t receive a copy of the Director of Police Accountability job description or notification it was up for review. The presence of someone from the PRC would have been helpful. From my reading there is a disconnect between the Director of Police Accountability and the Police Accountability Board. I wonder if anyone present had ever paid any attention to the PRC or the ballot initiative other than a dry reading. There were few questions and comments, altogether very unsatisfying.
Probably many of us didn’t spend much time looking at our job descriptions until that work performance evaluation rolled along, but well done job descriptions do set the direction of work. They are also how we decide whether we want the job in the first place. LaTanya Bellow from the Human Resources Department stated to the board there were over 150 jobs with only one person in them. She was bringing to the board two generic job descriptions. These would replace all those inconvenient one person job descriptions. There was no review of what was being eliminated. The board suggested that a couple of responsibilities might be reordered and otherwise gave the rubber stamp of approval.
As someone who wrote programs for state licensure, many job descriptions and held responsibility for hire and fire of employees, well done job descriptions are important. A better standard than the inconvenient number would consider whether the job was unique with special skill or knowledge requirements, was the description written without bias for or against any group, does it still fit a job that may have evolved. It is no wonder why many of us are unhappy with performance of some of our city employees. Is generic the best we can expect?
The last meeting for comment is the Open Government Commission on Thursday evening and during that meeting open is not a term I would use. Shirley Dean filed a Brown Act complaint on March 5, 2021 (see Activist’s Diaries March 6, March 20, March 28 and Packet-OGC/FCPC https://www.cityofberkeley.info/opengovermentcommission/ starting on page 24).
Janis Ching noted that the minutes did not include the discussion of calling a special meeting to review the complaints. The complaints arrived 13 days not the required 14 days before the scheduled Open Government Commission March 18th meeting. Therefore, the complaints would not be reviewed prior to the special meeting called by the mayor to consider council action on the subjects of the complaints, land use zoning including Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning and Quadplex Zoning.
The special open government meeting was not called. The Chair, Brad Smith made that decision. The commission members were not notified of the decision nor were they notified under what conditions the members of the commission could call a special meeting. I commented that all of this looked suspect when the chair of the commission Brad Smith was the appointee of Lori Droste who was the author of the resolution and quadplex zoning complaints. Brad Smith was not present for the April 15 commission meeting. A majority of the commissioners voted to dismiss the complaints rather than perform side by side comparisons of the documents as requested by Janis Ching.
I finished Twilight of the Elites by Chris Hayes. It was published in 2011. I wish the optimistic twilight was true. One book that stands out from last year with the formation of the Republican America First Caucus is It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens. In summary, Stevens wrote the Republican party stands for nothing but white supremacy.
Some years ago, Harry Brill said to me local politics weren’t very interesting as it was just real estate. A lot has changed in the years in between then and now.
Real estate and land use are big issues. Those of us who care about open space, biodiversity, climate and urban habitat are horrified by state legislation to strip cities of local control. Add in the resolutions and ordinances coming from our own mayor and council. There is an obvious disconnect between density, covering land, climate and the environmental impacts. The other real estate piece is the complete denial that deregulation of zoning brings on an investor feeding frenzy. If this isn’t enough add UC Berkeley’s plans.
The meeting of the week with the highest attendance was Tuesday’s special city council meeting on the UC Berkeley Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) draft environmental impact report (DEIR). https://lrdp.berkeley.edu/environmental-review The deadline to respond to UC is Wednesday, April 21 at 5 pm. It came as a surprise why council would wait until a week before the deadline for a presentation by staff and council comment and questions when the LRDP 45 day review period started March 8.
It was obvious the Sophie Hahn had read the 1000 page document as she started through her list of comments. This was one time I really wanted to hear what she had to say, but the mayor cut her off to go to public comment.
While many in the zoom audience (there were over 70 logged in) spoke against the projects in People’s Park and Walnut Street, everyone was reminded that public comments need to be sent to UC Berkeley. The email is planning@berkeley.edu with “Draft EIR Comments:2021 LRDP and Housing Projects #1 and #2” in the subject line.
The list of deficiencies in the DEIR is long with the document described as 1000 pages of nothing. Here are key points: Mills College is closing and reuse of the campus by UCB was not considered, People’s Park as a historic resource and open space will be lost with 60 mature trees removed, controlled rent units in the building on Walnut will be lost, the impact of increased in UCB enrollment is ignored, the DEIR considers only impact to UCB campus not the adjacent community, demolition is a given, there are no plans to return the archeological resources stolen and held by UCB to Native Americans, the development at People’s Park (Strawberry Creek) was a major village site, UCB uses the City of Berkeley fire department services, the impact of building in high risk fire zones was not included, there is no fire evacuation plan, the addition of parking and traffic is unacceptable, there is no labor agreement for construction,.
Monday afternoon was the Agenda and Rules Committee meeting with the task of planning the April 27th city council regular meeting. One item that didn’t receive any attention that should be on everyone’s radar is that reserving $40 million from Measure O bond funds for transit-oriented housing over the Ashby and North Berkeley BART stations achieves only 35% affordable housing at each BART station. The agenda item states a new community process and new bond measure would be needed to get above 35%.
The most poorly attended meeting of the week was the Personnel Board on Monday evening. None of the job descriptions being reviewed were available to the public as the packet was sent only to board members and not posted. My comment was direct to the impropriety of not posting the job descriptions for the public. While I did receive a copy from Dana d’Angelo, Assistant Management Analyst the following day, it was too late to provide comment. The packet still is not posted for the public to read.
Much to my surprise and disappointment not one person from the Police Review Commission (PRC) joined the meeting to comment on the Director of Police Accountability position. Of course, they didn’t receive a copy of the Director of Police Accountability job description or notification it was up for review. The presence of someone from the PRC would have been helpful. From my reading there is a disconnect between the Director of Police Accountability and the Police Accountability Board. I wonder if anyone present had ever paid any attention to the PRC or the ballot initiative other than a dry reading. There were few questions and comments, altogether very unsatisfying.
Probably many of us didn’t spend much time looking at our job descriptions until that work performance evaluation rolled along, but well done job descriptions do set the direction of work. They are also how we decide whether we want the job in the first place. LaTanya Bellow from the Human Resources Department stated to the board there were over 150 jobs with only one person in them. She was bringing to the board two generic job descriptions. These would replace all those inconvenient one person job descriptions. There was no review of what was being eliminated. The board suggested that a couple of responsibilities might be reordered and otherwise gave the rubber stamp of approval.
As someone who wrote programs for state licensure, many job descriptions and held responsibility for hire and fire of employees, well done job descriptions are important. A better standard than the inconvenient number would consider whether the job was unique with special skill or knowledge requirements, was the description written without bias for or against any group, does it still fit a job that may have evolved. It is no wonder why many of us are unhappy with performance of some of our city employees. Is generic the best we can expect?
The last meeting for comment is the Open Government Commission on Thursday evening and during that meeting open is not a term I would use. Shirley Dean filed a Brown Act complaint on March 5, 2021 (see Activist’s Diaries March 6, March 20, March 28 and Packet-OGC/FCPC https://www.cityofberkeley.info/opengovermentcommission/ starting on page 24).
