Activist's Diary
What Happened is a 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 often include 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. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com
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 often include 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. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com
February 27, 2025 Activist's Diary
What do you do when you ask your daughter if your granddaughter is vaccinated against measles and she won’t answer?
That may be a question asked in many places, not just by a friend to her daughter.
Just a day ago the Texas Department of State Health Services announced an unvaccinated child died from measles in the ongoing outbreak in the Texas South Plains and Panhandle regions. https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news-alerts/texas-announces-first-death-measles-outbreak
This is so tragic. A child died from a wholly preventable disease, because of the failure to be vaccinated against measles.
The first Measles vaccine was released in 1963. In 1971 the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) was licensed. The MMRV which added the varicella vaccine to the MMR was approved in 2005.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United states in 2000 thanks to a very high percentage of people receiving the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. And then the anti-vaccine movement took hold.
Texas with a high rate of unvaccinated children is the center of the current measles outbreak and the location of the unvaccinated child that died from measles. The CDC reported as of February 20, 2025 measles cases in eight jurisdictions: Alaska, California, Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, Rhode Island, and Texas.
If you read the CDC report, note that a child is not fully vaccinated until after two doses of the MMR. The first does is recommended to start at age 12 to 15 months though during an epidemic or with travel the first dose of MMR can be given to an infant as young as 6 months. The second dose is at age 4 years to 6 years. Older children, teenagers and adults who have not been vaccinated at all still need two doses of the MMR or MMRV (varicella-chicken pox added) vaccine with at least 28 days between the first dose and the second dose. An extra dose during an epidemic is not harmful. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html
In 1989, California had a measles outbreak that lasted through 1990 with more than 16,400 reported cases, 3,390 hospital admissions and 75 deaths.
I remember it well. I was a relatively new manager in the pediatric clinic at Kaiser Oakland and one of my areas of responsibility was the pediatric injection clinic where vaccines were given.
Measles is the most contagious disease we know of. It is airborne and so contagious that just being in a room after someone infected with measles has left is enough for a susceptible person to become infected from the virus still floating in the air. Roughly 9 out of 10 unvaccinated children exposed to measles will become infected.
When someone is exposed to measles, the protective action to prevent infection or to modify the clinical course of disease is to give the MMR (measles vaccine) within 72 hours of exposure.
At Kaiser we were contacting every family of a child that had been registered one hour before the sick child with measles to two hours after. During the peak of the epidemic, in the Oakland pediatric vaccine clinic we were vaccinating more than 350 children a day.
As noted by the Texas Health Department and various other sources, people who are infected with measles will begin to have symptoms within a week or two and are contagious from about four days before the rash appears to four days after.
To quote from Dr. Peter Hotez, who was interviewed on several shows after the news of a child dying from measles said this:
“[M]easles is a serious illness. In the 1980s, 3 million kids died every year from measles. It was the single leading killer of children globally. Now through GAVI, the Global Alliance of Vaccines and Immunizations, we’ve brought it down to 100,000 deaths – still a lot of deaths…The minute you stop vaccinating and maintaining that vigilance of 90-95% vaccine coverage, the measles comes roaring back…
What happens [when you get infected] is you get a prodrome [early symptom] of what we used to call the three Cs – cough, coryza, which means upper respiratory involvement and congestion, conjunctivitis – followed by the rash. And the rash is occurring because the virus is getting into the bloodstream and disseminating to the skin and all parts of the body. And unfortunately, that includes what we call hematogenous spread to the lungs, and it causes a very damaging pneumonitis [inflammation of the lungs] and pneumonia, and then can also result in encephalitis [swelling and inflammation of the brain] and other involvement.”
Back in 2015 when the Berkeley City Council was taking a vote to support California SB 277 the immunization requirement bill for children entering child care or school, councilmember Wengraf related she moved to California to take a job as a teacher of deaf children who because of measles had lost their hearing. (Governor Brown signed SB 277 on June 30, 2015.)
My next door childhood playmate was deaf from a measles infection. When we reached school age the family moved to Faribault, Minnesota where there was a school for deaf and blind children.
As a retired RN who still maintains a Registered Nurse license and Public Health Nurse Certificate, there are not words suitable for print describing the frustration I feel toward anti-science and anti-vaccine movements like Health Freedom and the Health Freedom Defense Fund.
I temper that frustration with understanding, the problem with public health is that when it is working we don’t notice it.
The problem with childhood vaccinations is most adults today have no memory or experience with the complications, disabilities and deaths vaccines prevent. This week the first childhood death from measles in over a decade might put a wedge into the anti-vaccine mantra that vaccines are more dangerous than the disease.
The constant sewage of rage, disinformation, misinformation that flows across social media spread by charismatic influencers who place themselves as the ones to be trusted not physicians and scientists feed into conspiracies and fears. “Snake oil salesmen” (and women) have been around since the beginning of time.
Robert Frances Kennedy, Jr (RFKjr) professed during the senate hearings on his appointment by Trump to be Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) that he was all in on supporting vaccinations even convincing Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy (Republican – former Democrat) whose life’s work as a physician has been to advocate for vaccines including running large-scale vaccine programs. Cassidy didn’t just vote for RFKjr, he gave a speech in the Senate in support of RFKjr after being convinced by RFKjr that as Secretary of HHS he would support vaccines.
RFKJr as Secretary of HHS will oversee the CDC, NIH, FDA, Indian Health Services, Medicare and Medicaid. See the full HHS Organizational Chart here: https://www.hhs.gov/about/agencies/orgchart/index.html
Now on the job, RFKjr put the vaccine schedule in his crosshairs on day one. Cassidy should have known better than to trust RFKjr. There is plenty of recent history on RFKjr’s anti-vax stance. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/health/robert-f-kennedy-jr-polio-vaccines.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tU4.uG9l.ZJ9Irv4jPRuZ&smid=url-share
There is a sordid underbelly to RFKjr’s use of his father’s legacy and the recognition of the Robert Kennedy name to peddle the repeatedly studied and debunked theory that the measles vaccine (MMR – Measles, Mumps, Rubella) causes autism.
Yesterday at the Trump cabinet meeting, RFKjr said there were two measles deaths and claimed there was nothing unusual with the outbreak and that the reason 20 children were hospitalized was for quarantine.
Anyone hearing this should know better.
Dr. Lara Johnson, chief medical officer for Covenant Health Hospital in Lubbock, Texas where eighteen children are hospitalized with measles complications said they do not hospitalize to quarantine a child. That measles is a serious illness with a mortality rate of about a 3%. They hospitalize to manage symptoms with supportive care like supplemental high-flow oxygen and escalating support as needed.
I’ve read the original 1998 article by Wakefield in the Lancet where Wakefield hinted of a newly discovered syndrome linking the MMR vaccine and autism. It took over a decade before Wakefield’s scientifically and ethically flawed paper was withdrawn and his license revoked. By that time serious damage was done and the anti-vaccine movement surged.
I also read Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician and Autism Dad by Peter J. Hotez. The book is the very personal story of science and coping with a child with autism.
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder of genetic origins, in plain language, everything known to cause autism occurs during early brain development in the fetus. Autism is not caused by vaccines and a child can’t be made autistic. Two important identified factors are the age of the parents particularly the father and the health of the mother/pregnant person during pregnancy. Age 34 and older is associated with increased risk of autism. Maternal Health during pregnancy is important throughout a pregnancy and it is especially important in early pregnancy when the brain of the fetus is developing.
Back to RFKjr
It should be noted that the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense (CHD) was founded by Eric Gladen under the name of World Mercury Project. The income of the World Mercury Project jumped from $13,000 in 2014 to $470,000 in 2015 when RFKJr joined the board and the name was changed to Children’s Health Defense. Income (rounded) in 2020 was $6,800,000, in 2021 $16,000,000 and $23,500,000 in 2022.
RFKJr’s income from Children’s Health Defense is found in ProPublica Nonprofit explorer. Note that in 2023 while RFKJr was “chairman on leave” he was still paid $326,056 in compensation. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/260388604
RFKjr also reaps income through anti-vaccine lawsuits.
One of the early theories on the MMR vaccine and autism pointed to the tiny amount of the mercury based preservative Thimerosal used in vaccines. Though there was never any finding of any association between Thimerosal and autism, it was removed from childhood vaccines in the United Sates in 2001.
Thimerosal is still used for some formulations of inactivated influenza vaccines in multi-dose vials, however, flu vaccine in single dose vials (one person one dose), pre-filled syringes and nasal spray do not normally contain thimerosal. (You can always ask if that is your fixation.)
Only one Republican, Mitch McConnell a survivor of polio voted with the Democrats against the confirmation of RFKjr with the final count of 52 to confirm and 48 noes.
RFKjr has said no vaccines are safe. Polio is another vaccine under his attack.
Polio has existed since prehistoric times. FDR contracted polio at age 39 in 1921.
The Berkeley Times (in print only) devoted two full pages to Zona Roberts (1920 – 2025) and her activism for persons with disabilities describing her as a pioneer in the disability rights movement. Her son Ed Roberts for whom the Ed Roberts Campus is named contracted polio at 14 in 1953 and came home as a quadriplegic in an iron lung.
As a little kid, I remember my dad wanting to stop in Chicago during a family road trip and my mother absolutely refusing saying, “there is polio in Chicago.” I didn’t know what polio was, but I understood it was something terrible from my mother’s response.
Polio the scourge of the 1940s and 1950s ended with the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955. Dr. Albert B. Sabin developed a second polio vaccine in 1961.
RFK Jr was born in 1954. He would not have gone to kindergarten with children in wheelchairs from contracting polio as I did. He would have no memory of ambulance after ambulance rushing children with polio to the Sister Kenny Institute as my brother-in-law did.
Sister Elizabeth Kenny opened the Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1942. The Sister Kenny Institute still exists as the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute but with the polio vaccine effectively eliminating paralysis and death from polio the focus has shifted to serious injuries like brain injury, spinal cord injury or stroke.
If you are paying attention, polio is making a comeback with the anti-vaccine movements and war in Gaza.
In June 2022 a young unvaccinated man in his 20s from the Jewish Orthodox community in Rockland County, New York showed up in the emergency room with weakness and paralysis creating a public health emergency with the diagnosis of polio. According to news reporting some took quick advantage of free public vaccination clinics while others in the community called it a hoax and declined.
With the bombing and destruction of infrastructure, hospitals, loss of clean water, and loss of sanitation facilities in Gaza a 10-month old Palestinian baby in Gaza contracted polio in July 2024. To stop the spread of polio two humanitarian ceasefires were called for the two dose administration of the polio vaccine with the required four week wait between the first and second dose. The funding for the critical polio vaccination drive (2 doses) in Gaza for over 640,000 Gazan children under the age of 10 came from His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE.
The vaccinations were delivered in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) (January 20, 2025 Trump EO to withdraw from WHO), UNICEF and UNRWA (the U.S. stopped funding UNWRA in March 2024 until March 25, 2025 and Israel currently bans UNRWA from access to Gaza and the West Bank).
Polio outbreaks are also reported in Pakistan and French Guiana.
Keeping track of disease trends is what health professionals look for in the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) from the CDC. The banner on the CDC website stating “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders” is gone now, but not being stepped the content I can’t tell you what was removed or modified. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html
The MMWR is shared worldwide. Shutting down communication from the CDC has worldwide impact not just within the U.S.
Right now, there is a Tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, Kansas with 67 confirmed cases.
Over 900 dairy herds in California are infected with Bird Flu (H5N1), the virus has been found in 16 states. Bird flu is not just in birds and dairy, it has also infected seals, bears, foxes, skunks, opossums, racoons, bobcats, goats, alpacas, otters, lynxes, polecats, badgers, racoons, farmed mink, stray and domestic cats and dogs and zoo animals such as tigers and leopards. So far people infected with bird flu is around 70.
If you are following the price of eggs, depending on what source you check over 20 million egg laying hens have been culled.
Infectious disease isn’t going away.
MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is a noble endeavor, however, RFKJr’s approach to take an eight-year hiatus from the study of infectious disease to devote research to chronic disease is definitely wrong-headed.
These days everything is on the chopping block, federal funding, grants and of course the people with no thought or understanding to the massive impact of the firing of federal employees like the scientists and food inspectors who protect our health, the IRS employees who process our taxes, the USAID workers who provided assistance worldwide while at the same time monitored the spread of contagious disease and watched for brewing epidemics.
I am probably being too generous describing the destruction of government and government services unfolding before our eyes as being done out of ignorance, when what we see can only be explained as relishing in the impact to maximize the shock value of gutting the government to make way for harvesting the spoils.
Show up if you can, call often and email telling our senators, representatives, elected to stand up and stand firm. If we still had John Lewis, we wouldn’t have to tell him to stand up, he would stand firm until he was arrested and carried away.
The NIH is one of my go to sources when I am looking for research studies. Given the current scrubbing of government websites to remove any words, references that don’t align with the beliefs of the Trump administration, I signed up for the Center for Infectious Disease, Research and Policy (CIDRAP) daily newsletter from the University of Minnesota. It is free and CIDRAP covers the cost of removing the paywalls from references. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu
What do you do when you ask your daughter if your granddaughter is vaccinated against measles and she won’t answer?
That may be a question asked in many places, not just by a friend to her daughter.
Just a day ago the Texas Department of State Health Services announced an unvaccinated child died from measles in the ongoing outbreak in the Texas South Plains and Panhandle regions. https://www.dshs.texas.gov/news-alerts/texas-announces-first-death-measles-outbreak
This is so tragic. A child died from a wholly preventable disease, because of the failure to be vaccinated against measles.
The first Measles vaccine was released in 1963. In 1971 the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) was licensed. The MMRV which added the varicella vaccine to the MMR was approved in 2005.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United states in 2000 thanks to a very high percentage of people receiving the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. And then the anti-vaccine movement took hold.
Texas with a high rate of unvaccinated children is the center of the current measles outbreak and the location of the unvaccinated child that died from measles. The CDC reported as of February 20, 2025 measles cases in eight jurisdictions: Alaska, California, Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, Rhode Island, and Texas.
If you read the CDC report, note that a child is not fully vaccinated until after two doses of the MMR. The first does is recommended to start at age 12 to 15 months though during an epidemic or with travel the first dose of MMR can be given to an infant as young as 6 months. The second dose is at age 4 years to 6 years. Older children, teenagers and adults who have not been vaccinated at all still need two doses of the MMR or MMRV (varicella-chicken pox added) vaccine with at least 28 days between the first dose and the second dose. An extra dose during an epidemic is not harmful. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html
In 1989, California had a measles outbreak that lasted through 1990 with more than 16,400 reported cases, 3,390 hospital admissions and 75 deaths.
I remember it well. I was a relatively new manager in the pediatric clinic at Kaiser Oakland and one of my areas of responsibility was the pediatric injection clinic where vaccines were given.
Measles is the most contagious disease we know of. It is airborne and so contagious that just being in a room after someone infected with measles has left is enough for a susceptible person to become infected from the virus still floating in the air. Roughly 9 out of 10 unvaccinated children exposed to measles will become infected.
When someone is exposed to measles, the protective action to prevent infection or to modify the clinical course of disease is to give the MMR (measles vaccine) within 72 hours of exposure.
At Kaiser we were contacting every family of a child that had been registered one hour before the sick child with measles to two hours after. During the peak of the epidemic, in the Oakland pediatric vaccine clinic we were vaccinating more than 350 children a day.
As noted by the Texas Health Department and various other sources, people who are infected with measles will begin to have symptoms within a week or two and are contagious from about four days before the rash appears to four days after.
To quote from Dr. Peter Hotez, who was interviewed on several shows after the news of a child dying from measles said this:
“[M]easles is a serious illness. In the 1980s, 3 million kids died every year from measles. It was the single leading killer of children globally. Now through GAVI, the Global Alliance of Vaccines and Immunizations, we’ve brought it down to 100,000 deaths – still a lot of deaths…The minute you stop vaccinating and maintaining that vigilance of 90-95% vaccine coverage, the measles comes roaring back…
What happens [when you get infected] is you get a prodrome [early symptom] of what we used to call the three Cs – cough, coryza, which means upper respiratory involvement and congestion, conjunctivitis – followed by the rash. And the rash is occurring because the virus is getting into the bloodstream and disseminating to the skin and all parts of the body. And unfortunately, that includes what we call hematogenous spread to the lungs, and it causes a very damaging pneumonitis [inflammation of the lungs] and pneumonia, and then can also result in encephalitis [swelling and inflammation of the brain] and other involvement.”
Back in 2015 when the Berkeley City Council was taking a vote to support California SB 277 the immunization requirement bill for children entering child care or school, councilmember Wengraf related she moved to California to take a job as a teacher of deaf children who because of measles had lost their hearing. (Governor Brown signed SB 277 on June 30, 2015.)
My next door childhood playmate was deaf from a measles infection. When we reached school age the family moved to Faribault, Minnesota where there was a school for deaf and blind children.
As a retired RN who still maintains a Registered Nurse license and Public Health Nurse Certificate, there are not words suitable for print describing the frustration I feel toward anti-science and anti-vaccine movements like Health Freedom and the Health Freedom Defense Fund.
I temper that frustration with understanding, the problem with public health is that when it is working we don’t notice it.
The problem with childhood vaccinations is most adults today have no memory or experience with the complications, disabilities and deaths vaccines prevent. This week the first childhood death from measles in over a decade might put a wedge into the anti-vaccine mantra that vaccines are more dangerous than the disease.
The constant sewage of rage, disinformation, misinformation that flows across social media spread by charismatic influencers who place themselves as the ones to be trusted not physicians and scientists feed into conspiracies and fears. “Snake oil salesmen” (and women) have been around since the beginning of time.
Robert Frances Kennedy, Jr (RFKjr) professed during the senate hearings on his appointment by Trump to be Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) that he was all in on supporting vaccinations even convincing Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy (Republican – former Democrat) whose life’s work as a physician has been to advocate for vaccines including running large-scale vaccine programs. Cassidy didn’t just vote for RFKjr, he gave a speech in the Senate in support of RFKjr after being convinced by RFKjr that as Secretary of HHS he would support vaccines.
RFKJr as Secretary of HHS will oversee the CDC, NIH, FDA, Indian Health Services, Medicare and Medicaid. See the full HHS Organizational Chart here: https://www.hhs.gov/about/agencies/orgchart/index.html
Now on the job, RFKjr put the vaccine schedule in his crosshairs on day one. Cassidy should have known better than to trust RFKjr. There is plenty of recent history on RFKjr’s anti-vax stance. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/health/robert-f-kennedy-jr-polio-vaccines.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tU4.uG9l.ZJ9Irv4jPRuZ&smid=url-share
There is a sordid underbelly to RFKjr’s use of his father’s legacy and the recognition of the Robert Kennedy name to peddle the repeatedly studied and debunked theory that the measles vaccine (MMR – Measles, Mumps, Rubella) causes autism.
Yesterday at the Trump cabinet meeting, RFKjr said there were two measles deaths and claimed there was nothing unusual with the outbreak and that the reason 20 children were hospitalized was for quarantine.
Anyone hearing this should know better.
Dr. Lara Johnson, chief medical officer for Covenant Health Hospital in Lubbock, Texas where eighteen children are hospitalized with measles complications said they do not hospitalize to quarantine a child. That measles is a serious illness with a mortality rate of about a 3%. They hospitalize to manage symptoms with supportive care like supplemental high-flow oxygen and escalating support as needed.
I’ve read the original 1998 article by Wakefield in the Lancet where Wakefield hinted of a newly discovered syndrome linking the MMR vaccine and autism. It took over a decade before Wakefield’s scientifically and ethically flawed paper was withdrawn and his license revoked. By that time serious damage was done and the anti-vaccine movement surged.
I also read Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism: My Journey as a Vaccine Scientist, Pediatrician and Autism Dad by Peter J. Hotez. The book is the very personal story of science and coping with a child with autism.
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder of genetic origins, in plain language, everything known to cause autism occurs during early brain development in the fetus. Autism is not caused by vaccines and a child can’t be made autistic. Two important identified factors are the age of the parents particularly the father and the health of the mother/pregnant person during pregnancy. Age 34 and older is associated with increased risk of autism. Maternal Health during pregnancy is important throughout a pregnancy and it is especially important in early pregnancy when the brain of the fetus is developing.
Back to RFKjr
It should be noted that the anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense (CHD) was founded by Eric Gladen under the name of World Mercury Project. The income of the World Mercury Project jumped from $13,000 in 2014 to $470,000 in 2015 when RFKJr joined the board and the name was changed to Children’s Health Defense. Income (rounded) in 2020 was $6,800,000, in 2021 $16,000,000 and $23,500,000 in 2022.
RFKJr’s income from Children’s Health Defense is found in ProPublica Nonprofit explorer. Note that in 2023 while RFKJr was “chairman on leave” he was still paid $326,056 in compensation. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/260388604
RFKjr also reaps income through anti-vaccine lawsuits.
One of the early theories on the MMR vaccine and autism pointed to the tiny amount of the mercury based preservative Thimerosal used in vaccines. Though there was never any finding of any association between Thimerosal and autism, it was removed from childhood vaccines in the United Sates in 2001.
Thimerosal is still used for some formulations of inactivated influenza vaccines in multi-dose vials, however, flu vaccine in single dose vials (one person one dose), pre-filled syringes and nasal spray do not normally contain thimerosal. (You can always ask if that is your fixation.)
Only one Republican, Mitch McConnell a survivor of polio voted with the Democrats against the confirmation of RFKjr with the final count of 52 to confirm and 48 noes.
RFKjr has said no vaccines are safe. Polio is another vaccine under his attack.
Polio has existed since prehistoric times. FDR contracted polio at age 39 in 1921.
The Berkeley Times (in print only) devoted two full pages to Zona Roberts (1920 – 2025) and her activism for persons with disabilities describing her as a pioneer in the disability rights movement. Her son Ed Roberts for whom the Ed Roberts Campus is named contracted polio at 14 in 1953 and came home as a quadriplegic in an iron lung.
As a little kid, I remember my dad wanting to stop in Chicago during a family road trip and my mother absolutely refusing saying, “there is polio in Chicago.” I didn’t know what polio was, but I understood it was something terrible from my mother’s response.
Polio the scourge of the 1940s and 1950s ended with the polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955. Dr. Albert B. Sabin developed a second polio vaccine in 1961.
RFK Jr was born in 1954. He would not have gone to kindergarten with children in wheelchairs from contracting polio as I did. He would have no memory of ambulance after ambulance rushing children with polio to the Sister Kenny Institute as my brother-in-law did.
Sister Elizabeth Kenny opened the Sister Kenny Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1942. The Sister Kenny Institute still exists as the Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute but with the polio vaccine effectively eliminating paralysis and death from polio the focus has shifted to serious injuries like brain injury, spinal cord injury or stroke.
If you are paying attention, polio is making a comeback with the anti-vaccine movements and war in Gaza.
In June 2022 a young unvaccinated man in his 20s from the Jewish Orthodox community in Rockland County, New York showed up in the emergency room with weakness and paralysis creating a public health emergency with the diagnosis of polio. According to news reporting some took quick advantage of free public vaccination clinics while others in the community called it a hoax and declined.
With the bombing and destruction of infrastructure, hospitals, loss of clean water, and loss of sanitation facilities in Gaza a 10-month old Palestinian baby in Gaza contracted polio in July 2024. To stop the spread of polio two humanitarian ceasefires were called for the two dose administration of the polio vaccine with the required four week wait between the first and second dose. The funding for the critical polio vaccination drive (2 doses) in Gaza for over 640,000 Gazan children under the age of 10 came from His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE.
The vaccinations were delivered in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) (January 20, 2025 Trump EO to withdraw from WHO), UNICEF and UNRWA (the U.S. stopped funding UNWRA in March 2024 until March 25, 2025 and Israel currently bans UNRWA from access to Gaza and the West Bank).
Polio outbreaks are also reported in Pakistan and French Guiana.
Keeping track of disease trends is what health professionals look for in the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) from the CDC. The banner on the CDC website stating “CDC’s website is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders” is gone now, but not being stepped the content I can’t tell you what was removed or modified. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.html
The MMWR is shared worldwide. Shutting down communication from the CDC has worldwide impact not just within the U.S.
Right now, there is a Tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City, Kansas with 67 confirmed cases.
Over 900 dairy herds in California are infected with Bird Flu (H5N1), the virus has been found in 16 states. Bird flu is not just in birds and dairy, it has also infected seals, bears, foxes, skunks, opossums, racoons, bobcats, goats, alpacas, otters, lynxes, polecats, badgers, racoons, farmed mink, stray and domestic cats and dogs and zoo animals such as tigers and leopards. So far people infected with bird flu is around 70.
If you are following the price of eggs, depending on what source you check over 20 million egg laying hens have been culled.
Infectious disease isn’t going away.
MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) is a noble endeavor, however, RFKJr’s approach to take an eight-year hiatus from the study of infectious disease to devote research to chronic disease is definitely wrong-headed.
These days everything is on the chopping block, federal funding, grants and of course the people with no thought or understanding to the massive impact of the firing of federal employees like the scientists and food inspectors who protect our health, the IRS employees who process our taxes, the USAID workers who provided assistance worldwide while at the same time monitored the spread of contagious disease and watched for brewing epidemics.
I am probably being too generous describing the destruction of government and government services unfolding before our eyes as being done out of ignorance, when what we see can only be explained as relishing in the impact to maximize the shock value of gutting the government to make way for harvesting the spoils.
Show up if you can, call often and email telling our senators, representatives, elected to stand up and stand firm. If we still had John Lewis, we wouldn’t have to tell him to stand up, he would stand firm until he was arrested and carried away.
The NIH is one of my go to sources when I am looking for research studies. Given the current scrubbing of government websites to remove any words, references that don’t align with the beliefs of the Trump administration, I signed up for the Center for Infectious Disease, Research and Policy (CIDRAP) daily newsletter from the University of Minnesota. It is free and CIDRAP covers the cost of removing the paywalls from references. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu
February 26, 2025 Activist's Diary
When the EMBER Program comes back to council for the first reading on March 25, a fourth fire zone will be created.
My takeaways from Fire Chief Sprague’s presentation at the February 11, 2025 4 pm Berkeley City Council special meeting on EMBER short for Effective Mitigations for Berkeley’s Ember Resilience were these statements, “Something is NOT better than nothing” and “wildfire is a recurring feature of our landscape”. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas
The EMBER program adopts Ignition Zone 0 and home hardening as necessary actions starting with Zone 3 Panoramic Hill and the new Zone 4. As compliance with the EMBER program is gained to the new standard in these two fire zones, according to meeting documents other areas will systematically be added until all of the Berkeley Hills within the Very High fire Hazard Severity Zone are included.
Currently the City of Berkeley is divided into three fire zones with Fire Zones 2 and 3 designated as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/Berkeley-Fire-Zone-Map.pdf
CalFire published this week updated fire zones. You could almost hear the YIMBYs salivating over hoping to knock out the Berkeley Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones and replacing them with the smaller CalFire designated zones and add even more density to the hills.
Fire Zone 4 designates at a minimum the areas between Wildcat Canyon Road to the east, Grizzly Peak Blvd to the west, and Berkeley City limits to the south and north.
The Ignition Zone 0 is the five feet next to your home / structure. Treating Ignition Zone 0 and removing flammable debris and objects are the most important actions in preventing flying embers from igniting a building / your home. Ignition Zone 0 must be free of flammable materials, like vegetation, dead and dying plants, leaves, needles, bark, mulch and filled instead with gravel, pavers, concrete, river rock, etc and paired with home hardening.
To be an effective barrier, all the properties need to come to the same standard.
“The resilience of an individual property only increases if done in conjunction with adjacent properties. Thus, successful implementation and enforcement will be more effective if concentrated in one region of the City at a time.” (2/11/2025 meeting documents)
You can read more about defensible space in the FireSafe Berkeley website. https://www.berkeleyfiresafe.org/dspace
The challenge for Berkeley in addition to high fire risk in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones is the density of housing and the large swath of mapped landslide zones within the same area some of which are moving.
On May 6, 2025 city council will hear an appeal of the Zoning Adjustment Board decision in a six to three vote (2 abstentions, 1 no) to approve the project at 1048 Keith which demolishes an existing 2,760 square foot single-family dwelling to construct a 3,600 square foot single-family dwelling on a site that sits on top of the Hayward fault on a slowly moving active landslide in the Berkeley hills Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/informationwarehouse/eqzapp/
When it comes to fire there are four things that frame my thinking (1) the Paradise fire investigative reporting by Paige St. John, Joseph Serna and Rong-Gong Lin II for the Los Angeles Times, (2) my conversation with the former Fire Chief David Brannigan, (3) John Vaillant’s 2023 book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, and most important (4) regularly attending the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meetings.
I don’t remember exactly when I started attending the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, but after the Tubbs fire jumped the six lane 101 freeway to burn to the ground the residential neighborhood Coffey Park which wasn’t even identified as a high fire risk zone and watching the news from the Tubbs Fire covering the frantic evacuation of two hospitals in Santa Rosa, Kaiser and Sutter, I decided the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission was the most important commission in the City.
It isn’t that the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission has earth shattering agendas at every meeting, but it is the place where we hear about the work of the Berkeley Fire Department and have the opportunity to express concerns and engage in conversations before and after the meetings.
The city council meeting on the evacuation study being completed for the Berkeley Fire Department is postponed again. The new date is May 13.
I don’t have any inside information on the results, but I expect it is going contain what we can already see, narrow winding streets squeezed down to a single lane create a bottleneck blocking fire fighters from getting in and evacuees from getting out.
When fire weather comes, if you waited until the fire arrives to grab your bags and leave, the likelihood of getting out is grim. Plus, your late evacuation diverts fire fighters’ attention and work from fighting the fire to your safety and you may well impede fire fighters from getting in to fight the fire.
In the Palisades Fire just a few weeks ago, bulldozers had to be called to shove abandoned cars out of the way before emergency vehicles could get through.
I also expect the report to show that narrow roads impeding emergency vehicles aren’t just in the hillside fire zones and all those plans to narrow streets for bicyclists and add bulb outs are going to come into conflict with emergency vehicles. That always reminds me of the article, “Who Put the ‘DIE’ in LA Road DIEts?”.
What I’ve learned from attending City meetings is it takes consistent attendance to appreciate what is and what is not being addressed, the focus of individual appointees and elected, where the power lies and where and how to apply pressure.
From following multiple boards, commissions, and committees, I am continually struck by how we live and work in silos. The singular focus of adding housing means the Planning Commission ignores fire and other hazards like landslides and flooding when sending approvals of zoning code changes to council. The Transportation and Infrastructure Commission ignores emergency vehicle access in recommending road diets. The Zoning Adjustment Board rarely looks to anything beyond the border of the parcel where a project will sit.
Most commission meetings are poorly attended until an agenda item hits right next door as they did at the Design Review Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission Thursday night February 20, 2025. Then a neighborhood shows up for that agenda item and leaves when it is over.
As the LA Times journalists covered so thoroughly in their investigative report, “Must Reads: Here’s how Paradise ignored warnings and became a deathtrap” it was these statements that brought it home to Berkeley, “A state fire planning document warned in 2005 that Paradise risked an ember firestorm akin to the one that ripped through Berkeley and Oakland 14 years earlier killing more than two dozen people and destroying more that 2,000 homes…” and 88 year old Mildred Eselin’s, statement as the lone speaker at the 2014 council meeting warning against giving final approval to road narrowing of Paradise’s main evacuation route to improve pedestrian safety said this, “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”. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
In Berkeley, it was Margot Smith in her 90s who informed the public and everyone she could reach within the City of Berkeley administration that Hopkins Street was a City of Berkeley identified emergency evacuation route and therefore the bicycle plan would narrow the evacuation route and impact emergency evacuation and services.
For more of this debacle read “What Has Happened With Hopkins and Why”. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-04-09/article/50248?headline=What-Has-Happened-with-Hopkins-and-Why--Kelly-Hammargren
I heard third hand that the Kensington Fire Chief said in a fire spreading from the wildland to Kensington, Kensington could burn in eight minutes. I took advantage of seeing Fire Chief Brannigan at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission and asked what he thought about that comment, he said, “that sounds about right, Berkeley could burn in an hour”.
I went back to Brannigan at the next commission meeting and asked when he said that Berkeley could burn in an hour was that to Sacramento Street or to San Pablo Avenue. His answer was to the Bay. (Brannigan left Berkeley for Piedmont in 2021.)
With climate change, global warming, our invasion into what used to be wildland with structures that become the source of ignition conflagration, the behavior of wildfire has changed to fast moving and explosive.
When someone talks about wildfire or we see news clips or pictures of the devastation, or hear presentations, we are so numbed with the constant deluge of media that the ferocity of wildfire seems to get lost. What Valiant does so well in his book Fire Weather, is he brings us into weather conditions that set the stage for wildfire, the speed and intensity with which the wildfire spread with each building exploding into fire and igniting the next, the plight of the firefighters trying to stop it and people trying to escape from it.
Each time I drive up into the hills to meet a friend who lives in what will be Fire Zone 4, I can’t help but think it looks like a tinder box. We walk in Tilden Park and talk. This time it was about fire, ignition zone zero and the cost of home hardening. It is a lot to take in.
On Thursday there were two meetings and an event that I wanted to attend all running at the same time. At the Design Review Committee, they were scrounging up more chairs for all the people who showed up for the use permit modification of the group living project at 2147 San Pablo at Cowper and an 8-story mixed use project at 2655 Shattuck at Derby. I haven’t heard back what happened, but when I saw who was attending, I knew the audience of attendees was in good hands.
At the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission it was the presentation on three public restrooms that drew the crowd with the Portland Loo planned for San Pablo at University on the northeast corner that had the neighborhood in an uproar. The concerns from the neighborhood revolve around the fear that placing a public restroom at this location will become a magnet for drug use and sex trafficking which is already a problem in this area.
The neighborhood residents and businesses suggested moving the location down University near the public library. The building next to the site has been vacant for months. I didn’t hear any attendee speaking in support of the San Pablo University site.
The Adeline neighborhood supports the Adeline/Alcatraz public restroom site.
I suggested to a member of the Beautiful San Pablo group that they check out how the Portland Loo is working at Channing and Telegraph. If there were problems they would have experience /evidence on their side and if it was working well maybe some of their concerns would be alleviated. That suggestion fell flat, so needing an exercise break I did my own limited investigation.
The artwork on the Loo both inside and outside to blend with the mural is very cool.
I heard at the Transportation Commission that the ultraviolet light in the Loo prevents drug addicts from finding veins to shoot up. I stepped in to see if the prominent veins in my hands were less visible. Maybe I was there at the wrong time of day, but the lighting certainly didn’t do anything to make my veins disappear.
The Loo was clean.
One employee at the Framer’s Workshop was free to answer questions, the other was with a customer. I heard so far there were no problems, it was nice to have a public restroom and the ribbon cutting with Mayor Ishii and the big scissors was great.
Talking with people on the street and the Ambassador on Telegraph brought similar comments. One person worried that a homeless person might camp out inside the Loo and use it as a shelter. That has not actually happened. There is funding for daily maintenance that includes periodic monitoring throughout the day and night.
When I stopped in at Revolution Books on the other side of the block to ask what they thought I got an earful of how terrible the bathroom was, but with further pressing on details, the bathroom that earned all those negative comments was the bathroom within the parking lot, not the brand-new Portland Loo on Channing. Funny how we stay in our same routines and miss the changes around us.
When the EMBER Program comes back to council for the first reading on March 25, a fourth fire zone will be created.
My takeaways from Fire Chief Sprague’s presentation at the February 11, 2025 4 pm Berkeley City Council special meeting on EMBER short for Effective Mitigations for Berkeley’s Ember Resilience were these statements, “Something is NOT better than nothing” and “wildfire is a recurring feature of our landscape”. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/city-council/city-council-agendas
The EMBER program adopts Ignition Zone 0 and home hardening as necessary actions starting with Zone 3 Panoramic Hill and the new Zone 4. As compliance with the EMBER program is gained to the new standard in these two fire zones, according to meeting documents other areas will systematically be added until all of the Berkeley Hills within the Very High fire Hazard Severity Zone are included.
Currently the City of Berkeley is divided into three fire zones with Fire Zones 2 and 3 designated as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/Berkeley-Fire-Zone-Map.pdf
CalFire published this week updated fire zones. You could almost hear the YIMBYs salivating over hoping to knock out the Berkeley Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones and replacing them with the smaller CalFire designated zones and add even more density to the hills.
Fire Zone 4 designates at a minimum the areas between Wildcat Canyon Road to the east, Grizzly Peak Blvd to the west, and Berkeley City limits to the south and north.
The Ignition Zone 0 is the five feet next to your home / structure. Treating Ignition Zone 0 and removing flammable debris and objects are the most important actions in preventing flying embers from igniting a building / your home. Ignition Zone 0 must be free of flammable materials, like vegetation, dead and dying plants, leaves, needles, bark, mulch and filled instead with gravel, pavers, concrete, river rock, etc and paired with home hardening.
To be an effective barrier, all the properties need to come to the same standard.
“The resilience of an individual property only increases if done in conjunction with adjacent properties. Thus, successful implementation and enforcement will be more effective if concentrated in one region of the City at a time.” (2/11/2025 meeting documents)
You can read more about defensible space in the FireSafe Berkeley website. https://www.berkeleyfiresafe.org/dspace
The challenge for Berkeley in addition to high fire risk in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones is the density of housing and the large swath of mapped landslide zones within the same area some of which are moving.
On May 6, 2025 city council will hear an appeal of the Zoning Adjustment Board decision in a six to three vote (2 abstentions, 1 no) to approve the project at 1048 Keith which demolishes an existing 2,760 square foot single-family dwelling to construct a 3,600 square foot single-family dwelling on a site that sits on top of the Hayward fault on a slowly moving active landslide in the Berkeley hills Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/informationwarehouse/eqzapp/
When it comes to fire there are four things that frame my thinking (1) the Paradise fire investigative reporting by Paige St. John, Joseph Serna and Rong-Gong Lin II for the Los Angeles Times, (2) my conversation with the former Fire Chief David Brannigan, (3) John Vaillant’s 2023 book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, and most important (4) regularly attending the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meetings.
I don’t remember exactly when I started attending the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, but after the Tubbs fire jumped the six lane 101 freeway to burn to the ground the residential neighborhood Coffey Park which wasn’t even identified as a high fire risk zone and watching the news from the Tubbs Fire covering the frantic evacuation of two hospitals in Santa Rosa, Kaiser and Sutter, I decided the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission was the most important commission in the City.
It isn’t that the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission has earth shattering agendas at every meeting, but it is the place where we hear about the work of the Berkeley Fire Department and have the opportunity to express concerns and engage in conversations before and after the meetings.
The city council meeting on the evacuation study being completed for the Berkeley Fire Department is postponed again. The new date is May 13.
I don’t have any inside information on the results, but I expect it is going contain what we can already see, narrow winding streets squeezed down to a single lane create a bottleneck blocking fire fighters from getting in and evacuees from getting out.
When fire weather comes, if you waited until the fire arrives to grab your bags and leave, the likelihood of getting out is grim. Plus, your late evacuation diverts fire fighters’ attention and work from fighting the fire to your safety and you may well impede fire fighters from getting in to fight the fire.
In the Palisades Fire just a few weeks ago, bulldozers had to be called to shove abandoned cars out of the way before emergency vehicles could get through.
I also expect the report to show that narrow roads impeding emergency vehicles aren’t just in the hillside fire zones and all those plans to narrow streets for bicyclists and add bulb outs are going to come into conflict with emergency vehicles. That always reminds me of the article, “Who Put the ‘DIE’ in LA Road DIEts?”.
What I’ve learned from attending City meetings is it takes consistent attendance to appreciate what is and what is not being addressed, the focus of individual appointees and elected, where the power lies and where and how to apply pressure.
From following multiple boards, commissions, and committees, I am continually struck by how we live and work in silos. The singular focus of adding housing means the Planning Commission ignores fire and other hazards like landslides and flooding when sending approvals of zoning code changes to council. The Transportation and Infrastructure Commission ignores emergency vehicle access in recommending road diets. The Zoning Adjustment Board rarely looks to anything beyond the border of the parcel where a project will sit.
Most commission meetings are poorly attended until an agenda item hits right next door as they did at the Design Review Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission Thursday night February 20, 2025. Then a neighborhood shows up for that agenda item and leaves when it is over.
As the LA Times journalists covered so thoroughly in their investigative report, “Must Reads: Here’s how Paradise ignored warnings and became a deathtrap” it was these statements that brought it home to Berkeley, “A state fire planning document warned in 2005 that Paradise risked an ember firestorm akin to the one that ripped through Berkeley and Oakland 14 years earlier killing more than two dozen people and destroying more that 2,000 homes…” and 88 year old Mildred Eselin’s, statement as the lone speaker at the 2014 council meeting warning against giving final approval to road narrowing of Paradise’s main evacuation route to improve pedestrian safety said this, “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”. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
In Berkeley, it was Margot Smith in her 90s who informed the public and everyone she could reach within the City of Berkeley administration that Hopkins Street was a City of Berkeley identified emergency evacuation route and therefore the bicycle plan would narrow the evacuation route and impact emergency evacuation and services.
For more of this debacle read “What Has Happened With Hopkins and Why”. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-04-09/article/50248?headline=What-Has-Happened-with-Hopkins-and-Why--Kelly-Hammargren
I heard third hand that the Kensington Fire Chief said in a fire spreading from the wildland to Kensington, Kensington could burn in eight minutes. I took advantage of seeing Fire Chief Brannigan at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission and asked what he thought about that comment, he said, “that sounds about right, Berkeley could burn in an hour”.
I went back to Brannigan at the next commission meeting and asked when he said that Berkeley could burn in an hour was that to Sacramento Street or to San Pablo Avenue. His answer was to the Bay. (Brannigan left Berkeley for Piedmont in 2021.)
With climate change, global warming, our invasion into what used to be wildland with structures that become the source of ignition conflagration, the behavior of wildfire has changed to fast moving and explosive.
When someone talks about wildfire or we see news clips or pictures of the devastation, or hear presentations, we are so numbed with the constant deluge of media that the ferocity of wildfire seems to get lost. What Valiant does so well in his book Fire Weather, is he brings us into weather conditions that set the stage for wildfire, the speed and intensity with which the wildfire spread with each building exploding into fire and igniting the next, the plight of the firefighters trying to stop it and people trying to escape from it.
Each time I drive up into the hills to meet a friend who lives in what will be Fire Zone 4, I can’t help but think it looks like a tinder box. We walk in Tilden Park and talk. This time it was about fire, ignition zone zero and the cost of home hardening. It is a lot to take in.
On Thursday there were two meetings and an event that I wanted to attend all running at the same time. At the Design Review Committee, they were scrounging up more chairs for all the people who showed up for the use permit modification of the group living project at 2147 San Pablo at Cowper and an 8-story mixed use project at 2655 Shattuck at Derby. I haven’t heard back what happened, but when I saw who was attending, I knew the audience of attendees was in good hands.
At the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission it was the presentation on three public restrooms that drew the crowd with the Portland Loo planned for San Pablo at University on the northeast corner that had the neighborhood in an uproar. The concerns from the neighborhood revolve around the fear that placing a public restroom at this location will become a magnet for drug use and sex trafficking which is already a problem in this area.
The neighborhood residents and businesses suggested moving the location down University near the public library. The building next to the site has been vacant for months. I didn’t hear any attendee speaking in support of the San Pablo University site.
The Adeline neighborhood supports the Adeline/Alcatraz public restroom site.
I suggested to a member of the Beautiful San Pablo group that they check out how the Portland Loo is working at Channing and Telegraph. If there were problems they would have experience /evidence on their side and if it was working well maybe some of their concerns would be alleviated. That suggestion fell flat, so needing an exercise break I did my own limited investigation.
The artwork on the Loo both inside and outside to blend with the mural is very cool.
I heard at the Transportation Commission that the ultraviolet light in the Loo prevents drug addicts from finding veins to shoot up. I stepped in to see if the prominent veins in my hands were less visible. Maybe I was there at the wrong time of day, but the lighting certainly didn’t do anything to make my veins disappear.
The Loo was clean.
One employee at the Framer’s Workshop was free to answer questions, the other was with a customer. I heard so far there were no problems, it was nice to have a public restroom and the ribbon cutting with Mayor Ishii and the big scissors was great.
Talking with people on the street and the Ambassador on Telegraph brought similar comments. One person worried that a homeless person might camp out inside the Loo and use it as a shelter. That has not actually happened. There is funding for daily maintenance that includes periodic monitoring throughout the day and night.
When I stopped in at Revolution Books on the other side of the block to ask what they thought I got an earful of how terrible the bathroom was, but with further pressing on details, the bathroom that earned all those negative comments was the bathroom within the parking lot, not the brand-new Portland Loo on Channing. Funny how we stay in our same routines and miss the changes around us.
February 8, 2025 Activist's Diary
It’s been quite a week. On Monday, February 3, 2025 when I called in to the Berkeley Council’s Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee to make a non-agenda comment, I said I had been listening to the morning news and it was very unsettling, the closing of USAID, the takeover of the Treasury Payment System, that I was concerned we were in a soft coup, that I would like to see our city government call a special meeting to talk to us about what is happening nationally and how we will respond locally.
I felt like I would probably be seen as some crazy person in a tinfoil hat saying we were in a coup out loud. Within hours the word coup was being used by respected national journalists and some of the more daring Democratic politicians. Councilmember Bartlett, the just elected committee chair followed my comment stating the reminder of the media moguls standing behind Trump at the Inauguration and then the meeting moved on.
Monday morning was my last city meeting of the week. I heard about the protests at state capitals from a caller into the Thom Hartmann show. I arrived around 1:15 pm to the Wednesday Sacramento protest that started at noon. People were still coming while others were leaving. There weren’t any speakers that I could hear so I wandered through the crowd asking people how they found out about the protest, where they came from and now and then I would engage in longer conversations.
One person I spoke with saw the demonstration as so important that she drove up from Los Angeles the day before. People traveled from Redding, Chico, Fresno, Mountain View, Fremont, San Jose, San Mateo, Oakland. Some brought their children. For some this was their first protest.
They heard about the protest through Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, BlueSky, friends and emails. Some answered with the “all” encompassing “social media”.
I never got to the front, but felt encouraged by the diversity of the people who showed up with probably the largest group falling into the 30 to 55 age range. This was definitely not a protest of college students with a few older adults joining in support. There were some students including four Fremont high schoolers dressed in their most respectable best attending as part of their journalism class.
Of course, the signs were great with many calling for the removal of Elon Musk.
Much to my delight when I pulled up my evening recording of the Rachel Maddow show, she started off with photos of protests at state capitals from all over the country including Sacramento.
If you don’t have TV or access to MSNBC, I highly recommend picking up the free Rachel Maddow show (Monday - Friday) podcasts which you can listen to anytime. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rachel-maddow-show/id294055449
The encouragement I felt by the show of people standing up to be counted in resistance on Wednesday vanished when I attended a birthday party on Saturday and expanded the conversations with friends and new acquaintances to national news. It was the same as the party I attended the week before. Their response was to turn off the news and disengage saying it was too stressful as if hiding in a news blackout would stop the erosion of the constitution.
When we’re needed in the streets to resist, tuning out is exactly the response that is needed to smooth the road for the new regime.
The lack of leadership and cohesive response from the Democrats doesn’t help as those who do want to engage are lost in how. We need to push our elected through calling, writing and showing up.
For guidance in action, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder is at the top of the New York Times best seller list. It is a start. Then follow it with Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. It is free online, though you can always buy it, https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-a-conceptual-framework-for-liberation/
And, sign up with Indivisible and other groups taking action. This is an all hands on deck moment.
If you need a little uplift Ezra Klein gives a take on why Trump is executive orders instead of congress besides Bannon’s “Flood the Zone”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8QLgLfqh6s
I expected Trump would be more organized the second time around, but I didn’t expect a Musk to march in with a team of young engineers and hackers to take over departments, start wholesale gutting, gain access and invade critical systems like the Treasury payment system.
I received one email saying the twenty somethings didn’t know what they were doing. I responded back they did and to look up Curtis Yarvin. I guess the name for people like Yarvin is “Influencer” and he seems to have influenced VP JD Vance among others. Yarvin professes we need a CEO not a president and embraces governing by an authoritarian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
The big problem is as I emailed a friend over the weekend in response to the Friday Ezra Klein podcast with Kara Swisher Tech journalist with this, “listened to the podcast - break things and a disregard for law are the key points - this is bad, very bad - add in that we have two men, Trump and Musk, who don't really care about anyone but themselves with an insatiable need for attention, racists to the core and a president with a fragile ego filled with the thirst for revenge, retribution.”
After that I found Kara Swisher’s audiobook Burn Book: A Tech Love Story at the Los Angeles library and finished it by Sunday night. It was well worth the time which is why I returned the audiobook to the library and signed out the ebook for notes.
Swisher labeled Zuckerberg as, “The Most Dangerous Man” in chapter 9 covering Facebook. She described him as, “extraordinarily naïve about the forces he had unleashed…that Zuckerberg was woefully unprepared to rein in the power of his digital platform as Facebook’s population swelled to 3 billion active users and it became the most important and vast communications, information, advertising, and media behemoth the world has ever seen.”
“Move fast and break things” from Mark Zuckerberg was the motto for Facebook. With the creation of META the new mantra became “move fast with stability”, but if we look at action the mentality of breaking things is where we are.
Burn Book was published in 2024. It’s worse now as Zuckerberg knelt to Trump removing fact checking from Facebook leaving it to the “community” to catch up with circulation of conspiracies, hoaxes, disinformation and misinformation. And, Zuckerberg deposited $1,000,000 into Trump’s inauguration fund. A token to show that he is onboard.
Swisher got to Musk in Chapter 13. Swisher started the interview with Ezra Klein calling Musk a one-man wrecking ball and it didn’t get any better in the book.
Musk and Trump have always acted as though laws do not apply to them. When their actions do land them in court, it appears to be a mere bump in the road. Now with the latest responses to the courts pulling in the reins, defiance is the threatened response. We are in a constitutional crisis.
The court doesn’t have its own police force. Over the weekend and as I write, VP JD Vance and reporters are reminding us of President Andrew Jackson. No sources call “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it” an actual quote from Jackson in regard to a supreme court decision, but it gets the point across. The courts lack enforcement forces and that is never more true than when the Supreme Court has already granted broad presidential immunity in Trump v. United States No. 23-939 Decided July 1, 2024 and the President controls and chooses will and will not be enforced.
With Pam Bondi, Trump’s former defense attorney as the new Attorney General, we can expect all that happy talk about independence and following the law to vanish with anything Trump.
Ezra Klein with Kara Swisher full interview to read or listen from New York Times as subscriber article share. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-kara-swisher.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wE4.UE3w._9TIwQZ5lU_D&smid=url-share
Back to the city.
The Land, Use, Housing and Economic Development Committee meeting agenda items were taken out of order with the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) item on prohibiting the sale or use of algorithmic devices to set rents or manage occupancy levels for residential units. I wrote about RealPage and a software program used by property owners to maximize rent and calculate the sweet spot between maximum rent and vacancy in my August 4, 2024 Activist’s Diary referencing Tyler Walicek’s article in Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/real-estate-software-aided-price-fixing-cartel-among-us-property-companies/
After a long discussion the HAC item passed with full committee support.
Next up Councilmember Tregub’s budget referral on a transfer tax exemption on 100% affordable housing projects passed with clarifying language to include 100% affordable rehabilitation housing projects.
Last up was former councilmember Hahn’s item on vacant store fronts modeled after San Francisco’s First Year Free program. It was moved forward with a unanimous negative recommendation which translates to take no action and let it die.
After councilmember Harrison resigned, Hahn called agenda items of former councilmembers no longer in office “orphan items” and commented on those items when discussed without using Harrison’s name in a manner that is best described as not nice. One time at the Agenda Committee during the public comment period of the discussion on creating a policy on “orphan items” I suggested the possibility that they (members Arreguin, Wengraf, Hahn) might consider what would happen with their own items. Arreguin was obviously going to be a State Senator, Wengraf was retiring and Hahn was running for mayor.
I don’t think Hahn imagined she would lose the mayor race. People were still angry with Harrison for quitting and Ishii was an unknown. I expected Ishii to win with reallocation of votes through rank choice. I did not expect her to lead with the majority of votes before adding in rank choice, but she did just that. She worked hard, knocked on lots of doors including my neighbors. She missed my door and I did not take advantage of talking with her when she joined a house party for another candidate. I’m sorry I didn’t jump on that opportunity to meet her.
My favorite part of the day is when I’ve completed my to do list for the day or given up on unfinished tasks and crawl into bed to read until I’m tired enough to fall asleep. My goal is to finish one to two books per week.
We’re living through a very difficult time and it looks to get worse. We’re going to be called on. The question is how much will we do to help another in the days ahead. Are we willing to stand up and be counted.
Two ordinary British sisters Ida and Louse Cook answered the call in the lead up to WWII. Their memoir written by Ida Cook in 1950 and republished twice first in 1976 and then again in 2021 with a new title The Bravest Voices: A Memoir of Two Sister’s Heroism During the Nazi Era tells that story. It’s one of those books that has kept me up reading into the wee hours of the morning. Maria Rose ended the title of her article reviewing the book with “Why Heroism Will Never Be Enough and Why We Can’t Let That Stop Us.” https://marla-rose.medium.com/little-things-are-big-what-the-legacy-of-ida-and-louise-cook-tells-us-about-why-heroism-will-never-e207264f218d
Of course, Ida and Louise Cook were on my mind when I visited the Berkeley Historical Society exhibition Roots, Removal and Resistance: Japanese Americans in Berkeley and stayed for the film One Fighting Irishman: Wayne M. Collins and the Tule Lake Segregation Center and post film discussion with Sharon Yamato who wrote, directed and produced the film and Satsuki Ina, child trauma psychotherapist, author of The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest.https://www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/the-poet-and-the-silk/
Satsuki Ina was born at the Tule Lake internment camp. Ina told us that when her mother was sick and dying she (Satsuki) wanted to replace her mother’s worn torn quilt, but her mother refused relating that when she was incarcerated at Tanforan and pregnant a woman managed to throw that quilt over the high barbed wire fence and said, “I hope that helps”. The quilt held the memory that in that dark time someone cared.
The exhibit in the Veterans Memorial Building at 1931 Center Street is free and open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 1 – 4 pm, from now through August. It will come down sometime in September, but don’t wait. You may feel as I do there is a lot to absorb and want to make multiple visits after looking at “Here Lived” the more than 1,100 names and 260 addresses of Berkeley residents removed under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 Executive Order 9066.
Michael Several said he spent two full years beginning in 2022 researching and compiling the “Here Lived” with date and place of birth, occupation, camps in order of incarceration, date of removal through date of release, and released to location.
In Several’s description of his work, he wrote he was inspired by the stepping stones, Stolperstine, in Berlin Germany, “Knowing that installing plaques in front of houses in Berkeley where people who had been incarcerated had lived at the beginning of World War II was beyond my capability, I decided to create digital Stolpersteine…”
It seems like this exhibit is too important to send to the Veteran’s Building attic for storage. Do we have a public art artist who can pick up from here and turn this exhibit into a Berkeley walking tour with plaques? Can we kickstart such a project with in lieu fees for Public Art on Private Development? I certainly hope so. And, while we’re at it can include in that walking tour the borders of redlining. https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/permits-design-parameters/design-parameters/public-art-private-development#:~:text=Policy%20requirements,as%20an%20in%2Dlieu%20fee.
The Historical Society exhibit this fall is on Latinos in Berkeley. Given that Berkeley reaffirmed our status as a sanctuary city at the January 21, 2025 City Council meeting, we can expect to be targeted for actions and removals. Will we hold or fold?
It’s been quite a week. On Monday, February 3, 2025 when I called in to the Berkeley Council’s Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee to make a non-agenda comment, I said I had been listening to the morning news and it was very unsettling, the closing of USAID, the takeover of the Treasury Payment System, that I was concerned we were in a soft coup, that I would like to see our city government call a special meeting to talk to us about what is happening nationally and how we will respond locally.
I felt like I would probably be seen as some crazy person in a tinfoil hat saying we were in a coup out loud. Within hours the word coup was being used by respected national journalists and some of the more daring Democratic politicians. Councilmember Bartlett, the just elected committee chair followed my comment stating the reminder of the media moguls standing behind Trump at the Inauguration and then the meeting moved on.
Monday morning was my last city meeting of the week. I heard about the protests at state capitals from a caller into the Thom Hartmann show. I arrived around 1:15 pm to the Wednesday Sacramento protest that started at noon. People were still coming while others were leaving. There weren’t any speakers that I could hear so I wandered through the crowd asking people how they found out about the protest, where they came from and now and then I would engage in longer conversations.
One person I spoke with saw the demonstration as so important that she drove up from Los Angeles the day before. People traveled from Redding, Chico, Fresno, Mountain View, Fremont, San Jose, San Mateo, Oakland. Some brought their children. For some this was their first protest.
They heard about the protest through Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, BlueSky, friends and emails. Some answered with the “all” encompassing “social media”.
I never got to the front, but felt encouraged by the diversity of the people who showed up with probably the largest group falling into the 30 to 55 age range. This was definitely not a protest of college students with a few older adults joining in support. There were some students including four Fremont high schoolers dressed in their most respectable best attending as part of their journalism class.
Of course, the signs were great with many calling for the removal of Elon Musk.
Much to my delight when I pulled up my evening recording of the Rachel Maddow show, she started off with photos of protests at state capitals from all over the country including Sacramento.
If you don’t have TV or access to MSNBC, I highly recommend picking up the free Rachel Maddow show (Monday - Friday) podcasts which you can listen to anytime. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rachel-maddow-show/id294055449
The encouragement I felt by the show of people standing up to be counted in resistance on Wednesday vanished when I attended a birthday party on Saturday and expanded the conversations with friends and new acquaintances to national news. It was the same as the party I attended the week before. Their response was to turn off the news and disengage saying it was too stressful as if hiding in a news blackout would stop the erosion of the constitution.
When we’re needed in the streets to resist, tuning out is exactly the response that is needed to smooth the road for the new regime.
The lack of leadership and cohesive response from the Democrats doesn’t help as those who do want to engage are lost in how. We need to push our elected through calling, writing and showing up.
For guidance in action, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder is at the top of the New York Times best seller list. It is a start. Then follow it with Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. It is free online, though you can always buy it, https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-a-conceptual-framework-for-liberation/
And, sign up with Indivisible and other groups taking action. This is an all hands on deck moment.
If you need a little uplift Ezra Klein gives a take on why Trump is executive orders instead of congress besides Bannon’s “Flood the Zone”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8QLgLfqh6s
I expected Trump would be more organized the second time around, but I didn’t expect a Musk to march in with a team of young engineers and hackers to take over departments, start wholesale gutting, gain access and invade critical systems like the Treasury payment system.
I received one email saying the twenty somethings didn’t know what they were doing. I responded back they did and to look up Curtis Yarvin. I guess the name for people like Yarvin is “Influencer” and he seems to have influenced VP JD Vance among others. Yarvin professes we need a CEO not a president and embraces governing by an authoritarian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
The big problem is as I emailed a friend over the weekend in response to the Friday Ezra Klein podcast with Kara Swisher Tech journalist with this, “listened to the podcast - break things and a disregard for law are the key points - this is bad, very bad - add in that we have two men, Trump and Musk, who don't really care about anyone but themselves with an insatiable need for attention, racists to the core and a president with a fragile ego filled with the thirst for revenge, retribution.”
After that I found Kara Swisher’s audiobook Burn Book: A Tech Love Story at the Los Angeles library and finished it by Sunday night. It was well worth the time which is why I returned the audiobook to the library and signed out the ebook for notes.
Swisher labeled Zuckerberg as, “The Most Dangerous Man” in chapter 9 covering Facebook. She described him as, “extraordinarily naïve about the forces he had unleashed…that Zuckerberg was woefully unprepared to rein in the power of his digital platform as Facebook’s population swelled to 3 billion active users and it became the most important and vast communications, information, advertising, and media behemoth the world has ever seen.”
“Move fast and break things” from Mark Zuckerberg was the motto for Facebook. With the creation of META the new mantra became “move fast with stability”, but if we look at action the mentality of breaking things is where we are.
Burn Book was published in 2024. It’s worse now as Zuckerberg knelt to Trump removing fact checking from Facebook leaving it to the “community” to catch up with circulation of conspiracies, hoaxes, disinformation and misinformation. And, Zuckerberg deposited $1,000,000 into Trump’s inauguration fund. A token to show that he is onboard.
Swisher got to Musk in Chapter 13. Swisher started the interview with Ezra Klein calling Musk a one-man wrecking ball and it didn’t get any better in the book.
Musk and Trump have always acted as though laws do not apply to them. When their actions do land them in court, it appears to be a mere bump in the road. Now with the latest responses to the courts pulling in the reins, defiance is the threatened response. We are in a constitutional crisis.
The court doesn’t have its own police force. Over the weekend and as I write, VP JD Vance and reporters are reminding us of President Andrew Jackson. No sources call “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it” an actual quote from Jackson in regard to a supreme court decision, but it gets the point across. The courts lack enforcement forces and that is never more true than when the Supreme Court has already granted broad presidential immunity in Trump v. United States No. 23-939 Decided July 1, 2024 and the President controls and chooses will and will not be enforced.
With Pam Bondi, Trump’s former defense attorney as the new Attorney General, we can expect all that happy talk about independence and following the law to vanish with anything Trump.
Ezra Klein with Kara Swisher full interview to read or listen from New York Times as subscriber article share. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-kara-swisher.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wE4.UE3w._9TIwQZ5lU_D&smid=url-share
Back to the city.
The Land, Use, Housing and Economic Development Committee meeting agenda items were taken out of order with the Housing Advisory Commission (HAC) item on prohibiting the sale or use of algorithmic devices to set rents or manage occupancy levels for residential units. I wrote about RealPage and a software program used by property owners to maximize rent and calculate the sweet spot between maximum rent and vacancy in my August 4, 2024 Activist’s Diary referencing Tyler Walicek’s article in Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/real-estate-software-aided-price-fixing-cartel-among-us-property-companies/
After a long discussion the HAC item passed with full committee support.
Next up Councilmember Tregub’s budget referral on a transfer tax exemption on 100% affordable housing projects passed with clarifying language to include 100% affordable rehabilitation housing projects.
Last up was former councilmember Hahn’s item on vacant store fronts modeled after San Francisco’s First Year Free program. It was moved forward with a unanimous negative recommendation which translates to take no action and let it die.
After councilmember Harrison resigned, Hahn called agenda items of former councilmembers no longer in office “orphan items” and commented on those items when discussed without using Harrison’s name in a manner that is best described as not nice. One time at the Agenda Committee during the public comment period of the discussion on creating a policy on “orphan items” I suggested the possibility that they (members Arreguin, Wengraf, Hahn) might consider what would happen with their own items. Arreguin was obviously going to be a State Senator, Wengraf was retiring and Hahn was running for mayor.
I don’t think Hahn imagined she would lose the mayor race. People were still angry with Harrison for quitting and Ishii was an unknown. I expected Ishii to win with reallocation of votes through rank choice. I did not expect her to lead with the majority of votes before adding in rank choice, but she did just that. She worked hard, knocked on lots of doors including my neighbors. She missed my door and I did not take advantage of talking with her when she joined a house party for another candidate. I’m sorry I didn’t jump on that opportunity to meet her.
My favorite part of the day is when I’ve completed my to do list for the day or given up on unfinished tasks and crawl into bed to read until I’m tired enough to fall asleep. My goal is to finish one to two books per week.
We’re living through a very difficult time and it looks to get worse. We’re going to be called on. The question is how much will we do to help another in the days ahead. Are we willing to stand up and be counted.
Two ordinary British sisters Ida and Louse Cook answered the call in the lead up to WWII. Their memoir written by Ida Cook in 1950 and republished twice first in 1976 and then again in 2021 with a new title The Bravest Voices: A Memoir of Two Sister’s Heroism During the Nazi Era tells that story. It’s one of those books that has kept me up reading into the wee hours of the morning. Maria Rose ended the title of her article reviewing the book with “Why Heroism Will Never Be Enough and Why We Can’t Let That Stop Us.” https://marla-rose.medium.com/little-things-are-big-what-the-legacy-of-ida-and-louise-cook-tells-us-about-why-heroism-will-never-e207264f218d
Of course, Ida and Louise Cook were on my mind when I visited the Berkeley Historical Society exhibition Roots, Removal and Resistance: Japanese Americans in Berkeley and stayed for the film One Fighting Irishman: Wayne M. Collins and the Tule Lake Segregation Center and post film discussion with Sharon Yamato who wrote, directed and produced the film and Satsuki Ina, child trauma psychotherapist, author of The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest.https://www.heydaybooks.com/catalog/the-poet-and-the-silk/
Satsuki Ina was born at the Tule Lake internment camp. Ina told us that when her mother was sick and dying she (Satsuki) wanted to replace her mother’s worn torn quilt, but her mother refused relating that when she was incarcerated at Tanforan and pregnant a woman managed to throw that quilt over the high barbed wire fence and said, “I hope that helps”. The quilt held the memory that in that dark time someone cared.
The exhibit in the Veterans Memorial Building at 1931 Center Street is free and open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 1 – 4 pm, from now through August. It will come down sometime in September, but don’t wait. You may feel as I do there is a lot to absorb and want to make multiple visits after looking at “Here Lived” the more than 1,100 names and 260 addresses of Berkeley residents removed under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1942 Executive Order 9066.
Michael Several said he spent two full years beginning in 2022 researching and compiling the “Here Lived” with date and place of birth, occupation, camps in order of incarceration, date of removal through date of release, and released to location.
In Several’s description of his work, he wrote he was inspired by the stepping stones, Stolperstine, in Berlin Germany, “Knowing that installing plaques in front of houses in Berkeley where people who had been incarcerated had lived at the beginning of World War II was beyond my capability, I decided to create digital Stolpersteine…”
It seems like this exhibit is too important to send to the Veteran’s Building attic for storage. Do we have a public art artist who can pick up from here and turn this exhibit into a Berkeley walking tour with plaques? Can we kickstart such a project with in lieu fees for Public Art on Private Development? I certainly hope so. And, while we’re at it can include in that walking tour the borders of redlining. https://berkeleyca.gov/construction-development/permits-design-parameters/design-parameters/public-art-private-development#:~:text=Policy%20requirements,as%20an%20in%2Dlieu%20fee.
The Historical Society exhibit this fall is on Latinos in Berkeley. Given that Berkeley reaffirmed our status as a sanctuary city at the January 21, 2025 City Council meeting, we can expect to be targeted for actions and removals. Will we hold or fold?
February 1, 2025 Activist's Diary
We’re in a mess though there are hours in the day, when things seem so normal that it is hard to absorb that it looks like we are in the middle of a soft coup.
It is only twelve days and we are already deep into the reordering and dismantling of the government under Trump 2.0. And, Elon Musk’s Team now has access to the Treasury’s Payment System. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-federal-payments-system.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t04.OH1P.uzLc5RhJqrWp&smid=em-share
If you are having trouble keeping track of the whirlwind of Executive Orders you can go to the Presidential Actions page to catch up and keep track. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions
Bob Woodward titled his first book on Trump, Fear. In an interview with Laura Coates on CNN, Woodward related that when he asked Trump about power, Trump answered with, “Real power is … I even don’t like to use the word … but real power is fear”. https://www.yahoo.com/news/bob-woodward-recalls-donald-trump-094902943.html
Another quote from Trump is, “I am your voice … I am your warrior…I am your retribution … I will totally obliterate the deep state, I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system…” c-span, March 4, 2023 Day 3 of CPAC.
And, he seems to be doing just that.
In my November 20, 2021 Activist’s Diary and again on March 14, 2024 I listed how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years through twelve steps. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2024-03-10/article/50631?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-March-14--Kelly-Hammargren
The demand of names from Bove of what we might call line officers follows the purge of eight senior FBI executives and Justice Department prosecutors. Bove was an attorney on Trump’s defense team prior to the appointment as Acting Deputy Attorney General.
Trump called the January 6 rioters “hostages” and promised to pardon them if reelected and he did just that on day one, inauguration day.
“Granting Pardons And Commutation of Sentences For Certain Offenses Relating To The Events At Or Near The United States Capitol On January 6, 2021” was number fourteen in the list of the January 20, 2025 Executive Orders. Trump pardoned roughly 1500 January 6 rioters and commuted the sentences of fourteen, nine members of the Oath Keepers and five members of the Proud Boys.
The pardons and sentence commutations erode the independence of the rule of law by sending a clear message from Trump that if you are loyal and at the ready of his beck and call he will take care of you.
The firings, threats of termination declare, if you attack me, prosecute me, investigate me or anyone following my orders I will punish you.
We are at least eight years into this if we count Trump’s first term and the four years in between while Biden was President and Trump was always present campaigning and plotting and planning.
The first twelve days of this second round are a blaring wake up. We can’t waste any time.
To anyone who has decided the way to cope is to turn off the news, crawl under the covers and wait ‘til it’s over, action is the best antidote.
We need to throw back the covers, turn the news back on and start taking action beginning with dialing 202-224-3121 to tell our senators and representatives to get off their butts and show some real resistance while we organize.
The next days and weeks are going to be critical.
This country has been through corrupt leaders before.
Put your fingers on the dial 202-224-3121 to the switchboard.
More to come.
In the mean-time read or reread Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lesson from the Twentieth Century published in 2017. It is only 125 pages.
Then go to Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. It is free online, though you can always buy it, (please not through Amazon). https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-a-conceptual-framework-for-liberation/
We’re in a mess though there are hours in the day, when things seem so normal that it is hard to absorb that it looks like we are in the middle of a soft coup.
It is only twelve days and we are already deep into the reordering and dismantling of the government under Trump 2.0. And, Elon Musk’s Team now has access to the Treasury’s Payment System. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/us/politics/elon-musk-doge-federal-payments-system.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t04.OH1P.uzLc5RhJqrWp&smid=em-share
If you are having trouble keeping track of the whirlwind of Executive Orders you can go to the Presidential Actions page to catch up and keep track. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions
Bob Woodward titled his first book on Trump, Fear. In an interview with Laura Coates on CNN, Woodward related that when he asked Trump about power, Trump answered with, “Real power is … I even don’t like to use the word … but real power is fear”. https://www.yahoo.com/news/bob-woodward-recalls-donald-trump-094902943.html
Another quote from Trump is, “I am your voice … I am your warrior…I am your retribution … I will totally obliterate the deep state, I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system…” c-span, March 4, 2023 Day 3 of CPAC.
And, he seems to be doing just that.
In my November 20, 2021 Activist’s Diary and again on March 14, 2024 I listed how Viktor Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years through twelve steps. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2024-03-10/article/50631?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-March-14--Kelly-Hammargren
- 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 demand of names from Bove of what we might call line officers follows the purge of eight senior FBI executives and Justice Department prosecutors. Bove was an attorney on Trump’s defense team prior to the appointment as Acting Deputy Attorney General.
Trump called the January 6 rioters “hostages” and promised to pardon them if reelected and he did just that on day one, inauguration day.
“Granting Pardons And Commutation of Sentences For Certain Offenses Relating To The Events At Or Near The United States Capitol On January 6, 2021” was number fourteen in the list of the January 20, 2025 Executive Orders. Trump pardoned roughly 1500 January 6 rioters and commuted the sentences of fourteen, nine members of the Oath Keepers and five members of the Proud Boys.
The pardons and sentence commutations erode the independence of the rule of law by sending a clear message from Trump that if you are loyal and at the ready of his beck and call he will take care of you.
The firings, threats of termination declare, if you attack me, prosecute me, investigate me or anyone following my orders I will punish you.
We are at least eight years into this if we count Trump’s first term and the four years in between while Biden was President and Trump was always present campaigning and plotting and planning.
The first twelve days of this second round are a blaring wake up. We can’t waste any time.
To anyone who has decided the way to cope is to turn off the news, crawl under the covers and wait ‘til it’s over, action is the best antidote.
We need to throw back the covers, turn the news back on and start taking action beginning with dialing 202-224-3121 to tell our senators and representatives to get off their butts and show some real resistance while we organize.
The next days and weeks are going to be critical.
This country has been through corrupt leaders before.
Put your fingers on the dial 202-224-3121 to the switchboard.
More to come.
In the mean-time read or reread Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lesson from the Twentieth Century published in 2017. It is only 125 pages.
Then go to Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. It is free online, though you can always buy it, (please not through Amazon). https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-a-conceptual-framework-for-liberation/
January 5, 2024 Activist's Diary The Berkeley Hills Hazard Trifecta
Are we dancing with disaster?
The project at 1048 Keith is back on the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) agenda for January 9, 2025. This project initially caught my attention because it was listed as sitting in the Hillside Overly (high fire zone) in the ZAB September 26, 2024 agenda. Out of curiosity, I checked the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map and found the project hit the Berkeley Hazard trifecta, the landslide zone and earthquake fault zone and the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ).[i]
Little did I know when I shot off an email to ZAB on the project at 1048 Keith back in September that the landslide zone had already taken first place in the Berkeley Hazard Trifecta and that Keith Avenue was notorious for houses moving in this active landslide zone.
The 1048 Keith Avenue project was continued twice, first on September 26, 2024 and then again on October 10, 2024. At the September 26th ZAB meeting the neighbors testified the land was moving, houses were sliding down the hill and the land survey for 1048 Keith had a disclaimer that because the land is moving it may be off by 5 feet or more.
The reason there was a request for a continuance (postponing review) was that because the land is actively moving there was a dispute over the property lines, an active lawsuit and the location of the proposed 1048 Keith project may be on the neighbor’s land.
When Robert Matthews spoke, he said he was familiar with ground movement. In his full statement about the active landslide he related how his house made the front page of the Chronicle in 2004, that ground had been actively moving for decades.
The 2004 article Matthews references describes his house on Keith as sliding about 20 feet since it was built in 1916 and half of it was now on his neighbor’s lot.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/when-property-lines-run-through-the-front-door-2662450.php
Matthews brought his comments to a close with “[I] oppose the current plan, because I believe the applicant simply may not own the property...and I urge you not to approve any construction in the area until the disagreement is resolved between the parties.”
I thanked everyone who spoke. The evening testimony was better than TV.
Did I mention 1048 Keith Avenue is also right on top of the Hayward Fault?
The bottom line is should anyone be building anything in an area that is on land that is moving.
Apparently, the issues are settled now as Berkeley City Planning staff recommend approving the project. But should they?
We might question the sanity of people who keep rebuilding in Florida with hurricane after hurricane, but what about us?
We might ask how many landslides, hurricanes, floods, or fires does it take for someone to say enough, or for FEMA to relocate communities, or for insurance companies to leave or for governments to say no? Who ends up paying? Will it be just the home owner when disaster finally happens or will City of Berkeley be on the hook if the project at 1048 Keith Avenue and projects like it are approved by ZAB and then again by the various City of Berkeley Departments and staff?
There are people who argue the Berkeley Fire Zone map encircles an area that is too large, but we just passed the 101-year anniversary of the September 17, 1923 fire. That fire stopped just short of Shattuck when the hot dry Diablo winds from the northeast stilled and the late afternoon moist winds off the bay came in to give the fire fighters and volunteers the much needed edge to gain control and stop the fire from moving into the downtown and across Shattuck. By that time, the fast-moving fire had consumed 640 structures including 584 houses.
I drove right by the plaque at 1916 Oxford on the 1923 fire on my way up the hill to pick up a friend living in the Berkeley Hazard Trifecta area. On the way up, parked cars on both sides of Oxford squeezed the two-way street into a single lane. All I could think about was if a wildfire hits that area, there is no way people are going to get out.
I recommend picking up and reading Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Jake Bittle does a much better job than I can do here in this limited space describing what happens to individuals, families and communities when the calamities of nature strike. Bittle does it through the lens of the people experiencing it. After moving around the country on hurricanes, floods and drought, Bittle brings it home to us in the chapter on the 2017 Tubbs fire and Coffey Park.
You can borrow The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration from the Berkeley Public Library as an ebook, audiobook or in print.
_________________________
[i] The Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation is a State of California map https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/ and the Berkeley Fire Zone map is a City of Berkeley map https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/Berkeley-Fire-Zone-Map.pdf.
Are we dancing with disaster?
The project at 1048 Keith is back on the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) agenda for January 9, 2025. This project initially caught my attention because it was listed as sitting in the Hillside Overly (high fire zone) in the ZAB September 26, 2024 agenda. Out of curiosity, I checked the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map and found the project hit the Berkeley Hazard trifecta, the landslide zone and earthquake fault zone and the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ).[i]
Little did I know when I shot off an email to ZAB on the project at 1048 Keith back in September that the landslide zone had already taken first place in the Berkeley Hazard Trifecta and that Keith Avenue was notorious for houses moving in this active landslide zone.
The 1048 Keith Avenue project was continued twice, first on September 26, 2024 and then again on October 10, 2024. At the September 26th ZAB meeting the neighbors testified the land was moving, houses were sliding down the hill and the land survey for 1048 Keith had a disclaimer that because the land is moving it may be off by 5 feet or more.
The reason there was a request for a continuance (postponing review) was that because the land is actively moving there was a dispute over the property lines, an active lawsuit and the location of the proposed 1048 Keith project may be on the neighbor’s land.
When Robert Matthews spoke, he said he was familiar with ground movement. In his full statement about the active landslide he related how his house made the front page of the Chronicle in 2004, that ground had been actively moving for decades.
The 2004 article Matthews references describes his house on Keith as sliding about 20 feet since it was built in 1916 and half of it was now on his neighbor’s lot.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/when-property-lines-run-through-the-front-door-2662450.php
Matthews brought his comments to a close with “[I] oppose the current plan, because I believe the applicant simply may not own the property...and I urge you not to approve any construction in the area until the disagreement is resolved between the parties.”
I thanked everyone who spoke. The evening testimony was better than TV.
Did I mention 1048 Keith Avenue is also right on top of the Hayward Fault?
The bottom line is should anyone be building anything in an area that is on land that is moving.
Apparently, the issues are settled now as Berkeley City Planning staff recommend approving the project. But should they?
We might question the sanity of people who keep rebuilding in Florida with hurricane after hurricane, but what about us?
We might ask how many landslides, hurricanes, floods, or fires does it take for someone to say enough, or for FEMA to relocate communities, or for insurance companies to leave or for governments to say no? Who ends up paying? Will it be just the home owner when disaster finally happens or will City of Berkeley be on the hook if the project at 1048 Keith Avenue and projects like it are approved by ZAB and then again by the various City of Berkeley Departments and staff?
There are people who argue the Berkeley Fire Zone map encircles an area that is too large, but we just passed the 101-year anniversary of the September 17, 1923 fire. That fire stopped just short of Shattuck when the hot dry Diablo winds from the northeast stilled and the late afternoon moist winds off the bay came in to give the fire fighters and volunteers the much needed edge to gain control and stop the fire from moving into the downtown and across Shattuck. By that time, the fast-moving fire had consumed 640 structures including 584 houses.
I drove right by the plaque at 1916 Oxford on the 1923 fire on my way up the hill to pick up a friend living in the Berkeley Hazard Trifecta area. On the way up, parked cars on both sides of Oxford squeezed the two-way street into a single lane. All I could think about was if a wildfire hits that area, there is no way people are going to get out.
I recommend picking up and reading Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Jake Bittle does a much better job than I can do here in this limited space describing what happens to individuals, families and communities when the calamities of nature strike. Bittle does it through the lens of the people experiencing it. After moving around the country on hurricanes, floods and drought, Bittle brings it home to us in the chapter on the 2017 Tubbs fire and Coffey Park.
You can borrow The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration from the Berkeley Public Library as an ebook, audiobook or in print.
_________________________
[i] The Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation is a State of California map https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/ and the Berkeley Fire Zone map is a City of Berkeley map https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/Berkeley-Fire-Zone-Map.pdf.
October 15, 2024 Activist's Diary on Tax Exemption for Research
In case you are wondering who I am voting for in the local elections, it is Kate Harrison for Mayor, Margot Smith for State Assembly, Jovanka Beckles for State Senate, Nikki Fortunato Bas for Alameda County Supervisor. If I lived in District 6 I would vote for Andy Katz, District 5 Shoshana O’Keefe, in District 3 I would rank only Chip Moore and Ben Bartlett. I am voting for Fix the Streets – Measure EE, Parks – Measure Y, and Libraries – Measure X. I haven’t decided on BUSD or finalized my vote on the rest of the ballot initiatives.
As you keep reading you’ll see why I’ve made some of these choices.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 was an interesting day starting in the afternoon with the Agenda Committee and ending in the evening with the Berkeley City Council.
At the Agenda Committee the alternate councilmember Taplin filled in for councilmember Wengraf.
In the public comment period on the draft city council agenda for October 29, 2024, I suggested that item 15 from Public Works on an “Agreement Regarding Allocation of Costs for Railroad Crossing Improvements for Berkeley Commons Between Berkeley Commons Owner, LLC (Developer) and City of Berkeley (City)” was potentially controversial and should be moved to action. The parking lots for this development have approximately 1,000 parking spaces.
Berkeley Commons is the big project on the edge of Aquatic Park built as a research and development project presumably for biotech.
Berkeley Commons is in council District 2, Taplin’s District.
Whether Taplin was picking up on my comment or he had also been looking at the item in another way, I don’t know, but when public comment closed and Taplin spoke, he asked for the Berkeley Commons item on the railroad crossings to be moved to action. Mayor Arreguin, basically cut off Taplin at the knees by saying he didn’t agree, the City was a pass through and Taplin could talk with the City Manager about the item.
The supporting documentation that wasn’t available on Tuesday is posted with the October 29 City Council Agenda, but it only designates where the improvements will be on Addison and Bancroft, not what the safety improvements will be which some might say is important with entrances for around 500 parking spaces for the Bancroft parking lot entrance and another 500 at the Addison parking lot entrance.
People in West Berkeley are concerned, some are upset about all of the parking that is being given to the multiple biotech projects now totaling about 3000 parking spaces in multilevel parking lots next to biotech projects already built or in the making. If even two thirds of these parking spaces are used that means 2000 more cars going through West Berkeley for biotech. That is while the city approves housing project after housing project with little to no parking leaving residents who need their cars struggling for parking when they come home and biotech scooping up three thousand spaces with ease in multi-level parking edging up on the residential neighborhoods.
While the city leaders in Berkeley have been chasing after biotech, the West Berkeley Plan with protective zoning for arts and crafts is taking hits with rezoning spaces piece by piece for biotech.
Estimates through public comment and the petition from Kate Harrison place the vacancy in developments for biotech at 39% to 47%. There are still more planned projects for biotech to come.
The West Berkeley neighborhood housing, where the largest percentage of persons of color live in Berkeley also looks to be the target and sacrifice zone for Middle Housing Zoning.
Add on to that sour taste that Arreguin had on the evening city council agenda item 21 on consent (to pass without discussion) Amend BMC 9.04.165 – Tax Exemption for Research & Development Grants to exempt the taxation of business gross receipts relating to government and philanthropic research and development grants in the public interest.
Arreguin stated to the public and council that as the author of item 21 the Tax Exemption for Research and Development, he was pulling the item from the evening agenda and rescheduling it for November 12, 2024. That is conveniently after the election while Arreguin is still in office as mayor in Berkeley.
Here is Arreguin’s statement:
“So, on item 21, this is the item tax exemption for research and development grants I submitted for Council consideration this evening. Since the item first appeared, there’s been considerable interest in the proposal. We received many letters of support from companies engaged in a wide range of research in Berkeley who asked council to approve the item [emphasis added] and received emails and letters from community members and public and requests to pull it from consent for more discussion of the proposal. While I’m still ultimately in support of moving forward, I agree more time would be beneficial to respond to the public comments and provide additional background on the reasons for the proposal, the financial implications and potential benefits. As the author of the item I’d like to ask for unanimous consent for the City Council to continue item 21 to November 12, 2024 is to allow time for council to discuss the merits of the proposal and act in time for the finance department to implement the new policy when the tax bills are sent in December.”
Of course, companies engaged in a wide range of research would enjoy tax breaks, while we as property owner taxpayers are asked to cough up more money through the multiple ballot measures for streets, the parks, the libraries.
As public comment on the consent calendar ended, Arreguin said giving the tax exemption would only cost the City $9,000. Here is Arreguin’s full statement regarding the tax exemption:
“I just have to say we received some information from the City Manager about what is the economic impact of the proposal on 21, $9,000 per year. So, to think that this is some big boondoggle or swindle for, you know, corporations at the expense of our tax base is just fake news. And, I just have to say I really resent the implication that because I’m bringing something forward to support a local economy that that’s somehow unethical [emphasis added], you know, we really need to move past toxicity and divisiveness and rhetoric that unfortunately has crept into this council chambers and let’s have a civil debate, let’s focus on the issues that’s what I intend to have on November 12 and let the council decide how to proceed and not to politicize or use -- [captioner missed a couple of words] or take an issue to create some false narrative for political purposes, because that’s what is really going on here.”
So, what is really going on? Chapter 9.04 of the Berkeley Municipal Code relates to Business Licenses, who/what needs a business license and how the fee (tax) for that license is calculated.
The current ordinance section to be modified limits the tax exemption to:
“Any person subject to a license under provisions of this section with less than $100,000 in annual gross receipts, as defined in Section 9.04.025, net of governmental research grants, may exclude from gross receipts up to $1,000,000 received from governmental research grants, providing that a list of those grants and the amounts of payments received are reported to the City as defined by the Director of Finance.”
What this means in plain language is any person with a Berkeley business license who receives money from a governmental research grant may subtract up to $1,000,000 in grants from gross receipts (income) for the purpose of calculating the fee/tax charged by the city. And when after subtracting the governmental grant from the total income results in a dollar number is less than $100,000 that income with the Berkeley business license is tax exempt.
As currently written this was supposed to help small struggling research and development entities.
Reading Arreguin’s agenda item 21 tax exemption proposal, it states:
“As of late 2023, the city had approximately 400 innovation sector companies, with 325 of them (81%) considered ‘startups’…”
and only
“…21 companies have received a R&D grant tax waiver, of which four (almost one-fifth) have reached the $1,000,000 maximum and several companies have been denied the waiver because they either had other gross receipts exceeding the $100,000 (e.g. from interest income on equity investments made in the company, [emphasis added] tax credits or philanthropic organization, rather than government entity.”
If each of the 21 companies mentioned received exactly the same exemption using the $9,000 impact (lost revenue), that would work out to $428.57 each. Of course, some exemptions were higher and some lower.
What Arreguin is proposing is to expand the sources of grants by adding philanthropic grants (which can come from anywhere, anyone not just the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or like foundations) and to remove all limitations on the amounts of grants and all limits on gross receipts (income).
So, we are to believe that the many letters of support from companies engaged in a wide range of research bothered to write for a share of $9,000 among them and all these tax emptions will total only a $9,000 loss to the City of Berkeley.
And, with more companies involved and the $9,000 divided among more companies, all this effort is for a tax exemption of less than $428.57 if divided equally. If the number of qualifying companies doubled then the cost of paying the accountants and staff to create the reports to send to the City of Berkeley Finance Department would very likely cost more than the expected $214.28 tax exemption if divided equally.
With the limits removed, no definition of who or what is going to fit into that philanthropic grant category, this looks like an invitation for creative accounting.
So, if the yearly loss of $9,000 to the City of Berkeley isn’t that the exemptions are going to total $9,000 split up among many more companies involved in research, what is it?
Maybe it is after Arreguin’s plan gives away what would have been revenue to the City of Berkeley, that all this new business, all this economic growth of biotech, all these new employees visiting Berkeley for their jobs will only set back the city for a loss of $9,000 each year after year going forward.
I’ll sure be interested in hearing how more companies qualifying for tax exemptions are going to do all this for a share of $9,000 or how they calculate this big giveaway is going to bring in so much income to the city that the overall yearly loss is only $9,000. Or maybe Arreguin will come up with some imagined profits with the help of the City Manager that will offset the lost revenue to seal the deal.
Or maybe this is to grease the wheels for the developers who manage and build the biotech buildings to incentivize the research/biotech with generous tax exemptions to come to Berkeley to fill the vacant space.
There are lots of studies that the promised gains from tax incentives, tax giveaways don’t produce as promised. And the tax exemptions and giveaways especially don’t work out as promised when it is a half-baked idea coming from someone who is pushing through giveaways on the way out the door for another office.
Something is very wrong with someone’s math or maybe all the bluster in Arreguin’s statement, “I really resent the implication that because I’m bringing something forward to support a local economy that that’s somehow unethical” is to divert our attention from taking a hard look and pulling out our mobile devices with the calculator and doing a little math ourselves.
This is looking more and more unsavory as I write.
None of all the building for biotech or the upzoning to demolish single family housing and fill the space with multi-unit projects takes into consideration the infrastructure that is needed to support it or the impact on the environment. That bill is coming.
Putting the evening together, from the beginning with non-agenda comments to the council meeting end at 8:18, besides Arreguin’s tax exemption plan, we heard from Marlene Watson one of the two Native artists (Watson uses “Native”) for the public art project at the Civic Center Park fountain that is supposed to recognize and honor Native People is now in contract to non-Native People for the work.
Marlene Watson: [I]t’s been problematic the last two and a half years of contributing on a capital budget with capital funds for a Native Project and Participation. We’re almost three years and now it’s going out to bid as a non-native project. So, that’s what we’d like the council to be aware of in the process of unfair contract practices…”
We heard complaints of a dual system when it comes to the Black Repertory Group Theater.
Note, there always seems to be money to go around for the Berkeley Rep on Center Street. The City Council approved putting the emergency rescue of $150,000 for the Aurora Theatre according to an article in Berkeleyside. I remember seeing it, but can’t find confirmation in City documents. The La Pena Cultural Center was approved on October 1, 2024 for consideration of $150,000 rescue in the mid-year budget adjustment.
And the Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater can’t seem to get follow up from the City of Berkeley.
We heard Councilmember Bartlett learned the art of acting at the Black Repertory Theater.
We heard Deputy City Manager La Tanya Bellow profess her commitment to resolving the issues with the Berkeley Repertory Group Theater.
We were reminded of biased City of Berkeley contracting practices as identified in the Mason Tillman Report.
We heard about non-compliance with public records requests from a journalist still waiting for over a year for requested documents.
We heard how the City of Berkeley prioritizes bicyclists over the rest of the community, people who “roll” (people who use wheelchairs), people who are deaf, and pedestrians.
A group of volunteers did bicycle counts at the same intersections at the same time of day in 2023 to compare current use of bicycles in comparison to studies done in 2000, 2010, 2015, 2018 and 2022. While Berkeley’s population has increased, the volume of bicyclists in the 2023 bicycle counts decreased. The results were presented to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission. The Commission wasn’t interested in following up on the findings and the commissioner leading the bicycle counts was replaced on the Commission.
We heard about the complaint about Sophie Hahn non-disclosure and conflict of interest.
There was some happy news at council. Taplin’s referral to maintain the six berths on J-Dock for the Cal Sailing Club passed without a peep of resistance. This was a lift that started months ago in response to a presentation under the previous city manager to the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission to take away those berths from the Cal Sailing Club and give them to big yachts.
Remember, Hahn who is the beneficiary of family income from the biotech industry did not recuse herself from the vote on the Wareham appeal to change zoning from protected space to filmmakers to research and development zoning.
If you want to see who is giving campaign donations to who in local elections, you can take a cruise through the City of Berkeley Electronic Filing System.
In case this link to the City of Berkeley Electronic Filing System of campaign donations doesn’t work. https://www.netfile.com/agency/brk/, you can do your own searches by going to the City of Berkeley website https://berkeleyca.gov and typing in campaign donations. Follow the instructions for the Public Access Portal.
Independent Expenditures are donations from PACs (political action committees aka dark money) The mailer on Nikki Fortunato Bas with the be afraid header “crime spree” is from the National Association of Realtors and California Association of Realtors.
There are a lot of what I would call dirty mailers from the Real Estate industry and because they have been successful in swinging voters even here in Berkeley with their dirty games they are still at it. Please don’t be fooled by these dirty negative hit pieces.
If you have trouble, I can walk you through it as I did the other evening for someone who wanted to follow-up on my Activist’s Diary: Full Disclosure? https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2024-10-01/article/50857?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-Full-Disclosure---Kelly-Hammargren
I finished Ta-Nehisi’s new book The Message earlier this week. If you can find it, snap it up and read it. I bought the last book from the first shipment to Pegasus. More on The Message later this Diary is long already.
In case you are wondering who I am voting for in the local elections, it is Kate Harrison for Mayor, Margot Smith for State Assembly, Jovanka Beckles for State Senate, Nikki Fortunato Bas for Alameda County Supervisor. If I lived in District 6 I would vote for Andy Katz, District 5 Shoshana O’Keefe, in District 3 I would rank only Chip Moore and Ben Bartlett. I am voting for Fix the Streets – Measure EE, Parks – Measure Y, and Libraries – Measure X. I haven’t decided on BUSD or finalized my vote on the rest of the ballot initiatives.
As you keep reading you’ll see why I’ve made some of these choices.
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 was an interesting day starting in the afternoon with the Agenda Committee and ending in the evening with the Berkeley City Council.
At the Agenda Committee the alternate councilmember Taplin filled in for councilmember Wengraf.
In the public comment period on the draft city council agenda for October 29, 2024, I suggested that item 15 from Public Works on an “Agreement Regarding Allocation of Costs for Railroad Crossing Improvements for Berkeley Commons Between Berkeley Commons Owner, LLC (Developer) and City of Berkeley (City)” was potentially controversial and should be moved to action. The parking lots for this development have approximately 1,000 parking spaces.
Berkeley Commons is the big project on the edge of Aquatic Park built as a research and development project presumably for biotech.
Berkeley Commons is in council District 2, Taplin’s District.
Whether Taplin was picking up on my comment or he had also been looking at the item in another way, I don’t know, but when public comment closed and Taplin spoke, he asked for the Berkeley Commons item on the railroad crossings to be moved to action. Mayor Arreguin, basically cut off Taplin at the knees by saying he didn’t agree, the City was a pass through and Taplin could talk with the City Manager about the item.
The supporting documentation that wasn’t available on Tuesday is posted with the October 29 City Council Agenda, but it only designates where the improvements will be on Addison and Bancroft, not what the safety improvements will be which some might say is important with entrances for around 500 parking spaces for the Bancroft parking lot entrance and another 500 at the Addison parking lot entrance.
People in West Berkeley are concerned, some are upset about all of the parking that is being given to the multiple biotech projects now totaling about 3000 parking spaces in multilevel parking lots next to biotech projects already built or in the making. If even two thirds of these parking spaces are used that means 2000 more cars going through West Berkeley for biotech. That is while the city approves housing project after housing project with little to no parking leaving residents who need their cars struggling for parking when they come home and biotech scooping up three thousand spaces with ease in multi-level parking edging up on the residential neighborhoods.
While the city leaders in Berkeley have been chasing after biotech, the West Berkeley Plan with protective zoning for arts and crafts is taking hits with rezoning spaces piece by piece for biotech.
Estimates through public comment and the petition from Kate Harrison place the vacancy in developments for biotech at 39% to 47%. There are still more planned projects for biotech to come.
The West Berkeley neighborhood housing, where the largest percentage of persons of color live in Berkeley also looks to be the target and sacrifice zone for Middle Housing Zoning.
Add on to that sour taste that Arreguin had on the evening city council agenda item 21 on consent (to pass without discussion) Amend BMC 9.04.165 – Tax Exemption for Research & Development Grants to exempt the taxation of business gross receipts relating to government and philanthropic research and development grants in the public interest.
Arreguin stated to the public and council that as the author of item 21 the Tax Exemption for Research and Development, he was pulling the item from the evening agenda and rescheduling it for November 12, 2024. That is conveniently after the election while Arreguin is still in office as mayor in Berkeley.
Here is Arreguin’s statement:
“So, on item 21, this is the item tax exemption for research and development grants I submitted for Council consideration this evening. Since the item first appeared, there’s been considerable interest in the proposal. We received many letters of support from companies engaged in a wide range of research in Berkeley who asked council to approve the item [emphasis added] and received emails and letters from community members and public and requests to pull it from consent for more discussion of the proposal. While I’m still ultimately in support of moving forward, I agree more time would be beneficial to respond to the public comments and provide additional background on the reasons for the proposal, the financial implications and potential benefits. As the author of the item I’d like to ask for unanimous consent for the City Council to continue item 21 to November 12, 2024 is to allow time for council to discuss the merits of the proposal and act in time for the finance department to implement the new policy when the tax bills are sent in December.”
Of course, companies engaged in a wide range of research would enjoy tax breaks, while we as property owner taxpayers are asked to cough up more money through the multiple ballot measures for streets, the parks, the libraries.
As public comment on the consent calendar ended, Arreguin said giving the tax exemption would only cost the City $9,000. Here is Arreguin’s full statement regarding the tax exemption:
“I just have to say we received some information from the City Manager about what is the economic impact of the proposal on 21, $9,000 per year. So, to think that this is some big boondoggle or swindle for, you know, corporations at the expense of our tax base is just fake news. And, I just have to say I really resent the implication that because I’m bringing something forward to support a local economy that that’s somehow unethical [emphasis added], you know, we really need to move past toxicity and divisiveness and rhetoric that unfortunately has crept into this council chambers and let’s have a civil debate, let’s focus on the issues that’s what I intend to have on November 12 and let the council decide how to proceed and not to politicize or use -- [captioner missed a couple of words] or take an issue to create some false narrative for political purposes, because that’s what is really going on here.”
So, what is really going on? Chapter 9.04 of the Berkeley Municipal Code relates to Business Licenses, who/what needs a business license and how the fee (tax) for that license is calculated.
The current ordinance section to be modified limits the tax exemption to:
“Any person subject to a license under provisions of this section with less than $100,000 in annual gross receipts, as defined in Section 9.04.025, net of governmental research grants, may exclude from gross receipts up to $1,000,000 received from governmental research grants, providing that a list of those grants and the amounts of payments received are reported to the City as defined by the Director of Finance.”
What this means in plain language is any person with a Berkeley business license who receives money from a governmental research grant may subtract up to $1,000,000 in grants from gross receipts (income) for the purpose of calculating the fee/tax charged by the city. And when after subtracting the governmental grant from the total income results in a dollar number is less than $100,000 that income with the Berkeley business license is tax exempt.
As currently written this was supposed to help small struggling research and development entities.
Reading Arreguin’s agenda item 21 tax exemption proposal, it states:
“As of late 2023, the city had approximately 400 innovation sector companies, with 325 of them (81%) considered ‘startups’…”
and only
“…21 companies have received a R&D grant tax waiver, of which four (almost one-fifth) have reached the $1,000,000 maximum and several companies have been denied the waiver because they either had other gross receipts exceeding the $100,000 (e.g. from interest income on equity investments made in the company, [emphasis added] tax credits or philanthropic organization, rather than government entity.”
If each of the 21 companies mentioned received exactly the same exemption using the $9,000 impact (lost revenue), that would work out to $428.57 each. Of course, some exemptions were higher and some lower.
What Arreguin is proposing is to expand the sources of grants by adding philanthropic grants (which can come from anywhere, anyone not just the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or like foundations) and to remove all limitations on the amounts of grants and all limits on gross receipts (income).
So, we are to believe that the many letters of support from companies engaged in a wide range of research bothered to write for a share of $9,000 among them and all these tax emptions will total only a $9,000 loss to the City of Berkeley.
And, with more companies involved and the $9,000 divided among more companies, all this effort is for a tax exemption of less than $428.57 if divided equally. If the number of qualifying companies doubled then the cost of paying the accountants and staff to create the reports to send to the City of Berkeley Finance Department would very likely cost more than the expected $214.28 tax exemption if divided equally.
With the limits removed, no definition of who or what is going to fit into that philanthropic grant category, this looks like an invitation for creative accounting.
So, if the yearly loss of $9,000 to the City of Berkeley isn’t that the exemptions are going to total $9,000 split up among many more companies involved in research, what is it?
Maybe it is after Arreguin’s plan gives away what would have been revenue to the City of Berkeley, that all this new business, all this economic growth of biotech, all these new employees visiting Berkeley for their jobs will only set back the city for a loss of $9,000 each year after year going forward.
I’ll sure be interested in hearing how more companies qualifying for tax exemptions are going to do all this for a share of $9,000 or how they calculate this big giveaway is going to bring in so much income to the city that the overall yearly loss is only $9,000. Or maybe Arreguin will come up with some imagined profits with the help of the City Manager that will offset the lost revenue to seal the deal.
Or maybe this is to grease the wheels for the developers who manage and build the biotech buildings to incentivize the research/biotech with generous tax exemptions to come to Berkeley to fill the vacant space.
There are lots of studies that the promised gains from tax incentives, tax giveaways don’t produce as promised. And the tax exemptions and giveaways especially don’t work out as promised when it is a half-baked idea coming from someone who is pushing through giveaways on the way out the door for another office.
Something is very wrong with someone’s math or maybe all the bluster in Arreguin’s statement, “I really resent the implication that because I’m bringing something forward to support a local economy that that’s somehow unethical” is to divert our attention from taking a hard look and pulling out our mobile devices with the calculator and doing a little math ourselves.
This is looking more and more unsavory as I write.
None of all the building for biotech or the upzoning to demolish single family housing and fill the space with multi-unit projects takes into consideration the infrastructure that is needed to support it or the impact on the environment. That bill is coming.
Putting the evening together, from the beginning with non-agenda comments to the council meeting end at 8:18, besides Arreguin’s tax exemption plan, we heard from Marlene Watson one of the two Native artists (Watson uses “Native”) for the public art project at the Civic Center Park fountain that is supposed to recognize and honor Native People is now in contract to non-Native People for the work.
Marlene Watson: [I]t’s been problematic the last two and a half years of contributing on a capital budget with capital funds for a Native Project and Participation. We’re almost three years and now it’s going out to bid as a non-native project. So, that’s what we’d like the council to be aware of in the process of unfair contract practices…”
We heard complaints of a dual system when it comes to the Black Repertory Group Theater.
Note, there always seems to be money to go around for the Berkeley Rep on Center Street. The City Council approved putting the emergency rescue of $150,000 for the Aurora Theatre according to an article in Berkeleyside. I remember seeing it, but can’t find confirmation in City documents. The La Pena Cultural Center was approved on October 1, 2024 for consideration of $150,000 rescue in the mid-year budget adjustment.
And the Berkeley Black Repertory Group Theater can’t seem to get follow up from the City of Berkeley.
We heard Councilmember Bartlett learned the art of acting at the Black Repertory Theater.
We heard Deputy City Manager La Tanya Bellow profess her commitment to resolving the issues with the Berkeley Repertory Group Theater.
We were reminded of biased City of Berkeley contracting practices as identified in the Mason Tillman Report.
We heard about non-compliance with public records requests from a journalist still waiting for over a year for requested documents.
We heard how the City of Berkeley prioritizes bicyclists over the rest of the community, people who “roll” (people who use wheelchairs), people who are deaf, and pedestrians.
A group of volunteers did bicycle counts at the same intersections at the same time of day in 2023 to compare current use of bicycles in comparison to studies done in 2000, 2010, 2015, 2018 and 2022. While Berkeley’s population has increased, the volume of bicyclists in the 2023 bicycle counts decreased. The results were presented to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission. The Commission wasn’t interested in following up on the findings and the commissioner leading the bicycle counts was replaced on the Commission.
We heard about the complaint about Sophie Hahn non-disclosure and conflict of interest.
There was some happy news at council. Taplin’s referral to maintain the six berths on J-Dock for the Cal Sailing Club passed without a peep of resistance. This was a lift that started months ago in response to a presentation under the previous city manager to the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission to take away those berths from the Cal Sailing Club and give them to big yachts.
Remember, Hahn who is the beneficiary of family income from the biotech industry did not recuse herself from the vote on the Wareham appeal to change zoning from protected space to filmmakers to research and development zoning.
If you want to see who is giving campaign donations to who in local elections, you can take a cruise through the City of Berkeley Electronic Filing System.
In case this link to the City of Berkeley Electronic Filing System of campaign donations doesn’t work. https://www.netfile.com/agency/brk/, you can do your own searches by going to the City of Berkeley website https://berkeleyca.gov and typing in campaign donations. Follow the instructions for the Public Access Portal.
Independent Expenditures are donations from PACs (political action committees aka dark money) The mailer on Nikki Fortunato Bas with the be afraid header “crime spree” is from the National Association of Realtors and California Association of Realtors.
There are a lot of what I would call dirty mailers from the Real Estate industry and because they have been successful in swinging voters even here in Berkeley with their dirty games they are still at it. Please don’t be fooled by these dirty negative hit pieces.
If you have trouble, I can walk you through it as I did the other evening for someone who wanted to follow-up on my Activist’s Diary: Full Disclosure? https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2024-10-01/article/50857?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-Full-Disclosure---Kelly-Hammargren
I finished Ta-Nehisi’s new book The Message earlier this week. If you can find it, snap it up and read it. I bought the last book from the first shipment to Pegasus. More on The Message later this Diary is long already.
October 11, 2024 Activist's Diary on Sophie Hahn, FPPC Complaint and review of Form 700
It seems like the national news media is hanging in anxious anticipation for that “October Surprise” event, revelation, or catastrophe that will swing the Presidential election one way or the other.
And, then there is Berkeley.
Some of us received the forwarded letter from Paola Laverde that starts with, “Today I filed a complaint against Sophie Hahn, Mayoral candidate in Berkeley, with the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).”
The complaint revolves around the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) Form 700 and failure to report.
I requested and received the full packet with the complaint from Paola Laverde and it is best summarized as thorough with substantial supporting documentation. Laverde used the California Form 700 filings, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings and business reports as documentation.
Here is an excerpt from that filing:
“Sophie Hahn (Ms. Hahn) is both a current City Councilmember for the City of Berkeley, first elected in November, 2016, and also a candidate for Mayor of Berkeley in the upcoming November 5, 2024 election. In her FPPC Form 700 filings, dating back to 2020, if not earlier, it appears Ms. Hahn failed to report, as required by the FPPC, her 50% share of yearly earnings from her spouse (Mr. Eric Bjerkholt), currently Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mirum Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company. These earnings likely averaged at least $500,000 per year during this period and were closer to $1 million/year for 2023 and 2024. A recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing listed Mr. Bjerkholt’s compensation at $4,337,928 for 2023 although this included stock options that may not yet have been awarded. (Ex. 1) Ms. Hahn also appeared not to report (other than 2020), as required by the FPPC, her family’s substantial stock holdings in various biotechnology companies. These holdings have been estimated as high as $4 million. (Ex. 2).”
In writing this Activist’s Diary, I went through the mandated Form 700 filings by Sophie Hahn going back to 2014, when I first started attending city meetings. I started with the State FPPC website, but the back and forth of when Hahn included her husband’ compensations in the biotech industry and when she didn’t was so hard to follow that I switched to the City of Berkeley website (which had the same Form 700 filings) where the documents were easier to view, save and print.
Here is the explanation of the Form 700 from the State of California FPPC website:
“Every elected official and public employee who makes or influences governmental decisions is required to submit a Statement of Economic Interests, also known as Form 700. The Form 700 provides transparency and ensures accountability in two ways:
For comparison and to be thorough I also reviewed the Form 700 filings completed by candidates Kate Harrison and Adena Ishii.
To look at the Form 700 filings go to the City of Berkeley and type in Conflict of Interest in the search bar. Then click on submitted forms. When the request page comes up you can change the dates and type in the last name of anyone you want to search. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/public-records/conflict-interest-reports
Not every Form 700 filing by an elected person in Berkeley is listed in the City of Berkeley filings. For example, Mayor Arreguin and Auditor Jenny Wong filed the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) sponsored trips to Israel with the State FPPC, but those same forms of the controversial trips to Israel are not in City of Berkeley filings. A person looking only at Berkeley Form 700 filings would not find the documentation of Arreguin’s and Wong’s sponsored trips to Israel.
For Form 700s filed with the state use https://fppc.ca.gov/transparency/form-700-filed-by-public-officials/form700-search.html
I was looking at councilmember Hahn’s 700 form filings a few weeks ago in relation to her trip with the Jewish Community Relations Council to Israel (JCRC) in March of 2023, so I was only looking at the recent 700 forms. What I found strange in Hahn’s filings was that her only investment was Jimmy’s described as “Environmentally smart dog food” with the box checked as stock with a value of $100,001 - $1,000,000 and the house she owns with her husband in the Berkeley Hills.
A dog food company by the name of Jimmy’s does not exist. Hahn did not bother to correct the name in her fillings of 3/10/2022, 4/3/2023, 3/15/2024. Most would probably excuse the misspelling of Jiminy’s as Jimmy’s as carelessness. It wasn’t until she completed her August 8, 2024 Form 700 filing as candidate for mayor that Jiminy’s was listed. In those same years Hahn listed only her house with a value of greater than $1,000,000 and did not list the income or any other investments. She did not list the substantial household income of her spouse that Laverde found in her searches
Jiminy’s is a privately held Berkeley initiated and based company with a Solano Avenue address. In the “profile preview” PitchBook Platform webpage it lists five of nine investors. Hahn is not listed in the five named venture capital investors. https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/459645-22#team
Hahn’s house is in fire zone 2 in the hillside overlay on a parcel that is designated as a landslide zone. Her house made only two of the three criteria for what I call the Berkeley Hazard Trifecta which are parcels/lots/properties that are in the very high fire hazard severity zone, in a landslide zone and also sit on top of the Hayward fault.
In the March 5, 2021 filing Hahn lists Chinook Theraputics stock with a value of $100,001 - $1,000,000. Hahn’s Form 700 filings of Chinook Theraputics lists an acquired date of 11/10/20 and then it just disappears from future filings.
The FPPC requires stocks that are worth $2,000 or more during the reporting period must be reported every year that they are held. The “acquired” and “disposed” are only required if the stocks were acquired or disposed during the period covered by the Form 700.
Here is the excerpt from the complaint referring to the March 5, 2021 for the year 2020.
“As noted above, Ms. Hahn did report her share of her husband’s salary and stockholdings in Chinook Pharmaceuticals but only for her 2020 FPPC filing. Chinook Pharmaceutical is the successor to Aduro Pharmaceuticals, through a reverse merger between the two firms. (Ex. 21) Aduro was started in Berkeley in 2015, and operated, and was headquartered in Berkeley, CA until, around the time of its reverse merger in 2020. (Ex. 22) As a result of the merger it relocated most of its operations outside of Berkeley.
However, this does not excuse the failure to report Chinook Pharmaceuticals for the 2021 through 2023 reporting years as Chinook continued to operate in Berkeley. It retained (and then sublet) the long-term lease with Wareham Development for Aduro’s headquarters at 740 Heinz St. (Ex. 23) as well as acquiring various Aduro patent rights held in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley. (Ex. 24)
Chinook’s continued long-term lease in Berkeley should have been known by Ms. Hahn, as it was included in Chinook’s 2023 Annual Report, attested to by her husband in his role as CFO of Chinook (Ex. 23). Additionally, even if Chinook had completely eliminated its Berkeley presence (which it did not), the FPPC requires that candidates continue reporting for the following two years after departure (i.e. 2021 and 2022). Once again, this is something that Ms. Hahn failed to do.”
In Hahn’s Form 700 filings for March 12, 2017, March 18, 2018, March 7, 2019, April 16, 2020 July 30, 2020, she lists only her residence, no income, no investments.
The California Form 700 Fair Political Practice Commission is a public document with the cover page title of STATEMENT OF ECONOMIC INTERESTS. It is supposed to tell us in the Schedules (added forms) Schedule A-1 Investments, Schedule A-2 Investments, Schedule B-Real Property, Schedule C- Income, Loans & Business Positions, Schedule D-Income-Gifts and Schedule E-Income Gifts Travel Payments.
During the years I reviewed 2014 through 2024, Hahn completed the Form 700 Schedule A-1, Schedule A-2, Schedule B and Schedule C forms as required by the FPPC when she was appointed to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). Those filings ended when Hahn ran for city council and was elected in 2016. The filings for 2017 through 2020 as noted above listed only her residence.
The FPPC frequently asked questions and answers can be accessed with this link: https://www.fppc.ca.gov/content/dam/fppc/NS-Documents/TAD/Form%20700/2019-2020/Form_700_FAQs_2019.pdf
I did look at the Form 700 filings for candidates Kate Harrison and Adena Ishii.
Kate Harrison did not include her husband’s salary as he was a government employee. A spouse or registered domestic partner’s government salary is not reportable.
Harrison’s husband James Hendry is officially retired, though I understand he may still put in some part time hours. As a government employee Hendry was required to complete Form 700. According to his Form 700 filings I found with the last one dated 3/17/2024, Hendry was a civil servant working as a Public Utilities Commission, Boards and Administration Utility Specialist for the City and County of San Francisco. In his earlier filings Hendry did report Harrison’s non-governmental earnings.
The Harrison Hendry household holdings of mutual funds do not need to be reported according to the FPPC.
Stocks in a diversified mutual fund registered with the SEC or in a fund similar to a diversified mutual fund that meets criteria in Regulation 18237 do not need to be reported, nor do defined-benefit pension program plan such as CalPERS do not need to be reported.
Adena Ishii filed what looks to be a complete Form 700 including Schedule A-1, Schedule A-2, Schedule B, Schedule C, and included income and place of employment of her spouse or registered domestic partner.
One of the many things in Laverde’s complaint that caught my attention was the connection between Hahn’s husband’s business and Wareham Development. It is Wareham Development that purchased the building that housed filmmakers and Fantasy Studios and filed to change the zoning from arts which were protected into research and development for biotechnology. Wareham lost at the Zoning Adjustment Board which determined filmmaking was an art and protected.
Wareham appealed the ZAB decision by redefining film as just media and not an art. The Berkeley City Council heard the appeal on July 30, 2024 and voted in favor of Wareham. Hahn did not recuse herself and voted in favor of Wareham. I wrote about filmmaking, the Fantasy Studios and the hearing in my August Activist’s Diary. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2024-08-01/article/50779?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-August-1--Kelly-Hammargren
Will Hahn’s failure to disclose make any difference to Berkeley voters?
It would to me, but I had my reservations about Sophie Hahn before this new layer fell in my lap. I have been observing Hahn for nearly ten years first on ZAB, then on City Council and in Council Committees.
I’ve had my concerns for a very long time.
It seems like the national news media is hanging in anxious anticipation for that “October Surprise” event, revelation, or catastrophe that will swing the Presidential election one way or the other.
And, then there is Berkeley.
Some of us received the forwarded letter from Paola Laverde that starts with, “Today I filed a complaint against Sophie Hahn, Mayoral candidate in Berkeley, with the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).”
The complaint revolves around the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) Form 700 and failure to report.
I requested and received the full packet with the complaint from Paola Laverde and it is best summarized as thorough with substantial supporting documentation. Laverde used the California Form 700 filings, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings and business reports as documentation.
Here is an excerpt from that filing:
“Sophie Hahn (Ms. Hahn) is both a current City Councilmember for the City of Berkeley, first elected in November, 2016, and also a candidate for Mayor of Berkeley in the upcoming November 5, 2024 election. In her FPPC Form 700 filings, dating back to 2020, if not earlier, it appears Ms. Hahn failed to report, as required by the FPPC, her 50% share of yearly earnings from her spouse (Mr. Eric Bjerkholt), currently Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mirum Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company. These earnings likely averaged at least $500,000 per year during this period and were closer to $1 million/year for 2023 and 2024. A recent Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing listed Mr. Bjerkholt’s compensation at $4,337,928 for 2023 although this included stock options that may not yet have been awarded. (Ex. 1) Ms. Hahn also appeared not to report (other than 2020), as required by the FPPC, her family’s substantial stock holdings in various biotechnology companies. These holdings have been estimated as high as $4 million. (Ex. 2).”
In writing this Activist’s Diary, I went through the mandated Form 700 filings by Sophie Hahn going back to 2014, when I first started attending city meetings. I started with the State FPPC website, but the back and forth of when Hahn included her husband’ compensations in the biotech industry and when she didn’t was so hard to follow that I switched to the City of Berkeley website (which had the same Form 700 filings) where the documents were easier to view, save and print.
Here is the explanation of the Form 700 from the State of California FPPC website:
“Every elected official and public employee who makes or influences governmental decisions is required to submit a Statement of Economic Interests, also known as Form 700. The Form 700 provides transparency and ensures accountability in two ways:
- It provides necessary information to the public about an official’s personal financial interests to ensure that officials are making decisions in the best interest of the public and not enhancing their personal finances.
- It serves as a reminder to the public official of potential conflicts of interest so the official can abstain from making or participating in governmental decisions that are deemed conflict of interest.”
For comparison and to be thorough I also reviewed the Form 700 filings completed by candidates Kate Harrison and Adena Ishii.
To look at the Form 700 filings go to the City of Berkeley and type in Conflict of Interest in the search bar. Then click on submitted forms. When the request page comes up you can change the dates and type in the last name of anyone you want to search. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/public-records/conflict-interest-reports
Not every Form 700 filing by an elected person in Berkeley is listed in the City of Berkeley filings. For example, Mayor Arreguin and Auditor Jenny Wong filed the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) sponsored trips to Israel with the State FPPC, but those same forms of the controversial trips to Israel are not in City of Berkeley filings. A person looking only at Berkeley Form 700 filings would not find the documentation of Arreguin’s and Wong’s sponsored trips to Israel.
For Form 700s filed with the state use https://fppc.ca.gov/transparency/form-700-filed-by-public-officials/form700-search.html
I was looking at councilmember Hahn’s 700 form filings a few weeks ago in relation to her trip with the Jewish Community Relations Council to Israel (JCRC) in March of 2023, so I was only looking at the recent 700 forms. What I found strange in Hahn’s filings was that her only investment was Jimmy’s described as “Environmentally smart dog food” with the box checked as stock with a value of $100,001 - $1,000,000 and the house she owns with her husband in the Berkeley Hills.
A dog food company by the name of Jimmy’s does not exist. Hahn did not bother to correct the name in her fillings of 3/10/2022, 4/3/2023, 3/15/2024. Most would probably excuse the misspelling of Jiminy’s as Jimmy’s as carelessness. It wasn’t until she completed her August 8, 2024 Form 700 filing as candidate for mayor that Jiminy’s was listed. In those same years Hahn listed only her house with a value of greater than $1,000,000 and did not list the income or any other investments. She did not list the substantial household income of her spouse that Laverde found in her searches
Jiminy’s is a privately held Berkeley initiated and based company with a Solano Avenue address. In the “profile preview” PitchBook Platform webpage it lists five of nine investors. Hahn is not listed in the five named venture capital investors. https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/459645-22#team
Hahn’s house is in fire zone 2 in the hillside overlay on a parcel that is designated as a landslide zone. Her house made only two of the three criteria for what I call the Berkeley Hazard Trifecta which are parcels/lots/properties that are in the very high fire hazard severity zone, in a landslide zone and also sit on top of the Hayward fault.
In the March 5, 2021 filing Hahn lists Chinook Theraputics stock with a value of $100,001 - $1,000,000. Hahn’s Form 700 filings of Chinook Theraputics lists an acquired date of 11/10/20 and then it just disappears from future filings.
The FPPC requires stocks that are worth $2,000 or more during the reporting period must be reported every year that they are held. The “acquired” and “disposed” are only required if the stocks were acquired or disposed during the period covered by the Form 700.
Here is the excerpt from the complaint referring to the March 5, 2021 for the year 2020.
“As noted above, Ms. Hahn did report her share of her husband’s salary and stockholdings in Chinook Pharmaceuticals but only for her 2020 FPPC filing. Chinook Pharmaceutical is the successor to Aduro Pharmaceuticals, through a reverse merger between the two firms. (Ex. 21) Aduro was started in Berkeley in 2015, and operated, and was headquartered in Berkeley, CA until, around the time of its reverse merger in 2020. (Ex. 22) As a result of the merger it relocated most of its operations outside of Berkeley.
However, this does not excuse the failure to report Chinook Pharmaceuticals for the 2021 through 2023 reporting years as Chinook continued to operate in Berkeley. It retained (and then sublet) the long-term lease with Wareham Development for Aduro’s headquarters at 740 Heinz St. (Ex. 23) as well as acquiring various Aduro patent rights held in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley. (Ex. 24)
Chinook’s continued long-term lease in Berkeley should have been known by Ms. Hahn, as it was included in Chinook’s 2023 Annual Report, attested to by her husband in his role as CFO of Chinook (Ex. 23). Additionally, even if Chinook had completely eliminated its Berkeley presence (which it did not), the FPPC requires that candidates continue reporting for the following two years after departure (i.e. 2021 and 2022). Once again, this is something that Ms. Hahn failed to do.”
In Hahn’s Form 700 filings for March 12, 2017, March 18, 2018, March 7, 2019, April 16, 2020 July 30, 2020, she lists only her residence, no income, no investments.
The California Form 700 Fair Political Practice Commission is a public document with the cover page title of STATEMENT OF ECONOMIC INTERESTS. It is supposed to tell us in the Schedules (added forms) Schedule A-1 Investments, Schedule A-2 Investments, Schedule B-Real Property, Schedule C- Income, Loans & Business Positions, Schedule D-Income-Gifts and Schedule E-Income Gifts Travel Payments.
During the years I reviewed 2014 through 2024, Hahn completed the Form 700 Schedule A-1, Schedule A-2, Schedule B and Schedule C forms as required by the FPPC when she was appointed to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). Those filings ended when Hahn ran for city council and was elected in 2016. The filings for 2017 through 2020 as noted above listed only her residence.
The FPPC frequently asked questions and answers can be accessed with this link: https://www.fppc.ca.gov/content/dam/fppc/NS-Documents/TAD/Form%20700/2019-2020/Form_700_FAQs_2019.pdf
I did look at the Form 700 filings for candidates Kate Harrison and Adena Ishii.
Kate Harrison did not include her husband’s salary as he was a government employee. A spouse or registered domestic partner’s government salary is not reportable.
Harrison’s husband James Hendry is officially retired, though I understand he may still put in some part time hours. As a government employee Hendry was required to complete Form 700. According to his Form 700 filings I found with the last one dated 3/17/2024, Hendry was a civil servant working as a Public Utilities Commission, Boards and Administration Utility Specialist for the City and County of San Francisco. In his earlier filings Hendry did report Harrison’s non-governmental earnings.
The Harrison Hendry household holdings of mutual funds do not need to be reported according to the FPPC.
Stocks in a diversified mutual fund registered with the SEC or in a fund similar to a diversified mutual fund that meets criteria in Regulation 18237 do not need to be reported, nor do defined-benefit pension program plan such as CalPERS do not need to be reported.
Adena Ishii filed what looks to be a complete Form 700 including Schedule A-1, Schedule A-2, Schedule B, Schedule C, and included income and place of employment of her spouse or registered domestic partner.
One of the many things in Laverde’s complaint that caught my attention was the connection between Hahn’s husband’s business and Wareham Development. It is Wareham Development that purchased the building that housed filmmakers and Fantasy Studios and filed to change the zoning from arts which were protected into research and development for biotechnology. Wareham lost at the Zoning Adjustment Board which determined filmmaking was an art and protected.
Wareham appealed the ZAB decision by redefining film as just media and not an art. The Berkeley City Council heard the appeal on July 30, 2024 and voted in favor of Wareham. Hahn did not recuse herself and voted in favor of Wareham. I wrote about filmmaking, the Fantasy Studios and the hearing in my August Activist’s Diary. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2024-08-01/article/50779?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-August-1--Kelly-Hammargren
Will Hahn’s failure to disclose make any difference to Berkeley voters?
It would to me, but I had my reservations about Sophie Hahn before this new layer fell in my lap. I have been observing Hahn for nearly ten years first on ZAB, then on City Council and in Council Committees.
I’ve had my concerns for a very long time.
October 7, 2024 Peace and Justice Commission Passed the Ceasefire Resolution and Rules that can be used to delay it from coming before the City Council for a vote
Monday, September 30, 2024 was the long overdue meeting of the Peace and Justice Commission on a “Resolution for an Immediate and Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza, and an End to U.S. Military Aid to Israel, and Support for Palestinian Self-Determination”.
You probably know by now that the resolution passed with an 8 to 7 vote. But there is a lot more to what happened.
By the time you read this, we will have already passed one-year of war since the attack by Hamas on Israel killing 1195 including 815 civilians and took 251 hostages. It was a shock that reverberated across Israel and around the world. The year marks the escalation and expansion of the war into Lebanon with Israeli bombings including the insertion of bombs into pagers and walkie talkies killing over 2000. The number of dead Palestinians that were whole enough to be counted is more than 41,000.
Whole enough to be counted goes to the descriptions from physicians volunteering in Gaza of the impact on people of the bunker busting 2000 lb. bombs furnished by the United States to Israel. Dr. Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic surgeon who volunteered in Gaza, described bodies being brought to the hospital in bags that looked as if they had been in a shredder. Perlmutter also described seeing children being shot twice both in the head and chest with horrific exit wounds as no accident.
The July 10, 2024 article in the Lancet “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential” estimated direct and indirect deaths of Palestinians from the war may be more than 186,000. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext
It is impossible to identify the thousands buried in rubble.
The number of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza in this war of one year is now at 175.
As I finish this diary 19-year-old Hassan Hamad is the latest casualty in the targeting of journalists in Israel’s effort to silence and end reporting on the conditions in Gaza. Hamad, who was receiving messages from an Israeli officer ordering him to stop filming, died on October 6, 2024.
It is in this setting that on September 30, 2024 the main room at the North Berkeley Senior Center was packed. There were not enough chairs for everyone with many of us lining the walls and the back of the room. I tried counting. There were well over two hundred present.
If Maoz Inon Israeli peace activist whose parents were killed in the October 7, 2023 attack and is traveling the world with Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah had been in the room he would have called for the ceasefire as he has done for the last year. Inon would have said as he did today in the interview broadcast, “[O]nly few years after the Second World War, where they were fighting among each other and killing 10 millions of each other, they realized that the only way to prevent the next war is making the enemies of the past into the partners of the future…” https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/7/maoz_inon_october_7_israel_palestine
What I had hoped when I sent my letter to the Peace and Justice Commission in support of the Ceasefire Resolution was that the commissioners would work together through wordsmithing, additional statements and possible subtractions for a ceasefire resolution they could all support. but it was obvious from the beginning there were seven commissioners who were appointed to block and obstruct.
The obstruction started when the Commission Chair Grace Morizawa opened the meeting acknowledging that the large public presence was for the Ceasefire Resolution and asked for a reordering of the agenda. Mayor Arreguin’s appointee commissioner Andrea Cassidy was the most vocal with others chiming in, the order of the agenda couldn’t be changed.
A vote was taken. The obstructers lost.
Commissioners Luke Taylor and George Lippman (both Jewish) wrote the Ceasefire Resolution and introduced the Resolution to the public before public comment began. Taylor explained their intent was to call for a permanent ceasefire and not to take sides. The resolution was written with the best intentions to bring it into the mission and function of the Peace and Justice Commission on the issues of peace and justice.
Taylor said he has students in the West Bank and when he opens his messages he will see martyred (killed) with the name of someone he knows.
I counted sixty-four speakers for the resolution (that includes speakers who assigned their time to another) and twenty speakers in opposition though there may have been a few more who assigned their time without the announcement that accompanied everyone for the ceasefire resolution that they were giving their time to another speaker. The limit was one minute for individual speakers and three minutes for speakers who received time from others.
There was no shouting or screaming during the evening though early on the commission chair Morizawa asked for clapping to stop and people to raise their hands and wiggle their fingers in a show of support instead. There were frequent reminders the meeting was scheduled to end at 10 pm encouraging speakers to leave time for the commission to discuss the resolution and vote.
There were speakers who were very moving, like the nurse practitioner who described what she experienced providing care during her month in Gaza.
Having done so much reading on Israel and Palestine, I wondered what the man holding the vehicle license plate in the back of the room was all about.
The Palestinian man was from the West Bank and showed his “green card” and passport and even his vehicle license plate to dispel the myth that Palestinians in the West Bank are treated equally.
Green cards are issued to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza strip. It is illegal for a Palestinian living in the West Bank to travel to Gaza or Jerusalem without a special travel permit from Israel. Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have blue IDs. Movement is tightly controlled with checkpoints and Palestinians must have their cards with them at all times. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/18/the-colour-coded-israeli-id-system-for-palestinians
Waving his green card, passport and license plate might not have had the same impact on others as it had for me. On the recommendation of a friend who is very much pro-Israel, I read Noa Tishby’s Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. If that was your only source of information on Israel then you would have been led to believe that Palestinians living in Israel have all the same rights as the Jewish citizens of Israel which is simply not true. You would also believe the Nakba in 1948 was not much of anything when to the Palestinians it was the great catastrophe.
Reading the accounts by historians, the Nakba was the horrific. 750,000 Palestinians were violently displaced and dispossessed of land, property and belongings by the Israelis before and after the creation of the State of Israel.
The Nakba is akin to the Trail of Tears though the number of Native Americans in the forced removal was 60,000 with more than 3,000 deaths not 750,000 Palestinians and an unknown number of deaths.
What stuck with my friend, who is Jewish and supported the ceasefire resolution, was the public speaker who said the Jews were the indigenous people to the land implying the Palestinians were not indigenous and therefore had no rights.
I was surprised and not surprised by such a statement. It goes to the myth Israel was, A land without a people for people without a land, and that Jews are the rightful inhabitants of the land ignoring and denying the Palestinians as an indigenous people to the land.
I’ve been working my way through Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha a Palestinian historian at the University of London. Masalha writes with extensive sourcing and bibliography Palestine is not a modern invention, but instead firmly existed in the ancient past.
Accepting that Palestinians are indigenous to the land and existed in the ancient past is all very uncomfortable to historical and modern self-identity, but not as unsettling as the 2001 publication on Jewish and Palestinian genetics that created such a furor that the NIH retracted “The origin of Palestinians and their genetic relatedness with other Mediterranean populations“ and the Guardian wrote about the retraction in “Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians” That is the story of science colliding with biblical dogma and science lost.
NIH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11543891/
Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/25/medicalscience.genetics
Rabbi Lynn Gottleib described herself as the first woman rabbi and who has led over fifteen delegations to Palestine. She said, “non-violence is an act of hope” and described the leadership of Israel as a racist right-wing regime that has run amok.
When the public speakers ended and the discussion by the commissioners proceeded what stuck with me was the statement from councilmember Sophie Hahn’s appointee commissioner Nimrod Pitsker Elias. Elias stated he was the “mainstream” Jew implying that everyone else who identified as Jewish and who spoke for the ceasefire resolution was not mainstream. His comment sounded as those who didn’t align with his view were some kind of outlier.
There is a certain comfort in fortifying your position as being mainstream. Maybe Elias is right. And maybe he’s not. And, Is who has the largest number standing with them or who is or isn’t mainstream really the issue before the Peace and Justice Commission?
The Functions of the Peace and Justice Commission in the enabling legislation starts with:
“A. Advise the Berkeley City Council and the Berkeley Unified School Board on all matters relating to the City of Berkeley’s role in issues of peace and social justice, including, but not limited to the issues of ending the arms race, abolishing nuclear weapons, support for human rights and self-determination throughout the world, and the reallocation of our national resources so that money now spent on war and preparation of war is spent on fulfilling human needs and the promotion of peace.” https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/3.68.070
You can find the full enabling legislation and purpose of the Peace and Justice Commission by going to the commission webpage and clicking on BMC Chapter 3.68 on the right side of the page under Enabling Legislation or go to Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) starting at 3.68.010. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/peace-and-justice-commission
In the commissioner discussion, Andrea Cassidy appointed by Arreguin on August 30, 2024 insisted that she had no time to read the resolution when she had over a month to read the first version for the cancelled September 3 meeting and at least four days to read the resolution before the commission.
There were complaints that there had been no listening session. With that, one has to wonder then, what the hours of comments from public speakers should be called?
In response to what I would call blatant behavior to obstruct, Lippman said he wished the discussion was of the content of the Resolution.
Lippman suggested to Cassidy that if she had issues with the motion on the floor, she should make a substitute motion.
Cassidy didn’t seem to know what a substitute motion was. To that I would suggest that commissioners put in more time to attending city council meetings. Attending city meetings is a continuous lesson in procedures.
I believe it was Elias that first asked for the amendment to the motion to insert a statement condemning Hamas. Lippman the maker of the motion would not agree to adding rape to the statement since there is dispute whether rapes occurred in the October 7 attack. The rest of the requested amendment was passed by the commission and is inserted as 4) on page 6 of the resolution, “Condemns the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on civilians in Israel, the murders, and the kidnappings.”
Elias complained that anti-Semitism was a misspelling and demonstrated a failure of the authors to properly seek consultation. In the final version it was changed to antisemitism to satisfy Elias, however, both spellings are correct and anyone doing any research will see both spellings. Which spelling is used varies by author, institution, journal, news media, etc.
The 8 to 7 vote finally came after three meeting extensions and “calling the question” which is a call to end debate and vote on the motion or motions on the floor. Calling the question requires a vote too. It was a long evening. According to my watch the vote to pass the Ceasefire Resolution as amended passed at 10:58 pm.
After the vote, commissioner Lippman said it would take about two months for the Ceasefire Resolution to reach the city council agenda for consideration.
Now that the commissioners appointed by Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Kesarwani, Tregub, Hahn, Wengraf, and Humbert failed to block the Ceasefire Resolution whether the City Council actually votes on the Ceasefire Resolution anytime soon will depend on the actions of the City Manager and the Council Agenda and Rules Committee members, Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf who have all openly stated their opposition to a Ceasefire Resolution.
No ceasefire resolution has made it to the draft Berkeley city council agenda. This resolution coming from the Peace and Justice commission will eventually make it to the draft agenda, but the Agenda Committee threesome (Arreguin, Wengraf, Hahn) have several paths to follow to delay the Ceasefire Resolution from seeing the light of day before Arreguin and Hahn make it through the November 5, 2024 election after the Resolution passes through the hands of the City Manager. Wengraf is retiring at the end of her term this year.
Anything submitted by boards and commissions for consideration by the City Council are subject to review by the City Manager. Currently that is the newly installed Paul Buddenhagen.
The city manager can let a board or commission submission progress to the agenda as submitted or step in and decide the commission submission needs a companion report. A companion report is either a report of opposition or modification of the action taken by a board or commission. If a companion report is to be submitted then an item from a commission will reappear on the city council agenda not sooner than 60 days or later than 120 days.
When the City Manager moves the commission item (Ceasefire Resolution) off his desk to be placed on the city council draft agenda, the Agenda Committee members currently Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf as noted all in opposition have four paths for action:
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/City%20Council%20Rules%20of%20Procedure%20-%20July%2011%202023%20-%20FINAL.pdf
Arreguin is running for State Senate against Jovanka Beckles who supports Ceasefire Resolutions. Beckles’ home base Richmond, California was the first city in the United States to pass a Ceasefire Resolution on October 25, 2023 followed by Oakland on November 27, 2023 and San Francisco on January 9, 2024.
Hahn who has explicitly stated she opposes a ceasefire resolution is running for mayor against Kate Harrison and Adena Ishii both of whom have expressed their support for a Ceasefire Resolution.
Next Monday, the second Monday in October the United States will observe the day as Columbus Day a federal holiday celebrating the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
Berkeley will celebrate October 14, 2024 (the 2nd Monday) as Indigenous Peoples Day. Berkeley was the first city in the U.S. to recognize the holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day in 1992. There are now over 200 cities, 17 states and Washington D.C. following Berkeley’s lead. President Biden is the first President to commemorate indigenous people on the federal holiday.
Berkeley has led on so many movements for justice that cities, states and countries have followed, one would expect this city would be standing for an end to this ugly horrific escalating expanding war that threatens the entire Middle East and threatens to pull the United States fully into it.
But we have a mayor and councilmembers who are firmly opposed to any ceasefire resolution.
Whether they actually believe in continuing this war that Israel has now expanded into Lebanon or if they see it as expedient for their November election to not offend the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) that sponsors the elected officials trips to Israel is unknown.
Our ballots are arriving any day. Whatever is going on in their heads, they have lost my vote. I will be voting for Jovanka Beckles and Kate Harrison.
Monday, September 30, 2024 was the long overdue meeting of the Peace and Justice Commission on a “Resolution for an Immediate and Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza, and an End to U.S. Military Aid to Israel, and Support for Palestinian Self-Determination”.
You probably know by now that the resolution passed with an 8 to 7 vote. But there is a lot more to what happened.
By the time you read this, we will have already passed one-year of war since the attack by Hamas on Israel killing 1195 including 815 civilians and took 251 hostages. It was a shock that reverberated across Israel and around the world. The year marks the escalation and expansion of the war into Lebanon with Israeli bombings including the insertion of bombs into pagers and walkie talkies killing over 2000. The number of dead Palestinians that were whole enough to be counted is more than 41,000.
Whole enough to be counted goes to the descriptions from physicians volunteering in Gaza of the impact on people of the bunker busting 2000 lb. bombs furnished by the United States to Israel. Dr. Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic surgeon who volunteered in Gaza, described bodies being brought to the hospital in bags that looked as if they had been in a shredder. Perlmutter also described seeing children being shot twice both in the head and chest with horrific exit wounds as no accident.
The July 10, 2024 article in the Lancet “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential” estimated direct and indirect deaths of Palestinians from the war may be more than 186,000. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext
It is impossible to identify the thousands buried in rubble.
The number of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza in this war of one year is now at 175.
As I finish this diary 19-year-old Hassan Hamad is the latest casualty in the targeting of journalists in Israel’s effort to silence and end reporting on the conditions in Gaza. Hamad, who was receiving messages from an Israeli officer ordering him to stop filming, died on October 6, 2024.
It is in this setting that on September 30, 2024 the main room at the North Berkeley Senior Center was packed. There were not enough chairs for everyone with many of us lining the walls and the back of the room. I tried counting. There were well over two hundred present.
If Maoz Inon Israeli peace activist whose parents were killed in the October 7, 2023 attack and is traveling the world with Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah had been in the room he would have called for the ceasefire as he has done for the last year. Inon would have said as he did today in the interview broadcast, “[O]nly few years after the Second World War, where they were fighting among each other and killing 10 millions of each other, they realized that the only way to prevent the next war is making the enemies of the past into the partners of the future…” https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/7/maoz_inon_october_7_israel_palestine
What I had hoped when I sent my letter to the Peace and Justice Commission in support of the Ceasefire Resolution was that the commissioners would work together through wordsmithing, additional statements and possible subtractions for a ceasefire resolution they could all support. but it was obvious from the beginning there were seven commissioners who were appointed to block and obstruct.
The obstruction started when the Commission Chair Grace Morizawa opened the meeting acknowledging that the large public presence was for the Ceasefire Resolution and asked for a reordering of the agenda. Mayor Arreguin’s appointee commissioner Andrea Cassidy was the most vocal with others chiming in, the order of the agenda couldn’t be changed.
A vote was taken. The obstructers lost.
Commissioners Luke Taylor and George Lippman (both Jewish) wrote the Ceasefire Resolution and introduced the Resolution to the public before public comment began. Taylor explained their intent was to call for a permanent ceasefire and not to take sides. The resolution was written with the best intentions to bring it into the mission and function of the Peace and Justice Commission on the issues of peace and justice.
Taylor said he has students in the West Bank and when he opens his messages he will see martyred (killed) with the name of someone he knows.
I counted sixty-four speakers for the resolution (that includes speakers who assigned their time to another) and twenty speakers in opposition though there may have been a few more who assigned their time without the announcement that accompanied everyone for the ceasefire resolution that they were giving their time to another speaker. The limit was one minute for individual speakers and three minutes for speakers who received time from others.
There was no shouting or screaming during the evening though early on the commission chair Morizawa asked for clapping to stop and people to raise their hands and wiggle their fingers in a show of support instead. There were frequent reminders the meeting was scheduled to end at 10 pm encouraging speakers to leave time for the commission to discuss the resolution and vote.
There were speakers who were very moving, like the nurse practitioner who described what she experienced providing care during her month in Gaza.
Having done so much reading on Israel and Palestine, I wondered what the man holding the vehicle license plate in the back of the room was all about.
The Palestinian man was from the West Bank and showed his “green card” and passport and even his vehicle license plate to dispel the myth that Palestinians in the West Bank are treated equally.
Green cards are issued to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza strip. It is illegal for a Palestinian living in the West Bank to travel to Gaza or Jerusalem without a special travel permit from Israel. Palestinians living in East Jerusalem have blue IDs. Movement is tightly controlled with checkpoints and Palestinians must have their cards with them at all times. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/18/the-colour-coded-israeli-id-system-for-palestinians
Waving his green card, passport and license plate might not have had the same impact on others as it had for me. On the recommendation of a friend who is very much pro-Israel, I read Noa Tishby’s Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth. If that was your only source of information on Israel then you would have been led to believe that Palestinians living in Israel have all the same rights as the Jewish citizens of Israel which is simply not true. You would also believe the Nakba in 1948 was not much of anything when to the Palestinians it was the great catastrophe.
Reading the accounts by historians, the Nakba was the horrific. 750,000 Palestinians were violently displaced and dispossessed of land, property and belongings by the Israelis before and after the creation of the State of Israel.
The Nakba is akin to the Trail of Tears though the number of Native Americans in the forced removal was 60,000 with more than 3,000 deaths not 750,000 Palestinians and an unknown number of deaths.
What stuck with my friend, who is Jewish and supported the ceasefire resolution, was the public speaker who said the Jews were the indigenous people to the land implying the Palestinians were not indigenous and therefore had no rights.
I was surprised and not surprised by such a statement. It goes to the myth Israel was, A land without a people for people without a land, and that Jews are the rightful inhabitants of the land ignoring and denying the Palestinians as an indigenous people to the land.
I’ve been working my way through Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha a Palestinian historian at the University of London. Masalha writes with extensive sourcing and bibliography Palestine is not a modern invention, but instead firmly existed in the ancient past.
Accepting that Palestinians are indigenous to the land and existed in the ancient past is all very uncomfortable to historical and modern self-identity, but not as unsettling as the 2001 publication on Jewish and Palestinian genetics that created such a furor that the NIH retracted “The origin of Palestinians and their genetic relatedness with other Mediterranean populations“ and the Guardian wrote about the retraction in “Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians” That is the story of science colliding with biblical dogma and science lost.
NIH: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11543891/
Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/25/medicalscience.genetics
Rabbi Lynn Gottleib described herself as the first woman rabbi and who has led over fifteen delegations to Palestine. She said, “non-violence is an act of hope” and described the leadership of Israel as a racist right-wing regime that has run amok.
When the public speakers ended and the discussion by the commissioners proceeded what stuck with me was the statement from councilmember Sophie Hahn’s appointee commissioner Nimrod Pitsker Elias. Elias stated he was the “mainstream” Jew implying that everyone else who identified as Jewish and who spoke for the ceasefire resolution was not mainstream. His comment sounded as those who didn’t align with his view were some kind of outlier.
There is a certain comfort in fortifying your position as being mainstream. Maybe Elias is right. And maybe he’s not. And, Is who has the largest number standing with them or who is or isn’t mainstream really the issue before the Peace and Justice Commission?
The Functions of the Peace and Justice Commission in the enabling legislation starts with:
“A. Advise the Berkeley City Council and the Berkeley Unified School Board on all matters relating to the City of Berkeley’s role in issues of peace and social justice, including, but not limited to the issues of ending the arms race, abolishing nuclear weapons, support for human rights and self-determination throughout the world, and the reallocation of our national resources so that money now spent on war and preparation of war is spent on fulfilling human needs and the promotion of peace.” https://berkeley.municipal.codes/BMC/3.68.070
You can find the full enabling legislation and purpose of the Peace and Justice Commission by going to the commission webpage and clicking on BMC Chapter 3.68 on the right side of the page under Enabling Legislation or go to Berkeley Municipal Code (BMC) starting at 3.68.010. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/peace-and-justice-commission
In the commissioner discussion, Andrea Cassidy appointed by Arreguin on August 30, 2024 insisted that she had no time to read the resolution when she had over a month to read the first version for the cancelled September 3 meeting and at least four days to read the resolution before the commission.
There were complaints that there had been no listening session. With that, one has to wonder then, what the hours of comments from public speakers should be called?
In response to what I would call blatant behavior to obstruct, Lippman said he wished the discussion was of the content of the Resolution.
Lippman suggested to Cassidy that if she had issues with the motion on the floor, she should make a substitute motion.
Cassidy didn’t seem to know what a substitute motion was. To that I would suggest that commissioners put in more time to attending city council meetings. Attending city meetings is a continuous lesson in procedures.
I believe it was Elias that first asked for the amendment to the motion to insert a statement condemning Hamas. Lippman the maker of the motion would not agree to adding rape to the statement since there is dispute whether rapes occurred in the October 7 attack. The rest of the requested amendment was passed by the commission and is inserted as 4) on page 6 of the resolution, “Condemns the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on civilians in Israel, the murders, and the kidnappings.”
Elias complained that anti-Semitism was a misspelling and demonstrated a failure of the authors to properly seek consultation. In the final version it was changed to antisemitism to satisfy Elias, however, both spellings are correct and anyone doing any research will see both spellings. Which spelling is used varies by author, institution, journal, news media, etc.
The 8 to 7 vote finally came after three meeting extensions and “calling the question” which is a call to end debate and vote on the motion or motions on the floor. Calling the question requires a vote too. It was a long evening. According to my watch the vote to pass the Ceasefire Resolution as amended passed at 10:58 pm.
After the vote, commissioner Lippman said it would take about two months for the Ceasefire Resolution to reach the city council agenda for consideration.
Now that the commissioners appointed by Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Kesarwani, Tregub, Hahn, Wengraf, and Humbert failed to block the Ceasefire Resolution whether the City Council actually votes on the Ceasefire Resolution anytime soon will depend on the actions of the City Manager and the Council Agenda and Rules Committee members, Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf who have all openly stated their opposition to a Ceasefire Resolution.
No ceasefire resolution has made it to the draft Berkeley city council agenda. This resolution coming from the Peace and Justice commission will eventually make it to the draft agenda, but the Agenda Committee threesome (Arreguin, Wengraf, Hahn) have several paths to follow to delay the Ceasefire Resolution from seeing the light of day before Arreguin and Hahn make it through the November 5, 2024 election after the Resolution passes through the hands of the City Manager. Wengraf is retiring at the end of her term this year.
Anything submitted by boards and commissions for consideration by the City Council are subject to review by the City Manager. Currently that is the newly installed Paul Buddenhagen.
The city manager can let a board or commission submission progress to the agenda as submitted or step in and decide the commission submission needs a companion report. A companion report is either a report of opposition or modification of the action taken by a board or commission. If a companion report is to be submitted then an item from a commission will reappear on the city council agenda not sooner than 60 days or later than 120 days.
When the City Manager moves the commission item (Ceasefire Resolution) off his desk to be placed on the city council draft agenda, the Agenda Committee members currently Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf as noted all in opposition have four paths for action:
- Will decide whether as with any agenda item in the draft agenda should it be on “consent” or “action” by leaving it as submitted or by moving it (some items always stay on action according to procedural rules),
- they can re-schedule board and commission items (Ceasefire Resolution) to appear on one of the next three regular meeting agendas after the council agenda where it first appears,
- they can send a board and commission item to a Council Policy Committee for review where the limit for taking action is supposed to be 120 days though items from councilmembers or staff can be renewed, extended and sometimes languish for months, (when city council is on recess those days are not counted in the 120) or
- the Agenda Committee can allow the item to proceed as submitted.
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/City%20Council%20Rules%20of%20Procedure%20-%20July%2011%202023%20-%20FINAL.pdf
Arreguin is running for State Senate against Jovanka Beckles who supports Ceasefire Resolutions. Beckles’ home base Richmond, California was the first city in the United States to pass a Ceasefire Resolution on October 25, 2023 followed by Oakland on November 27, 2023 and San Francisco on January 9, 2024.
Hahn who has explicitly stated she opposes a ceasefire resolution is running for mayor against Kate Harrison and Adena Ishii both of whom have expressed their support for a Ceasefire Resolution.
Next Monday, the second Monday in October the United States will observe the day as Columbus Day a federal holiday celebrating the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492.
Berkeley will celebrate October 14, 2024 (the 2nd Monday) as Indigenous Peoples Day. Berkeley was the first city in the U.S. to recognize the holiday as Indigenous Peoples Day in 1992. There are now over 200 cities, 17 states and Washington D.C. following Berkeley’s lead. President Biden is the first President to commemorate indigenous people on the federal holiday.
Berkeley has led on so many movements for justice that cities, states and countries have followed, one would expect this city would be standing for an end to this ugly horrific escalating expanding war that threatens the entire Middle East and threatens to pull the United States fully into it.
But we have a mayor and councilmembers who are firmly opposed to any ceasefire resolution.
Whether they actually believe in continuing this war that Israel has now expanded into Lebanon or if they see it as expedient for their November election to not offend the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) that sponsors the elected officials trips to Israel is unknown.
Our ballots are arriving any day. Whatever is going on in their heads, they have lost my vote. I will be voting for Jovanka Beckles and Kate Harrison.
September 27, 2024 and Peace and Justice Commission Ceasefire Resolution
The Peace and Justice Commission will meet and vote on a Ceasefire Resolution Monday, September 30, 2024 at 7 pm at the NORTH Berkeley Senior Center at 1901 Hearst. This is not the normal meeting place for the Peace and Justice Commission, but they are expecting large attendance.
Please show up for peace and a ceasefire.
We can expect the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco (JCRC) will be putting out their call for their community to show up in opposition. The JCRC of San Francisco celebrated on their Facebook page the cancellation of the Peace and Justice Commission meeting that was supposed to take place the day after Labor Day, Tuesday, September 3rd. https://www.facebook.com/sfjcrc
There were over 100 of us who gathered the evening of the Peace and Justice meeting cancellation to hear speakers and stand in solidarity for a permanent ceasefire.
Dr. Feroze Sidwa MD, came from Stockton to describe his experience as a trauma surgeon in Gaza.
Dr. Sidwa is one of the many physicians that volunteer to go into war zones. There is a consistency in how the returning physicians describe the injuries and conditions in Gaza, it is, never have they seen such deliberately horrific scenes, children shot in the head, children with terrible painful injuries, a shortage of medicines to relieve their suffering, not even soap to wash their hands, children with loss of muscle and body fat from starvation, body burns, missing arms and legs, destroyed infrastructure and the imprisonment and torture of colleagues.
Biden the talking heads would like us to start history on October 7, 2023 ignoring the occupation, imprisonments, detentions, deliberate disabling injuries, torture and murder of Palestinians that preceded that day and continue. We are to see Israel as the victim and the expanding Israeli aggression into Lebanon and the West Bank as Israel defending itself.
The war continues with expanding aggression that could not happen without the complicity of the United States furnishing the bombs and munitions. The new military aid package to Israel approved by Biden totals $8.7 billion. A no from Biden to furnish more aid to Israel would bring this escalating war to a close, but Biden has not used the power he possess and has publicly called himself a Zionist.
The statements from Biden and his administration that they are working tirelessly day and night to bring a ceasefire and the lack of success is because of the intractable resistance of Hamas rings hollow when Netanyahu, the Knesset block ceasefire agreements and with their base of extremists call for the erasure of Palestine and the Palestinians and the flow of arms continues.
How can anyone think the hostages are going to survive while buildings are being blown up everywhere around them, there is no safe water and famine is setting in?
Harris has expressed recognizing the suffering of the Palestinians, but framing what much of the world including myself call a genocide as Israeli’s right to defend itself will not bring back the voters who are horrified by the bombing, killing, maiming of Palestinians in Gaza. It may well cost Harris and us the election.
Harris is the product of a JCRC sponsored trip to Israel. JCRC let out the secret on their website a little over a week ago, the same time they posted about Mayor Arreguin’s trip and declared in their myth and fact that the JCRC trips are balanced with multiple voices and that saying the trips are anything other than balanced with multiple narratives is “textbook antisemitism”.
If sponsoring trips for elected officials didn’t carry with them influence on future actions then how likely is it that organizations and individuals would spend thousands and thousands of dollars on them?
I am still voting for the Harris Walz ticket, because of Walz and a third party vote is a wasted vote. Protest votes are for the primary. When it comes to state and local elections, I / we have other choices in November.
At any other time, there would not even be a question of whether the posting error by the Peace and Justice Commission Secretary Okeya Vance-Dozier causing the meeting cancellation was deliberate or just a mistake.
Usually, this kind of mistake where the day of the week and the date don’t match is handled with reposting the agenda with the correct day, date and time and the meeting goes on not cancelled, but according to the article in the DailyCal the error was not caught until the morning of the meeting. The meeting was posted as Wednesday, September 3, 2024. September 3, 2024 was Tuesday.
Many of us have made posting mistakes. I’ve made them myself in what is now nearly a decade of emailing the summary of city meetings to make it easier to engage in local politics. In my case, there are always alert readers who see the error and email me within hours I need to send a correction.
At the rally in support of the Ceasefire Resolution, we learned Peace and Justice commissioner Diana Bohn was removed by Igor Tregub who was recently elected as Councilmember District 4. I had a chance to speak to Bohn, who said that Igor’s statements that she refused his request to insert language about Hamas into the resolution was a lie. She said she agreed to bring his requests forward.
It is up to the commissioners to accept or reject resolution change requests.
I expect there will be changes to the posted ceasefire resolution if there is a commitment among the commissioners to work together, but we shall see if that is the intention of the new and replacement appointees or whether they were appointed to block and obstruct any action.
After observing Igor at city meetings for nearly ten years and hearing from others their experiences, I know who I believe in the supposed disagreement – Diana Bohn. I told a friend who was all in on working on Tregub’s campaign and told me that she received his promise he supported a ceasefire resolution, that no matter what he said or promised she would learn like others.
Tregub has been great on environmental issues and it could easily be argued that the assault on Gaza is an environmental catastrophe too, but replacing commissioner Bohn on the Peace and Justice Commission on August 29, 2024, days before the important meeting on a ceasefire resolution is another extension of the pattern I’ve seen over the last ten years.
There are lives in the balance. The count of dead and maimed Palestinians grows daily. In just five days, the Israeli escalation into Lebanon has killed over 740, the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza is over 41,000 and in the West Bank it is over 600.
What Berkeley does actually matters. Berkeley’s history in movements for free speech, against apartheid to name two of many has put this city on the world stage. But this is 2024 and here we are with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf steadfastly opposed to a ceasefire resolution.
Councilmembers Bartlett and Taplin who posted draft ceasefire resolutions on Twitter months ago quickly fell in line and withdrew them, never bringing them before full council for a vote. Taplin and Bartlett are both running for reelection to council.
Councilmember Lunaparra who ran for her seat on supporting a ceasefire resolution has fallen in line too.
When I went through the JCRC of San Francisco Facebook photo posts there was a smiling Tregub. I guess now that he is an elected official he will be eligible for one of the JCRC trips to Israel to rub shoulders with other Bay Area elected officials to solidify relationships, friendships and support.
I suspect the cozy JCRC sponsored trip to Israel in March 2023 is how Hank Levy, Alameda County Treasurer landed on the Sophie Hahn for Mayor mailer paid for by Sophie Hahn for Mayor 2024. Anyone who is a property owner in Alameda County addresses their property tax payment to Henry C. Levy aka Hank Levy. Hahn and Levy were on the same JCRC trip to Israel together along with Jenny Wong, City Auditor and Dan Kalb, Oakland Councilmember.
You won’t find a paper trail for Hahn’s participation in the JCRC trip as it is said she paid for the JCRC trip to Israel herself while still taking advantage of all the connections with elected officials. In the JCRC trip picture, Hahn stands behind a much taller man exposing a little less than half of her face. Wong also stands behind a taller person.
Wong’s trip was paid for by the JCRC. Wong completed the California Form 700 listing $4,743 for the trip to Israel and $175 for the extension, but you have to go to the state of California FPPC website to find the 700s, not the City of Berkeley conflict of interest filings where they should also be. The FPPC website is where you will also find Arreguin’s 700 forms for his sponsored trip.
Just because Arreguin and Wong filled out the proper 700 forms with the State of California, doesn’t mean the trip didn’t achieve influence. If a pro-Israel organization didn’t find that sponsored trips to support their pro-Israel cause weren’t beneficial then would they be paying for them?
The declaration of the JCRC trips being balanced made me think of the description of Harriet Martineau’s trip to the United Sates in 1834 in our September book club choice Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom by Lyon Woo. Martineau traveled to the United States determined to come with an open mind to view slavery first hand. Friends in Kentucky insisted she see the Saturday evening market run by cheerful slaves selling handicrafts and fruit, but Martineau found the other market where people were sold by auction and seeing that agony is what shaped her. (Put this book on your reading list)
We’ve had multiple scandals of late on sponsored trips from Clarence Thomas Supreme Court Justice to the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams New York City Mayor just this week.
There are posts on the JCRC of SF Facebook to activate JCRC members to oppose the ceasefire resolutions.
We can’t blame Dan Kalb’s third place finish in the State Senate primary in March behind Jovanka Beckles to his signing the Oakland City Council resolution for a ceasefire. Kalb didn’t have a strong campaign, but in reading the Marin’s Newsletter on elected officials and Jenny Wong to the end there should be concerns about elected officials’ participation in these sponsored trips. https://marincountyconfidential.substack.com/p/what-a-berkeley-elected-officials?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
With the rise of Trump, the racism and constant attacks on minorities this is an ugly time.
Anti-Semitism exists, it is real like Islamophobia, the call for mass deportations, the attacks on the Haitians.
The labeling of anyone who criticizes Israel as anti-Semitic brings up another book and another time in our history.
My plans to finish off all the partially read ebooks on my iPad while sitting in airports and on airplanes went down the drain when I picked up Betty Medsger's The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI published in 2014 about the break-in to the Media, Pennsylvania FBI office by eight Vietnam War resisters on March 8, 1971 the night of the Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier II fight.
The Burglary is the story of eight ordinary people who risked everything to confront the spying on of Americans and the use of violence, harassment, fabrication, demonization and defamation by the FBI, to suppress and silence dissent to the Vietnam War.
In many ways the tactics used by the FBI against the Vietnam war resisters are not so different from the name calling, accusations and attacks on Pro-Palestinian students. The students have been accused of being under the influence and monetized by the Russians and other foreign and subversive entities, ill-informed, misguided and anti-Semitic. They have been kicked out of colleges, denied their graduation degrees, had job offers withdrawn, doxed, threatened and beaten.
The attacks don’t end with students.
Today I sent my email to [email protected] for the Monday, September 30, 2024 Peace and Justice Commission meeting.
Dear Peace and Justice Commissioners, Thank you for bringing forward the Ceasefire Resolution. Please note my strong support. I expect there may be some wordsmithing, additional statements and possible subtraction of statements made to the resolution as it is currently posted in the agenda. It is my deepest hope and request that through working together you can reach an agreement on a resolution that you all can support. The escalation that is occurring as I write threatens tragedy for the entire Middle East region. Berkeley’s previous resolutions has put us on the world stage. What Berkeley does matters. We must not be silent. Kelly Hammargren
The Peace and Justice Commission will meet and vote on a Ceasefire Resolution Monday, September 30, 2024 at 7 pm at the NORTH Berkeley Senior Center at 1901 Hearst. This is not the normal meeting place for the Peace and Justice Commission, but they are expecting large attendance.
Please show up for peace and a ceasefire.
We can expect the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco (JCRC) will be putting out their call for their community to show up in opposition. The JCRC of San Francisco celebrated on their Facebook page the cancellation of the Peace and Justice Commission meeting that was supposed to take place the day after Labor Day, Tuesday, September 3rd. https://www.facebook.com/sfjcrc
There were over 100 of us who gathered the evening of the Peace and Justice meeting cancellation to hear speakers and stand in solidarity for a permanent ceasefire.
Dr. Feroze Sidwa MD, came from Stockton to describe his experience as a trauma surgeon in Gaza.
Dr. Sidwa is one of the many physicians that volunteer to go into war zones. There is a consistency in how the returning physicians describe the injuries and conditions in Gaza, it is, never have they seen such deliberately horrific scenes, children shot in the head, children with terrible painful injuries, a shortage of medicines to relieve their suffering, not even soap to wash their hands, children with loss of muscle and body fat from starvation, body burns, missing arms and legs, destroyed infrastructure and the imprisonment and torture of colleagues.
Biden the talking heads would like us to start history on October 7, 2023 ignoring the occupation, imprisonments, detentions, deliberate disabling injuries, torture and murder of Palestinians that preceded that day and continue. We are to see Israel as the victim and the expanding Israeli aggression into Lebanon and the West Bank as Israel defending itself.
The war continues with expanding aggression that could not happen without the complicity of the United States furnishing the bombs and munitions. The new military aid package to Israel approved by Biden totals $8.7 billion. A no from Biden to furnish more aid to Israel would bring this escalating war to a close, but Biden has not used the power he possess and has publicly called himself a Zionist.
The statements from Biden and his administration that they are working tirelessly day and night to bring a ceasefire and the lack of success is because of the intractable resistance of Hamas rings hollow when Netanyahu, the Knesset block ceasefire agreements and with their base of extremists call for the erasure of Palestine and the Palestinians and the flow of arms continues.
How can anyone think the hostages are going to survive while buildings are being blown up everywhere around them, there is no safe water and famine is setting in?
Harris has expressed recognizing the suffering of the Palestinians, but framing what much of the world including myself call a genocide as Israeli’s right to defend itself will not bring back the voters who are horrified by the bombing, killing, maiming of Palestinians in Gaza. It may well cost Harris and us the election.
Harris is the product of a JCRC sponsored trip to Israel. JCRC let out the secret on their website a little over a week ago, the same time they posted about Mayor Arreguin’s trip and declared in their myth and fact that the JCRC trips are balanced with multiple voices and that saying the trips are anything other than balanced with multiple narratives is “textbook antisemitism”.
If sponsoring trips for elected officials didn’t carry with them influence on future actions then how likely is it that organizations and individuals would spend thousands and thousands of dollars on them?
I am still voting for the Harris Walz ticket, because of Walz and a third party vote is a wasted vote. Protest votes are for the primary. When it comes to state and local elections, I / we have other choices in November.
At any other time, there would not even be a question of whether the posting error by the Peace and Justice Commission Secretary Okeya Vance-Dozier causing the meeting cancellation was deliberate or just a mistake.
Usually, this kind of mistake where the day of the week and the date don’t match is handled with reposting the agenda with the correct day, date and time and the meeting goes on not cancelled, but according to the article in the DailyCal the error was not caught until the morning of the meeting. The meeting was posted as Wednesday, September 3, 2024. September 3, 2024 was Tuesday.
Many of us have made posting mistakes. I’ve made them myself in what is now nearly a decade of emailing the summary of city meetings to make it easier to engage in local politics. In my case, there are always alert readers who see the error and email me within hours I need to send a correction.
At the rally in support of the Ceasefire Resolution, we learned Peace and Justice commissioner Diana Bohn was removed by Igor Tregub who was recently elected as Councilmember District 4. I had a chance to speak to Bohn, who said that Igor’s statements that she refused his request to insert language about Hamas into the resolution was a lie. She said she agreed to bring his requests forward.
It is up to the commissioners to accept or reject resolution change requests.
I expect there will be changes to the posted ceasefire resolution if there is a commitment among the commissioners to work together, but we shall see if that is the intention of the new and replacement appointees or whether they were appointed to block and obstruct any action.
After observing Igor at city meetings for nearly ten years and hearing from others their experiences, I know who I believe in the supposed disagreement – Diana Bohn. I told a friend who was all in on working on Tregub’s campaign and told me that she received his promise he supported a ceasefire resolution, that no matter what he said or promised she would learn like others.
Tregub has been great on environmental issues and it could easily be argued that the assault on Gaza is an environmental catastrophe too, but replacing commissioner Bohn on the Peace and Justice Commission on August 29, 2024, days before the important meeting on a ceasefire resolution is another extension of the pattern I’ve seen over the last ten years.
There are lives in the balance. The count of dead and maimed Palestinians grows daily. In just five days, the Israeli escalation into Lebanon has killed over 740, the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza is over 41,000 and in the West Bank it is over 600.
What Berkeley does actually matters. Berkeley’s history in movements for free speech, against apartheid to name two of many has put this city on the world stage. But this is 2024 and here we are with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf steadfastly opposed to a ceasefire resolution.
Councilmembers Bartlett and Taplin who posted draft ceasefire resolutions on Twitter months ago quickly fell in line and withdrew them, never bringing them before full council for a vote. Taplin and Bartlett are both running for reelection to council.
Councilmember Lunaparra who ran for her seat on supporting a ceasefire resolution has fallen in line too.
When I went through the JCRC of San Francisco Facebook photo posts there was a smiling Tregub. I guess now that he is an elected official he will be eligible for one of the JCRC trips to Israel to rub shoulders with other Bay Area elected officials to solidify relationships, friendships and support.
I suspect the cozy JCRC sponsored trip to Israel in March 2023 is how Hank Levy, Alameda County Treasurer landed on the Sophie Hahn for Mayor mailer paid for by Sophie Hahn for Mayor 2024. Anyone who is a property owner in Alameda County addresses their property tax payment to Henry C. Levy aka Hank Levy. Hahn and Levy were on the same JCRC trip to Israel together along with Jenny Wong, City Auditor and Dan Kalb, Oakland Councilmember.
You won’t find a paper trail for Hahn’s participation in the JCRC trip as it is said she paid for the JCRC trip to Israel herself while still taking advantage of all the connections with elected officials. In the JCRC trip picture, Hahn stands behind a much taller man exposing a little less than half of her face. Wong also stands behind a taller person.
Wong’s trip was paid for by the JCRC. Wong completed the California Form 700 listing $4,743 for the trip to Israel and $175 for the extension, but you have to go to the state of California FPPC website to find the 700s, not the City of Berkeley conflict of interest filings where they should also be. The FPPC website is where you will also find Arreguin’s 700 forms for his sponsored trip.
Just because Arreguin and Wong filled out the proper 700 forms with the State of California, doesn’t mean the trip didn’t achieve influence. If a pro-Israel organization didn’t find that sponsored trips to support their pro-Israel cause weren’t beneficial then would they be paying for them?
The declaration of the JCRC trips being balanced made me think of the description of Harriet Martineau’s trip to the United Sates in 1834 in our September book club choice Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom by Lyon Woo. Martineau traveled to the United States determined to come with an open mind to view slavery first hand. Friends in Kentucky insisted she see the Saturday evening market run by cheerful slaves selling handicrafts and fruit, but Martineau found the other market where people were sold by auction and seeing that agony is what shaped her. (Put this book on your reading list)
We’ve had multiple scandals of late on sponsored trips from Clarence Thomas Supreme Court Justice to the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams New York City Mayor just this week.
There are posts on the JCRC of SF Facebook to activate JCRC members to oppose the ceasefire resolutions.
We can’t blame Dan Kalb’s third place finish in the State Senate primary in March behind Jovanka Beckles to his signing the Oakland City Council resolution for a ceasefire. Kalb didn’t have a strong campaign, but in reading the Marin’s Newsletter on elected officials and Jenny Wong to the end there should be concerns about elected officials’ participation in these sponsored trips. https://marincountyconfidential.substack.com/p/what-a-berkeley-elected-officials?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
With the rise of Trump, the racism and constant attacks on minorities this is an ugly time.
Anti-Semitism exists, it is real like Islamophobia, the call for mass deportations, the attacks on the Haitians.
The labeling of anyone who criticizes Israel as anti-Semitic brings up another book and another time in our history.
My plans to finish off all the partially read ebooks on my iPad while sitting in airports and on airplanes went down the drain when I picked up Betty Medsger's The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI published in 2014 about the break-in to the Media, Pennsylvania FBI office by eight Vietnam War resisters on March 8, 1971 the night of the Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier II fight.
The Burglary is the story of eight ordinary people who risked everything to confront the spying on of Americans and the use of violence, harassment, fabrication, demonization and defamation by the FBI, to suppress and silence dissent to the Vietnam War.
In many ways the tactics used by the FBI against the Vietnam war resisters are not so different from the name calling, accusations and attacks on Pro-Palestinian students. The students have been accused of being under the influence and monetized by the Russians and other foreign and subversive entities, ill-informed, misguided and anti-Semitic. They have been kicked out of colleges, denied their graduation degrees, had job offers withdrawn, doxed, threatened and beaten.
The attacks don’t end with students.
Today I sent my email to [email protected] for the Monday, September 30, 2024 Peace and Justice Commission meeting.
Dear Peace and Justice Commissioners, Thank you for bringing forward the Ceasefire Resolution. Please note my strong support. I expect there may be some wordsmithing, additional statements and possible subtraction of statements made to the resolution as it is currently posted in the agenda. It is my deepest hope and request that through working together you can reach an agreement on a resolution that you all can support. The escalation that is occurring as I write threatens tragedy for the entire Middle East region. Berkeley’s previous resolutions has put us on the world stage. What Berkeley does matters. We must not be silent. Kelly Hammargren
July 23, 2024 and Middle Housing
I was in Tim Walz country (Minnesota) when I saw the book Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters by Cary J. Griffith sitting on top of the stack of books at my sister’s house. Gunflint Burning is the story of the Ham Lake Fire, the largest fire in Minnesota history in almost a century.
If you have ever canoed and portaged through the Boundary Waters then you know how uniquely beautiful, serene the experience is. I did the trip decades ago with my then boyfriend. Out on the lake completely by ourselves we stopped to take in the spectacular beauty. It felt and looked as though the earth curved off from this miraculously special place.
Stephen Posniak who loved the Boundary Waters on May 5, 2007 two days into his twenty-seventh solo annual trip into the boundary waters in a moment of carelessness accidently ignited the fire that burned an estimated 75,551 acres of forest with a cost over $11,000,000 in resources, and destroyed so much that some told the author Griffith it was just too painful to relive through even talking about it.
More than one thousand firefighters, volunteers and others responded to the call to fight the Ham Lake Fire.
Griffith is masterful in describing wildfire as the beast that it is eating up whatever is in its path.
Any casual trip into the Berkeley Hills reveals yards, gullies, hillsides filled with highly flammable vegetation leading to the densely packed housing all of which make a tasty meal to feed the fire beast.
I doubt that any of the younger crowd that spoke in favor of adding housing, increasing density, in the high fire zones in the Berkeley Hills at the July 23 special meeting on the Middle Housing Ordinance have any appreciation of the beast that wildfire is and how a moment of carelessness, a wayward spark can ignite a fire that eats everything in its path until it runs out of fuel.
A young woman who has never previously attended the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission that I recall in the years I’ve attended the commission meetings stood up for non-agenda comments on August 7, 2024 to speak to how she attended the city council meeting on middle housing and that older people from the hills were talking about fire and opposing adding middle housing in the hills when her friends needed housing.
She insinuated through her comments that opposition to adding housing in the fire zones was a ruse by existing property owners to bolster their own selfish interests. She didn’t believe the hills were actually that hazardous and housing should be built in the hills so her friends would have places to live.
The comments from the young woman pushing for approval of increasing density in the hills, the fire zones, didn’t move any commission action at the meeting.
Through the evening we learned from the young woman’s comments she had lived in Berkeley three years and that is exactly the problem.
She wasn’t here in 1991 nearly thirty-three years ago when the Berkeley Oakland Firestorm exploded on Sunday morning October 20th destroying 2,843 single-family homes, 437 apartments and condominium units, took the lives of 25 and 150 people suffered non-fatal injuries.
Anyone who experienced that day is unlikely to forget it especially the people who were trapped in traffic trying to evacuate, abandoned their cars and ran for their lives with the fire billowing around them. Others of us watched the fire move down the hills not knowing if it could be stopped and heard the frightening fire survivor stories from co-workers, friends and neighbors over the days that followed.
I wonder if she read Fire Chief Sprague’s letter to City Council on the Middle Housing Zoning and fire risk, watched the films and followed the references from Sprague’s letter or for that matter if any of the people commenting at the July 23 City Council meeting for treating all of the City the same and increasing density in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ) read his letter. https://tinyurl.com/ye27ra3e
I doubt any of those commenters at City Council dismissing fire risk actually grasped that fire in the Berkeley Hills is cyclical in nature and at thirty-three years since the Oakland Berkeley Hills Fire in 1991 we are pushing our luck.
Of course, I’ve learned as a RN, people even when confronted with irrefutable science and facts, have an immense capacity for denial.
After the meeting, in the brief exchange I had with a member of the Berkeley Fire Department, asking what he thought, he gave this answer, “she isn’t interested in the science.”
When Kathy Kramer (organizer of the annual native plant garden tour) and I took a drive through the VHFHSZ to look at vegetation especially along the expected evacuation routes, nearly the entire area along our drive was filled with what looked more like kindling than what would fall into recommended steps for home hardening to reduce fire risk.
You can find the list of recommended native plants for VHFHSZ on the Bringing Back the Natives Fire-Hazardous plants and fire-resistant native plants webpage. https://www.bringingbackthenatives.net/fire-hazardous-plants-fire-resistant-native-plants
To make what Kathy and I saw that day even more alarming, my walk partner who lives in the WUI (Wildland Urban Interface) on the very edge where housing ends and wildland starts shared with me that in a recent evacuation exercise/drill she couldn’t get out and down the hill. That was in optimal conditions without raging fire and panicked drivers trying to evacuate.
Changing the VHFHSZ from a mix of highly flammable vegetation to fire-resistant native plants is a momentous task. The Berkeley Fire Department is trying to get on top of this through inspections and the Berkeley Fire Safe Council has done a miraculous job of clearing flammable eucalyptus debris, but there is still so much to be done.
A frequent phrase heard on adding and increasing housing density is that it is necessary because “my children can’t live here” or “my friends can’t live here” as if the 10.5 square miles of land in Berkeley is the only place in the world to live. What was interesting in my recent trip to Minnesota and all the other trips over the years, I never heard anyone whining about where their children or friends couldn’t live.
Fire was just part of the backdrop to what played out at the July 23, 2024 city council special meeting on the Middle Housing Ordinance that started at 3:30 pm, was supposed to end at 5:30 pm and ran over to 8:42 pm.
I read the late posted “Revised Agenda Material for Supplemental Packet 2” from Jordon Klein, that stated, “Staff recommend delaying action to adopt the Middle Housing Zoning Ordinance…” but I didn’t quite believe there would be no action so I attended in person to what I believed would be a historic city council meeting.
By the time the meeting started, there were over 100 in attendance and most everyone spoke. It broke out in young versus old meaning under 40 and people with gray hair, there was resentment over the long history of restrictive covenants, wealth in the hills and redlining in the flats. There was the continuing divide of race and class between hills and the flats with There was the demand that if density is going to increase then it should be across the entire city. There were calls of racism as the real issue for exempting the hills from increased density not fire.
The very real unaffordability of housing hovered over all of it.
It was former councilmember Lori Droste who brought the Missing Middle Housing to the table as an answer to housing affordability. Middle Housing defined as duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes were supposed to be more affordable by their very nature of adding more units to a single parcel and neatly fitting into single family home neighborhoods.
Missing Middle Housing was presented as addressing racism and the remnants of redlining and bringing equity by eliminating single family housing zoning even though it has been that same single family housing zoning that protected the historic San Pablo Park Black neighborhood and to this day single family housing provides the more modestly priced homes in West Berkeley which has the highest percentage of persons of color in the 2020 census.
At the August 10, 2024 Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meeting, Chip Moore Chair of the Planning Commission was invited to speak on the Middle Housing Zoning Ordinance. Moore (who is Black), expressed his reservations on the Middle Housing Zoning going on to state, “They [proponents of middle housing] are using racism as a way to defend bad public policy…this is not real…they want you to shy away from this argument and I think it is despicable that they are using redlining to justify this…”.
Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Kesarwani attached their names as sponsors to Droste when Missing Middle Housing appeared on the city council agenda on February 26, 2019 (vote to continue), on March 26, 2019 (vote to hold over to April 23) and on April 23, 2019 when it was finally passed as a referral to the City Manager after which it landed at the Planning Commission.
Missing Middle Housing fell to the back shelf with the pandemic and other priorities. In the intervening years on February 23, 2021 City Council voted to end single family zoning and to allow multi-family housing throughout all residential neighborhoods with small scale developments in formerly single-family zoning neighborhood and low-density neighborhoods.
In 2023 Berkeley submitted its Housing Element for the years 2023 – 2031 which is the state required document and exercise to define Berkeley’s plan for adding the assigned Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 8,934 dwelling units which Berkeley expanded to plan for 15,000 units.
Each regional governmental group receives a bulk number of new housing units which are divided up and assigned to cities within a region. Berkeley is part of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) of which Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin is President.
Interestingly, Richmond which is just up the road and has nearly three times the amount of land (33.7 square miles) was assigned by ABAG just 3,614 dwelling units. ABAG has their formulas. https://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/DocumentCenter/View/66913/6th-Cycle-Housing-Element_Certified?bidId=
In 2023, Middle Housing was revived and brought to the Planning Commission for discussion by city staff on November 1, 2023 to refine the recommendations to send to City Council.
The name Missing Middle Housing is to give the impression that besides middle size housing being missing that when middle housing is built it will be affordable to middle income and low-income households.
The entire theory ignores the price of land. The more units that can be put on a piece of land, the more valuable that piece of land becomes which in turn hikes the rent and sale price of units. It is why when a modest single-family home is demolished and replaced with two or more houses they each sell at market rate which is over $1,000,000.
At the start of the Planning Commission public hearing on Middle Housing on April 3, 2024 Laurie Capitelli (alternate for the evening for Blaine Merker) was still on the middle housing as “affordable” page until he was informed by other commissioners that middle housing was about increasing the number of units not affordability.
April 3 was the evening that John E. “Chip” Moore, the Planning Commission Chair, was absent and Barnali Ghosh, vice-chair, chaired the meeting. It was quite a scene. In the nearly ten years I’ve attended Berkeley City meetings, I’ve never seen anything like it. Ghosh was intent on not allowing Commissioner Elisa Mikitin to speak. Ghosh interrupted her, spoke over her and even called on city staff to stop Mikitin from speaking. Staff stayed out of it.
Despite Mikitin’s concern not being on the table, she remained calm making her point that if there wasn’t some kind of staging/priority setting to encourage density in single family home districts that normally escape the impacts of upzoning (increasing housing density with bigger taller buildings covering more of the land on a lot/parcel), i.e. North Berkeley, the modest more affordable homes in West Berkeley would be the target for demolition and replacement.
The Planning Commission voted 7 to 2 (Ayes: Andrew, Capitelli, Marthinsen, Twu, Hauser, Ghosh, Noes: Mikitin, Oates, Absent: Moore) for one to 50 dwelling units per acre in Lower Density Residential including the Hillside Overly the VHFSHZ and 20 to 80 dwelling units per acre in the Middle Density Residential and to change the language to say “building intensity can range” instead of “building intensity will range” under land use classifications.
The upzoning vote by the Planning Commission would increase the number of units in current low density neighborhoods with a range of 1 to 10 units to up to 50 units per acre and multi-unit neighborhoods from 20 to 40 units to up to 80 units per acre.
Middle Housing Zoning does not include the downtown which is zoned separately and seeing a surge of high-rises like the 26-story 456 unit building on Oxford and Center before the Zoning Adjustment Board on September 12, 2024. The Southside next to UC Berkeley Campus has already been upzoned.
In anticipation of the city council vote on Middle Housing Zoning, Commission on Aging commissioner Phyllis Orrick, who self-proclaimed as a YIMBY in her Sierra Club Northern Alameda County Executive Committee bid (she won), invited Karen Parolek to present examples of middle housing to the Commission on Aging on March 20, 2024. While Parolek was introduced as a Planner and representing Berkeley and she is the chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission and a member of Walk Bike Berkeley, Parolek is the co-founder and President of Opticos Design, Inc., a nationally engaged architecture and urban design firm which specializes in missing middle housing. Parolek is not a city employee.
Parolek’s presentation included photos of fourplexes with spacious lawns and other designs that blended into local architecture. Spacious green lawns can be seen driving north on Claremont Boulevard off Ashby and Claremont Avenue, but most of us are living in already very dense neighborhoods. I measured the narrowest distance between the wall of my house and the wall of my neighbor, the duplex next door. It is 5 feet 7 inches.
In fact, the map included in Fire Chief Sprague’s letter shows nearly the entire Fire Zones 2 and 3 as dangerously dense which places Berkeley’s Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones in the highest risk category in addition to the topography and highly flammable vegetation.
Mayor Arreguin partnered with councilmember Kesarwani before the July 23 council meeting on Middle Housing Zoning to draft a proposal. It was a smart move as without gaining Kesarwani as a partner the ordinance likely would have passed with Kesarwani and Humbert joining Taplin Bartlett and Lunapara who all voted to move forward instead of abstaining.
The Lunapara/Humbert motion exempted the Hillside Overlay R1-H (Fire Zone 2) until after the evacuation study is completed by the Fire Department and accepted the maximum densities recommended by Arreguin and Kesarwani.
R-1 – 40 units/acre – Resulting in 5 units on a 5000 square foot lot
R-1A and R2 – 50 units/acre – Resulting in 6 units on a 5000 square foot lot
R-2A and MU-R – 60 units/acre – Resulting in 7 units on a 5000 square foot lot
If your eyes glaze over and your brain goes into shutdown with these numbers, just know Jordon Klein, Director of Planning and Development stated in his introduction to City Council on July 23, “Council is being asked to consider new objective standards to facilitate the production of multi-unit projects in low density districts where those projects are currently not allowed.”
The bottom line is this is about opening every neighborhood to multi-unit development that has not already been upzoned.
There has been considerable information provided by the Fire Department in documents and presentations on the impact increasing the population and building density in Berkeley has on the capacity of the Fire Department to provide services.
The evacuation study being completed for the Fire Department is not just evacuation. It is also emergency access and will include when completed late this fall according to the information provided at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission the capacity to assess the impact of how changing the configuration of a street will impact evacuation and emergency access.
The Berkeley Hills are not the only areas of the city with narrow streets creating trouble in the event of an emergency whether it is access for emergency medical services, response to fire or evacuation.
If public safety has a place in planning and decisions, any further upzoning or changes to the configuration of city streets should be on hold until the evacuation study is completed.
Middle Housing Zoning is coming back for a City Council vote, we need to keep our eyes open and our email pens ready.
I was in Tim Walz country (Minnesota) when I saw the book Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters by Cary J. Griffith sitting on top of the stack of books at my sister’s house. Gunflint Burning is the story of the Ham Lake Fire, the largest fire in Minnesota history in almost a century.
If you have ever canoed and portaged through the Boundary Waters then you know how uniquely beautiful, serene the experience is. I did the trip decades ago with my then boyfriend. Out on the lake completely by ourselves we stopped to take in the spectacular beauty. It felt and looked as though the earth curved off from this miraculously special place.
Stephen Posniak who loved the Boundary Waters on May 5, 2007 two days into his twenty-seventh solo annual trip into the boundary waters in a moment of carelessness accidently ignited the fire that burned an estimated 75,551 acres of forest with a cost over $11,000,000 in resources, and destroyed so much that some told the author Griffith it was just too painful to relive through even talking about it.
More than one thousand firefighters, volunteers and others responded to the call to fight the Ham Lake Fire.
Griffith is masterful in describing wildfire as the beast that it is eating up whatever is in its path.
Any casual trip into the Berkeley Hills reveals yards, gullies, hillsides filled with highly flammable vegetation leading to the densely packed housing all of which make a tasty meal to feed the fire beast.
I doubt that any of the younger crowd that spoke in favor of adding housing, increasing density, in the high fire zones in the Berkeley Hills at the July 23 special meeting on the Middle Housing Ordinance have any appreciation of the beast that wildfire is and how a moment of carelessness, a wayward spark can ignite a fire that eats everything in its path until it runs out of fuel.
A young woman who has never previously attended the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission that I recall in the years I’ve attended the commission meetings stood up for non-agenda comments on August 7, 2024 to speak to how she attended the city council meeting on middle housing and that older people from the hills were talking about fire and opposing adding middle housing in the hills when her friends needed housing.
She insinuated through her comments that opposition to adding housing in the fire zones was a ruse by existing property owners to bolster their own selfish interests. She didn’t believe the hills were actually that hazardous and housing should be built in the hills so her friends would have places to live.
The comments from the young woman pushing for approval of increasing density in the hills, the fire zones, didn’t move any commission action at the meeting.
Through the evening we learned from the young woman’s comments she had lived in Berkeley three years and that is exactly the problem.
She wasn’t here in 1991 nearly thirty-three years ago when the Berkeley Oakland Firestorm exploded on Sunday morning October 20th destroying 2,843 single-family homes, 437 apartments and condominium units, took the lives of 25 and 150 people suffered non-fatal injuries.
Anyone who experienced that day is unlikely to forget it especially the people who were trapped in traffic trying to evacuate, abandoned their cars and ran for their lives with the fire billowing around them. Others of us watched the fire move down the hills not knowing if it could be stopped and heard the frightening fire survivor stories from co-workers, friends and neighbors over the days that followed.
I wonder if she read Fire Chief Sprague’s letter to City Council on the Middle Housing Zoning and fire risk, watched the films and followed the references from Sprague’s letter or for that matter if any of the people commenting at the July 23 City Council meeting for treating all of the City the same and increasing density in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ) read his letter. https://tinyurl.com/ye27ra3e
I doubt any of those commenters at City Council dismissing fire risk actually grasped that fire in the Berkeley Hills is cyclical in nature and at thirty-three years since the Oakland Berkeley Hills Fire in 1991 we are pushing our luck.
Of course, I’ve learned as a RN, people even when confronted with irrefutable science and facts, have an immense capacity for denial.
After the meeting, in the brief exchange I had with a member of the Berkeley Fire Department, asking what he thought, he gave this answer, “she isn’t interested in the science.”
When Kathy Kramer (organizer of the annual native plant garden tour) and I took a drive through the VHFHSZ to look at vegetation especially along the expected evacuation routes, nearly the entire area along our drive was filled with what looked more like kindling than what would fall into recommended steps for home hardening to reduce fire risk.
You can find the list of recommended native plants for VHFHSZ on the Bringing Back the Natives Fire-Hazardous plants and fire-resistant native plants webpage. https://www.bringingbackthenatives.net/fire-hazardous-plants-fire-resistant-native-plants
To make what Kathy and I saw that day even more alarming, my walk partner who lives in the WUI (Wildland Urban Interface) on the very edge where housing ends and wildland starts shared with me that in a recent evacuation exercise/drill she couldn’t get out and down the hill. That was in optimal conditions without raging fire and panicked drivers trying to evacuate.
Changing the VHFHSZ from a mix of highly flammable vegetation to fire-resistant native plants is a momentous task. The Berkeley Fire Department is trying to get on top of this through inspections and the Berkeley Fire Safe Council has done a miraculous job of clearing flammable eucalyptus debris, but there is still so much to be done.
A frequent phrase heard on adding and increasing housing density is that it is necessary because “my children can’t live here” or “my friends can’t live here” as if the 10.5 square miles of land in Berkeley is the only place in the world to live. What was interesting in my recent trip to Minnesota and all the other trips over the years, I never heard anyone whining about where their children or friends couldn’t live.
Fire was just part of the backdrop to what played out at the July 23, 2024 city council special meeting on the Middle Housing Ordinance that started at 3:30 pm, was supposed to end at 5:30 pm and ran over to 8:42 pm.
I read the late posted “Revised Agenda Material for Supplemental Packet 2” from Jordon Klein, that stated, “Staff recommend delaying action to adopt the Middle Housing Zoning Ordinance…” but I didn’t quite believe there would be no action so I attended in person to what I believed would be a historic city council meeting.
By the time the meeting started, there were over 100 in attendance and most everyone spoke. It broke out in young versus old meaning under 40 and people with gray hair, there was resentment over the long history of restrictive covenants, wealth in the hills and redlining in the flats. There was the continuing divide of race and class between hills and the flats with There was the demand that if density is going to increase then it should be across the entire city. There were calls of racism as the real issue for exempting the hills from increased density not fire.
The very real unaffordability of housing hovered over all of it.
It was former councilmember Lori Droste who brought the Missing Middle Housing to the table as an answer to housing affordability. Middle Housing defined as duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes were supposed to be more affordable by their very nature of adding more units to a single parcel and neatly fitting into single family home neighborhoods.
Missing Middle Housing was presented as addressing racism and the remnants of redlining and bringing equity by eliminating single family housing zoning even though it has been that same single family housing zoning that protected the historic San Pablo Park Black neighborhood and to this day single family housing provides the more modestly priced homes in West Berkeley which has the highest percentage of persons of color in the 2020 census.
At the August 10, 2024 Berkeley Neighborhoods Council meeting, Chip Moore Chair of the Planning Commission was invited to speak on the Middle Housing Zoning Ordinance. Moore (who is Black), expressed his reservations on the Middle Housing Zoning going on to state, “They [proponents of middle housing] are using racism as a way to defend bad public policy…this is not real…they want you to shy away from this argument and I think it is despicable that they are using redlining to justify this…”.
Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Kesarwani attached their names as sponsors to Droste when Missing Middle Housing appeared on the city council agenda on February 26, 2019 (vote to continue), on March 26, 2019 (vote to hold over to April 23) and on April 23, 2019 when it was finally passed as a referral to the City Manager after which it landed at the Planning Commission.
Missing Middle Housing fell to the back shelf with the pandemic and other priorities. In the intervening years on February 23, 2021 City Council voted to end single family zoning and to allow multi-family housing throughout all residential neighborhoods with small scale developments in formerly single-family zoning neighborhood and low-density neighborhoods.
In 2023 Berkeley submitted its Housing Element for the years 2023 – 2031 which is the state required document and exercise to define Berkeley’s plan for adding the assigned Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 8,934 dwelling units which Berkeley expanded to plan for 15,000 units.
Each regional governmental group receives a bulk number of new housing units which are divided up and assigned to cities within a region. Berkeley is part of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) of which Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin is President.
Interestingly, Richmond which is just up the road and has nearly three times the amount of land (33.7 square miles) was assigned by ABAG just 3,614 dwelling units. ABAG has their formulas. https://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/DocumentCenter/View/66913/6th-Cycle-Housing-Element_Certified?bidId=
In 2023, Middle Housing was revived and brought to the Planning Commission for discussion by city staff on November 1, 2023 to refine the recommendations to send to City Council.
The name Missing Middle Housing is to give the impression that besides middle size housing being missing that when middle housing is built it will be affordable to middle income and low-income households.
The entire theory ignores the price of land. The more units that can be put on a piece of land, the more valuable that piece of land becomes which in turn hikes the rent and sale price of units. It is why when a modest single-family home is demolished and replaced with two or more houses they each sell at market rate which is over $1,000,000.
At the start of the Planning Commission public hearing on Middle Housing on April 3, 2024 Laurie Capitelli (alternate for the evening for Blaine Merker) was still on the middle housing as “affordable” page until he was informed by other commissioners that middle housing was about increasing the number of units not affordability.
April 3 was the evening that John E. “Chip” Moore, the Planning Commission Chair, was absent and Barnali Ghosh, vice-chair, chaired the meeting. It was quite a scene. In the nearly ten years I’ve attended Berkeley City meetings, I’ve never seen anything like it. Ghosh was intent on not allowing Commissioner Elisa Mikitin to speak. Ghosh interrupted her, spoke over her and even called on city staff to stop Mikitin from speaking. Staff stayed out of it.
Despite Mikitin’s concern not being on the table, she remained calm making her point that if there wasn’t some kind of staging/priority setting to encourage density in single family home districts that normally escape the impacts of upzoning (increasing housing density with bigger taller buildings covering more of the land on a lot/parcel), i.e. North Berkeley, the modest more affordable homes in West Berkeley would be the target for demolition and replacement.
The Planning Commission voted 7 to 2 (Ayes: Andrew, Capitelli, Marthinsen, Twu, Hauser, Ghosh, Noes: Mikitin, Oates, Absent: Moore) for one to 50 dwelling units per acre in Lower Density Residential including the Hillside Overly the VHFSHZ and 20 to 80 dwelling units per acre in the Middle Density Residential and to change the language to say “building intensity can range” instead of “building intensity will range” under land use classifications.
The upzoning vote by the Planning Commission would increase the number of units in current low density neighborhoods with a range of 1 to 10 units to up to 50 units per acre and multi-unit neighborhoods from 20 to 40 units to up to 80 units per acre.
Middle Housing Zoning does not include the downtown which is zoned separately and seeing a surge of high-rises like the 26-story 456 unit building on Oxford and Center before the Zoning Adjustment Board on September 12, 2024. The Southside next to UC Berkeley Campus has already been upzoned.
In anticipation of the city council vote on Middle Housing Zoning, Commission on Aging commissioner Phyllis Orrick, who self-proclaimed as a YIMBY in her Sierra Club Northern Alameda County Executive Committee bid (she won), invited Karen Parolek to present examples of middle housing to the Commission on Aging on March 20, 2024. While Parolek was introduced as a Planner and representing Berkeley and she is the chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission and a member of Walk Bike Berkeley, Parolek is the co-founder and President of Opticos Design, Inc., a nationally engaged architecture and urban design firm which specializes in missing middle housing. Parolek is not a city employee.
Parolek’s presentation included photos of fourplexes with spacious lawns and other designs that blended into local architecture. Spacious green lawns can be seen driving north on Claremont Boulevard off Ashby and Claremont Avenue, but most of us are living in already very dense neighborhoods. I measured the narrowest distance between the wall of my house and the wall of my neighbor, the duplex next door. It is 5 feet 7 inches.
In fact, the map included in Fire Chief Sprague’s letter shows nearly the entire Fire Zones 2 and 3 as dangerously dense which places Berkeley’s Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones in the highest risk category in addition to the topography and highly flammable vegetation.
Mayor Arreguin partnered with councilmember Kesarwani before the July 23 council meeting on Middle Housing Zoning to draft a proposal. It was a smart move as without gaining Kesarwani as a partner the ordinance likely would have passed with Kesarwani and Humbert joining Taplin Bartlett and Lunapara who all voted to move forward instead of abstaining.
The Lunapara/Humbert motion exempted the Hillside Overlay R1-H (Fire Zone 2) until after the evacuation study is completed by the Fire Department and accepted the maximum densities recommended by Arreguin and Kesarwani.
R-1 – 40 units/acre – Resulting in 5 units on a 5000 square foot lot
R-1A and R2 – 50 units/acre – Resulting in 6 units on a 5000 square foot lot
R-2A and MU-R – 60 units/acre – Resulting in 7 units on a 5000 square foot lot
If your eyes glaze over and your brain goes into shutdown with these numbers, just know Jordon Klein, Director of Planning and Development stated in his introduction to City Council on July 23, “Council is being asked to consider new objective standards to facilitate the production of multi-unit projects in low density districts where those projects are currently not allowed.”
The bottom line is this is about opening every neighborhood to multi-unit development that has not already been upzoned.
There has been considerable information provided by the Fire Department in documents and presentations on the impact increasing the population and building density in Berkeley has on the capacity of the Fire Department to provide services.
The evacuation study being completed for the Fire Department is not just evacuation. It is also emergency access and will include when completed late this fall according to the information provided at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission the capacity to assess the impact of how changing the configuration of a street will impact evacuation and emergency access.
The Berkeley Hills are not the only areas of the city with narrow streets creating trouble in the event of an emergency whether it is access for emergency medical services, response to fire or evacuation.
If public safety has a place in planning and decisions, any further upzoning or changes to the configuration of city streets should be on hold until the evacuation study is completed.
Middle Housing Zoning is coming back for a City Council vote, we need to keep our eyes open and our email pens ready.
August 4, 2024 on Filmmakers in in Berkeley
The current Historical Society exhibit running until September 21, 2024 is “Berkeley and the Movies”. It is fitting that this exhibit at this time is sponsored by the Historical Society as the once vibrant center of filmmaking and film viewing in Berkeley is fading into the past falling victim to the steady erosion of theaters demolished for housing and creative space for collaboration turned over to more profitable tenants.
At its peak there were thirty-two movie theaters in Berkeley. Now there is only the Elmwood and the Pacific Film Archive. The Pacific Film Archive doesn’t help if your desire is to see current films, especially the independent and documentary films that used to be offered at the Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley with ten screens.
When I stopped by the exhibit on Thursday at 1931 Center in the Veterans Building, the volunteer (I didn’t catch her name) said I missed the talk by Saul Zaentz’s nephew Paul Zaentz. It evidently wasn’t recorded as it is not available on the Historical Society website. The volunteer told me how Saul Zaentz (the early owner of 2600 Tenth Street) planned for filmmakers to fill the building, but he soon found he needed tenants who could pay higher rent. She worked for McGraw Hill which shared the building with the filmmakers and paid the higher rent in the Fantasy Studio Building.
The Historical Society exhibit is open on Thursdays and Fridays from 1 pm to 4 pm. https://berkhistory.org/2024/03/20/berkeley-and-the-movies/
Wareham purchased the Fantasy Studio Building in 2007. As noted by Frances Dinkelspiel in her July 31, 2018 article, “Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios closure came because of financial struggles”. From her interview with Rich Robbins she wrote, “[W]areham Development’s main focus is on building and operating life science, medical, research and biotechnology complexes…” https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/07/31/berkeleys-fantasy-studios-closure-came-because-of-financial-struggles
After Arreguin and Taplin recused themselves stating they had received contributions from a party to the matter before council, Wengraf took over the appeal by Wareham Development to City Council to overturn the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) decision upholding that filmmaking is an art and thereby the space occupied by filmmakers at 2600 Tenth Street (known as the Fantasy Studio Building even though fantasy studios closed in 2018) is protected under the West Berkeley Plan.
Overturning the ZAB decision by council would enable Wareham Development the building owner to turn what had been determined to be three protected spaces for the creation of art or crafts (filmmakers) into nine units for research and development (R & D). It all boiled down to was filmmaking an art (protected) or media production (not protected).
In the city staff presentation photographers/filmmakers are included as examples of an establishment engaged in the creation of art or crafts and in a separate box film recording, editing, special effects production, motion picture processing are listed as media production.
Presentations from both sides were heard with Wareham Development challenging the ZAB decision and defining what the filmmakers were doing was media production and not protected. The filmmakers and Rick Auerbach representing the arts and the West Berkeley Plan spoke to filmmaking as an art and always included in the West Berkeley Plan protections.
In 2011 years after the West Berkeley Plan was adopted, a definition of media production was added. Auerbach informed Council that the Civic Arts Commission reviewed and included filmmaking as an art twice which Council approved. Auerbach reminded Council that the Oscars are given from the Academy of the Arts.
Maureen Gosling documentary filmmaker spoke to her experience, ”I’ve been working at the fantasy building since 1984, that’s thirty years. The Berkeley Community with the hub at Saul Zaentz Fantasy Studios has created a legacy and made an outsized contribution to the art of film in the United States and around the world. Our independent community includes directors, editors, writers, cinematologists, sound mixers and more…In the time I have been there, I have felt the art space chipped away, chipped away, chipped away and now it seems it is happening again…”
We heard how working in one building allowed collaboration and fostered mentoring of film students and new filmmakers.
After all the public speakers made their points, Wengraf opened the Council discussion relating how she was a documentary filmmaker, worked in the building and met her husband there.
I wondered why she hadn’t recused herself and then realized she was relating this personal story, because she had already made up her mind that the filmmakers were not protected and Wareham would have their appeal upheld.
Wengraf preceded her question to Chris Barlow from Wareham with, “[T]he fim making community is feeling threatened and that’s not a good thing…but, I’m trying to understand the threat…” and posed the question, “Is there any intention to displace the community of filmmakers...?” and asked about longer leases.
Chris Barlow gave a long round about answer how they met with each tenant, how longer leases weren’t suitable, because of the cyclical nature of the filmmaker funding and two to three-year leases were more practical.
Wengraf responded with “okay” giving the impression she was reassured and then turned the discussion over the remaining councilmembers.
The exchange between Wengraf and Barlow reminded me of another Susan, Susan Collins and what she said about meeting with Judge Kavanaugh when she announced she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. In light of what the Supreme Court has done since securing a six to three majority those remarks from Collins make for very interesting reading. https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/senator-collins-announces-she-will-vote-confirm-judge-kavanaugh
Throughout the evening in public testimony, question and answer between councilmembers and the filmmakers we heard that Wareham did not meet individually with all the filmmaker tenants as stated, how longer leases were not offered, how rents were doubled and tripled, how Wareham would not meet with them as a group, how Wareham pitted one against the other and how some had already left.
It wasn’t a surprise when the remaining councilmembers, Kesarwani, Bartlett, Tregub, Hahn, Wengraf, Lunaparra, and Humbert voted unanimously to support the appeal by Wareham Developments. Bartlett rather than making a hollow how much he cared, stated his concern that denying the appeal would entangle the city in a lawsuit.
The city elected, Planning Department and developers have been chasing after biotech, research and development as the next big thing. Land is cheaper in West Berkeley making it the target area for development. The West Berkeley Plan was supposed to protect the arts and crafts from being pushed out, but when City Council approved the first change of use (zoning) for the Wareham Development new building now occupied by Kaiser it was really the beginning of the end for protections of the arts.
There is something very special about watching a movie on the big screen with surround sound. It was something I took for granted until we fought to save our movie theaters and lost. And as we heard on Tuesday evening July 30, 2024 there is something very special about having filmmakers sharing the same spaces where they can form community, create, collaborate, and mentor film students and newcomers to filmmaking.
Last week I watched the sold out documentary “Al Shifa Hospital: The Crimes They Tried to Bury” in the packed fellowship hall at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists church. It was a rough film in content. A panel discussion followed with Dr. Feroze Sidwa and Dr. Mohammad Subeh who both had recently returned from their second rotation in Gaza and were present in person. What is happening in Gaza and the West Bank is heart breaking and horrific.
Documentary films change minds in ways that an article can’t.
The proceeds from attending the film will be donated to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Berkeley has lost its theaters and now it looks as though Berkeley will lose its filmmakers too.
This is a sad ending to another marathon day with Berkeley City Council that started and ended with the arts.
We have an election for a new mayor in November. We should ask what is the vision for Berkeley.
This might be a good time to listen to Governor Tim Walz and Ezra Klein and hear how Walz’s vision set the direction for Minnesota. Walz is uplifting and positive. This link should work https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-tim-walz.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AU4.fJ6r.TNezOafnL4Cl&smid=em-share
Listening to podcasts doesn’t require a subscription, they are just better with a finger on fast forward to skip the ads.
The current Historical Society exhibit running until September 21, 2024 is “Berkeley and the Movies”. It is fitting that this exhibit at this time is sponsored by the Historical Society as the once vibrant center of filmmaking and film viewing in Berkeley is fading into the past falling victim to the steady erosion of theaters demolished for housing and creative space for collaboration turned over to more profitable tenants.