Janis Ching noted that the minutes did not include the discussion of calling a special meeting to review the complaints. The complaints arrived 13 days not the required 14 days before the scheduled Open Government Commission March 18th meeting. Therefore, the complaints would not be reviewed prior to the special meeting called by the mayor to consider council action on the subjects of the complaints, land use zoning including Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning and Quadplex Zoning.
The special open government meeting was not called. The Chair, Brad Smith made that decision. The commission members were not notified of the decision nor were they notified under what conditions the members of the commission could call a special meeting. I commented that all of this looked suspect when the chair of the commission Brad Smith was the appointee of Lori Droste who was the author of the resolution and quadplex zoning complaints. Brad Smith was not present for the April 15 commission meeting. A majority of the commissioners voted to dismiss the complaints rather than perform side by side comparisons of the documents as requested by Janis Ching.
I finished Twilight of the Elites by Chris Hayes. It was published in 2011. I wish the optimistic twilight was true. One book that stands out from last year with the formation of the Republican America First Caucus is It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens. In summary, Stevens wrote the Republican party stands for nothing but white supremacy.
March 28, 2021
From the week that is just ending, the big event was Thursday and not much else mattered.
The March 25th special Council meeting called by Mayor Arreguin created a giant uproar with numerous phone calls in all directions, over 300 letters and 250 meeting attendees. As I wrote in the Activist’s Diary last week (March 20th) the special meeting was to cover the bungled attempt to push through Quadplex Zoning. Once the complaint was filed by former mayor Shirley Dean with the Berkeley Open Government Commission alleging that a violation of the State of California Brown Act had occurred, the Quadplex Zoning measure had to be rewritten to be considered by council. (The Brown Act is a state law which protects public access to meetings of California government entities. It prohibits behind-the-scenes discussions by a majority of members of legislative matters which they will vote on.)
I predicted last week that the mayor would come in at the last minute with some supposed compromise that the public will not have had a chance to review before the meeting starts. He did one better. At 29 minutes into the meeting the mayor submitted his “supplemental” (modifications of the original submission authored by the mayor and councilmembers Droste, Kesarwani and Taplin) and then said to the full council they could read the supplemental during public comment. That should tell you everything thing you need to know about what the mayor thinks of the public and that is the key difference between the proposal pushed forward by Arreguin and Droste and the proposal authored by Councilmembers Hahn and Harrison.
The late revision from Arreguin substituted and added words like consider, explore and study, but these words did nothing to change the original directive which places the work to update the Housing Element to cover the years 2023 to 2031 in the hands of the Planning Department staff, consultants and the Planning Commission. Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf put the responsibility in the hands of the public with Planning, the Housing Advisory Commission, the Homeless Commission and other appropriate commissions, City Council and City staff with consultants to lead the Housing Element update.
Both approaches are required to work within the same time frame. The new updated Housing Element to plan how to adapt and accommodate the onerous volume of new housing is due to be complete before January 2023. The actual allocation of housing to be built in Berkeley between 2023 and 2031 is 2446 units (27%) for extremely low and very low income households, 1408 units (16%) for low income households, 1416 units (16%) for moderate income households and 3664 units (41%) for above moderate income households (also known as market rate or whatever the owner choses to charge for rent). Those numbers total 8934 units.
If you feel lost or any of these terms Housing Element, Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) are new to you or confusing read item 2. in the agenda, The Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation by Councilmembers Hahn and Harrison. The explanation starts on page 3. file:///Users/kellyhammargren/Downloads/Item%202%20Supp%20Hahn%20(5).pdf
As the McGee Spaulding Neighbors in Action learned from Councilmember Harrison during the Wednesday evening town hall, the projected population for Berkeley by 2050 is 163,000. And, if the drop in population in California in 2020 is not just a blip, but a trend, there is no readjustment to the housing allocation that is supposed to be built.
For those who hung on for the entire Council meeting 5 hours and 6 minutes, the mayor near the very end stated a motion to accept his changes (the supplemental) to item 1 the Droste, Arreguin, Kesarwani and Taplin submission and to accept item 2 the Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf submission. Councilmember Wengraf signed on with Hahn, Harrison and Bartlett and that looks to have been a very significant move in this meeting outcome.
Letters and calls do matter, but in the end, it is going to mean showing up, signing on to zoom and tracking this process until it is completed. The chair of the Planning Commission Shane Krpata already declared where he stands on Thursday evening in public comment, steadfastly on item 1 which limits public participation. This doesn’t put us off to a very good start if the process is limited to the Planning Commission, consultants and city Planning staff. Right now, that looks too much like group think.
The importance of broad community engagement through the entire process cannot be underestimated. Diverse groups come up with better solutions and that is the key benefit of following the Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) from Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf.
In the past there was no punishment for not building the assigned volume of housing, but all that is changed for the future. When Berkeley is unable to cough up 8934 new housing units, the threat looms of the State overriding any local zoning codes that restrict housing production. Already there are laws on the books to speed up the processing of mixed-used multi-unit buildings and limit local restrictions. From the laws I have read so far, I haven’t found exactly when overriding local zoning codes kicks in and what we will be forced to swallow with that 8934 unit gulp. The focus is existing transit which targets San Pablo, downtown, south and west Berkeley. I still have a list to finish. There will be more in the weeks ahead.
We should not forget that the mayor for all his declarations of concern about climate, he has stated he is opposed to the Rights of Nature, item 31 on the March 30 Council agenda. When I took a walk late this afternoon, the air was filled with the sounds of song birds. I wondered how many dead zones we will have if we cover what is left of open space in Berkeley with concrete. Living with and making space for nature is more than creating a pleasurable city to live in for our physical and mental health, urban habitat is gaining critical importance in the midst of ecosystem collapse. Well planned cities can and do support diverse species.
Don’t forget https://calscape.org/ Restore Nature One Garden at a Time for spring gardening.
As to the rest of the meetings I attended during the week, Monday afternoon was a special meeting of the Council Agenda and Rules Committee to discuss two items. The first was to temporarily limit significant new legislation to be considered by the council policy committees or the council as a whole during the pandemic unless it is time urgent, related to COVID-19 or already in process. This item was passed out of committee to be considered by Council in April.
The second item, System Realignment, was discussed and then continued. Systems Realignment defines when and how a major item (i.e. anything that requires new or additional resources) may be submitted to Council for a vote.
On Monday, it seemed like, “why now” when we are getting vaccinated and coming out of the pandemic darkness, but by Friday there was a big jump in the total of new cases in the US and California. The warnings of the B.1.1.7 variant hitting us this spring have been circulating for weeks. We are not out of the woods yet.
I only caught the beginning of The Ashby and North Berkeley BART CAG meeting. Enough to hear that 35% affordable housing at each station will be a push. That is a far cry from RHNA with 59% as the need for affordable housing.
I like to end with what I’m reading. I just finished Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria, 2020. It is well written and packed with information and much to consider. Lesson one: Buckle-up. We have created a world in overdrive. Lesson five: Life is digital. COVID is breaking down the last barriers to going digital and the changes are here to stay. Lesson Six: We are social animals, cities will endure. This is a book I’d like to read again and there are some things to pull out as we embark on RHNA like lessons one, five and six
From the week that is just ending, the big event was Thursday and not much else mattered.