At its peak there were thirty-two movie theaters in Berkeley. Now there is only the Elmwood and the Pacific Film Archive. The Pacific Film Archive doesn’t help if your desire is to see current films, especially the independent and documentary films that used to be offered at the Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley with ten screens.
When I stopped by the exhibit on Thursday at 1931 Center in the Veterans Building, the volunteer (I didn’t catch her name) said I missed the talk by Saul Zaentz’s nephew Paul Zaentz. It evidently wasn’t recorded as it is not available on the Historical Society website. The volunteer told me how Saul Zaentz (the early owner of 2600 Tenth Street) planned for filmmakers to fill the building, but he soon found he needed tenants who could pay higher rent. She worked for McGraw Hill which shared the building with the filmmakers and paid the higher rent in the Fantasy Studio Building.
The Historical Society exhibit is open on Thursdays and Fridays from 1 pm to 4 pm. https://berkhistory.org/2024/03/20/berkeley-and-the-movies/
Wareham purchased the Fantasy Studio Building in 2007. As noted by Frances Dinkelspiel in her July 31, 2018 article, “Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios closure came because of financial struggles”. From her interview with Rich Robbins she wrote, “[W]areham Development’s main focus is on building and operating life science, medical, research and biotechnology complexes…” https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/07/31/berkeleys-fantasy-studios-closure-came-because-of-financial-struggles
After Arreguin and Taplin recused themselves stating they had received contributions from a party to the matter before council, Wengraf took over the appeal by Wareham Development to City Council to overturn the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) decision upholding that filmmaking is an art and thereby the space occupied by filmmakers at 2600 Tenth Street (known as the Fantasy Studio Building even though fantasy studios closed in 2018) is protected under the West Berkeley Plan.
Overturning the ZAB decision by council would enable Wareham Development the building owner to turn what had been determined to be three protected spaces for the creation of art or crafts (filmmakers) into nine units for research and development (R & D). It all boiled down to was filmmaking an art (protected) or media production (not protected).
In the city staff presentation photographers/filmmakers are included as examples of an establishment engaged in the creation of art or crafts and in a separate box film recording, editing, special effects production, motion picture processing are listed as media production.
Presentations from both sides were heard with Wareham Development challenging the ZAB decision and defining what the filmmakers were doing was media production and not protected. The filmmakers and Rick Auerbach representing the arts and the West Berkeley Plan spoke to filmmaking as an art and always included in the West Berkeley Plan protections.
In 2011 years after the West Berkeley Plan was adopted, a definition of media production was added. Auerbach informed Council that the Civic Arts Commission reviewed and included filmmaking as an art twice which Council approved. Auerbach reminded Council that the Oscars are given from the Academy of the Arts.
Maureen Gosling documentary filmmaker spoke to her experience, ”I’ve been working at the fantasy building since 1984, that’s thirty years. The Berkeley Community with the hub at Saul Zaentz Fantasy Studios has created a legacy and made an outsized contribution to the art of film in the United States and around the world. Our independent community includes directors, editors, writers, cinematologists, sound mixers and more…In the time I have been there, I have felt the art space chipped away, chipped away, chipped away and now it seems it is happening again…”
We heard how working in one building allowed collaboration and fostered mentoring of film students and new filmmakers.
After all the public speakers made their points, Wengraf opened the Council discussion relating how she was a documentary filmmaker, worked in the building and met her husband there.
I wondered why she hadn’t recused herself and then realized she was relating this personal story, because she had already made up her mind that the filmmakers were not protected and Wareham would have their appeal upheld.
Wengraf preceded her question to Chris Barlow from Wareham with, “[T]he fim making community is feeling threatened and that’s not a good thing…but, I’m trying to understand the threat…” and posed the question, “Is there any intention to displace the community of filmmakers...?” and asked about longer leases.
Chris Barlow gave a long round about answer how they met with each tenant, how longer leases weren’t suitable, because of the cyclical nature of the filmmaker funding and two to three-year leases were more practical.
Wengraf responded with “okay” giving the impression she was reassured and then turned the discussion over the remaining councilmembers.
The exchange between Wengraf and Barlow reminded me of another Susan, Susan Collins and what she said about meeting with Judge Kavanaugh when she announced she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. In light of what the Supreme Court has done since securing a six to three majority those remarks from Collins make for very interesting reading. https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/senator-collins-announces-she-will-vote-confirm-judge-kavanaugh
Throughout the evening in public testimony, question and answer between councilmembers and the filmmakers we heard that Wareham did not meet individually with all the filmmaker tenants as stated, how longer leases were not offered, how rents were doubled and tripled, how Wareham would not meet with them as a group, how Wareham pitted one against the other and how some had already left.
It wasn’t a surprise when the remaining councilmembers, Kesarwani, Bartlett, Tregub, Hahn, Wengraf, Lunaparra, and Humbert voted unanimously to support the appeal by Wareham Developments. Bartlett rather than making a hollow how much he cared, stated his concern that denying the appeal would entangle the city in a lawsuit.
The city elected, Planning Department and developers have been chasing after biotech, research and development as the next big thing. Land is cheaper in West Berkeley making it the target area for development. The West Berkeley Plan was supposed to protect the arts and crafts from being pushed out, but when City Council approved the first change of use (zoning) for the Wareham Development new building now occupied by Kaiser it was really the beginning of the end for protections of the arts.
There is something very special about watching a movie on the big screen with surround sound. It was something I took for granted until we fought to save our movie theaters and lost. And as we heard on Tuesday evening July 30, 2024 there is something very special about having filmmakers sharing the same spaces where they can form community, create, collaborate, and mentor film students and newcomers to filmmaking.
Last week I watched the sold out documentary “Al Shifa Hospital: The Crimes They Tried to Bury” in the packed fellowship hall at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists church. It was a rough film in content. A panel discussion followed with Dr. Feroze Sidwa and Dr. Mohammad Subeh who both had recently returned from their second rotation in Gaza and were present in person. What is happening in Gaza and the West Bank is heart breaking and horrific.
Documentary films change minds in ways that an article can’t.
The proceeds from attending the film will be donated to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Berkeley has lost its theaters and now it looks as though Berkeley will lose its filmmakers too.
This is a sad ending to another marathon day with Berkeley City Council that started and ended with the arts.
We have an election for a new mayor in November. We should ask what is the vision for Berkeley.
This might be a good time to listen to Governor Tim Walz and Ezra Klein and hear how Walz’s vision set the direction for Minnesota. Walz is uplifting and positive. This link should work https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-tim-walz.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AU4.fJ6r.TNezOafnL4Cl&smid=em-share
Listening to podcasts doesn’t require a subscription, they are just better with a finger on fast forward to skip the ads.
August 4, 2024 on Berkeley Ballot Measures
City Council began and ended with the arts on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 in an eight hour and twenty-minute session of two back to back meetings one at 3 pm and a second scheduled for 6 pm that didn’t start until 7:27 pm, the entire evening of city council didn’t end until 11:20 pm.
Council didn’t finish the 3 pm meeting agenda so when they should be off on summer recess, they are meeting again at 6 pm on Monday, August 5, 2024.
If we’re paying attention, not reviewing Councilmember Lunaparra’s ballot measure on Tuesday, July 30 looks like Arreguin’s strategy to give himself and Hahn more time to write an alternative ballot measure. The email notice that the August 5 meeting agenda posted on Thursday had been revised arrived in my email inbox at 6 pm Friday.
The revised agenda with the added alternate ballot measure now reads as one agenda item with 1.a. from Lunaparra – Placing the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act on the November 5, 2024 Ballot and 1.b. from Arreguin and Hahn - Placing the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act and Funding Housing Retention on the November 5, 2024 ballot.
I was expecting a long and interesting discussion Monday evening on the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act for the November election, but with the Arreguin - Hahn alternative removing Golden Duplexes (a Golden Duplex is when the owner occupies one of the two units), we might get by without having to bring rations to make it through the night, but there is a twist, keep reading.
Lunaparra’s ballot measure if passed by the voters as written would phase out the Golden Duplex modify grounds for eviction, allow tenant associations, limit automatic rent adjustment (rent increases) based on CPI to 3%, eliminate the ability of boards and city council to remove price controls during period of high vacancy, require landlords to notify tenants of their rights. Arreguin and Hahn removed the Golden Duplex, eliminated the prohibition of boards and city council to remove price controls during period of high vacancy and added using U1 Ballot Initiative funds for housing retention.
Deleting the section on prohibiting boards and commissions from removing price controls during high vacancies, takes on a whole different perspective when you read (the article is short) “Real Estate Software Aided Price-Fixing ‘Cartel’ Among US Property Companies” by Tyler Walicek published on July 28, 2024. https://truthout.org/articles/real-estate-software-aided-price-fixing-cartel-among-us-property-companies/
Walicek covers how property companies use the program RealPage which “suggests” how high rents can and should be pushed as it is more profitable to maximize rent than to fill units. Lunaparra is on the right track with prohibiting removing price controls during periods of high vacancies as the software could very well assist the large property owners to maximize rent (price gouge the captive student audience) and manage vacancy rates to avoid rent price controls.
After investigative reporter Heather Vogell exposed the rent fixing game in ProPublica in 2022, lawsuits have cropped up around the country from coast to coast and even include Fresno, California. Maximizing rent/price gouging rather than filling units as a business plan certainly pieces together the complaint of exorbitant rents and vacant units.
To read both ballot measures on tenant protections go to https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-august-5-2024
There were ten proposed local ballot measures besides Lunaparra’s.
The community survey on the ballot initiatives kicked off the 3 pm meeting discussion.
The results of the issues identified by the city of Berkeley to survey ranked in the following order of priority of where tax dollars should be spent by the residents who responded, 1) Major investment in affordable housing, 2) Continue rehousing and providing services for homelessness, 3) Repairing deteriorating streets, 4) Planting and maintaining trees and improving park maintenance and infrastructure, including the waterfront, 5) Electrification of gas-powered buildings to reduce climate impact, 6) Expanding Sunday hours and Children’s programming at libraries, and 7) Saving and sustaining arts and culture.
The Council was considering a ballot measure for the arts (theaters, music, dance and theater organizations), but dropped any consideration of crafting a ballot measure for the performing arts when the survey respondents placed financing the arts through additional taxes at the bottom of their priorities. None of the machinations of possible tax plans, i.e. parcel tax, sales tax or transient occupancy tax (TOT – tax added onto hotel, etc. bills) garnered enough support to predict even the slimmest chance of passing a ballot measure for the arts.
Looking at the broader implications, this could spell the end of the proposed 24,273 square feet of live theater space in the plans for the 18-story mixed-use project at the California Theater site 2113-2115 Kittredge. The mixed-use development comes with 211 dwelling units (including 22 very low-income density bonus qualifying units).
I always doubted the final project would include the live performing theater and viewed it as a proposal to gain support while another three movie theater screens turn to dust in the downtown.
Now with performance theater groups struggling, no ballot initiative to bail them out and per Mark Rhodes in his statement to council at the appeal on June 4, 2024, actually building that performing theater under the 18-story development would require raising $25,000,000 from the community. We shouldn’t be surprised if the approved project at the California Theater site comes back for modification without a live performance theater in the basement.
In the 2025/2026 budget, City Council allocated $300,000 for Civic Center Phase III Pre-Design & Construction Activities In the 2025/2026 biennial budget. The lack of support for the performing arts may also spell trouble for the Civic Center Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings which comes with a total projected cost of $109,450,000 for seismic work, rehabilitation, remodeling and new chambers for city council. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/civic-center-vision-plan
In the next few years, deferred maintenance is going to catch up with Berkeley just as it already has for the visibly poor condition of the streets. While Berkeley City Council is busy disassembling zoning codes to increase city density, there has not been a whiff of attention from City Council to upgrade and replace the Fire Department facilities to match the increased density Council keeps approving. That bill comes to around $310,000,000. Those of us who attend the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission have already seen the presentation and report.
And those of us who remember the Oakland Berkeley Hills fire in 1991 probably have a different feeling about the threat of fire and the Fire Department I know I do than the younger crowd that showed up at the July 23 special city council meeting on middle housing pushing upzoning, increasing density, adding housing for the entire city including the fire zones in the hills.
Back to the ballots. The two ballot measures on the deteriorating streets, “Fix the Streets” and “Safe Streets” will appear on the ballot without council statements for or against either measure. Toni Mester had the best comment on the street ballot measures.
“I’m not sure as a taxpayer why we have to have citizens initiatives to do what city government should be doing on a regular basis, which is to maintain the roadways. It should come out of the general fund. It should be organized by the Public Works Department. Hopefully directed by the Public Works Commission…The whole idea of having a citizens’ initiative to do something that is the basic chore of the city is perplexing.”
City Council dissolved the Public Works Commission on June 14, 2022 creating the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission. Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Wengraf, Robinson, Droste and Arreguin all voted to dissolve what I found to be the most productive commission in the city. Harrison voted no and Hahn abstained which was interesting as Hahn lead the reorganizing and dissolution of commissions for the Agenda Committee.
The new Transportation Commission seems to forget that infrastructure (a substitute for public works) is part of their assignment. At least that is what I find from reading the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission agendas.
Gretchen Whitmer had much to say about Fix the Damn Roads in a terrific interview with Ezra Klein recorded on July 29, 2024. https://youtu.be/wz0MB1JbcCc?si=ndlWxDRegi8HQ6W1&t=77
Councilmember Tregub worked on an alternative to the community ballot initiative organized by Fossil Free Berkeley for a special tax on natural gas consumption in buildings of 15,000 square feet or larger. Even with Lunaparra and Hahn joining Tregub on the motion to continue the discussion until August 5, Tregub lost. Arreguin abstained and Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Wengraf and Humbert voted no, killing an alternative ballot measure.
The Fossil Free Berkeley organizers for the special tax on natural gas use gathered approximately 1500 more signatures than needed for November election and filled a webpage with an impressive list of supporting organizations. https://fossilfreeberkeley.org/endorsements/
There was opposition to the special tax on natural gas. Emily from Boichik Bagels showed up in frustration having just made a huge investment in natural gas presumably to bake bagels.
As money pours in to oppose the special tax, I am sure we will hear more and our mailboxes will be filled with scary postcards when our November ballots arrive for early voting.
This community based ballot measure really reflects our failure to act on global warming. We have been unwilling to change how we live. Despite the 2018 warning from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) that we are running out of time to hold temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrials levels, the action in the last six years has been wholly inadequate.
We just had the hottest days on the planet ever reliably measured. Copernicus the European Union’s Earth observation programme recorded an entire year from June 2023 through May 2024 as 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels.
The longer we postpone making the changes we need to get a grip on global warming, the harder it gets. “We” is being used deliberately, because everyone of us is part of the consumption driving climate change.
August 1, 2024 was Earth Overshoot Day. This is the day when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what the earth can regenerate in a year. If everyone lived like the population in the United States, earth overshoot day for 2024 would have been March 14. We have a lot of work to do.
In all the gloom on climate change/global warming, I like to follow David Roberts’ VOLTS podcast. Roberts’ mission in his own words, “Volts is a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind. I’ve been reporting on and explaining clean-energy topics for almost 20 years, and I love talking to politicians, analysts, innovators, and activists about the latest progress in the world’s most important fight.” Go to www.volts.wtf or look for the VOLTS podcast on your phone, tablet or computer.
Council voted unanimously to write an opposition to the community based ballot initiative requiring adoption of minimum air quality standards in city-owned and city-leased buildings. This came out of the city employee experience during the pandemic and not being able to move council on installing HVAC filtration systems to improve indoor air quality and safety for city employees. The Council discussion flowed from individual councilmember declarations of how much they cared about city employees while justifying opposition to the ballot measure as too expensive to enact.
The last of the ballot initiatives include extending the Sugar Sweetened Beverage Tax and a small increase in the parcel tax to maintain library services. There is a ballot measure of adding a tax for the parks. The property transfer tax (time of sale) to extend Measure P for homeless services finishes off the list with Arreguin, Hahn, Tregub and Bartlett all volunteering to write the argument in favor of the ballot measure.
We will have a lot to think about when the November ballots arrive. For those of us that own property we’re going to need our property tax statements and calculators to work our way through the impact of everything.
No matter what shows up in that long list of ballot measures for the November election, maintaining the library services are on top of my list. I love the ebooks and audiobooks from the library and will be voting for the library ballot measure.
Our book club choice for July was the The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor by Hamilton Nolan which I read as an ebook from the library. One of the book club members complained to me that she wanted to read about books related to the election not a book on labor. That was, of course, before she picked up the book and Sean O’Brien President of the Teamsters spoke at the Republican Convention.
Whatever you have heard about O'Brien's speech and before you surrender to the pundits telling you what to think of Teamster Sean O’Brien as a keynote speaker at the Republican Convention, there is nothing like watching it. https://youtu.be/a5WlI1LK1NY?si=rjuQdig_DsmTZy_k
And yes, The Hammer fit right in to a robust discussion of the book, labor and the November election.
City Council began and ended with the arts on Tuesday, July 30, 2024 in an eight hour and twenty-minute session of two back to back meetings one at 3 pm and a second scheduled for 6 pm that didn’t start until 7:27 pm, the entire evening of city council didn’t end until 11:20 pm.
Council didn’t finish the 3 pm meeting agenda so when they should be off on summer recess, they are meeting again at 6 pm on Monday, August 5, 2024.
If we’re paying attention, not reviewing Councilmember Lunaparra’s ballot measure on Tuesday, July 30 looks like Arreguin’s strategy to give himself and Hahn more time to write an alternative ballot measure. The email notice that the August 5 meeting agenda posted on Thursday had been revised arrived in my email inbox at 6 pm Friday.
The revised agenda with the added alternate ballot measure now reads as one agenda item with 1.a. from Lunaparra – Placing the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act on the November 5, 2024 Ballot and 1.b. from Arreguin and Hahn - Placing the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act and Funding Housing Retention on the November 5, 2024 ballot.
I was expecting a long and interesting discussion Monday evening on the Berkeley Tenant Protection and Right to Organize Act for the November election, but with the Arreguin - Hahn alternative removing Golden Duplexes (a Golden Duplex is when the owner occupies one of the two units), we might get by without having to bring rations to make it through the night, but there is a twist, keep reading.
Lunaparra’s ballot measure if passed by the voters as written would phase out the Golden Duplex modify grounds for eviction, allow tenant associations, limit automatic rent adjustment (rent increases) based on CPI to 3%, eliminate the ability of boards and city council to remove price controls during period of high vacancy, require landlords to notify tenants of their rights. Arreguin and Hahn removed the Golden Duplex, eliminated the prohibition of boards and city council to remove price controls during period of high vacancy and added using U1 Ballot Initiative funds for housing retention.
Deleting the section on prohibiting boards and commissions from removing price controls during high vacancies, takes on a whole different perspective when you read (the article is short) “Real Estate Software Aided Price-Fixing ‘Cartel’ Among US Property Companies” by Tyler Walicek published on July 28, 2024. https://truthout.org/articles/real-estate-software-aided-price-fixing-cartel-among-us-property-companies/
Walicek covers how property companies use the program RealPage which “suggests” how high rents can and should be pushed as it is more profitable to maximize rent than to fill units. Lunaparra is on the right track with prohibiting removing price controls during periods of high vacancies as the software could very well assist the large property owners to maximize rent (price gouge the captive student audience) and manage vacancy rates to avoid rent price controls.
After investigative reporter Heather Vogell exposed the rent fixing game in ProPublica in 2022, lawsuits have cropped up around the country from coast to coast and even include Fresno, California. Maximizing rent/price gouging rather than filling units as a business plan certainly pieces together the complaint of exorbitant rents and vacant units.
To read both ballot measures on tenant protections go to https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-august-5-2024
There were ten proposed local ballot measures besides Lunaparra’s.
The community survey on the ballot initiatives kicked off the 3 pm meeting discussion.
The results of the issues identified by the city of Berkeley to survey ranked in the following order of priority of where tax dollars should be spent by the residents who responded, 1) Major investment in affordable housing, 2) Continue rehousing and providing services for homelessness, 3) Repairing deteriorating streets, 4) Planting and maintaining trees and improving park maintenance and infrastructure, including the waterfront, 5) Electrification of gas-powered buildings to reduce climate impact, 6) Expanding Sunday hours and Children’s programming at libraries, and 7) Saving and sustaining arts and culture.
The Council was considering a ballot measure for the arts (theaters, music, dance and theater organizations), but dropped any consideration of crafting a ballot measure for the performing arts when the survey respondents placed financing the arts through additional taxes at the bottom of their priorities. None of the machinations of possible tax plans, i.e. parcel tax, sales tax or transient occupancy tax (TOT – tax added onto hotel, etc. bills) garnered enough support to predict even the slimmest chance of passing a ballot measure for the arts.
Looking at the broader implications, this could spell the end of the proposed 24,273 square feet of live theater space in the plans for the 18-story mixed-use project at the California Theater site 2113-2115 Kittredge. The mixed-use development comes with 211 dwelling units (including 22 very low-income density bonus qualifying units).
I always doubted the final project would include the live performing theater and viewed it as a proposal to gain support while another three movie theater screens turn to dust in the downtown.
Now with performance theater groups struggling, no ballot initiative to bail them out and per Mark Rhodes in his statement to council at the appeal on June 4, 2024, actually building that performing theater under the 18-story development would require raising $25,000,000 from the community. We shouldn’t be surprised if the approved project at the California Theater site comes back for modification without a live performance theater in the basement.
In the 2025/2026 budget, City Council allocated $300,000 for Civic Center Phase III Pre-Design & Construction Activities In the 2025/2026 biennial budget. The lack of support for the performing arts may also spell trouble for the Civic Center Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings which comes with a total projected cost of $109,450,000 for seismic work, rehabilitation, remodeling and new chambers for city council. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/civic-center-vision-plan
In the next few years, deferred maintenance is going to catch up with Berkeley just as it already has for the visibly poor condition of the streets. While Berkeley City Council is busy disassembling zoning codes to increase city density, there has not been a whiff of attention from City Council to upgrade and replace the Fire Department facilities to match the increased density Council keeps approving. That bill comes to around $310,000,000. Those of us who attend the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission have already seen the presentation and report.
And those of us who remember the Oakland Berkeley Hills fire in 1991 probably have a different feeling about the threat of fire and the Fire Department I know I do than the younger crowd that showed up at the July 23 special city council meeting on middle housing pushing upzoning, increasing density, adding housing for the entire city including the fire zones in the hills.
Back to the ballots. The two ballot measures on the deteriorating streets, “Fix the Streets” and “Safe Streets” will appear on the ballot without council statements for or against either measure. Toni Mester had the best comment on the street ballot measures.
“I’m not sure as a taxpayer why we have to have citizens initiatives to do what city government should be doing on a regular basis, which is to maintain the roadways. It should come out of the general fund. It should be organized by the Public Works Department. Hopefully directed by the Public Works Commission…The whole idea of having a citizens’ initiative to do something that is the basic chore of the city is perplexing.”
City Council dissolved the Public Works Commission on June 14, 2022 creating the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission. Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Wengraf, Robinson, Droste and Arreguin all voted to dissolve what I found to be the most productive commission in the city. Harrison voted no and Hahn abstained which was interesting as Hahn lead the reorganizing and dissolution of commissions for the Agenda Committee.
The new Transportation Commission seems to forget that infrastructure (a substitute for public works) is part of their assignment. At least that is what I find from reading the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission agendas.
Gretchen Whitmer had much to say about Fix the Damn Roads in a terrific interview with Ezra Klein recorded on July 29, 2024. https://youtu.be/wz0MB1JbcCc?si=ndlWxDRegi8HQ6W1&t=77
Councilmember Tregub worked on an alternative to the community ballot initiative organized by Fossil Free Berkeley for a special tax on natural gas consumption in buildings of 15,000 square feet or larger. Even with Lunaparra and Hahn joining Tregub on the motion to continue the discussion until August 5, Tregub lost. Arreguin abstained and Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Wengraf and Humbert voted no, killing an alternative ballot measure.
The Fossil Free Berkeley organizers for the special tax on natural gas use gathered approximately 1500 more signatures than needed for November election and filled a webpage with an impressive list of supporting organizations. https://fossilfreeberkeley.org/endorsements/
There was opposition to the special tax on natural gas. Emily from Boichik Bagels showed up in frustration having just made a huge investment in natural gas presumably to bake bagels.
As money pours in to oppose the special tax, I am sure we will hear more and our mailboxes will be filled with scary postcards when our November ballots arrive for early voting.
This community based ballot measure really reflects our failure to act on global warming. We have been unwilling to change how we live. Despite the 2018 warning from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) that we are running out of time to hold temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrials levels, the action in the last six years has been wholly inadequate.
We just had the hottest days on the planet ever reliably measured. Copernicus the European Union’s Earth observation programme recorded an entire year from June 2023 through May 2024 as 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels.
The longer we postpone making the changes we need to get a grip on global warming, the harder it gets. “We” is being used deliberately, because everyone of us is part of the consumption driving climate change.
August 1, 2024 was Earth Overshoot Day. This is the day when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services exceeds what the earth can regenerate in a year. If everyone lived like the population in the United States, earth overshoot day for 2024 would have been March 14. We have a lot of work to do.
In all the gloom on climate change/global warming, I like to follow David Roberts’ VOLTS podcast. Roberts’ mission in his own words, “Volts is a podcast about leaving fossil fuels behind. I’ve been reporting on and explaining clean-energy topics for almost 20 years, and I love talking to politicians, analysts, innovators, and activists about the latest progress in the world’s most important fight.” Go to www.volts.wtf or look for the VOLTS podcast on your phone, tablet or computer.
Council voted unanimously to write an opposition to the community based ballot initiative requiring adoption of minimum air quality standards in city-owned and city-leased buildings. This came out of the city employee experience during the pandemic and not being able to move council on installing HVAC filtration systems to improve indoor air quality and safety for city employees. The Council discussion flowed from individual councilmember declarations of how much they cared about city employees while justifying opposition to the ballot measure as too expensive to enact.
The last of the ballot initiatives include extending the Sugar Sweetened Beverage Tax and a small increase in the parcel tax to maintain library services. There is a ballot measure of adding a tax for the parks. The property transfer tax (time of sale) to extend Measure P for homeless services finishes off the list with Arreguin, Hahn, Tregub and Bartlett all volunteering to write the argument in favor of the ballot measure.
We will have a lot to think about when the November ballots arrive. For those of us that own property we’re going to need our property tax statements and calculators to work our way through the impact of everything.
No matter what shows up in that long list of ballot measures for the November election, maintaining the library services are on top of my list. I love the ebooks and audiobooks from the library and will be voting for the library ballot measure.
Our book club choice for July was the The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor by Hamilton Nolan which I read as an ebook from the library. One of the book club members complained to me that she wanted to read about books related to the election not a book on labor. That was, of course, before she picked up the book and Sean O’Brien President of the Teamsters spoke at the Republican Convention.
Whatever you have heard about O'Brien's speech and before you surrender to the pundits telling you what to think of Teamster Sean O’Brien as a keynote speaker at the Republican Convention, there is nothing like watching it. https://youtu.be/a5WlI1LK1NY?si=rjuQdig_DsmTZy_k
And yes, The Hammer fit right in to a robust discussion of the book, labor and the November election.
July 17, 2024
It was around 1970 on one of those trips from visiting my parents when I looked out into the night sky through the plane window and felt the thrill of seeing the expanse of bright lights down on the ground as we descended for the landing. The lights were Los Angeles and I was on my way home.
A lot has happened since 1970 beside recognizing those Los Angeles night lights are light pollution damaging ecosystems, habitat, a factor in the sixth extinction and laced with links to breast cancer, colon cancer, thyroid cancer and macular degeneration.
Since 1970, we’ve lost nearly a third of the birds in North America. We read micro plastics are everywhere, in our food, in our bodies and the science hasn’t caught up yet with what havoc those microplastics inside us might be causing. We know about giant garbage patches in the ocean, animals being attracted to eating plastic and dying. We know or should know that much of plastic recycling is wishcycling.
In 1970 the CO2 was only 325 ppm. The famous Exxon paper was still seven years away.
We shouldn’t be surprised by the fix we’re in with the global average temperature of 1.6°C above preindustrial levels for the twelve months from June 2023 through May 2024 according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Eunice Newton Foote wrote in 1856 in the American Journal of Science that the heat trapping ability of CO2 “would give to our earth a high temperature.” It was in 1896 Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius recognized that burning coal could increase carbon dioxide and warm the climate. Sixty-seven years later Edward Teller warned of global warming at a 1959 petroleum conference “Energy and Man” and President Johnson was warned in 1965. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-1959
On July 16, 2024, CO2 was measured as 425.79 ppm.
On the night of October 4 and in the early hours of darkness on October 5, 2023 before sunrise, nine hundred sixty-four (964) migrating song birds, thirty-three (33) species died in one night from the combination of night light pollution and glass at McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago, Illinois. It was a shocking preventable event.
In the book A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Scoot Weidensaul wrote how through the use of tiny GPS devices on the backs of migrating birds, birds are being pulled off their migration flyways by the bright lights of cities.
It is not just birds that are impacted by artificial night light.
In 1970 washing the family car still required “bug removal” to do the job.
Insects are in rapid decline. Habitat loss, pesticide use, invasive species and climate change all have a role. The article “Light pollution is a driver of insect declines” covers the overlooked role of artificial light at night (ALAN). ALAN causes insect declines due to affecting insect movement, foraging, reproduction, and predation.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320719307797
Douglas Tallamy, entomologist, who speaks around the country on the importance of native plants often starts his talks quoting from E.O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world.”
Ecosystems can’t function without the millions of insects that make up the base of the food chain. Insects aren’t just the pollinators. The biosphere would rot without Insects as the decomposers.
If we know that birds, insects, amphibians, plants and mammals are impacted by artificial light at night, what about us? We are mammals.
The impact of ALAN on human health was what consent agenda item 13 “Community Health Commission Comments on Dark Skies” addressed.
Following the linked studies and references within those studies in the report on the Dark Skies Ordinance referral makes for very interesting reading on ALAN and breast cancer, thyroid cancer, pancreatic cancer, diabetes and macular degeneration.
So where was Berkeley City Council when given the opportunity to vote on a lukewarm referral on a Dark Skies Ordinance?
This Berkeley City Council with a mayor that brags how advanced Berkeley is as a progressive leader, it was that same mayor, Arreguin who was the first to voice his opposition to agenda item 13 on the Dark Skies Ordinance. The Council rejected in a seven to two vote to add the Community Health Commission comments to the Dark Skies Ordinance that has been languishing in the Planning Commission to do list since November 2019 and to also refer to the City Manager to request the Department of Public Works implement a moratorium on the installation of street and building lighting exceeding 3,000 Kelvin.
Only Councilmembers Bartlett and Tregub stood in support for the Dark Skies Ordinance referral. Councilmembers Kesarwani, Taplin, Humbert, Wengraf and Mayor Arreguin all voted no. Councilmembers Hahn and Lunaparra abstained.
Last summer I joined my childhood friend in Palm Springs for a road trip to Santa Fe with many stops along the way and home again. Our last nights were in Cottonwood, Arizona. Cottonwood is a delightful small city. We had two terrific dinners at local restaurants. The two of us walked around town late in the evening after dinner, hours after sunset, with the night sky above us. It never occurred to me that the well lite streets and sidewalks with lighting where we needed it were in a recognized, designated International Dark-Sky Place.
It was after I got home and attended a Dark Skies webinar that I discovered my friend and I spent our last night in an internationally recognized Dark Sky Community. Cottonwood became a designated location of the International Dark-Sky Places in 2019 four years before my friend and I arrived.
The City of Cottonwood website states, “Since 2016 it has been the City of Cottonwood’s mission to obtain the designation of a Dark-Sky Community to promote and protect our dark skies…Light pollution effects the world as a whole. Excess light disrupts the natural day-night pattern and has negative impacts on the ecosystem, wildlife and human health. The City of Cottonwood is committed to protecting the night skies for present and future generations.” http://cottonwoodaz.gov/747/Dark-Sky-Community
There is a misconception that a Dark Skies Ordinance means our streets will be dangerously dark. Protecting the environment and our own health doesn’t mean the Department of Public Works can’t install lighting. What it does is give direction to not installing the wrong kind of lighting adding to night light pollution and to instead direct light to where it is needed with the lowest amount of brightness to do the job.
Do street lights three stories high above the tree canopy direct lighting to where we need it? Do street lights from the top of tall light poles glaring down at us put light where we need it? I would answer both of those with a resounding no.
The new Director of Public Works Terrance Davis wasn’t called on to comment on night light and the Dark Skies Ordinance referral.
I have no idea where Director Davis stands on the impact of night light pollution or where he stands on other environmental and climate measures that cross into public works like tree canopy and heat island effect and water runoff and permeable paving. His profile on Linkedin and the internet doesn’t offer a clue to where he might stand on climate change, rising ground water with sea level rise, protecting ecosystems and habitat.
As for our councilmembers that couldn’t bring themselves to support a Dark Skies Ordinance was this ordinary ignorance or as Minnijean Brown-Trickey from the Little Rock Nine would say, “Profound Intentional Ignorance”.
I certainly expect more from our councilmembers. If we were truly a progressive city we would be like Cottonwood, Arizona actively pursuing the designation as a Dark Skies Place.
And, certainly a progressive City Council wouldn’t be sacrificing such an easily mitigated hazard to our health and the health of ecosystems, just to give free rein to developers if that is what lurks beneath the languishing Dark Skies Ordinance.
I always learn something when I make it to the Commission on Disability. And it is not just that commissioner Helen Walsh sent me the link to the National Center on Disability and Journalism. https://ncdj.org/style-guide/ These commissioners should be everywhere. They truly are wonderful and deeply knowledgeable.
Rex Brown, City of Berkeley DEI Officer, was the first speaker at the Commission on Disability.
I didn’t know Berkeley had hired a DEI Officer.
Programs on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are what governors in the South like DeSantis are banning from education calling such programs discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination.
If Trump is re-elected DEI is on the hit list for elimination along with the FDA, EPA, NOAA, Department of Education, school lunch programs, contraception, marriage equality, no fault divorce, plus so much more in the Mandate for Leadership Project 2025.
In Brown’s answer to the question on why he took the DEI Officer job in Berkeley, it boiled down to his perception of Berkeley as a progressive city.
Someone (I didn’t catch who) responded that Berkeley as progressive city was past history not current.
Brown was hired November 27, 2023. DEI is a start-up program and I didn’t get the sense that there is a vision to where this program is going or what it should encompass. It didn’t sound like anyone had filled Brown in on the Mason-Tillman Report and contracting habits in Berkeley, the report on biased policing, the Police Bicycle Team and racist texting.
Brown had been filled in enough that he couldn’t talk about the Disability Rights Advocates lawsuit against the City of Berkeley for disability discrimination. It isn’t just the Commission on Disability commissioners who are feeling the discrimination from the heel dragging of providing remote access (ZOOM) to City of Berkeley public meetings. This is front and center to DEI.
The closed captioning for City Council meetings is definitely lacking of late. I notice it more now that I have become a heavy user of voice recognition software in zoom meetings where it is made available and more importantly when the meeting is set up to allow attendees to save the transcript. The City Council and Zoning Adjustment Board meetings use a live transcriber (captioner). The City Council Policy Committees use voice recognition software and the commissions, that is where the gap in access lacks citywide.
The next presentation came from AC Transit Planner Crystal Wang on the proposed Transit-Supportive Design Guidelines, i.e. bus stop design and its multimodal integration with paratransit, sidewalk users, and bikeways. We can only hope Wang took good notes as the commissioners were full of suggestions to improve the design of bus stops. These meetings need to be recorded.
The Commission Chair Rena Fischer who is a wheelchair user said she can get to Point Isabel with her senior aged dog using Paratransit, but to get home by AC Transit it is a mile across the park to the bus stop and a six hour wait.
When it comes to transit, I often complain it doesn’t get me to where I want to go. Commissioner Fisher pointed out the other dilemma, when transit may get you to where you want to go, the amount of time waiting for it makes it impractical before even considering the location of the bus stops and other factors.
At an AC Transit presentation, I heard some months ago, it isn’t just budget that is impacting service. Another problem is there are not enough bus drivers filling the ranks to replace the bus drivers that are retiring.
I thoroughly support making bus stops accessible, but I am not an enthusiast of spending millions of dollars on infrastructure if we don’t have the other pieces to make it a functional system. Dedicated bus lanes do make it easier for buses to be efficient and on time. Buses have the flexibility over rail to change routes which isn’t always an advantage when that route change is a takeaway instead of an addition.
When it comes to door to door convenience, mass transit is in tough competition for those who can use Uber and Lyft. A friend who uses the GoGo Grandparent program for seniors 70 and older and disabled had saved up enough in her ride “bank” to use to GoGo Grandparent to go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I could have driven – I have a car, but the service was amazing. The ride home arrived nearly instantaneously not even the expected three minutes.
It is great for the users, but I am not so sure the drivers are getting a fair deal. (I’ve been reading Rana Foroohar’s book Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed It’s Founding Principles – and All of Us. Chapter 8 is The Uberization of Everything)
I left the Commission on Disability early to catch the Will Knight Presentation and Q&A on the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson Supreme Court decision. It was promised to be recorded, but Carole Marasovic reported at the Agenda Committee that city staff lost the recording. Such a shame.
Knight gave an excellent presentation. He saw the Grants Pass ruling as narrow which leaves some ways out for homeless persons. However, as we observe, this Supreme Court with its secure six to three majority doesn’t leave the courts as answer.
Councilmember Lunaparra, submitted an emergency agenda item at council on July 9 after the Grants Pass ruling stating, “Adopt a Resolution reaffirming the City of Berkeley’s commitments to enact no additional restrictions to effectively prohibit sleeping by an unhoused individual if there is no shelter space available in the jurisdiction for the unhoused individual to sleep, to not impose criminal penalties for sleeping in public spaces without first making an offer of shelter, and to construct, repurpose, and offer non-congregate shelter and permanent housing options whenever possible.”
The resolution lost in a four to five vote. Taplin, Bartlett, Tregub, and Lunaparra voted for the resolution, Kesarwani and Humbert voted against and Hahn, Wengraf and Arreguin abstained.
At the beginning of the council meeting Kesarwani, Wengraf and Humbert all voted against evening bringing up the resolution for consideration.
Arreguin’s alternate motion on the resolution for the unhoused was to refer the item to the City Attorney for analysis and to schedule a closed session for consideration of the issue. The impression was left that such a meeting could take place before summer recess begins on July 31. The City Attorney had answered yes to Arreguin’s question if an analysis could be completed within two weeks to precede a closed council session.
The motion passed in an 8 to 1 vote. Lunaparra voted no. Whether anything gets done before summer recess, we shall see.
The votes on Lunaparra’s emergency resolution on the unhoused came at the end of the council meeting after the report on “Gap Analysis of Berkeley’s Homelessnesss system of Care” by Peter Radu from the City Manager’s Office who introduced himself as the Neighborhood Services Manager and Zoe Klingman from Berkeley Public Policy, The Goldman School.
For all the bragging coming from Mayor Arreguin and last evening from Sophie Hahn candidate for mayor at the mayor’s forum, in how well Berkeley is doing on homelessness, there are still big gaps (more on the mayor’s forum in my next Activist’s Diary).
The average wait for an unhoused person to get permanent housing after being referred to the waiting list is 280 days (more than nine months). Sixty-six percent of the funds that support homelessness services come from Measure P which according to the presentation charts have been declining since Fiscal Years 2021 – 2022. The recommendation in the supplemental report summary is in bold, “Berkeley should look for opportunities to increase funding for homelessness services and affordable housing.”
The Point-in-Time homeless count which is done every two years nationwide at the end of January counted 844 homeless individuals in Berkeley in 2024 down from 1,057 in 2022. It is an improvement that the city elected celebrated.
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/simtech.solutions/viz/AlamedaCountyPoint-in-TimeCountResultsSummary/PITTrends?publish=yes
There will be a boost in affordable housing with the two BART Housing projects, but those are years away. There are affordable housing projects in the pipeline/planning but when rent for a studio apartment in Berkeley can fall somewhere between $1595 in an old building to over $3000 in a new building that doesn’t give much hope for the unhoused. There is no place for someone with low income to go except on the street unless they can get subsidized housing or stuff more people into an apartment than can reasonably expected to live there.
If the Republicans clean up in the fall election as they are now projected to do, the poor are going to have harder times ahead.
It was around 1970 on one of those trips from visiting my parents when I looked out into the night sky through the plane window and felt the thrill of seeing the expanse of bright lights down on the ground as we descended for the landing. The lights were Los Angeles and I was on my way home.
A lot has happened since 1970 beside recognizing those Los Angeles night lights are light pollution damaging ecosystems, habitat, a factor in the sixth extinction and laced with links to breast cancer, colon cancer, thyroid cancer and macular degeneration.
Since 1970, we’ve lost nearly a third of the birds in North America. We read micro plastics are everywhere, in our food, in our bodies and the science hasn’t caught up yet with what havoc those microplastics inside us might be causing. We know about giant garbage patches in the ocean, animals being attracted to eating plastic and dying. We know or should know that much of plastic recycling is wishcycling.
In 1970 the CO2 was only 325 ppm. The famous Exxon paper was still seven years away.
We shouldn’t be surprised by the fix we’re in with the global average temperature of 1.6°C above preindustrial levels for the twelve months from June 2023 through May 2024 according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Eunice Newton Foote wrote in 1856 in the American Journal of Science that the heat trapping ability of CO2 “would give to our earth a high temperature.” It was in 1896 Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius recognized that burning coal could increase carbon dioxide and warm the climate. Sixty-seven years later Edward Teller warned of global warming at a 1959 petroleum conference “Energy and Man” and President Johnson was warned in 1965. https://www.greenbiz.com/article/what-big-oil-knew-about-climate-change-1959
On July 16, 2024, CO2 was measured as 425.79 ppm.
On the night of October 4 and in the early hours of darkness on October 5, 2023 before sunrise, nine hundred sixty-four (964) migrating song birds, thirty-three (33) species died in one night from the combination of night light pollution and glass at McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago, Illinois. It was a shocking preventable event.
In the book A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Scoot Weidensaul wrote how through the use of tiny GPS devices on the backs of migrating birds, birds are being pulled off their migration flyways by the bright lights of cities.
It is not just birds that are impacted by artificial night light.
In 1970 washing the family car still required “bug removal” to do the job.
Insects are in rapid decline. Habitat loss, pesticide use, invasive species and climate change all have a role. The article “Light pollution is a driver of insect declines” covers the overlooked role of artificial light at night (ALAN). ALAN causes insect declines due to affecting insect movement, foraging, reproduction, and predation.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320719307797
Douglas Tallamy, entomologist, who speaks around the country on the importance of native plants often starts his talks quoting from E.O. Wilson, “Insects are the little things that run the world.”
Ecosystems can’t function without the millions of insects that make up the base of the food chain. Insects aren’t just the pollinators. The biosphere would rot without Insects as the decomposers.
If we know that birds, insects, amphibians, plants and mammals are impacted by artificial light at night, what about us? We are mammals.
The impact of ALAN on human health was what consent agenda item 13 “Community Health Commission Comments on Dark Skies” addressed.
Following the linked studies and references within those studies in the report on the Dark Skies Ordinance referral makes for very interesting reading on ALAN and breast cancer, thyroid cancer, pancreatic cancer, diabetes and macular degeneration.
So where was Berkeley City Council when given the opportunity to vote on a lukewarm referral on a Dark Skies Ordinance?
This Berkeley City Council with a mayor that brags how advanced Berkeley is as a progressive leader, it was that same mayor, Arreguin who was the first to voice his opposition to agenda item 13 on the Dark Skies Ordinance. The Council rejected in a seven to two vote to add the Community Health Commission comments to the Dark Skies Ordinance that has been languishing in the Planning Commission to do list since November 2019 and to also refer to the City Manager to request the Department of Public Works implement a moratorium on the installation of street and building lighting exceeding 3,000 Kelvin.
Only Councilmembers Bartlett and Tregub stood in support for the Dark Skies Ordinance referral. Councilmembers Kesarwani, Taplin, Humbert, Wengraf and Mayor Arreguin all voted no. Councilmembers Hahn and Lunaparra abstained.
Last summer I joined my childhood friend in Palm Springs for a road trip to Santa Fe with many stops along the way and home again. Our last nights were in Cottonwood, Arizona. Cottonwood is a delightful small city. We had two terrific dinners at local restaurants. The two of us walked around town late in the evening after dinner, hours after sunset, with the night sky above us. It never occurred to me that the well lite streets and sidewalks with lighting where we needed it were in a recognized, designated International Dark-Sky Place.
It was after I got home and attended a Dark Skies webinar that I discovered my friend and I spent our last night in an internationally recognized Dark Sky Community. Cottonwood became a designated location of the International Dark-Sky Places in 2019 four years before my friend and I arrived.
The City of Cottonwood website states, “Since 2016 it has been the City of Cottonwood’s mission to obtain the designation of a Dark-Sky Community to promote and protect our dark skies…Light pollution effects the world as a whole. Excess light disrupts the natural day-night pattern and has negative impacts on the ecosystem, wildlife and human health. The City of Cottonwood is committed to protecting the night skies for present and future generations.” http://cottonwoodaz.gov/747/Dark-Sky-Community
There is a misconception that a Dark Skies Ordinance means our streets will be dangerously dark. Protecting the environment and our own health doesn’t mean the Department of Public Works can’t install lighting. What it does is give direction to not installing the wrong kind of lighting adding to night light pollution and to instead direct light to where it is needed with the lowest amount of brightness to do the job.
Do street lights three stories high above the tree canopy direct lighting to where we need it? Do street lights from the top of tall light poles glaring down at us put light where we need it? I would answer both of those with a resounding no.
The new Director of Public Works Terrance Davis wasn’t called on to comment on night light and the Dark Skies Ordinance referral.
I have no idea where Director Davis stands on the impact of night light pollution or where he stands on other environmental and climate measures that cross into public works like tree canopy and heat island effect and water runoff and permeable paving. His profile on Linkedin and the internet doesn’t offer a clue to where he might stand on climate change, rising ground water with sea level rise, protecting ecosystems and habitat.
As for our councilmembers that couldn’t bring themselves to support a Dark Skies Ordinance was this ordinary ignorance or as Minnijean Brown-Trickey from the Little Rock Nine would say, “Profound Intentional Ignorance”.
I certainly expect more from our councilmembers. If we were truly a progressive city we would be like Cottonwood, Arizona actively pursuing the designation as a Dark Skies Place.
And, certainly a progressive City Council wouldn’t be sacrificing such an easily mitigated hazard to our health and the health of ecosystems, just to give free rein to developers if that is what lurks beneath the languishing Dark Skies Ordinance.
I always learn something when I make it to the Commission on Disability. And it is not just that commissioner Helen Walsh sent me the link to the National Center on Disability and Journalism. https://ncdj.org/style-guide/ These commissioners should be everywhere. They truly are wonderful and deeply knowledgeable.
Rex Brown, City of Berkeley DEI Officer, was the first speaker at the Commission on Disability.
I didn’t know Berkeley had hired a DEI Officer.
Programs on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) are what governors in the South like DeSantis are banning from education calling such programs discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination.
If Trump is re-elected DEI is on the hit list for elimination along with the FDA, EPA, NOAA, Department of Education, school lunch programs, contraception, marriage equality, no fault divorce, plus so much more in the Mandate for Leadership Project 2025.
In Brown’s answer to the question on why he took the DEI Officer job in Berkeley, it boiled down to his perception of Berkeley as a progressive city.
Someone (I didn’t catch who) responded that Berkeley as progressive city was past history not current.
Brown was hired November 27, 2023. DEI is a start-up program and I didn’t get the sense that there is a vision to where this program is going or what it should encompass. It didn’t sound like anyone had filled Brown in on the Mason-Tillman Report and contracting habits in Berkeley, the report on biased policing, the Police Bicycle Team and racist texting.
Brown had been filled in enough that he couldn’t talk about the Disability Rights Advocates lawsuit against the City of Berkeley for disability discrimination. It isn’t just the Commission on Disability commissioners who are feeling the discrimination from the heel dragging of providing remote access (ZOOM) to City of Berkeley public meetings. This is front and center to DEI.
The closed captioning for City Council meetings is definitely lacking of late. I notice it more now that I have become a heavy user of voice recognition software in zoom meetings where it is made available and more importantly when the meeting is set up to allow attendees to save the transcript. The City Council and Zoning Adjustment Board meetings use a live transcriber (captioner). The City Council Policy Committees use voice recognition software and the commissions, that is where the gap in access lacks citywide.
The next presentation came from AC Transit Planner Crystal Wang on the proposed Transit-Supportive Design Guidelines, i.e. bus stop design and its multimodal integration with paratransit, sidewalk users, and bikeways. We can only hope Wang took good notes as the commissioners were full of suggestions to improve the design of bus stops. These meetings need to be recorded.
The Commission Chair Rena Fischer who is a wheelchair user said she can get to Point Isabel with her senior aged dog using Paratransit, but to get home by AC Transit it is a mile across the park to the bus stop and a six hour wait.
When it comes to transit, I often complain it doesn’t get me to where I want to go. Commissioner Fisher pointed out the other dilemma, when transit may get you to where you want to go, the amount of time waiting for it makes it impractical before even considering the location of the bus stops and other factors.
At an AC Transit presentation, I heard some months ago, it isn’t just budget that is impacting service. Another problem is there are not enough bus drivers filling the ranks to replace the bus drivers that are retiring.
I thoroughly support making bus stops accessible, but I am not an enthusiast of spending millions of dollars on infrastructure if we don’t have the other pieces to make it a functional system. Dedicated bus lanes do make it easier for buses to be efficient and on time. Buses have the flexibility over rail to change routes which isn’t always an advantage when that route change is a takeaway instead of an addition.
When it comes to door to door convenience, mass transit is in tough competition for those who can use Uber and Lyft. A friend who uses the GoGo Grandparent program for seniors 70 and older and disabled had saved up enough in her ride “bank” to use to GoGo Grandparent to go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. I could have driven – I have a car, but the service was amazing. The ride home arrived nearly instantaneously not even the expected three minutes.
It is great for the users, but I am not so sure the drivers are getting a fair deal. (I’ve been reading Rana Foroohar’s book Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed It’s Founding Principles – and All of Us. Chapter 8 is The Uberization of Everything)
I left the Commission on Disability early to catch the Will Knight Presentation and Q&A on the City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson Supreme Court decision. It was promised to be recorded, but Carole Marasovic reported at the Agenda Committee that city staff lost the recording. Such a shame.
Knight gave an excellent presentation. He saw the Grants Pass ruling as narrow which leaves some ways out for homeless persons. However, as we observe, this Supreme Court with its secure six to three majority doesn’t leave the courts as answer.
Councilmember Lunaparra, submitted an emergency agenda item at council on July 9 after the Grants Pass ruling stating, “Adopt a Resolution reaffirming the City of Berkeley’s commitments to enact no additional restrictions to effectively prohibit sleeping by an unhoused individual if there is no shelter space available in the jurisdiction for the unhoused individual to sleep, to not impose criminal penalties for sleeping in public spaces without first making an offer of shelter, and to construct, repurpose, and offer non-congregate shelter and permanent housing options whenever possible.”
The resolution lost in a four to five vote. Taplin, Bartlett, Tregub, and Lunaparra voted for the resolution, Kesarwani and Humbert voted against and Hahn, Wengraf and Arreguin abstained.
At the beginning of the council meeting Kesarwani, Wengraf and Humbert all voted against evening bringing up the resolution for consideration.
Arreguin’s alternate motion on the resolution for the unhoused was to refer the item to the City Attorney for analysis and to schedule a closed session for consideration of the issue. The impression was left that such a meeting could take place before summer recess begins on July 31. The City Attorney had answered yes to Arreguin’s question if an analysis could be completed within two weeks to precede a closed council session.
The motion passed in an 8 to 1 vote. Lunaparra voted no. Whether anything gets done before summer recess, we shall see.
The votes on Lunaparra’s emergency resolution on the unhoused came at the end of the council meeting after the report on “Gap Analysis of Berkeley’s Homelessnesss system of Care” by Peter Radu from the City Manager’s Office who introduced himself as the Neighborhood Services Manager and Zoe Klingman from Berkeley Public Policy, The Goldman School.
For all the bragging coming from Mayor Arreguin and last evening from Sophie Hahn candidate for mayor at the mayor’s forum, in how well Berkeley is doing on homelessness, there are still big gaps (more on the mayor’s forum in my next Activist’s Diary).
The average wait for an unhoused person to get permanent housing after being referred to the waiting list is 280 days (more than nine months). Sixty-six percent of the funds that support homelessness services come from Measure P which according to the presentation charts have been declining since Fiscal Years 2021 – 2022. The recommendation in the supplemental report summary is in bold, “Berkeley should look for opportunities to increase funding for homelessness services and affordable housing.”
The Point-in-Time homeless count which is done every two years nationwide at the end of January counted 844 homeless individuals in Berkeley in 2024 down from 1,057 in 2022. It is an improvement that the city elected celebrated.
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/simtech.solutions/viz/AlamedaCountyPoint-in-TimeCountResultsSummary/PITTrends?publish=yes
There will be a boost in affordable housing with the two BART Housing projects, but those are years away. There are affordable housing projects in the pipeline/planning but when rent for a studio apartment in Berkeley can fall somewhere between $1595 in an old building to over $3000 in a new building that doesn’t give much hope for the unhoused. There is no place for someone with low income to go except on the street unless they can get subsidized housing or stuff more people into an apartment than can reasonably expected to live there.
If the Republicans clean up in the fall election as they are now projected to do, the poor are going to have harder times ahead.
July 10, 2024
Before getting into the meat of this Activist’s Diary, at the July 1, 2024 Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee Councilmember Taplin’s Affordable Housing for Artists and Berkeley Green New Deal: Just Transition Framework for the General Plan’s Environmental Justice Element were continued to a future meeting with no action or discussion (a message from Taplin’s office was sent to continue the items) and COPA/TOPA (Community Opportunity to Purchase Act / Tenants’ Opportunity to Purchase Act) is moving on to council with votes by Councilmembers Humbert and Wengraf to kill it with a negative recommendation. (Lunaparra voted against the Humbert – Wengraf motion).
I missed the Land Use Meeting, but I picked up the discussion from listening to the recording. (FYI every Council Committee meeting is recorded. The link is at the bottom of the committee webpage.) There were just a handful of speakers. Humbert, committee chair, started off the discussion with his opinion TOPA should not be pursued and should be forwarded with a negative recommendation. Wengraf concurred.
Councilmember Lunaparra spoke in favor of TOPA, about the years of work put into it, stabilizing affordable housing and asked staff if she could pick up TOPA from former councilmember Harrison and proceed as the sponsor. City staff told Lunaparra she could not.
Interestingly in the July 8 Agenda Committee discussion on legislative reform, committee members Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf had a long discussion of how proposed ordinances and resolutions from councilmembers who have left office could move forward with new sponsors.
If TOPA had ever passed, it would require property owners to notify tenants that the property they are living in was being put up for sale. TOPA would give tenants the first right of refusal meaning first right to purchase the property. The real estate industry, property owners of rental property as you might expect had a small fit when it was first presented back in 2018 by Arreguin. Tenants clamored for it.
I never thought there would be a huge number of tenants that could scrape the money /deposits / loans together to purchase a multi-unit building, but it could have been a stabilizing factor in housing. In the resubmission by Harrison (the first submission was by Arreguin who presented various versions over months and years and then let it disappear) COPA added a new dimension for the building purchase through affordable housing nonprofits in the COPA arm of the proposal.
At the July 3 FITES (Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability) Committee, Taplin’s Train Quiet Zones in West Berkeley slipped off the table as too expensive to pursue though the staff presentation on the costs of various options was excellent. Councilmember Bartlett’s EVITP (Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program) was referred out of committee for review by the City Attorney. This is an ordinance requiring 50% of electricians per job installing and maintaining city-funded electric vehicle supply equipment and infrastructure to be certified through a training program to reduce risk of fire.
FITES Committee members Taplin, Humbert and Lunaparra had already made up their minds to refer the Curb Management Plan from the Environment and Climate Commission to the City Manager when they rejected my recommendation that this item really needed input from the Commission on Disability, the Design Review Committee (DRC) and the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) before sending the item off to sit (languish) in the very long City Manager “to do” list. Plus using these resources could speed up the process.
Attending as many City meetings as I do (and life experiences as a caregiver and a RN) gives me a different perspective on how we can use the expertise in the community including citizen scientists and commissioners to get things done.
Curb Management which is about loading zones, parking, bus stops and bicycle lanes really needs broad input. Disability parking isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I remember handicapped spaces that didn’t work with our handicapped van. The inability of the DRC and ZAB to place loading zones where they would work best for new mixed-use developments, hampers project design.
My recall of creating the Council Committees was sold on Councilmembers developing and refining proposals in committee. Former Councilmember Harrison often used the FITES Committee as a forum to bring in representatives from business and the community for input before finalizing ideas into ordinances. I miss that.
As I have written many times before, City Council Committees are often a detour on the way to getting things done.
The Bicycle Access Improvements on the Virginia Street Bikeway were in the draft agenda for July 23 City Council meeting until it was pulled on Monday to be postponed until fall. The Virginia Street Bikeway went through the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission on June 20. I arrived a little late that evening having attended the DRC first. I counted about forty people (most of whom spoke) on whether the Virginia bikeway should be 9 feet wide and preserve parking or 12 feet wide and remove parking. I did not count how many speakers pleaded for each alternative, but there was a heavy showing for preserving parking and a third alternative suggested by Bryce Nesbit complete with a map.
Ray Yep the Commissioner chairing the meeting tried to put together a compromise or at the very least at a community meeting to explore the bikeway alternatives further. The Commission was having none of it, declined to support Yep’s motion and voted for the 12 foot wide bikeway.
I am not an enthusiast of curbed protected bikeways. If we ever really get people out of cars and on bicycles and scooters, narrow protected bikeways will not handle a real increase in usage.
For all the attention to bike infrastructure, when Bryce Nesbit with a group of volunteers duplicated the prior bicycle rider counts by approximating the same locations, conditions and times, their bicycle counts found fewer bicycle riders in the 2023 count than the 2010 and 2015 counts. The population of Berkeley during that same time increased from 112,580 (2010) to 118,962 (2023). At the Transportation Commission meeting where the bicycle survey results were presented, the commissioners expressed no interest in pursuing why the investment in bicycle infrastructure wasn’t translating into changing behavior.
My favored response to encouraging the switch from cars to bicycles and improving safety is reducing/restricting speed on residential streets and directing vehicle traffic to identified traffic corridors resulting in bicycle and scooter friendly streets (quiet streets) instead of curbed bike lanes.
At the June 25 City Council meeting the main event was the Council managing to pass the biennial budget for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Councilmember Kesarwani made her pitch to remove the budgeted $10,000,000 for the small sites program and did not walk out as she did at the Budget and Finance Committee on June 19 when Councilmember Hahn countered Kesarwani by speaking for the importance of funding the purchase of existing small apartment buildings and thereby supporting existing affordable housing and community diversity.
The $10,000,000 is more like seed money for housing trusts, grants, etc.
The budget passed unanimously.
What didn’t get any attention was agenda item 58. Climate lost.
In 2021 when Former Councilmember Kate Harrison proposed adopting an ordinance on climate with the overwhelming title “Establishing Emergency Greenhouse Gas Limits, Process for Updated Climate Action Plan, Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Regional Collaboration.”
The carbon dioxide level was described as staggering at 418 parts per million (ppm). Now three years later on July 6, 2024 CO2 was 425.50 ppm.
Global warming which was at 1.1 °C above preindustrial levels in 2021 and given as justification for taking action came with this warning, “[C]urrent global growth trends and policies could push humanity past 1.5 degrees by mid-century…” and “[T]he ‘Global North,’ which includes Berkeley, has far exceeded its fair share of the emissions …[and] must reduce its emissions rapidly and justly”.
In 2018 when the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published the special report on the importance of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5°C instead of 2°C to avoid the most catastrophic impacts from climate change the prediction for reaching/crossing the 1.5°C threshold was sometime between 2030 and 2050.
The report came with this directive to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global warming.
“The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require ‘rapid and far-reaching’ transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.” http://tiny.cc/82n3zz
The proposed Harrison climate ordinance was already dead long before City Council voted to take no action on May 25. I counted twenty-one meetings/opportunities for action, but found it was brought up for discussion only three times. The last FITES Committee discussion was on June 6, 2022 with nothing until May 15, 2024 when FITES took no action and sent it back to council.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, we have already crossed the 1.5°C threshold. The global average temperature was 1.6°C above preindustrial levels for the twelve months from June 2023 through May 2024.
The latest climate news is anything but reassuring. On June 7, 2024 on Democracy Now the closing interview was with Jeff Goodall the author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. Just four days earlier Goodall wrote an op-ed “The Heat Wave Scenario That Keeps Climate Scientists Up at Night” in the New York Times. That climate scenario is a power failure in the height of an extreme heat wave. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/opinion/heat-technology-climate.html
Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, Arizona State University and the University of Michigan looked at the potential consequences of a total blackout for two days with three days of restoring power in three cities (Phoenix, Detroit, Atlanta) during an extreme heat wave. The results for Phoenix predicted 800,000 emergency room visits and 13,000 deaths, for Detroit 221 deaths and Atlanta 12,540 emergency room visits and 6 deaths.
The first 2024 draft update to Berkeley’s federally required Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) projects a potential annual average of six to seven 90-100 degree days in Berkeley in ten years and follows that with there isn’t much useful research on the economic impacts of high heat at the local level.
Six or seven days doesn’t seem like much to worry about, though I certainly remember during 2022 heat wave receiving the text alert at 5:48 pm on September 6, 2022 to shut down all unnecessary power to save the grid.
On July 10, 2024 the Mercury News published the California Department of Insurance found the hidden costs of extreme heat to be $7.7 billion for California over the last decade from lost productivity to healthcare for heat related illnesses. The evening news announced fourteen deaths (the number is expected to go up) in San Jose from heat in the current heat wave.
In Berkeley, our first 2024 summer “heat wave” according to my iPhone Berkeley reached only 81° on July 4, but Palm Springs reached 124° on July 5 (day after reports in the newspaper). Now we’re in another temperature swing under the heat dome covering much of the U.S. West.
In the LHMP, if in a ten year future the heat wave for Berkeley is projected at six to seven 90° to 100° days then what are the temperatures going to be east, north and south of us?
Jeff Goodall in The Heat Will Kill You First doesn’t stop with what happens to us humans. He includes what happens to plants (it isn’t good) our food in this heated future. Councilmember Bartlett’s Berkeley Food Utility and Access Resilience Measure (FARM) passed by City Council and sitting in the City Manager’s long referral “to do” list isn’t going to save us. In the committee discussion, the food resilience was to look at sources of food within 100 miles of Berkeley, seemingly forgetting that there are hundreds of thousands of other people living in that same 100 miles and what might happen to those food sources in a drought and on a heated planet.
Mayor Arreguin’s April 11, 2024 email “Implementing Climate Policies for a Greener Future makes it sound as if here in Berkeley we’ve made incredible progress. I beg to differ.
I went back to Mayor Arreguin’s email from April 11, 2024 extolling how great Berkeley is doing on climate action with temperature rise of 1.18 C° for 2023. (The 1.18 °C is from NOAA) A bulk of the conclusions Arreguin cited on GHG reductions attribute 54% of Berkeley’s GHG to transportation were from 2021 when we were still barely coming out of the pandemic shutdowns.
Looking at the December 12, 2023 Climate Action Plan and Resilience Update from Jordon Klein, Director, Department of Planning and Development linked in Arreguin’s email, Berkeley has some big work to do this year with a budget that is undergoing some belt tightening. The goal for public Level 2 EV chargers is 420 by 2025. There were 110 in October 2023. The goal for public direct current fast chargers by 2025 is 100. There were 19 in 2023.
More worrisome risks in the LHMP are active and potential landslide areas, wildland urban wildfire and the overdue big earthquake whenever that comes. Looking at the maps in the LHMP there is very little land in Berkeley that is not in one of the identified high-risk areas, i.e. the Hayward Fault, landslide, liquefaction or wildfire.
You can read the LHMP at https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/local-hazard-mitigation-plan-update
The LHMP includes lots of charts and maps, but it does not include this link where you can type in an address and see whether that address/land parcel is on a fault line, landside area or both or sitting in a liquefaction zone. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
One thing Wengraf and I totally agree on, is Berkeley should not be adding density, building more housing and putting more people in the high fire zones which also happen to be next to or on top of the Hayward Fault and in landslide zones.
Arreguin cited in his email the “Deep Green Building Initiative” which he authored with Hahn. The Deep Green Building Initiative was an incentive-based plan. I said at the time as a participant in the meetings, that incentives would never work and they haven’t. Developers do use the state measure SB 330 density bonus with the formula for how far a project can exceed zoning restrictions by including a pittance of income restricted units in the building.
From my perspective, we have a lot of work to do to warrant labeling Berkeley as a leader.
A year of record global heat has pushed Earth closer to dangerous threshold by Scott Dance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/06/05/global-temperatures-1-5-celsius-record-year/
When it comes to climate I have to ask what are we thinking? Are we believing that some magical technology is going to come along and save us from the repercussions of our actions? Is the way we live so precious to us that we wish to blind ourselves to the impact of our lifestyles? And what about all the habitat, ecosystems that we destroy in the process of endless building that is really suited to the last century and not the future.
We need to think, plan, act and live differently if we want a livable planet for those babies pictured in my facebook feed from friends and family.
I have much more to say and some interesting reading to report, but this is on my usual writing long side already, so watch for the next edition of the Activist’s Diary.
Before getting into the meat of this Activist’s Diary, at the July 1, 2024 Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee Councilmember Taplin’s Affordable Housing for Artists and Berkeley Green New Deal: Just Transition Framework for the General Plan’s Environmental Justice Element were continued to a future meeting with no action or discussion (a message from Taplin’s office was sent to continue the items) and COPA/TOPA (Community Opportunity to Purchase Act / Tenants’ Opportunity to Purchase Act) is moving on to council with votes by Councilmembers Humbert and Wengraf to kill it with a negative recommendation. (Lunaparra voted against the Humbert – Wengraf motion).
I missed the Land Use Meeting, but I picked up the discussion from listening to the recording. (FYI every Council Committee meeting is recorded. The link is at the bottom of the committee webpage.) There were just a handful of speakers. Humbert, committee chair, started off the discussion with his opinion TOPA should not be pursued and should be forwarded with a negative recommendation. Wengraf concurred.
Councilmember Lunaparra spoke in favor of TOPA, about the years of work put into it, stabilizing affordable housing and asked staff if she could pick up TOPA from former councilmember Harrison and proceed as the sponsor. City staff told Lunaparra she could not.
Interestingly in the July 8 Agenda Committee discussion on legislative reform, committee members Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf had a long discussion of how proposed ordinances and resolutions from councilmembers who have left office could move forward with new sponsors.
If TOPA had ever passed, it would require property owners to notify tenants that the property they are living in was being put up for sale. TOPA would give tenants the first right of refusal meaning first right to purchase the property. The real estate industry, property owners of rental property as you might expect had a small fit when it was first presented back in 2018 by Arreguin. Tenants clamored for it.
I never thought there would be a huge number of tenants that could scrape the money /deposits / loans together to purchase a multi-unit building, but it could have been a stabilizing factor in housing. In the resubmission by Harrison (the first submission was by Arreguin who presented various versions over months and years and then let it disappear) COPA added a new dimension for the building purchase through affordable housing nonprofits in the COPA arm of the proposal.
At the July 3 FITES (Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability) Committee, Taplin’s Train Quiet Zones in West Berkeley slipped off the table as too expensive to pursue though the staff presentation on the costs of various options was excellent. Councilmember Bartlett’s EVITP (Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program) was referred out of committee for review by the City Attorney. This is an ordinance requiring 50% of electricians per job installing and maintaining city-funded electric vehicle supply equipment and infrastructure to be certified through a training program to reduce risk of fire.
FITES Committee members Taplin, Humbert and Lunaparra had already made up their minds to refer the Curb Management Plan from the Environment and Climate Commission to the City Manager when they rejected my recommendation that this item really needed input from the Commission on Disability, the Design Review Committee (DRC) and the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) before sending the item off to sit (languish) in the very long City Manager “to do” list. Plus using these resources could speed up the process.
Attending as many City meetings as I do (and life experiences as a caregiver and a RN) gives me a different perspective on how we can use the expertise in the community including citizen scientists and commissioners to get things done.
Curb Management which is about loading zones, parking, bus stops and bicycle lanes really needs broad input. Disability parking isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I remember handicapped spaces that didn’t work with our handicapped van. The inability of the DRC and ZAB to place loading zones where they would work best for new mixed-use developments, hampers project design.
My recall of creating the Council Committees was sold on Councilmembers developing and refining proposals in committee. Former Councilmember Harrison often used the FITES Committee as a forum to bring in representatives from business and the community for input before finalizing ideas into ordinances. I miss that.
As I have written many times before, City Council Committees are often a detour on the way to getting things done.
The Bicycle Access Improvements on the Virginia Street Bikeway were in the draft agenda for July 23 City Council meeting until it was pulled on Monday to be postponed until fall. The Virginia Street Bikeway went through the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission on June 20. I arrived a little late that evening having attended the DRC first. I counted about forty people (most of whom spoke) on whether the Virginia bikeway should be 9 feet wide and preserve parking or 12 feet wide and remove parking. I did not count how many speakers pleaded for each alternative, but there was a heavy showing for preserving parking and a third alternative suggested by Bryce Nesbit complete with a map.
Ray Yep the Commissioner chairing the meeting tried to put together a compromise or at the very least at a community meeting to explore the bikeway alternatives further. The Commission was having none of it, declined to support Yep’s motion and voted for the 12 foot wide bikeway.
I am not an enthusiast of curbed protected bikeways. If we ever really get people out of cars and on bicycles and scooters, narrow protected bikeways will not handle a real increase in usage.
For all the attention to bike infrastructure, when Bryce Nesbit with a group of volunteers duplicated the prior bicycle rider counts by approximating the same locations, conditions and times, their bicycle counts found fewer bicycle riders in the 2023 count than the 2010 and 2015 counts. The population of Berkeley during that same time increased from 112,580 (2010) to 118,962 (2023). At the Transportation Commission meeting where the bicycle survey results were presented, the commissioners expressed no interest in pursuing why the investment in bicycle infrastructure wasn’t translating into changing behavior.
My favored response to encouraging the switch from cars to bicycles and improving safety is reducing/restricting speed on residential streets and directing vehicle traffic to identified traffic corridors resulting in bicycle and scooter friendly streets (quiet streets) instead of curbed bike lanes.
At the June 25 City Council meeting the main event was the Council managing to pass the biennial budget for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Councilmember Kesarwani made her pitch to remove the budgeted $10,000,000 for the small sites program and did not walk out as she did at the Budget and Finance Committee on June 19 when Councilmember Hahn countered Kesarwani by speaking for the importance of funding the purchase of existing small apartment buildings and thereby supporting existing affordable housing and community diversity.
The $10,000,000 is more like seed money for housing trusts, grants, etc.
The budget passed unanimously.
What didn’t get any attention was agenda item 58. Climate lost.
In 2021 when Former Councilmember Kate Harrison proposed adopting an ordinance on climate with the overwhelming title “Establishing Emergency Greenhouse Gas Limits, Process for Updated Climate Action Plan, Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Regional Collaboration.”
The carbon dioxide level was described as staggering at 418 parts per million (ppm). Now three years later on July 6, 2024 CO2 was 425.50 ppm.
Global warming which was at 1.1 °C above preindustrial levels in 2021 and given as justification for taking action came with this warning, “[C]urrent global growth trends and policies could push humanity past 1.5 degrees by mid-century…” and “[T]he ‘Global North,’ which includes Berkeley, has far exceeded its fair share of the emissions …[and] must reduce its emissions rapidly and justly”.
In 2018 when the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published the special report on the importance of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5°C instead of 2°C to avoid the most catastrophic impacts from climate change the prediction for reaching/crossing the 1.5°C threshold was sometime between 2030 and 2050.
The report came with this directive to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global warming.
“The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require ‘rapid and far-reaching’ transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.” http://tiny.cc/82n3zz
The proposed Harrison climate ordinance was already dead long before City Council voted to take no action on May 25. I counted twenty-one meetings/opportunities for action, but found it was brought up for discussion only three times. The last FITES Committee discussion was on June 6, 2022 with nothing until May 15, 2024 when FITES took no action and sent it back to council.
According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, we have already crossed the 1.5°C threshold. The global average temperature was 1.6°C above preindustrial levels for the twelve months from June 2023 through May 2024.
The latest climate news is anything but reassuring. On June 7, 2024 on Democracy Now the closing interview was with Jeff Goodall the author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. Just four days earlier Goodall wrote an op-ed “The Heat Wave Scenario That Keeps Climate Scientists Up at Night” in the New York Times. That climate scenario is a power failure in the height of an extreme heat wave. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/03/opinion/heat-technology-climate.html
Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology, Arizona State University and the University of Michigan looked at the potential consequences of a total blackout for two days with three days of restoring power in three cities (Phoenix, Detroit, Atlanta) during an extreme heat wave. The results for Phoenix predicted 800,000 emergency room visits and 13,000 deaths, for Detroit 221 deaths and Atlanta 12,540 emergency room visits and 6 deaths.
The first 2024 draft update to Berkeley’s federally required Local Hazard Mitigation Plan (LHMP) projects a potential annual average of six to seven 90-100 degree days in Berkeley in ten years and follows that with there isn’t much useful research on the economic impacts of high heat at the local level.
Six or seven days doesn’t seem like much to worry about, though I certainly remember during 2022 heat wave receiving the text alert at 5:48 pm on September 6, 2022 to shut down all unnecessary power to save the grid.
On July 10, 2024 the Mercury News published the California Department of Insurance found the hidden costs of extreme heat to be $7.7 billion for California over the last decade from lost productivity to healthcare for heat related illnesses. The evening news announced fourteen deaths (the number is expected to go up) in San Jose from heat in the current heat wave.
In Berkeley, our first 2024 summer “heat wave” according to my iPhone Berkeley reached only 81° on July 4, but Palm Springs reached 124° on July 5 (day after reports in the newspaper). Now we’re in another temperature swing under the heat dome covering much of the U.S. West.
In the LHMP, if in a ten year future the heat wave for Berkeley is projected at six to seven 90° to 100° days then what are the temperatures going to be east, north and south of us?
Jeff Goodall in The Heat Will Kill You First doesn’t stop with what happens to us humans. He includes what happens to plants (it isn’t good) our food in this heated future. Councilmember Bartlett’s Berkeley Food Utility and Access Resilience Measure (FARM) passed by City Council and sitting in the City Manager’s long referral “to do” list isn’t going to save us. In the committee discussion, the food resilience was to look at sources of food within 100 miles of Berkeley, seemingly forgetting that there are hundreds of thousands of other people living in that same 100 miles and what might happen to those food sources in a drought and on a heated planet.
Mayor Arreguin’s April 11, 2024 email “Implementing Climate Policies for a Greener Future makes it sound as if here in Berkeley we’ve made incredible progress. I beg to differ.
I went back to Mayor Arreguin’s email from April 11, 2024 extolling how great Berkeley is doing on climate action with temperature rise of 1.18 C° for 2023. (The 1.18 °C is from NOAA) A bulk of the conclusions Arreguin cited on GHG reductions attribute 54% of Berkeley’s GHG to transportation were from 2021 when we were still barely coming out of the pandemic shutdowns.
Looking at the December 12, 2023 Climate Action Plan and Resilience Update from Jordon Klein, Director, Department of Planning and Development linked in Arreguin’s email, Berkeley has some big work to do this year with a budget that is undergoing some belt tightening. The goal for public Level 2 EV chargers is 420 by 2025. There were 110 in October 2023. The goal for public direct current fast chargers by 2025 is 100. There were 19 in 2023.
More worrisome risks in the LHMP are active and potential landslide areas, wildland urban wildfire and the overdue big earthquake whenever that comes. Looking at the maps in the LHMP there is very little land in Berkeley that is not in one of the identified high-risk areas, i.e. the Hayward Fault, landslide, liquefaction or wildfire.
You can read the LHMP at https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/local-hazard-mitigation-plan-update
The LHMP includes lots of charts and maps, but it does not include this link where you can type in an address and see whether that address/land parcel is on a fault line, landside area or both or sitting in a liquefaction zone. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
One thing Wengraf and I totally agree on, is Berkeley should not be adding density, building more housing and putting more people in the high fire zones which also happen to be next to or on top of the Hayward Fault and in landslide zones.
Arreguin cited in his email the “Deep Green Building Initiative” which he authored with Hahn. The Deep Green Building Initiative was an incentive-based plan. I said at the time as a participant in the meetings, that incentives would never work and they haven’t. Developers do use the state measure SB 330 density bonus with the formula for how far a project can exceed zoning restrictions by including a pittance of income restricted units in the building.
From my perspective, we have a lot of work to do to warrant labeling Berkeley as a leader.
A year of record global heat has pushed Earth closer to dangerous threshold by Scott Dance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/06/05/global-temperatures-1-5-celsius-record-year/
When it comes to climate I have to ask what are we thinking? Are we believing that some magical technology is going to come along and save us from the repercussions of our actions? Is the way we live so precious to us that we wish to blind ourselves to the impact of our lifestyles? And what about all the habitat, ecosystems that we destroy in the process of endless building that is really suited to the last century and not the future.
We need to think, plan, act and live differently if we want a livable planet for those babies pictured in my facebook feed from friends and family.
I have much more to say and some interesting reading to report, but this is on my usual writing long side already, so watch for the next edition of the Activist’s Diary.
July 5, 2024
My neighbor and I are out looking in anticipation for little bites in the leaves of the plants in the strip between the sidewalk and the street. I call it the median, though a new friend constantly corrects me that the median is in the middle of the street. The strip has many names like road verge, parkways, medians, berms, hellstrip. It’s really owned by the city, but we’re responsible for maintaining it.
I got help to dig up, pull out the weeds in my strip and my neighbor hired the same “helper” to take out the concrete. We’ve been going to the native plant stores and put in native plants, for birds, butterflies and caterpillars. We thought we had lost the caterpillars, but I got a text there were two. I’m thinking, I might have to put up a sign on the sidewalk, “caterpillar crossing” when they leave the plants to form their chrysalis and return as a butterfly. I planted the pipevine inside the front yard.
Erin Diehm who introduced me to the thrill of native plants said it might be three or four years before I see the pipevine caterpillars and the black and iridescent blue pipevine butterflies. In pre-pandemic days as we walked together to the downtown Y, she would point out the yards with native plants with skippers, bees and butterflies and she would point out the yards with non-native imported plants as dead zones with no pollinators flitting from plant to plant.
I shudder when I think of both the massive and focused herbicide and pesticide spraying to maintain big green lawns when I visit family in the Midwest. This along with monoculture, alien
/non-native plants, urban sprawl, glass architecture and climate change is why we’ve lost a third of the birds in North America and are sitting on the edge of the collapse of nature.
With all the swirling bad news, finding caterpillars is brightening my day.
When I see the development plans at the Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB), I feel like the designs are for a past that is gone, not a warming future especially not an excessive heat warning day. Those building plans with bedrooms with no windows become deadly in a power failure.
The 1598 University project (the bedrooms have windows) came back for final design approval to DRC on May 16 with a new architectural firm DJR out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. DRC rejected the changes DJR made to the design by Trachtenberg Architects and sent them back to the drawing board. DJR returned on June 20 bringing back the featured shading over windows and full samples of the exterior finish. The building exterior/finish was much improved, but landscape plans had a row of Canary pines.
Mary Muszynski, MLA (Master of Landscape Architecture) is the DRC member with the responsibility for assessing and advising on project development landscape plans.
Muszynski addressed the Canary pines in a way that was a first for DRC. She said that Canary pines are a highly flammable tree with resin and even though 1598 University is in the flats and not in one of the very high fire hazard severity zones, highly flammable trees should not be planted next to residences.
Muszynski also asked DJR to reduce cultivars and increase native plants.
It is summer, it is hot, we need to think and act differently which takes us to the property insurance crisis in the very high fire hazard severity zones (VHFHSZ).
First to the Insurance Crisis Panel arranged by Councilmember Wengraf.
I live in the formerly redlined area of Berkeley, the flats, not the wildland urban interface (WUI) or in fire zone 2 (Berkeley Hills) or 3 (Panoramic Hill).
Here are my takeaways from the webinar: 1) If you own property in one of the high risk wildland urban interface fire areas or happen to sit in the same zip code, when you get that homeowner insurance policy cancellation notice or giant rate hike, check if you can change your status through home hardening measures (measures to make your property more resistant to wildfire). 2) Get to work immediately to find a replacement even if the actual cancellation may still be a couple of months or more away. 3) If you find an insurer the advice is jump on it as the offer can quickly slip away. 4) When all else fails, there is the California Fair Plan. 5) The California Fair Plan is intended to be temporary while searching for an insurer and may not (more like will not) offer the full coverage homeowners seek in normal circumstances.
Though the name California Fair Plan makes it sound like it is a State of California sponsored backstop it is not.
You can watch the Insurance Crisis webinar at https://youtu.be/76TV56X3dLk?si=GVAHverDe632u5Hk
There wasn’t a lot of detail on the California Fair Plan by the panel. For a better understanding of the Fair Plan, Livable California sponsored an in-depth session which can be watched at: https://youtu.be/OWCewh-_26g?si=Czvbxeeeel2FOW8G&t=1
The property insurance crisis is much broader than just California and Florida. ‘How ‘Kitty cats’ are wrecking the home insurance industry” by Jake Bittle originally published in Grist and republished in the Guardian gives a taste to how the cumulative impact of smaller catastrophic storms fueled by climate change are hitting the home insurance markets in the Midwest, plains and south. https://grist.org/extreme-weather/home-insurance-midwest-climate-disasters/
None of this is good news.
When catastrophic events hit, they make a splash in the news cycle for a couple of days and then disappear. In Jake Bittle’s book The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, Bittle takesus into the personal stories of how people’s lives and community are impacted and changed from the Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene, fire, heat, drought and flood. This book is definitely worth reading and not just because the section on fires is close to home, the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa and the Camp fire that destroyed Paradise. As for floods, I will never look at Houston the same way.
If you don’t have a TV with connection to CNN or didn’t watch the series Violent Earth you can still watch episode 2 Wildfire for $1.99+ https://www.vudu.com/content/browse/details/Violent-Earth-Wildfire/3305747
My neighbor and I are out looking in anticipation for little bites in the leaves of the plants in the strip between the sidewalk and the street. I call it the median, though a new friend constantly corrects me that the median is in the middle of the street. The strip has many names like road verge, parkways, medians, berms, hellstrip. It’s really owned by the city, but we’re responsible for maintaining it.
I got help to dig up, pull out the weeds in my strip and my neighbor hired the same “helper” to take out the concrete. We’ve been going to the native plant stores and put in native plants, for birds, butterflies and caterpillars. We thought we had lost the caterpillars, but I got a text there were two. I’m thinking, I might have to put up a sign on the sidewalk, “caterpillar crossing” when they leave the plants to form their chrysalis and return as a butterfly. I planted the pipevine inside the front yard.
Erin Diehm who introduced me to the thrill of native plants said it might be three or four years before I see the pipevine caterpillars and the black and iridescent blue pipevine butterflies. In pre-pandemic days as we walked together to the downtown Y, she would point out the yards with native plants with skippers, bees and butterflies and she would point out the yards with non-native imported plants as dead zones with no pollinators flitting from plant to plant.
I shudder when I think of both the massive and focused herbicide and pesticide spraying to maintain big green lawns when I visit family in the Midwest. This along with monoculture, alien
/non-native plants, urban sprawl, glass architecture and climate change is why we’ve lost a third of the birds in North America and are sitting on the edge of the collapse of nature.
With all the swirling bad news, finding caterpillars is brightening my day.
When I see the development plans at the Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB), I feel like the designs are for a past that is gone, not a warming future especially not an excessive heat warning day. Those building plans with bedrooms with no windows become deadly in a power failure.
The 1598 University project (the bedrooms have windows) came back for final design approval to DRC on May 16 with a new architectural firm DJR out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. DRC rejected the changes DJR made to the design by Trachtenberg Architects and sent them back to the drawing board. DJR returned on June 20 bringing back the featured shading over windows and full samples of the exterior finish. The building exterior/finish was much improved, but landscape plans had a row of Canary pines.
Mary Muszynski, MLA (Master of Landscape Architecture) is the DRC member with the responsibility for assessing and advising on project development landscape plans.
Muszynski addressed the Canary pines in a way that was a first for DRC. She said that Canary pines are a highly flammable tree with resin and even though 1598 University is in the flats and not in one of the very high fire hazard severity zones, highly flammable trees should not be planted next to residences.
Muszynski also asked DJR to reduce cultivars and increase native plants.
It is summer, it is hot, we need to think and act differently which takes us to the property insurance crisis in the very high fire hazard severity zones (VHFHSZ).
First to the Insurance Crisis Panel arranged by Councilmember Wengraf.
I live in the formerly redlined area of Berkeley, the flats, not the wildland urban interface (WUI) or in fire zone 2 (Berkeley Hills) or 3 (Panoramic Hill).
Here are my takeaways from the webinar: 1) If you own property in one of the high risk wildland urban interface fire areas or happen to sit in the same zip code, when you get that homeowner insurance policy cancellation notice or giant rate hike, check if you can change your status through home hardening measures (measures to make your property more resistant to wildfire). 2) Get to work immediately to find a replacement even if the actual cancellation may still be a couple of months or more away. 3) If you find an insurer the advice is jump on it as the offer can quickly slip away. 4) When all else fails, there is the California Fair Plan. 5) The California Fair Plan is intended to be temporary while searching for an insurer and may not (more like will not) offer the full coverage homeowners seek in normal circumstances.
Though the name California Fair Plan makes it sound like it is a State of California sponsored backstop it is not.
You can watch the Insurance Crisis webinar at https://youtu.be/76TV56X3dLk?si=GVAHverDe632u5Hk
There wasn’t a lot of detail on the California Fair Plan by the panel. For a better understanding of the Fair Plan, Livable California sponsored an in-depth session which can be watched at: https://youtu.be/OWCewh-_26g?si=Czvbxeeeel2FOW8G&t=1
The property insurance crisis is much broader than just California and Florida. ‘How ‘Kitty cats’ are wrecking the home insurance industry” by Jake Bittle originally published in Grist and republished in the Guardian gives a taste to how the cumulative impact of smaller catastrophic storms fueled by climate change are hitting the home insurance markets in the Midwest, plains and south. https://grist.org/extreme-weather/home-insurance-midwest-climate-disasters/
None of this is good news.
When catastrophic events hit, they make a splash in the news cycle for a couple of days and then disappear. In Jake Bittle’s book The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, Bittle takesus into the personal stories of how people’s lives and community are impacted and changed from the Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene, fire, heat, drought and flood. This book is definitely worth reading and not just because the section on fires is close to home, the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa and the Camp fire that destroyed Paradise. As for floods, I will never look at Houston the same way.
If you don’t have a TV with connection to CNN or didn’t watch the series Violent Earth you can still watch episode 2 Wildfire for $1.99+ https://www.vudu.com/content/browse/details/Violent-Earth-Wildfire/3305747
July 2, 2024
I’ve been doing more reading than writing in the recent weeks and as usual the reading content is heavy, bringing a different frame to the war in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, the debate and the Supreme Court.
After reading Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine on the Holodomor the entirely manmade famine of the 1930s also known as the Ukrainian Famine engineered by Joseph Stalin, it is difficult to believe the Ukrainians all these years later would be willing to negotiate a peace agreement with Russia that would give away any Ukrainian land.
Memories are long.
When I read Ronen Bergman’s book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted AssassinationsI described it as brutal and it was with descriptions of bombings and torture followed by murder. But even that did not prepare me for the brutality in Ilan Pappe’s description of the Nakba in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
In Ashfaaq Carim’s March 15, 2024 interview with Pappe, Pappe describes his journey sharing how through declassification of the historical documents of the Nakba in 1978 challenged the narrative and everything he and his friends had come to believe. Reading the declassified documents changed the trajectory of his career as a historian resulting in becoming an Israeli dissident and authoring The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine in 2006. https://youtu.be/Bu1_OFUcd0g?si=81-xdtA6ftEmSPfO
There seems to be an endless list of books on Israel and Palestine. Since November 2023, I’ve made my way through thirteen, have three in process and six more on hold. But it was Peter Maass’s April 9, 2024 opinion piece in the Washington Post, “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them” that led me to reading about the war in Bosnia in his first book Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War published in 1996.
There is a through line in my recent reading. Maass ponders in Love Thy Neighbor how the “wild beast” in human nature can so easily break the restraints of civilization and incite neighbors to torture, rape and murder one another.
Bosnia was an integrated pluralistic society in 1992 prior to the war.
There is so much that is quotable and memorable in Love Thy Neighbor that it seemed like the entire book was underlined when I borrowed it from the Berkeley library. The book isn’t easy to get. The Berkeley Central Library has one print copy and there are no e-editions. My reading journal is filled with pages of notes.
From Love Thy Neighbor
“What happened in Bosnia was not a Balkan Freak Show, but a violent process of national breakdown at the hand of political manipulators. The dynamics of fear and loathing between people of different backgrounds – ethnic or religious or economic – are not as unique or complex as we might like to believe. Violent breakdowns can occur in virtually any country during times of economic hardship, political transition or moral infirmity; such troubles create opportunities for manipulators and the manipulators create opportunities for the wild beast.”
We are in a perilous time for our country. With the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 as a guide, Donald Trump and all of his enabling sycophants are poised to dismantle the governing we have known into an authoritarian state.
With no hope of expanding the Supreme Court or impeaching the corrupted Clarence Thomas, the secure conservative majority of six to three has free rein or better free reign to create endless damage.
We could say the dismantling has already begun with the decisions coming from the Supreme Court.
The Court has even gone so far as to encourage payoffs. In Snyder v. United States, the Court decided in a 6 – 3 opinion that generous gifts after a “service” by state and local officials is not bribery/corruption. This was before Monday, July 1, 2024 when the Court bestowed broad immunity on a past and future Trump presidency, “The Court thus concludes that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” (page 2 TRUMP v. UNITED STATES) https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/07/scotus_immunity-7-1.pdf
Women, pregnant people were already disposable with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the abortion bans that followed. As if that wasn’t enough, through the use of the filibuster the Senate minority blocked legislation to protect the right to contraception on June 5, 2024. And then, there was Biden’s inability to articulate a coherent answer to a question on abortion at the June 27, 2024 debate.
Biden’s performance in the debate was a disaster. Friends were texting me they couldn’t take it anymore and shut off the debate.
In the thread of emails, I’ve been receiving from a Democratic party-based group sending links to donating to Biden’s campaign and articles supporting Biden countering my comment that Biden looked like a deer in headlights and that his performance reinforced all my fears about his aging, they are all in.
Biden has accomplished a lot, but these are no ordinary times. And prior to the debate, his accomplishments weren’t translating into a lead over Trump. In fact, besides being on the losing end, Biden has been polling behind Democratic Senators and Representatives.
In the fallout from the debate, it is not the loyal Democrats that worry me. They will vote the ticket regardless. It is the people like the woman standing next to me waiting for the light to change to cross the street on Friday afternoon. I asked her if she watched the debate and what she thought. To her the debate was such a disaster, she said she can’t vote for either Biden or Trump. She expects to sit out voting. She voted for Biden last time.
There was the young man at my house for the inspection of my rooftop solar. He didn’t watch the debate and wasn’t planning on voting. If he did vote he said he would probably vote for Trump as he is not impressed with Biden.
What appears obvious is that Biden can perform exceptionally when he has a teleprompter. But, stepping away from scripted settings and rote glad-handing interactions, Biden falls apart. Biden lost his train of thought, was at times incoherent, was unable to counter Trump’s barrage of lies and on the question on abortion which is undoubtedly one of the most important issues for young voters he blew it.
This cannot be explained away, by saying Biden has a stutter or he had a cold or was tired.
We need a fully functioning president or at the very least we need a team around Biden who have enough sense, not to put him into situations where he will fail.
Think back to the 2020 Biden Trump debate. Biden was sharp in control. This time Biden struggled through responses. The description I heard that was most fitting was in the Ezra Klein post-debate podcast. It was, as if Biden’s cue cards fell on the floor in a pile and as he was trying to pick them up he spouted off in whatever order he found them.
Friday morning following the debate on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough left behind his usual cheer leading for another Biden term and spoke honestly “failure is not an option” and asked if any Fortune 500 company would keep a CEO in place who appeared as Biden did last night losing his train of thought unable to respond to Trump’s continuous string of lies. The answer is, of course, no.
Mika (on Morning Joe) came to Biden’s defense, saying we shouldn’t be so quick to judge.
I agree with Ezra Klein’s post saying that the job of the president is not just to do the job, but to instill confidence that as president he is capable of doing the job.
I can’t imagine a President Biden able to fulfill his responsibilities for another term.
As I see it, we don’t have a large enough core of faithful supporters who will vote for Biden to defeat Trump even without considering third party candidates siphoning away votes.
Plus, Biden losing means an unrestrained Trump. When Trump tells his followers, “I am your retribution” we should believe him.
Biden’s responses in the debate told me why we are nine months into a war on Gaza that is an unremitting horror, a moral and political failure and the move to peace in Ukraine is beyond grasp.
Biden has burned through voters who supported him in 2020 in his handling of Israel in the war on Gaza.
This is a train wreck.
Back to Love Thy Neighbor.
“The goal of imperial wars, which we are most familiar with is to conquer and rule [Russia’s war on Ukraine]. The goal of nationalist wars, as in Bosnia [and the Nakba] is to conquer and cleanse. These contests are winner take-all. When you are faced with enemies who wish to expunge you from your land, and when those enemies offer a treaty that ensures their boots will stay on your throat, suffocating you one day, you have little choice but to keep struggling, even though the odds are against you and people who call themselves your friends are saying you should give up. Resistance becomes not an option but an imperative.”
An article on Gaza in the Guardian many weeks ago described the destruction of housing and the toxins from bombings left behind would take possibly fourteen years to clean up. Looking at the photos of the devastation that make it out despite the targeted killing of journalists in Palestine makes fourteen years sound like unrealistic optimism. Along with the destruction of housing (domicide), hospitals and infrastructure, there is the destruction of schools and universities (scholasticide) and the killing of scholars, educators, artists – the erasure of history.
Then there is the war crime of starvation.
I find it difficult to describe what is happening in Gaza as anything other than genocide.
Councilmember Lunaparra at the dais with the keffiyeh over her shoulders is smart, articulate, well-informed, impressive as someone who is young and a fresh college graduate, but she is no match for the pro-Israel power players dominating Berkeley City Council leadership. Her promise of a ceasefire resolution is dead just like the thousands of innocent Palestinian children.
There was one bright spot in my recent reading, Ali Velshi’s just released Small Acts of Courage: A legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy. The book is part memoir, part history. It is the story of immigration, finding country and home beginning with Velshi’s great grandfather leaving India for South Africa and family members crossing paths with Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Tolstoy Farm, living through Apartheid, the liberation of Kenya to self-governing and landing in Canada. The section on the pluralistic, multi-culture, immigrant welcoming Canada is inspiring. Small Acts of Courage is a book I highly recommend.
I’ve been doing more reading than writing in the recent weeks and as usual the reading content is heavy, bringing a different frame to the war in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, the debate and the Supreme Court.
After reading Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine on the Holodomor the entirely manmade famine of the 1930s also known as the Ukrainian Famine engineered by Joseph Stalin, it is difficult to believe the Ukrainians all these years later would be willing to negotiate a peace agreement with Russia that would give away any Ukrainian land.
Memories are long.
When I read Ronen Bergman’s book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted AssassinationsI described it as brutal and it was with descriptions of bombings and torture followed by murder. But even that did not prepare me for the brutality in Ilan Pappe’s description of the Nakba in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
In Ashfaaq Carim’s March 15, 2024 interview with Pappe, Pappe describes his journey sharing how through declassification of the historical documents of the Nakba in 1978 challenged the narrative and everything he and his friends had come to believe. Reading the declassified documents changed the trajectory of his career as a historian resulting in becoming an Israeli dissident and authoring The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine in 2006. https://youtu.be/Bu1_OFUcd0g?si=81-xdtA6ftEmSPfO
There seems to be an endless list of books on Israel and Palestine. Since November 2023, I’ve made my way through thirteen, have three in process and six more on hold. But it was Peter Maass’s April 9, 2024 opinion piece in the Washington Post, “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them” that led me to reading about the war in Bosnia in his first book Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War published in 1996.
There is a through line in my recent reading. Maass ponders in Love Thy Neighbor how the “wild beast” in human nature can so easily break the restraints of civilization and incite neighbors to torture, rape and murder one another.
Bosnia was an integrated pluralistic society in 1992 prior to the war.
There is so much that is quotable and memorable in Love Thy Neighbor that it seemed like the entire book was underlined when I borrowed it from the Berkeley library. The book isn’t easy to get. The Berkeley Central Library has one print copy and there are no e-editions. My reading journal is filled with pages of notes.
From Love Thy Neighbor
“What happened in Bosnia was not a Balkan Freak Show, but a violent process of national breakdown at the hand of political manipulators. The dynamics of fear and loathing between people of different backgrounds – ethnic or religious or economic – are not as unique or complex as we might like to believe. Violent breakdowns can occur in virtually any country during times of economic hardship, political transition or moral infirmity; such troubles create opportunities for manipulators and the manipulators create opportunities for the wild beast.”
We are in a perilous time for our country. With the Heritage Foundation Project 2025 as a guide, Donald Trump and all of his enabling sycophants are poised to dismantle the governing we have known into an authoritarian state.
With no hope of expanding the Supreme Court or impeaching the corrupted Clarence Thomas, the secure conservative majority of six to three has free rein or better free reign to create endless damage.
We could say the dismantling has already begun with the decisions coming from the Supreme Court.
The Court has even gone so far as to encourage payoffs. In Snyder v. United States, the Court decided in a 6 – 3 opinion that generous gifts after a “service” by state and local officials is not bribery/corruption. This was before Monday, July 1, 2024 when the Court bestowed broad immunity on a past and future Trump presidency, “The Court thus concludes that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.” (page 2 TRUMP v. UNITED STATES) https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/07/scotus_immunity-7-1.pdf
Women, pregnant people were already disposable with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the abortion bans that followed. As if that wasn’t enough, through the use of the filibuster the Senate minority blocked legislation to protect the right to contraception on June 5, 2024. And then, there was Biden’s inability to articulate a coherent answer to a question on abortion at the June 27, 2024 debate.
Biden’s performance in the debate was a disaster. Friends were texting me they couldn’t take it anymore and shut off the debate.
In the thread of emails, I’ve been receiving from a Democratic party-based group sending links to donating to Biden’s campaign and articles supporting Biden countering my comment that Biden looked like a deer in headlights and that his performance reinforced all my fears about his aging, they are all in.
Biden has accomplished a lot, but these are no ordinary times. And prior to the debate, his accomplishments weren’t translating into a lead over Trump. In fact, besides being on the losing end, Biden has been polling behind Democratic Senators and Representatives.
In the fallout from the debate, it is not the loyal Democrats that worry me. They will vote the ticket regardless. It is the people like the woman standing next to me waiting for the light to change to cross the street on Friday afternoon. I asked her if she watched the debate and what she thought. To her the debate was such a disaster, she said she can’t vote for either Biden or Trump. She expects to sit out voting. She voted for Biden last time.
There was the young man at my house for the inspection of my rooftop solar. He didn’t watch the debate and wasn’t planning on voting. If he did vote he said he would probably vote for Trump as he is not impressed with Biden.
What appears obvious is that Biden can perform exceptionally when he has a teleprompter. But, stepping away from scripted settings and rote glad-handing interactions, Biden falls apart. Biden lost his train of thought, was at times incoherent, was unable to counter Trump’s barrage of lies and on the question on abortion which is undoubtedly one of the most important issues for young voters he blew it.
This cannot be explained away, by saying Biden has a stutter or he had a cold or was tired.
We need a fully functioning president or at the very least we need a team around Biden who have enough sense, not to put him into situations where he will fail.
Think back to the 2020 Biden Trump debate. Biden was sharp in control. This time Biden struggled through responses. The description I heard that was most fitting was in the Ezra Klein post-debate podcast. It was, as if Biden’s cue cards fell on the floor in a pile and as he was trying to pick them up he spouted off in whatever order he found them.
Friday morning following the debate on Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough left behind his usual cheer leading for another Biden term and spoke honestly “failure is not an option” and asked if any Fortune 500 company would keep a CEO in place who appeared as Biden did last night losing his train of thought unable to respond to Trump’s continuous string of lies. The answer is, of course, no.
Mika (on Morning Joe) came to Biden’s defense, saying we shouldn’t be so quick to judge.
I agree with Ezra Klein’s post saying that the job of the president is not just to do the job, but to instill confidence that as president he is capable of doing the job.
I can’t imagine a President Biden able to fulfill his responsibilities for another term.
As I see it, we don’t have a large enough core of faithful supporters who will vote for Biden to defeat Trump even without considering third party candidates siphoning away votes.
Plus, Biden losing means an unrestrained Trump. When Trump tells his followers, “I am your retribution” we should believe him.
Biden’s responses in the debate told me why we are nine months into a war on Gaza that is an unremitting horror, a moral and political failure and the move to peace in Ukraine is beyond grasp.