The March 25th special Council meeting called by Mayor Arreguin created a giant uproar with numerous phone calls in all directions, over 300 letters and 250 meeting attendees. As I wrote in the Activist’s Diary last week (March 20th) the special meeting was to cover the bungled attempt to push through Quadplex Zoning. Once the complaint was filed by former mayor Shirley Dean with the Berkeley Open Government Commission alleging that a violation of the State of California Brown Act had occurred, the Quadplex Zoning measure had to be rewritten to be considered by council. (The Brown Act is a state law which protects public access to meetings of California government entities. It prohibits behind-the-scenes discussions by a majority of members of legislative matters which they will vote on.)
I predicted last week that the mayor would come in at the last minute with some supposed compromise that the public will not have had a chance to review before the meeting starts. He did one better. At 29 minutes into the meeting the mayor submitted his “supplemental” (modifications of the original submission authored by the mayor and councilmembers Droste, Kesarwani and Taplin) and then said to the full council they could read the supplemental during public comment. That should tell you everything thing you need to know about what the mayor thinks of the public and that is the key difference between the proposal pushed forward by Arreguin and Droste and the proposal authored by Councilmembers Hahn and Harrison.
The late revision from Arreguin substituted and added words like consider, explore and study, but these words did nothing to change the original directive which places the work to update the Housing Element to cover the years 2023 to 2031 in the hands of the Planning Department staff, consultants and the Planning Commission. Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf put the responsibility in the hands of the public with Planning, the Housing Advisory Commission, the Homeless Commission and other appropriate commissions, City Council and City staff with consultants to lead the Housing Element update.
Both approaches are required to work within the same time frame. The new updated Housing Element to plan how to adapt and accommodate the onerous volume of new housing is due to be complete before January 2023. The actual allocation of housing to be built in Berkeley between 2023 and 2031 is 2446 units (27%) for extremely low and very low income households, 1408 units (16%) for low income households, 1416 units (16%) for moderate income households and 3664 units (41%) for above moderate income households (also known as market rate or whatever the owner choses to charge for rent). Those numbers total 8934 units.
If you feel lost or any of these terms Housing Element, Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) are new to you or confusing read item 2. in the agenda, The Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation by Councilmembers Hahn and Harrison. The explanation starts on page 3. file:///Users/kellyhammargren/Downloads/Item%202%20Supp%20Hahn%20(5).pdf
As the McGee Spaulding Neighbors in Action learned from Councilmember Harrison during the Wednesday evening town hall, the projected population for Berkeley by 2050 is 163,000. And, if the drop in population in California in 2020 is not just a blip, but a trend, there is no readjustment to the housing allocation that is supposed to be built.
For those who hung on for the entire Council meeting 5 hours and 6 minutes, the mayor near the very end stated a motion to accept his changes (the supplemental) to item 1 the Droste, Arreguin, Kesarwani and Taplin submission and to accept item 2 the Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf submission. Councilmember Wengraf signed on with Hahn, Harrison and Bartlett and that looks to have been a very significant move in this meeting outcome.
Letters and calls do matter, but in the end, it is going to mean showing up, signing on to zoom and tracking this process until it is completed. The chair of the Planning Commission Shane Krpata already declared where he stands on Thursday evening in public comment, steadfastly on item 1 which limits public participation. This doesn’t put us off to a very good start if the process is limited to the Planning Commission, consultants and city Planning staff. Right now, that looks too much like group think.
The importance of broad community engagement through the entire process cannot be underestimated. Diverse groups come up with better solutions and that is the key benefit of following the Initiation of Participatory Planning for Berkeley’s Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) from Hahn, Harrison, Bartlett and Wengraf.
In the past there was no punishment for not building the assigned volume of housing, but all that is changed for the future. When Berkeley is unable to cough up 8934 new housing units, the threat looms of the State overriding any local zoning codes that restrict housing production. Already there are laws on the books to speed up the processing of mixed-used multi-unit buildings and limit local restrictions. From the laws I have read so far, I haven’t found exactly when overriding local zoning codes kicks in and what we will be forced to swallow with that 8934 unit gulp. The focus is existing transit which targets San Pablo, downtown, south and west Berkeley. I still have a list to finish. There will be more in the weeks ahead.
We should not forget that the mayor for all his declarations of concern about climate, he has stated he is opposed to the Rights of Nature, item 31 on the March 30 Council agenda. When I took a walk late this afternoon, the air was filled with the sounds of song birds. I wondered how many dead zones we will have if we cover what is left of open space in Berkeley with concrete. Living with and making space for nature is more than creating a pleasurable city to live in for our physical and mental health, urban habitat is gaining critical importance in the midst of ecosystem collapse. Well planned cities can and do support diverse species.
Don’t forget https://calscape.org/ Restore Nature One Garden at a Time for spring gardening.
As to the rest of the meetings I attended during the week, Monday afternoon was a special meeting of the Council Agenda and Rules Committee to discuss two items. The first was to temporarily limit significant new legislation to be considered by the council policy committees or the council as a whole during the pandemic unless it is time urgent, related to COVID-19 or already in process. This item was passed out of committee to be considered by Council in April.
The second item, System Realignment, was discussed and then continued. Systems Realignment defines when and how a major item (i.e. anything that requires new or additional resources) may be submitted to Council for a vote.
On Monday, it seemed like, “why now” when we are getting vaccinated and coming out of the pandemic darkness, but by Friday there was a big jump in the total of new cases in the US and California. The warnings of the B.1.1.7 variant hitting us this spring have been circulating for weeks. We are not out of the woods yet.
I only caught the beginning of The Ashby and North Berkeley BART CAG meeting. Enough to hear that 35% affordable housing at each station will be a push. That is a far cry from RHNA with 59% as the need for affordable housing.
I like to end with what I’m reading. I just finished Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria, 2020. It is well written and packed with information and much to consider. Lesson one: Buckle-up. We have created a world in overdrive. Lesson five: Life is digital. COVID is breaking down the last barriers to going digital and the changes are here to stay. Lesson Six: We are social animals, cities will endure. This is a book I’d like to read again and there are some things to pull out as we embark on RHNA like lessons one, five and six
March 6, 2021 - Notes from the editor for the week of February 28, - March 6, 2021
I received an email this week from someone I talk with on occasion about housing and construction in Berkeley. It started with, “I learned from a friend of a friend who manages a 50 unit building that he has 50% vacancies…” The note goes on that the same person related there are other buildings with 60% and 70% vacancies.
It is no surprise to have vacant housing with UC Berkeley essentially shuttered to on campus students. The 42,500 students (the number I’ve been given) probably make up close to a third of the city population. Without students we are swimming with vacant apartments, but we had vacancies before they left. It is probably overly optimistic to expect the 2020 census to tell us more, but I am hopeful.
High rents, a glut of vacant apartments, people on the street, politicians crying for the need for immediate action to solve the housing crisis, their rush of ordinances and resolutions to eliminate zoning codes, restrictions of what can be built where and the demand for evermore construction without oversight or public review. It is the new normal. It all fits perfectly into a housing market that isn’t about housing, but is about REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts),
buildings bundled, bought and sold. Housing has become the investment vehicle and it is the subject of the documentary film PUSH and the manufactured housing crisis. I highly recommend you join BCA for the virtual screening of PUSH listed in the Activist’s Calendar for Wednesday evening. I saw it last week.