Biden has burned through voters who supported him in 2020 in his handling of Israel in the war on Gaza.
This is a train wreck.
Back to Love Thy Neighbor.
“The goal of imperial wars, which we are most familiar with is to conquer and rule [Russia’s war on Ukraine]. The goal of nationalist wars, as in Bosnia [and the Nakba] is to conquer and cleanse. These contests are winner take-all. When you are faced with enemies who wish to expunge you from your land, and when those enemies offer a treaty that ensures their boots will stay on your throat, suffocating you one day, you have little choice but to keep struggling, even though the odds are against you and people who call themselves your friends are saying you should give up. Resistance becomes not an option but an imperative.”
An article on Gaza in the Guardian many weeks ago described the destruction of housing and the toxins from bombings left behind would take possibly fourteen years to clean up. Looking at the photos of the devastation that make it out despite the targeted killing of journalists in Palestine makes fourteen years sound like unrealistic optimism. Along with the destruction of housing (domicide), hospitals and infrastructure, there is the destruction of schools and universities (scholasticide) and the killing of scholars, educators, artists – the erasure of history.
Then there is the war crime of starvation.
I find it difficult to describe what is happening in Gaza as anything other than genocide.
Councilmember Lunaparra at the dais with the keffiyeh over her shoulders is smart, articulate, well-informed, impressive as someone who is young and a fresh college graduate, but she is no match for the pro-Israel power players dominating Berkeley City Council leadership. Her promise of a ceasefire resolution is dead just like the thousands of innocent Palestinian children.
There was one bright spot in my recent reading, Ali Velshi’s just released Small Acts of Courage: A legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy. The book is part memoir, part history. It is the story of immigration, finding country and home beginning with Velshi’s great grandfather leaving India for South Africa and family members crossing paths with Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Tolstoy Farm, living through Apartheid, the liberation of Kenya to self-governing and landing in Canada. The section on the pluralistic, multi-culture, immigrant welcoming Canada is inspiring. Small Acts of Courage is a book I highly recommend.
May 6, 2024
The resignation of the City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley wasn’t the only surprise on May 6, 2024.
This was the email sent at 1:09:20 PM PDT on May 6, 2024 to the Peace and Justice Commissioners by Peter Radu giving notice to the Commissioners that the evening Commission meeting scheduled at 7 pm was cancelled. (Note: Okeya is the Peace and Justice Commission Secretary.)
“Dear Commissioners,
With sincere apologies for the late notice, I am writing to inform you that the City Manager has directed staff to cancel tonight’s Peace and Justice Commission meeting. We will pause on rescheduling this meeting until City staff can meet to discuss how we can better plan for and accommodate meetings with potentially volatile agenda items, at this and other commissions. [emphasis added]
Okeya will be taking the formal administrative steps to cancel tonight’s meeting shortly. But I wanted to give you advanced notice, out of respect for your schedules this evening.
Respectfully,
Peter Radu
Assistant to the City Manager - Neighborhood Services
Interim Deputy Director – Health, Housing, and Community Services Department
City of Berkeley
2180 Milvia St, 5th Floor | Berkeley, CA 94704
Desk: 510-981-7045 | Cell: 510-853-2368
Email: [email protected]”
The three Discussion/Action items for the evening were: 8. Update on Planning Gaza Peace Conversation for Berkeley Residents. 9. Discussion on History of Commission Action in the Past Years and Potential 2024 Actions., 10. Discussion and Possible Action on Potential UC Police Removal of Demonstrators from Sproul Plaza.
College student pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken center stage with some national media anchors and pundits calling students terrorists, comparing them to January 6, 2021 insurrectionists, describing them as brainwashed and a string of other derogatory terms.
Chris Hayes had this to say on the long history of college activism in his eight-minute commentary on All In on May 1, “What I find particularly maddening about the focus on the protesters of the conflict is that it is an evasion. It avoids the difficult task of being universally empathetic to our fellow human beings and truly reckoning with the scale of devastation that is wrought by our country in our names, with our support.” (the full commentary at https://youtu.be/LZi7gxXEh5I?si=z85rQf870F8QlvIG )
On Saturday, May 4 Ayman Mohyeldin made his commentary on pro-Palestine protests by starting his first hour with Israa University in Gaza established in 2014 to ensure poverty would not stand in the way of pursuing a college degree. He described the University’s main building as constructed as a love letter to Islamic architecture. The school planned to open a museum in celebration of its tenth anniversary with more than 3000 artifacts from Roman to modern pieces of history and culture.
On January 17, 2024, the IDF demolished that beautiful Israa University building. Nothing is left but rubble, but you can see what it was in pictures of the main building, past conferences, activities and events on the Israa University website. https://en.israa.edu.ps
The UN describes the destruction of educational institutions in Gaza as Scholasticide.
Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine said this about the complete and partial demolition of five of seven educational institutions in Gaza including Israa University, “You are not fighting Hamas, you’re fighting the existence of Palestinians. You’re fighting their capability to have memory and to have records and be educated.”
Friday afternoon, I walked up to Sproul Plaza with a friend to see the UC Berkeley pro-Palestinian encampment. On the sidewalk outside campus grounds members of the worldwide peace movement Women in Black greeted us offering 4” by 6” cards with “Apartheid Israel” in large bold letters. https://womeninblack.org
On one side were four maps with the title “Israeli Theft of Palestinian & Syrian Land, 1947 to Present” with the website, https://ifamericansknew.org at the bottom. On the other side were three quotes from Ariel Sharon. The first quote dated 1973 stated “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them… we’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” The third quote dated 2000 stated “the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict.”
Given all the media coverage of police violently clearing student encampments across the country, we weren’t sure what we would find at Berkeley.
The demonstration was unexpectantly quiet. Other than a speaker surrounded by people sitting quietly on the plaza and two young people (presumably students) with information and free buttons not much was happening. There was a woman painting a portrait on one of the large plywood boards. The tents were packed in closely on the grass in front of Sproul Hall with several porta potties barely visible on north end. Not everyone was paying attention to the encampment. People were walking around on the plaza as one might expect on any normal pleasantly sunny noontime day.
The resignation of the City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley wasn’t the only surprise on May 6, 2024.
This was the email sent at 1:09:20 PM PDT on May 6, 2024 to the Peace and Justice Commissioners by Peter Radu giving notice to the Commissioners that the evening Commission meeting scheduled at 7 pm was cancelled. (Note: Okeya is the Peace and Justice Commission Secretary.)
“Dear Commissioners,
With sincere apologies for the late notice, I am writing to inform you that the City Manager has directed staff to cancel tonight’s Peace and Justice Commission meeting. We will pause on rescheduling this meeting until City staff can meet to discuss how we can better plan for and accommodate meetings with potentially volatile agenda items, at this and other commissions. [emphasis added]
Okeya will be taking the formal administrative steps to cancel tonight’s meeting shortly. But I wanted to give you advanced notice, out of respect for your schedules this evening.
Respectfully,
Peter Radu
Assistant to the City Manager - Neighborhood Services
Interim Deputy Director – Health, Housing, and Community Services Department
City of Berkeley
2180 Milvia St, 5th Floor | Berkeley, CA 94704
Desk: 510-981-7045 | Cell: 510-853-2368
Email: [email protected]”
The three Discussion/Action items for the evening were: 8. Update on Planning Gaza Peace Conversation for Berkeley Residents. 9. Discussion on History of Commission Action in the Past Years and Potential 2024 Actions., 10. Discussion and Possible Action on Potential UC Police Removal of Demonstrators from Sproul Plaza.
College student pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken center stage with some national media anchors and pundits calling students terrorists, comparing them to January 6, 2021 insurrectionists, describing them as brainwashed and a string of other derogatory terms.
Chris Hayes had this to say on the long history of college activism in his eight-minute commentary on All In on May 1, “What I find particularly maddening about the focus on the protesters of the conflict is that it is an evasion. It avoids the difficult task of being universally empathetic to our fellow human beings and truly reckoning with the scale of devastation that is wrought by our country in our names, with our support.” (the full commentary at https://youtu.be/LZi7gxXEh5I?si=z85rQf870F8QlvIG )
On Saturday, May 4 Ayman Mohyeldin made his commentary on pro-Palestine protests by starting his first hour with Israa University in Gaza established in 2014 to ensure poverty would not stand in the way of pursuing a college degree. He described the University’s main building as constructed as a love letter to Islamic architecture. The school planned to open a museum in celebration of its tenth anniversary with more than 3000 artifacts from Roman to modern pieces of history and culture.
On January 17, 2024, the IDF demolished that beautiful Israa University building. Nothing is left but rubble, but you can see what it was in pictures of the main building, past conferences, activities and events on the Israa University website. https://en.israa.edu.ps
The UN describes the destruction of educational institutions in Gaza as Scholasticide.
Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine said this about the complete and partial demolition of five of seven educational institutions in Gaza including Israa University, “You are not fighting Hamas, you’re fighting the existence of Palestinians. You’re fighting their capability to have memory and to have records and be educated.”
Friday afternoon, I walked up to Sproul Plaza with a friend to see the UC Berkeley pro-Palestinian encampment. On the sidewalk outside campus grounds members of the worldwide peace movement Women in Black greeted us offering 4” by 6” cards with “Apartheid Israel” in large bold letters. https://womeninblack.org
On one side were four maps with the title “Israeli Theft of Palestinian & Syrian Land, 1947 to Present” with the website, https://ifamericansknew.org at the bottom. On the other side were three quotes from Ariel Sharon. The first quote dated 1973 stated “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them… we’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” The third quote dated 2000 stated “the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict.”
Given all the media coverage of police violently clearing student encampments across the country, we weren’t sure what we would find at Berkeley.
The demonstration was unexpectantly quiet. Other than a speaker surrounded by people sitting quietly on the plaza and two young people (presumably students) with information and free buttons not much was happening. There was a woman painting a portrait on one of the large plywood boards. The tents were packed in closely on the grass in front of Sproul Hall with several porta potties barely visible on north end. Not everyone was paying attention to the encampment. People were walking around on the plaza as one might expect on any normal pleasantly sunny noontime day.
May 6, 2024 - City Manager Resigns
In a surprise move to anyone watching City of Berkeley politics, the City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley resigned (as reported in Berkeleyside) one hour after the scheduled City Council closed session with one agenda item, city manager evaluation. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/05/06/berkeley-city-manager-resignation
Brushing aside public performance concerns In November 2021, the City Council under the recommendation of Mayor Jesse Arreguin awarded Williams-Ridley a 28% raise of $84,732 to the new annualized salary of $386,160 making Berkeley’s City Manager the fourth highest paid city administrator in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Of the thirteen cities surveyed for salary comparisons, Berkeley rated 13th in area (10.5 square miles) and 11th in population (124,321). The highest paid administrator in the survey was the Contra Costa County Administrator at $393,216 with an area of 716 square miles and a population of 1,165,927.
In the recent months, Berkeley has had an unusual number of very visible resignations. Councilmembers Rigel Robinson and Kate Harrison resigned. Liam Garland, Director of Public Works resigned. Farid Javandel, Transportation Division Manager left in 2023 after the Hopkins Corridor Project fell apart.
Williams-Ridley’s last day is reported as being July 10, 2024.
In a surprise move to anyone watching City of Berkeley politics, the City Manager, Dee Williams-Ridley resigned (as reported in Berkeleyside) one hour after the scheduled City Council closed session with one agenda item, city manager evaluation. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/05/06/berkeley-city-manager-resignation
Brushing aside public performance concerns In November 2021, the City Council under the recommendation of Mayor Jesse Arreguin awarded Williams-Ridley a 28% raise of $84,732 to the new annualized salary of $386,160 making Berkeley’s City Manager the fourth highest paid city administrator in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Of the thirteen cities surveyed for salary comparisons, Berkeley rated 13th in area (10.5 square miles) and 11th in population (124,321). The highest paid administrator in the survey was the Contra Costa County Administrator at $393,216 with an area of 716 square miles and a population of 1,165,927.
In the recent months, Berkeley has had an unusual number of very visible resignations. Councilmembers Rigel Robinson and Kate Harrison resigned. Liam Garland, Director of Public Works resigned. Farid Javandel, Transportation Division Manager left in 2023 after the Hopkins Corridor Project fell apart.
Williams-Ridley’s last day is reported as being July 10, 2024.
April 7, 2024 Part 1
Israel and Palestine continue to consume my attention and reading. Each book, each article, each interview adds another layer to my understanding and perspective, but to put an end to the maiming, killing and genocide in Gaza, orthopedic surgeons Drs. Feroze Sidhwa and Mark Perlmutter who have just returned from Gaza call on us in their graphic description of two weeks at the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis.
If you read nothing else in this Diary, read “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: We urge anyone who reads this to publicly oppose sending weapons to Israel as long as this onslaught continues” by Drs. Feroze Sidhwa and Mark Perlmutter, April 11, 2024. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza
If any of us are thinking that replacing Netanyahu will change the direction of the war, Chris Hayes’ podcast interview with Israeli dissident Meir Baruchin, a Jewish history and civics teacher in Jerusalem, who was jailed and fired from his job (he has since been reinstated) gives us a reality check. You can read or listen at: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/story-israeli-dissident-meir-baruchin-podcast-transcript-rcna146927
Now that council ended pursuing the merger of the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare Community Action Commission, the time is ripe for the Peace and Justice Commission to act on its mission to “Advise the Council and the School Board on issues of peace and social justice. Creates citizen awareness and develops educational programs” and proceed with the planning for the Gaza Peace Roundtable.
If the Peace and Justice Commission roundtable ends with a ceasefire resolution, then getting anywhere with city council will be a mountainous climb with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf firmly entrenched in opposition.
At least when it comes to local elections, I can vote my conscience. There are other choices. Come November, the box will have to be checked for Biden, but that doesn’t mean that vote will go quietly. There are letters to write, visits to be made, demonstrations to attend.
What really caught my attention in the framing by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now for the interview with middle east analyst Mouin Rabbini was two words in the quote from President Biden. The quoted paragraph was taken from a release of Biden’s comments on Univision following the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy. Biden called for a temporary ceasefire and aid to the Palestinians in Gaza.
The two words received no special emphasis though they were cut off when I heard the same recorded Biden comments in a different podcast. If I hadn’t been doing so much reading they might have slipped by, but they sum up where Biden stands when it comes to Israel and Palestine and define policy and the actions of the U.S. Biden’s two words referencing Palestinians were “those people”. https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/10/mouin_rabbani_gaza_biden_netanyahu
It is the “othering” that runs through the history of the Palestinians. The words “those people” denote people who are not like us. They are less than us.
President Carter received blistering criticism and backlash when he wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. (If you are looking for a book on Israel and Palestine with maps, the text of agreements and an easy to read list of events up to 2009 this book has it.)
Apartheid is the correct description. Nathan Thrall describes the walls, the barriers, the checkpoints to control Palestinians in the West Bank in excruciating detail in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.
Aaron David Miller captures it in the second chapter of The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli when he wrote, “[Palestinians] Unlike the Israelis, who had an American Jewish community that generally could be depended on as a champion, Palestinians had few allies in the United States to explain their plight, let alone to create a Hollywood mythology. No Exodus or Cast a Giant Shadow told the world of their suffering and heroism. No United Jewish Appeal raised money or mobilized a community and few allies in Congress pleaded their cause…when Americans thought of Palestine, they thought of refugees and terrorists.”
The title of Khaled Elginoy’s book focusing on the decades of the U.S. taking the side of Israel in negotiations says it so clearly Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians From Balfour to Trump.
Then comes President Biden.
Reuters reported that when Biden met with Netanyahu and the war cabinet on October 21, 2023 on his visit to Israel that he said, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/i-am-zionist-how-joe-bidens-lifelong-bond-with-israel-shapes-war-policy-2023-10-21/
It is true you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. While Theodor Herzl is often credited as establishing the political organization for a Jewish nation at the end of the nineteenth century, the Christian Zionist movement precedes Herzl and the 1917 Balfour Declaration by decades. Some references push Christian Zionism back centuries. Reading “The Impact of Christian Zionism on American Policy” by William N. Dale is a quick primer on the history of Christian Zionism up to the Evangelical embrace of Zionism which serves as a guide to the present-day Republican Party and Trump. https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/ad/ad_v9_2/daw01.html
Tim Alberta covers the entanglement of Evangelicals, Trumpism and Trump in The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
The missile attack on the World Central Kitchen three vehicle convoy by the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), put a crack in Biden’s full unconditional support of Israel as a self-proclaimed Zionist turning his prior requests to Netanyahu into outrage.
What was it that made this so impactful?
How did the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen workers move President Biden to outrage when the deaths of 224 aid workers couldn’t, the deaths of over 400 doctors, nurses and health care workers couldn’t, the deaths of over 33,000 Palestinians couldn’t, the estimated deaths of 14,000 Palestinian children couldn’t, the deaths of Palestinian children from starvation couldn’t? How could the unparalleled suffering of innocent Palestinians not move a president who is recognized for extending his own personal losses to empathy for others?
Was it that Jose Andres isn’t just the Spanish chef and US naturalized citizen who founded World Central Kitchen, Andres is a charismatic humanitarian with vision and knowhow? Andres has literally walked into crises worldwide, more often catastrophes and used social media, videos of conditions to bring the goodness of serving food to hungry people for all to see. Andres finds chefs, volunteers and resources to feed hundreds of people accomplishing the seemingly impossible.
Or was it that this time, six of the seven World Central Kitchen workers killed were not Palestinian Muslims like all those other deaths and instead came from around the world? Was it that this time, President Biden expressed outrage because Jose Andres is a fellow Catholic with whom President Biden has formed a friendship?
Or, is it those people?
Jeet Heer ponders this question in “What It Takes to Break Joe Biden’s Zionist Bubble” published April 5, 2024 in The Nation with the sub header, “The President’s rigid ideological commitment has led him to shut out government dissenters – and his own voters.” The article chronicles how Biden going back to his early days as a Senator has been a firmly entrenched Zionist Hawk. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-zionist-bubble-gaza-muslims/
On Friday, Nancy Pelosi with thirty-six congressional Democrats signed on to the strong letter to President Biden that ended with, “we again urge you to ensure that any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.”
The letter should have arrived in Biden’s inbox, the same day, those of us who listen to Democracy Now first heard of “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy”.
“Lavender” is the AI machine directed program selecting Gazans for assassination who fit a profile making them suspect to being connected to Hamas. A component of that AI program “Where’s Daddy” follows the Gazan men home where the IDF can bomb their assassination target with ease.
Here we worry about AI generated disinformation.
In Gaza, a surreal science fiction future with drones buzzing overhead turns life in Gaza into a real present-day war horror where “no place is safe” children are injured, maimed, orphaned, killed, entire families and neighbors eliminated and buildings destroyed along with the target.
The April 3, 2024 article by Yuval Abraham is disturbing and chilling. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
In this swirl it was agenda item 10 Update the Gaza Peace Round Table Subgroup that pushed my attendance at the Peace and Justice Commission. When I arrived, the room was filled with attendees wrapped in keffiyehs and a man sitting at the table of commissioners wearing a Yamaka who I soon learned was Nimrod Pitsker Elias.
I asked a few of the attendees if they had been coming to the meetings or whether this was their first. For the few that answered this was the first meeting.
Expecting that they were there for the roundtable update, I was surprised when nearly everyone stood up for non-agenda comments. There were more than a dozen who one after another spoke to an incident involving Hahn’s appointee commissioner Nimrod Pitsker Elias at the March 26, city council meeting. He was described as pushing his phone into the face of a Palestinian woman in an act of intimidation and harassment. The speakers asked for his removal from the commission.
One young man said he had four videos of the incident. I handed him my email and asked for the links. So far, no videos or links have appeared in my email. The city council meeting video stream of speakers is of such poor quality, that nothing is visible except the timer filling most of the screen.
In councilmember Taplin’s newsletter, he described being appalled by the harassment of a Jewish woman at the same meeting.
At 7:50 pm councilmember Hahn showed up at the commission meeting, said nothing, took a seat and held her phone in the air evidently to record the meeting. While it came off as an act of intended intimidation, by the time she arrived, most of the attendees who had lined up had already spoken and one of the remaining speakers noted Hahn’s attendance.
This was the second meeting in less than a week that I wished I had a recorder turned on for the entire meeting.
Grace Morizawa explained at the end of the comments that the commission does not have the power to remove a commissioner, that rests with the councilmember. Morizawa did not mention that the number of commissioner terms are limited as that does not apply. Commissioner Elias was appointed by Hahn on December 5, 2023.
When councilmembers are replaced through elections, the new councilmember can choose a new appointee, though often the existing commissioner stays in place.
After the non-agenda comment period, most of the attendees left missing what was probably the most important discussion of the evening, item 13 titled as Discussion on Berkeley High School Ethnic Studies. There was no way of knowing from the agenda packet, meeting minutes or the description Ethnic Studies that this was about sending a letter to BHS from the commission regarding the Berkeley High School (BHS) curriculum on Israel and Palestine unless you attended the prior Peace and Justice Commission meeting.
The proposed letter was not in the agenda packet, as a supplement online or printed for public review. It was read aloud at the meeting.
The letter asked BHS to review class curriculum for errors and respond when according to the evening commission discussion the lesson plan in question had already been corrected.
We heard from Jewish parents who stated they had not heard from their children expressing concerns or acts of anti-Semitism, but in following up they found an organized group of parents claiming anti-Semitism and pushing to change the ethnic studies curriculum to one approved by the Brandeis Center and Anti-Defamation League.
Both commissioners Morizawa and Lippman expressed they did not support sending a letter, that the problem had already been resolved and that the Peace and Justice Commission should not be involved in dictating Berkeley High School curriculum.
Thinking about all the censoring, book banning and threatening to dismiss teachers and librarians from their jobs that is taking place in the south and even some conservative areas in California, I was disappointed that only one more commissioner Bohn joined Morizawa and Lippman to oppose any further consideration over sending a letter.
The final outcome in a four to three vote was to revise the letter and bring it back at the next meeting for final commission approval. Commissioners Jacqulin, Elias, Menscher and Guarino all voted for sending a letter.
There was little to report on the Gaza Peace Roundtable. subgroup. The next step is for the subgroup commissioners Lippman, Morizawa and Elias to find a facilitator for the roundtable.
April 7, 2024, Part 2 is still in the works covering the Planning Commission, the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and the Parks Commission.
Israel and Palestine continue to consume my attention and reading. Each book, each article, each interview adds another layer to my understanding and perspective, but to put an end to the maiming, killing and genocide in Gaza, orthopedic surgeons Drs. Feroze Sidhwa and Mark Perlmutter who have just returned from Gaza call on us in their graphic description of two weeks at the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis.
If you read nothing else in this Diary, read “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: We urge anyone who reads this to publicly oppose sending weapons to Israel as long as this onslaught continues” by Drs. Feroze Sidhwa and Mark Perlmutter, April 11, 2024. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza
If any of us are thinking that replacing Netanyahu will change the direction of the war, Chris Hayes’ podcast interview with Israeli dissident Meir Baruchin, a Jewish history and civics teacher in Jerusalem, who was jailed and fired from his job (he has since been reinstated) gives us a reality check. You can read or listen at: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/why-is-this-happening/story-israeli-dissident-meir-baruchin-podcast-transcript-rcna146927
Now that council ended pursuing the merger of the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare Community Action Commission, the time is ripe for the Peace and Justice Commission to act on its mission to “Advise the Council and the School Board on issues of peace and social justice. Creates citizen awareness and develops educational programs” and proceed with the planning for the Gaza Peace Roundtable.
If the Peace and Justice Commission roundtable ends with a ceasefire resolution, then getting anywhere with city council will be a mountainous climb with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf firmly entrenched in opposition.
At least when it comes to local elections, I can vote my conscience. There are other choices. Come November, the box will have to be checked for Biden, but that doesn’t mean that vote will go quietly. There are letters to write, visits to be made, demonstrations to attend.
What really caught my attention in the framing by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now for the interview with middle east analyst Mouin Rabbini was two words in the quote from President Biden. The quoted paragraph was taken from a release of Biden’s comments on Univision following the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy. Biden called for a temporary ceasefire and aid to the Palestinians in Gaza.
The two words received no special emphasis though they were cut off when I heard the same recorded Biden comments in a different podcast. If I hadn’t been doing so much reading they might have slipped by, but they sum up where Biden stands when it comes to Israel and Palestine and define policy and the actions of the U.S. Biden’s two words referencing Palestinians were “those people”. https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/10/mouin_rabbani_gaza_biden_netanyahu
It is the “othering” that runs through the history of the Palestinians. The words “those people” denote people who are not like us. They are less than us.
President Carter received blistering criticism and backlash when he wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. (If you are looking for a book on Israel and Palestine with maps, the text of agreements and an easy to read list of events up to 2009 this book has it.)
Apartheid is the correct description. Nathan Thrall describes the walls, the barriers, the checkpoints to control Palestinians in the West Bank in excruciating detail in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.
Aaron David Miller captures it in the second chapter of The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli when he wrote, “[Palestinians] Unlike the Israelis, who had an American Jewish community that generally could be depended on as a champion, Palestinians had few allies in the United States to explain their plight, let alone to create a Hollywood mythology. No Exodus or Cast a Giant Shadow told the world of their suffering and heroism. No United Jewish Appeal raised money or mobilized a community and few allies in Congress pleaded their cause…when Americans thought of Palestine, they thought of refugees and terrorists.”
The title of Khaled Elginoy’s book focusing on the decades of the U.S. taking the side of Israel in negotiations says it so clearly Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians From Balfour to Trump.
Then comes President Biden.
Reuters reported that when Biden met with Netanyahu and the war cabinet on October 21, 2023 on his visit to Israel that he said, “I don’t believe you have to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.” https://www.reuters.com/world/us/i-am-zionist-how-joe-bidens-lifelong-bond-with-israel-shapes-war-policy-2023-10-21/
It is true you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist. While Theodor Herzl is often credited as establishing the political organization for a Jewish nation at the end of the nineteenth century, the Christian Zionist movement precedes Herzl and the 1917 Balfour Declaration by decades. Some references push Christian Zionism back centuries. Reading “The Impact of Christian Zionism on American Policy” by William N. Dale is a quick primer on the history of Christian Zionism up to the Evangelical embrace of Zionism which serves as a guide to the present-day Republican Party and Trump. https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/ad/ad_v9_2/daw01.html
Tim Alberta covers the entanglement of Evangelicals, Trumpism and Trump in The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.
The missile attack on the World Central Kitchen three vehicle convoy by the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), put a crack in Biden’s full unconditional support of Israel as a self-proclaimed Zionist turning his prior requests to Netanyahu into outrage.
What was it that made this so impactful?
How did the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen workers move President Biden to outrage when the deaths of 224 aid workers couldn’t, the deaths of over 400 doctors, nurses and health care workers couldn’t, the deaths of over 33,000 Palestinians couldn’t, the estimated deaths of 14,000 Palestinian children couldn’t, the deaths of Palestinian children from starvation couldn’t? How could the unparalleled suffering of innocent Palestinians not move a president who is recognized for extending his own personal losses to empathy for others?
Was it that Jose Andres isn’t just the Spanish chef and US naturalized citizen who founded World Central Kitchen, Andres is a charismatic humanitarian with vision and knowhow? Andres has literally walked into crises worldwide, more often catastrophes and used social media, videos of conditions to bring the goodness of serving food to hungry people for all to see. Andres finds chefs, volunteers and resources to feed hundreds of people accomplishing the seemingly impossible.
Or was it that this time, six of the seven World Central Kitchen workers killed were not Palestinian Muslims like all those other deaths and instead came from around the world? Was it that this time, President Biden expressed outrage because Jose Andres is a fellow Catholic with whom President Biden has formed a friendship?
Or, is it those people?
Jeet Heer ponders this question in “What It Takes to Break Joe Biden’s Zionist Bubble” published April 5, 2024 in The Nation with the sub header, “The President’s rigid ideological commitment has led him to shut out government dissenters – and his own voters.” The article chronicles how Biden going back to his early days as a Senator has been a firmly entrenched Zionist Hawk. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/biden-zionist-bubble-gaza-muslims/
On Friday, Nancy Pelosi with thirty-six congressional Democrats signed on to the strong letter to President Biden that ended with, “we again urge you to ensure that any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.”
The letter should have arrived in Biden’s inbox, the same day, those of us who listen to Democracy Now first heard of “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy”.
“Lavender” is the AI machine directed program selecting Gazans for assassination who fit a profile making them suspect to being connected to Hamas. A component of that AI program “Where’s Daddy” follows the Gazan men home where the IDF can bomb their assassination target with ease.
Here we worry about AI generated disinformation.
In Gaza, a surreal science fiction future with drones buzzing overhead turns life in Gaza into a real present-day war horror where “no place is safe” children are injured, maimed, orphaned, killed, entire families and neighbors eliminated and buildings destroyed along with the target.
The April 3, 2024 article by Yuval Abraham is disturbing and chilling. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
In this swirl it was agenda item 10 Update the Gaza Peace Round Table Subgroup that pushed my attendance at the Peace and Justice Commission. When I arrived, the room was filled with attendees wrapped in keffiyehs and a man sitting at the table of commissioners wearing a Yamaka who I soon learned was Nimrod Pitsker Elias.
I asked a few of the attendees if they had been coming to the meetings or whether this was their first. For the few that answered this was the first meeting.
Expecting that they were there for the roundtable update, I was surprised when nearly everyone stood up for non-agenda comments. There were more than a dozen who one after another spoke to an incident involving Hahn’s appointee commissioner Nimrod Pitsker Elias at the March 26, city council meeting. He was described as pushing his phone into the face of a Palestinian woman in an act of intimidation and harassment. The speakers asked for his removal from the commission.
One young man said he had four videos of the incident. I handed him my email and asked for the links. So far, no videos or links have appeared in my email. The city council meeting video stream of speakers is of such poor quality, that nothing is visible except the timer filling most of the screen.
In councilmember Taplin’s newsletter, he described being appalled by the harassment of a Jewish woman at the same meeting.
At 7:50 pm councilmember Hahn showed up at the commission meeting, said nothing, took a seat and held her phone in the air evidently to record the meeting. While it came off as an act of intended intimidation, by the time she arrived, most of the attendees who had lined up had already spoken and one of the remaining speakers noted Hahn’s attendance.
This was the second meeting in less than a week that I wished I had a recorder turned on for the entire meeting.
Grace Morizawa explained at the end of the comments that the commission does not have the power to remove a commissioner, that rests with the councilmember. Morizawa did not mention that the number of commissioner terms are limited as that does not apply. Commissioner Elias was appointed by Hahn on December 5, 2023.
When councilmembers are replaced through elections, the new councilmember can choose a new appointee, though often the existing commissioner stays in place.
After the non-agenda comment period, most of the attendees left missing what was probably the most important discussion of the evening, item 13 titled as Discussion on Berkeley High School Ethnic Studies. There was no way of knowing from the agenda packet, meeting minutes or the description Ethnic Studies that this was about sending a letter to BHS from the commission regarding the Berkeley High School (BHS) curriculum on Israel and Palestine unless you attended the prior Peace and Justice Commission meeting.
The proposed letter was not in the agenda packet, as a supplement online or printed for public review. It was read aloud at the meeting.
The letter asked BHS to review class curriculum for errors and respond when according to the evening commission discussion the lesson plan in question had already been corrected.
We heard from Jewish parents who stated they had not heard from their children expressing concerns or acts of anti-Semitism, but in following up they found an organized group of parents claiming anti-Semitism and pushing to change the ethnic studies curriculum to one approved by the Brandeis Center and Anti-Defamation League.
Both commissioners Morizawa and Lippman expressed they did not support sending a letter, that the problem had already been resolved and that the Peace and Justice Commission should not be involved in dictating Berkeley High School curriculum.
Thinking about all the censoring, book banning and threatening to dismiss teachers and librarians from their jobs that is taking place in the south and even some conservative areas in California, I was disappointed that only one more commissioner Bohn joined Morizawa and Lippman to oppose any further consideration over sending a letter.
The final outcome in a four to three vote was to revise the letter and bring it back at the next meeting for final commission approval. Commissioners Jacqulin, Elias, Menscher and Guarino all voted for sending a letter.
There was little to report on the Gaza Peace Roundtable. subgroup. The next step is for the subgroup commissioners Lippman, Morizawa and Elias to find a facilitator for the roundtable.
April 7, 2024, Part 2 is still in the works covering the Planning Commission, the Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour and the Parks Commission.
March 27, 2024
City Council leaves for spring recess from March 27, 2024 through May 6. A six-week spring recess seems to be an unusual length of time, but I couldn’t be happier to see council meetings disappear from my weekly Activist’s Calendar.
At the Tuesday March 19 council meeting, Mayor Arreguin connected from Mexico by ZOOM and Vice Mayor Wengraf was present in person to run the show. I can’t recall a meeting she has previously attended in person since pre-pandemic though I think there was one.
I keep thinking I should show up to council in person to capture the atmosphere in the room, but the convenience of walking over to my computer instead wins out every time.
The person controlling the media cancels out the chanting in the room so the closest I get to the room atmosphere is counting the speakers for each side of a ceasefire and the pleas from the dais to the attendees to control themselves.
My niece was shocked to learn the mayor and councilmembers in Berkeley are opposed to a ceasefire resolution. She told our book club even Minneapolis voted for a ceasefire. As of Monday evening March 25, so has our neighboring city to the north, Albany.
Albany used community meetings to open discussion and develop a ceasefire resolution to bring to council which they passed unanimously. As I reported in the last Activist’s Diary, I was told by a commissioner, Berkeley councilmembers pressured their appointees on the Peace and Justice Commission to drop the planning for a community forum on Israel and Palestine.
The count for speakers on non-agenda items at the March 19 council meeting was fourteen for a ceasefire, three for the council not to take action (these are the speakers who oppose a ceasefire) and three on other subjects.
The City Auditor Jenny Wong noted the status report from the Department of Public Works on “Fleet Replacement Fund Short Millions & Rocky Road: Berkeley Streets At Risk and Significantly Underfunded” was under Information Reports on the agenda which is an unbearably long title to say our streets are crap and there was no cohesive plan for replacing city owned trucks, cars, etc. I characterize Berkeley streets as the city’s answer to permeable paving.
There are two petitions circulating by community groups on Berkeley streets. One is called “Fix the Streets” found in the website “Berkeleyans for Better Planning”. https://www.berkeleyansforbetterplanning.org/ The other is called “Safe Streets” with the website “Berkeley Citizens for Safe Streets”. https://www.berkeleysafestreets.com/home
Whichever one passes in November with at least 50% plus 1 and the most votes will prevail. Both are parcel taxes which will show up on the property owners’ tax bill. Property owners with very low income can apply for an exemption from parcel taxes.
I was going to do an in-depth side by side comparison into the difference between the two petitions, but I have decided to take a lighter comparison now though somewhat more detailed than you may wish.
Since we won’t be voting on the petitions until November we have plenty of time to make up our minds.
For right now the task is gaining signatures. I am on the “Fix the Streets” side. Please sign that petition.
The “Fix the Streets” parcel tax is 13 cents on “improvements” on a parcel (property) and it includes repairing/replacing sidewalks at 100% not the 50/50 sharing between the city and property owners that exists now. Fix the Streets is the same tax for all property owners.
For renters who never see property tax bills, this will be another line on the long list of add-ons (I counted 32 on my bill). Property taxes begin with the gross assessment of the land value and improvements (buildings).
Under Proposition 13 the gross assessment starts with 1% of the purchase price (used as the assessed value) and then increases by no more than 2% per year. Change of ownership or new construction will trigger reassessment. Any property that has not changed hands since before 1975 uses the 1975 value as the base.
Parcel taxes can be a flat tax per parcel with all property owners having the same fee or they can be based on the size of the parcel or the size of improvements i.e. the size of the buildings or livable space. Parcel taxes can be a split roll where the amount of the tax varies on the use of the parcel, i.e. residential versus commercial. Parcel taxes are not based on the assessed value of the property. Bond measures also appear in the list of add-ons.
When I spoke with Jim McGrath who was instrumental in the “Fix the Streets” ballot initiative, a big concern was using the best estimates to fix our deteriorating streets and sidewalks and how long it would take to complete the task. He expressed his concern for all the small independent businesses that are still struggling. That is why the “Fix the Streets” group uses the same 13 cents per square foot for all property owners regardless of use (residential or commercial). The PCI (Pavement Condition Index) to bring all street to a PCI of 70 or good condition is for the entirety of the street not the average. The parcel tax is for twelve years.
I have my bias. I’ve had a driver’s license for over 60 years. I’ve driven in all kinds of weather and road conditions all over this country, across Europe, the German autobahn and even in the center of Rome in congested 5 pm traffic. I was the caregiver for a wheelchair dependent partner and driver of our disability modified van. I had a parent who was in constant bone pain for whom walking any distance was painful and difficult. And, I’ve had my own personal experiences with injuries, casts, crutches, splints, boots, slings. I’m up to thirteen lifetime fractures. These days I mostly walk for exercise and to be a good climate citizen leaving using my car when walking or BART doesn’t work.
As I look at who and what is being done in the name of Vision Zero (reducing traffic injuries to zero) some of it is great, some good and some would fall into, “what were you thinking.” I see an absence of disabled, mobility limited persons and their caregivers in creating and evaluating plans for street infrastructure. I see bicycle enthusiasts filling the center of transportation planning and those same groups as participants and endorsers of the “Safe Streets” ballot initiative.
Until the big Hopkins Corridor Plan blew up, emergency and evacuation routes and the Fire Department were kind of an afterthought, if considered at all. See “What Has Happened with Hopkins and Why” from April 10, 2023 in the Berkeley Daily Planet for a bigger explanation. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-04-09/article/50248?headline=What-Has-Happened-with-Hopkins-and-Why--Kelly-Hammargren
The “Safe Streets” ballot initiative is a “split roll” which means the residential rate is 17 cents per square foot and the non-residential rate is at 25 cents per square foot. With “Safe Streets” our neighborhood stores and restaurants will pay almost double the “Fix the Streets” parcel tax not just Bayer and Sutter. Sidewalk repair/replacement stays at 50/50. The PCI is the “average” which means that a street can have potholes in one section and be repaired in the rest, but as long as it averages out it will meet the repair criteria. It also includes infrastructure to the streets like bus lanes, loading platforms, etc. This is where I worry we will get the “what were you thinking” kinds of changes to our streets. This parcel tax runs for fourteen years.
Cities always love more money. You will probably see the elected and politicians jumping for enthusiasm around “Safe Streets” and certainly the bicyclist with their infrastructure change wishes. As for the promise in the ballot initiative not to use “Safe Streets” funds for bicycle lanes on Hopkins from “Safe Streets” there is nothing stopping the city from adding in money from the general fund to finish the job.
There is a lot that is going to change in the coming decade. I would really prefer we weren’t put in this bind of choosing one or the other now, but here we are. I am on the “Fix the Streets” side as that does the most good with the least risk of “what were you thinking?” and puts better oversight and evaluation into the mix.
Last Saturday at the Livable California review of legislation, one of the attendees said that since Los Angeles implemented “Vision Zero” traffic deaths, pedestrian deaths have increased.
Karen Parolek who is the chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, member of Walk Bike Berkeley and co-founder and president of Opticos Design, Inc was listed as a Planner in the presentation to the Commission on Aging on Wednesday on Missing Middle Housing and Zoning Measures. On linkedin her education lists a B. Arch, Architecture and Graphic Design from the University of Notre Dame.
The examples in her presentation of missing middle housing which is duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes was filled with lovely pictures of buildings surrounded by yards that were inviting and fit into neighborhoods.
Berkeley is already an incredibly dense city, built up with little space between houses, back yards with small apartment buildings, ADUs/cottages and a shortage of parks. The push is to pack even more in, reduce separations between buildings and setbacks (the space between buildings and the lot line).
I wish what Parolek was presenting was where we are going. It is not. Unfortunately, what I see coming out of the Planning Department, Planning Commission and the YIMBYs (the group funded by big tech and real estate industry that is pushing building everywhere) is zoning changes for city council to approve to cover as much land as possible with new developments.
March 19 was the last day of filing an appeal of the Landmarks Preservation Commission NOD (Notice of Decision) for 2274 Shattuck Avenue currently the closed United Artists movie theater. When 2274 Shattuck is demolished for a student housing project, the only hint of its former use will be what little is left of the movie marquee in the Shattuck facing façade of the new project.
In Berkeley, the city that was formerly known as the center for viewing independent and foreign film only the Elmwood is left with three screens unless you count the single screening room in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). In the last few years 20 film screens went to the chopping block to be demolished. This is an enormous loss.
The item of the evening that drew a crowd to respond was the single action item 9 on the agenda “Adoption of a Master License Agreement Template for the Non-Exclusive Installation of Small Cell Telecommunications Facilities on City Owned and Maintained Streetlight Poles in the Public Right-of-Way”. Councilmember Hahn, motioned to move the item to consent, but Councilmember Bartlett intervened saying that many people had shown up to speak and Council should hear them.
There were 24 speakers. I was one. My issue was not Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), I thought the contract should have been beefed up to cover the city’s responsibility if a light pole with equipment on it needs to be removed for public safety in a weather or other emergency. That situation does not allow for the contract prescribed 10-day notice. The other speakers were there to declare their EHS symptoms and object to the contract.
The best article I found on Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) is from the NIH National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7201940/
The article is long. The symptoms the speakers declare are real, but linking the symptoms to electromagnetic fields (EMF) as the cause is where research, studies and science come up empty.
You can put me down with my RN credentials as an EHS, EMF skeptic, however, a friend reminded me that birds and other species in nature migrate by electromagnetic fields. There is a lot to learn about the world we live in. Just pick up Ed Yong’s wonderful book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Chapter 11 is Magnetic Fields.
The Master Lease passed with a yes by everyone present.
In my Friday morning podcasts it was “ceasefire” whiplash with Phyllis Bennis on Democracy Now going right into the word salad in the U.S, resolution to the U.N. Security Council that uses the words “immediate ceasefire” while not actually calling for a ceasefire.
Over the weekend Mary Robinson former president of Ireland called out the U.S. as playing games and the U.S. vetoes to a ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council a disgrace.
As I am finishing up on Monday, March 25, 2024, the U.S. abstained instead of casting a veto allowing the UN Security Council to pass a resolution for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel Hamas War. Russia and China were unsuccessful in inserting/keeping the word “permanent” with ceasefire so it is only during Ramadan.
Even with that resolution nothing is stopping the bombing, raids climbing Palestinian deaths and injuries.
I will continue to send back requests for campaign donations with no money and the words “permanent ceasefire” and “stop arming Israel” a practice I shared with a friend who says she throws them in the trash.
By Friday night I had had watched clips of the disgraceful attacks by Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz on President Biden’s nominee on Adeel A. Mangi who would have been the first Muslim American federal appellate judge. But, it was the Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masteo of Nevada who sank the nomination by saying she would not vote for Adeel followed by Senator Joe Manchin.
There seems to be a continuous string of investigations into anti-Semitism. The ceasefire mural Free Palestine by Berkeley High Students was item 2 in the March 27 City Council closed session as anticipated litigation.
I looked up the list of Jewish judges. It is long covering screen after screen. Elena Kagan is the eighth Jewish Supreme Court Justice. I found three Muslim American judges in the federal court system and now none will have advanced as far as the federal appeals court. According to online sources about 2% of Americans identify as Jewish and 1.1% of Americans identify as Muslim.
I finally finished Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman published in 2019. I switched to the audiobook a long 26 hours and then back to the ebook to take notes for my reading journal. The book carries the reader through assassination after assassination how methods for killing succeeded or failed, who approved them and how techniques became more sophisticated through the years, stopping occasionally to include those who were tortured by the Israelis before being murdered. The book is brutal. When drones were added to their killing repertoire, I thought about how the U.S. used drones to kill in the war in Afghanistan.
As the book closes Bergman writes of his last conversation with Meir Dagan who transformed the Mossad. After all Dagan had done directing the Israeli assassination killing machine, at the end of his life as he was dying of cancer, Dagan concluded only a political solution with the Palestinians, the two state solution could end the 150-year conflict.
City Council leaves for spring recess from March 27, 2024 through May 6. A six-week spring recess seems to be an unusual length of time, but I couldn’t be happier to see council meetings disappear from my weekly Activist’s Calendar.
At the Tuesday March 19 council meeting, Mayor Arreguin connected from Mexico by ZOOM and Vice Mayor Wengraf was present in person to run the show. I can’t recall a meeting she has previously attended in person since pre-pandemic though I think there was one.
I keep thinking I should show up to council in person to capture the atmosphere in the room, but the convenience of walking over to my computer instead wins out every time.
The person controlling the media cancels out the chanting in the room so the closest I get to the room atmosphere is counting the speakers for each side of a ceasefire and the pleas from the dais to the attendees to control themselves.
My niece was shocked to learn the mayor and councilmembers in Berkeley are opposed to a ceasefire resolution. She told our book club even Minneapolis voted for a ceasefire. As of Monday evening March 25, so has our neighboring city to the north, Albany.
Albany used community meetings to open discussion and develop a ceasefire resolution to bring to council which they passed unanimously. As I reported in the last Activist’s Diary, I was told by a commissioner, Berkeley councilmembers pressured their appointees on the Peace and Justice Commission to drop the planning for a community forum on Israel and Palestine.
The count for speakers on non-agenda items at the March 19 council meeting was fourteen for a ceasefire, three for the council not to take action (these are the speakers who oppose a ceasefire) and three on other subjects.
The City Auditor Jenny Wong noted the status report from the Department of Public Works on “Fleet Replacement Fund Short Millions & Rocky Road: Berkeley Streets At Risk and Significantly Underfunded” was under Information Reports on the agenda which is an unbearably long title to say our streets are crap and there was no cohesive plan for replacing city owned trucks, cars, etc. I characterize Berkeley streets as the city’s answer to permeable paving.
There are two petitions circulating by community groups on Berkeley streets. One is called “Fix the Streets” found in the website “Berkeleyans for Better Planning”. https://www.berkeleyansforbetterplanning.org/ The other is called “Safe Streets” with the website “Berkeley Citizens for Safe Streets”. https://www.berkeleysafestreets.com/home
Whichever one passes in November with at least 50% plus 1 and the most votes will prevail. Both are parcel taxes which will show up on the property owners’ tax bill. Property owners with very low income can apply for an exemption from parcel taxes.
I was going to do an in-depth side by side comparison into the difference between the two petitions, but I have decided to take a lighter comparison now though somewhat more detailed than you may wish.
Since we won’t be voting on the petitions until November we have plenty of time to make up our minds.
For right now the task is gaining signatures. I am on the “Fix the Streets” side. Please sign that petition.
The “Fix the Streets” parcel tax is 13 cents on “improvements” on a parcel (property) and it includes repairing/replacing sidewalks at 100% not the 50/50 sharing between the city and property owners that exists now. Fix the Streets is the same tax for all property owners.
For renters who never see property tax bills, this will be another line on the long list of add-ons (I counted 32 on my bill). Property taxes begin with the gross assessment of the land value and improvements (buildings).
Under Proposition 13 the gross assessment starts with 1% of the purchase price (used as the assessed value) and then increases by no more than 2% per year. Change of ownership or new construction will trigger reassessment. Any property that has not changed hands since before 1975 uses the 1975 value as the base.
Parcel taxes can be a flat tax per parcel with all property owners having the same fee or they can be based on the size of the parcel or the size of improvements i.e. the size of the buildings or livable space. Parcel taxes can be a split roll where the amount of the tax varies on the use of the parcel, i.e. residential versus commercial. Parcel taxes are not based on the assessed value of the property. Bond measures also appear in the list of add-ons.
When I spoke with Jim McGrath who was instrumental in the “Fix the Streets” ballot initiative, a big concern was using the best estimates to fix our deteriorating streets and sidewalks and how long it would take to complete the task. He expressed his concern for all the small independent businesses that are still struggling. That is why the “Fix the Streets” group uses the same 13 cents per square foot for all property owners regardless of use (residential or commercial). The PCI (Pavement Condition Index) to bring all street to a PCI of 70 or good condition is for the entirety of the street not the average. The parcel tax is for twelve years.
I have my bias. I’ve had a driver’s license for over 60 years. I’ve driven in all kinds of weather and road conditions all over this country, across Europe, the German autobahn and even in the center of Rome in congested 5 pm traffic. I was the caregiver for a wheelchair dependent partner and driver of our disability modified van. I had a parent who was in constant bone pain for whom walking any distance was painful and difficult. And, I’ve had my own personal experiences with injuries, casts, crutches, splints, boots, slings. I’m up to thirteen lifetime fractures. These days I mostly walk for exercise and to be a good climate citizen leaving using my car when walking or BART doesn’t work.
As I look at who and what is being done in the name of Vision Zero (reducing traffic injuries to zero) some of it is great, some good and some would fall into, “what were you thinking.” I see an absence of disabled, mobility limited persons and their caregivers in creating and evaluating plans for street infrastructure. I see bicycle enthusiasts filling the center of transportation planning and those same groups as participants and endorsers of the “Safe Streets” ballot initiative.
Until the big Hopkins Corridor Plan blew up, emergency and evacuation routes and the Fire Department were kind of an afterthought, if considered at all. See “What Has Happened with Hopkins and Why” from April 10, 2023 in the Berkeley Daily Planet for a bigger explanation. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-04-09/article/50248?headline=What-Has-Happened-with-Hopkins-and-Why--Kelly-Hammargren
The “Safe Streets” ballot initiative is a “split roll” which means the residential rate is 17 cents per square foot and the non-residential rate is at 25 cents per square foot. With “Safe Streets” our neighborhood stores and restaurants will pay almost double the “Fix the Streets” parcel tax not just Bayer and Sutter. Sidewalk repair/replacement stays at 50/50. The PCI is the “average” which means that a street can have potholes in one section and be repaired in the rest, but as long as it averages out it will meet the repair criteria. It also includes infrastructure to the streets like bus lanes, loading platforms, etc. This is where I worry we will get the “what were you thinking” kinds of changes to our streets. This parcel tax runs for fourteen years.
Cities always love more money. You will probably see the elected and politicians jumping for enthusiasm around “Safe Streets” and certainly the bicyclist with their infrastructure change wishes. As for the promise in the ballot initiative not to use “Safe Streets” funds for bicycle lanes on Hopkins from “Safe Streets” there is nothing stopping the city from adding in money from the general fund to finish the job.
There is a lot that is going to change in the coming decade. I would really prefer we weren’t put in this bind of choosing one or the other now, but here we are. I am on the “Fix the Streets” side as that does the most good with the least risk of “what were you thinking?” and puts better oversight and evaluation into the mix.
Last Saturday at the Livable California review of legislation, one of the attendees said that since Los Angeles implemented “Vision Zero” traffic deaths, pedestrian deaths have increased.
Karen Parolek who is the chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, member of Walk Bike Berkeley and co-founder and president of Opticos Design, Inc was listed as a Planner in the presentation to the Commission on Aging on Wednesday on Missing Middle Housing and Zoning Measures. On linkedin her education lists a B. Arch, Architecture and Graphic Design from the University of Notre Dame.
The examples in her presentation of missing middle housing which is duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes was filled with lovely pictures of buildings surrounded by yards that were inviting and fit into neighborhoods.
Berkeley is already an incredibly dense city, built up with little space between houses, back yards with small apartment buildings, ADUs/cottages and a shortage of parks. The push is to pack even more in, reduce separations between buildings and setbacks (the space between buildings and the lot line).
I wish what Parolek was presenting was where we are going. It is not. Unfortunately, what I see coming out of the Planning Department, Planning Commission and the YIMBYs (the group funded by big tech and real estate industry that is pushing building everywhere) is zoning changes for city council to approve to cover as much land as possible with new developments.
March 19 was the last day of filing an appeal of the Landmarks Preservation Commission NOD (Notice of Decision) for 2274 Shattuck Avenue currently the closed United Artists movie theater. When 2274 Shattuck is demolished for a student housing project, the only hint of its former use will be what little is left of the movie marquee in the Shattuck facing façade of the new project.
In Berkeley, the city that was formerly known as the center for viewing independent and foreign film only the Elmwood is left with three screens unless you count the single screening room in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). In the last few years 20 film screens went to the chopping block to be demolished. This is an enormous loss.
The item of the evening that drew a crowd to respond was the single action item 9 on the agenda “Adoption of a Master License Agreement Template for the Non-Exclusive Installation of Small Cell Telecommunications Facilities on City Owned and Maintained Streetlight Poles in the Public Right-of-Way”. Councilmember Hahn, motioned to move the item to consent, but Councilmember Bartlett intervened saying that many people had shown up to speak and Council should hear them.
There were 24 speakers. I was one. My issue was not Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), I thought the contract should have been beefed up to cover the city’s responsibility if a light pole with equipment on it needs to be removed for public safety in a weather or other emergency. That situation does not allow for the contract prescribed 10-day notice. The other speakers were there to declare their EHS symptoms and object to the contract.
The best article I found on Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) is from the NIH National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7201940/
The article is long. The symptoms the speakers declare are real, but linking the symptoms to electromagnetic fields (EMF) as the cause is where research, studies and science come up empty.
You can put me down with my RN credentials as an EHS, EMF skeptic, however, a friend reminded me that birds and other species in nature migrate by electromagnetic fields. There is a lot to learn about the world we live in. Just pick up Ed Yong’s wonderful book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Chapter 11 is Magnetic Fields.
The Master Lease passed with a yes by everyone present.
In my Friday morning podcasts it was “ceasefire” whiplash with Phyllis Bennis on Democracy Now going right into the word salad in the U.S, resolution to the U.N. Security Council that uses the words “immediate ceasefire” while not actually calling for a ceasefire.
Over the weekend Mary Robinson former president of Ireland called out the U.S. as playing games and the U.S. vetoes to a ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council a disgrace.
As I am finishing up on Monday, March 25, 2024, the U.S. abstained instead of casting a veto allowing the UN Security Council to pass a resolution for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel Hamas War. Russia and China were unsuccessful in inserting/keeping the word “permanent” with ceasefire so it is only during Ramadan.
Even with that resolution nothing is stopping the bombing, raids climbing Palestinian deaths and injuries.
I will continue to send back requests for campaign donations with no money and the words “permanent ceasefire” and “stop arming Israel” a practice I shared with a friend who says she throws them in the trash.
By Friday night I had had watched clips of the disgraceful attacks by Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz on President Biden’s nominee on Adeel A. Mangi who would have been the first Muslim American federal appellate judge. But, it was the Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masteo of Nevada who sank the nomination by saying she would not vote for Adeel followed by Senator Joe Manchin.
There seems to be a continuous string of investigations into anti-Semitism. The ceasefire mural Free Palestine by Berkeley High Students was item 2 in the March 27 City Council closed session as anticipated litigation.
I looked up the list of Jewish judges. It is long covering screen after screen. Elena Kagan is the eighth Jewish Supreme Court Justice. I found three Muslim American judges in the federal court system and now none will have advanced as far as the federal appeals court. According to online sources about 2% of Americans identify as Jewish and 1.1% of Americans identify as Muslim.
I finally finished Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman published in 2019. I switched to the audiobook a long 26 hours and then back to the ebook to take notes for my reading journal. The book carries the reader through assassination after assassination how methods for killing succeeded or failed, who approved them and how techniques became more sophisticated through the years, stopping occasionally to include those who were tortured by the Israelis before being murdered. The book is brutal. When drones were added to their killing repertoire, I thought about how the U.S. used drones to kill in the war in Afghanistan.
As the book closes Bergman writes of his last conversation with Meir Dagan who transformed the Mossad. After all Dagan had done directing the Israeli assassination killing machine, at the end of his life as he was dying of cancer, Dagan concluded only a political solution with the Palestinians, the two state solution could end the 150-year conflict.
March 17, 2024
I took my scissors to Joe Mathews’ op-ed “Please stop trying to ‘save democracy’” and taped this to my monitor: “…democracy isn’t something you save. It’s something you do – with other people…”
Now when I sit at my computer until I am blurry eyed trying to capture what happened in our government wondering if it makes a difference, I look at that clipping and get a little smile, democracy is something we do and this is a very big year.
On Wednesday, March 13, I saw the giant mural by Berkeley High students on Allston at MLK with Ceasefire, Free Palestine and a figure wearing a keffiyeh in the middle with a book. I was disappointed to read in Berkeleyside that it was painted with water-soluble tempra paint instead of the permanent paint used in other street murals, but given the current opposition of the Mayor and City Council to a ceasefire resolution, paint that will wash away in the next rain is probably the safest for the students. The mural was too large to capture with my iPhone camera so if you want to see it take a trip to the Civic Center.
While I was waiting at the corner for the light to change I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me asking if she had noticed it. Yes, of course, was the answer as she told me the students painted it during their lunch break. She said “they need to stop telling lies about us.” I asked if she was a teacher. She answered yes as we crossed the street before separating heading in different directions.
At each City Council meeting I count how many speakers call for a ceasefire during the non-agenda comment period and how many oppose the city taking any action. The total allotment for non-agenda comment speakers has been ten in-person speakers, ten on zoom with each person receiving one minute. Speakers can give away their minute to another person. When someone receives time from others I count the time slots. The actual number of speakers may be less. On Tuesday, March 12, I counted nine asking for a ceasefire, five opposed and three on other topics. Not all of the online time slots were used. The apparent neo-Nazi who called in online was quickly disconnected from zoom by the mayor and is not in the count.
The big news on Tuesday, March 12, 2024 came in the special 3:30 pm meeting that was posted on Monday, with only ten minutes to spare to make 24-hour notice requirement. The contentious housing project planned for 1900 Fourth Street on the West Berkeley Shellmound and the lawsuit Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley is done and over. In an incredible mediation settlement, the City of Berkeley paid the claim of attorney fees using city funds of up to $1.5 million, obtained release of all remaining claims in exchange for acquisition of 1900 Fourth Street and transferred the property to the Sogorea Te Land Trust, thereby returning the land to the Ohlone people. The 25 million dollars to finish the settlement came from the trust. https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/lisjan-history-and-territory/
In this case the land acknowledgement read at city meetings that recognizes the City of Berkeley occupies stolen unceded land of the Ohlone Tribes with a documented 5,000 year history to the West Berkeley Shellmound actually means something.
The vision for the Shellmound https://shellmound.org/learn-more/ohlone-vision/
A few Berkeley City Council meetings ago a woman speaking against the City taking up a ceasefire resolution wanted to start history in 2005.
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi is at the top of this week’s best seller list. Just think how much further along we would be on peace between Israel and Palestine instead of the perpetual cycles of violence, retaliation and revenge, if Israel acknowledged that Israel was created and built through settler colonialism instead of the perpetual myth that Palestine was, “a land without people for a people without land.”
Much of the reading I’ve been doing (almost done with my 10th book) start with the rise of the Zionist movement in the 1800s (though some books go back centuries) and follow with the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine before moving up to the present.
After hearing clips from Senator Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, I read the entire speech. Schumer was blunt. https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-senator-chuck-schumers-speech-israeli-elections-are-the-only-way/
Schumer listed four obstacles to peace: Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways, radical right-wing Israelis in government and society, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer called out Finance Minister Bexalel Smotrich and Ministry of National Security Itmar Ben Gvir as the worst examples of radicalism in government.
Saturday, March 16, 2024 was the 21st anniversary of the death of 23 year-old Rachel Corrie. Corrie was trying to protect the home of a local pharmacist in Gaza from demolition when she was standing to be visible and was run over and killed by an armored bulldozer operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The stage play based on her diaries and emails is called “My Name Is Rachel Corrie”.
Back to the City
There was more to the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) meeting on March 9th than 2902 Adeline and eminent domain that I covered in my last Diary.
If you don’t attend any other city or community meetings (or even if you do) signing on to the two-hour BNC zoom meeting on the second Saturday of the month from 10 am to noon is definitely an informative and worthwhile expenditure of time.
The North Berkeley BART Project was the main subject at the March 9, 2024 BNC meeting with Jon McCall from BRIDGE and Daniel Simons and Josie Morgan from DBA (David Baker Architects) presenting for North Berkeley Housing Partners. The current state of the project is 739 units with a little over the required minimum of 1000 bedrooms and a little over 50% of the units as affordable. The complex will have 50,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space, 6000 square feet of publicly accessible ground floor uses and around 300 parking spaces in a central garage with 176 allocated to residents. The current count of parking spaces at North Berkeley BART ranges from 620 to 700 depending on the source accessed.
All the bedrooms will have windows. The bike/pedestrian paths will be shared. There will be 70 units with case management services. There will be an evaluation of the project by bird-safe experts to identify locations where windows need to be reconfigured or bird-safe glass used. There are plans for a café and childcare space, but not a grocery.
The questions that didn’t get answered with follow up requested were the breakdown/count of units by number of bedrooms and shadow studies to show how much natural light will reach internal units (around open space).
I arrived at the Commission on Disability late and was surprised two members were attending on ZOOM. There was no announcement that the meeting was being conducted in a hybrid format, but then members of the Commission on Disability have a lawsuit against the City for not providing meetings in the hybrid format so disabled commissioners can attend. It appears the City has come halfway with ZOOM for commissioners, but not the public.
The City has not accommodated the blind commissioner for the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission (HWCAC) who needs documents in Braille. She left the HWCAC in the midst of the funding of service agencies. As described in the March 14th Activist’s Diary, It was hard enough for those of us in the room with vision to track on our pieces of scratch paper and devices the impact of changing allocation recommendations to squeeze $1,113,124 of requests into $563,266 of available funds. Imagine how that chaos landed on a commissioner who is blind and who was not accommodated with documents she could read.
I was present for most of the discussion at the Commission on Disability on AB 413 the “Daylighting Bill” which prohibits drivers from stopping or parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk or 15 feet from crosswalks with curb extensions (bulb outs).
While commissioners agreed prohibiting stopping or parking near intersections will greatly improve pedestrian and traffic safety there are issues for handicapped parking spaces that currently exist within the restricted zone and AB 413 will add difficulties for handicapped persons whose handicapped spaces need to be moved. The handicapped space at the top of California at Rose is one that looks to be in the daylighting zone.
There are also increased potential risks for disabled persons depending on how they access vehicles especially for disabled persons who enter on the traffic side as vehicle drivers. Depending on the configuration of handicapped spaces and handicapped vehicles, disabled persons who enter from the rear or even on the passenger side may also be impacted.
Between now and December 31, 2024 drivers will receive only a warning for parking in the daylighting zone unless the curb is marked with red paint or there is a sign. Starting January 1, 2025 stopping or parking in the restricted zone risks ticketing whether the zone or crosswalk is marked or not. The bill contains prohibitions from parking over a curb onto a sidewalk, something that is common practice on narrow streets in the hills. Parking in front of driveways whether public or private is prohibited (there is no exception in the bill if the driveway is to your own garage).
If you are a driver, reading AB 413 in full (it is very short) just might save you from a hefty ticket. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB413/id/2845316
The first major item of interest at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission was the parking study for the proposed ferry. Kittleson & Associates has been hired by the city to do the parking study. In general, I have a hard time believing ferry ridership will meet the early projections except on occasions when there are big events in San Francisco.
I noticed the Waterfront Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) stopped publishing the ferry occupancy rate during the busiest hour of the day in the Board meeting ridership reports. That usually hovered between 33% – 36% which meant that mostly near empty ferries typically travel back and forth across the bay. I would expect that low utilization to be about the same looking at the current charts and tables.
What concerns me the most besides the impact on marine life, is that the ferry looks like another money sink for city residents to shoulder so high income earners can have a boutique subsidized ferry service. WETA lowered the fare to increase ridership. From their own surveys the majority of the subsidized fares support high income earners.
Any increase in parking demand will be felt on the weekends when families access the waterfront. Once more charging for parking slipped into the presentation. I saw little interest from the presenter on receiving input from the commission or public on their parking studies.
There are plans for six weekday and 4 weekend “intercept surveys” when persons parking at the waterfront will be asked about their destinations, activities, parking duration and parking issues.
The Zoning Adjust Board (ZAB) met for a total of eighteen minutes to approve three Use Permits on consent. The next ZAB meeting on March 28 will be on 2136-2154 San Pablo a 6-story SB 330 state density project with 122 units (including 10 very low-income density bonus qualifying units), 3 live-work units and 50 ground floor parking spaces. This is the project that occupied the rest of the Parks Commission meeting and initiated a lively discussion.
The discussion started with should the San Pablo project which backs up to the George Florence Park on Tenth Street have its own gate from the private property into the park.
When I saw the plans at the Design Review Committee, my issue was the gates (there were several in the initial design now there is one) opened right into the pollinator garden so anyone entering from the development would trample the garden volunteers have been working so hard to create.
George Florence Park was a problematic neighborhood eyesore in the middle of a city block that has been completely restored by neighbors, volunteers and the City Parks Department into a delightful neighborhood resource with new play equipment for children. In this built up densely populated city with a shortage of parks and tiny yards between housing if there is any yard at all, these little “mini” parks fill the gap where children can play.
The commission focused on whether the project should have direct access through the fence into the park or should residents walk to the park like the other neighbors. The park is currently fenced on three sides and completely open on Tenth Street.
The commissioners were mixed on whether to allow a gate and in the final vote dropped that appropriately in the lap of the Parks Director and voted to require that the project applicant meet with the volunteers of the pollinator garden and that the entire project be required to install bird-safe glass.
Commissioner Abshez noted that Berkeley has a Civic Arts fee for mixed use projects, but does not have a parks fee which is common in other cities. With the shortage of public parks in Berkeley, the increasing population expected with large projects and decreased requirements for open space in new projects such as the rezoning approved for the Southside, the impetus to propose a parks fee with new construction is going to be on future agendas.
In closing, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on IVF (in vitro fertilization) defining embryos as children released on February 16, 2024, was the reason for finally finishing the book that has been recirculating in my reading list for months
The opinion written by the Chief Justice Tom Parker filled with biblical quotes and references and writings by Christian Theologians treads all over separation of church and state.
In summary, the theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. Section 36.06 recognized that this is true of the unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life – that even before birth all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.
The book is, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is UN-AMERICAN by Andrew L. Seidel. Seidel, a constitutional attorney for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, takes apart the myth that the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were founded on Judeo-Christian principles step by step using the ten commandments and biblical references with lots of quotes.
If you dip into The Founding Myth you will be grateful the framers of the Constitution were very skeptical of religion and wrote into the Constitution the separation of church and state. Seidel writes how religious fundamentalism cultivates submission to extreme authority and adulation to a punishing vengeful god and goes on to connect fundamentalism to the cultish adulation for the vengeful Trump who demands loyalty above all else and boasts if he is reelected of being “a dictator for a day”.
If we’re paying attention, Trump promises to pardon the January 6th seditionists, calls those convicted of crimes committed on January 6, 2021 “hostages” and describes immigrants as less than human and “poisoning the blood of our country”.
Things can change quickly if a wannabe dictator is elected. 2024 should not be a close election, but it is.
I took my scissors to Joe Mathews’ op-ed “Please stop trying to ‘save democracy’” and taped this to my monitor: “…democracy isn’t something you save. It’s something you do – with other people…”
Now when I sit at my computer until I am blurry eyed trying to capture what happened in our government wondering if it makes a difference, I look at that clipping and get a little smile, democracy is something we do and this is a very big year.
On Wednesday, March 13, I saw the giant mural by Berkeley High students on Allston at MLK with Ceasefire, Free Palestine and a figure wearing a keffiyeh in the middle with a book. I was disappointed to read in Berkeleyside that it was painted with water-soluble tempra paint instead of the permanent paint used in other street murals, but given the current opposition of the Mayor and City Council to a ceasefire resolution, paint that will wash away in the next rain is probably the safest for the students. The mural was too large to capture with my iPhone camera so if you want to see it take a trip to the Civic Center.
While I was waiting at the corner for the light to change I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me asking if she had noticed it. Yes, of course, was the answer as she told me the students painted it during their lunch break. She said “they need to stop telling lies about us.” I asked if she was a teacher. She answered yes as we crossed the street before separating heading in different directions.
At each City Council meeting I count how many speakers call for a ceasefire during the non-agenda comment period and how many oppose the city taking any action. The total allotment for non-agenda comment speakers has been ten in-person speakers, ten on zoom with each person receiving one minute. Speakers can give away their minute to another person. When someone receives time from others I count the time slots. The actual number of speakers may be less. On Tuesday, March 12, I counted nine asking for a ceasefire, five opposed and three on other topics. Not all of the online time slots were used. The apparent neo-Nazi who called in online was quickly disconnected from zoom by the mayor and is not in the count.
The big news on Tuesday, March 12, 2024 came in the special 3:30 pm meeting that was posted on Monday, with only ten minutes to spare to make 24-hour notice requirement. The contentious housing project planned for 1900 Fourth Street on the West Berkeley Shellmound and the lawsuit Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley is done and over. In an incredible mediation settlement, the City of Berkeley paid the claim of attorney fees using city funds of up to $1.5 million, obtained release of all remaining claims in exchange for acquisition of 1900 Fourth Street and transferred the property to the Sogorea Te Land Trust, thereby returning the land to the Ohlone people. The 25 million dollars to finish the settlement came from the trust. https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/lisjan-history-and-territory/
In this case the land acknowledgement read at city meetings that recognizes the City of Berkeley occupies stolen unceded land of the Ohlone Tribes with a documented 5,000 year history to the West Berkeley Shellmound actually means something.
The vision for the Shellmound https://shellmound.org/learn-more/ohlone-vision/
A few Berkeley City Council meetings ago a woman speaking against the City taking up a ceasefire resolution wanted to start history in 2005.
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi is at the top of this week’s best seller list. Just think how much further along we would be on peace between Israel and Palestine instead of the perpetual cycles of violence, retaliation and revenge, if Israel acknowledged that Israel was created and built through settler colonialism instead of the perpetual myth that Palestine was, “a land without people for a people without land.”
Much of the reading I’ve been doing (almost done with my 10th book) start with the rise of the Zionist movement in the 1800s (though some books go back centuries) and follow with the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917 to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine before moving up to the present.
After hearing clips from Senator Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, I read the entire speech. Schumer was blunt. https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-senator-chuck-schumers-speech-israeli-elections-are-the-only-way/
Schumer listed four obstacles to peace: Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways, radical right-wing Israelis in government and society, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer called out Finance Minister Bexalel Smotrich and Ministry of National Security Itmar Ben Gvir as the worst examples of radicalism in government.
Saturday, March 16, 2024 was the 21st anniversary of the death of 23 year-old Rachel Corrie. Corrie was trying to protect the home of a local pharmacist in Gaza from demolition when she was standing to be visible and was run over and killed by an armored bulldozer operated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The stage play based on her diaries and emails is called “My Name Is Rachel Corrie”.
Back to the City
There was more to the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) meeting on March 9th than 2902 Adeline and eminent domain that I covered in my last Diary.
If you don’t attend any other city or community meetings (or even if you do) signing on to the two-hour BNC zoom meeting on the second Saturday of the month from 10 am to noon is definitely an informative and worthwhile expenditure of time.
The North Berkeley BART Project was the main subject at the March 9, 2024 BNC meeting with Jon McCall from BRIDGE and Daniel Simons and Josie Morgan from DBA (David Baker Architects) presenting for North Berkeley Housing Partners. The current state of the project is 739 units with a little over the required minimum of 1000 bedrooms and a little over 50% of the units as affordable. The complex will have 50,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space, 6000 square feet of publicly accessible ground floor uses and around 300 parking spaces in a central garage with 176 allocated to residents. The current count of parking spaces at North Berkeley BART ranges from 620 to 700 depending on the source accessed.
All the bedrooms will have windows. The bike/pedestrian paths will be shared. There will be 70 units with case management services. There will be an evaluation of the project by bird-safe experts to identify locations where windows need to be reconfigured or bird-safe glass used. There are plans for a café and childcare space, but not a grocery.
The questions that didn’t get answered with follow up requested were the breakdown/count of units by number of bedrooms and shadow studies to show how much natural light will reach internal units (around open space).
I arrived at the Commission on Disability late and was surprised two members were attending on ZOOM. There was no announcement that the meeting was being conducted in a hybrid format, but then members of the Commission on Disability have a lawsuit against the City for not providing meetings in the hybrid format so disabled commissioners can attend. It appears the City has come halfway with ZOOM for commissioners, but not the public.
The City has not accommodated the blind commissioner for the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission (HWCAC) who needs documents in Braille. She left the HWCAC in the midst of the funding of service agencies. As described in the March 14th Activist’s Diary, It was hard enough for those of us in the room with vision to track on our pieces of scratch paper and devices the impact of changing allocation recommendations to squeeze $1,113,124 of requests into $563,266 of available funds. Imagine how that chaos landed on a commissioner who is blind and who was not accommodated with documents she could read.
I was present for most of the discussion at the Commission on Disability on AB 413 the “Daylighting Bill” which prohibits drivers from stopping or parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk or 15 feet from crosswalks with curb extensions (bulb outs).
While commissioners agreed prohibiting stopping or parking near intersections will greatly improve pedestrian and traffic safety there are issues for handicapped parking spaces that currently exist within the restricted zone and AB 413 will add difficulties for handicapped persons whose handicapped spaces need to be moved. The handicapped space at the top of California at Rose is one that looks to be in the daylighting zone.
There are also increased potential risks for disabled persons depending on how they access vehicles especially for disabled persons who enter on the traffic side as vehicle drivers. Depending on the configuration of handicapped spaces and handicapped vehicles, disabled persons who enter from the rear or even on the passenger side may also be impacted.
Between now and December 31, 2024 drivers will receive only a warning for parking in the daylighting zone unless the curb is marked with red paint or there is a sign. Starting January 1, 2025 stopping or parking in the restricted zone risks ticketing whether the zone or crosswalk is marked or not. The bill contains prohibitions from parking over a curb onto a sidewalk, something that is common practice on narrow streets in the hills. Parking in front of driveways whether public or private is prohibited (there is no exception in the bill if the driveway is to your own garage).
If you are a driver, reading AB 413 in full (it is very short) just might save you from a hefty ticket. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB413/id/2845316
The first major item of interest at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission was the parking study for the proposed ferry. Kittleson & Associates has been hired by the city to do the parking study. In general, I have a hard time believing ferry ridership will meet the early projections except on occasions when there are big events in San Francisco.
I noticed the Waterfront Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) stopped publishing the ferry occupancy rate during the busiest hour of the day in the Board meeting ridership reports. That usually hovered between 33% – 36% which meant that mostly near empty ferries typically travel back and forth across the bay. I would expect that low utilization to be about the same looking at the current charts and tables.
What concerns me the most besides the impact on marine life, is that the ferry looks like another money sink for city residents to shoulder so high income earners can have a boutique subsidized ferry service. WETA lowered the fare to increase ridership. From their own surveys the majority of the subsidized fares support high income earners.
Any increase in parking demand will be felt on the weekends when families access the waterfront. Once more charging for parking slipped into the presentation. I saw little interest from the presenter on receiving input from the commission or public on their parking studies.
There are plans for six weekday and 4 weekend “intercept surveys” when persons parking at the waterfront will be asked about their destinations, activities, parking duration and parking issues.
The Zoning Adjust Board (ZAB) met for a total of eighteen minutes to approve three Use Permits on consent. The next ZAB meeting on March 28 will be on 2136-2154 San Pablo a 6-story SB 330 state density project with 122 units (including 10 very low-income density bonus qualifying units), 3 live-work units and 50 ground floor parking spaces. This is the project that occupied the rest of the Parks Commission meeting and initiated a lively discussion.
The discussion started with should the San Pablo project which backs up to the George Florence Park on Tenth Street have its own gate from the private property into the park.
When I saw the plans at the Design Review Committee, my issue was the gates (there were several in the initial design now there is one) opened right into the pollinator garden so anyone entering from the development would trample the garden volunteers have been working so hard to create.
George Florence Park was a problematic neighborhood eyesore in the middle of a city block that has been completely restored by neighbors, volunteers and the City Parks Department into a delightful neighborhood resource with new play equipment for children. In this built up densely populated city with a shortage of parks and tiny yards between housing if there is any yard at all, these little “mini” parks fill the gap where children can play.
The commission focused on whether the project should have direct access through the fence into the park or should residents walk to the park like the other neighbors. The park is currently fenced on three sides and completely open on Tenth Street.
The commissioners were mixed on whether to allow a gate and in the final vote dropped that appropriately in the lap of the Parks Director and voted to require that the project applicant meet with the volunteers of the pollinator garden and that the entire project be required to install bird-safe glass.
Commissioner Abshez noted that Berkeley has a Civic Arts fee for mixed use projects, but does not have a parks fee which is common in other cities. With the shortage of public parks in Berkeley, the increasing population expected with large projects and decreased requirements for open space in new projects such as the rezoning approved for the Southside, the impetus to propose a parks fee with new construction is going to be on future agendas.
In closing, the Alabama Supreme Court ruling on IVF (in vitro fertilization) defining embryos as children released on February 16, 2024, was the reason for finally finishing the book that has been recirculating in my reading list for months
The opinion written by the Chief Justice Tom Parker filled with biblical quotes and references and writings by Christian Theologians treads all over separation of church and state.
In summary, the theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. Section 36.06 recognized that this is true of the unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life – that even before birth all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.
The book is, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is UN-AMERICAN by Andrew L. Seidel. Seidel, a constitutional attorney for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, takes apart the myth that the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were founded on Judeo-Christian principles step by step using the ten commandments and biblical references with lots of quotes.
If you dip into The Founding Myth you will be grateful the framers of the Constitution were very skeptical of religion and wrote into the Constitution the separation of church and state. Seidel writes how religious fundamentalism cultivates submission to extreme authority and adulation to a punishing vengeful god and goes on to connect fundamentalism to the cultish adulation for the vengeful Trump who demands loyalty above all else and boasts if he is reelected of being “a dictator for a day”.
If we’re paying attention, Trump promises to pardon the January 6th seditionists, calls those convicted of crimes committed on January 6, 2021 “hostages” and describes immigrants as less than human and “poisoning the blood of our country”.
Things can change quickly if a wannabe dictator is elected. 2024 should not be a close election, but it is.
March 11, 2024
Now that I have been so slow to finish off this Activist’s Diary and fallen into covering two weeks of meetings, it feels like the world has shifted again.
Trump’s visit with Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago is over, but for the voters with Trump amnesia or think we made it through fours years the first time and we can do it again, here is some food for thought.
In the November 20, 2021 Activist’s Diary, I reviewed After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes. In Rhodes’ travels for writing the book he met with a Hungarian who described how Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years through twelve 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.
Thanks to the Heritage Foundation, Trump has the 920 page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project for any needed help. Trump isn’t known to be a heavy reader, but he doesn’t have to be. He’ll have his loyalists to do that work. https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
I watched Biden’s State of the Union (SOTU), the post address panels, interviews and the Republican response. I know some people are spilling over with enthusiasm. My anxiety level over the election is in the red alert range.
The Democrats are splintering over Israel and Gaza. The conditions in Gaza are horrific. More children, women, journalists, aid workers, health workers have died in Gaza in five months from Israeli attacks than any other war in history. Children are dying of starvation now.
People identifying as Hispanic represent 19% of the population and 14.7% of the eligible voters. Hispanic voters who supported Biden in 2020 by a 21 point margin (Biden 59% Trump 38%) in a post election Pew poll are now according to the New York Times and Sienna College March 3, 2024 poll at 43% for Biden and 48% for Trump. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/us/politics/biden-trump-times-siena-poll.html
As Ben Rhodes said on Friday after SOTU on All In with Chris Hayes, Biden’s response on Gaza was very unsatisfactory. Biden needs to change course. The conditions in Gaza are dire. It’s the moral thing to do. The number of uncommitted voters in Michigan is not insignificant and ended with, “[W}hat an irony, a terrible tragic irony if a Democratic President’s support for BeBe Netanyahu ends up being a deciding factor in the swing states…He’s [Biden] very underwater on the issue in total. The longer it goes, the more he is underwater on this issue…”
On to the local scene.
At the Agenda Committee on Monday, February 26, 2024, Mayor Arreguin said in the discussion around the merger of the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission, “I have talked to the City Manager and asked that another option be presented which would not involve merging of the two commissions…and I will also state for the record that I will not be supporting the merger. “
When former councilmember Droste first proposed merging commissions as a cost saving measure, back in 2020, I felt then and do now there is a lack of appreciation for the work done by commissions and what that work means to the city and us as residents.
By the time the commission mergers were before Council on June 15, 2021 at the special 4 pm meeting Councilmembers Robinson, Kesarwani and Mayor Arreguin were signed on as supporters. The full council voted unanimously for the mergers.
Arreguin’s shift to not supporting the merger is very good news as the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission has federal mandated responsibilities to fulfill for the City of Berkeley to receive Community Service Block Grants (CSBG). Members of the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission have been calling out that Berkeley is at risk of losing Community Service Block Grant Funds for a very long time. Apparently, their warnings are finally getting through.
Wednesday March 6, I attended the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission in the Cypress Room at 2180 Milvia. This is important as the Cypress Room is fully equipped for hybrid meetings to connect people on zoom and people in the room. City staff told those of us in the room, the commission’s chair Mary Behm-Steinberg (who told us she was recovering from surgery) would be joining by phone.
I learned after the meeting closed that the depiction of Behm-Steinberg calling in by phone was not true. Behm-Steinberg was connecting to the meeting on her computer using the zoom link proved by staff to attend the meeting.
The first issue of the evening was the response to the strongly worded letter from Jason Wimbley, Acting Director, California Department of Community Services and Development. The letter started with the stated purpose of:
“Re: 45-Day Notice of Anticipated High-Risk Designation Based on The City of Berkeley’s Failure to Maintain Required CSBG Tripartite Board Structure and Failure to Administer Programs Through Tripartite Board; Required Response and Corrective Action Due by March 18, 2024.”
The letter starts on page 13 of the meeting packet for March 6, 2024. The very long letter with attachments states Berkeley has been out of compliance since 2012 and goes on with:
“[W]ithout board members in position comprised of different sectors of the population, no tripartite board exists to perform the oversight and governance duties and assure effective planning, implementation and evaluation of Berkeley’s CSBG program, as intended by CSBG laws and regulations and Berkeley’s own bylaws. An ongoing inability to recruit and retain board members constitutes noncompliance with federal law and disqualifies Berkeley as an eligible entity for the receipt and administration of the CSBG grant…” [emphasis added] https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/human-welfare-and-community-action-commission
The Tripartite Board membership is defined in the letter as consisting of not fewer than 1/3 of the members being poor/low income persons, 1/3 are elected officials holding office or their representatives and the remaining members must be chosen from business, industry, labor, law enforcement, education or other major groups and interests in the community served.
This mess sits squarely in the failure of City of Berkeley Administration all the way up the food chain and the City Council. Reviewing the published commission membership list. Mary Behm-Steinberg was appointed by Harrison 4/30/2019, J. George Lippman was appointed by Bartlett 12/7/2023, Jose Lara Cruz was appointed by Kesarwani 2/8/2024 and Diana Bohn was appointed by Arreguin 2/27/2024. That leaves Taplin, Hahn, Wengraf, Humbert and Robinson (who resigned in January) as not making appointments.
The Commission Secretary Mary-Claire Katz, Program Analyst and Margot Ernst, Executive Director were both present at a virtual meeting on May 5, 2022 where deficiencies were cited by the California Department of Community Services and Development.
The City is required to respond with corrective action by March 18. At the meeting when Behm-Steinberg asked to see the response before it was sent, the Commission Secretary Mary-Claire Katz said Behm-Steinberg will get a copy when it is sent. It wasn’t clear to me if the Commission Chair will have the opportunity to review the response before it is sent, though that was the request.
Katz also related to the commission that the alternate plan requested by the mayor to keep the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission intact was done and ready for the March 26 City Council meeting, however, the commission will not be allowed to see it any sooner than the general public. I expect that to be after 5 pm on March 14 when the final agenda is posted for the March 26 council meeting.
The alternate plan for the Human Welfare Commission is listed in the draft agenda for March 26 as item 22.b., however, there is no content as to what the plan is. The Agenda and Rules Committee (members Arreguin, Wengraf, Hahn) will review the agenda on Tuesday, March 13.
If the alternative plan from City Administration is already done, then why must it remain a secret? Do we actually believe there is no internal communication and that everyone is in the dark including the mayor and only the person who wrote it knows the content?
I wrote on February 8, I was shocked by the tone of the Director of Health, Housing and Community Services Lisa Warhuus when she presented the plan for merging the two commissions. Warhuus has moved on to her new job in Marin, but the tone doesn’t seem to have left.
The next item was the commission’s recommendation on the distribution of funding for community agencies. As this discussion was getting started, the staff secretary Katz left the room and then returned telling the commissioners and public the building security person’s shift was ending at 8:30 pm and they needed to be out of the building by 8:45 pm giving the commission about an hour to decide how to respond to applications for funding totaling $1,113,124 with only $563,266 in funds to distribute.
With the commission chair already on ZOOM, if the meeting had been set up to use the equipment in the room, commissioner Jose Lara Cruz could have displayed the budget sheet on his computer on the large screen for everyone to see including the commission chair at home. Commissioner Lara Cruz had all the application current funding and application requests in the accounting program excel where adding or subtracting funding would show the impact on the total funds available.
But instead we sat with inadequate meeting documents, our separate pieces of paper while Catherine Hutching was trying to respond to the discussion in the room and put the organizations being called out on the white board on the wall for the commissioners present to see. I had my own scratch sheet trying to keep up with the changing recommendations to squeeze over $1,000,000 in application requests into $563,266.
It was a totally unnecessary chaos. But, it is demonstrative of the unwillingness of the City of Berkeley Administration to use the tools/technology already available in the City Facilities when that use means supporting the commissioners and commissions. And, it is demonstrative of this mayor and this city council failure to step in and insist that existing equipment be made available for public meetings.
When the City of Berkeley is already on notice of non-compliance by the State of California, one would think the City of Berkeley would be doing everything possible to support the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission commissioners.
This is how the funding ended. The Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program – Recreational Services for Disabled, Life Long Medical and East Bay Law Center will all stay at their current level of funding. The Berkeley Food Project ($150,000) and ASUC ($32,000), which were not previously funded received no funding. The Bonita House with current funding of $15,324, a request of $25,000 and substantial funding from other sources was not funded.
The Family Violence Law Center
Current Award $61,842, Requested $82,080, Final $75,000
Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative
Current $11,895, Requested $153,052, Final $51,632
J-Sei Senior Services
Current $9,110, Requested $30,000, Final $20,000
Through the Looking Glass
Current $27,206, Requested $52,000, Final $35,000
I’ve attended meetings at three fully equipped conference rooms in 2180 Milvia. I suspect there is at least one and probably more fully equipped conference rooms in the Planning Department in the building on Center Street. There is equipment with giant display screens at the Fire Department Training Center on Cedar and in Public Works on Allston.
Commissions and the public have been requesting hybrid meetings for months. The excuse has been there isn’t equipment. Two days before the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission the Agenda Committee discussed and responded to the recommendations from the Open Government Commission where Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf did agree hybrid meetings should be pursued.
At the Saturday at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council it was mentioned that there was scaffolding up at 2902 Adeline, but there was no building permit. I didn’t see any scaffolding when I went to look at the property after the meeting, but the property certainly looked like it would fit the description of blighted.
On February 27, City Council passed on consent Councilmember Bartlett’s referral to the City Manager to investigate the feasibility of using eminent domain for 2902 and 2908 Adeline and the abandoned house on 1946 Russell to build affordable housing.
This is all very interesting as there was a Trachtenberg designed project for these three parcels approved by City Council in 2017. After losing the appeal to council the neighbors filed a lawsuit. That was settled in favor of the developer on July 10, 2018.
I found three closed expired permits for the property on the City of Berkeley website dated 5/1/2023 (received 11/30/2021), 11/16/2023 (received 9/20/2021), and 11/16/2023 (received 5/4/2022). https://berkeley.buildingeye.com/building
This was a very contentious projects when it was first proposed. I remember being told by one very active Berkeley resident who has since passed away, that REALTEX never built anything and that their game was to get projects entitled. That game isn’t limited to REALTEX. There are many projects approved that never seem to go anywhere for years if at all. There was no apparent application for a permit for anything for 2902 Adeline until over three years after REALTEX won the lawsuit filed by the neighbors.
What happens now sits in the City Manager’s to do list which gets longer with every new council referral.
The Peace and Justice Commission agenda item Update from the Gaza Roundtable Subgroup put that meeting on my list to attend, but I missed the meeting. I have since heard pressure on commissioners from councilmembers have squashed the effort for a Rountable on Gaza. This is such a shame. The Peace and Justice Commission is the place for a panel and public discussion.
I expect that a roundtable on Gaza would be difficult. There are lots of strong feelings, and many minds are made up, but it is a conversation that we need to have.
The Peace and Justice Commission did an outstanding job on the Fukushima Roundtable.
International Women’s Day was March 8 and the month of March is Women’s History Month.
If you are wondering just what is the Comstock Act of 1873 and how the Comstock Act could upend access to Mifepristone then pick up the entertaining biography by Jennifer Wright Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist. The book Madame Restell covers a time in U.S. history when abortionists competed and advertised in newspapers and Andrew Comstock was intent to put an end to it.
Now that I have been so slow to finish off this Activist’s Diary and fallen into covering two weeks of meetings, it feels like the world has shifted again.
Trump’s visit with Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Lago is over, but for the voters with Trump amnesia or think we made it through fours years the first time and we can do it again, here is some food for thought.
In the November 20, 2021 Activist’s Diary, I reviewed After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes. In Rhodes’ travels for writing the book he met with a Hungarian who described how Orban transformed Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system in the span of ten years through twelve 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.
Thanks to the Heritage Foundation, Trump has the 920 page Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project for any needed help. Trump isn’t known to be a heavy reader, but he doesn’t have to be. He’ll have his loyalists to do that work. https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
I watched Biden’s State of the Union (SOTU), the post address panels, interviews and the Republican response. I know some people are spilling over with enthusiasm. My anxiety level over the election is in the red alert range.
The Democrats are splintering over Israel and Gaza. The conditions in Gaza are horrific. More children, women, journalists, aid workers, health workers have died in Gaza in five months from Israeli attacks than any other war in history. Children are dying of starvation now.
People identifying as Hispanic represent 19% of the population and 14.7% of the eligible voters. Hispanic voters who supported Biden in 2020 by a 21 point margin (Biden 59% Trump 38%) in a post election Pew poll are now according to the New York Times and Sienna College March 3, 2024 poll at 43% for Biden and 48% for Trump. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/us/politics/biden-trump-times-siena-poll.html
As Ben Rhodes said on Friday after SOTU on All In with Chris Hayes, Biden’s response on Gaza was very unsatisfactory. Biden needs to change course. The conditions in Gaza are dire. It’s the moral thing to do. The number of uncommitted voters in Michigan is not insignificant and ended with, “[W}hat an irony, a terrible tragic irony if a Democratic President’s support for BeBe Netanyahu ends up being a deciding factor in the swing states…He’s [Biden] very underwater on the issue in total. The longer it goes, the more he is underwater on this issue…”
On to the local scene.
At the Agenda Committee on Monday, February 26, 2024, Mayor Arreguin said in the discussion around the merger of the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission, “I have talked to the City Manager and asked that another option be presented which would not involve merging of the two commissions…and I will also state for the record that I will not be supporting the merger. “
When former councilmember Droste first proposed merging commissions as a cost saving measure, back in 2020, I felt then and do now there is a lack of appreciation for the work done by commissions and what that work means to the city and us as residents.
By the time the commission mergers were before Council on June 15, 2021 at the special 4 pm meeting Councilmembers Robinson, Kesarwani and Mayor Arreguin were signed on as supporters. The full council voted unanimously for the mergers.
Arreguin’s shift to not supporting the merger is very good news as the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission has federal mandated responsibilities to fulfill for the City of Berkeley to receive Community Service Block Grants (CSBG). Members of the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission have been calling out that Berkeley is at risk of losing Community Service Block Grant Funds for a very long time. Apparently, their warnings are finally getting through.
Wednesday March 6, I attended the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission in the Cypress Room at 2180 Milvia. This is important as the Cypress Room is fully equipped for hybrid meetings to connect people on zoom and people in the room. City staff told those of us in the room, the commission’s chair Mary Behm-Steinberg (who told us she was recovering from surgery) would be joining by phone.
I learned after the meeting closed that the depiction of Behm-Steinberg calling in by phone was not true. Behm-Steinberg was connecting to the meeting on her computer using the zoom link proved by staff to attend the meeting.
The first issue of the evening was the response to the strongly worded letter from Jason Wimbley, Acting Director, California Department of Community Services and Development. The letter started with the stated purpose of:
“Re: 45-Day Notice of Anticipated High-Risk Designation Based on The City of Berkeley’s Failure to Maintain Required CSBG Tripartite Board Structure and Failure to Administer Programs Through Tripartite Board; Required Response and Corrective Action Due by March 18, 2024.”
The letter starts on page 13 of the meeting packet for March 6, 2024. The very long letter with attachments states Berkeley has been out of compliance since 2012 and goes on with:
“[W]ithout board members in position comprised of different sectors of the population, no tripartite board exists to perform the oversight and governance duties and assure effective planning, implementation and evaluation of Berkeley’s CSBG program, as intended by CSBG laws and regulations and Berkeley’s own bylaws. An ongoing inability to recruit and retain board members constitutes noncompliance with federal law and disqualifies Berkeley as an eligible entity for the receipt and administration of the CSBG grant…” [emphasis added] https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/human-welfare-and-community-action-commission
The Tripartite Board membership is defined in the letter as consisting of not fewer than 1/3 of the members being poor/low income persons, 1/3 are elected officials holding office or their representatives and the remaining members must be chosen from business, industry, labor, law enforcement, education or other major groups and interests in the community served.
This mess sits squarely in the failure of City of Berkeley Administration all the way up the food chain and the City Council. Reviewing the published commission membership list. Mary Behm-Steinberg was appointed by Harrison 4/30/2019, J. George Lippman was appointed by Bartlett 12/7/2023, Jose Lara Cruz was appointed by Kesarwani 2/8/2024 and Diana Bohn was appointed by Arreguin 2/27/2024. That leaves Taplin, Hahn, Wengraf, Humbert and Robinson (who resigned in January) as not making appointments.
The Commission Secretary Mary-Claire Katz, Program Analyst and Margot Ernst, Executive Director were both present at a virtual meeting on May 5, 2022 where deficiencies were cited by the California Department of Community Services and Development.
The City is required to respond with corrective action by March 18. At the meeting when Behm-Steinberg asked to see the response before it was sent, the Commission Secretary Mary-Claire Katz said Behm-Steinberg will get a copy when it is sent. It wasn’t clear to me if the Commission Chair will have the opportunity to review the response before it is sent, though that was the request.
Katz also related to the commission that the alternate plan requested by the mayor to keep the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission intact was done and ready for the March 26 City Council meeting, however, the commission will not be allowed to see it any sooner than the general public. I expect that to be after 5 pm on March 14 when the final agenda is posted for the March 26 council meeting.
The alternate plan for the Human Welfare Commission is listed in the draft agenda for March 26 as item 22.b., however, there is no content as to what the plan is. The Agenda and Rules Committee (members Arreguin, Wengraf, Hahn) will review the agenda on Tuesday, March 13.
If the alternative plan from City Administration is already done, then why must it remain a secret? Do we actually believe there is no internal communication and that everyone is in the dark including the mayor and only the person who wrote it knows the content?
I wrote on February 8, I was shocked by the tone of the Director of Health, Housing and Community Services Lisa Warhuus when she presented the plan for merging the two commissions. Warhuus has moved on to her new job in Marin, but the tone doesn’t seem to have left.
The next item was the commission’s recommendation on the distribution of funding for community agencies. As this discussion was getting started, the staff secretary Katz left the room and then returned telling the commissioners and public the building security person’s shift was ending at 8:30 pm and they needed to be out of the building by 8:45 pm giving the commission about an hour to decide how to respond to applications for funding totaling $1,113,124 with only $563,266 in funds to distribute.
With the commission chair already on ZOOM, if the meeting had been set up to use the equipment in the room, commissioner Jose Lara Cruz could have displayed the budget sheet on his computer on the large screen for everyone to see including the commission chair at home. Commissioner Lara Cruz had all the application current funding and application requests in the accounting program excel where adding or subtracting funding would show the impact on the total funds available.
But instead we sat with inadequate meeting documents, our separate pieces of paper while Catherine Hutching was trying to respond to the discussion in the room and put the organizations being called out on the white board on the wall for the commissioners present to see. I had my own scratch sheet trying to keep up with the changing recommendations to squeeze over $1,000,000 in application requests into $563,266.
It was a totally unnecessary chaos. But, it is demonstrative of the unwillingness of the City of Berkeley Administration to use the tools/technology already available in the City Facilities when that use means supporting the commissioners and commissions. And, it is demonstrative of this mayor and this city council failure to step in and insist that existing equipment be made available for public meetings.
When the City of Berkeley is already on notice of non-compliance by the State of California, one would think the City of Berkeley would be doing everything possible to support the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission commissioners.
This is how the funding ended. The Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program – Recreational Services for Disabled, Life Long Medical and East Bay Law Center will all stay at their current level of funding. The Berkeley Food Project ($150,000) and ASUC ($32,000), which were not previously funded received no funding. The Bonita House with current funding of $15,324, a request of $25,000 and substantial funding from other sources was not funded.
The Family Violence Law Center
Current Award $61,842, Requested $82,080, Final $75,000
Berkeley Community Gardening Collaborative
Current $11,895, Requested $153,052, Final $51,632
J-Sei Senior Services
Current $9,110, Requested $30,000, Final $20,000
Through the Looking Glass
Current $27,206, Requested $52,000, Final $35,000
I’ve attended meetings at three fully equipped conference rooms in 2180 Milvia. I suspect there is at least one and probably more fully equipped conference rooms in the Planning Department in the building on Center Street. There is equipment with giant display screens at the Fire Department Training Center on Cedar and in Public Works on Allston.
Commissions and the public have been requesting hybrid meetings for months. The excuse has been there isn’t equipment. Two days before the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission the Agenda Committee discussed and responded to the recommendations from the Open Government Commission where Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf did agree hybrid meetings should be pursued.
At the Saturday at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council it was mentioned that there was scaffolding up at 2902 Adeline, but there was no building permit. I didn’t see any scaffolding when I went to look at the property after the meeting, but the property certainly looked like it would fit the description of blighted.
On February 27, City Council passed on consent Councilmember Bartlett’s referral to the City Manager to investigate the feasibility of using eminent domain for 2902 and 2908 Adeline and the abandoned house on 1946 Russell to build affordable housing.
This is all very interesting as there was a Trachtenberg designed project for these three parcels approved by City Council in 2017. After losing the appeal to council the neighbors filed a lawsuit. That was settled in favor of the developer on July 10, 2018.
I found three closed expired permits for the property on the City of Berkeley website dated 5/1/2023 (received 11/30/2021), 11/16/2023 (received 9/20/2021), and 11/16/2023 (received 5/4/2022). https://berkeley.buildingeye.com/building
This was a very contentious projects when it was first proposed. I remember being told by one very active Berkeley resident who has since passed away, that REALTEX never built anything and that their game was to get projects entitled. That game isn’t limited to REALTEX. There are many projects approved that never seem to go anywhere for years if at all. There was no apparent application for a permit for anything for 2902 Adeline until over three years after REALTEX won the lawsuit filed by the neighbors.
What happens now sits in the City Manager’s to do list which gets longer with every new council referral.
The Peace and Justice Commission agenda item Update from the Gaza Roundtable Subgroup put that meeting on my list to attend, but I missed the meeting. I have since heard pressure on commissioners from councilmembers have squashed the effort for a Rountable on Gaza. This is such a shame. The Peace and Justice Commission is the place for a panel and public discussion.
I expect that a roundtable on Gaza would be difficult. There are lots of strong feelings, and many minds are made up, but it is a conversation that we need to have.
The Peace and Justice Commission did an outstanding job on the Fukushima Roundtable.
International Women’s Day was March 8 and the month of March is Women’s History Month.
If you are wondering just what is the Comstock Act of 1873 and how the Comstock Act could upend access to Mifepristone then pick up the entertaining biography by Jennifer Wright Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist. The book Madame Restell covers a time in U.S. history when abortionists competed and advertised in newspapers and Andrew Comstock was intent to put an end to it.
February 25, 2024
As I close out this Diary, late again from my Saturday February 24. 2024 target, the protest vote from Michigan is in with over with 100,000 as uncommitted. The Democratic leadership is banking on the protest voters coming home in November to support Biden against Trump who is known to be worse for Palestinian recognition, but will they? Will the MSNBC weekday and weeknight anchors and pundits falling all over themselves to praise Biden be enough?
Only two of the former three Muslim anchors remain with shows on Saturday and Sunday. Mehdi Hasan who gave the strongest coverage of the Israel Hamas war and toughest interviews is gone.
The Hilary Clinton team thought they could count on Democrats too in 2016, but in Michigan voters checked the down ballot boxes and left the president box blank. Conspiracies abounded over those empty boxes, but it was yet another protest by voters.
I’ve finished eight books on Israel and Palestine in the recent weeks (listed from last read to first, the bolded are on important to read lists), 1) Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians From Balfour to Trump by Khaled Elginoy, 2) Inter / Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine by Steven Salaita, 3) Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi, 4) The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi, 5) Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible by Mitri Raheb, 6) The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir by Naom Chayut, 7) Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe and 8) A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall.