This sets the stage for the special Monday afternoon Council Land Use Committee meeting. Councilmember Droste didn’t get the expected positive recommendation to move forward the Quadplex Zoning Proposal at the February 18th Land Use meeting. So many of us called in that by the time we finished, the clock had run out. With the first step of ushering through the YIMBY proposal broken, a special meeting was called for Monday, March 1st with Quadplex Zoning as the only agenda item. Councilmembers Droste, Taplin, and Kesarwani are listed as the authors with Mayor Arreguin listed as a Co-sponsor.
YIMBY stands for Yes In My Back Yard. This is a well-funded housing deregulation movement sponsored by big tech and the real estate industry. And, the Bay Area State Assembly and Senate are saturated with supporters. Just look to Scott Wiener, Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner. The YIMBY agenda is to deregulate housing, an apartment construction boom will follow. The theory sold to the believers in the deregulation movement is the initial high rents will stabilize and then drop solving the affordability crisis.
Those of us who have been around long enough have seen how deregulation fails to bring the promised solutions just like lowering taxes for the “job creators” never trickled-down to the rest of us. Deregulation is a boon to the investors, but the fallout to those living under it is just the opposite. Look to Texas and the failure of the energy grid. Councilmembers Droste and Taplin are leading the charge with Robinson, Kesarwani, Bartlett and Mayor Arreguin signing on. Anne Applebaum in her book Twilight of Democracy The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism writes of coming to terms with who her friends, acquaintances and colleagues had become. We need to come to terms with what the people we helped elect and voted for actually believe and to what ends they will follow to further their careers.
Councilmember Hahn kept her cool as she questioned Droste on the Quadplex Zoning. Hahn described the Quadplex Zoning measure as a moving target that should be divided into “upzoning,” which allows bigger and more expansive development making the land more valuable, a better money-making vehicle for investors and speculators and “ministerial approval” which eliminates review of the project to be constructed. Ministerial review is often interchanged with “by-right” which goes one step further meaning there can be no objection. All of this is the moving target of deregulation.
Councilmember Robinson kept referring to “we” and Hahn asked, “who is the we?” It looked like Robinson was about to spill the beans on who else is involved and then he caught himself. This all boils down to what is the rush to flood the city with resolutions, referrals and ordinances turning zoning upside down, more accurately eliminating building restrictions. Those putting forth measures declare it is to correct past wrongs of racism, exclusionary housing and fill the desperate housing needs especially for the “missing middle,” people with a fine income just not enough to buy the million dollar dream.
Hahn announced at the beginning of the meeting she had a hard stop at 4 pm. When the hour arrived and Hahn had to sign off, Robinson and Droste were almost gleeful in their good fortune that Hahn was no longer present. They floundered for a bit and then crafted their motion to take no action and to request the Agenda Committee schedule the item (Quadplex Zoning) for a special City Council meeting or worksession. And, that was Monday.
Thursday, March 4 was the regular meeting of the Land Use committee and committee chair Robinson announced that only one item would be addressed Taplin’s Resolution Recognizing Housing as a Human Right, but Hahn was back with questions about what happened on Monday. As it turns out the motion crafted by Robinson and Droste doesn’t fit within the committee rules. Council committees have four choices, a positive recommendation, a qualified positive recommendation, a negative recommendation and a qualified negative recommendation. The motion to take no action and forward the Quadplex Zoning to the full Council could not stand. Either it had to be corrected or Droste could withdraw the measure from committee and move it directly to Council. Droste said she would discuss what action to take with the mayor. As for the rest of the meeting there was discussion of the Housing as a Human Right, but no action was taken.
A few notes requiring attention are that buried in the Quadplex Zoning is the property owner has no obligation to notify tenants of the sale of the property. This would deny tenants the ability to exercise the Tenants’ Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) if that measure ever passes. TOPA is actually a great measure where tenants would have the first right to buy a building when it is put up for sale. Of course, deregulation will make the ground underneath any apartment building so valuable to investors and speculators that the price will escalate out of reach of the lowly tenants even if subsidies can be found.
There was another agenda item that was continued to a future meeting that needs tracking, the proposed Affordable Housing Overlay from Councilmember Taplin and co-sponsors Bartlett and Robinson. What this does in short is allow ministerial approval (counter sign-off no public hearing) for 100% low to moderate income 7-story projects and to allow for an additional 10’ density bonus (another story) to projects in residential neighborhoods (R-1, R-1A and R-2). It sounds wonderful at first glance until one looks for the details and this is where it gets loose.
The entire project could be rented to moderate income households. Per HUD, that is people earning 80 – 120% of the area median income (AMI). Using the Berkeley Housing Authority chart as a basis for calculating the AMI for a 1 person household the result is $91,375/year. By that standard one with moderate AMI is not poor and would qualify for a unit as a moderate income earner making the project sound as if it contributes to housing the poor while dancing on the edge of market rate. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BHA/Home/Payment_Standards,_Income_Limits,_and_Utility_Allowance.aspx.
There were a few callers extolling the benefits of Quadplex Zoning on Monday and Thursday from what used to be BARF (Bay Area Renters Federation) that has morphed into California Yimby and overlaps with East Bay for Everyone. There are true believers in trickle-down housing or that building everywhere without restraint will solve the problem of unaffordable housing for the many. Trying to change the mind of a YIMBY is like trying to convince someone wearing a MAGA hat that the election wasn’t stolen from Trump.
Patrick M. Condon was a true believer until he saw it didn’t work. I’m working my way through his book Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land. My walk partner asked me today what was the translation for the Latin quid pro quo. It is according to google translate “something for something,” a favor for a favor. This rush to eliminate zoning codes, deregulate housing looks to be a combination of an investment vehicle, true believers and a favor for a favor for the one vying for that real estate support for the coveted career move.
The last meeting to be covered is the Public Works Commission on Thursday evening. When I tuned in, the meeting was already in progress with employees calling in from parking enforcement to speak against being moved to another department under the Mayor’s proposed BerkDOT.
I don’t share the enthusiasm that is coming from some quarters of Berkeley for the Mayor’s idea of creating a Berkeley Department of Transportation (BerkDOT) as a solution to biased policing. The entire restructuring of parking enforcement currently under the police department to end biased policing strikes me as a costly and ill-timed misadventure. It should be preceded by the work just beginning Reimagining Public Safety. That task force meets this coming Thursday, March 11 at 6 pm.
Liam Garland has been tasked with developing the model for BerkDOT. As the new Director of Public Works, Garland is fulfilling his assignment. Just because we have a talented person assigned to lead a premature restructuring of the City organizational chart doesn’t make the timing any better.
I’ve listened to Liam Garland at a number of City meetings. At each, I am grateful that he was hired. He comes with an impressive resume of work experiences that would be rare to see in the position he holds in city administration. He was an elementary school teacher, later an attorney representing victims of housing discrimination. Garland will be introduced at the Wednesday evening Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association meeting at 7 pm.
I like to close with what I’m reading. Already mentioned is Twilight of Democracy The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum 2020. I also finished Nomadland by Jessica Bruder, 2017. The best quote in Nomadland comes from the main character Linda who describes Amazon as “people buying stuff they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.” Also, stacked on my iPad bookshelf is The Devil You Know A Black Power Manifesto by Charles M. Blow, 2021
I received an email this week from someone I talk with on occasion about housing and construction in Berkeley. It started with, “I learned from a friend of a friend who manages a 50 unit building that he has 50% vacancies…” The note goes on that the same person related there are other buildings with 60% and 70% vacancies.
It is no surprise to have vacant housing with UC Berkeley essentially shuttered to on campus students. The 42,500 students (the number I’ve been given) probably make up close to a third of the city population. Without students we are swimming with vacant apartments, but we had vacancies before they left. It is probably overly optimistic to expect the 2020 census to tell us more, but I am hopeful.
High rents, a glut of vacant apartments, people on the street, politicians crying for the need for immediate action to solve the housing crisis, their rush of ordinances and resolutions to eliminate zoning codes, restrictions of what can be built where and the demand for evermore construction without oversight or public review. It is the new normal. It all fits perfectly into a housing market that isn’t about housing, but is about REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts),
buildings bundled, bought and sold. Housing has become the investment vehicle and it is the subject of the documentary film PUSH and the manufactured housing crisis. I highly recommend you join BCA for the virtual screening of PUSH listed in the Activist’s Calendar for Wednesday evening. I saw it last week.
This sets the stage for the special Monday afternoon Council Land Use Committee meeting. Councilmember Droste didn’t get the expected positive recommendation to move forward the Quadplex Zoning Proposal at the February 18th Land Use meeting. So many of us called in that by the time we finished, the clock had run out. With the first step of ushering through the YIMBY proposal broken, a special meeting was called for Monday, March 1st with Quadplex Zoning as the only agenda item. Councilmembers Droste, Taplin, and Kesarwani are listed as the authors with Mayor Arreguin listed as a Co-sponsor.
YIMBY stands for Yes In My Back Yard. This is a well-funded housing deregulation movement sponsored by big tech and the real estate industry. And, the Bay Area State Assembly and Senate are saturated with supporters. Just look to Scott Wiener, Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner. The YIMBY agenda is to deregulate housing, an apartment construction boom will follow. The theory sold to the believers in the deregulation movement is the initial high rents will stabilize and then drop solving the affordability crisis.
Those of us who have been around long enough have seen how deregulation fails to bring the promised solutions just like lowering taxes for the “job creators” never trickled-down to the rest of us. Deregulation is a boon to the investors, but the fallout to those living under it is just the opposite. Look to Texas and the failure of the energy grid. Councilmembers Droste and Taplin are leading the charge with Robinson, Kesarwani, Bartlett and Mayor Arreguin signing on. Anne Applebaum in her book Twilight of Democracy The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism writes of coming to terms with who her friends, acquaintances and colleagues had become. We need to come to terms with what the people we helped elect and voted for actually believe and to what ends they will follow to further their careers.
Councilmember Hahn kept her cool as she questioned Droste on the Quadplex Zoning. Hahn described the Quadplex Zoning measure as a moving target that should be divided into “upzoning,” which allows bigger and more expansive development making the land more valuable, a better money-making vehicle for investors and speculators and “ministerial approval” which eliminates review of the project to be constructed. Ministerial review is often interchanged with “by-right” which goes one step further meaning there can be no objection. All of this is the moving target of deregulation.
Councilmember Robinson kept referring to “we” and Hahn asked, “who is the we?” It looked like Robinson was about to spill the beans on who else is involved and then he caught himself. This all boils down to what is the rush to flood the city with resolutions, referrals and ordinances turning zoning upside down, more accurately eliminating building restrictions. Those putting forth measures declare it is to correct past wrongs of racism, exclusionary housing and fill the desperate housing needs especially for the “missing middle,” people with a fine income just not enough to buy the million dollar dream.
Hahn announced at the beginning of the meeting she had a hard stop at 4 pm. When the hour arrived and Hahn had to sign off, Robinson and Droste were almost gleeful in their good fortune that Hahn was no longer present. They floundered for a bit and then crafted their motion to take no action and to request the Agenda Committee schedule the item (Quadplex Zoning) for a special City Council meeting or worksession. And, that was Monday.
Thursday, March 4 was the regular meeting of the Land Use committee and committee chair Robinson announced that only one item would be addressed Taplin’s Resolution Recognizing Housing as a Human Right, but Hahn was back with questions about what happened on Monday. As it turns out the motion crafted by Robinson and Droste doesn’t fit within the committee rules. Council committees have four choices, a positive recommendation, a qualified positive recommendation, a negative recommendation and a qualified negative recommendation. The motion to take no action and forward the Quadplex Zoning to the full Council could not stand. Either it had to be corrected or Droste could withdraw the measure from committee and move it directly to Council. Droste said she would discuss what action to take with the mayor. As for the rest of the meeting there was discussion of the Housing as a Human Right, but no action was taken.
A few notes requiring attention are that buried in the Quadplex Zoning is the property owner has no obligation to notify tenants of the sale of the property. This would deny tenants the ability to exercise the Tenants’ Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) if that measure ever passes. TOPA is actually a great measure where tenants would have the first right to buy a building when it is put up for sale. Of course, deregulation will make the ground underneath any apartment building so valuable to investors and speculators that the price will escalate out of reach of the lowly tenants even if subsidies can be found.
There was another agenda item that was continued to a future meeting that needs tracking, the proposed Affordable Housing Overlay from Councilmember Taplin and co-sponsors Bartlett and Robinson. What this does in short is allow ministerial approval (counter sign-off no public hearing) for 100% low to moderate income 7-story projects and to allow for an additional 10’ density bonus (another story) to projects in residential neighborhoods (R-1, R-1A and R-2). It sounds wonderful at first glance until one looks for the details and this is where it gets loose.
The entire project could be rented to moderate income households. Per HUD, that is people earning 80 – 120% of the area median income (AMI). Using the Berkeley Housing Authority chart as a basis for calculating the AMI for a 1 person household the result is $91,375/year. By that standard one with moderate AMI is not poor and would qualify for a unit as a moderate income earner making the project sound as if it contributes to housing the poor while dancing on the edge of market rate. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/BHA/Home/Payment_Standards,_Income_Limits,_and_Utility_Allowance.aspx.
There were a few callers extolling the benefits of Quadplex Zoning on Monday and Thursday from what used to be BARF (Bay Area Renters Federation) that has morphed into California Yimby and overlaps with East Bay for Everyone. There are true believers in trickle-down housing or that building everywhere without restraint will solve the problem of unaffordable housing for the many. Trying to change the mind of a YIMBY is like trying to convince someone wearing a MAGA hat that the election wasn’t stolen from Trump.
Patrick M. Condon was a true believer until he saw it didn’t work. I’m working my way through his book Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land. My walk partner asked me today what was the translation for the Latin quid pro quo. It is according to google translate “something for something,” a favor for a favor. This rush to eliminate zoning codes, deregulate housing looks to be a combination of an investment vehicle, true believers and a favor for a favor for the one vying for that real estate support for the coveted career move.
The last meeting to be covered is the Public Works Commission on Thursday evening. When I tuned in, the meeting was already in progress with employees calling in from parking enforcement to speak against being moved to another department under the Mayor’s proposed BerkDOT.
I don’t share the enthusiasm that is coming from some quarters of Berkeley for the Mayor’s idea of creating a Berkeley Department of Transportation (BerkDOT) as a solution to biased policing. The entire restructuring of parking enforcement currently under the police department to end biased policing strikes me as a costly and ill-timed misadventure. It should be preceded by the work just beginning Reimagining Public Safety. That task force meets this coming Thursday, March 11 at 6 pm.