I’m a third of the way through Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman and have seven more books waiting on hold at the library. Rise and Kill First is brutal and it will leave you wondering who should really be called the terrorists. You might be shocked, I know I was, at how many of the assassins and assassination plotters ended up in the formation of the Israeli political parties especially the Likud and various arms of the Israeli government as Israeli prime ministers, members of the Knesset, the Mossad, the IDF and as advisors.
Sunday, I saw the film Israelism at the Little Roxie in San Francisco. I highly recommend it especially for those of us not raised in a Jewish household and unfamiliar with the free Birthright Israel trips for 18 to 26 year old Jewish young adults and early education locking Israel and Jewish identity as inseparable. Simone Zimmerman one of the two featured Jewish Americans in the film called that education indoctrination.
I place the current horror in Gaza squarely in the lap of the United States and the failure of every president from Truman to the present including President Biden. It is Elginoy in Blind Spot who pulls it together and so clearly details how the U.S. alliance with Israel makes the U.S. far from an honest mediator to broker peace agreements between Israel and Palestine.
All the power rests with the United States and Israel. The U.S. negotiators have been Zionists at heart pushing the right to dignity, self-determination for Palestinians off the table. The Palestinians have no right of return while Jewish persons from around the world are invited to settle in Israel with settlers taking land away from Palestinians and destroying Palestinian homes.
The history is ugly and sickening like a festering boil that explodes in cycles of violence and retaliation and revenge.
The vengeance of Israel against the Palestinians under Netanyahu unfolding before our eyes over the last five months is like no other war in history in the number of deaths of children, women, aid workers, journalists, the destruction of hospitals, schools, universities, cultural sites, housing and suffering from starvation and no safe place anywhere.
Mehdi Hasan wrote in the Guardian on February 21, 2024 “Biden can end the bombing of Gaza right now. Here’s how” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/21/biden-stop-gaza-bombing-genocide-israel
Reading the early February 29 reports of the IDF opening fire on Palestinians gathering for a food convoy and murdering over 100 with more than 700 injured is no surprise. This kind of violence is described over and over in my reading along with the mindset behind it. We need to ask again who are the terrorists.
As long as Biden who has self-identified as a Zionist can’t bring himself beyond comments like describing the war on Gaza as “over the top” or reducing this latest massacre to interfering with negotiations while the U.S. continues to veto calls for a ceasefire at the U.N. and funds the Israeli war machine nothing will change.
The policy turnaround with action to match in the Biden administration will only come with increasing public pressure. We need it to save the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. And, we need to do it to save our own democracy.
James Carville warns if there is no de-escalation we could be looking at a repeat of 1968 with a splintered party. Nixon won that election.
All of this is the exact reason why Berkeley City Council with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn need to experience a turnaround in their opposition to a ceasefire resolution. We as a City and we as individuals must come together for a permanent ceasefire and humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
As for City meetings It was a quiet week. With Monday as the Presidents’ Day Holiday and City Council off for the week except for the closed session on Tuesday, I made it to only one uneventful City meeting, the Zoning Adjustment Board. All four projects were approved on consent: 1287 Gilman establish a wine bar, 1205 Kains lift a dwelling 18 inches and move it 3 feet 3 inches, 1340 Haskell demolish a single-family home and build 2 new single-family homes on the lot, and 2901-2903 Deakin lift a duplex 10 feet 6 inches and add a new 1st floor and 8th bedroom.
As for the closed Council session, could someone tell me if it is normal for a city to be in continuous labor negotiations?
I did watch the Berkeley Mayoral Forum, the Wellstone panel on calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza, part of the Wellstone Candidate Forum for City Council District 7, the presentation by Rex Frazier on the California insurance industry to Livable California and served as the driver for my favorite candidate Margot Smith for the Meet and Greet the Candidates at the Allen Temple Baptist Church.
Margot Smith is a long shot for State Assembly and I encourage you to vote for her in the March 5th primary. I think she would do a great job, most importantly, she would break the grip of big money on the Assembly seat. While Margot has attended multiple candidate events (ten and counting), Buffy Wicks (current State Assembly person) showed up once. Forums to debate/speak to the issues have been canceled, because Wicks doesn’t show up.
Even if Wicks doesn’t think she has real competition to be reelected, these forums are opportunities and not taking them tells me where Wicks places the interests of her constituents.
You can watch the Mayoral Forum on the Berkeley Community Media YouTube Channel and form your own opinion. https://www.youtube.com/user/BerkeleyCommMedia
There is no primary for mayor and it seems most unusual for the Chamber of Commerce to sponsor a mayor forum when we need to be focusing on the primary. I don’t have a handle on who pushed for this forum, but it doesn’t settle right. A lot can change between now and November when we cast our rank choice votes for mayor and council districts 2,3,5 and 6.
Candidates can submit paperwork to run until August 9, 2024. Since Arreguin is running for State Senate he won’t be running for mayor unless he misses the top two in the primary which is very unlikely. When the incumbent does not run, the filing period extends by one day to August 10, 2024. Here is the full schedule: https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/November%20Calendar%202024%20PUBLIC.pdf
I listened to part of the recording of the Wellstone District 7 Candidate Forum with James Chang and Cecilia Lunaparra and got as far as their stands on Israel and Palestine. I planned to go back to it, but it disappeared from my screen and the forum is not posted on the Wellstone website. Only residents of District 7 can vote in the special April 16 special election. I live in District 4. Our election will be May 28. Wellstone endorsed Lunaparra who supports a ceasefire. Chang does not.
The entire two-hour Livable California meeting was devoted to the presentation by Rex Frazier on the California insurance industry. Frazier explained how the California FAIR Plan works. The Fair Plan is an insurance option for residents and businesses that cannot obtain insurance through a regular insurance company. Listening to presentation and the questions at the end, I believe we can expect more homeowner insurance companies to leave California.
There is another problem. John Vailant refers to it over and over in his book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. It is the Lucretius Problem, humans have difficulty imagining and assimilating things outside their own personal experience. The very nature of fire is changing. Fires burn hotter and faster. I did not get a sense from the attendees’ questions that they grasped how quickly their homes and everything in them can burn and leave nothing but ashes.
You can watch the presentation at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWCewh-_26g
I’ve found my favorite book for Black History Month, Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity by Michele Norris creator of the Race Card Project.
Our Hidden Conversations was just released January 16, 2024. I had the audiobook from the Los Angeles Public Library read by the author with a full cast. There are long waits for the audiobook at Contra Costa, San Francisco, Alameda County and the Northern California Digital Libraries. The Berkeley library has the hard copy/print and ebook. Oakland has print only.
The Race Card Project started with Norris (former co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered”) leaving postcards in all sorts of places with the message “Race. Identity. Your Thoughts 6-Words. Please Send”. https://theracecardproject.com/
Norris says in the introduction the reader/listener can skip around. I chose to listen from the beginning to the end. Norris writes there is an honesty that comes from the six-word postcards. There was no request for people to sign their names, though many did. The cards expanded into stories of families, connections, pain, worries, grace, love and how race invades and reaches through all of us whether we admit it or not.
Chapter 5 connects with the book I recommended in the last Activist’s Diary by Susan Nieman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. Norris talks at length about needing conversations about slavery and racism.
Norris described Arlington, Virginia as taking on a project much like the Stolperstein (stumbling stone) in Berlin. These are stepping stones in the sidewalk in front of the person’s final residence before being sent to the death camps commemorating the lives of Jewish People, Sinti, Roma, disabled, gay and other victims of the Nazis. The plan for Arlington is to commemorate the enslaved.
This, reminds me of how the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners voted against Steve Finacom’s motion for a plaque to commemorate the history of 1652 – 1658 University (Jefferson and University) where in 1923 the white neighbors objected to the West Gate Masonic Association from building the Masonic Lodge for African Americans. Even though the City Council didn’t change the zoning, the project stalled and the Lodge was never built at the corner of University and Jefferson. Soon a new mixed-use housing development will sit at this corner. The last occupant of the current building headed for demolition was Radio Shack.
On some days, I think we should recognize the impact of redlining and Executive Order #9066 the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes to guarded internment camps with permanent civic art projects.
Our Hidden Conversations is too new to be censured, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it lands on a banned book list in the future. We are living in a time when history is being aggressively censured and rewritten.
As I close out this Diary, late again from my Saturday February 24. 2024 target, the protest vote from Michigan is in with over with 100,000 as uncommitted. The Democratic leadership is banking on the protest voters coming home in November to support Biden against Trump who is known to be worse for Palestinian recognition, but will they? Will the MSNBC weekday and weeknight anchors and pundits falling all over themselves to praise Biden be enough?
Only two of the former three Muslim anchors remain with shows on Saturday and Sunday. Mehdi Hasan who gave the strongest coverage of the Israel Hamas war and toughest interviews is gone.
The Hilary Clinton team thought they could count on Democrats too in 2016, but in Michigan voters checked the down ballot boxes and left the president box blank. Conspiracies abounded over those empty boxes, but it was yet another protest by voters.
I’ve finished eight books on Israel and Palestine in the recent weeks (listed from last read to first, the bolded are on important to read lists), 1) Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians From Balfour to Trump by Khaled Elginoy, 2) Inter / Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine by Steven Salaita, 3) Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi, 4) The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi, 5) Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible by Mitri Raheb, 6) The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir by Naom Chayut, 7) Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe and 8) A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall.
I’m a third of the way through Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman and have seven more books waiting on hold at the library. Rise and Kill First is brutal and it will leave you wondering who should really be called the terrorists. You might be shocked, I know I was, at how many of the assassins and assassination plotters ended up in the formation of the Israeli political parties especially the Likud and various arms of the Israeli government as Israeli prime ministers, members of the Knesset, the Mossad, the IDF and as advisors.
Sunday, I saw the film Israelism at the Little Roxie in San Francisco. I highly recommend it especially for those of us not raised in a Jewish household and unfamiliar with the free Birthright Israel trips for 18 to 26 year old Jewish young adults and early education locking Israel and Jewish identity as inseparable. Simone Zimmerman one of the two featured Jewish Americans in the film called that education indoctrination.
I place the current horror in Gaza squarely in the lap of the United States and the failure of every president from Truman to the present including President Biden. It is Elginoy in Blind Spot who pulls it together and so clearly details how the U.S. alliance with Israel makes the U.S. far from an honest mediator to broker peace agreements between Israel and Palestine.
All the power rests with the United States and Israel. The U.S. negotiators have been Zionists at heart pushing the right to dignity, self-determination for Palestinians off the table. The Palestinians have no right of return while Jewish persons from around the world are invited to settle in Israel with settlers taking land away from Palestinians and destroying Palestinian homes.
The history is ugly and sickening like a festering boil that explodes in cycles of violence and retaliation and revenge.
The vengeance of Israel against the Palestinians under Netanyahu unfolding before our eyes over the last five months is like no other war in history in the number of deaths of children, women, aid workers, journalists, the destruction of hospitals, schools, universities, cultural sites, housing and suffering from starvation and no safe place anywhere.
Mehdi Hasan wrote in the Guardian on February 21, 2024 “Biden can end the bombing of Gaza right now. Here’s how” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/21/biden-stop-gaza-bombing-genocide-israel
Reading the early February 29 reports of the IDF opening fire on Palestinians gathering for a food convoy and murdering over 100 with more than 700 injured is no surprise. This kind of violence is described over and over in my reading along with the mindset behind it. We need to ask again who are the terrorists.
As long as Biden who has self-identified as a Zionist can’t bring himself beyond comments like describing the war on Gaza as “over the top” or reducing this latest massacre to interfering with negotiations while the U.S. continues to veto calls for a ceasefire at the U.N. and funds the Israeli war machine nothing will change.
The policy turnaround with action to match in the Biden administration will only come with increasing public pressure. We need it to save the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. And, we need to do it to save our own democracy.
James Carville warns if there is no de-escalation we could be looking at a repeat of 1968 with a splintered party. Nixon won that election.
All of this is the exact reason why Berkeley City Council with Mayor Arreguin and councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn need to experience a turnaround in their opposition to a ceasefire resolution. We as a City and we as individuals must come together for a permanent ceasefire and humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
As for City meetings It was a quiet week. With Monday as the Presidents’ Day Holiday and City Council off for the week except for the closed session on Tuesday, I made it to only one uneventful City meeting, the Zoning Adjustment Board. All four projects were approved on consent: 1287 Gilman establish a wine bar, 1205 Kains lift a dwelling 18 inches and move it 3 feet 3 inches, 1340 Haskell demolish a single-family home and build 2 new single-family homes on the lot, and 2901-2903 Deakin lift a duplex 10 feet 6 inches and add a new 1st floor and 8th bedroom.
As for the closed Council session, could someone tell me if it is normal for a city to be in continuous labor negotiations?
I did watch the Berkeley Mayoral Forum, the Wellstone panel on calling for a Ceasefire in Gaza, part of the Wellstone Candidate Forum for City Council District 7, the presentation by Rex Frazier on the California insurance industry to Livable California and served as the driver for my favorite candidate Margot Smith for the Meet and Greet the Candidates at the Allen Temple Baptist Church.
Margot Smith is a long shot for State Assembly and I encourage you to vote for her in the March 5th primary. I think she would do a great job, most importantly, she would break the grip of big money on the Assembly seat. While Margot has attended multiple candidate events (ten and counting), Buffy Wicks (current State Assembly person) showed up once. Forums to debate/speak to the issues have been canceled, because Wicks doesn’t show up.
Even if Wicks doesn’t think she has real competition to be reelected, these forums are opportunities and not taking them tells me where Wicks places the interests of her constituents.
You can watch the Mayoral Forum on the Berkeley Community Media YouTube Channel and form your own opinion. https://www.youtube.com/user/BerkeleyCommMedia
There is no primary for mayor and it seems most unusual for the Chamber of Commerce to sponsor a mayor forum when we need to be focusing on the primary. I don’t have a handle on who pushed for this forum, but it doesn’t settle right. A lot can change between now and November when we cast our rank choice votes for mayor and council districts 2,3,5 and 6.
Candidates can submit paperwork to run until August 9, 2024. Since Arreguin is running for State Senate he won’t be running for mayor unless he misses the top two in the primary which is very unlikely. When the incumbent does not run, the filing period extends by one day to August 10, 2024. Here is the full schedule: https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/November%20Calendar%202024%20PUBLIC.pdf
I listened to part of the recording of the Wellstone District 7 Candidate Forum with James Chang and Cecilia Lunaparra and got as far as their stands on Israel and Palestine. I planned to go back to it, but it disappeared from my screen and the forum is not posted on the Wellstone website. Only residents of District 7 can vote in the special April 16 special election. I live in District 4. Our election will be May 28. Wellstone endorsed Lunaparra who supports a ceasefire. Chang does not.
The entire two-hour Livable California meeting was devoted to the presentation by Rex Frazier on the California insurance industry. Frazier explained how the California FAIR Plan works. The Fair Plan is an insurance option for residents and businesses that cannot obtain insurance through a regular insurance company. Listening to presentation and the questions at the end, I believe we can expect more homeowner insurance companies to leave California.
There is another problem. John Vailant refers to it over and over in his book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. It is the Lucretius Problem, humans have difficulty imagining and assimilating things outside their own personal experience. The very nature of fire is changing. Fires burn hotter and faster. I did not get a sense from the attendees’ questions that they grasped how quickly their homes and everything in them can burn and leave nothing but ashes.
You can watch the presentation at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWCewh-_26g
I’ve found my favorite book for Black History Month, Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity by Michele Norris creator of the Race Card Project.
Our Hidden Conversations was just released January 16, 2024. I had the audiobook from the Los Angeles Public Library read by the author with a full cast. There are long waits for the audiobook at Contra Costa, San Francisco, Alameda County and the Northern California Digital Libraries. The Berkeley library has the hard copy/print and ebook. Oakland has print only.
The Race Card Project started with Norris (former co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered”) leaving postcards in all sorts of places with the message “Race. Identity. Your Thoughts 6-Words. Please Send”. https://theracecardproject.com/
Norris says in the introduction the reader/listener can skip around. I chose to listen from the beginning to the end. Norris writes there is an honesty that comes from the six-word postcards. There was no request for people to sign their names, though many did. The cards expanded into stories of families, connections, pain, worries, grace, love and how race invades and reaches through all of us whether we admit it or not.
Chapter 5 connects with the book I recommended in the last Activist’s Diary by Susan Nieman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. Norris talks at length about needing conversations about slavery and racism.
Norris described Arlington, Virginia as taking on a project much like the Stolperstein (stumbling stone) in Berlin. These are stepping stones in the sidewalk in front of the person’s final residence before being sent to the death camps commemorating the lives of Jewish People, Sinti, Roma, disabled, gay and other victims of the Nazis. The plan for Arlington is to commemorate the enslaved.
This, reminds me of how the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners voted against Steve Finacom’s motion for a plaque to commemorate the history of 1652 – 1658 University (Jefferson and University) where in 1923 the white neighbors objected to the West Gate Masonic Association from building the Masonic Lodge for African Americans. Even though the City Council didn’t change the zoning, the project stalled and the Lodge was never built at the corner of University and Jefferson. Soon a new mixed-use housing development will sit at this corner. The last occupant of the current building headed for demolition was Radio Shack.
On some days, I think we should recognize the impact of redlining and Executive Order #9066 the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes to guarded internment camps with permanent civic art projects.
Our Hidden Conversations is too new to be censured, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it lands on a banned book list in the future. We are living in a time when history is being aggressively censured and rewritten.
February 18, 2024
There is a lot to pick up from my last Activist’s Diary and several very interesting meetings.
The League of Women Voters Berkeley Albany Emeryville forums of District 7 Senate candidates, District 5 Alameda County Supervisor candidates and House of Representatives are posted at: https://www.lwvbae.org/league-news/candidate-forums-for-the-2024-primary-2/
I still have not made any decisions on the Alameda County Supervisor’s race. The Berkeley Neighborhoods Council Forum from the 15th isn’t posted yet. Watch for it at: https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
I received several communications from Councilmember Ben Bartlett and his office in fallow-up that I didn’t recall his association with the SCU (Special Care Unit).
Here are the results. Bartlett submitted the Safety for All: The George Floyd Community Safety Act on June 16, 2020. It was submitted as an urgency item and it is not listed with the agenda. The meeting minutes show the first part of the Act passed as a budget referral to reallocate Berkeley Police Department funds spent on non-criminal activity and reinvest in a Specialized Care Unit pilot along with $150,000 to hire a consultant to analyze police calls and responses that could be responded to by non-police services.
The motion for the second part of the Act passed as, “to Direct the City Manager to reduce the footprint of the police department and limit the police’s response to violent and criminal service calls” was scheduled for the July 14, 2020 council meeting.
On July 14, 2020 the George Floyd Community Safety Act by Ben Bartlett was one of the five submissions from councilmembers with various proposals on policing and community engagement, which Mayor Arreguin wrapped into one measure. This became the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) was hired as the consulting organization. The NICJR and Task Force started shortly after the July 2020 council vote. Both the NICJR and Task Force reports were submitted in the spring of 2022 with the Task Force taking issue and rejecting many of the conclusions in the NICJR report. The Task Force was disbanded after the submission of the report. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/RPSTF%20Final%20Report.pdf
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd murder and the demonstrations that followed, the focus for Reimagining Public Safety was fair and impartial policing, early intervention to identify problem officers with respect to racial disparities, to remove sworn police officers from noncriminal tasks and to provide those services not requiring a sworn officer by appropriately skilled persons like the mental health crisis (SCU team) and through social service programs for crime prevention.
The July 14, 2020 meeting was the evening when the Council committed to the intent to reduce the Police Department budget by 50%. That never happened.
As pointed out by Bartlett in his July 14 supplements to the George Floyd Act proposal sending a response team (the SCU) instead of police officers to a person in a mental health crisis is not a new idea. Such a program CAHOOTS has been in operation in Eugene Oregon for over 30 years.
The SCU did open in the fall of 2023 with a contract with Bonita House. The SCU currently provides service from 6 am to 4 pm. The plan is to expand services to 24 hours. The three-person health team consisting of a clinician, peer specialist and EMT arrives without police to the location of the person in crisis in a van. To access help for a mental health crisis without police call (510) 948-0075. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/mental-health/crisis-services
Other than the SCU, the Reimagining Public Safety appeared to be headed off as another shelved effort.
Finally, on January 23, 2024, the City Manager, Deputy Managers, Department Directors and staff presented the progress on Reimagining Public Safety. I listened to the council meeting twice (live and the recording). It came across as a well-orchestrated scripted word salad with a 61-page presentation.
I can’t say that at the end of it including all the documents that I have a grasp of what has been accomplished other than quite a number of people have been hired into what appear to be program planning roles and program development is continuing. I continue to wonder how many hours were spent on creating the 61-page power point presentation document, writing the script, dividing up who would talk through the sections to give the council and the public a report of generalities.
It left me asking does everything need to turn into a presentation production. These productions make me feel like the effort is in the show for the council not in the work on the ground.
The responses were more informative than the presentation. George Lipman reported no progress has been made in disparate policing of persons of color and the same situation exists (no progress) in early police officer intervention efforts with problem officers.
Edward Opton, who was a member of the Reimagining Task Force and serves on the Mental Health Commission, pointed out transition to a different model of service is complicated and Governor Newsom’s initiative (if it passes) on the March 5 Ballot to emphasize institutionalization of schizophrenics is going to be a big change and it won’t go smoothly. Opton stated the Mental Health Commission could provide advice and analysis, but has not been asked to do so.
The suggestion of involving commissions instead of the endless hiring of consultants is ongoing.
Alex N. Gecan in Berkeleyside brought attention to the February 13, 2024 report from the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice titled “California Law Enforcement Agencies Are Spending More But Solving Fewer Crimes” and that Berkeley spending per capita on law enforcement is greater than the average and Berkeley Police Department solves fewer crimes than the state average.
Going directly to the report the header states “[D]espite record spending on law enforcement, crime-solving is at record lows” The link to the interactive section of the report where cities and counties can be entered for comparisons is at: https://www.cjcj.org/reports-publications/report/charts
The report gives the kind of data that we don’t hear in the annual crime report from the Police Chief.
The evening when Councilmember Harrison resigned was January 30 (before the release) during the multi-million-dollar expenditure proposal on fixed surveillance cameras introduced by Councilmember Humbert and approved by Humbert, Bartlett, Kesarwani, Taplin and Arreguin. Hahn abstained, Harrison left, Wengraf was absent and District 7 council seat was vacant.
Harrison had a long list of better ways to spend millions of dollars to reduce crime and enhance safety which were essentially rejected in favor of fixed cameras.
In Harrison’s resignation, she described Berkeley as broken. I certainly agree.
Hahn is focused on the redesigning the legislative process, the steps to go through to submit major legislation. Many of the referrals that councilmembers submit could and should be more complete, but should hours upon hours be spent on designing a process especially when there will be at least four new councilmembers by December, plus a new mayor. Also, what role does the mayor play in mentoring new councilmembers? In a novel concept, couldn’t some of these problems in councilmember submissions be resolved through mentoring new councilmembers. Should that be an expectation of who we select as mayor in November.
At the February 13, 2024 City Council meeting Bartlett submitted an urgency item for continuing District constituent services in the event of a resignation or death or expulsion of a councilmember. The measure would provide for continuity of services until a new councilmember is elected by continuing to employ the office staff of district without a councilmember to respond to Berkeley residents. And, that the staff would report to the mayor in the interim.
Berkeley does not have a procedure for expulsion so that was dropped.
Arreguin complained that having those staff report to him would be too much added work for him and his office. There was discussion of passing this off to the City Manager something that would change the separation between staff working for councilmembers and reporting relationships to the City Manager.
I doubt my comment had any impact on the final vote which assigned the reporting relationship to be to the mayor. I basically said if you want the big job then you do the work.
In the afternoon of February 13 at the Agenda Committee in the discussion of expanding representatives of the poor, Hahn asked the question if the City attorney had reviewed the dissolution /merging of the Human Welfare and Community Action Committee and the Peace and Justice Commission into the new Community Action Commission satisfied the governing requirements for receiving Community Service Block Grants. The answer was no.
The Block Grants are funds from the Federal Government administered by the states. There are rules/ government codes/regulations to follow.
The City of Berkeley is at risk of losing Community Service Block Grants through the failure of city councilmembers and council as a whole to fill positions in the existing commission and for the apparent failure of meeting reporting on the status of the commission and grant review.
The dissolution / merger was the last agenda of the February 13th evening before council. Arreguin stated he was ready to move forward despite the afternoon discussion.
Fortunately, the discussion on whether Arreguin as mayor would have to pick up City of Berkeley work ate up considerable time, so the vote on the dissolution / merger of the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission and the Peace and Justice Commission was pushed off to be rescheduled another day.
There is some rumbling that there are persons who would be content with losing Block Grants. After all, receiving Block Grants comes with following regulations and serving the needy, the people that some would like to disappear.
I’m beginning to think the real estate, developer and building industries won’t be satisfied until every inch of land is turned into a building project. The Planning Department and Planning Commission seem to be all in.
On February 7, the Planning Commission conducted a hearing to encourage “middle housing” in all residential areas of Berkeley from current single-family housing to mixed use residential. Middle housing are duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and small (10 units or less) multi-unit buildings. In the 7 to 2 vote, open space is decreased, lot coverage is increased to 60%, the maximum residential density standard for all zones is removed and to permit construction of all housing types that increase density with a Zoning Certificate (issued by Zoning staff through the online service center).
The density increases include all the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones even Panoramic Hill with only one way in and out and places with roads so narrow two cars can’t pass.
This is crazy stuff, but the City, boards and commissions have been taken over by the YIMBYs who seem to believe if enough housing is built it will trickle down to them and save the planet. The investors are on the side filing their pockets. There is nothing sustainable about the demolition of existing buildings and building these new structures. Forests are cut down, resources are extracted, habitat is destroyed. What goes into these buildings comes from somewhere. Somehow, we keep forgetting this planet is finite.
There is a Berkeley Mayoral Candidate forum with Sophie Hahn, Adena Ishii and Kate Harrison at the David Brower Center on February 22 from 5 to 6:30 pm moderated by Beth Roessner, Berkeley Chamber of Commerce CEO. I don’t have to worry about going. It is already sold out, but you can watch it on Berkeley Community Media’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7JZDJguFhk
My question on a mayoral forum remains. WHY? Can’t we get through the primary first. Applications to run for mayor don’t close until August. I’d really like more forums on the candidates and issues for the primary.
Item 13 on the February 27, 2024 Council Agenda with Arreguin and Hahn as the authors and Wengraf as the co-sponsor is to allocate $300,000 to “Resources to Plan for Future Health Care Access for Berkeley Residents” (Alta Bates closure).
I attended one of the early meetings (2018) on the closure of Alta Bates. My comments were not welcome and these won’t be either. I continue to see the closure of Alta Bates and any replacement as regional not Berkeley based issue. The location of a new hospital should involve a broad look at population, service, existing medical centers, even traffic corridors.
There were hard lessons learned with the pandemic. The future should look very different from the past.
We should all be grateful that medicine has progressed. Cataract surgery is an outpatient procedure not ten days in a dark room with your head braced in sandbags so you don’t move. That truly was the procedure decades ago. Gallbladder surgery means showing up in the morning and being on your way home by early afternoon, not seven to ten days in a hospital room.
It is Black History Month. On Saturday, February 17, masked men marched carrying Nazi flags in downtown Nashville Tennessee.
It may seem strange to end an Activist’s Diary in Black History Month with a book by a Jewish American who moved to Israel and then to Berlin, but the book is fitting for where we find ourselves in a divided nation with the banning of books about slavery, racism, LBGTQ+ and whatever “red” states don’t want children and young people to read with Texas and Florida leading in the volume of books banned. But, there are some blue states too with laws of concern moving forward. https://www.everylibrary.org/billtracking
The book is Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. I started with an ebook from the library and then followed with an action that I rarely take, I bought the book. Pegasus doesn’t stock it, but took my request and the special order is in my hands.
Neiman shifts back and forth between Germany’s long and difficult path from the Holocaust to the present and the failure of the United States to come to grips with the horrors of crimes committed here, slavery, Jim Crow, and the Native American genocide.
Neiman writes, “[N}azi jurists studied American race laws extensively, particularly concerning citizenship rights, immigration and miscegenation, before drafting the notorious Nuremberg Laws. Chillingly, those jurists found American racial policies too harsh to apply in Germany, and replaced the infamous “one drop of blood” by which American law determined race with more lenient criteria, allowing Germans possessing but one Jewish grandparent to count…”
The Nazi’s also studied the Native American genocide in the westward expansion using it to create the Nazi template for eastward expansion called Lebensraum (translation room to live).
As I read, I thought a lot about Palestine and how the current annihilation of Palestinians fits into the Native American genocide.
In another chapter Neiman addresses the Confederate monuments that still stand and asks if we could imagine Germany having monuments to the Nazis. Then she challenges us with the question how is it that there are still monuments glorifying the confederacy continuing to stand.
On Saturdays I like to catch Ali Velshi’s Banned Book Club. It is from that show that I read South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry, Black Boy by Richard Wright, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler and learned Visit Philadelphia is celebrating Black History Month with distributing banned books by Black authors in Little Free(dom) Libraries. Reading is resistance. https://www.visitphilly.com/articles/philadelphia/little-freedom-library/
The film Origin written and directed by Ava DuVernay based on Isabel Wilkerson’s journalistic life as she explores and writes the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is showing at the Rialto in El Cerrito and AMC in Emeryville. It is wonderfully done. Be sure to stay after the credits to listen to DuVernay’s answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the film. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/origin-movie-review-2023
There is a lot to pick up from my last Activist’s Diary and several very interesting meetings.
The League of Women Voters Berkeley Albany Emeryville forums of District 7 Senate candidates, District 5 Alameda County Supervisor candidates and House of Representatives are posted at: https://www.lwvbae.org/league-news/candidate-forums-for-the-2024-primary-2/
I still have not made any decisions on the Alameda County Supervisor’s race. The Berkeley Neighborhoods Council Forum from the 15th isn’t posted yet. Watch for it at: https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
I received several communications from Councilmember Ben Bartlett and his office in fallow-up that I didn’t recall his association with the SCU (Special Care Unit).
Here are the results. Bartlett submitted the Safety for All: The George Floyd Community Safety Act on June 16, 2020. It was submitted as an urgency item and it is not listed with the agenda. The meeting minutes show the first part of the Act passed as a budget referral to reallocate Berkeley Police Department funds spent on non-criminal activity and reinvest in a Specialized Care Unit pilot along with $150,000 to hire a consultant to analyze police calls and responses that could be responded to by non-police services.
The motion for the second part of the Act passed as, “to Direct the City Manager to reduce the footprint of the police department and limit the police’s response to violent and criminal service calls” was scheduled for the July 14, 2020 council meeting.
On July 14, 2020 the George Floyd Community Safety Act by Ben Bartlett was one of the five submissions from councilmembers with various proposals on policing and community engagement, which Mayor Arreguin wrapped into one measure. This became the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) was hired as the consulting organization. The NICJR and Task Force started shortly after the July 2020 council vote. Both the NICJR and Task Force reports were submitted in the spring of 2022 with the Task Force taking issue and rejecting many of the conclusions in the NICJR report. The Task Force was disbanded after the submission of the report. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/RPSTF%20Final%20Report.pdf
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd murder and the demonstrations that followed, the focus for Reimagining Public Safety was fair and impartial policing, early intervention to identify problem officers with respect to racial disparities, to remove sworn police officers from noncriminal tasks and to provide those services not requiring a sworn officer by appropriately skilled persons like the mental health crisis (SCU team) and through social service programs for crime prevention.
The July 14, 2020 meeting was the evening when the Council committed to the intent to reduce the Police Department budget by 50%. That never happened.
As pointed out by Bartlett in his July 14 supplements to the George Floyd Act proposal sending a response team (the SCU) instead of police officers to a person in a mental health crisis is not a new idea. Such a program CAHOOTS has been in operation in Eugene Oregon for over 30 years.
The SCU did open in the fall of 2023 with a contract with Bonita House. The SCU currently provides service from 6 am to 4 pm. The plan is to expand services to 24 hours. The three-person health team consisting of a clinician, peer specialist and EMT arrives without police to the location of the person in crisis in a van. To access help for a mental health crisis without police call (510) 948-0075. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/mental-health/crisis-services
Other than the SCU, the Reimagining Public Safety appeared to be headed off as another shelved effort.
Finally, on January 23, 2024, the City Manager, Deputy Managers, Department Directors and staff presented the progress on Reimagining Public Safety. I listened to the council meeting twice (live and the recording). It came across as a well-orchestrated scripted word salad with a 61-page presentation.
I can’t say that at the end of it including all the documents that I have a grasp of what has been accomplished other than quite a number of people have been hired into what appear to be program planning roles and program development is continuing. I continue to wonder how many hours were spent on creating the 61-page power point presentation document, writing the script, dividing up who would talk through the sections to give the council and the public a report of generalities.
It left me asking does everything need to turn into a presentation production. These productions make me feel like the effort is in the show for the council not in the work on the ground.
The responses were more informative than the presentation. George Lipman reported no progress has been made in disparate policing of persons of color and the same situation exists (no progress) in early police officer intervention efforts with problem officers.
Edward Opton, who was a member of the Reimagining Task Force and serves on the Mental Health Commission, pointed out transition to a different model of service is complicated and Governor Newsom’s initiative (if it passes) on the March 5 Ballot to emphasize institutionalization of schizophrenics is going to be a big change and it won’t go smoothly. Opton stated the Mental Health Commission could provide advice and analysis, but has not been asked to do so.
The suggestion of involving commissions instead of the endless hiring of consultants is ongoing.
Alex N. Gecan in Berkeleyside brought attention to the February 13, 2024 report from the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice titled “California Law Enforcement Agencies Are Spending More But Solving Fewer Crimes” and that Berkeley spending per capita on law enforcement is greater than the average and Berkeley Police Department solves fewer crimes than the state average.
Going directly to the report the header states “[D]espite record spending on law enforcement, crime-solving is at record lows” The link to the interactive section of the report where cities and counties can be entered for comparisons is at: https://www.cjcj.org/reports-publications/report/charts
The report gives the kind of data that we don’t hear in the annual crime report from the Police Chief.
The evening when Councilmember Harrison resigned was January 30 (before the release) during the multi-million-dollar expenditure proposal on fixed surveillance cameras introduced by Councilmember Humbert and approved by Humbert, Bartlett, Kesarwani, Taplin and Arreguin. Hahn abstained, Harrison left, Wengraf was absent and District 7 council seat was vacant.
Harrison had a long list of better ways to spend millions of dollars to reduce crime and enhance safety which were essentially rejected in favor of fixed cameras.
In Harrison’s resignation, she described Berkeley as broken. I certainly agree.
Hahn is focused on the redesigning the legislative process, the steps to go through to submit major legislation. Many of the referrals that councilmembers submit could and should be more complete, but should hours upon hours be spent on designing a process especially when there will be at least four new councilmembers by December, plus a new mayor. Also, what role does the mayor play in mentoring new councilmembers? In a novel concept, couldn’t some of these problems in councilmember submissions be resolved through mentoring new councilmembers. Should that be an expectation of who we select as mayor in November.
At the February 13, 2024 City Council meeting Bartlett submitted an urgency item for continuing District constituent services in the event of a resignation or death or expulsion of a councilmember. The measure would provide for continuity of services until a new councilmember is elected by continuing to employ the office staff of district without a councilmember to respond to Berkeley residents. And, that the staff would report to the mayor in the interim.
Berkeley does not have a procedure for expulsion so that was dropped.
Arreguin complained that having those staff report to him would be too much added work for him and his office. There was discussion of passing this off to the City Manager something that would change the separation between staff working for councilmembers and reporting relationships to the City Manager.
I doubt my comment had any impact on the final vote which assigned the reporting relationship to be to the mayor. I basically said if you want the big job then you do the work.
In the afternoon of February 13 at the Agenda Committee in the discussion of expanding representatives of the poor, Hahn asked the question if the City attorney had reviewed the dissolution /merging of the Human Welfare and Community Action Committee and the Peace and Justice Commission into the new Community Action Commission satisfied the governing requirements for receiving Community Service Block Grants. The answer was no.
The Block Grants are funds from the Federal Government administered by the states. There are rules/ government codes/regulations to follow.
The City of Berkeley is at risk of losing Community Service Block Grants through the failure of city councilmembers and council as a whole to fill positions in the existing commission and for the apparent failure of meeting reporting on the status of the commission and grant review.
The dissolution / merger was the last agenda of the February 13th evening before council. Arreguin stated he was ready to move forward despite the afternoon discussion.
Fortunately, the discussion on whether Arreguin as mayor would have to pick up City of Berkeley work ate up considerable time, so the vote on the dissolution / merger of the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission and the Peace and Justice Commission was pushed off to be rescheduled another day.
There is some rumbling that there are persons who would be content with losing Block Grants. After all, receiving Block Grants comes with following regulations and serving the needy, the people that some would like to disappear.
I’m beginning to think the real estate, developer and building industries won’t be satisfied until every inch of land is turned into a building project. The Planning Department and Planning Commission seem to be all in.
On February 7, the Planning Commission conducted a hearing to encourage “middle housing” in all residential areas of Berkeley from current single-family housing to mixed use residential. Middle housing are duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and small (10 units or less) multi-unit buildings. In the 7 to 2 vote, open space is decreased, lot coverage is increased to 60%, the maximum residential density standard for all zones is removed and to permit construction of all housing types that increase density with a Zoning Certificate (issued by Zoning staff through the online service center).
The density increases include all the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones even Panoramic Hill with only one way in and out and places with roads so narrow two cars can’t pass.
This is crazy stuff, but the City, boards and commissions have been taken over by the YIMBYs who seem to believe if enough housing is built it will trickle down to them and save the planet. The investors are on the side filing their pockets. There is nothing sustainable about the demolition of existing buildings and building these new structures. Forests are cut down, resources are extracted, habitat is destroyed. What goes into these buildings comes from somewhere. Somehow, we keep forgetting this planet is finite.
There is a Berkeley Mayoral Candidate forum with Sophie Hahn, Adena Ishii and Kate Harrison at the David Brower Center on February 22 from 5 to 6:30 pm moderated by Beth Roessner, Berkeley Chamber of Commerce CEO. I don’t have to worry about going. It is already sold out, but you can watch it on Berkeley Community Media’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7JZDJguFhk
My question on a mayoral forum remains. WHY? Can’t we get through the primary first. Applications to run for mayor don’t close until August. I’d really like more forums on the candidates and issues for the primary.
Item 13 on the February 27, 2024 Council Agenda with Arreguin and Hahn as the authors and Wengraf as the co-sponsor is to allocate $300,000 to “Resources to Plan for Future Health Care Access for Berkeley Residents” (Alta Bates closure).
I attended one of the early meetings (2018) on the closure of Alta Bates. My comments were not welcome and these won’t be either. I continue to see the closure of Alta Bates and any replacement as regional not Berkeley based issue. The location of a new hospital should involve a broad look at population, service, existing medical centers, even traffic corridors.
There were hard lessons learned with the pandemic. The future should look very different from the past.
We should all be grateful that medicine has progressed. Cataract surgery is an outpatient procedure not ten days in a dark room with your head braced in sandbags so you don’t move. That truly was the procedure decades ago. Gallbladder surgery means showing up in the morning and being on your way home by early afternoon, not seven to ten days in a hospital room.
It is Black History Month. On Saturday, February 17, masked men marched carrying Nazi flags in downtown Nashville Tennessee.
It may seem strange to end an Activist’s Diary in Black History Month with a book by a Jewish American who moved to Israel and then to Berlin, but the book is fitting for where we find ourselves in a divided nation with the banning of books about slavery, racism, LBGTQ+ and whatever “red” states don’t want children and young people to read with Texas and Florida leading in the volume of books banned. But, there are some blue states too with laws of concern moving forward. https://www.everylibrary.org/billtracking
The book is Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. I started with an ebook from the library and then followed with an action that I rarely take, I bought the book. Pegasus doesn’t stock it, but took my request and the special order is in my hands.
Neiman shifts back and forth between Germany’s long and difficult path from the Holocaust to the present and the failure of the United States to come to grips with the horrors of crimes committed here, slavery, Jim Crow, and the Native American genocide.
Neiman writes, “[N}azi jurists studied American race laws extensively, particularly concerning citizenship rights, immigration and miscegenation, before drafting the notorious Nuremberg Laws. Chillingly, those jurists found American racial policies too harsh to apply in Germany, and replaced the infamous “one drop of blood” by which American law determined race with more lenient criteria, allowing Germans possessing but one Jewish grandparent to count…”
The Nazi’s also studied the Native American genocide in the westward expansion using it to create the Nazi template for eastward expansion called Lebensraum (translation room to live).
As I read, I thought a lot about Palestine and how the current annihilation of Palestinians fits into the Native American genocide.
In another chapter Neiman addresses the Confederate monuments that still stand and asks if we could imagine Germany having monuments to the Nazis. Then she challenges us with the question how is it that there are still monuments glorifying the confederacy continuing to stand.
On Saturdays I like to catch Ali Velshi’s Banned Book Club. It is from that show that I read South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry, Black Boy by Richard Wright, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler and learned Visit Philadelphia is celebrating Black History Month with distributing banned books by Black authors in Little Free(dom) Libraries. Reading is resistance. https://www.visitphilly.com/articles/philadelphia/little-freedom-library/
The film Origin written and directed by Ava DuVernay based on Isabel Wilkerson’s journalistic life as she explores and writes the book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is showing at the Rialto in El Cerrito and AMC in Emeryville. It is wonderfully done. Be sure to stay after the credits to listen to DuVernay’s answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the film. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/origin-movie-review-2023
February 8, 2024
Buckle up
After multiple stops and starts, I hope to finally get this off my desk. It has taken nearly three weeks from my first day of COVID episode two (the first was Delta in 2021) to feel normal again.
I am still making up my mind on a few candidates, but I know who I am definitely not voting for.
If the Peace and Justice Commission had been on ZOOM Monday evening, I definitely would have attended, but I tuned into the League of Women Voters forum on District State Senate Candidates instead and then gave up on more meetings for the evening. In my biased view, the City of Berkeley is more interested in killing the commissions than it making it easier to attend.
At the Agenda and Rules meeting on January 29, 2024, I was actually shocked by the tone of the Director of Health, Housing and Community Services Lisa Warhuus’ comments on the merging of the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission.
The dissolution of the two commissions each of which has fifteen members and the creation of the new Berkeley Community Action Commission was on the agenda as a consent item for the February 13, 2024 city council meeting. Items coming from the city manager and department heads arrive with the header, a brief description and none of the documents, which means that none of commissioners attending the Agenda Committee to give public comment had any idea of how many commissioners would be on the new commission and the content of the new commission responsibilities.
Warhuus response: “I just want to share the it’s a lot of work [merging the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission]. And so, the department should not be left in a position of having to negotiate with different commissions. Ultimately, we’re going to bring things back to council direction and that is up to council to determine whether or not they want to go forward, but the staff can’t be left in a situation where they’re negotiating on behalf of council.”
That might sound fine to some readers, however, dismissing commissioners as an impediment with nothing meaningful to contribute instead of engaging with and hearing from commissioners in how a merged commission could work best exemplifies the attitude of city councilmembers, the mayor, the city manager and city department heads and staff. The Berkeley residents who volunteer their time in trying to make this a better city are dismissed as a pesky interference.
What burns me in attending city council meetings is that councilmembers will fall all over themselves to thank city staff for reports whether those reports are thorough or sloppy, work for which they are paid to do and council has thus far been unable to bring themselves to thank the Berkeley residents who answered the call to give [unpaid] their expertise and evenings and days month after month for the benefit of this city. The members of the Police Accountability Board and the representatives of the poor do receive a stipend.
I put councilmember Hahn at the top of that not thanking list. Hahn took over former councilmember Lori Droste’s proposal to merge and eliminate commissions.
I expect after this hits the press, there will be some comment about caring so much about the work of commissioners, but past action is what we might want to consider when those ballots are in our hands in March and November.
The dissolution of the two commissions and the creation of the new Berkeley Community Action Commission was moved to action. The documents published with the final agenda define a commission of nine members, three representatives of the poor, three members appointed by council majority and three members representing officials of business, industry, labor religious, welfare, education or major groups and interests in the community.
When Mayor Arreguin and Williams-Ridley first proposed the creation of City Council Committees, I saw that as the beginning of the end of commissions.
The council cancelled their committee meetings until May 1 at their January 22 special morning meeting, with the reason city staff have too much work with the special election to replace former councilmember Robinson who resigned from District 7.
Some see committee meeting cancellations as a loss.
I have characterized the council committees as a detour in the path to getting things done. The only committee that functioned as it should in my view was Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) chaired by Kate Harrison. Now with Harrison’s resignation, I doubt we will get the kind of thoroughness that I saw under her leadership.
The Council Land Use Committee at one time held multiple meetings on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act) which would have given tenants the first right to purchase the building when it goes up for sale. Arreguin did multiple rewrites of his TOPA proposal, but tenant voices lost under the weight of the investor class. TOPA disappeared from sight until Harrison tried to revive it. The Agenda Committee with Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf quickly sent the proposal to revive TOPA off to a council committee to die.
There was one useful suggestion from Droste that should have been pursued and fell flat. That was to decrease the size of the council from nine to seven. Palo Alto did this in 2018. It is a shame that Berkeley did not follow that example. With Robinson and Harrison both resigning and Wengraf getting ready to retire, this would have been the perfect time to reduce overhead both in the present and in long term pension costs. Council might even be more functional. Alameda County, Concord, Contra Costa County, Fremont, Hayward, Palo Alto, Richmond, San Mateo County and Santa Clara County Boards and Councils all number five to seven. Oakland City Council has nine members, San Jose has eleven members and San Francisco has eleven supervisors plus the mayor. Those three entities are significantly larger than Berkeley in both square miles and population.
The Peace and Justice Commission agenda included an update on the Gaza Peace Roundtable subgroup and an update on the November 2023 roundtable regarding the Fukushima Waste Water. The Fukushima Waste Water roundtable was really excellent, so much better than I ever expected with an impressive panel of experts. In the Q&A that followed the presentations, one attendee stood up and asked, “Who do we believe?”
Isn’t that always the question, “Who do we believe?” Who do we trust?
The League of Women Voters Berkeley Albany Emeryville Candidate Forum for California State Senate District 7 forum included Jesse Arreguin, Jovanka Beckles, Dan Kalb, Kathryn Lybarger, and Sandre R. Swanson. Jeanne Solnordal was invited and a no show.
The recording is up. You can find it with the list of the other forums for the March 5 Primary at: https://www.lwvbae.org/league-news/candidate-forums-for-the-2024-primary-2/
I’ve been swinging back and forth between Kalb and Lybarger. I think either one of them would do a terrific job despite complaints with no specifics from friends in Oakland regarding Kalb. Office follow-up seems to be the problem rather than action on city issues in Oakland. Other friends in Oakland are strong supporters.
Kathryn Lybarger was totally impressive the afternoon she spent with East Bay Community for Action answering questions though it was really more like a conversation. We even covered disappointments in candidates that say one thing and then once in office put ambition above everything. There was nothing canned about her responses.
I particularly appreciated that Lybarger stated she did not believe in trickle down housing, which is if we just keep building market rate (overpriced) housing it will trickle down with lower costs. At another forum Dan Kalb raised his hand when asked if he was a YIMBY (Lybarger and Swanson did not). My questions on nature, ecosystems and habitat were best answered by Lybarger. Kalb with the bulk of his career dedicated to climate legislation relegated nature to parks. Beckles was so clueless to my questions that I interrupted her and informed her that none of the answers she was giving had anything to do with nature, ecosystems or habitat.
Climate, nature, habitat and ecosystems are what I care deeply about besides ending the war in the middle east. I have written previously about the biodiversity crisis. It hasn’t gone away.
I just finished John Vaillant’s book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire that started on May 1, 2016 and was not declared extinguished until August 2, 2017. There is so much packed into the 395 pages, I couldn’t put the book down. The speed at which the fire devoured houses was so fast that the fire fighters clocked the “beast” as vaporizing houses and everything in them in just five minutes per house. There is more in the book, the people, the changing nature of fire in a heating planet and the serious message of climate science.
Everyone needs to read and hear the climate message. The planet crossed the 1.5°C of temperature rise in 2023, another hottest year recorded. The jet stream is so off kilter it looks like a loopy string sliding off the top of the planet. This is bad news. It is what David Wallace-Wells warned of in his 2019 book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.
It is raining not snowing today in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis finished off January with temperatures up to 53° and no snow on the ground. We are in deep trouble.
The LWV moderator did not ask where the candidates stood on a ceasefire resolution. Both Kalb and Lybarger support a ceasefire in the Israel Hamas War. Kalb voted with the Oakland Council to support their resolution (his amendments lost) and Lybarger spoke to leading the union through discussion that evolved into support for ceasefire.
The U.S. bombing in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq is turning the Israel Hamas war into a middle east war when what is needed is heavy diplomacy not heavy bombing. With every mention of Iran, I think about the 2019 film Coup 53 the British documentary on the 1953 CIA & M16 staged coup to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh. The coup was, of course, over the control oil.
How different would this world be if the U.S. wasn’t constantly involved in coups?
I’m reading about Israel’s military involvement in Mexico and Central America in Inter / Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine by Steven Salita
Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf published their opposition to a ceasefire resolution weeks ago and there is nothing to indicate they will change their minds though the public continues to try. City Council meetings continue to be disrupted with the clamor for a ceasefire resolution. The number of speakers calling for a ceasefire far outnumber the few asking the council not to take a stand which is reflective of the country.
I plan to attend the film Israelism at the Roxie. I watched the trailer. “[I]sraelism uniquely explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself.” https://roxie.com/film/israelism/
On Sunday, January 28, 2024 just two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide, (Genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”)
the Nachala settlement activist group held a conference in Jerusalem attended by thousands with the message to take advantage of the war to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza and build Jewish settlements in Gaza. Eleven Israeli government ministers and fifteen coalition lawmakers attended including the Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. https://www.timesofisrael.com/12-ministers-call-to-resettle-gaza-encourage-gazans-to-leave-at-jubilant-conference/
Chris Hayes said on the Thursday evening before the U.S. started dropping bombs, “this can’t go on, it is politically wrong, strategically wrong, and morally wrong.” I agree. Besides the heartbreaking suffering of the Palestinians, massive bombing, maimed children and civilian deaths, the war is adding to the destruction of the planet.
After listening to the February 7, 2024 interview of Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now (a news source I trust) I read Scahill’s article “Netanyahu’s War on Truth Israel’s Ruthless Propaganda Campaign to Dehumanize Palestinians”. You can catch both at: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/7/israel_propaganda_gaza
Scahill’s article is long and lays question to the portrayal of Palestinians as savages. https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/
There is so much wrapped up in this small plot of land, religious identity and beliefs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Jewish Zionism, Christian Zionism, the rapture, the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians who have occupied this land for centuries and those who remained.
Of the five books I’ve finished so far on Israel and Palestine The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi is the most thorough in covering the failures in negotiations and the U.S. greenlighting wars.
Councilmember Kate Harrison resigned over what she called a broken system.
While the mayor and council as a whole were supportive of Robinson, Councilmember Taplin was quick to accuse Harrison of racist microaggression. Councilmember Hahn turned Harrison’s resignation into a promotional piece for her run for mayor.
The council agenda item under discussion when Harrison read her resignation was the $7,000,000 fixed surveillance cameras. Harrison went through a lengthy list of actions that could be taken with $7,000,000 that would reduce crime and the threat of crime.
Fixed cameras that aren’t monitored and are checked only after an event as is the plan by Berkeley Police for the $7 million investment fall more into the placebo category. That didn’t stop Councilmember Humbert as the author and Ben Bartlett as the co-sponsor. Nor did it stop Humbert, Bartlett, Kesarwani, Taplin and Arreguin for voting for the measure. Hahn abstained, Wengraf was absent and Harrison had left.
In the string of candidates running for Alameda County Supervisor, I was quite stunned to hear Ben Bartlett claim in his list of accomplishments as being instrumental in establishing the Special Care Unit (SCU). At the Wellstone forum, I was even more surprised by the clapping response. That left me wondering what meetings those supporters attended and I missed. One person has been most involved in pushing for the SCU through commissions, presentations and tracking progress. At my request, they checked all their sources and were unable to come up with Bartlett’s involvement.
When I think of Bartlett’s proposals to council the one I can’t forget was to use blockchain for public financing. Cryptocurrency uses blockchain technology. Berkeley did not bite on the blockchain proposal.
Most of us have probably heard by now of Sam Bankman-Fried the collapse of the cryptocurrency he founded FTX and the guilty verdict.
The last meeting I attended before COVID was the Ohlone Greenway Safety Improvements Project presentation at the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission on January 18.
When former mayor Shirley Dean called on behalf of the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC), to request a presentation on the Ohlone Greenway Safety Improvements Project, she was told by the Project Manager he wasn’t giving any more presentations to anyone. Then he followed up by submitting a request to have Dean’s phone blocked. On January 25, Dean received a call from someone identifying himself as Reynaldo who told her that her phone was being blocked which resulted in being unable to contact any city services, councilmembers, the mayor and the city manager.
By Monday, January 29 the city manager was involved and lifted the block.
I’m not sure what to make of a city employee blocking the phone number of a person representing a Berkeley organization asking for a presentation on a city project that impacts city residents. I wonder if the city manager would have bothered to get involved or for that matter councilmembers Hahn and Harrison who Dean also contacted if it had been anyone other than the former mayor Shirley Dean who was shut off from being able to contact the city.
As for the project, the main concerns are electric bikes on shared paths with pedestrians, how the neighborhood will be impacted and how many trees will be removed.
Buckle up
After multiple stops and starts, I hope to finally get this off my desk. It has taken nearly three weeks from my first day of COVID episode two (the first was Delta in 2021) to feel normal again.
I am still making up my mind on a few candidates, but I know who I am definitely not voting for.
If the Peace and Justice Commission had been on ZOOM Monday evening, I definitely would have attended, but I tuned into the League of Women Voters forum on District State Senate Candidates instead and then gave up on more meetings for the evening. In my biased view, the City of Berkeley is more interested in killing the commissions than it making it easier to attend.
At the Agenda and Rules meeting on January 29, 2024, I was actually shocked by the tone of the Director of Health, Housing and Community Services Lisa Warhuus’ comments on the merging of the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission.
The dissolution of the two commissions each of which has fifteen members and the creation of the new Berkeley Community Action Commission was on the agenda as a consent item for the February 13, 2024 city council meeting. Items coming from the city manager and department heads arrive with the header, a brief description and none of the documents, which means that none of commissioners attending the Agenda Committee to give public comment had any idea of how many commissioners would be on the new commission and the content of the new commission responsibilities.
Warhuus response: “I just want to share the it’s a lot of work [merging the Peace and Justice Commission and the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission]. And so, the department should not be left in a position of having to negotiate with different commissions. Ultimately, we’re going to bring things back to council direction and that is up to council to determine whether or not they want to go forward, but the staff can’t be left in a situation where they’re negotiating on behalf of council.”
That might sound fine to some readers, however, dismissing commissioners as an impediment with nothing meaningful to contribute instead of engaging with and hearing from commissioners in how a merged commission could work best exemplifies the attitude of city councilmembers, the mayor, the city manager and city department heads and staff. The Berkeley residents who volunteer their time in trying to make this a better city are dismissed as a pesky interference.
What burns me in attending city council meetings is that councilmembers will fall all over themselves to thank city staff for reports whether those reports are thorough or sloppy, work for which they are paid to do and council has thus far been unable to bring themselves to thank the Berkeley residents who answered the call to give [unpaid] their expertise and evenings and days month after month for the benefit of this city. The members of the Police Accountability Board and the representatives of the poor do receive a stipend.
I put councilmember Hahn at the top of that not thanking list. Hahn took over former councilmember Lori Droste’s proposal to merge and eliminate commissions.
I expect after this hits the press, there will be some comment about caring so much about the work of commissioners, but past action is what we might want to consider when those ballots are in our hands in March and November.
The dissolution of the two commissions and the creation of the new Berkeley Community Action Commission was moved to action. The documents published with the final agenda define a commission of nine members, three representatives of the poor, three members appointed by council majority and three members representing officials of business, industry, labor religious, welfare, education or major groups and interests in the community.
When Mayor Arreguin and Williams-Ridley first proposed the creation of City Council Committees, I saw that as the beginning of the end of commissions.
The council cancelled their committee meetings until May 1 at their January 22 special morning meeting, with the reason city staff have too much work with the special election to replace former councilmember Robinson who resigned from District 7.
Some see committee meeting cancellations as a loss.
I have characterized the council committees as a detour in the path to getting things done. The only committee that functioned as it should in my view was Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) chaired by Kate Harrison. Now with Harrison’s resignation, I doubt we will get the kind of thoroughness that I saw under her leadership.
The Council Land Use Committee at one time held multiple meetings on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act) which would have given tenants the first right to purchase the building when it goes up for sale. Arreguin did multiple rewrites of his TOPA proposal, but tenant voices lost under the weight of the investor class. TOPA disappeared from sight until Harrison tried to revive it. The Agenda Committee with Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf quickly sent the proposal to revive TOPA off to a council committee to die.
There was one useful suggestion from Droste that should have been pursued and fell flat. That was to decrease the size of the council from nine to seven. Palo Alto did this in 2018. It is a shame that Berkeley did not follow that example. With Robinson and Harrison both resigning and Wengraf getting ready to retire, this would have been the perfect time to reduce overhead both in the present and in long term pension costs. Council might even be more functional. Alameda County, Concord, Contra Costa County, Fremont, Hayward, Palo Alto, Richmond, San Mateo County and Santa Clara County Boards and Councils all number five to seven. Oakland City Council has nine members, San Jose has eleven members and San Francisco has eleven supervisors plus the mayor. Those three entities are significantly larger than Berkeley in both square miles and population.
The Peace and Justice Commission agenda included an update on the Gaza Peace Roundtable subgroup and an update on the November 2023 roundtable regarding the Fukushima Waste Water. The Fukushima Waste Water roundtable was really excellent, so much better than I ever expected with an impressive panel of experts. In the Q&A that followed the presentations, one attendee stood up and asked, “Who do we believe?”
Isn’t that always the question, “Who do we believe?” Who do we trust?
The League of Women Voters Berkeley Albany Emeryville Candidate Forum for California State Senate District 7 forum included Jesse Arreguin, Jovanka Beckles, Dan Kalb, Kathryn Lybarger, and Sandre R. Swanson. Jeanne Solnordal was invited and a no show.
The recording is up. You can find it with the list of the other forums for the March 5 Primary at: https://www.lwvbae.org/league-news/candidate-forums-for-the-2024-primary-2/
I’ve been swinging back and forth between Kalb and Lybarger. I think either one of them would do a terrific job despite complaints with no specifics from friends in Oakland regarding Kalb. Office follow-up seems to be the problem rather than action on city issues in Oakland. Other friends in Oakland are strong supporters.
Kathryn Lybarger was totally impressive the afternoon she spent with East Bay Community for Action answering questions though it was really more like a conversation. We even covered disappointments in candidates that say one thing and then once in office put ambition above everything. There was nothing canned about her responses.
I particularly appreciated that Lybarger stated she did not believe in trickle down housing, which is if we just keep building market rate (overpriced) housing it will trickle down with lower costs. At another forum Dan Kalb raised his hand when asked if he was a YIMBY (Lybarger and Swanson did not). My questions on nature, ecosystems and habitat were best answered by Lybarger. Kalb with the bulk of his career dedicated to climate legislation relegated nature to parks. Beckles was so clueless to my questions that I interrupted her and informed her that none of the answers she was giving had anything to do with nature, ecosystems or habitat.
Climate, nature, habitat and ecosystems are what I care deeply about besides ending the war in the middle east. I have written previously about the biodiversity crisis. It hasn’t gone away.
I just finished John Vaillant’s book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World on the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire that started on May 1, 2016 and was not declared extinguished until August 2, 2017. There is so much packed into the 395 pages, I couldn’t put the book down. The speed at which the fire devoured houses was so fast that the fire fighters clocked the “beast” as vaporizing houses and everything in them in just five minutes per house. There is more in the book, the people, the changing nature of fire in a heating planet and the serious message of climate science.
Everyone needs to read and hear the climate message. The planet crossed the 1.5°C of temperature rise in 2023, another hottest year recorded. The jet stream is so off kilter it looks like a loopy string sliding off the top of the planet. This is bad news. It is what David Wallace-Wells warned of in his 2019 book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.
It is raining not snowing today in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Minneapolis finished off January with temperatures up to 53° and no snow on the ground. We are in deep trouble.
The LWV moderator did not ask where the candidates stood on a ceasefire resolution. Both Kalb and Lybarger support a ceasefire in the Israel Hamas War. Kalb voted with the Oakland Council to support their resolution (his amendments lost) and Lybarger spoke to leading the union through discussion that evolved into support for ceasefire.
The U.S. bombing in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq is turning the Israel Hamas war into a middle east war when what is needed is heavy diplomacy not heavy bombing. With every mention of Iran, I think about the 2019 film Coup 53 the British documentary on the 1953 CIA & M16 staged coup to overthrow the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh. The coup was, of course, over the control oil.
How different would this world be if the U.S. wasn’t constantly involved in coups?
I’m reading about Israel’s military involvement in Mexico and Central America in Inter / Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine by Steven Salita
Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf published their opposition to a ceasefire resolution weeks ago and there is nothing to indicate they will change their minds though the public continues to try. City Council meetings continue to be disrupted with the clamor for a ceasefire resolution. The number of speakers calling for a ceasefire far outnumber the few asking the council not to take a stand which is reflective of the country.
I plan to attend the film Israelism at the Roxie. I watched the trailer. “[I]sraelism uniquely explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself.” https://roxie.com/film/israelism/
On Sunday, January 28, 2024 just two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide, (Genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”)
the Nachala settlement activist group held a conference in Jerusalem attended by thousands with the message to take advantage of the war to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza and build Jewish settlements in Gaza. Eleven Israeli government ministers and fifteen coalition lawmakers attended including the Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. https://www.timesofisrael.com/12-ministers-call-to-resettle-gaza-encourage-gazans-to-leave-at-jubilant-conference/
Chris Hayes said on the Thursday evening before the U.S. started dropping bombs, “this can’t go on, it is politically wrong, strategically wrong, and morally wrong.” I agree. Besides the heartbreaking suffering of the Palestinians, massive bombing, maimed children and civilian deaths, the war is adding to the destruction of the planet.
After listening to the February 7, 2024 interview of Jeremy Scahill on Democracy Now (a news source I trust) I read Scahill’s article “Netanyahu’s War on Truth Israel’s Ruthless Propaganda Campaign to Dehumanize Palestinians”. You can catch both at: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/7/israel_propaganda_gaza
Scahill’s article is long and lays question to the portrayal of Palestinians as savages. https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/
There is so much wrapped up in this small plot of land, religious identity and beliefs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Jewish Zionism, Christian Zionism, the rapture, the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians who have occupied this land for centuries and those who remained.
Of the five books I’ve finished so far on Israel and Palestine The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi is the most thorough in covering the failures in negotiations and the U.S. greenlighting wars.
Councilmember Kate Harrison resigned over what she called a broken system.
While the mayor and council as a whole were supportive of Robinson, Councilmember Taplin was quick to accuse Harrison of racist microaggression. Councilmember Hahn turned Harrison’s resignation into a promotional piece for her run for mayor.
The council agenda item under discussion when Harrison read her resignation was the $7,000,000 fixed surveillance cameras. Harrison went through a lengthy list of actions that could be taken with $7,000,000 that would reduce crime and the threat of crime.
Fixed cameras that aren’t monitored and are checked only after an event as is the plan by Berkeley Police for the $7 million investment fall more into the placebo category. That didn’t stop Councilmember Humbert as the author and Ben Bartlett as the co-sponsor. Nor did it stop Humbert, Bartlett, Kesarwani, Taplin and Arreguin for voting for the measure. Hahn abstained, Wengraf was absent and Harrison had left.
In the string of candidates running for Alameda County Supervisor, I was quite stunned to hear Ben Bartlett claim in his list of accomplishments as being instrumental in establishing the Special Care Unit (SCU). At the Wellstone forum, I was even more surprised by the clapping response. That left me wondering what meetings those supporters attended and I missed. One person has been most involved in pushing for the SCU through commissions, presentations and tracking progress. At my request, they checked all their sources and were unable to come up with Bartlett’s involvement.
When I think of Bartlett’s proposals to council the one I can’t forget was to use blockchain for public financing. Cryptocurrency uses blockchain technology. Berkeley did not bite on the blockchain proposal.
Most of us have probably heard by now of Sam Bankman-Fried the collapse of the cryptocurrency he founded FTX and the guilty verdict.
The last meeting I attended before COVID was the Ohlone Greenway Safety Improvements Project presentation at the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission on January 18.
When former mayor Shirley Dean called on behalf of the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC), to request a presentation on the Ohlone Greenway Safety Improvements Project, she was told by the Project Manager he wasn’t giving any more presentations to anyone. Then he followed up by submitting a request to have Dean’s phone blocked. On January 25, Dean received a call from someone identifying himself as Reynaldo who told her that her phone was being blocked which resulted in being unable to contact any city services, councilmembers, the mayor and the city manager.
By Monday, January 29 the city manager was involved and lifted the block.
I’m not sure what to make of a city employee blocking the phone number of a person representing a Berkeley organization asking for a presentation on a city project that impacts city residents. I wonder if the city manager would have bothered to get involved or for that matter councilmembers Hahn and Harrison who Dean also contacted if it had been anyone other than the former mayor Shirley Dean who was shut off from being able to contact the city.
As for the project, the main concerns are electric bikes on shared paths with pedestrians, how the neighborhood will be impacted and how many trees will be removed.
January 14, 2024
The bigger local news of the week we just finished on January 13, 2024 is definitely not the meetings I attended, it is the people who are leaving their Berkeley careers behind and moving on.
Another department director is leaving Berkeley. Supriya Yelimeli from Berkeleyside covered it. Lisa Warhuus the Director of Health, Housing and Community Services is leaving Berkeley for less money and more responsibility in Marin. Warhuus is taking almost a $50,000 pay cut, $46,723 to be exact according to the article to manage a staff “almost eight times as large…with about double the budget” as her job in Berkeley. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/01/11/berkeley-health-lisa-warhuus-pandemic-housing-health
A website titled bestplaces listed the cost of living in San Rafael where offices are located as 15% higher than Berkeley though average home prices in Berkeley are $110,000 more in the chart. https://www.bestplaces.net/compare-cities/san_rafael_ca/berkeley_ca/overview
This is not to comment about Warhuus’ work here in Berkeley, except to state that there is a threshold where people want more challenging satisfying work and will accept a lower salary and benefit package to move on. Warhuus will still receive a generous salary package in Marin which makes another point for the ridiculousness of the salary ranges for the City of Berkeley administrators.
Some us recall that under Mayor Jesse Arreguin’s leadership and recommendation in 2021, the Berkeley City Council gave the Berkeley City Manager a 28.11% raise of $84,732 to elevate Dee Williams-Ridley, as the fourth highest paid manager of thirteen City/County manager positions surveyed in the Bay Area when Berkeley is the smallest city in square miles (land area 10.5 sq mi) of the thirteen cities surveyed, and was eleventh in population (124,321). This move placed the Berkeley City Manager as receiving $2,784 less than the Santa Clara County Executive a county of 1304 square miles and 1,936,259 people.
Prior to the raise, Williams-Ridley was earning $18,624 more than the city manager of Richmond and $7,716 more than the city manager of Concord which seems reasonable.
Of course, neither of those cities have a 2.8 acre plot of land officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and a commons recognized internationally surrounded by stacked shipping containers with razor wire on top guarded by police and other persons with SECURITY on the chest of their dark uniforms. It’s quite a scene.
No one seems to want to admit how the City of Berkeley allowed UC Berkeley to take such actions though the Berkeley City Council has been all in on the clear cutting of over 80 mature trees covering the NRHP plot of land and the erasure of historic memory of Peoples Park under the premise that student housing had to be built there when there were and are plenty of other available plots of land owned by UCB to build. State Assembly person Buffy Wicks is all in too.
In less than two months ballots for selecting who should replace Nancy Skinner in the California State Senate will be in our mailboxes for the March 5 primary. You might want to skip by the emails from Arreguin with his latest endorsements and take a hard look at the other four candidates Lybarger, Kalb, Swanson and Beckles. I know I will.
I attended the early debates/forums last fall. There should be more in the coming weeks. The best forums were sponsored by East Bay Community Activists (EBCA) at Live Oak Park last September and October where Lybarger, Kalb and Beckles each had their own Saturday afternoon to be peppered with unscreened, unfiltered questions until everyone who attended ran out of things to ask. These were so much better than all the candidates sitting together in a row answering the same questions and raising their hands as to who identified as a YIMBY. Lybarger who has said she doesn’t believe in “trickle down housing” and Swanson skipped that motion and kept their hands in their laps.
Councilmember Rigel Robinson resigned from City Council and ended his bid for mayor writing that he was “spent” “burnt out” that he has had to tolerate various forms of harassment and that he is prioritizing his well-being and his family and that he will focus on his “greatest passion: wedding planning.” Really?
Robinson who was 22 when first elected and 27 when he left office last week managed to capture a lengthy article in the Chronicle and space in Berkeleyside. I guess when you are 27 your wedding day is the biggest day in your life.
Those of us on the sidelines expect there will be some flourish over an “unexpected opportunity” in the coming months that is probably already in the works.
The SF Chronicle listed Robinson as a front runner for mayor. I’m not so sure about that analysis. The YIMBYs were able to take over the Northern Alameda County Sierra Club as only 6% of the membership bothered to vote.
Councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Kate Harrison are the two remaining candidates for mayor, but others have until August to jump in.
The second week of January was full with City meetings. I made three of them, the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, the Zoning Adjustment Board and the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council on Saturday. When every meeting was on ZOOM it was so much easier to pick up more meetings.
Brennan Cox, Landscape Architect and Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commissioner gave a presentation to the Parks Commission on traditional versus innovative play equipment for children. The differences were stark especially when it comes to designing play areas in public spaces that also welcome children with disabilities. The traditional play equipment really isn’t accessible and the usual play area design often isn’t planned in a way that welcomes the adult accompanying the child who may need accessible space and seating options.
Cox also shared a picture of non-gender assigned public restrooms in a public park that had a central hand washing area surrounded by toilet stalls with full doors for privacy. Such an arrangement could certainly solve the freak out in “conservative” areas over transgender bathroom use or even help caregivers/parents assisting a child or disabled adult of a different sex.
Scott Ferris, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront stated he expects the proposed February 6 date for the Waterfront Specific Plan presentation to City Council to be moved. Ferris said that there are still documents / reports /updates that need to be posted on the City Waterfront Specific Plan webpage. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/waterfront-specific-plan
The Zoning Adjustment Board meeting was more interesting than I expected. The first project of the evening at 2420 Shattuck, a 17-story 132 unit building of which 14 units will be available to very low-income households was continued to a date uncertain. It is a SB 330 project which means that it only has to comply with the ordinances in place at the time the application was complete.
The next project at 2120 McKinley to raise a house (needing lots of love) three feet passed on consent.
The last project of the evening at 2113 - 2115 Kittredge was an ambitious SB 330 18-story project with 211 units of which 22 are for very low-income households. The project is at the site of the now closed California movie theater. The project will retain the street facing California Theater façade (building up behind it) and proposes to include a 24,273 square foot live performance theater.
The City of Berkeley requires a total of 20% of the units to be affordable with 10% for very low income households and 10% to be available to low income households or to pay an in lieu mitigation fee instead of providing all or a portion of the affordable units. The project will provide the 10% very low-income units (22) to qualify for the state density bonus and pay the in lieu fee of $81,161.58 instead of providing the other 10% for low income households.
Imagine that. When we desperately need affordable housing this project gets a 50% bonus, 70 more units for 22 very low-income units and $81,161.58. The 211 units consists of 133 studio units with 14 BMR (below market rate), 66 2-bedroom units with 7 BMR and 12 4-bedroom units with one BMR.
Mark Rhoades representative for the developer said they have been working with the community on the live performance theater. If they can’t make the numbers work, make it financially feasible, they will be back requesting a modification to omit the theater. Conveniently the plans put the theater in levels B1 and B2, so it would be pretty easy to just build from the ground up. This project like nearly every project planned as student housing has no parking.
Since the application was complete in 2022 before the Bird Safe Ordinance passed, as an SB 330 project, the building is exempted from that requirement though Rhoades did say they will do bird safe glass for the first 36 feet, better than nothing, but the ordinance calls for the first 75 feet and all high risk features. The balconies are designed as glass so that means every balcony will have the hazard that killed the fledgling peregrine falcon Lux. After that incident UC installed bird safe streamers to prevent future accidents.
A tenant from the neighboring building spoke to his concern regarding adding so many people and the sidewalk and street traffic that will come with them next to a building with a number of disabled persons.
Board member Igor Tregrub appointed by Arreguin made a motion to approve 2113 – 2115 Kittredge with two recommendations, 1) that the applicant evaluate and if possible conform to the Bird Safe Glass Ordinance currently in effect and 2) the applicant abide by the provisions of the Hard Hats Ordinance (relates to prevailing pay and benefits). Board member Deborah Sanderson a former Planning Department Employee appointed by Councilmember Humbert vehemently opposed adding recommendations and made a substitute motion without the recommendations which passed.
It often feels like there is a game to stall ordinances so developers can get their applications completed before ordinances are passed and go into effect. Non-binding recommendations are the only persuasive tool the ZAB has with the SB 330 projects.
In November it is expected that there will be two ballot measures to fund fixing the streets in Berkeley. Given the poor condition of streets in Berkeley of which 42% are classified as failed or poor it is also expected that both measures will gain substantial support over the 50% threshold to pass. Whichever one gets the most votes wins.
In the City’s 2020 survey of Berkeley voters for city council to determine the probability of what ballot measures would pass, the voter’s preference was a parcel tax for street repairs and a small bond measure for infrastructure. The city council chose to ignore the survey results and instead threw everything into the whopping $650 million Measure L with a grab bag of ideas and commitment to none. Measure L failed.
On Saturday at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council, Nancy Radar and James McGrath presented the Berkeleyans for Better Planning special parcel tax measure. Click on the “view the measure” to read the full proposed ballot initiative. https://www.berkeleyansforbetterplanning.org/our-measure/
Basically, the parcel tax ballot initiative ($0.13 per square foot of improvements for 12 years) from Berkeleyans for Better Planning is to repair all the existing Berkeley streets, sidewalks and pedestrian paths starting with those in the worst condition in the neediest neighborhoods until all are brought to good condition using an index that grades the entire street not an average where poor or fair conditions are hidden. Very low-income property owners are exempted.
Rebeca Mirvish who is represents the other proposal ($0.17 per square foot over 14 years) will be presenting the other measure on February 10.
As you are wondering what to do during the rainy days ahead here are two suggestions.
If you are one of the many who never believed the Warren Commission Magic Bullet theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy, the final episode of ten-part podcast serial Who Killed JFK finished on January 10.
President Biden signed the Memorandum on Certifications Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy on June 30, 2023 that left 4,684 documents still withheld from the public. But, there is enough already released to put pieces together of who was likely involved and it wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald. You can search for Who Killed JFK in your podcast ap, your browser or use this link. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29898350/episodes/?season=1
I finished the book Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice Department by Ryan J. Reilly. The book starts out slow going through all the missteps and outdated equipment and methods. As I was just about ready to give up ever getting the story, Reilly moves on to the citizen sleuths who used the publicly available January 6th tapes, facial recognition, Facebook, twitter and a variety of applications. The National Book Review by Paul Markowitz does a much better job of describing the book than I can ever do here, but reading the book is way better than thinking you have the whole picture by scanning the review. Sedition Hunters is available at our local libraries. https://www.thenationalbookreview.com/features/2023/10/21/review-how-online-amateur-detectives-helped-bring-down-the-jan-6-insurrectionists
The bigger local news of the week we just finished on January 13, 2024 is definitely not the meetings I attended, it is the people who are leaving their Berkeley careers behind and moving on.
Another department director is leaving Berkeley. Supriya Yelimeli from Berkeleyside covered it. Lisa Warhuus the Director of Health, Housing and Community Services is leaving Berkeley for less money and more responsibility in Marin. Warhuus is taking almost a $50,000 pay cut, $46,723 to be exact according to the article to manage a staff “almost eight times as large…with about double the budget” as her job in Berkeley. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/01/11/berkeley-health-lisa-warhuus-pandemic-housing-health
A website titled bestplaces listed the cost of living in San Rafael where offices are located as 15% higher than Berkeley though average home prices in Berkeley are $110,000 more in the chart. https://www.bestplaces.net/compare-cities/san_rafael_ca/berkeley_ca/overview
This is not to comment about Warhuus’ work here in Berkeley, except to state that there is a threshold where people want more challenging satisfying work and will accept a lower salary and benefit package to move on. Warhuus will still receive a generous salary package in Marin which makes another point for the ridiculousness of the salary ranges for the City of Berkeley administrators.
Some us recall that under Mayor Jesse Arreguin’s leadership and recommendation in 2021, the Berkeley City Council gave the Berkeley City Manager a 28.11% raise of $84,732 to elevate Dee Williams-Ridley, as the fourth highest paid manager of thirteen City/County manager positions surveyed in the Bay Area when Berkeley is the smallest city in square miles (land area 10.5 sq mi) of the thirteen cities surveyed, and was eleventh in population (124,321). This move placed the Berkeley City Manager as receiving $2,784 less than the Santa Clara County Executive a county of 1304 square miles and 1,936,259 people.
Prior to the raise, Williams-Ridley was earning $18,624 more than the city manager of Richmond and $7,716 more than the city manager of Concord which seems reasonable.
Of course, neither of those cities have a 2.8 acre plot of land officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and a commons recognized internationally surrounded by stacked shipping containers with razor wire on top guarded by police and other persons with SECURITY on the chest of their dark uniforms. It’s quite a scene.
No one seems to want to admit how the City of Berkeley allowed UC Berkeley to take such actions though the Berkeley City Council has been all in on the clear cutting of over 80 mature trees covering the NRHP plot of land and the erasure of historic memory of Peoples Park under the premise that student housing had to be built there when there were and are plenty of other available plots of land owned by UCB to build. State Assembly person Buffy Wicks is all in too.
In less than two months ballots for selecting who should replace Nancy Skinner in the California State Senate will be in our mailboxes for the March 5 primary. You might want to skip by the emails from Arreguin with his latest endorsements and take a hard look at the other four candidates Lybarger, Kalb, Swanson and Beckles. I know I will.
I attended the early debates/forums last fall. There should be more in the coming weeks. The best forums were sponsored by East Bay Community Activists (EBCA) at Live Oak Park last September and October where Lybarger, Kalb and Beckles each had their own Saturday afternoon to be peppered with unscreened, unfiltered questions until everyone who attended ran out of things to ask. These were so much better than all the candidates sitting together in a row answering the same questions and raising their hands as to who identified as a YIMBY. Lybarger who has said she doesn’t believe in “trickle down housing” and Swanson skipped that motion and kept their hands in their laps.
Councilmember Rigel Robinson resigned from City Council and ended his bid for mayor writing that he was “spent” “burnt out” that he has had to tolerate various forms of harassment and that he is prioritizing his well-being and his family and that he will focus on his “greatest passion: wedding planning.” Really?
Robinson who was 22 when first elected and 27 when he left office last week managed to capture a lengthy article in the Chronicle and space in Berkeleyside. I guess when you are 27 your wedding day is the biggest day in your life.
Those of us on the sidelines expect there will be some flourish over an “unexpected opportunity” in the coming months that is probably already in the works.
The SF Chronicle listed Robinson as a front runner for mayor. I’m not so sure about that analysis. The YIMBYs were able to take over the Northern Alameda County Sierra Club as only 6% of the membership bothered to vote.
Councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Kate Harrison are the two remaining candidates for mayor, but others have until August to jump in.
The second week of January was full with City meetings. I made three of them, the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, the Zoning Adjustment Board and the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council on Saturday. When every meeting was on ZOOM it was so much easier to pick up more meetings.
Brennan Cox, Landscape Architect and Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commissioner gave a presentation to the Parks Commission on traditional versus innovative play equipment for children. The differences were stark especially when it comes to designing play areas in public spaces that also welcome children with disabilities. The traditional play equipment really isn’t accessible and the usual play area design often isn’t planned in a way that welcomes the adult accompanying the child who may need accessible space and seating options.
Cox also shared a picture of non-gender assigned public restrooms in a public park that had a central hand washing area surrounded by toilet stalls with full doors for privacy. Such an arrangement could certainly solve the freak out in “conservative” areas over transgender bathroom use or even help caregivers/parents assisting a child or disabled adult of a different sex.
Scott Ferris, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront stated he expects the proposed February 6 date for the Waterfront Specific Plan presentation to City Council to be moved. Ferris said that there are still documents / reports /updates that need to be posted on the City Waterfront Specific Plan webpage. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/waterfront-specific-plan
The Zoning Adjustment Board meeting was more interesting than I expected. The first project of the evening at 2420 Shattuck, a 17-story 132 unit building of which 14 units will be available to very low-income households was continued to a date uncertain. It is a SB 330 project which means that it only has to comply with the ordinances in place at the time the application was complete.
The next project at 2120 McKinley to raise a house (needing lots of love) three feet passed on consent.
The last project of the evening at 2113 - 2115 Kittredge was an ambitious SB 330 18-story project with 211 units of which 22 are for very low-income households. The project is at the site of the now closed California movie theater. The project will retain the street facing California Theater façade (building up behind it) and proposes to include a 24,273 square foot live performance theater.
The City of Berkeley requires a total of 20% of the units to be affordable with 10% for very low income households and 10% to be available to low income households or to pay an in lieu mitigation fee instead of providing all or a portion of the affordable units. The project will provide the 10% very low-income units (22) to qualify for the state density bonus and pay the in lieu fee of $81,161.58 instead of providing the other 10% for low income households.
Imagine that. When we desperately need affordable housing this project gets a 50% bonus, 70 more units for 22 very low-income units and $81,161.58. The 211 units consists of 133 studio units with 14 BMR (below market rate), 66 2-bedroom units with 7 BMR and 12 4-bedroom units with one BMR.
Mark Rhoades representative for the developer said they have been working with the community on the live performance theater. If they can’t make the numbers work, make it financially feasible, they will be back requesting a modification to omit the theater. Conveniently the plans put the theater in levels B1 and B2, so it would be pretty easy to just build from the ground up. This project like nearly every project planned as student housing has no parking.
Since the application was complete in 2022 before the Bird Safe Ordinance passed, as an SB 330 project, the building is exempted from that requirement though Rhoades did say they will do bird safe glass for the first 36 feet, better than nothing, but the ordinance calls for the first 75 feet and all high risk features. The balconies are designed as glass so that means every balcony will have the hazard that killed the fledgling peregrine falcon Lux. After that incident UC installed bird safe streamers to prevent future accidents.
A tenant from the neighboring building spoke to his concern regarding adding so many people and the sidewalk and street traffic that will come with them next to a building with a number of disabled persons.
Board member Igor Tregrub appointed by Arreguin made a motion to approve 2113 – 2115 Kittredge with two recommendations, 1) that the applicant evaluate and if possible conform to the Bird Safe Glass Ordinance currently in effect and 2) the applicant abide by the provisions of the Hard Hats Ordinance (relates to prevailing pay and benefits). Board member Deborah Sanderson a former Planning Department Employee appointed by Councilmember Humbert vehemently opposed adding recommendations and made a substitute motion without the recommendations which passed.
It often feels like there is a game to stall ordinances so developers can get their applications completed before ordinances are passed and go into effect. Non-binding recommendations are the only persuasive tool the ZAB has with the SB 330 projects.
In November it is expected that there will be two ballot measures to fund fixing the streets in Berkeley. Given the poor condition of streets in Berkeley of which 42% are classified as failed or poor it is also expected that both measures will gain substantial support over the 50% threshold to pass. Whichever one gets the most votes wins.
In the City’s 2020 survey of Berkeley voters for city council to determine the probability of what ballot measures would pass, the voter’s preference was a parcel tax for street repairs and a small bond measure for infrastructure. The city council chose to ignore the survey results and instead threw everything into the whopping $650 million Measure L with a grab bag of ideas and commitment to none. Measure L failed.
On Saturday at the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council, Nancy Radar and James McGrath presented the Berkeleyans for Better Planning special parcel tax measure. Click on the “view the measure” to read the full proposed ballot initiative. https://www.berkeleyansforbetterplanning.org/our-measure/
Basically, the parcel tax ballot initiative ($0.13 per square foot of improvements for 12 years) from Berkeleyans for Better Planning is to repair all the existing Berkeley streets, sidewalks and pedestrian paths starting with those in the worst condition in the neediest neighborhoods until all are brought to good condition using an index that grades the entire street not an average where poor or fair conditions are hidden. Very low-income property owners are exempted.
Rebeca Mirvish who is represents the other proposal ($0.17 per square foot over 14 years) will be presenting the other measure on February 10.
As you are wondering what to do during the rainy days ahead here are two suggestions.
If you are one of the many who never believed the Warren Commission Magic Bullet theory that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy, the final episode of ten-part podcast serial Who Killed JFK finished on January 10.
President Biden signed the Memorandum on Certifications Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy on June 30, 2023 that left 4,684 documents still withheld from the public. But, there is enough already released to put pieces together of who was likely involved and it wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald. You can search for Who Killed JFK in your podcast ap, your browser or use this link. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29898350/episodes/?season=1
I finished the book Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice Department by Ryan J. Reilly. The book starts out slow going through all the missteps and outdated equipment and methods. As I was just about ready to give up ever getting the story, Reilly moves on to the citizen sleuths who used the publicly available January 6th tapes, facial recognition, Facebook, twitter and a variety of applications. The National Book Review by Paul Markowitz does a much better job of describing the book than I can ever do here, but reading the book is way better than thinking you have the whole picture by scanning the review. Sedition Hunters is available at our local libraries. https://www.thenationalbookreview.com/features/2023/10/21/review-how-online-amateur-detectives-helped-bring-down-the-jan-6-insurrectionists
January 6, 2024
There was only one Berkeley City meeting in this first week of January 2024, the Agenda and Rules Committee. With a three member committee all of whom have publicly declared their opposition to a Ceasefire Resolution in the Israel Hamas war, it does not take any imagination to know what will not be on the agenda for the first city council meeting after winter recess on January 16. The three Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Taplin who each posted their version of a Ceasefire Resolution on X (formerly Twitter) folded under pressure and never submitted them. Taplin’s proposed resolution called for an end to hostilities which I characterized as too timid in a previous Activist’s Diary given the conditions in Gaza.
Committee member Councilmember Susan Wengraf who is retiring in 2024 was absent to the meeting which barely made the 24-hour posting requirement. The current Mayor Jesse Arreguin State Senate hopeful and Councilmember Sophie Hahn who hopes to be anointed by the voters in 2024 to replace Arreguin as mayor were present to finalize the agenda.
The January 16th agenda has items like adding 3-way stop signs at McGee and Hopkins (a good idea), funding a real bathroom to replace the porta potty at Ohlone Park, admitting there is a long term Homeless Shelter Crisis with a declaration that forecasts a shelter crisis end on January 17, 2029, adopting the first reading of the prevailing wage requirements in the Southside for projects with more than 50 units or 50,000 square feet and continuing the clean-up of the City of Berkeley’s failure in the handling of union contracts on CalPERS and PEPRA (retirement funding).
Councilmember Harrison’s proposed ordinance related to racehorses will go through another review by the City Attorney. The only expected action on January 16 on the conditions regarding horses for racing and sports is to move that item to consent to be rescheduled to a date certain.
In the agenda, non-agenda comment period at the beginning of the meeting, nine speakers called for the Berkeley City Council to vote for a ceasefire to which there was no response from either Arreguin or Hahn.
By the time this Diary is finished and published we will have an answer from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on their response to their Ceasefire Resolution. The weekend news announced San Francisco Supervisors will take public comment on Monday and vote on Tuesday.
When it came time to comment on Discussion and Possible Action on City Council Rules of Decorum, two of the regular Agenda Committee attendees expressed their distress and being appalled by the behavior and disruption at city council meetings by the people calling for a Ceasefire Resolution from the Berkeley City Council.
There is desperation in the voices of the people coming to council meetings pleading for Berkeley to join other cities. The desperation here is nothing compared to the horror in Gaza.
The death toll as month four of this war begins is around 23,000 with the deaths of children numbering over 10,000. That approximation is only those whose bodies can be counted. How many are under the rubble in unknown.
To put the deaths of children in Gaza in a broader perspective. Gaza has a population around 2.2 million. In Ukraine with a population of a little under 44 million an estimated 1800 children have died in the nearly two years since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
We are watching a genocide in Gaza.
Israel’s blockade of food, water and supplies and medicines continues.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths said this: “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable…The humanitarian community has been left with the impossible mission of supporting more than 2 million people even as its own staff are being killed and displaced, as communication blackouts continue, as roads are damaged and convoys are shot at, and as commercial supplies vital to survival are almost non-existent”.
Please read Griffiths’ full statement from January 5, 2024. https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/war-gaza-must-end-statement-martin-griffiths-under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief-coordinator-5-january-2024-enhear
Children in Gaza with such devastating injuries that their limbs have to be amputated are reduced to suffering that was common in the Civil War 170 years ago, surgeries without anesthesia. All this because of the Israeli blockade and relentless bombardment.
It is only because of dedicated journalists facing constant threat of death that the news reaches us. Somewhere between 79 and 110 journalists and media workers have been killed depending on which news source is referenced. Al Jazeera accused Israel of targeted killing of two of their journalists on Sunday.
The desperation in the voices of those coming to council and showing up on the street might best be interpreted that there are still some who hold shreds of hope that if enough people demonstrate somehow the killing of children, their parents and families in this war will stop.
Trita Parsi had this to say on Democracy Now: “I think the Biden administration made a huge miscalculation from the outset. They did not think there would be this type of backlash amongst the American public, including his own supporters, against the Israeli campaign…it appears that the conclusion in the White House is that they have already lost these votes…if they shift their position they will likely lose some of the voters that are in support of Israel’s Campaign”.
Calculation sounds like the retired generals who come on mainstream media shows to talk about war strategies in the detachment that disregards the lives and pain on the ground.
If this continues as Prime Minister Netanyahu promises and President Biden fails to use his leverage to end this war (It is American weapons, munitions and tax dollars that are used in the killing and maiming of civilians in Gaza) speeches on saving democracy to win reelection in 2024 pale in the horror of it all.
Now that two states Colorado (through the courts) and Maine (by Secretary of the State) have barred former President Trump from the primary ballot and stayed their decisions pending an appeal to the Supreme Court, the TV pundits on MSNBC and CNN have wrapped themselves into knots commenting on everything except the last sentence of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
I happen to keep a copy of the Constitution on my desk, but you can pull it up with your browser to read Section 3 for yourself.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United states, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. [emphasis added]
I’m not sure that I would trust Congress any more than I trust the Supreme Court. Would all the Democrats or at least enough still hold to prevent a two-thirds vote? The belief that Biden would do best in his bid for reelection against Trump is a risky position.
As the clamor grows, especially but not exclusively on the Republican side, that the voters should choose the President, has everyone ignored or forgotten that most dictators are elected? At least that is what the historians tell us.
Hitler was elected. Mussolini was elected in 1921 to the lower chamber of Italy’s parliament, the Chamber of Deputies before seizing power through the armed march on Rome in 1922 demanding to be named prime minister.
The story of Trump wanting to go to the capitol on January 6 reminded me of the descriptions of Mussolini’s march on Rome with his paramilitary Blackshirts. Trump had his militias the Oathkeepers, the Three Percenters, the violent far right Islamophobic, misogynistic hate group the Proud Boys and his true believers to fill out the mob.
Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) gave the warning the U.S. is “sleepwalking into dictatorship” earlier this year. (I am still on the wait list for her book at the Berkeley Library)
If we are really going to hold to the 14th Amendment Section 3, there were eight Senators and one hundred thirty-nine Representatives who voted after the insurrection against certifying the election of President Biden. Their action is more ambiguous. It might be asked did their vote against the certification of Biden as President after the insurrection fall into “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”? With nearly every one of these 147 still in Congress (only a couple Representatives left), they are still present to make trouble the next time around. And, some of those elected Senators and Representatives actively participated in the planning of schemes to keep Trump in office.
Having just finished reading The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic by Steve Vladeck, I have little faith the Supreme Court will do anything other than ensure that Trump is on the ballot, though they do have an out by following the 14th Amendment and sending the decision to Congress.
Some months ago, when I was out gathering signatures to support daylighting the creek in the Civic Center Park. I stopped to have a long conversation with a student from Stanford. I can’t remember how our conversation drifted to books. What I do remember is his boasting about never reading books.
While each of us has our stories about how the pandemic affected and changed us, mine was, I started reading with a voracious passion and I haven’t stopped. I also started writing.
I shared with my Sunday walk partner, how grateful I am for our book club.
I’m into my fourth book on Palestine and Israel Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People The Bible by Mitri Raheb with two more started in my reading stack The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashi Khalidi and Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Target Assassinations by Ronen Bergman. The three I finished were: Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall and The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir by Naom Chayut.
If you asked if you could read only one, which one would I recommend, that is a hard choice. Decolonizing Palestine is absolutely the clearest, that ethnic cleansing of the Arabs from Palestine was always the plan from the earliest visions in the 1800s. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama expands the tragic bus accident into describing daily life in the West Bank. Chayut’s rambling memoir chronicles his indoctrination into Zionism and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces); how they terrorized Palestinians in the West Bank, pushed them out of their homes, destroyed their possessions, killed innocent Palestinians and shot up property for sport.
Whatever I thought about Israel decades ago when I was in high school has been washed away by coming to an understanding of Palestine, settler colonization, race and the force I didn’t consider, Christian Zionism.
Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil by Susan Newman (another book I just finished) while focusing on racism and the history of slavery in the United States and Germany’s ongoing working off the past overlaps into the conditions in Israel and Palestine. Neiman is an American who moved to Israel to work and raise her three young children and then to Berlin, Germany in 1982 where she still lives.
There is so much in the book Learning From the Germans. In Nieman’s comparison between Germany and the United States slavery and the glorification of the lost cause, she writes and asks could we imagine Germany with statues glorifying Hitler? How is it we sit in the U.S. filled with statues honoring the confederacy glorifying confederate generals and soldiers and allow the Civil War portrayed as the “lost cause”?
It was just December 27, 2023 when Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked at a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire what did she believe caused the Civil War. Haley went into a lengthy response about the role of government, “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do” never mentioning slavery. The person who asked the question said he was “astonished” by the response.
As we crossed the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection I watched some of the film of that day with the carrying of confederate flags into the capitol.
As the book comes to a close Neiman writes about leadership. It was 2019. Neiman reminds us it was the racist backlash to President Obama, our first Black president that brought us President Trump in 2016.
On Christmas Day over brunch the conversation drifted to past trips. I mentioned I was so worried about the election in 2018 that I left the country on election day to travel solo in Germany for three weeks. I wanted to understand what happened. One of my friends answered with the simple explanation people were afraid.
It’s way more complicated.
I wonder how the Republican Party of today will really look in a historical review with a cult of personality at the center, grievance politics, othering, book banning, retribution, revenge, and an embrace of authoritarianism.
I closed out my week to see for myself the shipping containers surrounding Peoples Park. I’ve never been deeply involved in Peoples Park, but as I think about it and look at it, it strikes me as small-minded leaders passing grudges from one generation of chancellors to the next and developers determined to turn the debacle into a gentrifying opportunity, a process that already has a big head start. The park was destroyed months ago with clear cutting nearly all the trees. There were other places to build.
There was only one Berkeley City meeting in this first week of January 2024, the Agenda and Rules Committee. With a three member committee all of whom have publicly declared their opposition to a Ceasefire Resolution in the Israel Hamas war, it does not take any imagination to know what will not be on the agenda for the first city council meeting after winter recess on January 16. The three Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Taplin who each posted their version of a Ceasefire Resolution on X (formerly Twitter) folded under pressure and never submitted them. Taplin’s proposed resolution called for an end to hostilities which I characterized as too timid in a previous Activist’s Diary given the conditions in Gaza.
Committee member Councilmember Susan Wengraf who is retiring in 2024 was absent to the meeting which barely made the 24-hour posting requirement. The current Mayor Jesse Arreguin State Senate hopeful and Councilmember Sophie Hahn who hopes to be anointed by the voters in 2024 to replace Arreguin as mayor were present to finalize the agenda.
The January 16th agenda has items like adding 3-way stop signs at McGee and Hopkins (a good idea), funding a real bathroom to replace the porta potty at Ohlone Park, admitting there is a long term Homeless Shelter Crisis with a declaration that forecasts a shelter crisis end on January 17, 2029, adopting the first reading of the prevailing wage requirements in the Southside for projects with more than 50 units or 50,000 square feet and continuing the clean-up of the City of Berkeley’s failure in the handling of union contracts on CalPERS and PEPRA (retirement funding).
Councilmember Harrison’s proposed ordinance related to racehorses will go through another review by the City Attorney. The only expected action on January 16 on the conditions regarding horses for racing and sports is to move that item to consent to be rescheduled to a date certain.
In the agenda, non-agenda comment period at the beginning of the meeting, nine speakers called for the Berkeley City Council to vote for a ceasefire to which there was no response from either Arreguin or Hahn.
By the time this Diary is finished and published we will have an answer from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on their response to their Ceasefire Resolution. The weekend news announced San Francisco Supervisors will take public comment on Monday and vote on Tuesday.
When it came time to comment on Discussion and Possible Action on City Council Rules of Decorum, two of the regular Agenda Committee attendees expressed their distress and being appalled by the behavior and disruption at city council meetings by the people calling for a Ceasefire Resolution from the Berkeley City Council.
There is desperation in the voices of the people coming to council meetings pleading for Berkeley to join other cities. The desperation here is nothing compared to the horror in Gaza.
The death toll as month four of this war begins is around 23,000 with the deaths of children numbering over 10,000. That approximation is only those whose bodies can be counted. How many are under the rubble in unknown.
To put the deaths of children in Gaza in a broader perspective. Gaza has a population around 2.2 million. In Ukraine with a population of a little under 44 million an estimated 1800 children have died in the nearly two years since the Russian invasion in February 2022.
We are watching a genocide in Gaza.
Israel’s blockade of food, water and supplies and medicines continues.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths said this: “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable…The humanitarian community has been left with the impossible mission of supporting more than 2 million people even as its own staff are being killed and displaced, as communication blackouts continue, as roads are damaged and convoys are shot at, and as commercial supplies vital to survival are almost non-existent”.
Please read Griffiths’ full statement from January 5, 2024. https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/war-gaza-must-end-statement-martin-griffiths-under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief-coordinator-5-january-2024-enhear
Children in Gaza with such devastating injuries that their limbs have to be amputated are reduced to suffering that was common in the Civil War 170 years ago, surgeries without anesthesia. All this because of the Israeli blockade and relentless bombardment.
It is only because of dedicated journalists facing constant threat of death that the news reaches us. Somewhere between 79 and 110 journalists and media workers have been killed depending on which news source is referenced. Al Jazeera accused Israel of targeted killing of two of their journalists on Sunday.
The desperation in the voices of those coming to council and showing up on the street might best be interpreted that there are still some who hold shreds of hope that if enough people demonstrate somehow the killing of children, their parents and families in this war will stop.
Trita Parsi had this to say on Democracy Now: “I think the Biden administration made a huge miscalculation from the outset. They did not think there would be this type of backlash amongst the American public, including his own supporters, against the Israeli campaign…it appears that the conclusion in the White House is that they have already lost these votes…if they shift their position they will likely lose some of the voters that are in support of Israel’s Campaign”.
Calculation sounds like the retired generals who come on mainstream media shows to talk about war strategies in the detachment that disregards the lives and pain on the ground.
If this continues as Prime Minister Netanyahu promises and President Biden fails to use his leverage to end this war (It is American weapons, munitions and tax dollars that are used in the killing and maiming of civilians in Gaza) speeches on saving democracy to win reelection in 2024 pale in the horror of it all.
Now that two states Colorado (through the courts) and Maine (by Secretary of the State) have barred former President Trump from the primary ballot and stayed their decisions pending an appeal to the Supreme Court, the TV pundits on MSNBC and CNN have wrapped themselves into knots commenting on everything except the last sentence of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
I happen to keep a copy of the Constitution on my desk, but you can pull it up with your browser to read Section 3 for yourself.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United states, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. [emphasis added]
I’m not sure that I would trust Congress any more than I trust the Supreme Court. Would all the Democrats or at least enough still hold to prevent a two-thirds vote? The belief that Biden would do best in his bid for reelection against Trump is a risky position.
As the clamor grows, especially but not exclusively on the Republican side, that the voters should choose the President, has everyone ignored or forgotten that most dictators are elected? At least that is what the historians tell us.
Hitler was elected. Mussolini was elected in 1921 to the lower chamber of Italy’s parliament, the Chamber of Deputies before seizing power through the armed march on Rome in 1922 demanding to be named prime minister.
The story of Trump wanting to go to the capitol on January 6 reminded me of the descriptions of Mussolini’s march on Rome with his paramilitary Blackshirts. Trump had his militias the Oathkeepers, the Three Percenters, the violent far right Islamophobic, misogynistic hate group the Proud Boys and his true believers to fill out the mob.
Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) gave the warning the U.S. is “sleepwalking into dictatorship” earlier this year. (I am still on the wait list for her book at the Berkeley Library)
If we are really going to hold to the 14th Amendment Section 3, there were eight Senators and one hundred thirty-nine Representatives who voted after the insurrection against certifying the election of President Biden. Their action is more ambiguous. It might be asked did their vote against the certification of Biden as President after the insurrection fall into “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”? With nearly every one of these 147 still in Congress (only a couple Representatives left), they are still present to make trouble the next time around. And, some of those elected Senators and Representatives actively participated in the planning of schemes to keep Trump in office.
Having just finished reading The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic by Steve Vladeck, I have little faith the Supreme Court will do anything other than ensure that Trump is on the ballot, though they do have an out by following the 14th Amendment and sending the decision to Congress.
Some months ago, when I was out gathering signatures to support daylighting the creek in the Civic Center Park. I stopped to have a long conversation with a student from Stanford. I can’t remember how our conversation drifted to books. What I do remember is his boasting about never reading books.
While each of us has our stories about how the pandemic affected and changed us, mine was, I started reading with a voracious passion and I haven’t stopped. I also started writing.
I shared with my Sunday walk partner, how grateful I am for our book club.
I’m into my fourth book on Palestine and Israel Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People The Bible by Mitri Raheb with two more started in my reading stack The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashi Khalidi and Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Target Assassinations by Ronen Bergman. The three I finished were: Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall and The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir by Naom Chayut.
If you asked if you could read only one, which one would I recommend, that is a hard choice. Decolonizing Palestine is absolutely the clearest, that ethnic cleansing of the Arabs from Palestine was always the plan from the earliest visions in the 1800s. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama expands the tragic bus accident into describing daily life in the West Bank. Chayut’s rambling memoir chronicles his indoctrination into Zionism and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces); how they terrorized Palestinians in the West Bank, pushed them out of their homes, destroyed their possessions, killed innocent Palestinians and shot up property for sport.
Whatever I thought about Israel decades ago when I was in high school has been washed away by coming to an understanding of Palestine, settler colonization, race and the force I didn’t consider, Christian Zionism.
Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil by Susan Newman (another book I just finished) while focusing on racism and the history of slavery in the United States and Germany’s ongoing working off the past overlaps into the conditions in Israel and Palestine. Neiman is an American who moved to Israel to work and raise her three young children and then to Berlin, Germany in 1982 where she still lives.
There is so much in the book Learning From the Germans. In Nieman’s comparison between Germany and the United States slavery and the glorification of the lost cause, she writes and asks could we imagine Germany with statues glorifying Hitler? How is it we sit in the U.S. filled with statues honoring the confederacy glorifying confederate generals and soldiers and allow the Civil War portrayed as the “lost cause”?
It was just December 27, 2023 when Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley was asked at a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire what did she believe caused the Civil War. Haley went into a lengthy response about the role of government, “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do” never mentioning slavery. The person who asked the question said he was “astonished” by the response.
As we crossed the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection I watched some of the film of that day with the carrying of confederate flags into the capitol.
As the book comes to a close Neiman writes about leadership. It was 2019. Neiman reminds us it was the racist backlash to President Obama, our first Black president that brought us President Trump in 2016.
On Christmas Day over brunch the conversation drifted to past trips. I mentioned I was so worried about the election in 2018 that I left the country on election day to travel solo in Germany for three weeks. I wanted to understand what happened. One of my friends answered with the simple explanation people were afraid.
It’s way more complicated.
I wonder how the Republican Party of today will really look in a historical review with a cult of personality at the center, grievance politics, othering, book banning, retribution, revenge, and an embrace of authoritarianism.
I closed out my week to see for myself the shipping containers surrounding Peoples Park. I’ve never been deeply involved in Peoples Park, but as I think about it and look at it, it strikes me as small-minded leaders passing grudges from one generation of chancellors to the next and developers determined to turn the debacle into a gentrifying opportunity, a process that already has a big head start. The park was destroyed months ago with clear cutting nearly all the trees. There were other places to build.
December 22, 2023
My sister recommended the book Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman. The New York Times review called the book, “Riveting… A superbly written tale of moral courage and political courage for present day readers who find themselves in similarly dark times.”
Riveting is the best word to describe Freedman’s writing. The Berkeley library has one hard copy and the Oakland library has the ebook.
My memory of Hubert Humphrey is his support of the Vietnam War, the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention and losing the 1968 presidential election to Nixon who promised to end the war and then continued it for four more years until after he was safely reelected.
Humphrey’s pivotal role on civil rights was completely lost under the weight of Vietnam.
I knew nothing about Humphrey’s early political life especially how he addressed racism and anti-Semitism in Minneapolis as mayor or how he changed history with his firm stand on civil rights in 1948. I associated the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act signed by President Johnson in 1964. Humphrey’s place in civil rights starts long before becoming Johnson’s Vice President on January 20, 1965.
The book title comes from Humphrey’s speech on July 14, 1948 at the Democratic National Convention. The issue was not whether the delegates would nominate President Truman for a second term, but whether the Democrats would include civil rights in the official party platform. Humphrey had 10 minutes to speak for the minority and convince the delegates to support the platform on civil rights. Here is an excerpt:
“To those of you, my friends who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them, we are 172 years late.
To those who say, to those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this, that the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”
President Truman is described as not wanting the Democratic minority to win on the civil rights platform. He wanted to bury civil rights, but the party platform on civil rights forced his hand. Twelve days later on July 26, 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9980 integrating the Federal workforce and Executive Order 9981 banning segregation in the Armed Forces.
Sunday evening, I attended what I thought would be a talk on the book Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe at Revolution Books. The organizers were thinking in terms of starting a book club. The book sold out and most of us either hadn’t read it or barely started. I was the oldest person in the room and the majority in the group were less than half my age. which was exactly the mix I was looking for.
The discussion quickly strayed.
When I added voting to the conversation and that half the country is nuts, it went as might be expected. While probably most of the people in the room were self-selected to be prone to vote third party or wondering whether to vote at all, they were not buying the necessity of voting for President Biden to keep Trump out of office though one person brought up Project 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
I’ve been watching the polling that Biden is losing the support of voters under the age of 35 and Muslim and Arab Americans over his handling of the Israel – Hamas War.
Even before reading Into the Bright Sunshine, I’ve been thinking about the election of 1968 and the impact of the Vietnam war on that election. If people sit out voting, go for one of the third parties or vote only down ballot and skip the presidential vote as they did in Michigan in 2016, we could be in big trouble. Trump could be reelected and this time around he will be surrounded by sycophants and the Project 2025 blueprint to eviscerate the government. Things could change very quickly.
I thought a lot about Trump and Netanyahu as I took notes from Jason Stanley’s book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. They both fit the fascist description; Trump with his grievance politics pledging, “[F]or those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution” and Netanyahu calling up Amalek a war of genocide in the Bible citing Deuteronomy 25:17 on October 28, 2023. https://www.christianpost.com/news/netanyahu-compares-hamas-to-amalek-rival-of-the-israelites.html
The death toll in Gaza surpassed 20,000 several days ago. Over 8000 children have been killed.
Israel’s blockade of food, water and power started weeks ago in October. The UN reports over half a million people in Gaza are starving. The entire population in Gaza is in a food crisis as Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war. There is not safe drinking water. Sewage systems were destroyed leaving sewage untreated. Gazans are squeezed into refugee camps which are under attack from bombing and ground troops. There is no safe place for the 2.2 million people of Gaza.
I read Deuteronomy 25:17 and the entire book of 1 Samuel in the 1952 Revised Standard Version of the Bible (writings on remembrance of Amalek appear in several Biblical texts). I wrote a friend after reading 1 Samuel, it was about killing, jealousy, calling up mediums to speak to the dead and sacrifices (animals on alters). The genocidal command from “The Lord” on Amalek is clearest in 1 Samuel 15:3 (Chapter 15 verse 3), “’Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them; but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass’”.
This is really something to wrap your head around.
President Biden, his administration, the State Department are aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is using passages from the Bible calling for genocide and total destruction in his rallying cry in the Israel Hamas war.
For anyone who is paying attention, there should be no doubt of the intent of Netanyahu, the Knesset and advisors. They state it openly. Whatever President Biden is credited as saying to Netanyahu to protect the civilian population is obviously brushed aside through speech and action.
When agreement in Congress couldn’t be reached on Biden’s $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and national security, the Biden administration bypassed Congress on December 9, 2023 “selling” 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth $106,000,000. There is no reporting of any conditions placed on Israel in the furnishing of weapons in the Israel Hamas war.
History did not begin with the horrific attack on October 7, 2023.
The world sees Israel as committing war crimes and those crimes grow each day as the US blocks meaningful action at the UN.
It is in this atmosphere the Berkeley City Council couldn’t bring itself to join neighboring cities in a call for a ceasefire before they all left on their winter recess.
In Bethlehem the celebration of Christmas was canceled. The nativity scene depicted the figure of an infant Jesus with a keffiyeh surrounded by rubble. Reverend Munther Isaac in Bethlehem gave this message (read or listen): https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26/christ_in_the_rubble_christmas_sermon
I received another email from Mayor Jesse Arreguin at 9:14 this morning titled Happy Holidays asking for contributions to his run for State Senate.
There was only one City meeting in the last week before the City’s Christmas Holiday. I kept checking the Design Review Committee (DRC) webpage hoping for the word cancelled to appear. It didn’t. I was the only member of the public to attend.
There were only two projects on the agenda 2018 Blake the six-story, multi-unit project for students in the formerly redlined block and 2587 Telegraph an eight-story 52-unit project. Both were SB 330 density bonus projects which, of course, means building bigger taller buildings than allowed through the zoning ordinance. With new Southside zoning, the project on Telegraph could actually be bigger.
I remember the Asian couple in the little house next door to 2018 Blake who appealed the project that would tower over them. They lost their appeal. What is left of the buildings at 2018 Blake still smells like smoke more than three years after the April 2020 fire.
Big tall dense housing is what the Berkeley mayor and city council, the California State Assembly, the State Senate, Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner champion.
As I was nosing around on the internet to confirm that the mid-block 2018 Blake project was in the formerly redlined zone, I found the website Mapping Inequality Redlining in New Deal America. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/
It was back in February 2021 when the Berkeley City Council declared it would eliminate single family zoning as single-family zoning is inherently racist. Council declared Berkeley was the first city to establish the inherently racist practice of single family zoning in 1916. If the Council had actually done their homework, they would have noticed it was not single-family zoning that created the protected white neighborhoods. It was the covenants written into deeds restricting the sale of a property to nonwhites which was first introduced in Minneapolis in 1910. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/MN/Minneapolis/context#loc=12/44.9726/-93.2631
Covenants didn’t fit the narrative of upzoning Berkeley to make way for multi-unit housing, mid-rises and hi-rises. Calling single family housing racist made a better story. On the evening of the council action there were many who declared their abhorrence to single-family zoning as racist and their support for multi-unit housing as the answer.
Interestingly, the YIMBYs who are vocal supporters of high-density housing are listed under YIMBY Action as one of the financial supporters of the website.
There is an icon of the US that brings up a US map with links to cities and documents.
The D4 zone in Mapping Inequality where 2018 Blake sits comes with this description from 1937. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/CA/Oakland/area_descriptions#loc=15/37.8681/-122.2661
“14. CLARIFYING REMARKS (3) This area of modern type bungalows was originally put on as a white subdivision. However, now Negroes have crowded in until there is only a small percentage of white remaining, most Italians. District known as ‘Negro Piedmont’. This district will never recover its original pre-Depression values. Zoned for restricted type residences except about ten blocks in the center, which are zoned for two-family residences and duplexes. This is a high grade Negro area and good loan can be made here if care is exercised.
INHABITANTS
e. Infiltration of: orientals
c. Foreign-born: Latin & Nordic; 15%
d. Negro: yes; 50%
f. Relief families: many
a. Type: store-keepers, professional Negro white-collar workers, etc.
b. Estimated annual family income 1,000 – 2,500
3. FAVORABLE INFLUENCES
Modern type cottages and bungalows prevail; homogeneous types. Convenient to recreational facilities, schools, local and San Francisco transportation and local shopping district
4. DETRIMENTAL INFLUENCES
Predominance of Negroes and Orientals. Also mixed classes of wage earners and colored professional people
2. DESCRIPTION OF TERRAIN
Level”
Under SB 330, projects are held to the standards in place at the time their applications are complete. Neither project is required to comply with the Bird Safe Ordinance though 2587 Telegraph said they were including bird safe glass for the first 36 feet of the building.
I among others felt the Bird Safe Ordinance languished at the bottom the Planning Commission to do list for years for the exact purpose of allowing developers to get their applications in first.
The architect presenting for 2018 Blake quoted the bird safe ordinance standard as 2 feet by 4 feet and said he wasn’t sure if they were required to follow it. The 2 feet by 4 feet was another deliberate slip from the Planning Department. The standard was inches, 2 inches by 4 inches, however, since birds are able to fly through tiny spaces the final ordinance passed with 2 inches by 2 inches.
Anything coming from the Planning Department requires attention to detail as DRC committee member Finacom pointed out at the start of the meeting. Finacom related to the DRC his reading of the signage ordinance and project plans for 600 Addison were correct and that staff admitted at the appeal to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) that the presentation to DRC was in error. The DRC unknowingly approved signage for 600 Addison using flawed analysis by staff that the proposed signage fit within the City ordinance. The ZAB decided after being informed that the signage was not in compliance with the Berkeley Signage Ordinance to approve it anyway.
After citing the Bird Safe Ordinance is 2 inches not 2 feet and asking that the project to use bird safe glass, I stated that I know gray is a popular color and asked if we have to have gray buildings, that look like they are from East Germany.
The DRC did not approve the final design for 2018 Blake and asked the developer to return with a more colorful proposal and more windows.
The second project at 2587 Telegraph was approved to move on to ZAB with many suggestions for improvements. The DRC asked the project team how the neighborhood responded to the project. Mark Rhodes spoke for the project saying the neighbors weren’t happy, but they were working with them.
Eight, ten and twelve story buildings are the future for neighborhoods near commercial districts. Former Mayor Shirley Dean often relates how unhappy people were during her term as mayor with five story buildings. These days having only five stories next door looks like a gift.
After seeing so many really awful projects, 2587 Telegraph was a major improvement over what usually comes to DRC. The balconies on the Telegraph side were designed into the bulk of the project rather than hanging off the outside of the building visually breaking up the long linear building. It is a design that might work at North Berkeley BART. All the bedrooms had windows.
All of these projects come with bicycle rooms and it wasn’t clear where the increasingly popular e-scooters fit or what was being done to reduce the fire hazard from the scooter lithium ion batteries. The developer related that the Fire Marshall is now requiring bicycle rooms to be fire rated with sprinklers and scooters are not allowed in living spaces.
If you drive and haven’t been down MLK lately between Dwight and Ashby be ready for swerving lanes, pedestrian islands in the middle of the street with the rectangular rapid flashing beacons and curbs in unexpected places in the middle of the street. The flashing beacons and islands are nice for pedestrians, but it looks like there should have been better planning than traffic lanes that swerve in and out in each block. Watch out for the curbs in left turn lanes. They might cause some serious damage if you happen to be unlucky enough to hit one.
2023 is ending as the hottest year on record. It is hard to deny the impacts of climate change though some still try.
I have a protest sign in my kitchen, “Public Response Matters”. Let’s hope we heed it and 2024 turns out better than the pundits predict.
My sister recommended the book Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights by Samuel G. Freedman. The New York Times review called the book, “Riveting… A superbly written tale of moral courage and political courage for present day readers who find themselves in similarly dark times.”
Riveting is the best word to describe Freedman’s writing. The Berkeley library has one hard copy and the Oakland library has the ebook.
My memory of Hubert Humphrey is his support of the Vietnam War, the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention and losing the 1968 presidential election to Nixon who promised to end the war and then continued it for four more years until after he was safely reelected.
Humphrey’s pivotal role on civil rights was completely lost under the weight of Vietnam.
I knew nothing about Humphrey’s early political life especially how he addressed racism and anti-Semitism in Minneapolis as mayor or how he changed history with his firm stand on civil rights in 1948. I associated the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Act signed by President Johnson in 1964. Humphrey’s place in civil rights starts long before becoming Johnson’s Vice President on January 20, 1965.
The book title comes from Humphrey’s speech on July 14, 1948 at the Democratic National Convention. The issue was not whether the delegates would nominate President Truman for a second term, but whether the Democrats would include civil rights in the official party platform. Humphrey had 10 minutes to speak for the minority and convince the delegates to support the platform on civil rights. Here is an excerpt:
“To those of you, my friends who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them, we are 172 years late.
To those who say, to those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this, that the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”
President Truman is described as not wanting the Democratic minority to win on the civil rights platform. He wanted to bury civil rights, but the party platform on civil rights forced his hand. Twelve days later on July 26, 1948, Truman issued Executive Order 9980 integrating the Federal workforce and Executive Order 9981 banning segregation in the Armed Forces.
Sunday evening, I attended what I thought would be a talk on the book Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappe at Revolution Books. The organizers were thinking in terms of starting a book club. The book sold out and most of us either hadn’t read it or barely started. I was the oldest person in the room and the majority in the group were less than half my age. which was exactly the mix I was looking for.
The discussion quickly strayed.
When I added voting to the conversation and that half the country is nuts, it went as might be expected. While probably most of the people in the room were self-selected to be prone to vote third party or wondering whether to vote at all, they were not buying the necessity of voting for President Biden to keep Trump out of office though one person brought up Project 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
I’ve been watching the polling that Biden is losing the support of voters under the age of 35 and Muslim and Arab Americans over his handling of the Israel – Hamas War.
Even before reading Into the Bright Sunshine, I’ve been thinking about the election of 1968 and the impact of the Vietnam war on that election. If people sit out voting, go for one of the third parties or vote only down ballot and skip the presidential vote as they did in Michigan in 2016, we could be in big trouble. Trump could be reelected and this time around he will be surrounded by sycophants and the Project 2025 blueprint to eviscerate the government. Things could change very quickly.
I thought a lot about Trump and Netanyahu as I took notes from Jason Stanley’s book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. They both fit the fascist description; Trump with his grievance politics pledging, “[F]or those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution” and Netanyahu calling up Amalek a war of genocide in the Bible citing Deuteronomy 25:17 on October 28, 2023. https://www.christianpost.com/news/netanyahu-compares-hamas-to-amalek-rival-of-the-israelites.html
The death toll in Gaza surpassed 20,000 several days ago. Over 8000 children have been killed.
Israel’s blockade of food, water and power started weeks ago in October. The UN reports over half a million people in Gaza are starving. The entire population in Gaza is in a food crisis as Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war. There is not safe drinking water. Sewage systems were destroyed leaving sewage untreated. Gazans are squeezed into refugee camps which are under attack from bombing and ground troops. There is no safe place for the 2.2 million people of Gaza.
I read Deuteronomy 25:17 and the entire book of 1 Samuel in the 1952 Revised Standard Version of the Bible (writings on remembrance of Amalek appear in several Biblical texts). I wrote a friend after reading 1 Samuel, it was about killing, jealousy, calling up mediums to speak to the dead and sacrifices (animals on alters). The genocidal command from “The Lord” on Amalek is clearest in 1 Samuel 15:3 (Chapter 15 verse 3), “’Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them; but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass’”.
This is really something to wrap your head around.
President Biden, his administration, the State Department are aligned with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is using passages from the Bible calling for genocide and total destruction in his rallying cry in the Israel Hamas war.
For anyone who is paying attention, there should be no doubt of the intent of Netanyahu, the Knesset and advisors. They state it openly. Whatever President Biden is credited as saying to Netanyahu to protect the civilian population is obviously brushed aside through speech and action.
When agreement in Congress couldn’t be reached on Biden’s $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and national security, the Biden administration bypassed Congress on December 9, 2023 “selling” 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth $106,000,000. There is no reporting of any conditions placed on Israel in the furnishing of weapons in the Israel Hamas war.
History did not begin with the horrific attack on October 7, 2023.
The world sees Israel as committing war crimes and those crimes grow each day as the US blocks meaningful action at the UN.
It is in this atmosphere the Berkeley City Council couldn’t bring itself to join neighboring cities in a call for a ceasefire before they all left on their winter recess.
In Bethlehem the celebration of Christmas was canceled. The nativity scene depicted the figure of an infant Jesus with a keffiyeh surrounded by rubble. Reverend Munther Isaac in Bethlehem gave this message (read or listen): https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/26/christ_in_the_rubble_christmas_sermon
I received another email from Mayor Jesse Arreguin at 9:14 this morning titled Happy Holidays asking for contributions to his run for State Senate.
There was only one City meeting in the last week before the City’s Christmas Holiday. I kept checking the Design Review Committee (DRC) webpage hoping for the word cancelled to appear. It didn’t. I was the only member of the public to attend.
There were only two projects on the agenda 2018 Blake the six-story, multi-unit project for students in the formerly redlined block and 2587 Telegraph an eight-story 52-unit project. Both were SB 330 density bonus projects which, of course, means building bigger taller buildings than allowed through the zoning ordinance. With new Southside zoning, the project on Telegraph could actually be bigger.
I remember the Asian couple in the little house next door to 2018 Blake who appealed the project that would tower over them. They lost their appeal. What is left of the buildings at 2018 Blake still smells like smoke more than three years after the April 2020 fire.
Big tall dense housing is what the Berkeley mayor and city council, the California State Assembly, the State Senate, Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner champion.
As I was nosing around on the internet to confirm that the mid-block 2018 Blake project was in the formerly redlined zone, I found the website Mapping Inequality Redlining in New Deal America. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/
It was back in February 2021 when the Berkeley City Council declared it would eliminate single family zoning as single-family zoning is inherently racist. Council declared Berkeley was the first city to establish the inherently racist practice of single family zoning in 1916. If the Council had actually done their homework, they would have noticed it was not single-family zoning that created the protected white neighborhoods. It was the covenants written into deeds restricting the sale of a property to nonwhites which was first introduced in Minneapolis in 1910. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/MN/Minneapolis/context#loc=12/44.9726/-93.2631
Covenants didn’t fit the narrative of upzoning Berkeley to make way for multi-unit housing, mid-rises and hi-rises. Calling single family housing racist made a better story. On the evening of the council action there were many who declared their abhorrence to single-family zoning as racist and their support for multi-unit housing as the answer.
Interestingly, the YIMBYs who are vocal supporters of high-density housing are listed under YIMBY Action as one of the financial supporters of the website.
There is an icon of the US that brings up a US map with links to cities and documents.
The D4 zone in Mapping Inequality where 2018 Blake sits comes with this description from 1937. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/CA/Oakland/area_descriptions#loc=15/37.8681/-122.2661
“14. CLARIFYING REMARKS (3) This area of modern type bungalows was originally put on as a white subdivision. However, now Negroes have crowded in until there is only a small percentage of white remaining, most Italians. District known as ‘Negro Piedmont’. This district will never recover its original pre-Depression values. Zoned for restricted type residences except about ten blocks in the center, which are zoned for two-family residences and duplexes. This is a high grade Negro area and good loan can be made here if care is exercised.
INHABITANTS
e. Infiltration of: orientals
c. Foreign-born: Latin & Nordic; 15%
d. Negro: yes; 50%
f. Relief families: many
a. Type: store-keepers, professional Negro white-collar workers, etc.
b. Estimated annual family income 1,000 – 2,500
3. FAVORABLE INFLUENCES
Modern type cottages and bungalows prevail; homogeneous types. Convenient to recreational facilities, schools, local and San Francisco transportation and local shopping district
4. DETRIMENTAL INFLUENCES
Predominance of Negroes and Orientals. Also mixed classes of wage earners and colored professional people
2. DESCRIPTION OF TERRAIN
Level”
Under SB 330, projects are held to the standards in place at the time their applications are complete. Neither project is required to comply with the Bird Safe Ordinance though 2587 Telegraph said they were including bird safe glass for the first 36 feet of the building.
I among others felt the Bird Safe Ordinance languished at the bottom the Planning Commission to do list for years for the exact purpose of allowing developers to get their applications in first.
The architect presenting for 2018 Blake quoted the bird safe ordinance standard as 2 feet by 4 feet and said he wasn’t sure if they were required to follow it. The 2 feet by 4 feet was another deliberate slip from the Planning Department. The standard was inches, 2 inches by 4 inches, however, since birds are able to fly through tiny spaces the final ordinance passed with 2 inches by 2 inches.
Anything coming from the Planning Department requires attention to detail as DRC committee member Finacom pointed out at the start of the meeting. Finacom related to the DRC his reading of the signage ordinance and project plans for 600 Addison were correct and that staff admitted at the appeal to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) that the presentation to DRC was in error. The DRC unknowingly approved signage for 600 Addison using flawed analysis by staff that the proposed signage fit within the City ordinance. The ZAB decided after being informed that the signage was not in compliance with the Berkeley Signage Ordinance to approve it anyway.
After citing the Bird Safe Ordinance is 2 inches not 2 feet and asking that the project to use bird safe glass, I stated that I know gray is a popular color and asked if we have to have gray buildings, that look like they are from East Germany.
The DRC did not approve the final design for 2018 Blake and asked the developer to return with a more colorful proposal and more windows.
The second project at 2587 Telegraph was approved to move on to ZAB with many suggestions for improvements. The DRC asked the project team how the neighborhood responded to the project. Mark Rhodes spoke for the project saying the neighbors weren’t happy, but they were working with them.
Eight, ten and twelve story buildings are the future for neighborhoods near commercial districts. Former Mayor Shirley Dean often relates how unhappy people were during her term as mayor with five story buildings. These days having only five stories next door looks like a gift.
After seeing so many really awful projects, 2587 Telegraph was a major improvement over what usually comes to DRC. The balconies on the Telegraph side were designed into the bulk of the project rather than hanging off the outside of the building visually breaking up the long linear building. It is a design that might work at North Berkeley BART. All the bedrooms had windows.
All of these projects come with bicycle rooms and it wasn’t clear where the increasingly popular e-scooters fit or what was being done to reduce the fire hazard from the scooter lithium ion batteries. The developer related that the Fire Marshall is now requiring bicycle rooms to be fire rated with sprinklers and scooters are not allowed in living spaces.
If you drive and haven’t been down MLK lately between Dwight and Ashby be ready for swerving lanes, pedestrian islands in the middle of the street with the rectangular rapid flashing beacons and curbs in unexpected places in the middle of the street. The flashing beacons and islands are nice for pedestrians, but it looks like there should have been better planning than traffic lanes that swerve in and out in each block. Watch out for the curbs in left turn lanes. They might cause some serious damage if you happen to be unlucky enough to hit one.
2023 is ending as the hottest year on record. It is hard to deny the impacts of climate change though some still try.
I have a protest sign in my kitchen, “Public Response Matters”. Let’s hope we heed it and 2024 turns out better than the pundits predict.
December 17, 2023
With City Council on winter recess and most of the meetings for the year over, I turned on the audiobook version of McKay Coppins’ book Romney: A Reckoning and finished it in 2 ½ days while I put off writing and cleaned the house; which tells you where housing cleaning fell during the months of attending City meetings and writing about them.
No matter how we view Romney the closing comments from the author center on what I so often consider when I observe and write about our local politics and elected officials. What drives their actions and where do their actions fit with what they professed to stand for when we voted for them.
From McCay Coppins:
“Romney tells me he has been thinking about a question I asked when we first started meeting, I wanted to know if he thought there were any lessons in his story that future political leaders might take…he knows no one emerges from politics free of regret. These days when he speaks to student groups his frequent piece of advice is to not sacrifice their integrity at the altar of ambition, It’s not worth it he tells them. Believe me.
I once asked him if he would have taken the same lonely principled vote to convict Trump if he had been put in the same position thirty years earlier he answered, I don’t know the answer to that. I think I recognize now my capacity to rationalize decisions that are in my self interest and I don’t know that I recognized that to the same degree back then.
At a moment when courage is in vanishing short supply in politics it is worth considering what made Romney finally choose to do the right thing instead of the convenient one and whether the phenomenon can be replicated. Romney tells me he thinks the key is to get political leaders to think more deeply and more often about how they’ll be remembered when they are gone. You can rationalize anything when the only thought is how it will play in the next election…”
As of December 16, Mayor Arreguin and four Berkeley City Councilmembers are running for something. The council terms of Terry Taplin, Ben Bartlett, Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf all expire November 30, 2024. Wengraf announced she is retiring. Hahn is running for mayor as are Harrison and Robinson. Bartlett is running for Alameda County Supervisor against eight others. If Bartlett doesn’t make the top two in the primary, he can run to retain his council seat in November. The closing date to declare being a candidate for mayor or city council is August 9, 2023. Arreguin is running for State Senate against four others. Ernesto Falcon dropped out four days ago.
By the end of Sunday, December 10, 2023 Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Taplin had backpedaled and withdrawn their resolutions from December 7. Bartlett and Robinson called for a ceasefire and Taplin called for an end to hostilities in the Hamas – Israel war. Hahn had sent her email that none of these resolutions “…will ever - appear on a Council Agenda prior to Tuesday’s meeting…I am calling on my Council colleagues to stand firm and refuse to place any resolutions on our Agenda as Urgency Items…” and then called for us to write emails and attend the December 12th council meeting to oppose a resolution.
While I’ve been staring at this Diary, the number of Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in the Hamas - Israel war has grown to 97.
I’ve been into records online reading through letters sent to council on the Hamas – Israel war. The emails sent to take no action on a ceasefire resolution far outnumber the emails for a ceasefire resolution. It is the opposite in the people showing up to the council meetings. The vocal in-person attendees support a ceasefire resolution in overwhelming numbers.
I’ve been thinking about the City of Berkeley’s Land Acknowledgement Statement:
The City of Berkeley recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of xučyun (Huchiun (Hooch-yoon)), the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo (Cho-chen-yo)-speaking Ohlone (Oh-low-nee) people, the ancestors and descendants of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to all of the Ohlone Tribes and descendants of the Verona Band. As we begin our meeting tonight, we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of Berkeley, the documented 5,000-year history of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shellmound, and the Ohlone people who continue to reside in the East Bay. We recognize that Berkeley’s residents have and continue to benefit from the use and occupation of this unceded stolen land since the City of Berkeley’s incorporation in 1878. As stewards of the laws regulating the City of Berkeley, it is not only vital that we recognize the history of this land, but also recognize that the Ohlone people are present members of Berkeley and other East Bay communities today. The City of Berkeley will continue to build relationships with the Lisjan Tribe and to create meaningful actions that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgement.
Would we see Gaza and the Palestinians differently if the City of Berkeley was replaced with Israel and the inhabitants of the land was replaced with Palestinians? That is the Nakba, the catastrophe, the 750,000 Palestinians removed from their homes, their land to create the nation of Israel in 1948.
History gets complicated overridden with myths, religious beliefs, guilt and fear over the Holocaust, what is erased and revised, and power. History did not start with the horror of October 7, 2023.
What is not complicated is the killing must stop. The genocide must stop. The ethnic cleansing must stop. The liquidation of Gaza must stop. The murder of Palestinians in the West Bank must stop. The killing of Israelis must stop.
It wasn’t the deaths of over 18,000 Palestinians of whom over 7000 were children that brought Germany and the UK to change their minds to call for a sustainable ceasefire, it was the IDF (Israel Defense Force) shooting and killing on Friday three shirtless unarmed October 7 hostages bearing a white makeshift flag calling in Hebrew for help.
Masha Gessen still received the literary Hannah Arendt Prize in Germany, but her comparison of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto in her article in the New Yorker “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” was viewed as so controversial in Germany that two sponsors withdrew their support of the large ceremony. The literary prize was awarded at a private dinner ceremony as possible venues slipped away.
Gessen’s article is long and at this time when feelings are so hot over the Hamas - Israel war, it should be at the top of your reading list. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust
On December 5, 2023 The House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” in a vote of 311 to 14 with 92 Democrats voting present and 95 supporting it.
The Land Acknowledgement is the work of Councilmember Sophie Hahn.
The recitation of the Land Acknowledgement has turned into a ritual that carries little with it. There will eventually be the Turtle Island Monument placed on top of the fountain in Civic Center Park.
When I suggested at a meeting of the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (the group coordinated by John Caner, on restoring the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings and revitalizing the Civic Center Park) that the Lisjan should have space in the Maudelle Shirek Building that suggestion fell flat.
I chose to stay home and sign in on zoom for the Tuesday City Council double header expecting a late night. The special meeting on the Objective Design Standards for the North Berkeley BART Housing project started at 3 pm followed with the regular meeting at 6 pm with the Annual Appropriations Ordinance (AAO#1 aka the first midyear budget adjustment).
Of the twenty speakers on non-agenda items at the regular meeting nineteen addressed the Hamas - Israel war. One asked for a dialogue, five opposed a resolution and thirteen asked for a ceasefire.
In a change from previous meetings, Arreguin allowed forty-five minutes for public comment by in person attendees on the consent calendar. All but three speakers wrapped their call for a ceasefire to items on the consent calendar (the City Clerk counted 36 commenters). The forty-five minutes ended with a roll call vote on the consent calendar and adjourned at 7:39 pm. The Annual Appropriations Ordinance had been moved to consent without discussion. The City Manager withdrew the item on Berkeley High School staff parking.
At the 3 pm meeting on the North Berkeley BART Housing project the neighbors requested that Council approve the original objective design standards. They used the word betrayal over and over in describing what happened after all the community meetings including the September 11 open house and what was now before Council for the final vote. There were other speakers who asked council to approve the standards as proposed by staff and the Planning Commission.
When it comes to the large housing projects the divide is stark between the YIMBYs and like groups that push for maximum density everywhere and neighbors next door to the large projects who want projects to blend not towers.
On September 11, 2023, I attended the presentation and open house with City staff and the project developers North Berkeley Housing Partners on the proposed design for the North Berkeley BART Housing project. There were some people who were unhappy, but I thought the plan looked terrific especially after seeing so many projects at the Design Review Committee designed for students with bedrooms without windows.
The pictures showed an open parklike space in the center, setbacks from the sidewalk for plants and trees, major breaks in the long facades giving the units light and air plus a more pleasing blending into the setting of surrounding single family predominately one-story homes.
By October 18, when the objective design standards came to the Planning Commission, North Berkeley Housing Partners had a turn around with the support of the commission for big boxy buildings with smaller setbacks from the sidewalk and maximizing density. Commissioner Alfred Twu suggested the visual breaks through ornamentation. That was set at 5% of the wall on 200 linear feet. The major breaks that guaranteed lots of natural light into living spaces were gone.
Whatever is built at the North Berkeley BART site will be here for decades. Unlike so many projects, the housing at the BART stations is on public land. The developer is not buying the land.
Harrison and Hahn made a substitute motion to bring back these separations at least in the market rate buildings. Wengraf joined. Wengraf’s concern was the setback, the distance from the sidewalk to the ground floor units. They lost. The vote to accept the Planning Department / Planning Commission recommendation with the big boxy buildings with reduced setbacks for maximum density won in an eight to one vote. Harrison abstained.
Berkeley is in a building binge. I often wonder who is going to occupy all these buildings. California’s population is in decline and given the current stand on immigration it is likely to stay that way.
Berkeley’s population is bolstered by the ever increasing UC Berkeley student body. And, the elected are pinning their hopes on expansion in West Berkeley into research and development. Those jobs are seen as the kind of work that can’t be done remotely.
Monday morning was double booked with the Budget and Finance Committee finalizing the Annual Appropriations Ordinance (AAO#1 aka mid-year budget adjustment) and the Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee meeting on two different proposals for the Chess Club.
Arreguin’s proposal for the AAO#1 looked reasonable, the best outcome given the limitations. There were a few things added, Harrison’s request for $6,000 for mentoring Berkeley youth and violence prevention, Harrison’s request for $450,000 of the TNC tax (tax on lyft, Uber) for traffic calming, $50,000 for a prevailing wage study for the Southside and an increase from $2 million to $3 million for COVID hero pay for City staff who worked through the pandemic. Harrison and Arreguin approved the amended AAO#1. Kesarwani abstained.
The Health, Life Enrichment Committee with members Hahn as chair, Humbert and Bartlett blended the two proposals for the Chess Club. Humbert stated he was opposed to any fee reduction and opposed “directing” the City Manager to do anything. Hahn had to explain to Humbert the difference and use of “refer” and “direct” in the committee recommendation and why a permanent installation was less work and less expensive for the City.
The recommendation which in the end was approved by all three committee members included a referral for citywide chess and game facilities program, to explore the development of a parklet at or near the Telegraph and Haste intersection and to direct the City Manager to pause additional fees and to achieve an agreement on maintenance and improvements at 2454 Telegraph in exchange for a reduction/waiver of accumulated fees. The fees (penalties) are somewhere between $70,000 and $100,000 for the Chess Club using the open plaza in front of the former Cody’s books to gather to play chess.
The Telegraph Triangle at the intersection of Dwight and Telegraph keeps coming up in conversations as an alternative site. The Chess Club opposes that site referencing the amount of traffic.
I took a look at the Telegraph/Dwight Triangle. It was larger than I remembered it, but the thought of sitting there for a couple of hours while traffic whizzes by is definitely very unappealing. Thankfully, it was not listed in the recommendation.
The Zoning Adjustment Board was the last City meeting of the week on my schedule. I didn’t record what time it ended, but I think it might have been around 7:30 pm, certainly well before 8 pm. I was attending the Citizens for East Shore Parks where I am a board member and glanced at the captions often enough to see that three lone projects all passed on consent.
The 1287 Gilman to establish a wine bar passed with a continuation to date uncertain, 2573 Shattuck will become a veterinary clinic and 2800 MLK Jr Way will be converted into a duplex.
2800 MLK Jr Way is not new construction as it is an addition to an existing single-family home and is therefore not subject to the Natural Gas Ban. This is so unfortunate. The project essentially guts the existing family home to turn it into a duplex. It is the perfect time to convert it to 100% electric.
At the last Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) we heard the presentation on the Building Emissions Saving Ordinance (BESO) from City staff. I am always frustrated after sitting through these presentations. They never seem to go any further than flowery talk. I’ve heard way too many times how the BESO surveys/assessments at time of sale are going to improve and then the next time it is the same story.
That was followed with an introduction to the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan. When someone asked the presenter from the City how this plan fit with San Pablo as an evacuation route, he responded back that San Pablo wasn’t a fire zone so therefore San Pablo wasn’t an evacuation route.
City staff would do a lot better if they came to BNC better informed. San Pablo is an evacuation and emergency access route plainly visible on the Berkeley City map, which several members posted in the chat.
Enough for this sitting. There will be more next time, but it might not appear until after the holidays.
With City Council on winter recess and most of the meetings for the year over, I turned on the audiobook version of McKay Coppins’ book Romney: A Reckoning and finished it in 2 ½ days while I put off writing and cleaned the house; which tells you where housing cleaning fell during the months of attending City meetings and writing about them.
No matter how we view Romney the closing comments from the author center on what I so often consider when I observe and write about our local politics and elected officials. What drives their actions and where do their actions fit with what they professed to stand for when we voted for them.
From McCay Coppins:
“Romney tells me he has been thinking about a question I asked when we first started meeting, I wanted to know if he thought there were any lessons in his story that future political leaders might take…he knows no one emerges from politics free of regret. These days when he speaks to student groups his frequent piece of advice is to not sacrifice their integrity at the altar of ambition, It’s not worth it he tells them. Believe me.
I once asked him if he would have taken the same lonely principled vote to convict Trump if he had been put in the same position thirty years earlier he answered, I don’t know the answer to that. I think I recognize now my capacity to rationalize decisions that are in my self interest and I don’t know that I recognized that to the same degree back then.
At a moment when courage is in vanishing short supply in politics it is worth considering what made Romney finally choose to do the right thing instead of the convenient one and whether the phenomenon can be replicated. Romney tells me he thinks the key is to get political leaders to think more deeply and more often about how they’ll be remembered when they are gone. You can rationalize anything when the only thought is how it will play in the next election…”
As of December 16, Mayor Arreguin and four Berkeley City Councilmembers are running for something. The council terms of Terry Taplin, Ben Bartlett, Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf all expire November 30, 2024. Wengraf announced she is retiring. Hahn is running for mayor as are Harrison and Robinson. Bartlett is running for Alameda County Supervisor against eight others. If Bartlett doesn’t make the top two in the primary, he can run to retain his council seat in November. The closing date to declare being a candidate for mayor or city council is August 9, 2023. Arreguin is running for State Senate against four others. Ernesto Falcon dropped out four days ago.
By the end of Sunday, December 10, 2023 Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Taplin had backpedaled and withdrawn their resolutions from December 7. Bartlett and Robinson called for a ceasefire and Taplin called for an end to hostilities in the Hamas – Israel war. Hahn had sent her email that none of these resolutions “…will ever - appear on a Council Agenda prior to Tuesday’s meeting…I am calling on my Council colleagues to stand firm and refuse to place any resolutions on our Agenda as Urgency Items…” and then called for us to write emails and attend the December 12th council meeting to oppose a resolution.
While I’ve been staring at this Diary, the number of Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in the Hamas - Israel war has grown to 97.
I’ve been into records online reading through letters sent to council on the Hamas – Israel war. The emails sent to take no action on a ceasefire resolution far outnumber the emails for a ceasefire resolution. It is the opposite in the people showing up to the council meetings. The vocal in-person attendees support a ceasefire resolution in overwhelming numbers.
I’ve been thinking about the City of Berkeley’s Land Acknowledgement Statement:
The City of Berkeley recognizes that the community we live in was built on the territory of xučyun (Huchiun (Hooch-yoon)), the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo (Cho-chen-yo)-speaking Ohlone (Oh-low-nee) people, the ancestors and descendants of the sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to all of the Ohlone Tribes and descendants of the Verona Band. As we begin our meeting tonight, we acknowledge and honor the original inhabitants of Berkeley, the documented 5,000-year history of a vibrant community at the West Berkeley Shellmound, and the Ohlone people who continue to reside in the East Bay. We recognize that Berkeley’s residents have and continue to benefit from the use and occupation of this unceded stolen land since the City of Berkeley’s incorporation in 1878. As stewards of the laws regulating the City of Berkeley, it is not only vital that we recognize the history of this land, but also recognize that the Ohlone people are present members of Berkeley and other East Bay communities today. The City of Berkeley will continue to build relationships with the Lisjan Tribe and to create meaningful actions that uphold the intention of this land acknowledgement.
Would we see Gaza and the Palestinians differently if the City of Berkeley was replaced with Israel and the inhabitants of the land was replaced with Palestinians? That is the Nakba, the catastrophe, the 750,000 Palestinians removed from their homes, their land to create the nation of Israel in 1948.
History gets complicated overridden with myths, religious beliefs, guilt and fear over the Holocaust, what is erased and revised, and power. History did not start with the horror of October 7, 2023.
What is not complicated is the killing must stop. The genocide must stop. The ethnic cleansing must stop. The liquidation of Gaza must stop. The murder of Palestinians in the West Bank must stop. The killing of Israelis must stop.
It wasn’t the deaths of over 18,000 Palestinians of whom over 7000 were children that brought Germany and the UK to change their minds to call for a sustainable ceasefire, it was the IDF (Israel Defense Force) shooting and killing on Friday three shirtless unarmed October 7 hostages bearing a white makeshift flag calling in Hebrew for help.
Masha Gessen still received the literary Hannah Arendt Prize in Germany, but her comparison of Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto in her article in the New Yorker “In the Shadow of the Holocaust” was viewed as so controversial in Germany that two sponsors withdrew their support of the large ceremony. The literary prize was awarded at a private dinner ceremony as possible venues slipped away.
Gessen’s article is long and at this time when feelings are so hot over the Hamas - Israel war, it should be at the top of your reading list. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust
On December 5, 2023 The House of Representatives passed a resolution declaring “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” in a vote of 311 to 14 with 92 Democrats voting present and 95 supporting it.
The Land Acknowledgement is the work of Councilmember Sophie Hahn.
The recitation of the Land Acknowledgement has turned into a ritual that carries little with it. There will eventually be the Turtle Island Monument placed on top of the fountain in Civic Center Park.
When I suggested at a meeting of the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (the group coordinated by John Caner, on restoring the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings and revitalizing the Civic Center Park) that the Lisjan should have space in the Maudelle Shirek Building that suggestion fell flat.
I chose to stay home and sign in on zoom for the Tuesday City Council double header expecting a late night. The special meeting on the Objective Design Standards for the North Berkeley BART Housing project started at 3 pm followed with the regular meeting at 6 pm with the Annual Appropriations Ordinance (AAO#1 aka the first midyear budget adjustment).
Of the twenty speakers on non-agenda items at the regular meeting nineteen addressed the Hamas - Israel war. One asked for a dialogue, five opposed a resolution and thirteen asked for a ceasefire.
In a change from previous meetings, Arreguin allowed forty-five minutes for public comment by in person attendees on the consent calendar. All but three speakers wrapped their call for a ceasefire to items on the consent calendar (the City Clerk counted 36 commenters). The forty-five minutes ended with a roll call vote on the consent calendar and adjourned at 7:39 pm. The Annual Appropriations Ordinance had been moved to consent without discussion. The City Manager withdrew the item on Berkeley High School staff parking.
At the 3 pm meeting on the North Berkeley BART Housing project the neighbors requested that Council approve the original objective design standards. They used the word betrayal over and over in describing what happened after all the community meetings including the September 11 open house and what was now before Council for the final vote. There were other speakers who asked council to approve the standards as proposed by staff and the Planning Commission.
When it comes to the large housing projects the divide is stark between the YIMBYs and like groups that push for maximum density everywhere and neighbors next door to the large projects who want projects to blend not towers.
On September 11, 2023, I attended the presentation and open house with City staff and the project developers North Berkeley Housing Partners on the proposed design for the North Berkeley BART Housing project. There were some people who were unhappy, but I thought the plan looked terrific especially after seeing so many projects at the Design Review Committee designed for students with bedrooms without windows.
The pictures showed an open parklike space in the center, setbacks from the sidewalk for plants and trees, major breaks in the long facades giving the units light and air plus a more pleasing blending into the setting of surrounding single family predominately one-story homes.
By October 18, when the objective design standards came to the Planning Commission, North Berkeley Housing Partners had a turn around with the support of the commission for big boxy buildings with smaller setbacks from the sidewalk and maximizing density. Commissioner Alfred Twu suggested the visual breaks through ornamentation. That was set at 5% of the wall on 200 linear feet. The major breaks that guaranteed lots of natural light into living spaces were gone.
Whatever is built at the North Berkeley BART site will be here for decades. Unlike so many projects, the housing at the BART stations is on public land. The developer is not buying the land.
Harrison and Hahn made a substitute motion to bring back these separations at least in the market rate buildings. Wengraf joined. Wengraf’s concern was the setback, the distance from the sidewalk to the ground floor units. They lost. The vote to accept the Planning Department / Planning Commission recommendation with the big boxy buildings with reduced setbacks for maximum density won in an eight to one vote. Harrison abstained.
Berkeley is in a building binge. I often wonder who is going to occupy all these buildings. California’s population is in decline and given the current stand on immigration it is likely to stay that way.
Berkeley’s population is bolstered by the ever increasing UC Berkeley student body. And, the elected are pinning their hopes on expansion in West Berkeley into research and development. Those jobs are seen as the kind of work that can’t be done remotely.
Monday morning was double booked with the Budget and Finance Committee finalizing the Annual Appropriations Ordinance (AAO#1 aka mid-year budget adjustment) and the Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee meeting on two different proposals for the Chess Club.
Arreguin’s proposal for the AAO#1 looked reasonable, the best outcome given the limitations. There were a few things added, Harrison’s request for $6,000 for mentoring Berkeley youth and violence prevention, Harrison’s request for $450,000 of the TNC tax (tax on lyft, Uber) for traffic calming, $50,000 for a prevailing wage study for the Southside and an increase from $2 million to $3 million for COVID hero pay for City staff who worked through the pandemic. Harrison and Arreguin approved the amended AAO#1. Kesarwani abstained.
The Health, Life Enrichment Committee with members Hahn as chair, Humbert and Bartlett blended the two proposals for the Chess Club. Humbert stated he was opposed to any fee reduction and opposed “directing” the City Manager to do anything. Hahn had to explain to Humbert the difference and use of “refer” and “direct” in the committee recommendation and why a permanent installation was less work and less expensive for the City.
The recommendation which in the end was approved by all three committee members included a referral for citywide chess and game facilities program, to explore the development of a parklet at or near the Telegraph and Haste intersection and to direct the City Manager to pause additional fees and to achieve an agreement on maintenance and improvements at 2454 Telegraph in exchange for a reduction/waiver of accumulated fees. The fees (penalties) are somewhere between $70,000 and $100,000 for the Chess Club using the open plaza in front of the former Cody’s books to gather to play chess.
The Telegraph Triangle at the intersection of Dwight and Telegraph keeps coming up in conversations as an alternative site. The Chess Club opposes that site referencing the amount of traffic.
I took a look at the Telegraph/Dwight Triangle. It was larger than I remembered it, but the thought of sitting there for a couple of hours while traffic whizzes by is definitely very unappealing. Thankfully, it was not listed in the recommendation.
The Zoning Adjustment Board was the last City meeting of the week on my schedule. I didn’t record what time it ended, but I think it might have been around 7:30 pm, certainly well before 8 pm. I was attending the Citizens for East Shore Parks where I am a board member and glanced at the captions often enough to see that three lone projects all passed on consent.
The 1287 Gilman to establish a wine bar passed with a continuation to date uncertain, 2573 Shattuck will become a veterinary clinic and 2800 MLK Jr Way will be converted into a duplex.
2800 MLK Jr Way is not new construction as it is an addition to an existing single-family home and is therefore not subject to the Natural Gas Ban. This is so unfortunate. The project essentially guts the existing family home to turn it into a duplex. It is the perfect time to convert it to 100% electric.
At the last Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) we heard the presentation on the Building Emissions Saving Ordinance (BESO) from City staff. I am always frustrated after sitting through these presentations. They never seem to go any further than flowery talk. I’ve heard way too many times how the BESO surveys/assessments at time of sale are going to improve and then the next time it is the same story.
That was followed with an introduction to the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan. When someone asked the presenter from the City how this plan fit with San Pablo as an evacuation route, he responded back that San Pablo wasn’t a fire zone so therefore San Pablo wasn’t an evacuation route.
City staff would do a lot better if they came to BNC better informed. San Pablo is an evacuation and emergency access route plainly visible on the Berkeley City map, which several members posted in the chat.
Enough for this sitting. There will be more next time, but it might not appear until after the holidays.
December 10, 2023
Monday feels like it was a month ago. There is so much to cover and I can’t take my eyes off the Israel – Hamas War and the genocide and domicide (destruction of housing) in Gaza. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/07/widespread-destruction-in-gaza-puts-concept-of-domicide-in-focus
Monday evening the Rent Stabilization Board passed a ceasefire resolution in a 7 to 1 vote. Stefan Elgstrand who works in Mayor Arreguin’s office voted no on the ceasefire resolution after reading a statement that the resolution was outside the scope of the Rent Board in the City Charter and the Rent Stabilization Ordinance. Elgstrand did vote for the resolution to allow landlords to provide temporary, below-market rental housing in Berkeley for Palestinian, Israeli and Ukrainian refugees. Andy Kelley was absent.
City Council is yet to act, but there has been some movement since the Tuesday evening council meeting.
Councilmembers Rigel Robinson, Ben Bartlett and Terry Taplin all published their version of resolutions on the Israel-Hamas war on X (formerly twitter) on December 7, 2023. Bartlett and Robinson made it plain they were calling for a ceasefire. Taplin wrote “cessation of hostilities” instead of ceasefire which makes it sound like there is a squabble back and forth.
The death toll of Palestinians increases by hundreds daily. On Friday December 8, 2023 the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 17,177 people including 7,112 Children had been killed and 46,000 wounded since the Israeli-Hamas conflict started on October 7. In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian death toll is 266 with 3,365 wounded. The Israeli army said that 1,147 people on the Israeli side have died including 418 soldiers.
If the US suffered the same amount of deaths as those in Gaza in the two months since the Israel- Hamas War started it would be 2,542,368 people of whom 1,056,480 are children killed and 68,160,000 wounded. This is not a squabble. We are watching a genocide and deliberate acts by Israel that look to be the full intention to leave Gaza uninhabitable.
What sticks in my mind is the September 22, 2023 Prime Minister Netanyahu address to the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) using a map of “The New Middle East”. Just fifteen days before the horrific attack by Hamas on Israel, Netanyahu gave a speech using a map of Israel from the river to the sea with an end to Gaza and the West Bank. https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map
I cannot count six votes to get to get a resolution for a ceasefire on the Berkeley City Council agenda on the 12th and I can’t get to five to pass a resolution. Now at least three councilmembers have formally posted a resolution. Harrison declared support for a ceasefire in an October 20 Facebook post.
Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani and Mark Humbert would have to stand in opposition to Mayor Arreguin for any resolution to pass. Unless Arreguin and councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf move off their published stands against a ceasefire resolution, this is going nowhere.
This will make an interesting mayor’s race. Robinson, Hahn and Harrison are all running. In one of the many posts I have watched and heard is, “In November we will remember”.
Today, December 8, 2023, the U.S. vetoed the UN security council on an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The vote was 13 in favor, US against and the UK abstained.
On today’s Joe Scarborough show, the closest the show got to the horrific suffering in Gaza was to say the US is asking Israel to do more to protect civilians, President Biden is pressuring Netanyahu to let more aid into Gaza and the IDF is moving further into the southern part of Gaza on a mission to destroy Hamas. That was followed with an interview with a released hostage going back to her kibbutz being shocked by the destruction and delighted to find her cat.
If Scarborough and like shows are someone’s only source of news, they would never know of the horror in Gaza.
You will not hear on Scarborough that 1,900,000 Palestinians 85% of the population in Gaza are displaced where 30% of the Ukrainians have been displaced by the Russian invasion or the shear scope of destruction from the Israeli bombing of northern Gaza in just two months turning whole neighborhoods into rubble. That news comes from science and journalism elsewhere. https://tinyurl.com/9wvux3k2
The toll on journalists has been heavy. Sixty-three journalists and media workers have been confirmed killed, 56 Palestinians, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese.
Mainstream news has always been from the pro-Israel perspective and there are still shows with that line, but younger anchors, more diverse anchors aren’t holding that line.
My current book is from the Palestinian perspective. I’m just a third of the way through The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi one of the foremost historians on the Middle East writes from both archival research and family history which in my reading last night included a deep description of the Nakba. Palestinians were forced off their land, losing their homes, businesses, source of income and scattered into neighboring Arab countries without identity, passports, or papers. Families split as they fled. The Palestinians were expelled from the life they knew as their homes were turned into the new Jewish state.
Back to the City.
The council chambers were packed Tuesday evening with a determined crowd calling for a ceasefire. Nineteen of the twenty speakers allowed to speak on non-agenda items called for the Council to pass a resolution for a ceasefire. Only one spoke against a ceasefire.
December 5 was the first meeting of the month, which gives time to representatives of the Unions to speak and speak they did. Jose Guerrero reported union workers are still waiting for back pay from PEPRA (Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act) amendment with the City. Unbelievable, this has been going on for more than two years. No wonder there are problems with filling positions. Then we heard from Andrea Mullarky speaking for SEIU 1021 representing 60,000 workers that last month the executive board endorsed the movement of a ceasefire. Last Julia Heath from Local 1 spoke to City action resulting in the loss of Liam Garland as Director of Public Works a respected leader.
At times the crowd was disruptive and breaks were taken, but the Council did not exit to conduct business in another room as in previous meetings. Watching from home on zoom, during breaks to regain order Taplin, Bartlett and Harrison could be seen speaking to attendees.
Then it went back to public comment on the consent calendar.
The members of the public wrapped their comments on a ceasefire to agenda items. When it came to Taplin’s item 10 to name the Berkeley Pier after Nancy Skinner, speakers had plenty of suggestions Gus Newport, the Ohlone People, moral courage, justice, ceasefire, the Gaza Palestine Pier, the brave journalists in Gaza who are reporting on the ground, and
Marek Edelman leader in the Warsaw Ghetto who was a lifelong anti-Zionist and stood in solidarity with the Palestinians as fellow resistance fighters, and
James Baldwin was suggested and the speaker read from Balwin’s writing on Jews and Palestinians, and
Shireen Abu Akleh, American Palestinian, one of the most prominent journalists across the Middle East and Palestinian territories who was targeted and killed by Israeli forces while reporting from the West Bank on May 11, 2022. The day of her death was the same day Arreguin left for his trip to Israel sponsored by Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco.
The Consent Calendar was finally approved with the naming of the Berkeley Pier will go to the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, Harrison’s item on deconstruction was withdrawn, Harrison’s item on traffic calming went to the Budget Committee and the City Manager withdrew the Public Safety Status Report to be rescheduled.
In the motion to adjourn the council meeting, Kesarwani, Bartlett, Hahn, Wengraf, Robinson, and Humbert all voted yes, Taplin voted no and Harrison abstained.
The most significant outcome of the December 4, Monday morning Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee was that when Harrison who was filling in for Bartlett asked that her item on the Community/Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) be scheduled for the next meeting, Robinson as the Chair declined making a firm no. The due date to act on TOPA is May 13, 2024 which means that if Robinson keeps TOPA off the agenda, Arreguin who is running for the State Senate seat District 7 won’t have to vote/take a stand on TOPA until after the primary in March.
TOPA has had a long tumultuous history in Berkeley. The earliest date I could find where TOPA was presented to the public in a readily available full Council meeting or Council Committee meeting going back to 2019 was at the Land Use Committee meeting on March 5, 2020. On that date there were 61 speakers and the due date for action was extended to January 21, 2021
When a multi-unit building goes up for sale TOPA gives tenants the first right of refusal to purchase the property. Tenants especially those who have experienced being in a building that was sold are enthusiastic about being notified that a plan to sell is in process and being given the first opportunity to purchase the building. The Chamber of Commerce, the real estate industry, investors, property owners are opposed to TOPA.
After multiple committee meetings, there was a special full council special meeting on just TOPA on January 27, 2022. Discussion was held there were 78 speakers and then it disappeared.
Harrison brought it back. TOPA was listed in the council draft agenda for November 28, 2023 until Wengraf, Hahn and Arreguin voted at the Agenda and Rules Committee to remove TOPA from the agenda for the full council meeting and send TOPA to the Land Use Committee where it now looks like it will languish as long as possible or at least until Arreguin has secured his position in the primary election to be on the ballot for November for that State Senate seat.
Kathryn Lybarger received the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club endorsement not Arreguin after last Saturday’s forum.
The one Land Use Committee agenda item was from Rigel Robinson. It was Neighborhood-Scale Commercial, refer to city manager and Planning Commission to consider policies to permit neighborhood-scale retail uses in residential neighborhoods. It passed with a positive recommendation.
Monday was the second meeting on the item. The motion is about researching returning these old store fronts we see in residential neighborhoods in the flats to neighborhood groceries, restaurants or other like uses. Humbert, Harrison and Robinson were all enthusiastic about the convenience for example of taking just a few steps to buy a gallon of milk instead of driving.
There is a reason these little former storefronts were turned into others uses usually living space.
At neither the first meeting nor this second meeting did Councilmembers Humbert, Robinson or Harrison consider why those storefronts are no longer neighborhood groceries or another business like a restaurant. None of them considered the volume of customers it takes to make enough money to pay employees and cover rent, utilities, insurance, equipment and all the supplies and goods needed for a viable business.
When the volume of customers is added to make a neighborhood business viable, it leaves walkable and bikable behind to bring in enough customers to cover overhead especially if it is a restaurant. And, that means cars and traffic. In their enthusiasm for the idea of businesses in residential neighborhoods Humbert and Harrison were concerned about unpleasant odors, smoke and noise.
Berkeley has empty storefronts in commercial corridors. The latest idea for staff time is to study how to return old neighborhood storefronts that have been turned into interesting buildings for reuse usually as housing could be better spent on empty storefronts in commercial districts.
The last City meeting I attended of the week was the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. Three items were passed and all of them have been on the agenda for a number of meetings. There was more back and forth than at times seemed reasonable, but that is the democratic process. It can get messy. The Commission voted to list agenda items as “Discussion and Possible Action” which will solve the problem of having to recycle agenda items because they were listed as discussion only. The Commission decided to study how the redesign of streets like curbs for bicycle lanes impact the Fire Department response times. The Commission approved using FF funds for a one-time removal of eucalyptus debris on private property in the very high fire severity hazard zone.
I skipped the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Thursday evening. The Budget and Finance Committee on Thursday morning was cancelled.
Enough for today. I have several books to recommend, but I’ll save them for next time. Just put The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi on your list. The wait at the library is 13 weeks, so your best bet is to head up to Revolution Books. They had a stack of the book in paperback. I’ll check Pegasus tomorrow.
Monday feels like it was a month ago. There is so much to cover and I can’t take my eyes off the Israel – Hamas War and the genocide and domicide (destruction of housing) in Gaza. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/07/widespread-destruction-in-gaza-puts-concept-of-domicide-in-focus
Monday evening the Rent Stabilization Board passed a ceasefire resolution in a 7 to 1 vote. Stefan Elgstrand who works in Mayor Arreguin’s office voted no on the ceasefire resolution after reading a statement that the resolution was outside the scope of the Rent Board in the City Charter and the Rent Stabilization Ordinance. Elgstrand did vote for the resolution to allow landlords to provide temporary, below-market rental housing in Berkeley for Palestinian, Israeli and Ukrainian refugees. Andy Kelley was absent.
City Council is yet to act, but there has been some movement since the Tuesday evening council meeting.
Councilmembers Rigel Robinson, Ben Bartlett and Terry Taplin all published their version of resolutions on the Israel-Hamas war on X (formerly twitter) on December 7, 2023. Bartlett and Robinson made it plain they were calling for a ceasefire. Taplin wrote “cessation of hostilities” instead of ceasefire which makes it sound like there is a squabble back and forth.
The death toll of Palestinians increases by hundreds daily. On Friday December 8, 2023 the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that 17,177 people including 7,112 Children had been killed and 46,000 wounded since the Israeli-Hamas conflict started on October 7. In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian death toll is 266 with 3,365 wounded. The Israeli army said that 1,147 people on the Israeli side have died including 418 soldiers.
If the US suffered the same amount of deaths as those in Gaza in the two months since the Israel- Hamas War started it would be 2,542,368 people of whom 1,056,480 are children killed and 68,160,000 wounded. This is not a squabble. We are watching a genocide and deliberate acts by Israel that look to be the full intention to leave Gaza uninhabitable.
What sticks in my mind is the September 22, 2023 Prime Minister Netanyahu address to the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) using a map of “The New Middle East”. Just fifteen days before the horrific attack by Hamas on Israel, Netanyahu gave a speech using a map of Israel from the river to the sea with an end to Gaza and the West Bank. https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map
I cannot count six votes to get to get a resolution for a ceasefire on the Berkeley City Council agenda on the 12th and I can’t get to five to pass a resolution. Now at least three councilmembers have formally posted a resolution. Harrison declared support for a ceasefire in an October 20 Facebook post.
Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani and Mark Humbert would have to stand in opposition to Mayor Arreguin for any resolution to pass. Unless Arreguin and councilmembers Sophie Hahn and Susan Wengraf move off their published stands against a ceasefire resolution, this is going nowhere.
This will make an interesting mayor’s race. Robinson, Hahn and Harrison are all running. In one of the many posts I have watched and heard is, “In November we will remember”.
Today, December 8, 2023, the U.S. vetoed the UN security council on an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The vote was 13 in favor, US against and the UK abstained.
On today’s Joe Scarborough show, the closest the show got to the horrific suffering in Gaza was to say the US is asking Israel to do more to protect civilians, President Biden is pressuring Netanyahu to let more aid into Gaza and the IDF is moving further into the southern part of Gaza on a mission to destroy Hamas. That was followed with an interview with a released hostage going back to her kibbutz being shocked by the destruction and delighted to find her cat.
If Scarborough and like shows are someone’s only source of news, they would never know of the horror in Gaza.
You will not hear on Scarborough that 1,900,000 Palestinians 85% of the population in Gaza are displaced where 30% of the Ukrainians have been displaced by the Russian invasion or the shear scope of destruction from the Israeli bombing of northern Gaza in just two months turning whole neighborhoods into rubble. That news comes from science and journalism elsewhere. https://tinyurl.com/9wvux3k2
The toll on journalists has been heavy. Sixty-three journalists and media workers have been confirmed killed, 56 Palestinians, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese.
Mainstream news has always been from the pro-Israel perspective and there are still shows with that line, but younger anchors, more diverse anchors aren’t holding that line.
My current book is from the Palestinian perspective. I’m just a third of the way through The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi one of the foremost historians on the Middle East writes from both archival research and family history which in my reading last night included a deep description of the Nakba. Palestinians were forced off their land, losing their homes, businesses, source of income and scattered into neighboring Arab countries without identity, passports, or papers. Families split as they fled. The Palestinians were expelled from the life they knew as their homes were turned into the new Jewish state.
Back to the City.
The council chambers were packed Tuesday evening with a determined crowd calling for a ceasefire. Nineteen of the twenty speakers allowed to speak on non-agenda items called for the Council to pass a resolution for a ceasefire. Only one spoke against a ceasefire.
December 5 was the first meeting of the month, which gives time to representatives of the Unions to speak and speak they did. Jose Guerrero reported union workers are still waiting for back pay from PEPRA (Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act) amendment with the City. Unbelievable, this has been going on for more than two years. No wonder there are problems with filling positions. Then we heard from Andrea Mullarky speaking for SEIU 1021 representing 60,000 workers that last month the executive board endorsed the movement of a ceasefire. Last Julia Heath from Local 1 spoke to City action resulting in the loss of Liam Garland as Director of Public Works a respected leader.
At times the crowd was disruptive and breaks were taken, but the Council did not exit to conduct business in another room as in previous meetings. Watching from home on zoom, during breaks to regain order Taplin, Bartlett and Harrison could be seen speaking to attendees.
Then it went back to public comment on the consent calendar.
The members of the public wrapped their comments on a ceasefire to agenda items. When it came to Taplin’s item 10 to name the Berkeley Pier after Nancy Skinner, speakers had plenty of suggestions Gus Newport, the Ohlone People, moral courage, justice, ceasefire, the Gaza Palestine Pier, the brave journalists in Gaza who are reporting on the ground, and
Marek Edelman leader in the Warsaw Ghetto who was a lifelong anti-Zionist and stood in solidarity with the Palestinians as fellow resistance fighters, and
James Baldwin was suggested and the speaker read from Balwin’s writing on Jews and Palestinians, and
Shireen Abu Akleh, American Palestinian, one of the most prominent journalists across the Middle East and Palestinian territories who was targeted and killed by Israeli forces while reporting from the West Bank on May 11, 2022. The day of her death was the same day Arreguin left for his trip to Israel sponsored by Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco.
The Consent Calendar was finally approved with the naming of the Berkeley Pier will go to the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, Harrison’s item on deconstruction was withdrawn, Harrison’s item on traffic calming went to the Budget Committee and the City Manager withdrew the Public Safety Status Report to be rescheduled.
In the motion to adjourn the council meeting, Kesarwani, Bartlett, Hahn, Wengraf, Robinson, and Humbert all voted yes, Taplin voted no and Harrison abstained.
The most significant outcome of the December 4, Monday morning Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee was that when Harrison who was filling in for Bartlett asked that her item on the Community/Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) be scheduled for the next meeting, Robinson as the Chair declined making a firm no. The due date to act on TOPA is May 13, 2024 which means that if Robinson keeps TOPA off the agenda, Arreguin who is running for the State Senate seat District 7 won’t have to vote/take a stand on TOPA until after the primary in March.
TOPA has had a long tumultuous history in Berkeley. The earliest date I could find where TOPA was presented to the public in a readily available full Council meeting or Council Committee meeting going back to 2019 was at the Land Use Committee meeting on March 5, 2020. On that date there were 61 speakers and the due date for action was extended to January 21, 2021
When a multi-unit building goes up for sale TOPA gives tenants the first right of refusal to purchase the property. Tenants especially those who have experienced being in a building that was sold are enthusiastic about being notified that a plan to sell is in process and being given the first opportunity to purchase the building. The Chamber of Commerce, the real estate industry, investors, property owners are opposed to TOPA.
After multiple committee meetings, there was a special full council special meeting on just TOPA on January 27, 2022. Discussion was held there were 78 speakers and then it disappeared.
Harrison brought it back. TOPA was listed in the council draft agenda for November 28, 2023 until Wengraf, Hahn and Arreguin voted at the Agenda and Rules Committee to remove TOPA from the agenda for the full council meeting and send TOPA to the Land Use Committee where it now looks like it will languish as long as possible or at least until Arreguin has secured his position in the primary election to be on the ballot for November for that State Senate seat.
Kathryn Lybarger received the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club endorsement not Arreguin after last Saturday’s forum.
The one Land Use Committee agenda item was from Rigel Robinson. It was Neighborhood-Scale Commercial, refer to city manager and Planning Commission to consider policies to permit neighborhood-scale retail uses in residential neighborhoods. It passed with a positive recommendation.
Monday was the second meeting on the item. The motion is about researching returning these old store fronts we see in residential neighborhoods in the flats to neighborhood groceries, restaurants or other like uses. Humbert, Harrison and Robinson were all enthusiastic about the convenience for example of taking just a few steps to buy a gallon of milk instead of driving.
There is a reason these little former storefronts were turned into others uses usually living space.
At neither the first meeting nor this second meeting did Councilmembers Humbert, Robinson or Harrison consider why those storefronts are no longer neighborhood groceries or another business like a restaurant. None of them considered the volume of customers it takes to make enough money to pay employees and cover rent, utilities, insurance, equipment and all the supplies and goods needed for a viable business.
When the volume of customers is added to make a neighborhood business viable, it leaves walkable and bikable behind to bring in enough customers to cover overhead especially if it is a restaurant. And, that means cars and traffic. In their enthusiasm for the idea of businesses in residential neighborhoods Humbert and Harrison were concerned about unpleasant odors, smoke and noise.
Berkeley has empty storefronts in commercial corridors. The latest idea for staff time is to study how to return old neighborhood storefronts that have been turned into interesting buildings for reuse usually as housing could be better spent on empty storefronts in commercial districts.
The last City meeting I attended of the week was the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. Three items were passed and all of them have been on the agenda for a number of meetings. There was more back and forth than at times seemed reasonable, but that is the democratic process. It can get messy. The Commission voted to list agenda items as “Discussion and Possible Action” which will solve the problem of having to recycle agenda items because they were listed as discussion only. The Commission decided to study how the redesign of streets like curbs for bicycle lanes impact the Fire Department response times. The Commission approved using FF funds for a one-time removal of eucalyptus debris on private property in the very high fire severity hazard zone.
I skipped the Landmarks Preservation Commission on Thursday evening. The Budget and Finance Committee on Thursday morning was cancelled.
Enough for today. I have several books to recommend, but I’ll save them for next time. Just put The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi on your list. The wait at the library is 13 weeks, so your best bet is to head up to Revolution Books. They had a stack of the book in paperback. I’ll check Pegasus tomorrow.
December 3, 2023
After sitting through the November 28, 2023 City Council meeting on ZOOM from 6 pm until 11:55 pm and reading the string of emails complaining about Hopkins not being included in the 5-year paving plan, I drove the entire length of Hopkins before starting to write this December 3, 2023 Activist’s Diary.
The five-year paving plan through FY 2028 (present to June 30, 2028) was the only agenda action item until Councilmember Harrison’s budget referral item 16 on deconstruction was moved from consent to action.
The calls for a cease-fire kicked off the meeting and once again the Council left the BUSD Boardroom to escape the disruption and moved into a conference room without the pubic in attendance and continued on Zoom. There were so many attendees who signed on to Zoom and wrapped their cease-fire comments onto the two police funding items and the equitable Black Families grant that the discussion on the paving plan didn’t start until 9:22 pm. Due to the lateness of the evening Harrison’s item was moved to December 5 at her request.
It’s Monday December 4 and I should have finished this yesterday morning. While I’ve been working on my December 3 summary, Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn sent email blasts. They are distressed over the disruptive demonstrations at Council, do not support a resolution and include Mayor Arreguin’s full statement. Arreguin is clear he does not support a resolution with, “[T]hese resolutions will not end the violence abroad, but they do fan the flames of hatred here at home. That’s a threat I cannot ignore.”
Harrison’s position for a ceasefire was posted on her KateHarrisonD4 Facebook page on October 20, 2023. https://www.facebook.com/KateHarrisonD4/
In order to get a ceasefire resolution before Council it has to be approved by the Agenda Committee whose members are Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf or be accepted by 2/3 of the councilmembers (six yes votes) as an emergency item to be considered for a vote.
As stated in previous Diaries, I can’t count five votes on this Council to call for a ceasefire.
It’s quite amazing that Arreguin whose first campaign for mayor in 2016 highlighted himself as a progressive leader citing his own activism and referenced the fight against apartheid in South Africa as inspiration for his activism now opposes a resolution on a ceasefire as doing nothing but fanning the flames of hate.
I disagree with Arreguin that resolutions have no impact. They do.
It will take a groundswell to move a White House that started with President Biden’s embrace of Netanyahu captured in photos seen around the world.
The Guardian listed 30 unions calling for a ceasefire on Friday starting with the United Auto Workers representing 980,000 retired and current workers, the American Postal Workers Union, the California Nurses Association. That list doesn’t include local Bay Area unions, the cities Richmond and Oakland and doesn’t even touch the many other organizations calling for a ceasefire. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/01/uaw-ceasefire-gaza
.
My mornings normally start with two podcasts, Democracy Now followed with Joe Scarborough. Scarborough is as far right as I can go these days, except that I did watch the DeSantis Newsom debate on Sean Hannity until ZAB started at 7 pm. Other than a couple of Newsom zingers and a lot of Newsom and DeSantis talking over each other, Hannity and DeSantis took Newsom and California apart.
Even I was shocked when Hannity put a chart on the screen of total crime (everything lumped together) that pictured California as having twice the crime rate as the national average and Florida as below the national average. Newsom should know better than to go on Fox.
Democracy Now started with Palestinian journalist Akram al-Satarri in Gaza. The death toll in Gaza is over 15,500. al-Satarri stated in the last 24 hours 1,760 people were killed. There is no safe place. The 1.8 million people that were asked to leave their homes in the northern Gaza strip and move south find themselves being bombed in the very places that were supposed to be safe.
Last night I listened to Medhi Hasan. Between October 7 and November 28, 232 Palestinians including 61 children were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem where Hamas has never ruled. In Hasan’s interview with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Barghouti described the terrorism in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and Israel’s army. Palestinians are being killed, evicted and villages are being bulldozed.
You can watch the show with the video of the destruction in the West Bank at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BaA3htpNzo
If you would rather read the text put the YouTube link into https://youtubetranscript.com/
Hasan pointed out on Sunday, that on September 22, 2023 Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) using a map of “The New Middle East” that eliminated Palestinians. The picture of Netanyahu at the UNGA is 18 minutes into the YouTube video.
I didn’t find any reports of Netanyahu’s September speech in the NY Times, Washington Post or other mainstream press. The poorly attended Netanyahu address was reported in Common Dreams and the international press. https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map
Hasan who gives hard hitting interviews announced Sunday that his one-hour show is ending this month. That will leave two weekend shows with Muslim anchors, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/04/msnbc-bring-back-mehdi-hasan-show/
Hasan will still appear from time to time as a commenter for MSNBC, but that new role will put an end to interviews like the one of Mark Regev, senior advisor to Netanyahu. Regev who declared to Hasan that Israel had not killed any Palestinian children. The interview has been watched over 6 million times on X. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPz2aCo7W-c
When the mother of Hisham Awartani (one of the three Palestinian college students shot in Vermont) spoke over the weekend, she stated her son is paralyzed from the chest down and pointed to the hateful toxic rhetoric against Palestinians. That hateful toxic warmongering rhetoric is well exampled by what spewed out of Joe Scarborough’s mouth in the first minutes of the December 1, 2023 Scarborough podcast.
I listen to the Scarborough podcast at 1.25 speed not the entire 4 hours, but I have yet to hear anything about the conditions in Gaza. There is nothing about the steady carpet bombing of Gaza, the cutting off of power, the blockade of food and fuel or the collective punishment and suffering of the people of Gaza except to blame them for the actions of Hamas on October 7.
In my memory, the Scarborough early morning show is how mainstream reporting on Israel has always been. This time the horror in Gaza can’t be contained. That is what we are seeing in the heartbreak of the people filling the council chambers. Jews, Palestinians and their supporters are showing up week after week calling for a ceasefire resolution from the Berkeley City Council.
Our book club the choice for January 2024 is The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi. November 2, 1917 is when Britain declared support for the establishment of a Jewish state within Palestine in the Balfour Declaration. At the time the Jewish people were only 6% of the country’s inhabitants. The Balfour Declaration grew out of Theordor Herzl’s foundational text of political Zionism, Der Judenstaat (the Jews’ State) written in 1896.
The Hundred Years War on Palestine is listed as one of the ten best books for understanding the Israel-Hamas War. Another is A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall which I read and recommended previously. Both are available through local libraries, but expect a wait.
On to the City.
The 5-year paving plan is reviewed every two years, but if feels like the 5-year paving plan is in continuous review. After the enormous kerfuffle over the Hopkins Corridor Plan, Hopkins repaving was put on hold in the 2024-2025 budget so other projects like the African American Holistic Center could move forward.
For an in-depth review of all the issues and questionable City actions read “What Has Happened with Hopkins and Why”. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-04-09/article/50248?headline=What-Has-Happened-with-Hopkins-and-Why--Kelly-Hammargren
Hopkins is no worse than the street I live on (I am not complaining) and is in far better condition than McGee and Roosevelt near the high school and many other streets that are not included in the 5-year paving plan.
Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf submitted a Supplemental and made a substitute motion to put Hopkins from Alameda to Gilman into the 5-year paving plan on the list for paving in 2025. Their motion failed. The final motion from Humbert and Robinson accepted the staff recommendations and added Milvia from Hearst to Rose, the recommendation from the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, and to complete Hopkins Street segments by FY 2027.
The “Hopkins Street segments” phrase in the motion recorded in the annotated agenda is worrisome as one of the many issues in the Hopkins Corridor Plan was the rush to secure final City Council approval and award the Hopkins Corridor Project before July 1, 2023. Beating that date was to avoid complying with the new San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board stormwater treatment and green infrastructure regulations.
At the Tuesday meeting Karen Parolek, Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure in her statement to Council said, “[W]e also have been advocating for practices to combine projects including safety enhancement and repaving. Pulling the Hopkins project apart into multiple projects is counter to the fiscal responsibility we’ve been encouraging…”
Ron Nevels, Manager of Engineering, Public Works said the City might not need to do the stormwater treatment.
The worry here is of the City of Berkeley breaking Hopkins into smaller “segments” to escape having to comply with regulations requiring stormwater treatment and green infrastructure.
Harrison asked if there was money in the Hahn and Wengraf plan to cover the infrastructure. The answer was no. At different times during the evening Hahn insisted there was funding and at other times stated a source of funding for the infrastructure could not be identified.
The problem with repaving without the stormwater infrastructure means that with so many of Berkeley’s streets being in poor condition, the likelihood of going back to Hopkins for infrastructure after repaving is close to zero. Hopkins at Monterey is the location where the foam from putting out a garbage truck fire drained into Cordornices Creek wiping out nearly the entire population of threatened steelhead trout.
I’m on the side of requiring the green infrastructure. Rough roads slow down traffic.
The Harrison budget referral with the very long title, “Refer to City Manager to Enhance the City’s Deconstruction and Construction Materials Management Enforcement and Regulations and Refer to AAO#1 Budget Process $250,000 for Social Cost of Carbon Nexus Fee Study for Berkeley Origin Construction and Demolition Debris” is a big deal.
There is nothing “green” about razing existing buildings, sending the debris to landfill and all the extraction, mining, and deforestation that is involved in the materials that will be used to build the new building to take its place. Deconstruction is the process to remove salvageable materials for reuse in new construction and renovation.
Here is a wonderful short video on deconstruction called “Unbuild Better: A case study in deconstruction” from Cornell University explaining the case for deconstruction over demolition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejjd6E_7SsQ
The complaints about deconstruction taking too long makes me think of all the projects that are pushed through the Design Review Committee, the Zoning Adjustment Board and approved only to sit for years before anything is built. In fact, at one Design Review Committee meeting, a committee member asked the developer for NX Ventures if they ever intended to build since the NX projects approved never seem to transition from approval to construction.
The Environment and Climate Commission met Wednesday. Billi Romain, Manager of Energy and Sustainable Development for the City of Berkeley announced her retirement.
I’m still not sure how the Curbside Management Plan landed in the Environment and Climate Commission. The motion to refer to the City Manager and the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission had many good points like adequate loading zones, short term parking (pick up and drop off), disabled parking, AB 413 the bill to prevent parking within 20 feet of an intersection (daylighting), emergency access in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ), additional parking meters and bicycle parking.
There are not enough loading zones and removing so much of parking in the City makes short term parking for quick trips near impossible. Restricting parking in the VHFHSZ comes with hand wringing and little to no visible action every year, which I hear has been the same response for decades. But why the Commission on Disability wasn’t included for input on disabled parking in the final motion looks like an unacceptable oversight.
The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was the last city meeting of the week. East Bay for Everyone and YIMBY inspired speakers told their stories of the difficulty of finding housing and how the project at 2127 – 2159 Dwight Way between Shattuck and Fulton must be supported. The Dwight Way project was a SB 330 density bonus with 58 new units for a total of 66 residential units onsite which is impossible to deny.
Soli Alpert, who is on the Rent Board and was filling in on ZAB for the first time, questioned whether the City was following the law. In his reading of SB 330 when eight rent-controlled or affordable units are demolished, they need to be replaced with eight units onsite. The mix of units posted in the ZAB agenda description was 3 very low-income units, 2 very low-income units, 2 low income units and 1 moderate income unit, however, in the Findings and Conditions for approval from City staff, the eighth unit, the moderate-income unit was dropped and replaced with a market rate unit. Only seven units were going to be below market. It was a good catch by Alpert, but only Shoshana O’Keefe and Brandon Yung supported Alpert’s substitute motion which lost for the 8th below market unit.
The 5-story project at 1652 University with 26 units including 2 very-low income units plus two live/work units approved the same evening comes with a history that was missed by city staff and the historian hired by the project.
Fran Cappelletti, Archivist for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association found that 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.
At the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Commissioner Finacom asked for a plaque to be at the site to commemorate the history, but was met with pushback and objections from the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners including Chair Enchill. 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?
ZAB member O’Keefe thanked me for sharing the history and said that the developer didn’t need approval to include the history at the site.
After sitting through the November 28, 2023 City Council meeting on ZOOM from 6 pm until 11:55 pm and reading the string of emails complaining about Hopkins not being included in the 5-year paving plan, I drove the entire length of Hopkins before starting to write this December 3, 2023 Activist’s Diary.
The five-year paving plan through FY 2028 (present to June 30, 2028) was the only agenda action item until Councilmember Harrison’s budget referral item 16 on deconstruction was moved from consent to action.
The calls for a cease-fire kicked off the meeting and once again the Council left the BUSD Boardroom to escape the disruption and moved into a conference room without the pubic in attendance and continued on Zoom. There were so many attendees who signed on to Zoom and wrapped their cease-fire comments onto the two police funding items and the equitable Black Families grant that the discussion on the paving plan didn’t start until 9:22 pm. Due to the lateness of the evening Harrison’s item was moved to December 5 at her request.
It’s Monday December 4 and I should have finished this yesterday morning. While I’ve been working on my December 3 summary, Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn sent email blasts. They are distressed over the disruptive demonstrations at Council, do not support a resolution and include Mayor Arreguin’s full statement. Arreguin is clear he does not support a resolution with, “[T]hese resolutions will not end the violence abroad, but they do fan the flames of hatred here at home. That’s a threat I cannot ignore.”
Harrison’s position for a ceasefire was posted on her KateHarrisonD4 Facebook page on October 20, 2023. https://www.facebook.com/KateHarrisonD4/
In order to get a ceasefire resolution before Council it has to be approved by the Agenda Committee whose members are Arreguin, Hahn and Wengraf or be accepted by 2/3 of the councilmembers (six yes votes) as an emergency item to be considered for a vote.
As stated in previous Diaries, I can’t count five votes on this Council to call for a ceasefire.
It’s quite amazing that Arreguin whose first campaign for mayor in 2016 highlighted himself as a progressive leader citing his own activism and referenced the fight against apartheid in South Africa as inspiration for his activism now opposes a resolution on a ceasefire as doing nothing but fanning the flames of hate.
I disagree with Arreguin that resolutions have no impact. They do.
It will take a groundswell to move a White House that started with President Biden’s embrace of Netanyahu captured in photos seen around the world.
The Guardian listed 30 unions calling for a ceasefire on Friday starting with the United Auto Workers representing 980,000 retired and current workers, the American Postal Workers Union, the California Nurses Association. That list doesn’t include local Bay Area unions, the cities Richmond and Oakland and doesn’t even touch the many other organizations calling for a ceasefire. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/01/uaw-ceasefire-gaza
.
My mornings normally start with two podcasts, Democracy Now followed with Joe Scarborough. Scarborough is as far right as I can go these days, except that I did watch the DeSantis Newsom debate on Sean Hannity until ZAB started at 7 pm. Other than a couple of Newsom zingers and a lot of Newsom and DeSantis talking over each other, Hannity and DeSantis took Newsom and California apart.
Even I was shocked when Hannity put a chart on the screen of total crime (everything lumped together) that pictured California as having twice the crime rate as the national average and Florida as below the national average. Newsom should know better than to go on Fox.
Democracy Now started with Palestinian journalist Akram al-Satarri in Gaza. The death toll in Gaza is over 15,500. al-Satarri stated in the last 24 hours 1,760 people were killed. There is no safe place. The 1.8 million people that were asked to leave their homes in the northern Gaza strip and move south find themselves being bombed in the very places that were supposed to be safe.
Last night I listened to Medhi Hasan. Between October 7 and November 28, 232 Palestinians including 61 children were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem where Hamas has never ruled. In Hasan’s interview with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Barghouti described the terrorism in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and Israel’s army. Palestinians are being killed, evicted and villages are being bulldozed.
You can watch the show with the video of the destruction in the West Bank at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BaA3htpNzo
If you would rather read the text put the YouTube link into https://youtubetranscript.com/
Hasan pointed out on Sunday, that on September 22, 2023 Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) using a map of “The New Middle East” that eliminated Palestinians. The picture of Netanyahu at the UNGA is 18 minutes into the YouTube video.
I didn’t find any reports of Netanyahu’s September speech in the NY Times, Washington Post or other mainstream press. The poorly attended Netanyahu address was reported in Common Dreams and the international press. https://www.commondreams.org/news/netanyahu-map
Hasan who gives hard hitting interviews announced Sunday that his one-hour show is ending this month. That will leave two weekend shows with Muslim anchors, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/04/msnbc-bring-back-mehdi-hasan-show/
Hasan will still appear from time to time as a commenter for MSNBC, but that new role will put an end to interviews like the one of Mark Regev, senior advisor to Netanyahu. Regev who declared to Hasan that Israel had not killed any Palestinian children. The interview has been watched over 6 million times on X. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPz2aCo7W-c
When the mother of Hisham Awartani (one of the three Palestinian college students shot in Vermont) spoke over the weekend, she stated her son is paralyzed from the chest down and pointed to the hateful toxic rhetoric against Palestinians. That hateful toxic warmongering rhetoric is well exampled by what spewed out of Joe Scarborough’s mouth in the first minutes of the December 1, 2023 Scarborough podcast.
I listen to the Scarborough podcast at 1.25 speed not the entire 4 hours, but I have yet to hear anything about the conditions in Gaza. There is nothing about the steady carpet bombing of Gaza, the cutting off of power, the blockade of food and fuel or the collective punishment and suffering of the people of Gaza except to blame them for the actions of Hamas on October 7.
In my memory, the Scarborough early morning show is how mainstream reporting on Israel has always been. This time the horror in Gaza can’t be contained. That is what we are seeing in the heartbreak of the people filling the council chambers. Jews, Palestinians and their supporters are showing up week after week calling for a ceasefire resolution from the Berkeley City Council.
Our book club the choice for January 2024 is The Hundred Years War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance 1917 – 2017 by Rashid Khalidi. November 2, 1917 is when Britain declared support for the establishment of a Jewish state within Palestine in the Balfour Declaration. At the time the Jewish people were only 6% of the country’s inhabitants. The Balfour Declaration grew out of Theordor Herzl’s foundational text of political Zionism, Der Judenstaat (the Jews’ State) written in 1896.
The Hundred Years War on Palestine is listed as one of the ten best books for understanding the Israel-Hamas War. Another is A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall which I read and recommended previously. Both are available through local libraries, but expect a wait.
On to the City.
The 5-year paving plan is reviewed every two years, but if feels like the 5-year paving plan is in continuous review. After the enormous kerfuffle over the Hopkins Corridor Plan, Hopkins repaving was put on hold in the 2024-2025 budget so other projects like the African American Holistic Center could move forward.
For an in-depth review of all the issues and questionable City actions read “What Has Happened with Hopkins and Why”. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-04-09/article/50248?headline=What-Has-Happened-with-Hopkins-and-Why--Kelly-Hammargren
Hopkins is no worse than the street I live on (I am not complaining) and is in far better condition than McGee and Roosevelt near the high school and many other streets that are not included in the 5-year paving plan.
Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf submitted a Supplemental and made a substitute motion to put Hopkins from Alameda to Gilman into the 5-year paving plan on the list for paving in 2025. Their motion failed. The final motion from Humbert and Robinson accepted the staff recommendations and added Milvia from Hearst to Rose, the recommendation from the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, and to complete Hopkins Street segments by FY 2027.
The “Hopkins Street segments” phrase in the motion recorded in the annotated agenda is worrisome as one of the many issues in the Hopkins Corridor Plan was the rush to secure final City Council approval and award the Hopkins Corridor Project before July 1, 2023. Beating that date was to avoid complying with the new San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board stormwater treatment and green infrastructure regulations.
At the Tuesday meeting Karen Parolek, Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure in her statement to Council said, “[W]e also have been advocating for practices to combine projects including safety enhancement and repaving. Pulling the Hopkins project apart into multiple projects is counter to the fiscal responsibility we’ve been encouraging…”
Ron Nevels, Manager of Engineering, Public Works said the City might not need to do the stormwater treatment.
The worry here is of the City of Berkeley breaking Hopkins into smaller “segments” to escape having to comply with regulations requiring stormwater treatment and green infrastructure.
Harrison asked if there was money in the Hahn and Wengraf plan to cover the infrastructure. The answer was no. At different times during the evening Hahn insisted there was funding and at other times stated a source of funding for the infrastructure could not be identified.
The problem with repaving without the stormwater infrastructure means that with so many of Berkeley’s streets being in poor condition, the likelihood of going back to Hopkins for infrastructure after repaving is close to zero. Hopkins at Monterey is the location where the foam from putting out a garbage truck fire drained into Cordornices Creek wiping out nearly the entire population of threatened steelhead trout.
I’m on the side of requiring the green infrastructure. Rough roads slow down traffic.
The Harrison budget referral with the very long title, “Refer to City Manager to Enhance the City’s Deconstruction and Construction Materials Management Enforcement and Regulations and Refer to AAO#1 Budget Process $250,000 for Social Cost of Carbon Nexus Fee Study for Berkeley Origin Construction and Demolition Debris” is a big deal.
There is nothing “green” about razing existing buildings, sending the debris to landfill and all the extraction, mining, and deforestation that is involved in the materials that will be used to build the new building to take its place. Deconstruction is the process to remove salvageable materials for reuse in new construction and renovation.
Here is a wonderful short video on deconstruction called “Unbuild Better: A case study in deconstruction” from Cornell University explaining the case for deconstruction over demolition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejjd6E_7SsQ
The complaints about deconstruction taking too long makes me think of all the projects that are pushed through the Design Review Committee, the Zoning Adjustment Board and approved only to sit for years before anything is built. In fact, at one Design Review Committee meeting, a committee member asked the developer for NX Ventures if they ever intended to build since the NX projects approved never seem to transition from approval to construction.
The Environment and Climate Commission met Wednesday. Billi Romain, Manager of Energy and Sustainable Development for the City of Berkeley announced her retirement.
I’m still not sure how the Curbside Management Plan landed in the Environment and Climate Commission. The motion to refer to the City Manager and the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission had many good points like adequate loading zones, short term parking (pick up and drop off), disabled parking, AB 413 the bill to prevent parking within 20 feet of an intersection (daylighting), emergency access in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ), additional parking meters and bicycle parking.
There are not enough loading zones and removing so much of parking in the City makes short term parking for quick trips near impossible. Restricting parking in the VHFHSZ comes with hand wringing and little to no visible action every year, which I hear has been the same response for decades. But why the Commission on Disability wasn’t included for input on disabled parking in the final motion looks like an unacceptable oversight.
The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was the last city meeting of the week. East Bay for Everyone and YIMBY inspired speakers told their stories of the difficulty of finding housing and how the project at 2127 – 2159 Dwight Way between Shattuck and Fulton must be supported. The Dwight Way project was a SB 330 density bonus with 58 new units for a total of 66 residential units onsite which is impossible to deny.
Soli Alpert, who is on the Rent Board and was filling in on ZAB for the first time, questioned whether the City was following the law. In his reading of SB 330 when eight rent-controlled or affordable units are demolished, they need to be replaced with eight units onsite. The mix of units posted in the ZAB agenda description was 3 very low-income units, 2 very low-income units, 2 low income units and 1 moderate income unit, however, in the Findings and Conditions for approval from City staff, the eighth unit, the moderate-income unit was dropped and replaced with a market rate unit. Only seven units were going to be below market. It was a good catch by Alpert, but only Shoshana O’Keefe and Brandon Yung supported Alpert’s substitute motion which lost for the 8th below market unit.
The 5-story project at 1652 University with 26 units including 2 very-low income units plus two live/work units approved the same evening comes with a history that was missed by city staff and the historian hired by the project.
Fran Cappelletti, Archivist for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association found that 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.
At the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Commissioner Finacom asked for a plaque to be at the site to commemorate the history, but was met with pushback and objections from the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners including Chair Enchill. 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?
ZAB member O’Keefe thanked me for sharing the history and said that the developer didn’t need approval to include the history at the site.
November 26, 2023
The last meeting of Thanksgiving week ended at 12:02 pm Tuesday.
After calls for a cease-fire brought the November 14 council meeting to an abrupt end
the entire consent and action calendar from the November 14, 2023 city council meeting was moved to 9 am on November 21. Most people missed the rescheduling announcement (it was in the Activist’s Calendar), but not a group calling for a cease-fire that showed up at the unusual meeting hour.
The calls for action on a cease-fire began within minutes of the start of the meeting and could be heard in the background while Mayor Arreguin ran through the early votes. Russell Bates was the loudest. Arreguin responded stating disruption would not be tolerated, disruptive persons would be removed and council would reconvene at another location and gaveled for a ten-minute recess.
Unlike the demonstration that ended the November 14th council meeting, this time a camera was turned into the room and Bates was loud enough to be heard on ZOOM. Arreguin attempted to resume the meeting in the BUSD Boardroom. When the public calls for action continued, Arreguin announced that due to the disruption the council meeting would continue without the public present and resumed in another room.
When the meeting resumed the main agenda item rezoning the Southside Rezoning was up for discussion and vote. The Southside rezoning is a major overhaul with bigger, taller buildings covering the lots with little to no space in between buildings. As with all zoning changes the path to approval goes through the Planning Commission first and then on to City Council.
Besides bigger taller buildings, the amount of usable open space went on the chopping block. Open space is normally defined as open to the sky and air for passive or active use. For the time being that still defines open space in the rest of the city and 50% of that condition can be satisfied with balconies that have a minimum length and width of 6 feet.
In the new Southside zoning code 50% of the usable open space can be satisfied with a pet washing room, a multi-purpose room or a gym/health club/fitness studio. The calculation of how much open space is required changed from a per unit basis to per 1000 square feet of gross residential area.
The new maximum height in the R-SMU (residential – southside multi-unit) increased to 85 feet / 8-stories from a former 4 stories (5 stories with a use permit). While the new standard does not allow more height with a use permit, it comes with the possibility of density bonuses. Justin Horner, Associate Planner stated in his presentation to the council that with density bonuses the height could increase up to 100%. Since the amount of the density bonus is based on the percentage of below market units and developers have been using the minimum number of units to qualify for the bonus, 10 to 12 story buildings are the most likely result.
The C-T (commercial on Telegraph) is also 85 feet. The R-S (residential high-density Southside) is set at 55 feet / 5 stories and R-3 (residential medium density) is set at 45 feet / 4-stories.
The Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ) runs through the Southside east of College Avenue. The very highest risk fire zone in the entire city Panoramic Hill backs up to the Southside on the eastern border and comes with the zoning code ES-R (environmental safety-residential). Other VHFHSZ areas of Berkeley (the hills) are in what is called the Hillside Overly and have a H added to the zoning code.
The Hayward fault runs through Panoramic Hill and the Southside with upper Bancroft, Channing and Dwight all sitting in the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
It is unclear from the discussion and the documents if the height limit in the hillside overlay will be 3 or 4 stories. Either one with a density bonus has the potential to crossover to high-rise definition for the purpose of how firefighters would respond. The H that should be added to designate the hillside overly was included in earlier documents for the Planning Commission, but absent in the documents for council.
A high-rise is defined as above seven stories though the transition to high-rise response begins above five stories according the Fire Chief Sprague. Response to a high-rise fire means calling more fire fighters and equipment. The example given to the Budget Committee by the fire chief was a response to a fire in a low-rise building would need around 30 firefighters. Though fires in high-rises are infrequent, when they happen they are “high risk”. In rough numbers, 50 - 100 fire fighters might be needed for such a fire and if it is more than a couple of rooms then significantly more firefighters would be needed. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-05-08/article/50289?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-April-30--Kelly-Hammargren
The Planning and Development Department has been insistent that all this increased density will neatly fit into the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) Update with no need for any adjustment other than for the Council to approve the addendum stating the conclusion, “[B]ased on substantial evidence, that the proposed project would not result in new or substantially more severe significant environmental impacts beyond those identified in the 2023 EIR due to substantial changes in the previously approved project…”
The EIR declared that the Southside is underbuilt and since the new buildings will be built to higher fire safety standards that will improve Fire Department efficiency. That conclusion ignores the fact that the population in the Southside will easily double, could triple and college students do stupid stuff, get themselves in trouble and need emergency services. Some of that stupid stuff is forgetting about their e-scooters or e-skateboards with lithium ion batteries that are plugged in, overcharging and overheating and occasionally catching on fire.
Fire Chief Sprague presented the Fire Department Facilities Master Plan to the City Council on May 16, 2023 with a thorough description of the upgrades and new facilities needed to serve Berkeley now and in the future. That looks like a long-forgotten memory from those who attended the presentation, Bartlett, Hahn, Wengraf, Robinson, Humbert and Arreguin. Kesarwani, Taplin and Harrison were absent. The City Council has yet to hear the presentation from Fire Chief Sprague on the Dispatch Needs Assessment (911 calls).
I’ve heard both presentations and read the documents. We, the Council, the City need to pay attention.
Two Supplementals were submitted for the Southside rezoning. A Supplemental is best thought of as an alternative or addition to the initial proposal. In this case that was the staff report.
Councilmember Hahn, who was on the Zoning Adjustment Board for years reviewing large multi-unit projects, had a much different perspective on the upzoning of the Southside than Rigel Robinson who I have never seen at a Zoning Adjustment Board meeting since I started attending in November 2014. Robinson’s perspective with no visible experience included in his supplemental and initial motion that any project, citywide, that meets SB 35 with 10% low-income housing on-site and prevailing wage should be eligible for ministerial approval (by right – a simple signing at the counter without Design Review Committee, Zoning Adjustment Board or public review).
Hahn said this, “Zoning is not just about how you use your own parcel, but how the use of your parcel impacts other parcels and the public realm”. Translated, wall to wall 8-story multi-unit buildings that could go up to 12 maybe even 16 stories with density bonuses is dramatically going to change the Southside and the micro-climate (heat island effect).
Hahn’s supplemental included green roofs to combat heat island effect, windows in bedrooms, widening sidewalks, study and landmark historical and cultural buildings and sites, incorporate affordable housing for low income students. In the substitute motion that was supported only by Hahn and Harrison removed the pet washing room as satisfying the open space requirement.
In the final motion that was approved by all the councilmembers except Wengraf who was absent, recommendations from Hahn landed as a referral to the city manager. It is hard to know how soon any of Hahn’s recommendations will see the light of day. The Bird Safe Glass ordinance took five years.
The part of the final motion on the prevailing wage and ministerial approval citywide of SB 35 projects with 10% affordable housing will get fast tracked to meet the implementation date of March 1, 2024.
Not much happened at the only other City meeting I attended during Thanksgiving week.
At the Agenda Committee UC Berkeley students lined up to request that Harrison’s Resolution: Opposition to Police Brutality and Use of Force on Nonviolent Protesters stay on the agenda for December 5. They lost, of course. The Agenda Committee sent the resolution to the Public Safety Committee. Taplin’s item to name the planned new pier after Nancy Skinner is on the December 5 agenda as a referral to the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission.
Carol Marasovic reported the Commission on Status of Women had to meet outside as North Berkeley Senior Center was closed and Peter Radu did not have the authority to direct staff to open the building for the scheduled meeting.
Last, I did receive the 2023 bicycle count performed by Bryce Nesbitt and volunteers. The Bicycle counts were done midweek in the fall from 4 pm to 6 pm to duplicate the conditions from four previous bicycle counts in 2010, 2015, 2018, 2022 performed by the City.
I have been in a string of emails regarding the bicycle counts and bicycle riding. Here are some of the thoughtful responses and points to consider for further research.
The decline of bicycle riding as documented by the bicycle counts matches observations by bicycle riders in the email string, my own observations and other studies.
There is nothing from current observations and counts the supports Rigel Robinson’s glorious declarations in his Berkeleyside op-ed that automobile traffic is on the decline and bicycle riding is increasing or that Berkeley is fourth in the nation in bicycle riders. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2019/12/17/opinion-the-future-of-telegraph-avenue-is-a-shared-street
Fourth in the nation was 2014. Berkeley did better in the number of bicycle riders in 2015 than 2023. The bicycle plan was approved in 2017.
UC Berkeley student population increased from 35,833 in 2010 to 45,307 in 2022. The bicycle count at Bowditch and Channing (Southside near campus) in 2010 was 305. In 2023 it was 181. The 2023 count also included scooters 160 and pedestrians 600.
The intersection of Channing a designated bicycle boulevard and Milvia with a protected bike lane the count in 2010 was 510 and in 2023 was 450. Milvia and Hearst did increase from 402 in 2010 to 443 in 2023.
What was notable is lots of people walk and scooters are increasingly popular. One person wrote, “What’s going on? Shouldn’t we try to find out? If Berkeley had a 10-year plan to build new tennis courts, but the world had switched to pickle-ball wouldn’t we want to change the plan?
After the presentation of the bicycle count to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, the majority response was to make excuses and move on without a deeper look, which strikes me as a “don’t confuse me with the facts when I have already made up my mind.”
The bottom line is there does need to be a deep look into why bicycle riding is declining and going in the opposite direction of the City’s plan. And, any street that is being considered as a bicycle street without protective bicycle lane curbing or a street with protected bicycle lanes needs to have multiple bicycle and traffic counts before embarking re-engineering planning and after any modifications or improvements.
The Telraam sensor that I wrote about in the November 19 Activist’s Diary looks like a great way to collect what modes of transportation people are actually using and how that may or may not change with street modifications and improvements. Bryce Nesbitt noted in his presentation of the bicycle counts to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission documentation of vehicle traffic speeding up after repaving. Telraam continuously monitors motorized vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians and more according to the company website.
https://telraam.net/en/what-is-telraam
There is a $900,000 budget referral on the December 5 city council agenda from Harrison co-sponsored by Taplin to calm traffic with $100,000 of it designated in the vicinity of Derby.
Will preconceived notions dominate the response to the child struck by a hit-and-run driver on Halloween after sunset (6:11 pm) around 6:25 pm? According, to the Berkeley Scanner, the child ran out into the street between two parked cars on Derby near Mabel. The car sped away westward on Derby. https://tinyurl.com/56p2ynxh
Mabel is not a through street. The intersection at Mabel and Derby diverts southbound traffic on Mabel onto Derby in a westerly direction, which might indicate the traffic diversion contributed to the accident. There is no marked crosswalk at this intersection that I saw when I walked around the area.
As I looked for traffic and crossed at the corner, I tried to reimagine the incident from reading the Berkeley Scanner report and listening to the story the child’s mother told to the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES).
We’ll never know the full story as the driver sped off. But what we do know is bad things can happen quickly when we’re in a hurry, not paying attention and not thinking safety first.
The last meeting of Thanksgiving week ended at 12:02 pm Tuesday.
After calls for a cease-fire brought the November 14 council meeting to an abrupt end
the entire consent and action calendar from the November 14, 2023 city council meeting was moved to 9 am on November 21. Most people missed the rescheduling announcement (it was in the Activist’s Calendar), but not a group calling for a cease-fire that showed up at the unusual meeting hour.
The calls for action on a cease-fire began within minutes of the start of the meeting and could be heard in the background while Mayor Arreguin ran through the early votes. Russell Bates was the loudest. Arreguin responded stating disruption would not be tolerated, disruptive persons would be removed and council would reconvene at another location and gaveled for a ten-minute recess.
Unlike the demonstration that ended the November 14th council meeting, this time a camera was turned into the room and Bates was loud enough to be heard on ZOOM. Arreguin attempted to resume the meeting in the BUSD Boardroom. When the public calls for action continued, Arreguin announced that due to the disruption the council meeting would continue without the public present and resumed in another room.
When the meeting resumed the main agenda item rezoning the Southside Rezoning was up for discussion and vote. The Southside rezoning is a major overhaul with bigger, taller buildings covering the lots with little to no space in between buildings. As with all zoning changes the path to approval goes through the Planning Commission first and then on to City Council.
Besides bigger taller buildings, the amount of usable open space went on the chopping block. Open space is normally defined as open to the sky and air for passive or active use. For the time being that still defines open space in the rest of the city and 50% of that condition can be satisfied with balconies that have a minimum length and width of 6 feet.
In the new Southside zoning code 50% of the usable open space can be satisfied with a pet washing room, a multi-purpose room or a gym/health club/fitness studio. The calculation of how much open space is required changed from a per unit basis to per 1000 square feet of gross residential area.
The new maximum height in the R-SMU (residential – southside multi-unit) increased to 85 feet / 8-stories from a former 4 stories (5 stories with a use permit). While the new standard does not allow more height with a use permit, it comes with the possibility of density bonuses. Justin Horner, Associate Planner stated in his presentation to the council that with density bonuses the height could increase up to 100%. Since the amount of the density bonus is based on the percentage of below market units and developers have been using the minimum number of units to qualify for the bonus, 10 to 12 story buildings are the most likely result.
The C-T (commercial on Telegraph) is also 85 feet. The R-S (residential high-density Southside) is set at 55 feet / 5 stories and R-3 (residential medium density) is set at 45 feet / 4-stories.
The Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (VHFHSZ) runs through the Southside east of College Avenue. The very highest risk fire zone in the entire city Panoramic Hill backs up to the Southside on the eastern border and comes with the zoning code ES-R (environmental safety-residential). Other VHFHSZ areas of Berkeley (the hills) are in what is called the Hillside Overly and have a H added to the zoning code.
The Hayward fault runs through Panoramic Hill and the Southside with upper Bancroft, Channing and Dwight all sitting in the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
It is unclear from the discussion and the documents if the height limit in the hillside overlay will be 3 or 4 stories. Either one with a density bonus has the potential to crossover to high-rise definition for the purpose of how firefighters would respond. The H that should be added to designate the hillside overly was included in earlier documents for the Planning Commission, but absent in the documents for council.
A high-rise is defined as above seven stories though the transition to high-rise response begins above five stories according the Fire Chief Sprague. Response to a high-rise fire means calling more fire fighters and equipment. The example given to the Budget Committee by the fire chief was a response to a fire in a low-rise building would need around 30 firefighters. Though fires in high-rises are infrequent, when they happen they are “high risk”. In rough numbers, 50 - 100 fire fighters might be needed for such a fire and if it is more than a couple of rooms then significantly more firefighters would be needed. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-05-08/article/50289?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-April-30--Kelly-Hammargren
The Planning and Development Department has been insistent that all this increased density will neatly fit into the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) Update with no need for any adjustment other than for the Council to approve the addendum stating the conclusion, “[B]ased on substantial evidence, that the proposed project would not result in new or substantially more severe significant environmental impacts beyond those identified in the 2023 EIR due to substantial changes in the previously approved project…”
The EIR declared that the Southside is underbuilt and since the new buildings will be built to higher fire safety standards that will improve Fire Department efficiency. That conclusion ignores the fact that the population in the Southside will easily double, could triple and college students do stupid stuff, get themselves in trouble and need emergency services. Some of that stupid stuff is forgetting about their e-scooters or e-skateboards with lithium ion batteries that are plugged in, overcharging and overheating and occasionally catching on fire.
Fire Chief Sprague presented the Fire Department Facilities Master Plan to the City Council on May 16, 2023 with a thorough description of the upgrades and new facilities needed to serve Berkeley now and in the future. That looks like a long-forgotten memory from those who attended the presentation, Bartlett, Hahn, Wengraf, Robinson, Humbert and Arreguin. Kesarwani, Taplin and Harrison were absent. The City Council has yet to hear the presentation from Fire Chief Sprague on the Dispatch Needs Assessment (911 calls).
I’ve heard both presentations and read the documents. We, the Council, the City need to pay attention.
Two Supplementals were submitted for the Southside rezoning. A Supplemental is best thought of as an alternative or addition to the initial proposal. In this case that was the staff report.
Councilmember Hahn, who was on the Zoning Adjustment Board for years reviewing large multi-unit projects, had a much different perspective on the upzoning of the Southside than Rigel Robinson who I have never seen at a Zoning Adjustment Board meeting since I started attending in November 2014. Robinson’s perspective with no visible experience included in his supplemental and initial motion that any project, citywide, that meets SB 35 with 10% low-income housing on-site and prevailing wage should be eligible for ministerial approval (by right – a simple signing at the counter without Design Review Committee, Zoning Adjustment Board or public review).
Hahn said this, “Zoning is not just about how you use your own parcel, but how the use of your parcel impacts other parcels and the public realm”. Translated, wall to wall 8-story multi-unit buildings that could go up to 12 maybe even 16 stories with density bonuses is dramatically going to change the Southside and the micro-climate (heat island effect).
Hahn’s supplemental included green roofs to combat heat island effect, windows in bedrooms, widening sidewalks, study and landmark historical and cultural buildings and sites, incorporate affordable housing for low income students. In the substitute motion that was supported only by Hahn and Harrison removed the pet washing room as satisfying the open space requirement.
In the final motion that was approved by all the councilmembers except Wengraf who was absent, recommendations from Hahn landed as a referral to the city manager. It is hard to know how soon any of Hahn’s recommendations will see the light of day. The Bird Safe Glass ordinance took five years.
The part of the final motion on the prevailing wage and ministerial approval citywide of SB 35 projects with 10% affordable housing will get fast tracked to meet the implementation date of March 1, 2024.
Not much happened at the only other City meeting I attended during Thanksgiving week.
At the Agenda Committee UC Berkeley students lined up to request that Harrison’s Resolution: Opposition to Police Brutality and Use of Force on Nonviolent Protesters stay on the agenda for December 5. They lost, of course. The Agenda Committee sent the resolution to the Public Safety Committee. Taplin’s item to name the planned new pier after Nancy Skinner is on the December 5 agenda as a referral to the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission.
Carol Marasovic reported the Commission on Status of Women had to meet outside as North Berkeley Senior Center was closed and Peter Radu did not have the authority to direct staff to open the building for the scheduled meeting.
Last, I did receive the 2023 bicycle count performed by Bryce Nesbitt and volunteers. The Bicycle counts were done midweek in the fall from 4 pm to 6 pm to duplicate the conditions from four previous bicycle counts in 2010, 2015, 2018, 2022 performed by the City.
I have been in a string of emails regarding the bicycle counts and bicycle riding. Here are some of the thoughtful responses and points to consider for further research.
The decline of bicycle riding as documented by the bicycle counts matches observations by bicycle riders in the email string, my own observations and other studies.
There is nothing from current observations and counts the supports Rigel Robinson’s glorious declarations in his Berkeleyside op-ed that automobile traffic is on the decline and bicycle riding is increasing or that Berkeley is fourth in the nation in bicycle riders. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2019/12/17/opinion-the-future-of-telegraph-avenue-is-a-shared-street
Fourth in the nation was 2014. Berkeley did better in the number of bicycle riders in 2015 than 2023. The bicycle plan was approved in 2017.
UC Berkeley student population increased from 35,833 in 2010 to 45,307 in 2022. The bicycle count at Bowditch and Channing (Southside near campus) in 2010 was 305. In 2023 it was 181. The 2023 count also included scooters 160 and pedestrians 600.
The intersection of Channing a designated bicycle boulevard and Milvia with a protected bike lane the count in 2010 was 510 and in 2023 was 450. Milvia and Hearst did increase from 402 in 2010 to 443 in 2023.
What was notable is lots of people walk and scooters are increasingly popular. One person wrote, “What’s going on? Shouldn’t we try to find out? If Berkeley had a 10-year plan to build new tennis courts, but the world had switched to pickle-ball wouldn’t we want to change the plan?
After the presentation of the bicycle count to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, the majority response was to make excuses and move on without a deeper look, which strikes me as a “don’t confuse me with the facts when I have already made up my mind.”
The bottom line is there does need to be a deep look into why bicycle riding is declining and going in the opposite direction of the City’s plan. And, any street that is being considered as a bicycle street without protective bicycle lane curbing or a street with protected bicycle lanes needs to have multiple bicycle and traffic counts before embarking re-engineering planning and after any modifications or improvements.
The Telraam sensor that I wrote about in the November 19 Activist’s Diary looks like a great way to collect what modes of transportation people are actually using and how that may or may not change with street modifications and improvements. Bryce Nesbitt noted in his presentation of the bicycle counts to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission documentation of vehicle traffic speeding up after repaving. Telraam continuously monitors motorized vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians and more according to the company website.
https://telraam.net/en/what-is-telraam
There is a $900,000 budget referral on the December 5 city council agenda from Harrison co-sponsored by Taplin to calm traffic with $100,000 of it designated in the vicinity of Derby.
Will preconceived notions dominate the response to the child struck by a hit-and-run driver on Halloween after sunset (6:11 pm) around 6:25 pm? According, to the Berkeley Scanner, the child ran out into the street between two parked cars on Derby near Mabel. The car sped away westward on Derby. https://tinyurl.com/56p2ynxh
Mabel is not a through street. The intersection at Mabel and Derby diverts southbound traffic on Mabel onto Derby in a westerly direction, which might indicate the traffic diversion contributed to the accident. There is no marked crosswalk at this intersection that I saw when I walked around the area.
As I looked for traffic and crossed at the corner, I tried to reimagine the incident from reading the Berkeley Scanner report and listening to the story the child’s mother told to the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES).
We’ll never know the full story as the driver sped off. But what we do know is bad things can happen quickly when we’re in a hurry, not paying attention and not thinking safety first.
November 19, 2023
As I begin this week’s Activist Diary, the Los Angeles Times editorial board called for a “Cease-fire now. The killing of civilians in Gaza must stop.” The editorial close states this, “Remaining mindful of America’s mistakes, it is incumbent upon the Biden administration now to avoid complicity with Israel’s.”
Trump and Netanyahu both share a common thread: using power to escape charges of fraud and criminal punishment. If you haven’t read Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present this would be a good time to pick it up.
Here is an excerpt of Ben-Ghiat’s early analysis from her substack on Netanyahu and the horror we are watching unfold:
“In December 2022, Netanyahu thought he had won the autocrat’s lottery, having been reelected despite charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, and a corruption trial ongoing He promptly initiated a ‘judicial reform’ that would limit the Israeli Supreme Court’s authority and clear the way for him to realize the strongman dream: becoming personally untouchable by the law.
Instead, this authoritarian overreach led to the largest protests in Israeli history – protests that united grassroots activists and elites and included refusals by Army and Air Force personnel to perform military service. But Netanyahu did not back down. Propelled by a desire for self-preservation, and unencumbered by any moral code, strongmen with legal troubles that threaten their power become laser-focused on making those troubles go away for good. Netanyahu fits this model.”
Ben Ghiat’s full analysis at: https://lucid.substack.com/p/what-will-be-the-destiny-of-netanyahu
Trump’s promises of retribution if elected, along with Project 2025, a sweeping remake of the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, fit the same mold of making troubles go away with a giant power grab. Loyalists are already being screened and lined up so Trump won’t have gatekeepers the next time around to rein in his worst instincts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Unless something changes soon, it looks like in the coming election of 2024 President Biden will be running against himself and third-party candidates as much as he will be running against Trump and the ideologues of the Republican Party, the GOP disrupters and the theocracy of the right with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at its congressional head.
Councilmember Harrison attempted to put the Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) back on the City Council regular meeting agenda for a vote on November 28, 2023. It was pulled from the draft agenda at the Agenda and Rules Committee and moved to the Council’s Land Use Policy Committee an action initiated by Councilmember Wengraf and supported by Councilmember Hahn.
It is now over three years since TOPA appeared on the Land Use Committee agenda on March 5, 2020 and disappeared from further action after a January 27, 2022 City Council special meeting where discussion was held, 78 people spoke and no action was taken.
In the piles of documents, I sifted through I found a memo dated March 10, 2020 from Mayor Arreguin to City Council that I can’t attach to any meeting agenda. TOPA gives tenants the first right to purchase the building when it goes up for sale. The Chamber of Commerce, the real estate industry and investors oppose TOPA.
Whenever I have the choice of attending a City meeting online instead of in-person, I choose online. This week that meant I totally missed the demonstration at the council regular meeting on Tuesday evening calling for a cease-fire. Online all we got was pauses with Council exiting the dais, not the scene in the room.
Nineteen of twenty speaker cards pulled on non-agenda items were from people calling for a cease-fire. Nearly all the speakers were Palestinian American. One of the few speaking on a cease-fire who was not Palestinian American was Steve Martinot who seemed to confuse the vote on the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant release of radioactive contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean with the issue at hand.
As a close observer of City Council, I could not count five (the number needed for a majority vote) who would support a cease-fire. I’m not sure there is any amount of demonstrating or number of Palestinian children’s deaths that would change hardened positions or fear of taking a position, but we try.
I still recall the uproar in June 2018 when former councilmember Cheryl Davila selected Hatem Bazian as her emergency standby officer. Hatem Bazian is an outspoken advocate for Palestinians and lecturer on Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. The City Council finally confirmed Bazian as Davila’s standby officer, but it was months later. The date I found was December 3, 2019 when he was appointed with 21 others.
Before public comment on the cease-fire and the council meeting abruptly ended with no votes taken on the evening agenda, Ryan Lau and Carissa Lee presented the AC Transit Realign draft of bus route changes and schedules to council. The same presentation to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission on Thursday evening was so much better with a more robust discussion between the AC Transit presenters and the commissioners and attendees.
The presentation started with AC Transit At-a-Glance of rider demographics: 65% are low income, 75% are people of color, 29% have limited English proficiency, 27% are traveling to work and there are 30,000 student trips to and from school every school day.
The transbay bus serves riders who are mostly in the $100,000 to $150,000 income bracket. With remote work the transbay ridership is about 20% of the pre-pandemic level.
A key limiting factor for providing bus service is bus drivers. Even before the pandemic, the average age of a bus driver was near retirement age.
While the question was asked if there were any plans for driverless buses, there was no discussion of how much bus drivers earn. An internet search turned up that the average wage starts around $50,000 for fulltime employment with the generous benefit package that could be expected with a union job. As for self-driving/driverless buses, the AC Transit representatives said there were no such plans.
AC Transit is up to 72% of pre-pandemic levels and looking away from serving commuters to serving those who need bus service the most for daytime trips, evenings and weekends. The proposed realignment drops the transbay route and the Grizzly Peak route. The plan to expand service on Cedar needs to first work through an existing agreement that limits bus service on Cedar.
Though not discussed, the new BART cars have 50 seats and can hold up to 200 passengers in a “crush” load which makes BART the most efficient mode of transit for longer distance commuters. An eight-car-BART-train under the Bay in one trip can carry up to 1600 riders.
The AC Transit Realign plan is proposed to be implemented in April. You can find routes, public meeting announcements and directions for feedback at Actransit.org/realign: https://www.actransit.org/realign
You can also email [email protected]
The last presentation of the evening at the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission was Bryce Nesbitt’s Informational Briefing on Community-led Traffic Counts. The presentation is promised to be available on the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission webpage, but it is not posted as of this writing and I do not have a copy so I am working from notes and memory. The report was fascinating and should definitely receive much broader distribution and attention.
The hand traffic counts used the same locations and times of day as a City study done many years earlier. During the intervening years Berkeley’s population increased by 16% and the City has embarked on a bicycle plan to increase ridership. The results of the community count show declining bicycle ridership and increases in pedestrians. Nesbitt said that when a count was repeated by a different person the results were similar, countering questions of counting errors.
The results of declining ridership mirrored studies from other sources with similar results of declining bicycle ridership, including a national survey that commuting by bicycle was declining before the pandemic.
This is all very interesting. One commissioner in particular did not seem to want to accept the findings and kept throwing out excuses. Commissioner Rick Raffanti, appointed by Councilmember Harrison, made the most sense, suggesting there should be a deeper look.
It was a bit of a shock, but not surprising that commissioners committed to expanding bicycle infrastructure weren’t interested in pursuing why ridership is in decline rather than increasing.
The bicycle plan established in 2017 following a community survey that included asking residents if they were active bike riders, not interested in bicycle riding or not bicycle riders, but interested in bicycle riding as a means of transportation and what conditions would persuade them to change their minds. Safety was a key factor.
I believe it was Nesbitt who compared the wish of bicycle riding to asking someone if they wanted to go to the gym three times a week. Yes, sounds nice in an answer, but that doesn’t mean someone will go to the gym three times a week, once a week or at all.
Yet, this city and many others are redesigning infrastructure to support the small percentage of the population that are avid bicycle riders with the belief that all these changes will convince the hesitant possibly interested person to take up bicycle riding to combat climate change.
Curbs on bicycle lanes are supposed to make the hesitant feel safer. My friends who are regular bicycle riders avoid bicycle lanes with curbs. They see them as dangerous, because they are trapped in the lane with no way out if there is a hazard in front of them.
Members of bicycling groups and organizations like Walk, Bike Berkeley seem to have an inside track with City staff with regularly scheduled meetings to promote bicycling and bicycling infrastructure. That is what I saw in my public records request on the Hopkins Corridor.
Nesbitt also included the interesting results from the use of a Telraam device mounted in a 2nd story window on Camelia monitoring traffic speed before and after repaying. Telraan documented what we should know, traffic speeds up after repaving.
The Telraam sensor is in some ways similar to PurpleAir. Both are available to the public for purchase and to collect data. PurpleAir monitors air quality. Telraam continuously monitors motorized vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians and more according to the company website. https://telraam.net/en/what-is-telraam
The City Council voted unanimously at the special 4 pm meeting on Tuesday to approve the San Pablo Avenue Multimodal Corridor Program: Safety Enhancements and Parallel Bike Improvement projects using the Supplemental 3 from Councilmembers Taplin, Kesarwani and Humbert which adds to advance traffic calming improvements especially at intersections. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-november-14-2023
While the project leaders touted comprehensive community outreach, there were still businesses and nearby residents impacted by the removal of 174 parking spaces and other changes who were unaware of the project. What struck me the most about the entire meeting was how Councilmember Robinson carried on about how many meetings he had attended and how he still wanted to see the bike lanes on San Pablo Avenue at a future date. That left me wondering when there are major regional projects, why don’t councilmembers representing the city at these regional committees give a one-minute update to the rest of the Council and the public.
The owner of Lavender Bakery and Cafe on the southeast corner of San Pablo at Addison, said he was not notified of the plan and will be losing eight parking spaces near his business. He spoke to the impact this will have on his business especially the loss of parking for loading and unloading.
It is not clear how many of the 174 parking spaces are lost due to AB 413, which was signed into law on October 10, 2023. AB 413, often referred to as “Daylighting”, prohibits vehicles from parking, standing or stopping within 20 feet of a crosswalk whether marked or unmarked or 15 feet from any crosswalk where a curb extension (bulb-out) is present.
In the informational briefing to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, Hamid Mostowfi, Transportation Division Manager, noted the bill does not require public notification in advance. Meeting the conditions of the law is not debatable or negotiable. The safety zone can be marked by a sign or red paint on the curb. With just a little bit of humor he suggested red paint might be a good investment which got a chuckle as there is going to be a lot of red paint being applied to curbs all over not just Berkeley, but the entire state.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB413
The outcry of opposition from members of the community and especially commissioners from the Commission on Disability and the Commission on Aging to Rigel Robinson’s proposal to allow bicycles on sidewalks was swift and loud. The proposal before the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) titled “Modernizing and updating outdated & unnecessary language in the BMC related to transportation” was item 2 on the agenda and yet attendees had to sit through a meeting that started at 2 pm until 3:35 pm to hear Robinson say that he had rewritten the proposal and removed allowing riding bicycles on sidewalks.
Sitting through the endless discussion, we learned Robinson has little regard for policies. It was an eye-opener when Robinson said he knows he is in violation when he rides his bike through Strawberry Park after council meetings when the park is closed. Councilmember Taplin responded saying that he always rides down Browning after council meetings to Channing the bicycle boulevard. He said he would never ride through the park after closing out of respect for his constituents and the park.
Attendees had to wait until 4:10 pm to comment. Rena Fischer, Chair of the Commission on Disability, was controlled and blunt that she had just wasted half a day to hear that the contentious item,“bicycles on sidewalks”, had been removed. She stated it was illogical that when people are obviously attending to express their concerns that the attendees could not be notified at the beginning of the meeting.
Robinson’s proposal was continued and will be listed under unscheduled items.
I had less patience than most while listening the mother who was given as much time as she wanted at the beginning of the meeting to describe a traffic accident. She started with saying her child died from being hit by a car and then later explained her child didn’t die, but suffered a broken leg from being hit by a car as he ran into the street after his friends on Halloween. It was frightening and traumatic for the parent and child, but the child’s leg will heal according to his mother. He will be fine.
While listening, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Gaza has turned into a graveyard for children. More than 5,000 are dead. The number of wounded children whose entire families have been killed from the endless bombing has a new acronym, WCNSF: wounded child no surviving family. Some will grow up not knowing their name, their true age, their birthday. They won’t have pictures of their parents and siblings. Where they lived is rubble. There is not enough food and water to feed them. And, this city and our national government, our President can’t call for a cease-fire and an end to this horror. We should hang our heads in shame.
As I begin this week’s Activist Diary, the Los Angeles Times editorial board called for a “Cease-fire now. The killing of civilians in Gaza must stop.” The editorial close states this, “Remaining mindful of America’s mistakes, it is incumbent upon the Biden administration now to avoid complicity with Israel’s.”
Trump and Netanyahu both share a common thread: using power to escape charges of fraud and criminal punishment. If you haven’t read Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present this would be a good time to pick it up.
Here is an excerpt of Ben-Ghiat’s early analysis from her substack on Netanyahu and the horror we are watching unfold:
“In December 2022, Netanyahu thought he had won the autocrat’s lottery, having been reelected despite charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, and a corruption trial ongoing He promptly initiated a ‘judicial reform’ that would limit the Israeli Supreme Court’s authority and clear the way for him to realize the strongman dream: becoming personally untouchable by the law.
Instead, this authoritarian overreach led to the largest protests in Israeli history – protests that united grassroots activists and elites and included refusals by Army and Air Force personnel to perform military service. But Netanyahu did not back down. Propelled by a desire for self-preservation, and unencumbered by any moral code, strongmen with legal troubles that threaten their power become laser-focused on making those troubles go away for good. Netanyahu fits this model.”
Ben Ghiat’s full analysis at: https://lucid.substack.com/p/what-will-be-the-destiny-of-netanyahu
Trump’s promises of retribution if elected, along with Project 2025, a sweeping remake of the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, fit the same mold of making troubles go away with a giant power grab. Loyalists are already being screened and lined up so Trump won’t have gatekeepers the next time around to rein in his worst instincts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
Unless something changes soon, it looks like in the coming election of 2024 President Biden will be running against himself and third-party candidates as much as he will be running against Trump and the ideologues of the Republican Party, the GOP disrupters and the theocracy of the right with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at its congressional head.
Councilmember Harrison attempted to put the Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) back on the City Council regular meeting agenda for a vote on November 28, 2023. It was pulled from the draft agenda at the Agenda and Rules Committee and moved to the Council’s Land Use Policy Committee an action initiated by Councilmember Wengraf and supported by Councilmember Hahn.
It is now over three years since TOPA appeared on the Land Use Committee agenda on March 5, 2020 and disappeared from further action after a January 27, 2022 City Council special meeting where discussion was held, 78 people spoke and no action was taken.
In the piles of documents, I sifted through I found a memo dated March 10, 2020 from Mayor Arreguin to City Council that I can’t attach to any meeting agenda. TOPA gives tenants the first right to purchase the building when it goes up for sale. The Chamber of Commerce, the real estate industry and investors oppose TOPA.
Whenever I have the choice of attending a City meeting online instead of in-person, I choose online. This week that meant I totally missed the demonstration at the council regular meeting on Tuesday evening calling for a cease-fire. Online all we got was pauses with Council exiting the dais, not the scene in the room.
Nineteen of twenty speaker cards pulled on non-agenda items were from people calling for a cease-fire. Nearly all the speakers were Palestinian American. One of the few speaking on a cease-fire who was not Palestinian American was Steve Martinot who seemed to confuse the vote on the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant release of radioactive contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean with the issue at hand.
As a close observer of City Council, I could not count five (the number needed for a majority vote) who would support a cease-fire. I’m not sure there is any amount of demonstrating or number of Palestinian children’s deaths that would change hardened positions or fear of taking a position, but we try.
I still recall the uproar in June 2018 when former councilmember Cheryl Davila selected Hatem Bazian as her emergency standby officer. Hatem Bazian is an outspoken advocate for Palestinians and lecturer on Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. The City Council finally confirmed Bazian as Davila’s standby officer, but it was months later. The date I found was December 3, 2019 when he was appointed with 21 others.
Before public comment on the cease-fire and the council meeting abruptly ended with no votes taken on the evening agenda, Ryan Lau and Carissa Lee presented the AC Transit Realign draft of bus route changes and schedules to council. The same presentation to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission on Thursday evening was so much better with a more robust discussion between the AC Transit presenters and the commissioners and attendees.
The presentation started with AC Transit At-a-Glance of rider demographics: 65% are low income, 75% are people of color, 29% have limited English proficiency, 27% are traveling to work and there are 30,000 student trips to and from school every school day.
The transbay bus serves riders who are mostly in the $100,000 to $150,000 income bracket. With remote work the transbay ridership is about 20% of the pre-pandemic level.
A key limiting factor for providing bus service is bus drivers. Even before the pandemic, the average age of a bus driver was near retirement age.
While the question was asked if there were any plans for driverless buses, there was no discussion of how much bus drivers earn. An internet search turned up that the average wage starts around $50,000 for fulltime employment with the generous benefit package that could be expected with a union job. As for self-driving/driverless buses, the AC Transit representatives said there were no such plans.
AC Transit is up to 72% of pre-pandemic levels and looking away from serving commuters to serving those who need bus service the most for daytime trips, evenings and weekends. The proposed realignment drops the transbay route and the Grizzly Peak route. The plan to expand service on Cedar needs to first work through an existing agreement that limits bus service on Cedar.
Though not discussed, the new BART cars have 50 seats and can hold up to 200 passengers in a “crush” load which makes BART the most efficient mode of transit for longer distance commuters. An eight-car-BART-train under the Bay in one trip can carry up to 1600 riders.
The AC Transit Realign plan is proposed to be implemented in April. You can find routes, public meeting announcements and directions for feedback at Actransit.org/realign: https://www.actransit.org/realign
You can also email [email protected]
The last presentation of the evening at the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission was Bryce Nesbitt’s Informational Briefing on Community-led Traffic Counts. The presentation is promised to be available on the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission webpage, but it is not posted as of this writing and I do not have a copy so I am working from notes and memory. The report was fascinating and should definitely receive much broader distribution and attention.
The hand traffic counts used the same locations and times of day as a City study done many years earlier. During the intervening years Berkeley’s population increased by 16% and the City has embarked on a bicycle plan to increase ridership. The results of the community count show declining bicycle ridership and increases in pedestrians. Nesbitt said that when a count was repeated by a different person the results were similar, countering questions of counting errors.
The results of declining ridership mirrored studies from other sources with similar results of declining bicycle ridership, including a national survey that commuting by bicycle was declining before the pandemic.
This is all very interesting. One commissioner in particular did not seem to want to accept the findings and kept throwing out excuses. Commissioner Rick Raffanti, appointed by Councilmember Harrison, made the most sense, suggesting there should be a deeper look.
It was a bit of a shock, but not surprising that commissioners committed to expanding bicycle infrastructure weren’t interested in pursuing why ridership is in decline rather than increasing.
The bicycle plan established in 2017 following a community survey that included asking residents if they were active bike riders, not interested in bicycle riding or not bicycle riders, but interested in bicycle riding as a means of transportation and what conditions would persuade them to change their minds. Safety was a key factor.
I believe it was Nesbitt who compared the wish of bicycle riding to asking someone if they wanted to go to the gym three times a week. Yes, sounds nice in an answer, but that doesn’t mean someone will go to the gym three times a week, once a week or at all.
Yet, this city and many others are redesigning infrastructure to support the small percentage of the population that are avid bicycle riders with the belief that all these changes will convince the hesitant possibly interested person to take up bicycle riding to combat climate change.
Curbs on bicycle lanes are supposed to make the hesitant feel safer. My friends who are regular bicycle riders avoid bicycle lanes with curbs. They see them as dangerous, because they are trapped in the lane with no way out if there is a hazard in front of them.
Members of bicycling groups and organizations like Walk, Bike Berkeley seem to have an inside track with City staff with regularly scheduled meetings to promote bicycling and bicycling infrastructure. That is what I saw in my public records request on the Hopkins Corridor.
Nesbitt also included the interesting results from the use of a Telraam device mounted in a 2nd story window on Camelia monitoring traffic speed before and after repaying. Telraan documented what we should know, traffic speeds up after repaving.
The Telraam sensor is in some ways similar to PurpleAir. Both are available to the public for purchase and to collect data. PurpleAir monitors air quality. Telraam continuously monitors motorized vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians and more according to the company website. https://telraam.net/en/what-is-telraam
The City Council voted unanimously at the special 4 pm meeting on Tuesday to approve the San Pablo Avenue Multimodal Corridor Program: Safety Enhancements and Parallel Bike Improvement projects using the Supplemental 3 from Councilmembers Taplin, Kesarwani and Humbert which adds to advance traffic calming improvements especially at intersections. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-november-14-2023
While the project leaders touted comprehensive community outreach, there were still businesses and nearby residents impacted by the removal of 174 parking spaces and other changes who were unaware of the project. What struck me the most about the entire meeting was how Councilmember Robinson carried on about how many meetings he had attended and how he still wanted to see the bike lanes on San Pablo Avenue at a future date. That left me wondering when there are major regional projects, why don’t councilmembers representing the city at these regional committees give a one-minute update to the rest of the Council and the public.
The owner of Lavender Bakery and Cafe on the southeast corner of San Pablo at Addison, said he was not notified of the plan and will be losing eight parking spaces near his business. He spoke to the impact this will have on his business especially the loss of parking for loading and unloading.
It is not clear how many of the 174 parking spaces are lost due to AB 413, which was signed into law on October 10, 2023. AB 413, often referred to as “Daylighting”, prohibits vehicles from parking, standing or stopping within 20 feet of a crosswalk whether marked or unmarked or 15 feet from any crosswalk where a curb extension (bulb-out) is present.
In the informational briefing to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, Hamid Mostowfi, Transportation Division Manager, noted the bill does not require public notification in advance. Meeting the conditions of the law is not debatable or negotiable. The safety zone can be marked by a sign or red paint on the curb. With just a little bit of humor he suggested red paint might be a good investment which got a chuckle as there is going to be a lot of red paint being applied to curbs all over not just Berkeley, but the entire state.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB413
The outcry of opposition from members of the community and especially commissioners from the Commission on Disability and the Commission on Aging to Rigel Robinson’s proposal to allow bicycles on sidewalks was swift and loud. The proposal before the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) titled “Modernizing and updating outdated & unnecessary language in the BMC related to transportation” was item 2 on the agenda and yet attendees had to sit through a meeting that started at 2 pm until 3:35 pm to hear Robinson say that he had rewritten the proposal and removed allowing riding bicycles on sidewalks.
Sitting through the endless discussion, we learned Robinson has little regard for policies. It was an eye-opener when Robinson said he knows he is in violation when he rides his bike through Strawberry Park after council meetings when the park is closed. Councilmember Taplin responded saying that he always rides down Browning after council meetings to Channing the bicycle boulevard. He said he would never ride through the park after closing out of respect for his constituents and the park.
Attendees had to wait until 4:10 pm to comment. Rena Fischer, Chair of the Commission on Disability, was controlled and blunt that she had just wasted half a day to hear that the contentious item,“bicycles on sidewalks”, had been removed. She stated it was illogical that when people are obviously attending to express their concerns that the attendees could not be notified at the beginning of the meeting.
Robinson’s proposal was continued and will be listed under unscheduled items.
I had less patience than most while listening the mother who was given as much time as she wanted at the beginning of the meeting to describe a traffic accident. She started with saying her child died from being hit by a car and then later explained her child didn’t die, but suffered a broken leg from being hit by a car as he ran into the street after his friends on Halloween. It was frightening and traumatic for the parent and child, but the child’s leg will heal according to his mother. He will be fine.
While listening, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Gaza has turned into a graveyard for children. More than 5,000 are dead. The number of wounded children whose entire families have been killed from the endless bombing has a new acronym, WCNSF: wounded child no surviving family. Some will grow up not knowing their name, their true age, their birthday. They won’t have pictures of their parents and siblings. Where they lived is rubble. There is not enough food and water to feed them. And, this city and our national government, our President can’t call for a cease-fire and an end to this horror. We should hang our heads in shame.
October 29, 2023
I often think I should approach writing the Activist’s Diary like plein air painting by picking a point in time and stopping, but the world and the City keep moving on while I write.
I finished Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger just two weeks before the Hamas attack on Israel. Doppelganger starts with Klein describing her double with whom she is often confused Naomi Wolf who has taken a hard right turn. In the book Klein recounts her trip to Gaza and compares the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel to the displacement and genocide of the American Indigenous People in the United States.
At the beginning of the week the death toll in Gaza was 5,791 of whom 2,360 were children. After President Joe Biden placed doubt on the number of deaths, the Gaza Health Ministry published on October 26, 2023 a 212 page list of over 6700 dead Palestinians by name, age, gender and ID number. 2665 were children. The list does not contain the names of 281 who could not be identified. As I write there is more bombing and more names to be added. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/27/headlines/gaza_health_ministry_publishes_names_of_nearly_7_000_palestinians_killed_in_israeli_strikes
The residents of Gaza are running out of food, water, medicine and fuel and now Israel has shut off power and communications. The few aid convoys into Gaza before this latest siege were wholly inadequate for what is needed for 2.2 million people. Twenty-nine journalists are confirmed dead, 24 Palestinian, 1 Lebanese, and 4 Israeli. Eight journalists were reported injured and 9 were reported missing or detained. Last night I heard the injured at the hospital in Gaza City numbered 19,000.
Will all the Israeli retaliation under the banner of turning Hamas to dust end terrorism? I doubt it. The horror raining down on Gaza, the massive destruction by Israel, the thousands dead and injured brings only more terror. It is not war crimes it is war is the crime. I believe it was Howard Zinn who said that first.
In some parts of the country, calling for a ceasefire, ending the blockade to Palestine has meant being doxed, fired, nasty emails, posts, being called anti-Semitic and death threats. But now the pictures and reports coming out of Gaza look like a genocide of the Palestinians and the demonstrations calling for a cease-fire are growing around the world and here too. And, yes I sent off my ceasefire contact letters to the President, U.S. Senators and Barbara Lee.
Tuesday was book club. We chose The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 - 2017 by Rashid Khalidi for January.
The new speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a self-described Evangelical Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition who said “My faith informs everything I do.” Johnson previously worked as senior attorney and spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) a Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate group.
When I downloaded Robert P. Jones’ book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, I never expected that the new speaker of the House would be coming out of the tradition of which Jones writes (religion, politics and culture including the Evangelical Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition). The book covers how deeply white supremacy is embedded in white Christianity especially the Southern Baptist and Evangelical churches in the South. Jones goes into detail in how the Daughters of the Confederacy embedded teaching children in the “Lost Cause” mirroring religious studies at church and Sunday school with lessons, holidays and celebrations of the Confederacy.
The book is fascinating. I never knew the National Cathedral had four stained-glass windows honoring the Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (1953-2017) donated by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Those windows were replaced in 2017 (before my first visit) with racial justice themed stained-glass windows.
My copy of the book was from the Contra Costa County Library. There are four people in line for the one copy at the San Francisco Library and no copies that I could find in Berkeley.
If you are not up for a book or already in overload, Katelyn Fossett’s October 27, 2023 interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez (author of Jesus and John Wayne) on Mike Johnson will give you a peak into what is ahead. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/mike-johnson-christian-nationalist-ideas-qa-00123882
On to the week in Berkeley.
Monday afternoon four of us attending the Agenda and Rules Committee spoke to our concerns regarding item 22 in the draft agenda for November 7, 2023.
“22. Modernizing and updating outdated & unnecessary language in the BMC related to transportation
From: Councilmember Rigel Robinson
Recommendation: Adopt first reading of an Ordinance amending BMC Chapters 6.32, 1432 and 14.68 to: 1. Rescind outdated or unnecessary regulations pertaining to jaywalking, skateboarding, bicycle licenses and bicycle establishment requirements, 2. Allow 24/7 use of public paths by pedestrians and cyclists for the purpose of transportation; 3. Allow bicyclists on non-electric bicycles to ride on the sidewalk while exercising due care and yielding right-of-way to pedestrians when no Class I, Class II, or Class IV bicycle facility is available; 4. Align the penalty for bicycle violations with other moving violations by amending it from a misdemeanor to an infraction; 5. Update definitions of bicycles and scooters to align with definitions in the California Vehicle Code.” [emphasis added]
There was not one peep out of Mayor Arreguin and Councilmember Sophie Hahn who were up first in making comments on the draft agenda. When it was finally Councilmember Wengraf’s turn to speak she suggested that Robinson’s item 22 go to a policy committee before it went to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission. The policy committee suggested was Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) with Councilmembers Harrison as chair with Robinson and Taplin and Humbert as the alternate.
After Wengraf started the discussion of pulling the item 22 from the November 7 agenda and sending it to committee, then Hahn and Arreguin joined in suggesting that the item should go to the Commission on Aging and the Commission on Disability. The final motion by Hahn was “to recommend to the author [Robinson] that they amend the item to include a referral to the Disability, Aging and Transportation and Infrastructure Commissions.” The annotated agenda listed only commissions and not those specifically named in the motion.
The special City Council meeting on the Waterfront Specific Plan on November 2 was still on the schedule, but it was cancelled later with a new proposed date of January 23, 2024.
Monday evening the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council sponsored the presentation by Kristina Hill on “Contaminated Sites and Sea Level Rise – Preparing for Change.” Hill explained (with diagrams) how groundwater sits on top of the denser salty sea water and seeps into capped contaminated sites with sea level rise. Levees will not stop the groundwater rise.
In the Q & A, one person asked about the flooding at the Coliseum Connections Housing Project in East Oakland. Hill said she warned that the project would sit on a dry creek bed, a disaster waiting to happen.
Right now, Berkeley is in the middle of rezoning the low-lying West Berkeley contaminated Steel Casting site for a large biolab campus. The environmental impact report (EIR) is underway. The plan as of this week is still to cap the contaminated site.
You can pick up the link for the webinar from the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council home page at https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
or go directly to the webinar at https://tinyurl.com/2s4uuzbf
The 4 x 4 Committee met on the demolition ordinance. The subject of the ordinance is protections for the renters who are displaced by the demolition of the unit they are renting or the loss of a rental unit through elimination or conversion of a unit within a building. The protections include moving and relocation location assistance, first right of refusal when new building is completed, rental differential assistance in specified circumstances for example when household income falls below 50% of the AMI (area median income).
The definition of the dwelling units covered includes just about everything even non-permitted dwellings as long as they are registered with the Rent Board, also ADUs and JADUs. The exceptions are group living accommodations in a University recognized sorority or fraternity and a single-family house.
The plan for the demolition ordinance passed by the 4 x 4 Committee on October 24, 2023 is to go to the Planning Commission, Housing Advisory Commissions and City Council before the
Middle Housing Ordinance reaches the City Council.
The discussion of the proposal for Middle Housing is before the Planning Commission on November 1. The goal of Middle Housing which includes duplexes, triplexes fourplexes and small buildings is to increase density in all areas of Berkeley (R-1, R-2, R-2A, MU-R) except the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. The theory is that Middle Housing besides being “middle in size” will be naturally affordable.
The proposal includes things like by right demolition of single-family houses, removal of the minimum size restrictions of units, reducing the amount of open space. The proposed ordinance was presented to the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council on October 14. You can see that recording at: https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
Fire Chief Sprague presented the Fiscal Year 2023 in Review and the Fiscal Year 2024 Goals to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on Wednesday.
I caught up with my neighbor who was also at the meeting the next day to compare notes. We were both totally impressed by Sprague’s one hour and twenty-minute presentation and shuddered every time he mentioned succession and leadership planning. We wondered how long Berkeley would be able to keep someone this qualified.
The thrust of the presentation is that Berkeley is no longer a suburban city. Berkeley is the second most dense city of the 51 most populated cities in California. San Francisco is number one. The Fire Department resources in staff, fire fighters, equipment and facilities are not equipped for the dense city we have become with high-rises replacing single family housing, one and two-story commercial buildings and low-rise multi-unit buildings. Plus the very high fire hazard severity zones are densely populated.
Sprague’s goal of returning wildland to native vegetation, made this attendee very happy.
Sprague expects that when the evacuation emergency access study is completed next year more areas will be designated as the very highest fire risk, what we now call Fire Zone 3 or ES-R (Environmental Safety-Residential District) like Panoramic Hill. Sprague also said if Panoramic Hill is being evacuated from an oncoming fire, then we have failed. Panoramic Hill residents need to evacuate in advance.x
When Mayor Arreguin states his vision of adding 15,000 units to Berkeley which if filled would add around 30,000 to 40,000 people never have I heard that accompanied with that to have adequate services and response times Berkeley needs to upgrade and properly staff the dispatch center (think 911), add ambulances, firefighters, EMTs, replace four fire stations with new facilities and renovate three. Nor do those statements that are so appealing to the endorsements he is courting inform that the needed investment of renovating three fire stations, replacing four stations, new headquarters and the training center comes with a $330,000,000 - $372,000,000 price tag. This does not include the dispatch center.
The presentation starts on page 15 in the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission packet for the October 25, 2023 meeting. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/disaster-and-fire-safety-commission
No votes were taken on the AAO#! (Annual Appropriations Ordinance aka Fall Budget Adjustment) at the Budget Committee, however, before any more budget referrals are added, the spending requests total $38,805,924 and the available funds are $13,945,878.
The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was the last City meeting I attended for the week. Nature lost in the 600 Addison Street biolab building appeal. The appeal of the sign approved by the Design Review Committee (DRC) to the Zoning Adjustment Board was that the height and lighting of the signage was in conflict with the City Sign Ordinance. The DRC Secretary Anne Burns confessed to incorrectly informing the DRC members that the sign was in compliance with the Sign Ordinance when it wasn’t.
The developer gave their song and dance of how the signage wasn’t really advertising, that the lights would be shut off from 10 pm to 5 am and would meet the Dark Skies Initiative ignoring that unnecessary night light is in conflict with the Dark Skies Initiative and detrimental to nature. The vote was 7 to 2 in favor of the sign. The ZAB was more moved by the DRC secretary confessing to providing incorrect direction to committee members, than that the sign was in conflict with the ordinance.
The last project was to request five additional parking spaces for the 2403-2407 San Pablo multi-unit project. There was a back and forth until finally the five spaces were approved in a 7 to 2 vote. It is quite amazing how the Berkeley elected and appointed are quick to prohibit parking at large multi-unit housing projects and perfectly willing to approve 943 parking spaces for 600 Addison and large parking lots for other biolab buildings.
The San Pablo project will be condominiums. Maybe the Panoramic Hill resident who commented at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meeting that he absolutely must have [street] parking for his car or he couldn’t live on Panoramic Hill. Maybe he should take a look at the condominiums on San Pablo. It’s a nice project and not in ES-r/Fire Zone 3.
It is impossible to attend every meeting. I missed the Rent board, Loan Administration Board, Solano Business Improvement District, the Zero Waste Commission, the Civic arts Commission, the Police Accountability Board, the Community Forum on the Berkeley Marina and the Community Health Commission.
I did make it to the forum with State Senate Candidate Dan Kalb on Saturday. That was the third and final planned forum with State Senate Candidates sponsored by East Bay Community for Action. The great thing about each of these forums was we had just one candidate at a time with ample time to ask a wide variety of unscreened, unfiltered questions. I took pages and pages of notes at each forum and will send a summary in the next Activist’s Diary. The other two forums were with the candidates Kathryn Lybarger and Jovanka Beckles.
I often think I should approach writing the Activist’s Diary like plein air painting by picking a point in time and stopping, but the world and the City keep moving on while I write.
I finished Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger just two weeks before the Hamas attack on Israel. Doppelganger starts with Klein describing her double with whom she is often confused Naomi Wolf who has taken a hard right turn. In the book Klein recounts her trip to Gaza and compares the treatment of the Palestinians by Israel to the displacement and genocide of the American Indigenous People in the United States.
At the beginning of the week the death toll in Gaza was 5,791 of whom 2,360 were children. After President Joe Biden placed doubt on the number of deaths, the Gaza Health Ministry published on October 26, 2023 a 212 page list of over 6700 dead Palestinians by name, age, gender and ID number. 2665 were children. The list does not contain the names of 281 who could not be identified. As I write there is more bombing and more names to be added. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/27/headlines/gaza_health_ministry_publishes_names_of_nearly_7_000_palestinians_killed_in_israeli_strikes
The residents of Gaza are running out of food, water, medicine and fuel and now Israel has shut off power and communications. The few aid convoys into Gaza before this latest siege were wholly inadequate for what is needed for 2.2 million people. Twenty-nine journalists are confirmed dead, 24 Palestinian, 1 Lebanese, and 4 Israeli. Eight journalists were reported injured and 9 were reported missing or detained. Last night I heard the injured at the hospital in Gaza City numbered 19,000.
Will all the Israeli retaliation under the banner of turning Hamas to dust end terrorism? I doubt it. The horror raining down on Gaza, the massive destruction by Israel, the thousands dead and injured brings only more terror. It is not war crimes it is war is the crime. I believe it was Howard Zinn who said that first.
In some parts of the country, calling for a ceasefire, ending the blockade to Palestine has meant being doxed, fired, nasty emails, posts, being called anti-Semitic and death threats. But now the pictures and reports coming out of Gaza look like a genocide of the Palestinians and the demonstrations calling for a cease-fire are growing around the world and here too. And, yes I sent off my ceasefire contact letters to the President, U.S. Senators and Barbara Lee.
Tuesday was book club. We chose The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917 - 2017 by Rashid Khalidi for January.
The new speaker of the House Mike Johnson is a self-described Evangelical Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition who said “My faith informs everything I do.” Johnson previously worked as senior attorney and spokesperson for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) a Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate group.
When I downloaded Robert P. Jones’ book White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, I never expected that the new speaker of the House would be coming out of the tradition of which Jones writes (religion, politics and culture including the Evangelical Christian in the Southern Baptist tradition). The book covers how deeply white supremacy is embedded in white Christianity especially the Southern Baptist and Evangelical churches in the South. Jones goes into detail in how the Daughters of the Confederacy embedded teaching children in the “Lost Cause” mirroring religious studies at church and Sunday school with lessons, holidays and celebrations of the Confederacy.
The book is fascinating. I never knew the National Cathedral had four stained-glass windows honoring the Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (1953-2017) donated by the Daughters of the Confederacy. Those windows were replaced in 2017 (before my first visit) with racial justice themed stained-glass windows.
My copy of the book was from the Contra Costa County Library. There are four people in line for the one copy at the San Francisco Library and no copies that I could find in Berkeley.
If you are not up for a book or already in overload, Katelyn Fossett’s October 27, 2023 interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez (author of Jesus and John Wayne) on Mike Johnson will give you a peak into what is ahead. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/27/mike-johnson-christian-nationalist-ideas-qa-00123882
On to the week in Berkeley.
Monday afternoon four of us attending the Agenda and Rules Committee spoke to our concerns regarding item 22 in the draft agenda for November 7, 2023.
“22. Modernizing and updating outdated & unnecessary language in the BMC related to transportation
From: Councilmember Rigel Robinson
Recommendation: Adopt first reading of an Ordinance amending BMC Chapters 6.32, 1432 and 14.68 to: 1. Rescind outdated or unnecessary regulations pertaining to jaywalking, skateboarding, bicycle licenses and bicycle establishment requirements, 2. Allow 24/7 use of public paths by pedestrians and cyclists for the purpose of transportation; 3. Allow bicyclists on non-electric bicycles to ride on the sidewalk while exercising due care and yielding right-of-way to pedestrians when no Class I, Class II, or Class IV bicycle facility is available; 4. Align the penalty for bicycle violations with other moving violations by amending it from a misdemeanor to an infraction; 5. Update definitions of bicycles and scooters to align with definitions in the California Vehicle Code.” [emphasis added]
There was not one peep out of Mayor Arreguin and Councilmember Sophie Hahn who were up first in making comments on the draft agenda. When it was finally Councilmember Wengraf’s turn to speak she suggested that Robinson’s item 22 go to a policy committee before it went to the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission. The policy committee suggested was Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) with Councilmembers Harrison as chair with Robinson and Taplin and Humbert as the alternate.
After Wengraf started the discussion of pulling the item 22 from the November 7 agenda and sending it to committee, then Hahn and Arreguin joined in suggesting that the item should go to the Commission on Aging and the Commission on Disability. The final motion by Hahn was “to recommend to the author [Robinson] that they amend the item to include a referral to the Disability, Aging and Transportation and Infrastructure Commissions.” The annotated agenda listed only commissions and not those specifically named in the motion.
The special City Council meeting on the Waterfront Specific Plan on November 2 was still on the schedule, but it was cancelled later with a new proposed date of January 23, 2024.
Monday evening the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council sponsored the presentation by Kristina Hill on “Contaminated Sites and Sea Level Rise – Preparing for Change.” Hill explained (with diagrams) how groundwater sits on top of the denser salty sea water and seeps into capped contaminated sites with sea level rise. Levees will not stop the groundwater rise.
In the Q & A, one person asked about the flooding at the Coliseum Connections Housing Project in East Oakland. Hill said she warned that the project would sit on a dry creek bed, a disaster waiting to happen.
Right now, Berkeley is in the middle of rezoning the low-lying West Berkeley contaminated Steel Casting site for a large biolab campus. The environmental impact report (EIR) is underway. The plan as of this week is still to cap the contaminated site.
You can pick up the link for the webinar from the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council home page at https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
or go directly to the webinar at https://tinyurl.com/2s4uuzbf
The 4 x 4 Committee met on the demolition ordinance. The subject of the ordinance is protections for the renters who are displaced by the demolition of the unit they are renting or the loss of a rental unit through elimination or conversion of a unit within a building. The protections include moving and relocation location assistance, first right of refusal when new building is completed, rental differential assistance in specified circumstances for example when household income falls below 50% of the AMI (area median income).
The definition of the dwelling units covered includes just about everything even non-permitted dwellings as long as they are registered with the Rent Board, also ADUs and JADUs. The exceptions are group living accommodations in a University recognized sorority or fraternity and a single-family house.
The plan for the demolition ordinance passed by the 4 x 4 Committee on October 24, 2023 is to go to the Planning Commission, Housing Advisory Commissions and City Council before the
Middle Housing Ordinance reaches the City Council.
The discussion of the proposal for Middle Housing is before the Planning Commission on November 1. The goal of Middle Housing which includes duplexes, triplexes fourplexes and small buildings is to increase density in all areas of Berkeley (R-1, R-2, R-2A, MU-R) except the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. The theory is that Middle Housing besides being “middle in size” will be naturally affordable.
The proposal includes things like by right demolition of single-family houses, removal of the minimum size restrictions of units, reducing the amount of open space. The proposed ordinance was presented to the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council on October 14. You can see that recording at: https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
Fire Chief Sprague presented the Fiscal Year 2023 in Review and the Fiscal Year 2024 Goals to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on Wednesday.
I caught up with my neighbor who was also at the meeting the next day to compare notes. We were both totally impressed by Sprague’s one hour and twenty-minute presentation and shuddered every time he mentioned succession and leadership planning. We wondered how long Berkeley would be able to keep someone this qualified.
The thrust of the presentation is that Berkeley is no longer a suburban city. Berkeley is the second most dense city of the 51 most populated cities in California. San Francisco is number one. The Fire Department resources in staff, fire fighters, equipment and facilities are not equipped for the dense city we have become with high-rises replacing single family housing, one and two-story commercial buildings and low-rise multi-unit buildings. Plus the very high fire hazard severity zones are densely populated.
Sprague’s goal of returning wildland to native vegetation, made this attendee very happy.
Sprague expects that when the evacuation emergency access study is completed next year more areas will be designated as the very highest fire risk, what we now call Fire Zone 3 or ES-R (Environmental Safety-Residential District) like Panoramic Hill. Sprague also said if Panoramic Hill is being evacuated from an oncoming fire, then we have failed. Panoramic Hill residents need to evacuate in advance.x
When Mayor Arreguin states his vision of adding 15,000 units to Berkeley which if filled would add around 30,000 to 40,000 people never have I heard that accompanied with that to have adequate services and response times Berkeley needs to upgrade and properly staff the dispatch center (think 911), add ambulances, firefighters, EMTs, replace four fire stations with new facilities and renovate three. Nor do those statements that are so appealing to the endorsements he is courting inform that the needed investment of renovating three fire stations, replacing four stations, new headquarters and the training center comes with a $330,000,000 - $372,000,000 price tag. This does not include the dispatch center.
The presentation starts on page 15 in the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission packet for the October 25, 2023 meeting. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/disaster-and-fire-safety-commission
No votes were taken on the AAO#! (Annual Appropriations Ordinance aka Fall Budget Adjustment) at the Budget Committee, however, before any more budget referrals are added, the spending requests total $38,805,924 and the available funds are $13,945,878.
The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) was the last City meeting I attended for the week. Nature lost in the 600 Addison Street biolab building appeal. The appeal of the sign approved by the Design Review Committee (DRC) to the Zoning Adjustment Board was that the height and lighting of the signage was in conflict with the City Sign Ordinance. The DRC Secretary Anne Burns confessed to incorrectly informing the DRC members that the sign was in compliance with the Sign Ordinance when it wasn’t.
The developer gave their song and dance of how the signage wasn’t really advertising, that the lights would be shut off from 10 pm to 5 am and would meet the Dark Skies Initiative ignoring that unnecessary night light is in conflict with the Dark Skies Initiative and detrimental to nature. The vote was 7 to 2 in favor of the sign. The ZAB was more moved by the DRC secretary confessing to providing incorrect direction to committee members, than that the sign was in conflict with the ordinance.
The last project was to request five additional parking spaces for the 2403-2407 San Pablo multi-unit project. There was a back and forth until finally the five spaces were approved in a 7 to 2 vote. It is quite amazing how the Berkeley elected and appointed are quick to prohibit parking at large multi-unit housing projects and perfectly willing to approve 943 parking spaces for 600 Addison and large parking lots for other biolab buildings.
The San Pablo project will be condominiums. Maybe the Panoramic Hill resident who commented at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission meeting that he absolutely must have [street] parking for his car or he couldn’t live on Panoramic Hill. Maybe he should take a look at the condominiums on San Pablo. It’s a nice project and not in ES-r/Fire Zone 3.
It is impossible to attend every meeting. I missed the Rent board, Loan Administration Board, Solano Business Improvement District, the Zero Waste Commission, the Civic arts Commission, the Police Accountability Board, the Community Forum on the Berkeley Marina and the Community Health Commission.
I did make it to the forum with State Senate Candidate Dan Kalb on Saturday. That was the third and final planned forum with State Senate Candidates sponsored by East Bay Community for Action. The great thing about each of these forums was we had just one candidate at a time with ample time to ask a wide variety of unscreened, unfiltered questions. I took pages and pages of notes at each forum and will send a summary in the next Activist’s Diary. The other two forums were with the candidates Kathryn Lybarger and Jovanka Beckles.
October 1 & 7 the rest of what happened, Part II
The local heat wave officially ended Saturday at 11 pm. Nearly 9000 lost power in San Francisco Friday evening. The power wasn’t out for long, hours not days, but it left me wondering how the UC Berkeley students will fair in the future in their rooms with no windows when the power goes out.
Cities and buildings in warm climates used to be designed around air flow and breezes to moderate temperatures, but with air conditioning that design and planning ended. Power failures in heat waves turn buildings with few options for ventilation into furnaces.
I pay a lot more attention to these things after reading Jeff Goodell’s book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. The book starts with rather startling statistics too many to list here, but there were several things that stuck. The recorded high temperature in Portland, Oregon during that June 2021 heat dome was 116°, but Vivek Shandas who studies urban heat islands drove around Portland measuring air temperature. In the poorest areas with few trees and lots of concrete the temperature was 124°. That is called urban heat island effect.
Over 650 people in Oregon, Washington and Canada died from the June 2021 Northwest heat wave.
We actually change the micro climate when we cut down trees and cover the land with buildings, concrete and asphalt. And, that is exactly what we are doing in this endless pursuit of adding housing without thought to building cities for a heating future and making space and place for nature to survive and cooling trees with large canopies.
Nearly every mixed-use housing tower being approved in Berkeley is a state density project with 90% of the units at market rate (luxury priced) when what is needed is around 40% of the units to be affordable.
Declining population in California and erasure of the earlier projections of explosive population growth hasn’t swayed Mayor Arreguin. He declared again at the State of the City that his intention is the goal of adding 15,000 new units across all districts in Berkeley. All districts, sounds like we can see more housing in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, Landslide Zones, on the Fault Line and liquefaction zones.
If all those units fill which is questionable, Berkeley could count on somewhere between 30,000 to 40,000 new residents most of whom would be opting for apartments designed for students and needing to earn above the area medium income to pay the rent.
I’m not sure it matters much whether the units are filled, since it is the high-rise building and the land which is being bought and sold as the investment.
Be assured the state of the city is fine. You can watch the State of the City speech including the removal of chairs for the crowd that didn’t appear on Arreguin’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlQWFe-CUr4
Wednesday evening, I opted to attend the Homeless Services Panel of Experts (HSPE) instead of the Planning Commission which usually grabs my attention.
The meeting was held in the Berkeley Repertory Theater Mercer-Golden Rehearsal Hall at 999 Harrison. The building number wasn’t obvious so I made a couple of trips by the encampments (they are so depressing) on Harrison before seeing the number and landing at the building parking lot. I learned when I got inside the location was chosen to enable the homeless to attend.
Peter Radu, Assistant to the City Manager, introduced the main topic of the evening item 6 on the agenda Development of Good Neighbor Guidelines and Encampment Policy by saying “unsheltered homelessness is our new normal.” That was quite a statement.
Radu went through his presentation labeled as a draft with guidelines consisting of please throw away trash and old food, keep belongings out of the road, do not build structures that can create a fire hazard or injury risk, stay to one sidewalk side of the street and be fire safe. The policy that followed defined what made an encampment the lowest priority, medium priority or highest priority for interventions and actions. You can read the policy and accompanying letters for the October 4, 2023 HSPE meeting at: https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/homeless-services-panel-experts
Radu was asking the HSPE to forward the draft policy to the full council to be turned over to a council policy committee to finish. His suggestion was the Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Policy Committee.
The recent meetings of the Council Agenda and Rules Committee have been on a process to make council committees more effective and the process to get major legislation through city council and on to implementation. The word process is repeated deliberately, because the “process” for improving council function is spelled out complete with presentation documents, explanations, a matrix table, check lists, flow charts, rules, forms and a timeline in the 138 page packet for the October 10 City Council 4 pm special meeting.
Mayor Arreguin made it plain at the September 26 Agenda and Rules Committee (members Arreguin, Wengraf and Hahn) in the discussion that the process Councilmember Hahn has been instrumental in developing with the city manager, city clerk and others did not have his blessing. The process is the “Systems Alignment Proposal.”
The included documents in the proposal point to redesigning council work dating back several years. Some of us may recall it was former councilmember Droste who dropped the BERIPE (Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Referral Improvement and Prioritization Effort) on limiting major legislation as her parting gesture in the last days before leaving office in December 2022. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-08/article/50141?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-January-8--Kelly-Hammargren
Since I regularly attend these meetings, I was asked to submit my opinion which I did. It amounted to I don’t think charts, checklists and rules will make the desired change.
I have often called the council policy committees a detour on the way to getting things done and I said as much when my turn arrived to speak to the members of HSPE and city staff.
I suggested that the HSPE should do the work not a council committee. There were quite a few other speakers who spoke to lack of trust, destruction of property, the need for bathrooms and trash pickup. Osha Neumann commented that conditions do not correspond to the reality and Sabyl Landrum from the East Bay Community Law Center stated there was no commitment to services. Jacquie McCormick from the Mayor’s office, who said she was speaking as an individual praised Radu for his empathy and caring.
The members of the HSPE after a long discussion, voted to establish a subcommittee to work with the homeless on guidelines and policies. They set the target to complete their work to bring it back to the full HSPE for a vote in January. The HSPE rejected Radu’s ask to approve the draft guidelines and policy that evening as written and send them on to council with a referral to a policy committee to finish.
While the HSPE should have the greatest potential for working with the homeless, I continue to worry what council will do once this reaches their hands. Council’s actions show little respect for commission work except when it seems to fit something the city manager, mayor and councilmembers have already decided.
Night lights and lots of glass at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago drew migrating birds off course into deadly bird-glass collisions Wednesday night. Volunteers and scientists found the bodies of 961 migrating birds Thursday morning October 5, 2023. It is a truly shocking number of birds dying in one night at one building. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/us/birds-dead-chicago-building.html
In the chapter on big data in the book A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Scott Weidensaul writes about how tiny GPS devices on the backs of migrating birds document how night lights pull birds off their migration course into cities. Berkeley is in the Pacific flyway and like Chicago we have thousands of birds flying over us in the fall and spring migration.
Had Berkeley City Council passed the Bird Safe Ordinance last June without change as brought to them by the Planning Commission and Councilmember Harrison in her supplemental, Berkeley would have the best Bird Safe Ordinance in the nation. But, Council dismissed the scientists’ letters of support, community experts, and the teenagers who spoke passionately about their future and instead chose to gut it filling in exemptions so there is little to share with other cities.
A Dark Skies Initiative accompanied the Bird Safe Ordinance in the March 2, 2022 Planning Department Staff presentation to the Planning Commission, but then it disappeared as the months moved on and the Bird Safe Ordinance moved forward.
Andy Katz revived the Dark Skies Initiative at the Community Health Commission as a health initiative and it passed. Artificial light pollution at night is hazardous to our own health disrupting sleep and with links to breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Maybe this time looking out for our own health “Dark Skies” will spillover to benefit nocturnal wildlife and biodiversity.
City Council heard the appeals from neighbors on 705 Euclid and 1598 University at a special meeting on September 26.
The neighbors appealed the Zoning Adjustment Board approval of 705 Euclid a 4,528 square foot 3-story single family dwelling with two parking spaces and associated retaining walls. The appeal was based on the excessive height of the project, impact on views, light and air. Between the time the appeal was filed and the council hearing, the architect modified the plan and lowered the height.
At the appeal hearing the property owners for the proposed house described themselves as civil engineers. That is probably a good thing since this house in the benign sounding Hillside Overly is in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone 2 and the site is a designated landslide area according to the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
If this project had been across the street at 700 Euclid or 708 Euclid, a search of the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map would have come with the warning “All or a portion of this parcel LIES WITHIN an Earthquake Fault Zone.”
There was no mention of the warning that I could find in the staff reports that noted in the same Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map the property site came with this warning “All or a portion of this parcel LIES WITHIN a Landslide Zone.” In fact, the Geotechnical report by California Engineering Co. included in the administrative record for the appeal on page 13 states, “The site is stable, has very low liquefaction susceptibility, is not in a slide area, has no recent history of seismic activity and outside the Alquist-Priolo Special Studies Zone.”
No one seems to be calling for a moratorium or asking if there should be more housing in these hazardous zones except the Fire Chief. I found suggested locations for building ADUs right on top of the Hayward Fault in the Housing Element Update.
Council approved the 8-story state density project at 1598 University. There were a few gains by the neighbors over the months before the appeal in creating more of a stepdown into the neighborhood and three small gains the night of the appeal. The applicant/developer shall relocate the utility box at the corner with approvals from the city and utility providers, the loading zone will be moved further away from the corner and the landscape must be maintained for the life of the building. Nothing changes that this will be a big building for the neighbors backed up next to the project. This is the future.
We are going to see more high-rise buildings along main traffic corridors. We should just hope the Fire Department Master Plan is approved so we have the services to support the residents in these buildings.
I still feeling guilty about not attending the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Thursday evening with the California movie theater at 2113 Kittredge on the agenda. In its place will be an 18-story tower with a live performance stage on the commercial ground floor. I usually attend every possible public City meeting on projects, but I decided to skip the last meeting of the week on my list.
Friends are fighting to save the last film theater in the downtown. Over the recent years Berkeley lost 20 film theaters, Shattuck Cinemas, United Artists and the California. All that remains is the Elmwood and the Pacific Film Archive.
I miss going to film on the big screen and the incredible independent and foreign films that were offered at the Shattuck Cinemas, the California and Landmark Theaters throughout the area. The pandemic really killed movie theaters. Barbie and Oppenheimer might offer new life, but holding on to one theater in a shrinking chain doesn’t look like enough to save it.
In the drive I took to check out the condition of Keeler the subject of a number of speakers at the Transportation Commission, Keeler wasn’t any worse than many of the streets in the flats including in my own neighborhood. When it came my turn to speak that evening, on the five-year paving plan, I said I didn’t expect to be the contrarian, but rough streets slowed down traffic. The street in front of my house near the high school feels less like a speedway now that the condition is deteriorating.
I heard my comment repeated by commissioner Liza Lutzker. Even as she spoke movingly about her child suffering an injury on her bicycle from a deteriorating street she said she was more afraid of speeding traffic on repaved streets.
The local heat wave officially ended Saturday at 11 pm. Nearly 9000 lost power in San Francisco Friday evening. The power wasn’t out for long, hours not days, but it left me wondering how the UC Berkeley students will fair in the future in their rooms with no windows when the power goes out.
Cities and buildings in warm climates used to be designed around air flow and breezes to moderate temperatures, but with air conditioning that design and planning ended. Power failures in heat waves turn buildings with few options for ventilation into furnaces.
I pay a lot more attention to these things after reading Jeff Goodell’s book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. The book starts with rather startling statistics too many to list here, but there were several things that stuck. The recorded high temperature in Portland, Oregon during that June 2021 heat dome was 116°, but Vivek Shandas who studies urban heat islands drove around Portland measuring air temperature. In the poorest areas with few trees and lots of concrete the temperature was 124°. That is called urban heat island effect.
Over 650 people in Oregon, Washington and Canada died from the June 2021 Northwest heat wave.
We actually change the micro climate when we cut down trees and cover the land with buildings, concrete and asphalt. And, that is exactly what we are doing in this endless pursuit of adding housing without thought to building cities for a heating future and making space and place for nature to survive and cooling trees with large canopies.
Nearly every mixed-use housing tower being approved in Berkeley is a state density project with 90% of the units at market rate (luxury priced) when what is needed is around 40% of the units to be affordable.
Declining population in California and erasure of the earlier projections of explosive population growth hasn’t swayed Mayor Arreguin. He declared again at the State of the City that his intention is the goal of adding 15,000 new units across all districts in Berkeley. All districts, sounds like we can see more housing in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone, Landslide Zones, on the Fault Line and liquefaction zones.
If all those units fill which is questionable, Berkeley could count on somewhere between 30,000 to 40,000 new residents most of whom would be opting for apartments designed for students and needing to earn above the area medium income to pay the rent.
I’m not sure it matters much whether the units are filled, since it is the high-rise building and the land which is being bought and sold as the investment.
Be assured the state of the city is fine. You can watch the State of the City speech including the removal of chairs for the crowd that didn’t appear on Arreguin’s YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlQWFe-CUr4
Wednesday evening, I opted to attend the Homeless Services Panel of Experts (HSPE) instead of the Planning Commission which usually grabs my attention.
The meeting was held in the Berkeley Repertory Theater Mercer-Golden Rehearsal Hall at 999 Harrison. The building number wasn’t obvious so I made a couple of trips by the encampments (they are so depressing) on Harrison before seeing the number and landing at the building parking lot. I learned when I got inside the location was chosen to enable the homeless to attend.
Peter Radu, Assistant to the City Manager, introduced the main topic of the evening item 6 on the agenda Development of Good Neighbor Guidelines and Encampment Policy by saying “unsheltered homelessness is our new normal.” That was quite a statement.
Radu went through his presentation labeled as a draft with guidelines consisting of please throw away trash and old food, keep belongings out of the road, do not build structures that can create a fire hazard or injury risk, stay to one sidewalk side of the street and be fire safe. The policy that followed defined what made an encampment the lowest priority, medium priority or highest priority for interventions and actions. You can read the policy and accompanying letters for the October 4, 2023 HSPE meeting at: https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/homeless-services-panel-experts
Radu was asking the HSPE to forward the draft policy to the full council to be turned over to a council policy committee to finish. His suggestion was the Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Policy Committee.
The recent meetings of the Council Agenda and Rules Committee have been on a process to make council committees more effective and the process to get major legislation through city council and on to implementation. The word process is repeated deliberately, because the “process” for improving council function is spelled out complete with presentation documents, explanations, a matrix table, check lists, flow charts, rules, forms and a timeline in the 138 page packet for the October 10 City Council 4 pm special meeting.
Mayor Arreguin made it plain at the September 26 Agenda and Rules Committee (members Arreguin, Wengraf and Hahn) in the discussion that the process Councilmember Hahn has been instrumental in developing with the city manager, city clerk and others did not have his blessing. The process is the “Systems Alignment Proposal.”
The included documents in the proposal point to redesigning council work dating back several years. Some of us may recall it was former councilmember Droste who dropped the BERIPE (Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Referral Improvement and Prioritization Effort) on limiting major legislation as her parting gesture in the last days before leaving office in December 2022. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-08/article/50141?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-January-8--Kelly-Hammargren
Since I regularly attend these meetings, I was asked to submit my opinion which I did. It amounted to I don’t think charts, checklists and rules will make the desired change.
I have often called the council policy committees a detour on the way to getting things done and I said as much when my turn arrived to speak to the members of HSPE and city staff.
I suggested that the HSPE should do the work not a council committee. There were quite a few other speakers who spoke to lack of trust, destruction of property, the need for bathrooms and trash pickup. Osha Neumann commented that conditions do not correspond to the reality and Sabyl Landrum from the East Bay Community Law Center stated there was no commitment to services. Jacquie McCormick from the Mayor’s office, who said she was speaking as an individual praised Radu for his empathy and caring.
The members of the HSPE after a long discussion, voted to establish a subcommittee to work with the homeless on guidelines and policies. They set the target to complete their work to bring it back to the full HSPE for a vote in January. The HSPE rejected Radu’s ask to approve the draft guidelines and policy that evening as written and send them on to council with a referral to a policy committee to finish.
While the HSPE should have the greatest potential for working with the homeless, I continue to worry what council will do once this reaches their hands. Council’s actions show little respect for commission work except when it seems to fit something the city manager, mayor and councilmembers have already decided.
Night lights and lots of glass at the McCormick Place Lakeside Center in Chicago drew migrating birds off course into deadly bird-glass collisions Wednesday night. Volunteers and scientists found the bodies of 961 migrating birds Thursday morning October 5, 2023. It is a truly shocking number of birds dying in one night at one building. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/us/birds-dead-chicago-building.html
In the chapter on big data in the book A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, Scott Weidensaul writes about how tiny GPS devices on the backs of migrating birds document how night lights pull birds off their migration course into cities. Berkeley is in the Pacific flyway and like Chicago we have thousands of birds flying over us in the fall and spring migration.
Had Berkeley City Council passed the Bird Safe Ordinance last June without change as brought to them by the Planning Commission and Councilmember Harrison in her supplemental, Berkeley would have the best Bird Safe Ordinance in the nation. But, Council dismissed the scientists’ letters of support, community experts, and the teenagers who spoke passionately about their future and instead chose to gut it filling in exemptions so there is little to share with other cities.
A Dark Skies Initiative accompanied the Bird Safe Ordinance in the March 2, 2022 Planning Department Staff presentation to the Planning Commission, but then it disappeared as the months moved on and the Bird Safe Ordinance moved forward.
Andy Katz revived the Dark Skies Initiative at the Community Health Commission as a health initiative and it passed. Artificial light pollution at night is hazardous to our own health disrupting sleep and with links to breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Maybe this time looking out for our own health “Dark Skies” will spillover to benefit nocturnal wildlife and biodiversity.
City Council heard the appeals from neighbors on 705 Euclid and 1598 University at a special meeting on September 26.
The neighbors appealed the Zoning Adjustment Board approval of 705 Euclid a 4,528 square foot 3-story single family dwelling with two parking spaces and associated retaining walls. The appeal was based on the excessive height of the project, impact on views, light and air. Between the time the appeal was filed and the council hearing, the architect modified the plan and lowered the height.
At the appeal hearing the property owners for the proposed house described themselves as civil engineers. That is probably a good thing since this house in the benign sounding Hillside Overly is in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone 2 and the site is a designated landslide area according to the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
If this project had been across the street at 700 Euclid or 708 Euclid, a search of the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map would have come with the warning “All or a portion of this parcel LIES WITHIN an Earthquake Fault Zone.”
There was no mention of the warning that I could find in the staff reports that noted in the same Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map the property site came with this warning “All or a portion of this parcel LIES WITHIN a Landslide Zone.” In fact, the Geotechnical report by California Engineering Co. included in the administrative record for the appeal on page 13 states, “The site is stable, has very low liquefaction susceptibility, is not in a slide area, has no recent history of seismic activity and outside the Alquist-Priolo Special Studies Zone.”
No one seems to be calling for a moratorium or asking if there should be more housing in these hazardous zones except the Fire Chief. I found suggested locations for building ADUs right on top of the Hayward Fault in the Housing Element Update.
Council approved the 8-story state density project at 1598 University. There were a few gains by the neighbors over the months before the appeal in creating more of a stepdown into the neighborhood and three small gains the night of the appeal. The applicant/developer shall relocate the utility box at the corner with approvals from the city and utility providers, the loading zone will be moved further away from the corner and the landscape must be maintained for the life of the building. Nothing changes that this will be a big building for the neighbors backed up next to the project. This is the future.
We are going to see more high-rise buildings along main traffic corridors. We should just hope the Fire Department Master Plan is approved so we have the services to support the residents in these buildings.
I still feeling guilty about not attending the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) Thursday evening with the California movie theater at 2113 Kittredge on the agenda. In its place will be an 18-story tower with a live performance stage on the commercial ground floor. I usually attend every possible public City meeting on projects, but I decided to skip the last meeting of the week on my list.
Friends are fighting to save the last film theater in the downtown. Over the recent years Berkeley lost 20 film theaters, Shattuck Cinemas, United Artists and the California. All that remains is the Elmwood and the Pacific Film Archive.
I miss going to film on the big screen and the incredible independent and foreign films that were offered at the Shattuck Cinemas, the California and Landmark Theaters throughout the area. The pandemic really killed movie theaters. Barbie and Oppenheimer might offer new life, but holding on to one theater in a shrinking chain doesn’t look like enough to save it.
In the drive I took to check out the condition of Keeler the subject of a number of speakers at the Transportation Commission, Keeler wasn’t any worse than many of the streets in the flats including in my own neighborhood. When it came my turn to speak that evening, on the five-year paving plan, I said I didn’t expect to be the contrarian, but rough streets slowed down traffic. The street in front of my house near the high school feels less like a speedway now that the condition is deteriorating.
I heard my comment repeated by commissioner Liza Lutzker. Even as she spoke movingly about her child suffering an injury on her bicycle from a deteriorating street she said she was more afraid of speeding traffic on repaved streets.
Activist's Diary October 1 & 7, Part I
Last weekend in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota) where in October high temperatures are normally in the 60s, marathon officials looked at high humidity, cloudless skies, expected temperatures in the 90s and canceled the Sunday, October 1, 2023 marathon and 10-mile races. Later in the day, the temperature reached a record setting 92°. In the New York City Triathlon, a second run was substituted for the swim in the Hudson River over concerns of water contamination following flooding from Friday’s record-breaking rain of over 8 inches in one day.
Berkeley is entering its own mini-heat wave, but it doesn’t look like we’ll dip deep into fire weather or any local records will be set even with Bay Area temperatures averaging 14° above normal. Berkeley should coast with ease through this little autumn heat dome weather event that is predicted to last only a few days. But, the bigger message is the same. 2023 looks to be the hottest year ever recorded and the planet is heating faster than expected.
Monday night I received a how could I support parking in the hills call, didn’t I know that would increase the value of the property and just make traffic in an evacuation worse. I signed off to join the Sierra Club Conservation Committee meeting, but not before I said Council hasn’t studied the Fire Department Master Plan, the Dispatch Center Report and the Fire Department Evacuation Study won’t be complete until next year. There should be a moratorium on adding any density to the hills. Of course, that isn’t what happened Tuesday evening.
I’ve been a Sierra Club member for thirty years, but until I attended the Conservation Committee with Glenn Philips, Director Golden Gate Bird Alliance (formerly Golden Gate Audubon), Erin Diehm and Alfred Twu to request the Sierra Club to support the Berkeley Bird Safe Ordinance, I had always left the committee work to others. The Sierra Club endorsed the Bird Safe Ordinance.
I stayed on for the rest of the meeting listening to the discussions for over two hours until finally I couldn’t stay quiet any longer and asked, “[T]his is supposed to be conservation and where do we fit in ecosystems and nature and habitat and how do we fit that in with housing, because if we only look at climate change that’s not going to save the planet and that’s not going to save us? We also have to figure out how to fit in that [ecosystems, nature] with what we’re doing. Urban habitat is really important.”
The Sierra Club Conservation Committee is now on my already long list of meetings to attend.
If you want to vote in the fall election on who decides what the Sierra Club does or doesn’t support, join or renew your membership now. https://tinyurl.com/4mzmjhpz
The tongue-in-cheek editorial by Robert M. Smith in the October 4, 2023 Chronicle of the Department of Public Works doggedly pursuing the removal of a small bookcase for a free book exchange in front of a pet store in San Francisco’s Cole Valley seems like the perfect introduction to the October 3 Berkeley city council meeting.
At least in the removal of the small bookcase no one suffered physical injury in contrast to what was described as the punishing end to the Berkeley Chess Club on Telegraph Avenue.
Eighteen speakers stepped to the podium in the non-agenda comment period to describe their amazing experience of meeting people whose paths they would never cross without the cultural hub of the Chess Club. They spoke to Chess Club welcoming beginners to International Masters in a “beautiful mix of cultures that encapsulates Berkeley,” with the founder Jesse Sheehan keeping the Club running from dawn to dusk.
As more speakers stepped forward, they filled out the story with a business owner that had given permission for the club to meet on the plaza of the closed book store to a business owner fined $79,000 by the City of Berkeley for code violations. Their description of the torturous manhandling of Jesse Sheehan founder of the Chess Club being handcuffed with his arms behind his back and lifted by his wrists into a Berkeley Police vehicle, disappeared for hours and then dumped at an area hospital was backed up by the 12 second video of the arrest posted on the Cop Watch website. https://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/single-post/video-brutal-arrest-of-chess-club-organizer
It would take more time than I have now to find the city council meeting when councilmember Hahn extolled the culture of other cities like Paris and New York City with parks being the center of gatherings like playing chess. I commented that evening people played chess on Telegraph.
The Chess Club pointed to councilmember Robinson and gentrification at the center of this.
City Administration responded that the location of the Chess Club was the subject of code violation and the property owner came in compliance with the terms of use by the removal of the items at 2454 Telegraph (Telegraph and Haste). There were no incidents and Berkeley Police were on standby.
Robinson followed with there was a misunderstanding, the arrest of the Jesse Sheehan the founder which happened later (after the clearing of the plaza) was unrelated. The Chess Club needed to coexist with neighbors and find better locations than with this property owner. Hahn suggested parklets, Harrison offered District 4 and Bartlett offered to help them form a nonprofit.
All this, oh we care so much was punctuated by Hahn’s “…I whole heartedly share your vision for enlivened street for community gathering…”
It seems it was the make up of the people playing chess not being preppy enough that was at the core of the take down.
Not being a chess player myself, I never stopped to linger when I’ve walked up to Telegraph, but I loved seeing the pairs of people seated at the tables out on the plaza in front of a closed storefront concentrating on their next chess move. It was so Berkeley.
Council moved on to the consent calendar which included approving the appointment by Robinson to fill a vacant seat on the Police Accountability Board (PAB). More speakers stepped forward, this time representing the ASUC AAVP (Associated Students of the University of California Academic Affairs Vice President) and the Cal Berkeley Democrats asking the PAB to investigate the police brutality caught on video and reminding council of the leaked racist texts from Berkeley Police officers. Chess Club was a diverse mix of people.
It was after 8 pm when council moved on to the ADU Ordinance. Councilmember Kesarwani could be seen grinning on zoom as Mayor Arreguin took to forming a final motion around Kesarwani’s Supplemental (draft conditions).
Council brushed aside the comments from Wengraf that even on a normal day without fire and evacuations, delivery trucks and parked cars on the narrow winding roads block access. In Wengraf’s moving plea, she said this is a problem now stating “We have lost lives by emergency vehicles not being able to get through. People have died because first responders can’t get through. The focus on evacuation modeling is a mistake…”
Councilmember Humbert, District 8 had little to say during the entire evening except to praise city staff and Kesarwani, to suggest removing excess vegetation, figure out red curbing and consider building separation. It is not surprising, but should be that he had so little to say when Panoramic Hill, Fire Zone 3, the Highest Risk Fire Hazard Severity Zone in the entire city sits in his district.
At the September 27, 2023 Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, Janice Thomas returned with copies of the Panoramic Patter from July 1952 showing that discussion with the City of Berkeley for a secondary access road to Panoramic Hill has been going off and on (mostly off) for over seventy years.
It was commissioner Harrison Raine (appointed by Robinson District 7) who placed the State Fire Marshall’s June 2023 report recommendation for a secondary access road to Panoramic Hill on the August 2, 2023 commission meeting agenda for discussion.
At the September meeting, it was former mayor and commissioner Shirley Dean who brought the agenda item recommending that the commission forward Thomas’s letter with a cover letter to council. Unable to reach agreement on the content of a cover letter, the commission postponed action to the next meeting.
During the lengthy Panoramic Hill discussion that ensued, Raine stated there should be a focus on home hardening and sheltering in place not evacuation.
When I heard sheltering in place, all I could think of was my drive to Hiller-Highlands after the Oakland - Berkeley Hills fire in 1991. The reality of it sunk in as I looked over the devastation with little left other than foundations and chimneys.
Of course, no one knows whether their home hardening actually works until a fire reaches them.
In pictures from the August Lahaina fire, the recently remodeled Millikin home with a commercial grade steel roof and five feet of river stones around the house stood as the only surviving intact house surrounded by burned to the ground structures. Fire experts credit the river rock as giving the landing embers nothing to burn.
Even a casual look at Berkeley shows a city of wildfire fuel, wood fences, decks and balconies, patio furniture, invasive vegetation and buildings closely packed in next to each other. Whether rain gutters are free from debris, vents are protected against floating embers and roofs are rated for fire zones is another question.
When past fires show flying embers driven by wind jumping six lanes of freeway into Coffey Park in the Tubbs fire and eight lanes in the Oakland – Berkeley Hills Fire, no part of Berkeley is safe from a rapidly moving wind driven fire starting in the hills.
Councilmember Harrison’s issues revolved around off-street parking should not be required and accessory buildings (garages, garden sheds, etc.) need to have the same Structure Separation Distance (SSD) setbacks and standards as ADUs. She urged the council to pushback against HCD where it conflicts with safety. Harrison referred to Paradise as the example of more cars making it more difficult to evacuate and for fire trucks to get in. In her assessment, off street parking would just add more cars in an evacuation.
The investigative reporting by Paige St. John, Joseph Serna and Rong-Gong Lin II would disagree with the notion that it was too many cars. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
Their December 30, 2018 “Must Reads: Here’s how Paradise ignored warnings and became a deathtrap” tells the story of a city council ignoring warnings and choosing to reduce pedestrian car injuries by narrowing the road:
“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. [emphasis added]
The plan also warned of ‘a high potential for large damaging fires and loss of life and property’ in the Concow Basin beside Paradise. Heavy fuel loads, steep terrain, poor access and light flashy fuels create sever fire hazards. The increased population in this area creates a high potential for catastrophic life and property loss…’
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,’ said 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.’” [emphasis added] https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
Former Berkeley Mayor and current Disaster and Fire Safety Commissioner Shirley Dean who is in her eighties but not yet as old as not as old as Mildred Eselin was in 2014 was finally allowed to speak at 10:31 pm and said this to Berkeley’s mayor and council:
“Tonight, I am speaking as an individual. I am deeply disappointed in many of the comments that I heard tonight from various councilmembers. I suggest that Berkeley should challenge HCD’s ill-founded contention that Berkeley allow both an ADU and a JADU on each parcel in high fire risk zones 2 and 3. Of the 51 largest California cities, Berkeley ranks #2. We are denser than Los Angeles and San Diego. and within our little land area we uniquely have an Earthquake fault Zone and officially designated landslide and liquefaction areas. You can’t escape the fact that we already have a huge fire safety and evacuation problem.
You are also being asked to consider what to do about parking within a half mile of public transportation but remember that much of the public transportation in the hills lies within the designated Earthquake Fault. Even though for years, cars in the hills park on our narrow winding streets and today those streets can’t function for both firefighting going up and residents fleeing going down.
The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission has asked time and time again for enforcement of existing parking restrictions and have been ignored. You need to enact a moratorium on all new detached structures in Fire Zones 2 and 3 at least until the Evacuation Study is completed and it is determined what the appropriate separation distance should be between structures. Building separation is a key factor in reducing the spread of a fire and will improve fire safety and evacuation for everyone.
Please listen to your Fire Department who are your staff that understands the issues and what to do about them for the greatest safety for all of us.”
Standards for accessory buildings turned into a referral to the City Manager “to consider changes to development standards with specific consideration for setbacks, height, and building separation for accessory buildings and structures to promote fire safety citywide.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for the City to come up with any requirements for accessory structures which can at any time be converted to an ADU by right without regard to building separation, setbacks or height as long as the same footprint is used.
When someone brags about how much they’ve done or how this or that was passed by council, check if that action was a referral to the City Manager. If it was a referral, you may be waiting a very very long time or never see it again. It took almost five years from start to finish to get the Bird Safe Ordinance passed.
On October 10 we’ll see if Hahn and Wengraf stand their ground and abstain while the other seven vote yes again at the second reading of the ADU ordinance.
The City of Oakland took a different path with a very strong stand against HCD.
Last weekend in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota) where in October high temperatures are normally in the 60s, marathon officials looked at high humidity, cloudless skies, expected temperatures in the 90s and canceled the Sunday, October 1, 2023 marathon and 10-mile races. Later in the day, the temperature reached a record setting 92°. In the New York City Triathlon, a second run was substituted for the swim in the Hudson River over concerns of water contamination following flooding from Friday’s record-breaking rain of over 8 inches in one day.
Berkeley is entering its own mini-heat wave, but it doesn’t look like we’ll dip deep into fire weather or any local records will be set even with Bay Area temperatures averaging 14° above normal. Berkeley should coast with ease through this little autumn heat dome weather event that is predicted to last only a few days. But, the bigger message is the same. 2023 looks to be the hottest year ever recorded and the planet is heating faster than expected.
Monday night I received a how could I support parking in the hills call, didn’t I know that would increase the value of the property and just make traffic in an evacuation worse. I signed off to join the Sierra Club Conservation Committee meeting, but not before I said Council hasn’t studied the Fire Department Master Plan, the Dispatch Center Report and the Fire Department Evacuation Study won’t be complete until next year. There should be a moratorium on adding any density to the hills. Of course, that isn’t what happened Tuesday evening.
I’ve been a Sierra Club member for thirty years, but until I attended the Conservation Committee with Glenn Philips, Director Golden Gate Bird Alliance (formerly Golden Gate Audubon), Erin Diehm and Alfred Twu to request the Sierra Club to support the Berkeley Bird Safe Ordinance, I had always left the committee work to others. The Sierra Club endorsed the Bird Safe Ordinance.
I stayed on for the rest of the meeting listening to the discussions for over two hours until finally I couldn’t stay quiet any longer and asked, “[T]his is supposed to be conservation and where do we fit in ecosystems and nature and habitat and how do we fit that in with housing, because if we only look at climate change that’s not going to save the planet and that’s not going to save us? We also have to figure out how to fit in that [ecosystems, nature] with what we’re doing. Urban habitat is really important.”
The Sierra Club Conservation Committee is now on my already long list of meetings to attend.
If you want to vote in the fall election on who decides what the Sierra Club does or doesn’t support, join or renew your membership now. https://tinyurl.com/4mzmjhpz
The tongue-in-cheek editorial by Robert M. Smith in the October 4, 2023 Chronicle of the Department of Public Works doggedly pursuing the removal of a small bookcase for a free book exchange in front of a pet store in San Francisco’s Cole Valley seems like the perfect introduction to the October 3 Berkeley city council meeting.
At least in the removal of the small bookcase no one suffered physical injury in contrast to what was described as the punishing end to the Berkeley Chess Club on Telegraph Avenue.
Eighteen speakers stepped to the podium in the non-agenda comment period to describe their amazing experience of meeting people whose paths they would never cross without the cultural hub of the Chess Club. They spoke to Chess Club welcoming beginners to International Masters in a “beautiful mix of cultures that encapsulates Berkeley,” with the founder Jesse Sheehan keeping the Club running from dawn to dusk.
As more speakers stepped forward, they filled out the story with a business owner that had given permission for the club to meet on the plaza of the closed book store to a business owner fined $79,000 by the City of Berkeley for code violations. Their description of the torturous manhandling of Jesse Sheehan founder of the Chess Club being handcuffed with his arms behind his back and lifted by his wrists into a Berkeley Police vehicle, disappeared for hours and then dumped at an area hospital was backed up by the 12 second video of the arrest posted on the Cop Watch website. https://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/single-post/video-brutal-arrest-of-chess-club-organizer
It would take more time than I have now to find the city council meeting when councilmember Hahn extolled the culture of other cities like Paris and New York City with parks being the center of gatherings like playing chess. I commented that evening people played chess on Telegraph.
The Chess Club pointed to councilmember Robinson and gentrification at the center of this.
City Administration responded that the location of the Chess Club was the subject of code violation and the property owner came in compliance with the terms of use by the removal of the items at 2454 Telegraph (Telegraph and Haste). There were no incidents and Berkeley Police were on standby.
Robinson followed with there was a misunderstanding, the arrest of the Jesse Sheehan the founder which happened later (after the clearing of the plaza) was unrelated. The Chess Club needed to coexist with neighbors and find better locations than with this property owner. Hahn suggested parklets, Harrison offered District 4 and Bartlett offered to help them form a nonprofit.
All this, oh we care so much was punctuated by Hahn’s “…I whole heartedly share your vision for enlivened street for community gathering…”
It seems it was the make up of the people playing chess not being preppy enough that was at the core of the take down.
Not being a chess player myself, I never stopped to linger when I’ve walked up to Telegraph, but I loved seeing the pairs of people seated at the tables out on the plaza in front of a closed storefront concentrating on their next chess move. It was so Berkeley.
Council moved on to the consent calendar which included approving the appointment by Robinson to fill a vacant seat on the Police Accountability Board (PAB). More speakers stepped forward, this time representing the ASUC AAVP (Associated Students of the University of California Academic Affairs Vice President) and the Cal Berkeley Democrats asking the PAB to investigate the police brutality caught on video and reminding council of the leaked racist texts from Berkeley Police officers. Chess Club was a diverse mix of people.
It was after 8 pm when council moved on to the ADU Ordinance. Councilmember Kesarwani could be seen grinning on zoom as Mayor Arreguin took to forming a final motion around Kesarwani’s Supplemental (draft conditions).
Council brushed aside the comments from Wengraf that even on a normal day without fire and evacuations, delivery trucks and parked cars on the narrow winding roads block access. In Wengraf’s moving plea, she said this is a problem now stating “We have lost lives by emergency vehicles not being able to get through. People have died because first responders can’t get through. The focus on evacuation modeling is a mistake…”
Councilmember Humbert, District 8 had little to say during the entire evening except to praise city staff and Kesarwani, to suggest removing excess vegetation, figure out red curbing and consider building separation. It is not surprising, but should be that he had so little to say when Panoramic Hill, Fire Zone 3, the Highest Risk Fire Hazard Severity Zone in the entire city sits in his district.
At the September 27, 2023 Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, Janice Thomas returned with copies of the Panoramic Patter from July 1952 showing that discussion with the City of Berkeley for a secondary access road to Panoramic Hill has been going off and on (mostly off) for over seventy years.
It was commissioner Harrison Raine (appointed by Robinson District 7) who placed the State Fire Marshall’s June 2023 report recommendation for a secondary access road to Panoramic Hill on the August 2, 2023 commission meeting agenda for discussion.
At the September meeting, it was former mayor and commissioner Shirley Dean who brought the agenda item recommending that the commission forward Thomas’s letter with a cover letter to council. Unable to reach agreement on the content of a cover letter, the commission postponed action to the next meeting.
During the lengthy Panoramic Hill discussion that ensued, Raine stated there should be a focus on home hardening and sheltering in place not evacuation.
When I heard sheltering in place, all I could think of was my drive to Hiller-Highlands after the Oakland - Berkeley Hills fire in 1991. The reality of it sunk in as I looked over the devastation with little left other than foundations and chimneys.
Of course, no one knows whether their home hardening actually works until a fire reaches them.
In pictures from the August Lahaina fire, the recently remodeled Millikin home with a commercial grade steel roof and five feet of river stones around the house stood as the only surviving intact house surrounded by burned to the ground structures. Fire experts credit the river rock as giving the landing embers nothing to burn.
Even a casual look at Berkeley shows a city of wildfire fuel, wood fences, decks and balconies, patio furniture, invasive vegetation and buildings closely packed in next to each other. Whether rain gutters are free from debris, vents are protected against floating embers and roofs are rated for fire zones is another question.
When past fires show flying embers driven by wind jumping six lanes of freeway into Coffey Park in the Tubbs fire and eight lanes in the Oakland – Berkeley Hills Fire, no part of Berkeley is safe from a rapidly moving wind driven fire starting in the hills.
Councilmember Harrison’s issues revolved around off-street parking should not be required and accessory buildings (garages, garden sheds, etc.) need to have the same Structure Separation Distance (SSD) setbacks and standards as ADUs. She urged the council to pushback against HCD where it conflicts with safety. Harrison referred to Paradise as the example of more cars making it more difficult to evacuate and for fire trucks to get in. In her assessment, off street parking would just add more cars in an evacuation.
The investigative reporting by Paige St. John, Joseph Serna and Rong-Gong Lin II would disagree with the notion that it was too many cars. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
Their December 30, 2018 “Must Reads: Here’s how Paradise ignored warnings and became a deathtrap” tells the story of a city council ignoring warnings and choosing to reduce pedestrian car injuries by narrowing the road:
“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. [emphasis added]
The plan also warned of ‘a high potential for large damaging fires and loss of life and property’ in the Concow Basin beside Paradise. Heavy fuel loads, steep terrain, poor access and light flashy fuels create sever fire hazards. The increased population in this area creates a high potential for catastrophic life and property loss…’
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,’ said 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.’” [emphasis added] https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-camp-fire-deathtrap-20181230-story.html
Former Berkeley Mayor and current Disaster and Fire Safety Commissioner Shirley Dean who is in her eighties but not yet as old as not as old as Mildred Eselin was in 2014 was finally allowed to speak at 10:31 pm and said this to Berkeley’s mayor and council:
“Tonight, I am speaking as an individual. I am deeply disappointed in many of the comments that I heard tonight from various councilmembers. I suggest that Berkeley should challenge HCD’s ill-founded contention that Berkeley allow both an ADU and a JADU on each parcel in high fire risk zones 2 and 3. Of the 51 largest California cities, Berkeley ranks #2. We are denser than Los Angeles and San Diego. and within our little land area we uniquely have an Earthquake fault Zone and officially designated landslide and liquefaction areas. You can’t escape the fact that we already have a huge fire safety and evacuation problem.
You are also being asked to consider what to do about parking within a half mile of public transportation but remember that much of the public transportation in the hills lies within the designated Earthquake Fault. Even though for years, cars in the hills park on our narrow winding streets and today those streets can’t function for both firefighting going up and residents fleeing going down.
The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission has asked time and time again for enforcement of existing parking restrictions and have been ignored. You need to enact a moratorium on all new detached structures in Fire Zones 2 and 3 at least until the Evacuation Study is completed and it is determined what the appropriate separation distance should be between structures. Building separation is a key factor in reducing the spread of a fire and will improve fire safety and evacuation for everyone.