Liam Garland has been tasked with developing the model for BerkDOT. As the new Director of Public Works, Garland is fulfilling his assignment. Just because we have a talented person assigned to lead a premature restructuring of the City organizational chart doesn’t make the timing any better.
I’ve listened to Liam Garland at a number of City meetings. At each, I am grateful that he was hired. He comes with an impressive resume of work experiences that would be rare to see in the position he holds in city administration. He was an elementary school teacher, later an attorney representing victims of housing discrimination. Garland will be introduced at the Wednesday evening Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association meeting at 7 pm.
I like to close with what I’m reading. Already mentioned is Twilight of Democracy The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum 2020. I also finished Nomadland by Jessica Bruder, 2017. The best quote in Nomadland comes from the main character Linda who describes Amazon as “people buying stuff they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.” Also, stacked on my iPad bookshelf is The Devil You Know A Black Power Manifesto by Charles M. Blow, 2021
February 27 - Notes from the editor for the week of February 21 - February 27, 2021
I normally end my Activist’s Diary with what I am reading, but this week it is also the start. There is good reason by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 2013 book Braiding Sweetgrass is on the best seller list. It is a lovely book about living with nature and the environment, consuming only what is needed and being a good steward. Kimmerer weaves in those who see resources as a commodity to be consumed until depleted, nature as an inconvenience to be conquered and the waste left behind to be disregarded. She leads us to contemplate that we are at a crossroads. Which road do we chose, the path of stewardship of the living world or the path of consumption and destruction?
It was a scattered week of too many meetings, impossible to do justice to more than a few.
At the 4 pm February 23 Special City Council meeting the single subject was the Report and Recommendations from the Mayor’s Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group. It started with a report of the findings, need for improvements and recommendations. The testimony from the public at the February 9 Council meeting on the Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief, my own attendance as an observer at the last two Fair and Impartial Working Group meetings and Police Chief Greenwood’s response to the report and recommendations, define a police chief who is defensive and obstructive. In situations where leadership performance is at issue and care of the person still matters, the result would be a private conversation and a graceful retirement exit. This is not Berkeley at least not yet.
As the meeting was reaching the end and a $50,000 cost was on the table for program implementation, the City Manager said such an amount could not be found in the budget and implementation certainly couldn’t happen now.
At 2:36.39 into the meeting video you can hear Councilmember Bartlett state that in the last two years Berkeley has paid out $580,000 in fines for police misconduct, $63,000 in auto accidents and $28,000 in wrongful towing, making the point that surely $50,000 can be found. Nearly $700,000 is small compared to the lawsuits brought against some cities for wrongful deaths at the hands of police, but it is enough to demonstrate there is a problem with policing in Berkeley that needs correction. Bartlett interrupted comments to say he received notification that the community would come up with the money, a loan, so the implementation program could start now.
When it comes to the flood of zoning and development proposals appearing on meeting agendas, I’m beginning to feel like ALEC (American Legislative Council) has come to town.
Smart growth seems to have lost some of its luster as the phrase du jour to upend zoning and give free reign to developers. The new banner to achieve the same end and move the posts even further is racism. Racism is being waved to justify eliminating zoning codes and it is working as demonstrated by the calls on Tuesday evening at the regular February 23 City Council meeting with declarations of support for the Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning in Berkeley on the basis of an end to racist zoning practices. It also worked in Minneapolis in 2019 the city of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd.
Racism runs deep and redlining is a long ugly history. What is happening here is different, especially the rush, the immediacy of changing the zoning codes to make way for apartment buildings, quadplexes, triplexes and duplexes. The entire flood of proposals, resolutions and ordinances are worrisome as the people who are supposedly going to benefit from the land use changes look to be the target.
There is a rush to dismantle what are already inadequate ordinances in place to safe guard Berkeley from a changing climate while accommodating population growth. Berkeley population density is 11,632 per sq. mile which may not mean much until there is comparison with its neighbors and Portland and Minneapolis two cities which are cited in proposals as examples to be followed. For comparison the population per sq. mile of Sacramento is 5342, Oakland 7787, San Jose 5677, Richmond 1976, Emeryville 9411, El Cerrito 6921. San Francisco is 18,440. The population density of two “example” cities are Portland 4740 and Minneapolis 8130. These numbers will change as new census data comes in.
The point is Berkeley is already a very population dense city. It is more than shortsighted to think and act as if the responsibilities of the City of Berkeley begins and ends with eliminating zoning codes and establishing ministerial approval for major structures.
There are considerations to be made when building like the impact of urban heat islands. Urban heat islands occur when cities replace natural land cover with dense concentrations of pavement and buildings. Heat islands increase energy costs, air pollution, heat-related illness and mortality. There are actions that counter heat island affect like reducing hardscape, pavement, cement, asphalt by using permeable paving to direct water into the ground instead of runoff into the bay. There is more like adding green roofs, a program to maintain mature trees and plant native trees selected by how many species they support.
Cities are home to a significant fraction of the world’s biodiversity and take on greater importance in protecting biodiversity as plummeting insect populations threaten the collapse of ecosystems. Planning for people, plants and animals with nature friendly urban design makes cities more livable and resilient. The present and future framework for well-designed cities integrates urban ecological science for supporting nature with planning. We have experts at our fingertips. The San Francisco Estuary Institute and Aquatic Science Center is a start https://www.sfei.org/projects/making-natures-city
Ministerial approval of projects (signing approval at the counter with no public meetings) is the new companion in the land use proposals and a major concern. As we saw Thursday evening at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) even when architects come with impressive credentials, it does not mean that a project should go forward without review.
Charles Kahn, AIA, LEED AP meaning he is an Accredited Professional with advanced depth of knowledge in green building practices recused himself from ZAB meeting on Thursday evening stating he was the architect of record for 2317 Channing which was being reviewed. Another person from KDA Studio presented the project to ZAB. No one objected to replacing the 2-story medical office building with housing. The problem was the design and it was more than disappointing that someone who is a member of both ZAB and DRC, someone who has asked other architects and developers to consider including native plants, bird safe glass, sustainable features would not do the same with the project under his name. There was excessive hardscape, poorly planned greenspace and exotic plants rather than natives. If we can’t count on the people who should know better how can we depend on developers who have no exposure to best practices through public review.
Teresa Clarke made a number of recommendations to the building design some of which are still to be worked out with the DRC planner. Public comment pointed lack of native plants. Only one of the twelve plant choices is a native to California. Insects, pollinators and plants evolve together, i.e. native butterflies like the Pipevine Swallowtail will lay their eggs only on a pipevine. Using the California Native Plant Society website https://calscape.org by the architect and staff instead running to exotic non-native plants means avoidance of invasive species, less herbicides, pesticides, lower maintenance, essentially better plant survival, habitat for insects all with less work and pollution. Even humans are not immune from the toxicity of herbicides and pesticides. This project should have gone to DRC to really work through issues.
As stated repeatedly in previous “Diaries” city boards and commissions could use improvement. We need ZAB and DRC appointees who will speak to problems, offer suggestions, do not hesitate when the practitioner is a colleague and practice what they purport to support. We need appointees who do more than just carry credentials, but actually use them. We need stewards of urban habitat for biodiversity and a forester who chooses trees by how many species are supported. We could really benefit from a member of ZAB and DRC from the disability community to give input on project designs. We could use a lot including planners who incorporate biodiversity into urban design for a healthier city.
600 Addison was also up for preview at ZAB. This is the commercial research and development project that abuts Aquatic Park and plans to use park land, Bolivar Drive eight hours a day as a shuttle thoroughfare. The developer seems to be coming around with a commitment to bird safe glass, and they are lining up the support from the construction unions and with the local Native American representative. The developer has yet to reroute the shuttle off our park. The call will continue.
I normally end my Activist’s Diary with what I am reading, but this week it is also the start. There is good reason by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 2013 book Braiding Sweetgrass is on the best seller list. It is a lovely book about living with nature and the environment, consuming only what is needed and being a good steward. Kimmerer weaves in those who see resources as a commodity to be consumed until depleted, nature as an inconvenience to be conquered and the waste left behind to be disregarded. She leads us to contemplate that we are at a crossroads. Which road do we chose, the path of stewardship of the living world or the path of consumption and destruction?
It was a scattered week of too many meetings, impossible to do justice to more than a few.
At the 4 pm February 23 Special City Council meeting the single subject was the Report and Recommendations from the Mayor’s Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group. It started with a report of the findings, need for improvements and recommendations. The testimony from the public at the February 9 Council meeting on the Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief, my own attendance as an observer at the last two Fair and Impartial Working Group meetings and Police Chief Greenwood’s response to the report and recommendations, define a police chief who is defensive and obstructive. In situations where leadership performance is at issue and care of the person still matters, the result would be a private conversation and a graceful retirement exit. This is not Berkeley at least not yet.
As the meeting was reaching the end and a $50,000 cost was on the table for program implementation, the City Manager said such an amount could not be found in the budget and implementation certainly couldn’t happen now.
At 2:36.39 into the meeting video you can hear Councilmember Bartlett state that in the last two years Berkeley has paid out $580,000 in fines for police misconduct, $63,000 in auto accidents and $28,000 in wrongful towing, making the point that surely $50,000 can be found. Nearly $700,000 is small compared to the lawsuits brought against some cities for wrongful deaths at the hands of police, but it is enough to demonstrate there is a problem with policing in Berkeley that needs correction. Bartlett interrupted comments to say he received notification that the community would come up with the money, a loan, so the implementation program could start now.
When it comes to the flood of zoning and development proposals appearing on meeting agendas, I’m beginning to feel like ALEC (American Legislative Council) has come to town.
Smart growth seems to have lost some of its luster as the phrase du jour to upend zoning and give free reign to developers. The new banner to achieve the same end and move the posts even further is racism. Racism is being waved to justify eliminating zoning codes and it is working as demonstrated by the calls on Tuesday evening at the regular February 23 City Council meeting with declarations of support for the Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning in Berkeley on the basis of an end to racist zoning practices. It also worked in Minneapolis in 2019 the city of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd.
Racism runs deep and redlining is a long ugly history. What is happening here is different, especially the rush, the immediacy of changing the zoning codes to make way for apartment buildings, quadplexes, triplexes and duplexes. The entire flood of proposals, resolutions and ordinances are worrisome as the people who are supposedly going to benefit from the land use changes look to be the target.
There is a rush to dismantle what are already inadequate ordinances in place to safe guard Berkeley from a changing climate while accommodating population growth. Berkeley population density is 11,632 per sq. mile which may not mean much until there is comparison with its neighbors and Portland and Minneapolis two cities which are cited in proposals as examples to be followed. For comparison the population per sq. mile of Sacramento is 5342, Oakland 7787, San Jose 5677, Richmond 1976, Emeryville 9411, El Cerrito 6921. San Francisco is 18,440. The population density of two “example” cities are Portland 4740 and Minneapolis 8130. These numbers will change as new census data comes in.
The point is Berkeley is already a very population dense city. It is more than shortsighted to think and act as if the responsibilities of the City of Berkeley begins and ends with eliminating zoning codes and establishing ministerial approval for major structures.
There are considerations to be made when building like the impact of urban heat islands. Urban heat islands occur when cities replace natural land cover with dense concentrations of pavement and buildings. Heat islands increase energy costs, air pollution, heat-related illness and mortality. There are actions that counter heat island affect like reducing hardscape, pavement, cement, asphalt by using permeable paving to direct water into the ground instead of runoff into the bay. There is more like adding green roofs, a program to maintain mature trees and plant native trees selected by how many species they support.
Cities are home to a significant fraction of the world’s biodiversity and take on greater importance in protecting biodiversity as plummeting insect populations threaten the collapse of ecosystems. Planning for people, plants and animals with nature friendly urban design makes cities more livable and resilient. The present and future framework for well-designed cities integrates urban ecological science for supporting nature with planning. We have experts at our fingertips. The San Francisco Estuary Institute and Aquatic Science Center is a start https://www.sfei.org/projects/making-natures-city
Ministerial approval of projects (signing approval at the counter with no public meetings) is the new companion in the land use proposals and a major concern. As we saw Thursday evening at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) even when architects come with impressive credentials, it does not mean that a project should go forward without review.
Charles Kahn, AIA, LEED AP meaning he is an Accredited Professional with advanced depth of knowledge in green building practices recused himself from ZAB meeting on Thursday evening stating he was the architect of record for 2317 Channing which was being reviewed. Another person from KDA Studio presented the project to ZAB. No one objected to replacing the 2-story medical office building with housing. The problem was the design and it was more than disappointing that someone who is a member of both ZAB and DRC, someone who has asked other architects and developers to consider including native plants, bird safe glass, sustainable features would not do the same with the project under his name. There was excessive hardscape, poorly planned greenspace and exotic plants rather than natives. If we can’t count on the people who should know better how can we depend on developers who have no exposure to best practices through public review.
Teresa Clarke made a number of recommendations to the building design some of which are still to be worked out with the DRC planner. Public comment pointed lack of native plants. Only one of the twelve plant choices is a native to California. Insects, pollinators and plants evolve together, i.e. native butterflies like the Pipevine Swallowtail will lay their eggs only on a pipevine. Using the California Native Plant Society website https://calscape.org by the architect and staff instead running to exotic non-native plants means avoidance of invasive species, less herbicides, pesticides, lower maintenance, essentially better plant survival, habitat for insects all with less work and pollution. Even humans are not immune from the toxicity of herbicides and pesticides. This project should have gone to DRC to really work through issues.
As stated repeatedly in previous “Diaries” city boards and commissions could use improvement. We need ZAB and DRC appointees who will speak to problems, offer suggestions, do not hesitate when the practitioner is a colleague and practice what they purport to support. We need appointees who do more than just carry credentials, but actually use them. We need stewards of urban habitat for biodiversity and a forester who chooses trees by how many species are supported. We could really benefit from a member of ZAB and DRC from the disability community to give input on project designs. We could use a lot including planners who incorporate biodiversity into urban design for a healthier city.
600 Addison was also up for preview at ZAB. This is the commercial research and development project that abuts Aquatic Park and plans to use park land, Bolivar Drive eight hours a day as a shuttle thoroughfare. The developer seems to be coming around with a commitment to bird safe glass, and they are lining up the support from the construction unions and with the local Native American representative. The developer has yet to reroute the shuttle off our park. The call will continue.
February 20, 2021 - for the week of February 14 - February 20, 2021
There is a lot to be learned from what happened in Texas this last week. While Texans are rightly angry with Ted Cruz taking off to Cancun to avoid the crisis, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to send some of our City elected officials to Cancun to sit out the rest of their terms as a damage control measure.
Land use, zoning, housing and infrastructure grabbed all the attention this week from Tuesday through Saturday.
Mayor Arreguin was evidently expecting enthusiasm for the ferry and pier at the Tuesday Council Worksession as when it didn’t come, he dismissed the public comments stating, “ I just want to represent that the people that come to our meetings we respect the comments, they don’t always reflect the vast majority of opinion in the Berkeley community…” Berkeley is literally in the WETA (Waterfront Emergency Transportation Authority) boat because the old pier wasn’t maintained, had to be closed and WETA will build a new pier on the condition of adding ferry service.
A ferry to and from San Francisco sounds sort of romantic, a bygone era and is presented as a reasonable commuter alternative to BART, bus or simply driving. No one is talking about how long it will take to get across the bay by ferry, just how much taxpayers are subsidizing ferry service or if Berkeley will be on the hook for financing if the ridership doesn’t materialize. The consultant said fares at $10 per trip cover only 58% of the operating cost. The assumption is being made that after a ferry commute, riders will hang out at the marina and fill out the lagging marina fund. Brennan Cox said that ferries are popular on the east coast and he doesn’t understand why there is not more enthusiasm. I would like to suggest that other forms of transportation are less time consuming, more convenient and it looks like will be less costly.
The pier/ferry presentation followed the report that 92 people were served/housed during the pandemic homeless outreach effort. Sadly, there are hundreds more living on the street.
The other Tuesday meeting the first meeting of the week was the best with a presentation for Community for a Cultural Civic Center Park Subcommittee by Margo Schueler on infrastructure. Every time I hear Margo speak I leave with another layer of new knowledge, i.e. the brick permeable surface on Allston between MLK and Milvia should last 85 to 100 years whereas asphalt streets deteriorate and need replacement every 10 – 15 years. There are other benefits too, like bricks slow traffic, lower urban heat, give air to the tree roots enhancing survival decreasing sidewalk and street uplift and permeable paving directs water into the ground underneath decreasing the need for watering. Allston brick was laid by hand, but there are machines that do it. And, Michigan and Iowa are the leaders in permeable paving, because of lower maintenance during the winter.
Thursday morning, so many people tried to attend the Council Land Use Committee meeting that the number of attempted attendees exceeded the zoom meeting limit of 100. Some texted Sophie Hahn that they couldn’t get in and she in turn shared the problem. When the meeting limit couldn’t be expanded, Christopher Jensen the City Assistant Attorney was consulted regarding whether the meeting needed to be canceled and rescheduled and whether any action could be taken. Mr. Jensen’s conclusion was that exceeding the zoom room capacity was no different from exceeding room capacity in an in-person meeting, however, he failed to remember that when in-person attendance exceeded capacity people were able to hear the meeting as it happened and allowed in to give public comment. In a zoom meeting people are just shut out. No action was taken as public comment filled the meeting.
The agenda items garnering such attention were TOPA – Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act which was postponed until March and the Quadplex Zoning proposal from Councilmembers Droste, Taplin and Kesarwani with Mayor Arreguin as Co-sponsor. The declarations of a terrible housing shortage is at a constant roar with the solution as unbridled building with ministerial approval even while we are surrounded by a glut of vacant market rate units and construction of mixed-use projects (commercial first floor with housing above) proceeding at a feverish pace. There were move-in today lease signs in the downtown for months in attempt to fill vacant units in new buildings before the pandemic caused the exiting of students.
The Quadplex zoning proposal, the main meeting event, allows for building of up to four units on one lot with no limits on the number of bed
There is a lot to be learned from what happened in Texas this last week. While Texans are rightly angry with Ted Cruz taking off to Cancun to avoid the crisis, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to send some of our City elected officials to Cancun to sit out the rest of their terms as a damage control measure.
Land use, zoning, housing and infrastructure grabbed all the attention this week from Tuesday through Saturday.
Mayor Arreguin was evidently expecting enthusiasm for the ferry and pier at the Tuesday Council Worksession as when it didn’t come, he dismissed the public comments stating, “ I just want to represent that the people that come to our meetings we respect the comments, they don’t always reflect the vast majority of opinion in the Berkeley community…” Berkeley is literally in the WETA (Waterfront Emergency Transportation Authority) boat because the old pier wasn’t maintained, had to be closed and WETA will build a new pier on the condition of adding ferry service.
A ferry to and from San Francisco sounds sort of romantic, a bygone era and is presented as a reasonable commuter alternative to BART, bus or simply driving. No one is talking about how long it will take to get across the bay by ferry, just how much taxpayers are subsidizing ferry service or if Berkeley will be on the hook for financing if the ridership doesn’t materialize. The consultant said fares at $10 per trip cover only 58% of the operating cost. The assumption is being made that after a ferry commute, riders will hang out at the marina and fill out the lagging marina fund. Brennan Cox said that ferries are popular on the east coast and he doesn’t understand why there is not more enthusiasm. I would like to suggest that other forms of transportation are less time consuming, more convenient and it looks like will be less costly.
The pier/ferry presentation followed the report that 92 people were served/housed during the pandemic homeless outreach effort. Sadly, there are hundreds more living on the street.
The other Tuesday meeting the first meeting of the week was the best with a presentation for Community for a Cultural Civic Center Park Subcommittee by Margo Schueler on infrastructure. Every time I hear Margo speak I leave with another layer of new knowledge, i.e. the brick permeable surface on Allston between MLK and Milvia should last 85 to 100 years whereas asphalt streets deteriorate and need replacement every 10 – 15 years. There are other benefits too, like bricks slow traffic, lower urban heat, give air to the tree roots enhancing survival decreasing sidewalk and street uplift and permeable paving directs water into the ground underneath decreasing the need for watering. Allston brick was laid by hand, but there are machines that do it. And, Michigan and Iowa are the leaders in permeable paving, because of lower maintenance during the winter.
Thursday morning, so many people tried to attend the Council Land Use Committee meeting that the number of attempted attendees exceeded the zoom meeting limit of 100. Some texted Sophie Hahn that they couldn’t get in and she in turn shared the problem. When the meeting limit couldn’t be expanded, Christopher Jensen the City Assistant Attorney was consulted regarding whether the meeting needed to be canceled and rescheduled and whether any action could be taken. Mr. Jensen’s conclusion was that exceeding the zoom room capacity was no different from exceeding room capacity in an in-person meeting, however, he failed to remember that when in-person attendance exceeded capacity people were able to hear the meeting as it happened and allowed in to give public comment. In a zoom meeting people are just shut out. No action was taken as public comment filled the meeting.
The agenda items garnering such attention were TOPA – Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act which was postponed until March and the Quadplex Zoning proposal from Councilmembers Droste, Taplin and Kesarwani with Mayor Arreguin as Co-sponsor. The declarations of a terrible housing shortage is at a constant roar with the solution as unbridled building with ministerial approval even while we are surrounded by a glut of vacant market rate units and construction of mixed-use projects (commercial first floor with housing above) proceeding at a feverish pace. There were move-in today lease signs in the downtown for months in attempt to fill vacant units in new buildings before the pandemic caused the exiting of students.
The Quadplex zoning proposal, the main meeting event, allows for building of up to four units on one lot with no limits on the number of bed