Please listen to your Fire Department who are your staff that understands the issues and what to do about them for the greatest safety for all of us.”
Standards for accessory buildings turned into a referral to the City Manager “to consider changes to development standards with specific consideration for setbacks, height, and building separation for accessory buildings and structures to promote fire safety citywide.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting for the City to come up with any requirements for accessory structures which can at any time be converted to an ADU by right without regard to building separation, setbacks or height as long as the same footprint is used.
When someone brags about how much they’ve done or how this or that was passed by council, check if that action was a referral to the City Manager. If it was a referral, you may be waiting a very very long time or never see it again. It took almost five years from start to finish to get the Bird Safe Ordinance passed.
On October 10 we’ll see if Hahn and Wengraf stand their ground and abstain while the other seven vote yes again at the second reading of the ADU ordinance.
The City of Oakland took a different path with a very strong stand against HCD.
Activist's Diary September 24, 2023
After neighbors on Keeler showed up at the Transportation Commission on Thursday complaining about the condition of their street in the hills, I decided it was time for another drive into the Berkeley hills. Keeler wasn’t the only reason, I was curious after hearing Councilmember Wengraf say during the City Council debate on the ADU Ordinance Tuesday evening, that property owners in the hills didn’t know where to put their fences as the hills were moving and property lines weren’t clear.
Adding to the urgency, nothing was settled Tuesday evening. City Council ended in a split vote (4 to 4) on the Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) Ordinance in the Hillside Overly, the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ) and will take up the ADU Ordinance again on October 3, 2023. It is item 10 on the agenda. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-regular-meeting-eagenda-october-3-2023
Writing about adding ADUs aka granny flats in the Berkeley Hills is a constantly moving target.
The more I read, the more I dig the messier it gets. Just this morning J.K. Dineen wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle about multiple vacant multi-unit buildings in San Francisco. That was a contrast to the stories with the usual splashes about not building new housing.
I’ve always wondered how many vacant housing units there are in Berkeley with the “for lease” signs that never seem to go away. We’re supposed to get that answer with the vacancy tax?
Before leaving, I studied the online Berkeley street map and the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation showing the fault lines and landslide areas in the North Berkeley Hills. Most of Keeler is in designated landslide areas and all of Keeler is in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.
This is the link to the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map I checked. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
The map opens to the entire state of California. Typing Berkeley into the box with the magnifier will center it over Berkeley. By clicking on the + symbol the map can be enlarged to the point where the street address is visible. From there you can click on an address and learn if the parcel is in a Fault Zone, Liquefaction Zone or Landslide Zone. The fault lines are broken black lines, areas of required investigation before building are yellow, landslide areas are in blue and yellow and liquefaction is green.
I didn’t stop to check if the map of the fault line and landslide areas was included with the open houses for sale I drove by, maybe next time.
I’ve driven Marin and Spruce many times, but never into the bowels of the North Berkeley Hills. This time I drove up and down the narrow winding roads filled with canyons and hills that are better suited to deer and wildlife than the houses I saw packed in closely next to each other hanging over cliffs or perched on hillsides. I didn’t count the number of times I crossed the Hayward Fault or meandered in and out of the earthquake zones of required investigation.
There is no way to get a sense of the topography by looking at a google map. Even the 3D map versions are of little help in giving a true sense of the terrain. Nearly all of what I drove was designated as landslide zones.
It is no wonder that Wengraf is so concerned about wildland urban fire. The evidence of the foolishness of adding density to an area that should have remained wildland instead of turning it into a densely packed urban area was everywhere.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023 was the first time I can remember a split vote with Council unable to reach a majority vote and continuing the agenda item to the next meeting (October 3, 2024). The presentations, public comment and debate on ADUs started after the evening break at 8 pm and ended at 11:15 pm with Hahn, Wengraf, Robinson and Arreguin on one side and Kesarwani, Taplin, Barlett and Humbert on the other. Councilmember Harrison was away representing the City.
While Mayor Arreguin voted with Wengraf, Hahn and Robinson on the 19th, he was back at the podium in the State of the City last night talking about his aspiration to exceed the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of the assigned 8934 new housing units in Berkeley. Instead Arreguin set his sights on adding 15,000 housing units in Berkeley and spreading them across all districts. That should keep the real estate and building industries and unions happy that have lined up behind Arreguin with their endorsements in his run for State Senate Seat District 7.
Fire Chief Sprague in his presentation on the 19th laid out the real Berkeley fire risk and concluded with “The scientific data presented in the supplemental, coupled with the region’s cyclic relationship with significant fire events, are the reason Berkeley Fire Department strongly believes that a moratorium should be considered on any development within the Fire Zones that: increases HU/ac (housing units per acre), reduces existing non-conforming SSD (Structure Separation Distance – puts buildings closer together), increases population or increases the number of vehicles that will use the roadway during a wildfire.”
ADUs and JADUs are supposed to be naturally affordable, because they are added on existing lots or to existing housing stock. An ADU is a completely independent living unit and can be detached or attached to a single-family home. A JADU (Junior ADU) is built completely within an existing home by converting/renovating an underutilized part of the house.
HCD Accessory Handbook https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/ADUHandbookUpdate.pdf
There is pressure to build enormous amounts of housing when population in California is in decline. The latest update from the Department of Finance projects population to continue in decline for the next several years and then slowly grow until it peaks in 2044 with a population increase of 635,426 over 2020 to 40,155,497. Then population falls into slow decline until by 2060 there are fewer people in California in 2060 than 2020. Document P-1A Total Population for California gives the revised year by year projections. https://dof.ca.gov/forecasting/demographics/projections/
It might be easier to follow by watching Marc Verville’s presentation to Livable California on September 23, 2023. It is posted on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtVEkLx3-Qs
You can turn the YouTube video instantaneously into a transcript by pasting the link into YouTube Transcript. It’s not perfect, but close. https://youtubetranscript.com/
The process to get to the 8,934 new housing units assigned to Berkeley to build starts with the California Department of Finance. The California Department of Finance creates the projections of population growth. This is turned over to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) which turns the population projections into new housing needs to be built over an eight-year cycle. Then HCD breaks down housing needs by region and assigns the housing needs known as the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) to the Council of Governments (COG) which breaks it down further to cities and counties which must develop a plan called the Housing Element of where all this new housing can go to meet the assigned allotment in the eight-year cycle currently 2023 – 2031.
Our regional COG is the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) of which Mayor Jesse Arreguin is the President.
Finding places to build means cities and counties with a shortage of vacant lots and “underutilized” buildings to demolish for new housing are pushed into upzoning, which is changing zoning to put more housing, more people on a lot, which adds more density, increases the value of the land and gives incentive to demolish whatever happens to exist on a lot.
ADUs and JADUs aren’t counted like houses and multi-family units so they increase building structures decreasing the SSD and add population density all while slipping under the radar except for the RHNA count.
The cities and counties aren’t actually building the housing (at least usually), that goes into the hands of developers/builders. When cities and counties fail to meet their target allocation of building new housing midway through the eight year RHNA/Housing Element cycle, there is something called “Builder’s Remedy” which basically lets builder’s bypass zoning and approval processes as long as 20% of dwellings/units are for low-income households (up to $112,150 annual income for a household of 4 in Alameda County) or when 100% of the units are for moderate income households (up to $177,500 annual income for a household of 4 in Alameda County).
You can read the entire chart of income levels by category by county starting on page 6. https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/grants-and-funding/income-limits-2023.pdf
The only problem with all of this is it seems the California Department of Finance made a little(?) error in their overly ambitious projections of population growth moving into the current RHNA cycle. Instead of fantastical future growth, the population in California is actually in decline. The Department of Finance press release of May 1, 2023 laid the ground that population projections had been overly optimistic. https://dof.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/352/Forecasting/Demographics/Documents/E-1_2023PressRelease.pdf
The new updated population projections made public in July 2023 set the total California population gain for 2031, the year this Housing Element cycle ends as only 11,957 more people than 2020.
In January 2021 ten months into the pandemic when California population was in decline, ABAG under the leadership of Arreguin as President in its ABAG Plan Bay Area 2050 their plan for the future used the fantastical growth for the Bay Area of 51% since 2015. The Plan Bay Area 2050 projected population growth of 1,367,000 for just the Bay Area. https://www.planbayarea.org/digital-library/plan-bay-area-2050-final-blueprint-growth-pattern
Back to the RHNA assignment to Berkeley to build 8934 new housing units. It is based on old fantastical growth projections not the Department of Finance July 2023 revision. The Housing Element for Berkeley and every entity in California is built on population growth that the Department of Finance no longer supports.
HCD is still operating on and holding cities to building housing for fantastical population growth predictions. Other cities are resisting with some suing over the RHNA assignments, but not Berkeley.
In 2022, Berkeley ranked as 84th in density in the U.S. When the ranking is narrowed to cities between 100,000 and 150,000, Berkeley is the second densest city in the nation. Listening to Arreguin, it sounds like his intention is to overtake that second in density rating. The agreement Arreguin negotiated with UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ appears to put student population growth on the accelerator. That agreement which can fill an entire Planet issue is a subject for another day.
On to the ordinance to add ADUs in the benign sounding “Hillside Overlay.” That title encompasses all of the hazards which are layered on top of each other, the Hayward Fault, the designated landslide areas and the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone and Wildland Urban Interface.
After multiple stops and starts, City Council separated the ADU Ordinance into two Ordinances. The first ADU Ordinance covering all of Berkeley except the Hillside Overlay passed in a unanimous vote on January 18, 2022. It was modeled on Councilmember Kesarwani’s Supplemental encouraging adding ADUs.
The ADU Ordinance for the Hillside Overlay based on the Hahn-Wengraf revised material for fire safety requirements using the public safety exception was passed on January 25, 2022. While allowing ADUs, it included firm setback requirements for building separation at property lines, prohibited intrusion into the setbacks and rooftop decks and included off-street parking requirements
There were memorable points in that January 2022 evening. While there was overwhelming public comment in support for the Hahn-Wengraf supplemental there were a few outliers like Todd Andrew who commented that evacuation in a fire would not be a problem as people would be driving down Marin.
When Wengraf took the floor after public comment closed, she shared the video of people evacuating in the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire where 25 people died. It was pretty raw. Wengraf said this as she commented on the video, “this is what an evacuation looks like. There is no such thing as an orderly peaceful choreographed evacuation. It’s chaotic, it’s driven by fear and panic and everybody is racing for their lives.”
What I remember most about January 2022 evening was not the end of the evening with seconds running out in a 5 to 4 vote when Councilmember Bartlett said he thought he voted the wrong way and asked for reconsideration to change his vote. In the 5 to 4 revote, Bartlett sided with the motion based on the Hahn-Wengraf Supplemental.
The memory that stood out the most that evening was Councilmember Kesarwani’s long winded comment on the simmering resentment of perceived inequity between the North Berkeley Hills and the “flats,” South and West Berkeley. An excerpt of her comments is included here:
“…I do have to say that those stone pillars that mark the areas of the city that were designed to exclude people of color…you know that does sting, that stings for me as a woman of color and that stings for my constituents and I just want to share with you my perspective that when you put forward limits that are very much different from what the rest of the flats are doing are going to be part of the housing solution that does rub some of us the wrong way and I’m trying to see your perspective and spend a lot of time driving around the hills on those narrow winding streets and I do want to say that it is unsafe up there. There are real concerns. But I do think we also have to figure out how can we do, how can we affirmatively further housing. You know that’s fair to the whole city, but that also mitigates wildfire risk and that it is my view that we follow the minimum requirements of state law and as it relates to ADUs.”
While Kesarwani acknowledged the real fire danger, more important to her was fulfilling equity, that the hills did not have exceptions and were under the same conditions as the flats for adding ADUs. That stand lost to public safety in January 2022.
The perception of privilege and the impacts of redlining lingers. The demographic chart of the Berkeley City Council Districts by race and home ownership tells the difference. In addition, the hills create a natural barrier to the homeless encampments that settle in the flats mostly in Districts 1, 2, and 3 with smaller encampments in District 4.
On October 17, 2022 HCD sent a letter to Jordan Klein, Director of Planning and Development Department stating that Berkeley’s ADU Ordinances did not comply with State Law.
Now we are back at this again, with a split City Council on what to do about adding ADUs in the Hillside overlay with its many dangers, the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, the Hayward Fault, and designated Landslides Zones.
Last January were the landslides. Significant fires cycle about every 20 years. The last major fire was 32 years ago, 1991. Berkeley is overdue. In 1868 the ground on the Hayward Fault line shifted six feet. A major earthquake on the Hayward Fault is overdue too.
There is limited egress and ingress to the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones.
How will thousands of residents in the Berkeley Hills evacuate while the Fire Department tries to make it in? All we really have are Marin and Spruce. Grizzly Peak through the very high fire zone really isn’t a way out.
Chief Sprague has a lot more worry than the thousands of residents in the Berkeley Hills. He has the department firefighters. Adding to all of this is climate change, the dangerous winds where fires create their own weather patterns. Fires can go up or down the hills and canyons. Embers can float in the wind and start new fires including in places not expected to burn like Coffey Park in the Tubbs fire.
Will City Council ignore the warnings from Fire Chief Sprague and acquiesce to HCD or will City Council heed the warnings and put forth the case to attend to public safety first? Will the simmering resentment over perceived privilege put the entire city at risk? These are open questions. Wengraf called City Council to challenge HCD. There are strong arguments to be made.
After neighbors on Keeler showed up at the Transportation Commission on Thursday complaining about the condition of their street in the hills, I decided it was time for another drive into the Berkeley hills. Keeler wasn’t the only reason, I was curious after hearing Councilmember Wengraf say during the City Council debate on the ADU Ordinance Tuesday evening, that property owners in the hills didn’t know where to put their fences as the hills were moving and property lines weren’t clear.
Adding to the urgency, nothing was settled Tuesday evening. City Council ended in a split vote (4 to 4) on the Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) Ordinance in the Hillside Overly, the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ) and will take up the ADU Ordinance again on October 3, 2023. It is item 10 on the agenda. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-regular-meeting-eagenda-october-3-2023
Writing about adding ADUs aka granny flats in the Berkeley Hills is a constantly moving target.
The more I read, the more I dig the messier it gets. Just this morning J.K. Dineen wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle about multiple vacant multi-unit buildings in San Francisco. That was a contrast to the stories with the usual splashes about not building new housing.
I’ve always wondered how many vacant housing units there are in Berkeley with the “for lease” signs that never seem to go away. We’re supposed to get that answer with the vacancy tax?
Before leaving, I studied the online Berkeley street map and the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation showing the fault lines and landslide areas in the North Berkeley Hills. Most of Keeler is in designated landslide areas and all of Keeler is in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.
This is the link to the Earthquake Zones of Required Investigation map I checked. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/EQZApp/app/
The map opens to the entire state of California. Typing Berkeley into the box with the magnifier will center it over Berkeley. By clicking on the + symbol the map can be enlarged to the point where the street address is visible. From there you can click on an address and learn if the parcel is in a Fault Zone, Liquefaction Zone or Landslide Zone. The fault lines are broken black lines, areas of required investigation before building are yellow, landslide areas are in blue and yellow and liquefaction is green.
I didn’t stop to check if the map of the fault line and landslide areas was included with the open houses for sale I drove by, maybe next time.
I’ve driven Marin and Spruce many times, but never into the bowels of the North Berkeley Hills. This time I drove up and down the narrow winding roads filled with canyons and hills that are better suited to deer and wildlife than the houses I saw packed in closely next to each other hanging over cliffs or perched on hillsides. I didn’t count the number of times I crossed the Hayward Fault or meandered in and out of the earthquake zones of required investigation.
There is no way to get a sense of the topography by looking at a google map. Even the 3D map versions are of little help in giving a true sense of the terrain. Nearly all of what I drove was designated as landslide zones.
It is no wonder that Wengraf is so concerned about wildland urban fire. The evidence of the foolishness of adding density to an area that should have remained wildland instead of turning it into a densely packed urban area was everywhere.
Tuesday, September 19, 2023 was the first time I can remember a split vote with Council unable to reach a majority vote and continuing the agenda item to the next meeting (October 3, 2024). The presentations, public comment and debate on ADUs started after the evening break at 8 pm and ended at 11:15 pm with Hahn, Wengraf, Robinson and Arreguin on one side and Kesarwani, Taplin, Barlett and Humbert on the other. Councilmember Harrison was away representing the City.
While Mayor Arreguin voted with Wengraf, Hahn and Robinson on the 19th, he was back at the podium in the State of the City last night talking about his aspiration to exceed the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of the assigned 8934 new housing units in Berkeley. Instead Arreguin set his sights on adding 15,000 housing units in Berkeley and spreading them across all districts. That should keep the real estate and building industries and unions happy that have lined up behind Arreguin with their endorsements in his run for State Senate Seat District 7.
Fire Chief Sprague in his presentation on the 19th laid out the real Berkeley fire risk and concluded with “The scientific data presented in the supplemental, coupled with the region’s cyclic relationship with significant fire events, are the reason Berkeley Fire Department strongly believes that a moratorium should be considered on any development within the Fire Zones that: increases HU/ac (housing units per acre), reduces existing non-conforming SSD (Structure Separation Distance – puts buildings closer together), increases population or increases the number of vehicles that will use the roadway during a wildfire.”
ADUs and JADUs are supposed to be naturally affordable, because they are added on existing lots or to existing housing stock. An ADU is a completely independent living unit and can be detached or attached to a single-family home. A JADU (Junior ADU) is built completely within an existing home by converting/renovating an underutilized part of the house.
HCD Accessory Handbook https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/ADUHandbookUpdate.pdf
There is pressure to build enormous amounts of housing when population in California is in decline. The latest update from the Department of Finance projects population to continue in decline for the next several years and then slowly grow until it peaks in 2044 with a population increase of 635,426 over 2020 to 40,155,497. Then population falls into slow decline until by 2060 there are fewer people in California in 2060 than 2020. Document P-1A Total Population for California gives the revised year by year projections. https://dof.ca.gov/forecasting/demographics/projections/
It might be easier to follow by watching Marc Verville’s presentation to Livable California on September 23, 2023. It is posted on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtVEkLx3-Qs
You can turn the YouTube video instantaneously into a transcript by pasting the link into YouTube Transcript. It’s not perfect, but close. https://youtubetranscript.com/
The process to get to the 8,934 new housing units assigned to Berkeley to build starts with the California Department of Finance. The California Department of Finance creates the projections of population growth. This is turned over to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) which turns the population projections into new housing needs to be built over an eight-year cycle. Then HCD breaks down housing needs by region and assigns the housing needs known as the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) to the Council of Governments (COG) which breaks it down further to cities and counties which must develop a plan called the Housing Element of where all this new housing can go to meet the assigned allotment in the eight-year cycle currently 2023 – 2031.
Our regional COG is the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) of which Mayor Jesse Arreguin is the President.
Finding places to build means cities and counties with a shortage of vacant lots and “underutilized” buildings to demolish for new housing are pushed into upzoning, which is changing zoning to put more housing, more people on a lot, which adds more density, increases the value of the land and gives incentive to demolish whatever happens to exist on a lot.
ADUs and JADUs aren’t counted like houses and multi-family units so they increase building structures decreasing the SSD and add population density all while slipping under the radar except for the RHNA count.
The cities and counties aren’t actually building the housing (at least usually), that goes into the hands of developers/builders. When cities and counties fail to meet their target allocation of building new housing midway through the eight year RHNA/Housing Element cycle, there is something called “Builder’s Remedy” which basically lets builder’s bypass zoning and approval processes as long as 20% of dwellings/units are for low-income households (up to $112,150 annual income for a household of 4 in Alameda County) or when 100% of the units are for moderate income households (up to $177,500 annual income for a household of 4 in Alameda County).
You can read the entire chart of income levels by category by county starting on page 6. https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/docs/grants-and-funding/income-limits-2023.pdf
The only problem with all of this is it seems the California Department of Finance made a little(?) error in their overly ambitious projections of population growth moving into the current RHNA cycle. Instead of fantastical future growth, the population in California is actually in decline. The Department of Finance press release of May 1, 2023 laid the ground that population projections had been overly optimistic. https://dof.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/352/Forecasting/Demographics/Documents/E-1_2023PressRelease.pdf
The new updated population projections made public in July 2023 set the total California population gain for 2031, the year this Housing Element cycle ends as only 11,957 more people than 2020.
In January 2021 ten months into the pandemic when California population was in decline, ABAG under the leadership of Arreguin as President in its ABAG Plan Bay Area 2050 their plan for the future used the fantastical growth for the Bay Area of 51% since 2015. The Plan Bay Area 2050 projected population growth of 1,367,000 for just the Bay Area. https://www.planbayarea.org/digital-library/plan-bay-area-2050-final-blueprint-growth-pattern
Back to the RHNA assignment to Berkeley to build 8934 new housing units. It is based on old fantastical growth projections not the Department of Finance July 2023 revision. The Housing Element for Berkeley and every entity in California is built on population growth that the Department of Finance no longer supports.
HCD is still operating on and holding cities to building housing for fantastical population growth predictions. Other cities are resisting with some suing over the RHNA assignments, but not Berkeley.
In 2022, Berkeley ranked as 84th in density in the U.S. When the ranking is narrowed to cities between 100,000 and 150,000, Berkeley is the second densest city in the nation. Listening to Arreguin, it sounds like his intention is to overtake that second in density rating. The agreement Arreguin negotiated with UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ appears to put student population growth on the accelerator. That agreement which can fill an entire Planet issue is a subject for another day.
On to the ordinance to add ADUs in the benign sounding “Hillside Overlay.” That title encompasses all of the hazards which are layered on top of each other, the Hayward Fault, the designated landslide areas and the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone and Wildland Urban Interface.
After multiple stops and starts, City Council separated the ADU Ordinance into two Ordinances. The first ADU Ordinance covering all of Berkeley except the Hillside Overlay passed in a unanimous vote on January 18, 2022. It was modeled on Councilmember Kesarwani’s Supplemental encouraging adding ADUs.
The ADU Ordinance for the Hillside Overlay based on the Hahn-Wengraf revised material for fire safety requirements using the public safety exception was passed on January 25, 2022. While allowing ADUs, it included firm setback requirements for building separation at property lines, prohibited intrusion into the setbacks and rooftop decks and included off-street parking requirements
There were memorable points in that January 2022 evening. While there was overwhelming public comment in support for the Hahn-Wengraf supplemental there were a few outliers like Todd Andrew who commented that evacuation in a fire would not be a problem as people would be driving down Marin.
When Wengraf took the floor after public comment closed, she shared the video of people evacuating in the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire where 25 people died. It was pretty raw. Wengraf said this as she commented on the video, “this is what an evacuation looks like. There is no such thing as an orderly peaceful choreographed evacuation. It’s chaotic, it’s driven by fear and panic and everybody is racing for their lives.”
What I remember most about January 2022 evening was not the end of the evening with seconds running out in a 5 to 4 vote when Councilmember Bartlett said he thought he voted the wrong way and asked for reconsideration to change his vote. In the 5 to 4 revote, Bartlett sided with the motion based on the Hahn-Wengraf Supplemental.
The memory that stood out the most that evening was Councilmember Kesarwani’s long winded comment on the simmering resentment of perceived inequity between the North Berkeley Hills and the “flats,” South and West Berkeley. An excerpt of her comments is included here:
“…I do have to say that those stone pillars that mark the areas of the city that were designed to exclude people of color…you know that does sting, that stings for me as a woman of color and that stings for my constituents and I just want to share with you my perspective that when you put forward limits that are very much different from what the rest of the flats are doing are going to be part of the housing solution that does rub some of us the wrong way and I’m trying to see your perspective and spend a lot of time driving around the hills on those narrow winding streets and I do want to say that it is unsafe up there. There are real concerns. But I do think we also have to figure out how can we do, how can we affirmatively further housing. You know that’s fair to the whole city, but that also mitigates wildfire risk and that it is my view that we follow the minimum requirements of state law and as it relates to ADUs.”
While Kesarwani acknowledged the real fire danger, more important to her was fulfilling equity, that the hills did not have exceptions and were under the same conditions as the flats for adding ADUs. That stand lost to public safety in January 2022.
The perception of privilege and the impacts of redlining lingers. The demographic chart of the Berkeley City Council Districts by race and home ownership tells the difference. In addition, the hills create a natural barrier to the homeless encampments that settle in the flats mostly in Districts 1, 2, and 3 with smaller encampments in District 4.
On October 17, 2022 HCD sent a letter to Jordan Klein, Director of Planning and Development Department stating that Berkeley’s ADU Ordinances did not comply with State Law.
Now we are back at this again, with a split City Council on what to do about adding ADUs in the Hillside overlay with its many dangers, the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones, the Hayward Fault, and designated Landslides Zones.
Last January were the landslides. Significant fires cycle about every 20 years. The last major fire was 32 years ago, 1991. Berkeley is overdue. In 1868 the ground on the Hayward Fault line shifted six feet. A major earthquake on the Hayward Fault is overdue too.
There is limited egress and ingress to the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones.
How will thousands of residents in the Berkeley Hills evacuate while the Fire Department tries to make it in? All we really have are Marin and Spruce. Grizzly Peak through the very high fire zone really isn’t a way out.
Chief Sprague has a lot more worry than the thousands of residents in the Berkeley Hills. He has the department firefighters. Adding to all of this is climate change, the dangerous winds where fires create their own weather patterns. Fires can go up or down the hills and canyons. Embers can float in the wind and start new fires including in places not expected to burn like Coffey Park in the Tubbs fire.
Will City Council ignore the warnings from Fire Chief Sprague and acquiesce to HCD or will City Council heed the warnings and put forth the case to attend to public safety first? Will the simmering resentment over perceived privilege put the entire city at risk? These are open questions. Wengraf called City Council to challenge HCD. There are strong arguments to be made.
The September Fire Ready Festival and the September 6, 2023 City Meetings of the Planning Commission and Disaster and Fire Safety Commission
Sunday, September 17 was the 100th anniversary of the 1923 Berkeley Fire that destroyed a 50-block area burning more that 600 homes to the ground. The anniversary was marked with the Fire Ready Festival at Live Oak Park, tented tables with city police, firefighters ready to talk about safety, vendors with fire prevention and safety products, sparkling fire trucks and children running around in their firefighter hats, playing games and generally enjoying the day.
There have been many California fires with greater devastation than Berkeley’s 1923 fire. There was the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire with 25 lives lost and 3,469 homes, apartments and condominiums burned, the 2017 Tubbs fire with 6,957 structures burned of which 1,422 were homes in Coffey Park where 23 people lost their lives. There was the Camps Fire in 2018 were 85 people in Paradise lost their lives and nearly 19,000 structures burned to the ground.
There is a common thread in all of these, the rapidity with which the fires moved and how quickly they engulfed residential neighborhoods. Coffey Park wasn’t even designated as a hazardous high fire risk area and yet it succumbed to flying embers blown over the six lane 101 freeway.
Peter Hartlaub in the Sunday, San Francisco Chronicle described the advancing 1923 fire from Wildcat Canyon into North Berkeley this way, “The fast moving wall of flames descended like an ambush, reaching residential streets with little warning less than two hours later.”
In 1923 the winds shifted from the east in the late afternoon to come in from the bay. That is what stopped the advancing fire from crossing Shattuck and stopping near Berkeley Way.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with the former Fire Chief Brannigan. I heard 3rd hand that the fire chief for Kensington had said a wildland – urban fire could burn Kensington to the ground in around eight minutes. I asked then Chief Brannigan what he thought about that statement. His answer was, “that sounds about right, Berkeley could burn to the ground in about an hour.”
Startled, I absorbed that news thinking about where I live in the flats. Several weeks later, I asked my question about Berkeley a little differently. Did he mean Berkeley could burn to Sacramento or San Pablo in an hour? Brannigan answered to the bay describing how strong winds from the east could carry embers spreading the fire.
At the Fire Ready Festival, I caught up with Fire Chief David Sprague who cordially answered my many questions. When I asked the same questions of Chief Sprague he said he didn’t want to put a time on how fast Berkeley could burn to the ground in highest risk fire conditions. We went on to talk about the evacuation study that is currently in process, the Master Plan for facilities, decontamination areas in facilities, adding density in the hills and curb redlining (the redlining to prohibit parking).
Sprague didn’t want to paint the picture of current readiness too harshly, but reading the Master Facilities Plan presented to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on September 6, 2023 the study of Standards of Coverage (SOC) by Citygate which compares Berkeley Fire Department response times to accepted standards states this:
“…the Department is organized only to accomplish ‘yesterday’s mission’ and is struggling to meet current demand, much less the future growth of the City and University…The ongoing intensification of land uses, building heights, and population density will make several sections of the City very urban – typical of the largest metropolitan cities for building fire and rescue/EMS challenges…The City’s fire and ambulance programs must evolve to those suitable for a major urban fire department in staffing, unit types and facility locations…”
Over the last twenty years, Berkeley has transitioned from a mostly single story, single-family residential community, with low-rise multi-unit buildings of two, three and four stories to a dense urban, vertically oriented community.
The State density bonus allowing a 50% increase in height over zoning limits for the paltry designation of 10% of the units of the “base project” for very low-income households. This means that six, eight and ten story buildings seem to be popping up everywhere in the flats. Soon there will be 26 story buildings. In the end the 10% of very low-income units is calculated on only that portion of the building that could be approved without the state density bonus, meaning the number of units set aside for very low-income households is less than 10% when looking at the entire project including the bonus.
We’ve heard from Fire Chief Sprague previously, what vertical density, adding height means to firefighters. Sprague said buildings above seven stories are designated as a high-rise though the transition comes with anything above fives floors. The example he gave to Budget and Finance Committee last April was that a fire on a ground floor could be handled with around 30 firefighters, but when that same kind of fire is in a high-rise the number of firefighters needed goes up to 50 to 100 and if it is anything more than a couple of rooms then it is several hundred firefighters.
At the Fire Ready festival, I struck up a conversation at the firefighters’ booth, asking about their new air breathing equipment and how that worked going into a high-rise fire. Firefighter Jesse told me they don’t turn on their “air” until they hit the fire/smoke. That answered my question about how they could run up all those stairs with fifty plus pounds of equipment in a high-rise and still have any air in their breathing equipment left when they reached the fire.
The health risks to firefighters from exposure to smoke and inhaled toxins was covered in the Sunday, September 3, 2023 San Francisco Chronicle article “Smoke poisoning state’s firefighters agencies accused of decades of failure to protect wildland workers.”
The significant higher incidence of cancer and heart disease firefighters face is also included in Berkeley Fire Department Master Plan. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/DFSC%20Agenda%20Packet%2023-09-06%20-%20Special%20Meeting.pdf
As Chief Sprague and I spoke, I directed the conversation to the apparent disconnect of the Planning Department proposals to densify Berkeley from the impact on the Fire Department to service bigger taller buildings and the residents in them.
September 6 was an interesting evening as City meetings go with just that contrast. There was the very well attended hearing at the Planning Commission on the Southside Zoning Modification Project at the North Berkeley Senior Center and less than a handful of attendees at the Fire Department Training Center to hear Fire Chief Sprague present the Fire Department Master Plan to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission.
While the Planning Commission listened to the City of Berkeley Planning staff describe the plan for upzoning the Southside and the public comment that followed, Fire Chief David Sprague was presenting that the Fire Department facilities are not equipped to handle the current Berkeley population and current high-rise buildings.
It didn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind in the City Planning Department presenting the case for upzoning, intensifying the Southside with bigger taller buildings that cover more land and more buildings on a parcel (a lot) with more people would add a burden to an already overtaxed Fire Department.
A number of speakers at the Southside Zoning Modification hearing complained of not having adequate notice and that the 269-page meeting packet and the agenda did not drop until just before the beginning of the long holiday Labor Day weekend.
As for the complaints that the Southside Zoning Plan was new and there was no public notification or meetings, rezoning the Southside has been in the City’s sights for years, really since 2016. It has been in the Planning Commission Workplan. The Planning Commission met on the Southisde Zoning Modification Project on April 19, 2023 and that meeting was followed with a presentation at the Design Review Committee May 18 and June 15, 2023.
However, the earlier presentations did not include the environmental impact report or diagrams of the fault lines and landslide areas. The presentations covered the changes to the zoning code and very little else.
Digging through the Planning Commission 269-page agenda packet, buried in the Addendum to the 2023-2031 Housing Element Update Final Environmental Impact Report (HEU) on pages 172 – 173 under Services, concludes that adding up to 1652 new units will reduce the demand for fire protection as the the probable 4,130 new residents will be in new buildings with more stringent regulations. Additionally, increased call volumes, emergency medical, disaster preparedness, future facility remodeling, 911 dispatch upgrades, etc. could all be covered by the 2020 Measure FF. Measure FF was estimated to generate $8,500,000 annually.
The diagrams on pages 140 and 141 show the eastern edge of the Southside sitting in an earthquake-induced landslide area with the Hayward fault running through it.
The agenda packet HEU section on Wildfire is contained in pages 182 – 186. This section starts out describing increased development would be located in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ), “…that construction and operation…could introduce potential sources of wildfire ignition…” and that the impact of building out the plan was “…found to be significant and unavoidable…” but since there are no significant changes there doesn’t need to be any revision in the analysis or plan.
While City staff did mention that the border of the Hillside overly runs through the Southside, it was never stated that the Hillside overlay defines entrance into the very high fire hazard severity zone. Nor was it ever noted in the Southside Zoning Modification Project that these new eight story buildings (twelve stories with the State Density Bonus) filled with students would be just four blocks from Panoramic Hill the highest fire risk area in the entire city for a wildland-urban fire.
Nowhere in the environmental impact report (HEU) is the history of wildfire nor as recently noted by Fire Chief Sprague is there the information that Berkeley experiences a major fire about every 20 years. Berkeley is now at 32 years since the last fire, the Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire.
At the Planning Commission hearing there was the usual parade of UC students declaring their support for the plan reiterating there is a housing crisis.
The neighbors expressed their concern of the impact on city services and the potential of UC taking over the new developments with master leases giving them tax exempt status and thereby removing them from contributing through property taxes to the cost of services these added thousands of students will demand.
Mayor Arreguin would probably say that the agreement he negotiated with UC covers the financial impact of UC on the City budget though Dean Metzger and David Wilson soundly disagree as they wrote in the Berkeley Daily Planet, September 15, 2021. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-09-03/article/49400?headline=Opinion-Berkeley-vs.-UC-Settlement-or-surrender-Part-1--Dean-Metzger-David-Wilson
There were comments on classifying a pet washing room, meeting room and gyms as open space, land value capture with upzoning and wildfire risk and the impact on evacuation.
Land value capture relates to the increased value of the land on which the new buildings will sit. Land value is why putting bigger denser buildings and more buildings on a plot of land does not bring the expected lower rent outcome. The new high value of the land is incorporated into the cost of the housing.
There were two substitute commissioners, Tim Frank (appointed by Mayor Arreguin), who I know better as a representative (lobbyist?) for the building trades and Brandon Yung (appointed by Councilmember Robinson), who sits on the Zoning Adjustment Board.
Tim Frank expressed concern that prevailing wage should be included in the plan. Emily Marthinsen appointed by Councilmember Wengraf stated her support for the designation of inside spaces as open space as the campus provides plenty of outdoor open space.
Brandon Yung said he was, “super stocked” by the progress of the plan and then went on to push for smaller setbacks with more density. Brandon’s suggestions to rewrite setbacks and conditions were finally stopped when staff stepped in to say that such changes would unravel the project. The Southside Zoning Modification Project passed as presented and moves on to approval by City Council.
Meanwhile across town, Fire Chief Sprague explained how becoming a YIMBY driven city, fire conditions, science and the emergency services provided by the Fire Department in addition to fire response all fold into the Master Plan. The Fire Department provides emergency medical services (EMS), paramedics, transport, disaster response, dispatch, rescue to name a few.
Firefighters face significant risk to their health and life through work exposure to smoke and toxins. They do not have facilities for decontamination of themselves and equipment that are properly separated from their work and living spaces while on duty.
The Master Plan covers the specific needs and deficiencies station by station. Four of the seven fire stations need to be replaced. Those are Fire Stations 1, 2, 4, and 5. A new site needs to be found for West Berkeley Station 1. Stations 3, 6 and 7 can be expanded and renovated at their current sites. Fire headquarters and the ambulance deployment center need to be relocated to a larger space. The needed new training facility and relocation is progressing through a partnership approach with other local municipalities. All this comes with a big price tag estimated as $330,000,000 to $372,000,000.
This is a lot to swallow.
Sunday, September 17 was the 100th anniversary of the 1923 Berkeley Fire that destroyed a 50-block area burning more that 600 homes to the ground. The anniversary was marked with the Fire Ready Festival at Live Oak Park, tented tables with city police, firefighters ready to talk about safety, vendors with fire prevention and safety products, sparkling fire trucks and children running around in their firefighter hats, playing games and generally enjoying the day.
There have been many California fires with greater devastation than Berkeley’s 1923 fire. There was the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire with 25 lives lost and 3,469 homes, apartments and condominiums burned, the 2017 Tubbs fire with 6,957 structures burned of which 1,422 were homes in Coffey Park where 23 people lost their lives. There was the Camps Fire in 2018 were 85 people in Paradise lost their lives and nearly 19,000 structures burned to the ground.
There is a common thread in all of these, the rapidity with which the fires moved and how quickly they engulfed residential neighborhoods. Coffey Park wasn’t even designated as a hazardous high fire risk area and yet it succumbed to flying embers blown over the six lane 101 freeway.
Peter Hartlaub in the Sunday, San Francisco Chronicle described the advancing 1923 fire from Wildcat Canyon into North Berkeley this way, “The fast moving wall of flames descended like an ambush, reaching residential streets with little warning less than two hours later.”
In 1923 the winds shifted from the east in the late afternoon to come in from the bay. That is what stopped the advancing fire from crossing Shattuck and stopping near Berkeley Way.
I am reminded of a conversation I had with the former Fire Chief Brannigan. I heard 3rd hand that the fire chief for Kensington had said a wildland – urban fire could burn Kensington to the ground in around eight minutes. I asked then Chief Brannigan what he thought about that statement. His answer was, “that sounds about right, Berkeley could burn to the ground in about an hour.”
Startled, I absorbed that news thinking about where I live in the flats. Several weeks later, I asked my question about Berkeley a little differently. Did he mean Berkeley could burn to Sacramento or San Pablo in an hour? Brannigan answered to the bay describing how strong winds from the east could carry embers spreading the fire.
At the Fire Ready Festival, I caught up with Fire Chief David Sprague who cordially answered my many questions. When I asked the same questions of Chief Sprague he said he didn’t want to put a time on how fast Berkeley could burn to the ground in highest risk fire conditions. We went on to talk about the evacuation study that is currently in process, the Master Plan for facilities, decontamination areas in facilities, adding density in the hills and curb redlining (the redlining to prohibit parking).
Sprague didn’t want to paint the picture of current readiness too harshly, but reading the Master Facilities Plan presented to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on September 6, 2023 the study of Standards of Coverage (SOC) by Citygate which compares Berkeley Fire Department response times to accepted standards states this:
“…the Department is organized only to accomplish ‘yesterday’s mission’ and is struggling to meet current demand, much less the future growth of the City and University…The ongoing intensification of land uses, building heights, and population density will make several sections of the City very urban – typical of the largest metropolitan cities for building fire and rescue/EMS challenges…The City’s fire and ambulance programs must evolve to those suitable for a major urban fire department in staffing, unit types and facility locations…”
Over the last twenty years, Berkeley has transitioned from a mostly single story, single-family residential community, with low-rise multi-unit buildings of two, three and four stories to a dense urban, vertically oriented community.
The State density bonus allowing a 50% increase in height over zoning limits for the paltry designation of 10% of the units of the “base project” for very low-income households. This means that six, eight and ten story buildings seem to be popping up everywhere in the flats. Soon there will be 26 story buildings. In the end the 10% of very low-income units is calculated on only that portion of the building that could be approved without the state density bonus, meaning the number of units set aside for very low-income households is less than 10% when looking at the entire project including the bonus.
We’ve heard from Fire Chief Sprague previously, what vertical density, adding height means to firefighters. Sprague said buildings above seven stories are designated as a high-rise though the transition comes with anything above fives floors. The example he gave to Budget and Finance Committee last April was that a fire on a ground floor could be handled with around 30 firefighters, but when that same kind of fire is in a high-rise the number of firefighters needed goes up to 50 to 100 and if it is anything more than a couple of rooms then it is several hundred firefighters.
At the Fire Ready festival, I struck up a conversation at the firefighters’ booth, asking about their new air breathing equipment and how that worked going into a high-rise fire. Firefighter Jesse told me they don’t turn on their “air” until they hit the fire/smoke. That answered my question about how they could run up all those stairs with fifty plus pounds of equipment in a high-rise and still have any air in their breathing equipment left when they reached the fire.
The health risks to firefighters from exposure to smoke and inhaled toxins was covered in the Sunday, September 3, 2023 San Francisco Chronicle article “Smoke poisoning state’s firefighters agencies accused of decades of failure to protect wildland workers.”
The significant higher incidence of cancer and heart disease firefighters face is also included in Berkeley Fire Department Master Plan. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/DFSC%20Agenda%20Packet%2023-09-06%20-%20Special%20Meeting.pdf
As Chief Sprague and I spoke, I directed the conversation to the apparent disconnect of the Planning Department proposals to densify Berkeley from the impact on the Fire Department to service bigger taller buildings and the residents in them.
September 6 was an interesting evening as City meetings go with just that contrast. There was the very well attended hearing at the Planning Commission on the Southside Zoning Modification Project at the North Berkeley Senior Center and less than a handful of attendees at the Fire Department Training Center to hear Fire Chief Sprague present the Fire Department Master Plan to the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission.
While the Planning Commission listened to the City of Berkeley Planning staff describe the plan for upzoning the Southside and the public comment that followed, Fire Chief David Sprague was presenting that the Fire Department facilities are not equipped to handle the current Berkeley population and current high-rise buildings.
It didn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind in the City Planning Department presenting the case for upzoning, intensifying the Southside with bigger taller buildings that cover more land and more buildings on a parcel (a lot) with more people would add a burden to an already overtaxed Fire Department.
A number of speakers at the Southside Zoning Modification hearing complained of not having adequate notice and that the 269-page meeting packet and the agenda did not drop until just before the beginning of the long holiday Labor Day weekend.
As for the complaints that the Southside Zoning Plan was new and there was no public notification or meetings, rezoning the Southside has been in the City’s sights for years, really since 2016. It has been in the Planning Commission Workplan. The Planning Commission met on the Southisde Zoning Modification Project on April 19, 2023 and that meeting was followed with a presentation at the Design Review Committee May 18 and June 15, 2023.
However, the earlier presentations did not include the environmental impact report or diagrams of the fault lines and landslide areas. The presentations covered the changes to the zoning code and very little else.
Digging through the Planning Commission 269-page agenda packet, buried in the Addendum to the 2023-2031 Housing Element Update Final Environmental Impact Report (HEU) on pages 172 – 173 under Services, concludes that adding up to 1652 new units will reduce the demand for fire protection as the the probable 4,130 new residents will be in new buildings with more stringent regulations. Additionally, increased call volumes, emergency medical, disaster preparedness, future facility remodeling, 911 dispatch upgrades, etc. could all be covered by the 2020 Measure FF. Measure FF was estimated to generate $8,500,000 annually.
The diagrams on pages 140 and 141 show the eastern edge of the Southside sitting in an earthquake-induced landslide area with the Hayward fault running through it.
The agenda packet HEU section on Wildfire is contained in pages 182 – 186. This section starts out describing increased development would be located in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones (VHFHSZ), “…that construction and operation…could introduce potential sources of wildfire ignition…” and that the impact of building out the plan was “…found to be significant and unavoidable…” but since there are no significant changes there doesn’t need to be any revision in the analysis or plan.
While City staff did mention that the border of the Hillside overly runs through the Southside, it was never stated that the Hillside overlay defines entrance into the very high fire hazard severity zone. Nor was it ever noted in the Southside Zoning Modification Project that these new eight story buildings (twelve stories with the State Density Bonus) filled with students would be just four blocks from Panoramic Hill the highest fire risk area in the entire city for a wildland-urban fire.
Nowhere in the environmental impact report (HEU) is the history of wildfire nor as recently noted by Fire Chief Sprague is there the information that Berkeley experiences a major fire about every 20 years. Berkeley is now at 32 years since the last fire, the Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire.
At the Planning Commission hearing there was the usual parade of UC students declaring their support for the plan reiterating there is a housing crisis.
The neighbors expressed their concern of the impact on city services and the potential of UC taking over the new developments with master leases giving them tax exempt status and thereby removing them from contributing through property taxes to the cost of services these added thousands of students will demand.
Mayor Arreguin would probably say that the agreement he negotiated with UC covers the financial impact of UC on the City budget though Dean Metzger and David Wilson soundly disagree as they wrote in the Berkeley Daily Planet, September 15, 2021. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2021-09-03/article/49400?headline=Opinion-Berkeley-vs.-UC-Settlement-or-surrender-Part-1--Dean-Metzger-David-Wilson
There were comments on classifying a pet washing room, meeting room and gyms as open space, land value capture with upzoning and wildfire risk and the impact on evacuation.
Land value capture relates to the increased value of the land on which the new buildings will sit. Land value is why putting bigger denser buildings and more buildings on a plot of land does not bring the expected lower rent outcome. The new high value of the land is incorporated into the cost of the housing.
There were two substitute commissioners, Tim Frank (appointed by Mayor Arreguin), who I know better as a representative (lobbyist?) for the building trades and Brandon Yung (appointed by Councilmember Robinson), who sits on the Zoning Adjustment Board.
Tim Frank expressed concern that prevailing wage should be included in the plan. Emily Marthinsen appointed by Councilmember Wengraf stated her support for the designation of inside spaces as open space as the campus provides plenty of outdoor open space.
Brandon Yung said he was, “super stocked” by the progress of the plan and then went on to push for smaller setbacks with more density. Brandon’s suggestions to rewrite setbacks and conditions were finally stopped when staff stepped in to say that such changes would unravel the project. The Southside Zoning Modification Project passed as presented and moves on to approval by City Council.
Meanwhile across town, Fire Chief Sprague explained how becoming a YIMBY driven city, fire conditions, science and the emergency services provided by the Fire Department in addition to fire response all fold into the Master Plan. The Fire Department provides emergency medical services (EMS), paramedics, transport, disaster response, dispatch, rescue to name a few.
Firefighters face significant risk to their health and life through work exposure to smoke and toxins. They do not have facilities for decontamination of themselves and equipment that are properly separated from their work and living spaces while on duty.
The Master Plan covers the specific needs and deficiencies station by station. Four of the seven fire stations need to be replaced. Those are Fire Stations 1, 2, 4, and 5. A new site needs to be found for West Berkeley Station 1. Stations 3, 6 and 7 can be expanded and renovated at their current sites. Fire headquarters and the ambulance deployment center need to be relocated to a larger space. The needed new training facility and relocation is progressing through a partnership approach with other local municipalities. All this comes with a big price tag estimated as $330,000,000 to $372,000,000.
This is a lot to swallow.
August 6 and 13, 2023 Combined
The first week of August was a perfect kind of week. City Council was on summer recess and so were most of the boards and commissions. Trump was finally indicted for his attempted coup culminating on January 6 and I managed to fit in Oppenheimer, Barbie and finish Thomas E. Ricks’ Churchill and Orwell.
As you might expect, I’ve read both of Jack Smith’s indictments of Trump and suggest you read them too. I doubt that the MAGA crowd/MAGA cult who according to polls believe these are just made up charges and Trump won the 2020 election would change their minds, but it would be a good idea for them too. Nonetheless, there is a reason Trump is sweating, but remember he is a media master.
DC indictment for Jan 6: (45 pages) - https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf
Florida Documents Case: For those of us who are not lawyers, we do not have to find the June 8 indictment and then the July 27 superseding indictment. The July 27, 2023 superseding indictment contains the original June 8 indictment with the new charges added making it one document (60 pages). - https://www.justice.gov/storage/US-v-Trump-Nauta-De-Oliveira-23-80101.pdf
It is official now July 2023 was the hottest month recorded, with July 4th as the hottest day. The planet crossed the 1.5°C of temperature rise at least temporarily. I added Phoenix to the cities I track.
While Berkeley basked in afternoons of the gentle 70s those living in Phoenix got a taste of what 1.5°C of temperature rise feels like with 31 days of temperatures over 110°F. People who were so unfortunate as to fall on Phoenix streets and sidewalks suffered 2nd and 3rd burns.
The heat wave finally broke on July 31, 2023 when the peak temperature dropped to 108°.
Burns from contact with scorching pavement and sidewalks or heat stroke are not the only worries from excessive heat waves. Chronic Kidney Disease of nontraditional or unknown cause CKDnT is being added to the list. CKDnT aka kidney failure has been showing up in medical journals and articles linking CKDnT to outdoor laborers working under extreme heat conditions. This week CKDnT made it into Time in “Chronic Kidney Disease Is Poised to Become the Black Lung of Climate Change.” https://time.com/6303020/chronic-kidney-disease-climate-change/
Andrew Needlam wrote in his August 4 article in the Atlantic “The Problem With ‘Why Do People Live in Phoenix?’” that, “America’s hottest city is still booming…the horror stories of life in 115 degrees is hardly guaranteed to blunt Phoenix’s explosive growth. There are currently building permits for 80,000 new homes in the Phoenix metro area that have not yet commenced construction – homes that will require more water, more AC, and more energy.”
People are still moving to places that will be unlivable part or much of the year in a future that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as “[T]he era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived…” This is insane.
As I was getting ready for this Diary final clean-up, I joined the monthly zoom meeting with my college classmates. While we were on, the news banner flashed across my screen that the youth who sued that Montana violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” WON.
After I shared the announcement, I asked my classmate living in Texas how people felt about climate change, did they think it was real? She said yes they believed climate change was real and we should get off fossil fuels. She confessed to liking her gas stove and since electricity was created by burning coal, she didn’t feel compelled to get rid of it.
As the discussion continued, she spoke about how young people are depressed and then followed with observing every generation has their challenges, “they just need to put their big boy pants on.” I was stunned. Is this really how we feel? Children just need to suck it up, put on their big boy pants and deal with the mess we’ve left. I guess this is why I never felt any connection to my college classmates and rarely join the monthly zoom. We have completely different perceptions of the world then and now.
Lahaina is in the news everywhere. The number of deaths has now eclipsed Paradise, California, making Lahaina the deadliest fire in over 100 years. As people sort through their losses and trauma, they say what we always hear, they will rebuild.
Rebuilding after a disaster may replace destroyed buildings with new, but what happens to community is the subject of Jake Bittle’s book The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Bittle takes us into the personal stories of how people’s lives are impacted and changed from the Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene, fire, heat, drought and flood. The book is worth reading. Paradise is in it.
The investigations into the causes and the responses to the fire that engulfed Lahaina has barely started, but already there are similarities to Paradise and the Oakland Berkeley Hills fires.
There was a small fire earlier in the day that was thought to be out and within several hours it exploded into a conflagration. Evacuation notices were delayed and when sent were on systems that were down/no longer working. There were few evacuation/escape routes. People hesitated to leave, then found themselves trapped by fire and abandoned cars and fled on foot for their lives.
The Maui siren warning system was not activated. The Lahaina fire moved at a mile a minute.
Berkeley’s installation of a siren warning system is nearly complete according to the Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth May.
At the one Berkeley Commission I did attend the first week in August, Janice Thomas from Panoramic Hill said at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, she was more afraid of the commission than – I thought she said living on Panoramic Hill, but it could have been the Fire Marshall’s report or something else, I couldn’t be sure. It is so much easier to catch full phrases on zoom especially when live transcription is activated.
There is not much reason to be afraid of commissions after watching what City Council does with commission recommendations. They don’t seem to hold much sway unless the recommendation is something Council is already is favor of doing.
The entire discussion and comments from Thomas started, because Commissioner Raine appointed by District 7 Rigel Robinson put the California Office of the State Fire Marshall’s review of the Panoramic Hill neighborhood on the agenda.
The State Fire Marshall report rates Panoramic Hill as very high fire risk and recommends to create a secondary access, install reflective signage, limit street parking, require locked private gates to remain unlocked during red flag warnings or high fire danger conditions, conduct community-wide evacuation drills and install reflective markings to indicate road edges during periods of low visibility (think smoke). Many edges of the roads drop off steeply into canyons.
It seemed like several members of the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission were unfamiliar with the designation of Panoramic Hill as a Fire Zone 3 area, meaning it is at the highest risk in Berkeley of a wildland-urban fire even though Panoramic Hill managed to escape both the 1923 fire that stopped just short of Shattuck and a block from University and the Berkeley Oakland Hills fire of 1991.
Escape is the key word, the same word that describes why Point Molate should never be a housing development site, one way in and out.
The roads in Panoramic Hill were built in the 1880s according to Thomas.
I was glad I no longer had my Saab with a clutch when I drove them Saturday in my little Prius just to see how bad they really are. When I met a car coming down as I was going up, one of us had to pull over to let the other pass. The passage is too narrow for two cars side by side and definitely too narrow for a wide-bodied fire engine and car to pass side by side.
With all the sharp turns and cars parked on the edges, if a wildfire hits this area it is hard to imagine people getting out or a fire truck coming in, though Commissioner Shirley Dean (Berkeley Mayor from 1994 – 2002) related during the meeting discussion that she once rode in an open cab fire truck up Panoramic Hill to understand the full difficulty of navigating a fire response to the area.
My annoyance with the commissioners that they didn’t seem to have a full grasp of the City of Berkeley Fire Zones ended when I went looking for Berkeley’s Fire Zone Map. Finding that map in the new revised city website was definitely a challenge. The map is only a gross picture containing no street names for the borders. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/Berkeley-Fire-Zone-Map.pdf
At one time according to Dean (decades ago) there were plans for a second road route out. Thomas said she still had those records. The item was continued to the next meeting.
Dean’s agenda item to look into development fees for hi-rise buildings met with pushback from Commissioner Theo Gordon appointed by District 8 Councilmember Humbert. Gordon stated property owners in the hills should be paying higher fees not the developers of hi-rises as the new hi-rises are more fire resistant and have lower rents. Panoramic Hill sits in District 8.
I wasn’t quite sure where Gordon gets his information that the new mixed-use buildings are cheaper to rent than older existing buildings. Councilmember Harrison has stated at council meetings, our most affordable housing is our existing housing.
When I related Gordon’s comments that new hi-rises are cheaper to rent to people who follow the cost of rentals in Berkeley, they called the comment laughable and asked was Gordon a paid YIMBY staffer or a true believer? California YIMBY is the land-use lobbying group for Big Tech and developers that celebrates big mixed use projects.
A light search on google and Gordon’s twitter handle lists him as the Lead of East Bay YIMBY. Gordon isn’t listed as staff on the California YIMBY website, but the average annual YIMBY Action Salary for Lead is approximately $175,423 according to Salary.Com. https://www.salary.com/
As for the new hi-rise units being cheaper to rent, the 10% very low income units calculated on the “base project” hardly make the other market rate 90% affordable to people who do not have a job earning greater than the area median income (AMI) in Alameda County currently at $147,900 for a four person household. Rentals for under $1000 listed in the various online rental apps are by the “bed” not by unit.
Setting aside 10% of the units for very low income households using the “base project” for calculation is how developers access the California State Density Bonus to increase a project size by 50% more than what would be allowed under existing zoning code. This is how 2190 Shattuck can provide 32 very low income units out of 326 and go from 18 floors to 25 or 1598 University (appeal date 10/3/23) with 21 very low income units out of 207 went from 4 stories to 8.
Dean’s item on a developer’s fee stems from Fire Chief Sprague’s comments at the April 27, 2023 Budget and Finance Committee regarding how many firefighters are needed for a hi-rise building which is any building above 7 floors. Sprague stated the change really comes at above 5 floors. Thirty firefighters would be needed for a residential fire, but 50 – 100 for an elevated fire. Any fire in a hi-rise that is more than a couple of rooms would need several 100 firefighters. Sprague’s statement is quoted in the April 30 Activist’s Diary. https://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-05-08/article/50289?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-April-30--Kelly-Hammargren
I skipped the Landmarks Preservation Commission. There were two demolition items which could be guaranteed to be approved and another on the color of paint for a historical building.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met for a debrief after the City Council vote to approve the Civic Center Plan Phase II including a full evaluation of daylighting Strawberry Creek. The Strawberry Creek culvert runs underneath the Maudelle Shirek Building. The group promoting daylighting the creek has already been invited to submit a full grant application for funding. Just how the rest of the project will be financed is up in the air.
Moving on, the takeaway from the Police Accountability Board Fair and Impartial Policing Subcommittee on August 7 is that the three-pronged approach to traffic stop policing which places the focus on Vision Zero (zero severe injury and fatal accidents) is not making the expected difference in reducing/eliminating disparate treatment of Black and Brown persons. Implicit bias appears to continue with a need for further review of community service calls and suspicious vehicle stops.
Only three members of the Commission on Disability attended the August 9 meeting. There are four commission vacancies and four of the five current commissioners were appointed in April and May of this year. Commissioners Sun and Walsh (the only member with several years on the commission) were absent. Thomas Gregory the Commission Secretary is also new with only 4 months as a City of Berkeley employee.
A letter from a Berkeley resident to former Councilmember Droste and the commission was in the meeting packet calling out Droste for using accessibility and ADA compliance as an issue for supporting the new Willard Park Clubhouse plans and involving other city commissions, but not the Commission on Disability.
The new commissioners were not involved and likely did not know that at the Agenda Committee meetings starting on June 15, 2020 when the Agenda Committee referred to itself the Commission Reorganization authored by Droste and co-sponsored by Councilmembers Kesarwani and Robinson (Mayor Arreguin joined later) that the proposed plan was to continue with only those commissions and boards required by law, charter, city ordinance and/or ballot initiatives. That would have eliminated the Commission on Disability.
With Droste as the author of the reorganization, it is no surprise that the Commission on Disability was not consulted. Additionally, since the Willard Park Community Center is planned around children and later discussions on commission mergers suggested combing the Commissions on Aging and Disability into one, it further dismisses these commissions from contributing to the planning even though there are children with disabilities and their parents, grandparents or caregivers may have disabilities.
It was finally decided in 2021 and 2022 as the commission mergers and eliminations moved forward not to merge Aging and Disability in the first commission reorganization round, but to come back to further reductions later. Councilmember Hahn Agenda Committee member was a vocal contributor to the slicing and dicing of commissions.
Much is made of making streets and intersections safe for pedestrians and persons with disabilities with little thought to engaging the Commission on Disability. That might be about to change. The new Commission Secretary is working on bringing project presentations to the Commission before they are set in cement. Then we could hear from the Commission on Disability on things like whether persons in wheelchairs really find it safe and want to ride in a bike lane in the street as suggested by a Transportation and Infrastructure Commissioner on January 19, 2023.
It didn’t look like The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) would vote for Board member Tregub’s substitute motion on the approval of 2147 San Pablo to include cleaning up the approval language to specify that monthly transit passes were for each bedroom and to recommend bird-safe glass, native plantings and compliance with the Hard Hat Ordinance. 2147 San Pablo is a SB 330 State Density Bonus which means, the project complies only with whatever ordinances were in effect when the application was filed.
There is no native plantings requirement, the Bird-Safe Ordinance went into effect after application and the Hard Hat Ordinance is still up in the air. ZAB member Brandon Yung liked the virtual signaling, but others vocalized their objections to making recommendations. In the end it passed 5 to 2. Kathleen Crandall who was subbing for the evening abstained and Debra Sanderson voted no.
The other surprise of the evening was that after extended discussion, ZAB continued 1515 Derby which adds a 3-story single family residence behind the current single family home. While only the house was before ZAB for approval, the plans included adding an ADU later. The discussion (and neighborhood objections) revolved around decreasing the impact to neighbors by swapping the placement of the house and the ADU.
All for now.
This Activist's Diary has been corrected. Commissioner Raine was appointed by Councilmember Robinson District 7 not by Wengraf District 6,
The first week of August was a perfect kind of week. City Council was on summer recess and so were most of the boards and commissions. Trump was finally indicted for his attempted coup culminating on January 6 and I managed to fit in Oppenheimer, Barbie and finish Thomas E. Ricks’ Churchill and Orwell.
As you might expect, I’ve read both of Jack Smith’s indictments of Trump and suggest you read them too. I doubt that the MAGA crowd/MAGA cult who according to polls believe these are just made up charges and Trump won the 2020 election would change their minds, but it would be a good idea for them too. Nonetheless, there is a reason Trump is sweating, but remember he is a media master.
DC indictment for Jan 6: (45 pages) - https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf
Florida Documents Case: For those of us who are not lawyers, we do not have to find the June 8 indictment and then the July 27 superseding indictment. The July 27, 2023 superseding indictment contains the original June 8 indictment with the new charges added making it one document (60 pages). - https://www.justice.gov/storage/US-v-Trump-Nauta-De-Oliveira-23-80101.pdf
It is official now July 2023 was the hottest month recorded, with July 4th as the hottest day. The planet crossed the 1.5°C of temperature rise at least temporarily. I added Phoenix to the cities I track.
While Berkeley basked in afternoons of the gentle 70s those living in Phoenix got a taste of what 1.5°C of temperature rise feels like with 31 days of temperatures over 110°F. People who were so unfortunate as to fall on Phoenix streets and sidewalks suffered 2nd and 3rd burns.
The heat wave finally broke on July 31, 2023 when the peak temperature dropped to 108°.
Burns from contact with scorching pavement and sidewalks or heat stroke are not the only worries from excessive heat waves. Chronic Kidney Disease of nontraditional or unknown cause CKDnT is being added to the list. CKDnT aka kidney failure has been showing up in medical journals and articles linking CKDnT to outdoor laborers working under extreme heat conditions. This week CKDnT made it into Time in “Chronic Kidney Disease Is Poised to Become the Black Lung of Climate Change.” https://time.com/6303020/chronic-kidney-disease-climate-change/
Andrew Needlam wrote in his August 4 article in the Atlantic “The Problem With ‘Why Do People Live in Phoenix?’” that, “America’s hottest city is still booming…the horror stories of life in 115 degrees is hardly guaranteed to blunt Phoenix’s explosive growth. There are currently building permits for 80,000 new homes in the Phoenix metro area that have not yet commenced construction – homes that will require more water, more AC, and more energy.”
People are still moving to places that will be unlivable part or much of the year in a future that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as “[T]he era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived…” This is insane.
As I was getting ready for this Diary final clean-up, I joined the monthly zoom meeting with my college classmates. While we were on, the news banner flashed across my screen that the youth who sued that Montana violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” WON.
After I shared the announcement, I asked my classmate living in Texas how people felt about climate change, did they think it was real? She said yes they believed climate change was real and we should get off fossil fuels. She confessed to liking her gas stove and since electricity was created by burning coal, she didn’t feel compelled to get rid of it.
As the discussion continued, she spoke about how young people are depressed and then followed with observing every generation has their challenges, “they just need to put their big boy pants on.” I was stunned. Is this really how we feel? Children just need to suck it up, put on their big boy pants and deal with the mess we’ve left. I guess this is why I never felt any connection to my college classmates and rarely join the monthly zoom. We have completely different perceptions of the world then and now.
Lahaina is in the news everywhere. The number of deaths has now eclipsed Paradise, California, making Lahaina the deadliest fire in over 100 years. As people sort through their losses and trauma, they say what we always hear, they will rebuild.
Rebuilding after a disaster may replace destroyed buildings with new, but what happens to community is the subject of Jake Bittle’s book The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Bittle takes us into the personal stories of how people’s lives are impacted and changed from the Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene, fire, heat, drought and flood. The book is worth reading. Paradise is in it.
The investigations into the causes and the responses to the fire that engulfed Lahaina has barely started, but already there are similarities to Paradise and the Oakland Berkeley Hills fires.
There was a small fire earlier in the day that was thought to be out and within several hours it exploded into a conflagration. Evacuation notices were delayed and when sent were on systems that were down/no longer working. There were few evacuation/escape routes. People hesitated to leave, then found themselves trapped by fire and abandoned cars and fled on foot for their lives.
The Maui siren warning system was not activated. The Lahaina fire moved at a mile a minute.
Berkeley’s installation of a siren warning system is nearly complete according to the Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth May.
At the one Berkeley Commission I did attend the first week in August, Janice Thomas from Panoramic Hill said at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, she was more afraid of the commission than – I thought she said living on Panoramic Hill, but it could have been the Fire Marshall’s report or something else, I couldn’t be sure. It is so much easier to catch full phrases on zoom especially when live transcription is activated.
There is not much reason to be afraid of commissions after watching what City Council does with commission recommendations. They don’t seem to hold much sway unless the recommendation is something Council is already is favor of doing.
The entire discussion and comments from Thomas started, because Commissioner Raine appointed by District 7 Rigel Robinson put the California Office of the State Fire Marshall’s review of the Panoramic Hill neighborhood on the agenda.
The State Fire Marshall report rates Panoramic Hill as very high fire risk and recommends to create a secondary access, install reflective signage, limit street parking, require locked private gates to remain unlocked during red flag warnings or high fire danger conditions, conduct community-wide evacuation drills and install reflective markings to indicate road edges during periods of low visibility (think smoke). Many edges of the roads drop off steeply into canyons.
It seemed like several members of the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission were unfamiliar with the designation of Panoramic Hill as a Fire Zone 3 area, meaning it is at the highest risk in Berkeley of a wildland-urban fire even though Panoramic Hill managed to escape both the 1923 fire that stopped just short of Shattuck and a block from University and the Berkeley Oakland Hills fire of 1991.
Escape is the key word, the same word that describes why Point Molate should never be a housing development site, one way in and out.
The roads in Panoramic Hill were built in the 1880s according to Thomas.
I was glad I no longer had my Saab with a clutch when I drove them Saturday in my little Prius just to see how bad they really are. When I met a car coming down as I was going up, one of us had to pull over to let the other pass. The passage is too narrow for two cars side by side and definitely too narrow for a wide-bodied fire engine and car to pass side by side.
With all the sharp turns and cars parked on the edges, if a wildfire hits this area it is hard to imagine people getting out or a fire truck coming in, though Commissioner Shirley Dean (Berkeley Mayor from 1994 – 2002) related during the meeting discussion that she once rode in an open cab fire truck up Panoramic Hill to understand the full difficulty of navigating a fire response to the area.
My annoyance with the commissioners that they didn’t seem to have a full grasp of the City of Berkeley Fire Zones ended when I went looking for Berkeley’s Fire Zone Map. Finding that map in the new revised city website was definitely a challenge. The map is only a gross picture containing no street names for the borders. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-04/Berkeley-Fire-Zone-Map.pdf
At one time according to Dean (decades ago) there were plans for a second road route out. Thomas said she still had those records. The item was continued to the next meeting.
Dean’s agenda item to look into development fees for hi-rise buildings met with pushback from Commissioner Theo Gordon appointed by District 8 Councilmember Humbert. Gordon stated property owners in the hills should be paying higher fees not the developers of hi-rises as the new hi-rises are more fire resistant and have lower rents. Panoramic Hill sits in District 8.
I wasn’t quite sure where Gordon gets his information that the new mixed-use buildings are cheaper to rent than older existing buildings. Councilmember Harrison has stated at council meetings, our most affordable housing is our existing housing.
When I related Gordon’s comments that new hi-rises are cheaper to rent to people who follow the cost of rentals in Berkeley, they called the comment laughable and asked was Gordon a paid YIMBY staffer or a true believer? California YIMBY is the land-use lobbying group for Big Tech and developers that celebrates big mixed use projects.
A light search on google and Gordon’s twitter handle lists him as the Lead of East Bay YIMBY. Gordon isn’t listed as staff on the California YIMBY website, but the average annual YIMBY Action Salary for Lead is approximately $175,423 according to Salary.Com. https://www.salary.com/
As for the new hi-rise units being cheaper to rent, the 10% very low income units calculated on the “base project” hardly make the other market rate 90% affordable to people who do not have a job earning greater than the area median income (AMI) in Alameda County currently at $147,900 for a four person household. Rentals for under $1000 listed in the various online rental apps are by the “bed” not by unit.
Setting aside 10% of the units for very low income households using the “base project” for calculation is how developers access the California State Density Bonus to increase a project size by 50% more than what would be allowed under existing zoning code. This is how 2190 Shattuck can provide 32 very low income units out of 326 and go from 18 floors to 25 or 1598 University (appeal date 10/3/23) with 21 very low income units out of 207 went from 4 stories to 8.
Dean’s item on a developer’s fee stems from Fire Chief Sprague’s comments at the April 27, 2023 Budget and Finance Committee regarding how many firefighters are needed for a hi-rise building which is any building above 7 floors. Sprague stated the change really comes at above 5 floors. Thirty firefighters would be needed for a residential fire, but 50 – 100 for an elevated fire. Any fire in a hi-rise that is more than a couple of rooms would need several 100 firefighters. Sprague’s statement is quoted in the April 30 Activist’s Diary. https://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-05-08/article/50289?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-April-30--Kelly-Hammargren
I skipped the Landmarks Preservation Commission. There were two demolition items which could be guaranteed to be approved and another on the color of paint for a historical building.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met for a debrief after the City Council vote to approve the Civic Center Plan Phase II including a full evaluation of daylighting Strawberry Creek. The Strawberry Creek culvert runs underneath the Maudelle Shirek Building. The group promoting daylighting the creek has already been invited to submit a full grant application for funding. Just how the rest of the project will be financed is up in the air.
Moving on, the takeaway from the Police Accountability Board Fair and Impartial Policing Subcommittee on August 7 is that the three-pronged approach to traffic stop policing which places the focus on Vision Zero (zero severe injury and fatal accidents) is not making the expected difference in reducing/eliminating disparate treatment of Black and Brown persons. Implicit bias appears to continue with a need for further review of community service calls and suspicious vehicle stops.
Only three members of the Commission on Disability attended the August 9 meeting. There are four commission vacancies and four of the five current commissioners were appointed in April and May of this year. Commissioners Sun and Walsh (the only member with several years on the commission) were absent. Thomas Gregory the Commission Secretary is also new with only 4 months as a City of Berkeley employee.
A letter from a Berkeley resident to former Councilmember Droste and the commission was in the meeting packet calling out Droste for using accessibility and ADA compliance as an issue for supporting the new Willard Park Clubhouse plans and involving other city commissions, but not the Commission on Disability.
The new commissioners were not involved and likely did not know that at the Agenda Committee meetings starting on June 15, 2020 when the Agenda Committee referred to itself the Commission Reorganization authored by Droste and co-sponsored by Councilmembers Kesarwani and Robinson (Mayor Arreguin joined later) that the proposed plan was to continue with only those commissions and boards required by law, charter, city ordinance and/or ballot initiatives. That would have eliminated the Commission on Disability.
With Droste as the author of the reorganization, it is no surprise that the Commission on Disability was not consulted. Additionally, since the Willard Park Community Center is planned around children and later discussions on commission mergers suggested combing the Commissions on Aging and Disability into one, it further dismisses these commissions from contributing to the planning even though there are children with disabilities and their parents, grandparents or caregivers may have disabilities.
It was finally decided in 2021 and 2022 as the commission mergers and eliminations moved forward not to merge Aging and Disability in the first commission reorganization round, but to come back to further reductions later. Councilmember Hahn Agenda Committee member was a vocal contributor to the slicing and dicing of commissions.
Much is made of making streets and intersections safe for pedestrians and persons with disabilities with little thought to engaging the Commission on Disability. That might be about to change. The new Commission Secretary is working on bringing project presentations to the Commission before they are set in cement. Then we could hear from the Commission on Disability on things like whether persons in wheelchairs really find it safe and want to ride in a bike lane in the street as suggested by a Transportation and Infrastructure Commissioner on January 19, 2023.
It didn’t look like The Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) would vote for Board member Tregub’s substitute motion on the approval of 2147 San Pablo to include cleaning up the approval language to specify that monthly transit passes were for each bedroom and to recommend bird-safe glass, native plantings and compliance with the Hard Hat Ordinance. 2147 San Pablo is a SB 330 State Density Bonus which means, the project complies only with whatever ordinances were in effect when the application was filed.
There is no native plantings requirement, the Bird-Safe Ordinance went into effect after application and the Hard Hat Ordinance is still up in the air. ZAB member Brandon Yung liked the virtual signaling, but others vocalized their objections to making recommendations. In the end it passed 5 to 2. Kathleen Crandall who was subbing for the evening abstained and Debra Sanderson voted no.
The other surprise of the evening was that after extended discussion, ZAB continued 1515 Derby which adds a 3-story single family residence behind the current single family home. While only the house was before ZAB for approval, the plans included adding an ADU later. The discussion (and neighborhood objections) revolved around decreasing the impact to neighbors by swapping the placement of the house and the ADU.
All for now.
This Activist's Diary has been corrected. Commissioner Raine was appointed by Councilmember Robinson District 7 not by Wengraf District 6,
July 23 and July 30, 2023 Combined
It’s been another comfortable week in Berkeley with temperatures in the 70s while heat domes threaten life across large swathes of the planet. Even the Saguaro Cactus in Arizona is collapsing in the extreme heat. As I pick my way through the news I feel like an observer in a world that is unraveling. And there has been local unraveling too.
I received a text and then a request to call back with the phone number of where to get help in Berkeley for someone who was in a mental health crisis. I did not have the answer on Tuesday, but I do now. The number for the Mobile Crisis Team is (510) 981-5900, and press 6 in the telephone tree or ask for Mental Health. That is if the situation is not life-threatening and the crisis occurs between 11:30 am and 10 pm on a Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. All other hours, and on Tuesday and Saturday, the choices are to call 911 for the police, take the person to a hospital or clinic or wait it out until the crisis team is available. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/mental-health/crisis-services
Berkeley’s implementation of a Special Care Unit (SCU) for persons in a mental health crisis is still weeks away, with the end of August as a planned opening.
Maybe someone with real expertise will respond with better alternatives.
The Resolution from the Mental Health Commission to Adopt a City-Wide “Care First, Jails Last” Policy, item 31 on the July 25, 2023 City Council Consent Calendar was passed that evening by the Berkeley City Council, but not without Councilmember Humbert throwing a wrench in it first. Humbert asked to refer item 31 to the Council’s Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community Policy Committee (Humbert is a member) for “vetting.” Wengraf agreed, no councilmember objected, and the item was moved as a referral to the committee in the preliminary council discussion before Public Comment and the vote on the consent calendar.
From my observation of how council committees function, referrals to committees are often just a detour on the road, slowing down the process of getting something done with little to show for all those months in committee, or even the path to killing an agenda item council doesn’t want to pass.
When Public Comment opened, the Mental Health Commissioners were at the podium, explaining to the Council that the Alameda County Board of Directors passed a resolution on May 25, 2021, and that Berkeley as a separate jurisdiction has been an outlier by not adopting a similar policy. There was considerable detail provided by the Commissioners on their extensive process of research in preparing the resolution, how the resolution gave direction to the Berkeley Police, and how the resolution fit with the SCU and continuum of care. Finally, Mayor Arreguin stepped in to move the item back to consent (for passage without a committee referral), with a minor change in the frequency of reporting, which Humbert accepted, cancelling the referral.
The big agenda item of the July 25th night was the Fixed Automated License Plate Readers, but before getting to that there was the non-agenda public comment at the beginning of the meeting. A maximum of ten speakers are allowed one minute each.
I recognized the four Japanese American women turning in their names for non-agenda comment as the same women who attended the Open Government Commission (OGC) on July 20th. At that meeting they were asking how it could be that the resolution to oppose Japan’s Planned Discharge of Wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant could lose without the mayor and councilmembers even giving a reason for their actions.
They said publicly at OGC what I had heard but not confirmed, that the Japanese Consulate called councilmembers asking them to oppose the resolution, leaving Berkeley in the position of essentially supporting the discharge of wastewater through taking no action.
These women were not giving up. They wanted the resolution back on the agenda and they wanted to hear the reasons from the mayor and councilmember. The discussion at the OGC was quite involved over the council process, how agenda items on consent imply approval, and yet five voted against the measure through abstention.
Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Kesarwani, Robinson, Wengraf and Humbert all abstained from supporting the resolution on July 11, sinking it.
Two speakers were at council to comment on the Berkeley Police Downtown Bike Team Texting Scandal and the results of the investigation by Swanson & McNamara. As reported by Alex N Gecan on the Berkeleyside site, the investigation found, according to Matthai Chakko, “[t]he department does not have a practice of racial bias, the department does not have any arrest quotas…”
The first non-agenda speaker handed printouts of the texts to the clerk, and then spoke describing the texts as extremely racist, anti-homeless and questioned how the city manager’s office found no wrong doing. He said that a transparent investigation was needed, and invited any councilmember to read the texts.
During the consent calendar. Councilmember Bartlett read from officer Darren Kacalek’s texts:
“Did you realize that all 5 people you arrested had something in common. All of the same heritage. I’m selling my white privilege card. It’s 48 years old and it hasn’t done a damn thing for me. No welfare checks, No inheritance, No free college, No free food, No free housing, etc. I may even be willing to do an even trade for a race card. Those seem to be way more useful and more widely accepted. Interested? Contact me on my non Obama cell phone that I have to pay for every month…’81 arrests. We can do 19 by Friday” [from Kacalek’s texts]
Bartlett followed the text reading with his personal comments:
“This sounds like Boss Hog of Dukes of Hazard. It’s not. It’s in Berkeley, the most enlightened city in America. It’s two steps forward, two steps back… On the one hand, we have all these amazing initiatives, the Specialized Care Unit, etc., great training, great new protocols, a very diverse force, largely beneficial to the community and I’ve interacted with them a lot. A lot of nice people doing their best. But, again, when you have this, these comments, it kind of throws everything out.
“It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous and frightening. And so to all of us here, I know it’s easy to forget that these are weaponized words. What I mean: people with weapons saying it. They may not be saying it to you, but they are saying it to a lot of us. And, it’s scary and it’s wrong and we have a duty to stop it. I’m curious to see the results of the investigation as well. I am an attorney. I have done some investigations. I’m really curious how they came to the conclusions they did, ’81 arrests. We can do 19 by Friday for sure’ [from Kacalek’s text] that’s from the Duke boys.” [emphasis added]
The investigation report is confidential. Not even the City Council has seen it. The person who sent those racist texts is Sergeant Darren Kacalek. Kacalek was put on leave when the scandal broke and stepped down from his position as president of the Berkeley Police Association (police union). Kacalek will now be returning to active duty in the Berkeley Police Department (BPD), just not on the downtown bike team.
Later in the evening Deputy City Manager LaTanya Bellow described the Chakko statements as unfortunate and outside the scope of the investigation and reiterated that the report on the police was confidential.
Those who attended the November 2022 meeting when the appointment of Jennifer Louis as Chief of Police was delayed amidst the Police Department scandal may recall the promise from City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley that a full investigation would be done to ensure public trust before the appointment of the new Police Chief. Jennifer Louis was appointed by City Council as Police Chief on May 9, 2023, before the investigation was complete and the investigation results, described by Chakko as no problem, are confidential.
****************************************
On to the Automated License Plate Reader Surveillance Ordinance (ALPRs). At the June 20, 2023 City Council Public Safety Committee meeting, Councilmember Wengraf pushed for approval of the ALPR Surveillance Ordinance with a qualified positive recommendation so it could be placed on the July 25 council agenda for a vote before council left on summer recess.
Usually a “qualified recommendation” means that a referral to a committee was modified before being sent on for the full council vote. In this case, Wengraf, Robinson and Taplin all voted to forward the surveillance ordinance to council knowing that revisions and amendments were needed and that in the rush to make the July 25 agenda, they would leave it to the BPD and not review it as would be the normal process.
When it was Councilmember Hahn’s turn to comment on the ALPRs, she pointed out the policy inconsistencies and asked that during the two year trial period the city attorney would rewrite the policy. Hahn abstained from voting for ALPR ordinance.
Wengraf gave her full support to the ALPRs referencing 150 letters in favor. It should be noted that Wengraf sent an email to her constituents with a model letter to copy and requested they email council in support of ALPRs.
Bartlett asked who would determine where cameras would be placed and received an answer that it would be determined in collaboration with the vendor. Bartlet followed with, “What if officer Hate is the one that places the cameras?” Bartlett said he loved technology and low touch criminal enforcement policies, but that he would not support endorsing the ALPR technology for a problematic department.
The community in their public comment was divided. Many in opposition voiced concern about privacy and the sharing of information. Those in favor looked to ALPRs as reducing crime.
The Police Accountability Board (PAB) opposed both the acquisition of the ALPR surveillance technology and the draft policy. The PAB identified inconsistencies and omissions in the policy and the potential for bias in selection of sites for camera placement. The PAB provided an in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of ALPRs. The deeper the look, the murkier the results, with proclamations of success fading over time.
While council dismissed much of the work of the PAB, council did accept the PAB’s broad outline of metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the ALPRs. Missing in the motion was using those metrics to establish a baseline before installing the ALPRs for comparison at the end of the trial period.
Kesarwani, Taplin, Wengraf, Robinson, Humbert and Arreguin all voted for the ALPR Surveillance Ordinance. Harrison was on an excused absence (sick leave ).
On to the other council meetings.
The July 18th Council Worksession on the Ashby BART station revolved around the Traction Power Substation (TPSS). BART had been planning to place a new TPSS in the west Ashby parking lot for a year or more but never informed the City of Berkeley. The TPSS space needs about 40 feet wide into the parking lot and 300 feet long with a ten foot tall wall along the Adeline plaza/sidewalk.
City Council was none too happy. No decisions were made. BART was left with exploring other options like another location or undergrounding. The loss of parking with building housing in the BART parking lot was not discussed. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-july-18-2023
At the July 24, 2023 special meeting, City Council voted to reject the Willard Neighbors’ appeal and approved replacing the Willard Park 565 square foot clubhouse with a new 3,301 square foot community center. The Willard Neighbors supported renovating/replacing the clubhouse, but with a smaller footprint than a 3,301 square foot community center and making the new center available to the community.
City Council voted in the special meeting at 4 pm on July 25, 2023 to approve the Civic Center Phase II Design. The group supporting daylighting Strawberry Creek was happy as the final language included exploring both a full and partial creek restoration. Directions also included keeping the farmers market in the civic center and exploring building out additional spaces at the Veterans’ Building. The renovation plans for the Maudelle Shirek Building (old City Hall) include new city council chambers with around 349 seats. With ZOOM and hybrid meetings, 50 attendees is a big night. The catch for all of this is the cost estimate of somewhere between $125,276,000 and $157,892,000.
The cigty has other needs, like upgrades to the fire stations so fire fighters can safely decontaminate themselves and equipment, plus being adequately resourced for population growth and hi-rises. The emergency dispatch center is also under resourced.
Council is set on a ferry service. When I attend Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) meetings, WETA is looking to Berkeley pick up a chunk of that cost and when I hear from Berkeley, it is WETA that will be picking up the tab.
And there are the groups that want the streets repaved and aging infrastructure repaired.
On July 20th I left the in-person OGC meeting, the discussion of Fukushima and council meeting procedures to comment at the Design Review Committee (DRC) on 1752 Shattuck a 7-story 72-unit mixed use building with 38 bedrooms which have no windows.
I’ve been asking the DRC to look at the interior floor plans for the livability of the units not just the exterior design and colors. An interesting discussion followed at DRC and it spilled over to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) on July 27 when I brought up windowless bedrooms again.
The California Building code no longer requires bedroom egress (escape) windows in multi-unit buildings with fire-safety features and ventilation. These buildings are considered safer. Bedroom escape windows are only required in wood frame buildings for the first three floors
This means multi-unit buildings are regularly before DRC and ZAB with interior bedrooms with “borrowed light.” This means instead of a solid door, a door with glass is used to “borrow” light for the windowless bedroom. Since students often rent by “bed” not by “unit” the windowless bedrooms rent for less attracting students anxious to save living expenses.
I remain concerned about the mental health of students.
What about the energy demands of buildings? How will that work when there are power failures or we are asked to shut down to save the grid as we were in September 2022. What happens when the e-skateboard catches on fire?
Phoenix’s daytime high has been over 110 every day in July and it looks like that will hold until July 30. When I checked at midnight the temperature was over 100. The current count of wildfires in Canada is over 700 with 233 listed as out of control. Ocean temperatures off Florida reached 101.1°F on Tuesday, July 25. Wildfires are spreading in Italy, France, Portugal, Algeria, Croatia, France, Spain and then there is Greece where the news described the evacuation from Rhodes as the largest ever.
Adding to the grim climate and weather news in the peer reviewed article in Nature Communications, Peter Ditlevsen and Susanne Ditlevsen (scientists, brother and sister, from Copenhagen, Denmark) estimate the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to occur around mid-century with the outside projections as early as 2025 or as late as 2095. This is very bad news.
And we keep charging ahead as if everything is fine.
“It’s as if the human race has received a terminal medical diagnosis and knows there is a cure, but has consciously decided not to save itself.” Prof Lesley Hughes, distinguished professor of biology at Macquarie University, former federal climate commissioner and former lead author in the IPCC’s 4th and 5th assessment report.
Berkeley is in such an incredible position to lead, please let’s stop squandering it.
It’s been another comfortable week in Berkeley with temperatures in the 70s while heat domes threaten life across large swathes of the planet. Even the Saguaro Cactus in Arizona is collapsing in the extreme heat. As I pick my way through the news I feel like an observer in a world that is unraveling. And there has been local unraveling too.
I received a text and then a request to call back with the phone number of where to get help in Berkeley for someone who was in a mental health crisis. I did not have the answer on Tuesday, but I do now. The number for the Mobile Crisis Team is (510) 981-5900, and press 6 in the telephone tree or ask for Mental Health. That is if the situation is not life-threatening and the crisis occurs between 11:30 am and 10 pm on a Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. All other hours, and on Tuesday and Saturday, the choices are to call 911 for the police, take the person to a hospital or clinic or wait it out until the crisis team is available. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/mental-health/crisis-services
Berkeley’s implementation of a Special Care Unit (SCU) for persons in a mental health crisis is still weeks away, with the end of August as a planned opening.
Maybe someone with real expertise will respond with better alternatives.
The Resolution from the Mental Health Commission to Adopt a City-Wide “Care First, Jails Last” Policy, item 31 on the July 25, 2023 City Council Consent Calendar was passed that evening by the Berkeley City Council, but not without Councilmember Humbert throwing a wrench in it first. Humbert asked to refer item 31 to the Council’s Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity & Community Policy Committee (Humbert is a member) for “vetting.” Wengraf agreed, no councilmember objected, and the item was moved as a referral to the committee in the preliminary council discussion before Public Comment and the vote on the consent calendar.
From my observation of how council committees function, referrals to committees are often just a detour on the road, slowing down the process of getting something done with little to show for all those months in committee, or even the path to killing an agenda item council doesn’t want to pass.
When Public Comment opened, the Mental Health Commissioners were at the podium, explaining to the Council that the Alameda County Board of Directors passed a resolution on May 25, 2021, and that Berkeley as a separate jurisdiction has been an outlier by not adopting a similar policy. There was considerable detail provided by the Commissioners on their extensive process of research in preparing the resolution, how the resolution gave direction to the Berkeley Police, and how the resolution fit with the SCU and continuum of care. Finally, Mayor Arreguin stepped in to move the item back to consent (for passage without a committee referral), with a minor change in the frequency of reporting, which Humbert accepted, cancelling the referral.
The big agenda item of the July 25th night was the Fixed Automated License Plate Readers, but before getting to that there was the non-agenda public comment at the beginning of the meeting. A maximum of ten speakers are allowed one minute each.
I recognized the four Japanese American women turning in their names for non-agenda comment as the same women who attended the Open Government Commission (OGC) on July 20th. At that meeting they were asking how it could be that the resolution to oppose Japan’s Planned Discharge of Wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant could lose without the mayor and councilmembers even giving a reason for their actions.
They said publicly at OGC what I had heard but not confirmed, that the Japanese Consulate called councilmembers asking them to oppose the resolution, leaving Berkeley in the position of essentially supporting the discharge of wastewater through taking no action.
These women were not giving up. They wanted the resolution back on the agenda and they wanted to hear the reasons from the mayor and councilmember. The discussion at the OGC was quite involved over the council process, how agenda items on consent imply approval, and yet five voted against the measure through abstention.
Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Kesarwani, Robinson, Wengraf and Humbert all abstained from supporting the resolution on July 11, sinking it.
Two speakers were at council to comment on the Berkeley Police Downtown Bike Team Texting Scandal and the results of the investigation by Swanson & McNamara. As reported by Alex N Gecan on the Berkeleyside site, the investigation found, according to Matthai Chakko, “[t]he department does not have a practice of racial bias, the department does not have any arrest quotas…”
The first non-agenda speaker handed printouts of the texts to the clerk, and then spoke describing the texts as extremely racist, anti-homeless and questioned how the city manager’s office found no wrong doing. He said that a transparent investigation was needed, and invited any councilmember to read the texts.
During the consent calendar. Councilmember Bartlett read from officer Darren Kacalek’s texts:
“Did you realize that all 5 people you arrested had something in common. All of the same heritage. I’m selling my white privilege card. It’s 48 years old and it hasn’t done a damn thing for me. No welfare checks, No inheritance, No free college, No free food, No free housing, etc. I may even be willing to do an even trade for a race card. Those seem to be way more useful and more widely accepted. Interested? Contact me on my non Obama cell phone that I have to pay for every month…’81 arrests. We can do 19 by Friday” [from Kacalek’s texts]
Bartlett followed the text reading with his personal comments:
“This sounds like Boss Hog of Dukes of Hazard. It’s not. It’s in Berkeley, the most enlightened city in America. It’s two steps forward, two steps back… On the one hand, we have all these amazing initiatives, the Specialized Care Unit, etc., great training, great new protocols, a very diverse force, largely beneficial to the community and I’ve interacted with them a lot. A lot of nice people doing their best. But, again, when you have this, these comments, it kind of throws everything out.
“It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous and frightening. And so to all of us here, I know it’s easy to forget that these are weaponized words. What I mean: people with weapons saying it. They may not be saying it to you, but they are saying it to a lot of us. And, it’s scary and it’s wrong and we have a duty to stop it. I’m curious to see the results of the investigation as well. I am an attorney. I have done some investigations. I’m really curious how they came to the conclusions they did, ’81 arrests. We can do 19 by Friday for sure’ [from Kacalek’s text] that’s from the Duke boys.” [emphasis added]
The investigation report is confidential. Not even the City Council has seen it. The person who sent those racist texts is Sergeant Darren Kacalek. Kacalek was put on leave when the scandal broke and stepped down from his position as president of the Berkeley Police Association (police union). Kacalek will now be returning to active duty in the Berkeley Police Department (BPD), just not on the downtown bike team.
Later in the evening Deputy City Manager LaTanya Bellow described the Chakko statements as unfortunate and outside the scope of the investigation and reiterated that the report on the police was confidential.
Those who attended the November 2022 meeting when the appointment of Jennifer Louis as Chief of Police was delayed amidst the Police Department scandal may recall the promise from City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley that a full investigation would be done to ensure public trust before the appointment of the new Police Chief. Jennifer Louis was appointed by City Council as Police Chief on May 9, 2023, before the investigation was complete and the investigation results, described by Chakko as no problem, are confidential.
****************************************
On to the Automated License Plate Reader Surveillance Ordinance (ALPRs). At the June 20, 2023 City Council Public Safety Committee meeting, Councilmember Wengraf pushed for approval of the ALPR Surveillance Ordinance with a qualified positive recommendation so it could be placed on the July 25 council agenda for a vote before council left on summer recess.
Usually a “qualified recommendation” means that a referral to a committee was modified before being sent on for the full council vote. In this case, Wengraf, Robinson and Taplin all voted to forward the surveillance ordinance to council knowing that revisions and amendments were needed and that in the rush to make the July 25 agenda, they would leave it to the BPD and not review it as would be the normal process.
When it was Councilmember Hahn’s turn to comment on the ALPRs, she pointed out the policy inconsistencies and asked that during the two year trial period the city attorney would rewrite the policy. Hahn abstained from voting for ALPR ordinance.
Wengraf gave her full support to the ALPRs referencing 150 letters in favor. It should be noted that Wengraf sent an email to her constituents with a model letter to copy and requested they email council in support of ALPRs.
Bartlett asked who would determine where cameras would be placed and received an answer that it would be determined in collaboration with the vendor. Bartlet followed with, “What if officer Hate is the one that places the cameras?” Bartlett said he loved technology and low touch criminal enforcement policies, but that he would not support endorsing the ALPR technology for a problematic department.
The community in their public comment was divided. Many in opposition voiced concern about privacy and the sharing of information. Those in favor looked to ALPRs as reducing crime.
The Police Accountability Board (PAB) opposed both the acquisition of the ALPR surveillance technology and the draft policy. The PAB identified inconsistencies and omissions in the policy and the potential for bias in selection of sites for camera placement. The PAB provided an in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of ALPRs. The deeper the look, the murkier the results, with proclamations of success fading over time.
While council dismissed much of the work of the PAB, council did accept the PAB’s broad outline of metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of the ALPRs. Missing in the motion was using those metrics to establish a baseline before installing the ALPRs for comparison at the end of the trial period.
Kesarwani, Taplin, Wengraf, Robinson, Humbert and Arreguin all voted for the ALPR Surveillance Ordinance. Harrison was on an excused absence (sick leave ).
On to the other council meetings.
The July 18th Council Worksession on the Ashby BART station revolved around the Traction Power Substation (TPSS). BART had been planning to place a new TPSS in the west Ashby parking lot for a year or more but never informed the City of Berkeley. The TPSS space needs about 40 feet wide into the parking lot and 300 feet long with a ten foot tall wall along the Adeline plaza/sidewalk.
City Council was none too happy. No decisions were made. BART was left with exploring other options like another location or undergrounding. The loss of parking with building housing in the BART parking lot was not discussed. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-july-18-2023
At the July 24, 2023 special meeting, City Council voted to reject the Willard Neighbors’ appeal and approved replacing the Willard Park 565 square foot clubhouse with a new 3,301 square foot community center. The Willard Neighbors supported renovating/replacing the clubhouse, but with a smaller footprint than a 3,301 square foot community center and making the new center available to the community.
City Council voted in the special meeting at 4 pm on July 25, 2023 to approve the Civic Center Phase II Design. The group supporting daylighting Strawberry Creek was happy as the final language included exploring both a full and partial creek restoration. Directions also included keeping the farmers market in the civic center and exploring building out additional spaces at the Veterans’ Building. The renovation plans for the Maudelle Shirek Building (old City Hall) include new city council chambers with around 349 seats. With ZOOM and hybrid meetings, 50 attendees is a big night. The catch for all of this is the cost estimate of somewhere between $125,276,000 and $157,892,000.
The cigty has other needs, like upgrades to the fire stations so fire fighters can safely decontaminate themselves and equipment, plus being adequately resourced for population growth and hi-rises. The emergency dispatch center is also under resourced.
Council is set on a ferry service. When I attend Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) meetings, WETA is looking to Berkeley pick up a chunk of that cost and when I hear from Berkeley, it is WETA that will be picking up the tab.
And there are the groups that want the streets repaved and aging infrastructure repaired.
On July 20th I left the in-person OGC meeting, the discussion of Fukushima and council meeting procedures to comment at the Design Review Committee (DRC) on 1752 Shattuck a 7-story 72-unit mixed use building with 38 bedrooms which have no windows.
I’ve been asking the DRC to look at the interior floor plans for the livability of the units not just the exterior design and colors. An interesting discussion followed at DRC and it spilled over to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) on July 27 when I brought up windowless bedrooms again.
The California Building code no longer requires bedroom egress (escape) windows in multi-unit buildings with fire-safety features and ventilation. These buildings are considered safer. Bedroom escape windows are only required in wood frame buildings for the first three floors
This means multi-unit buildings are regularly before DRC and ZAB with interior bedrooms with “borrowed light.” This means instead of a solid door, a door with glass is used to “borrow” light for the windowless bedroom. Since students often rent by “bed” not by “unit” the windowless bedrooms rent for less attracting students anxious to save living expenses.
I remain concerned about the mental health of students.
What about the energy demands of buildings? How will that work when there are power failures or we are asked to shut down to save the grid as we were in September 2022. What happens when the e-skateboard catches on fire?
Phoenix’s daytime high has been over 110 every day in July and it looks like that will hold until July 30. When I checked at midnight the temperature was over 100. The current count of wildfires in Canada is over 700 with 233 listed as out of control. Ocean temperatures off Florida reached 101.1°F on Tuesday, July 25. Wildfires are spreading in Italy, France, Portugal, Algeria, Croatia, France, Spain and then there is Greece where the news described the evacuation from Rhodes as the largest ever.
Adding to the grim climate and weather news in the peer reviewed article in Nature Communications, Peter Ditlevsen and Susanne Ditlevsen (scientists, brother and sister, from Copenhagen, Denmark) estimate the collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) to occur around mid-century with the outside projections as early as 2025 or as late as 2095. This is very bad news.
And we keep charging ahead as if everything is fine.
“It’s as if the human race has received a terminal medical diagnosis and knows there is a cure, but has consciously decided not to save itself.” Prof Lesley Hughes, distinguished professor of biology at Macquarie University, former federal climate commissioner and former lead author in the IPCC’s 4th and 5th assessment report.
Berkeley is in such an incredible position to lead, please let’s stop squandering it.
July 16, 2023
While we’re sitting in Berkeley with temperatures in the comfortable 70’s, it’s been big news the last couple of weeks that the planet just finished the hottest June ever recorded and July 4th was the hottest recorded day on earth.
As I write the heat domes in the U.S. South including Texas are moving into California, New York City and the surrounding area are under flood warnings (this is not the floods in Vermont and the Hudson Valley that started the week), the Minneapolis air quality index is in the unhealthy zone greater than 150 from Canadian wildfires now numbering somewhere around 900, the ocean temperature off Florida reached 98.1° and Farmers Insurance pulled out of Florida. Iowa meteorologist Chris Gloninger made the news after quitting his job in Des Moines, Iowa, over death threats for his coverage of climate change in the weather reports, and Ari Melber on his MSNBC show The Beat asked Bill Nye the Science Guy if this is the new normal.
Bill Nye gave Melber the same answer Michael Mann gave Thom Hartmann some weeks ago. There is no normal. Normal implies stability.
On a heating planet there is no new normal except that it is going to get worse.
Gaia Vince in her book Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World called fire, heat, drought and flood the “Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene”, the driving forces of the future. Before diving into climate migration, Vince described that we are on track to hit 3 - 4°C of warming by 2100 (with mitigation. It could be worse without) and what that will bring. We are at 1.2°C of warming now and will likely blow by 1.5°C by 2030. Her description is pretty bleak , with food shortages, crop failures, large swathes of the planet as unlivable all or much of the year, including the tropics, Europe, much of Australia, South America, Africa, Asia and the U.S. That leaves as livable areas Patagonia, Canada, Siberia and northern Scandinavia.
I couldn’t help but think about Councilmember Bartlett’s measure on the June 27th consent calendar, Berkeley Food Utility and Access Resilience Measure (FARM). FARM was written to protect Berkeley’s food supply and prepare for future food shortages. Part of the discussion at the Health, Life Enrichment, Equity, & Community Committee was how Emeryville is getting the jump on Berkeley with lab grown meats and synthesized foods. I kept wondering how all these lab grown foods will affect the gut biome, and then how soon the crisis will arrive. FARM passed as a referral to the City Manager.
Vince compares our damage to the planet in the span of just the recent 20 years to the asteroid that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years, yago killing off plants, animals and non-avian dinosaurs. Birds survived.
We (our species) have done so much damage to the planet in such a short period of time that there has been no opportunity for the other species to evolve, except maybe the viruses, bacteria and fungi which have evolved to evade medical treatments like antibiotics and antivirals. Birds may have survived the asteroid from space, but I’m not sure they will survive us.
While I was reading the last chapter of Nomad Century with the glowing benefits migrants bring, I glanced at the news banner on my phone, “The Dutch government collapsed after the parties in the ruling coalition failed to resolve a dispute about how to handle migration.” That was July 7. The Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned though he will stay on as a “caretaker government” until a new administration is elected.
Jeff Goodell author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet said this in a Democracy Now interview, “We have not at all come close to grasping the scale and scope of the crisis we are facing.”
Berkeley, which still has a place of influence, is operating as if it is 1990.
Moving on to Berkeley, just exactly what has our City government been up to since I last wrote besides supporting the release 1.3 million tons of nuclear waste water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown into the Pacific Ocean where it will wash up onto our shores? Ben Bartlett called it, “a sin against nature.” Sophie Hahn said nothing, but maintained support for the resolution.
Kate Harrison wrote the Resolution for the July 11, 2023 City Council meeting: to oppose Japan’s Planned Discharge of Wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, with the action to send copies of the resolution to oppose the release of nuclear waste water to Secretary Blinken, Senator Feinstein, Senator Padilla and Representative Lee.
It was close to 9 pm when the vote on the consent calendar was taken. Terry Taplin said that after public comment, he changed his mind and would support the resolution. That was not enough. Mayor Arreguin, and Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani, Susan Wengraf, Rigel Robinson, and Mark Humbert all abstained from supporting the resolution, which meant the resolution lost, leaving Berkeley as essentially supporting dumping nuclear waste water into the Pacific Ocean.
Before the other big item of the evening, the Auditor’s report on hiring and retention of City staff, the Council had to get through the discussion of Sophie Hahn’s Resolution on dedicating time at council meetings for the City of Berkeley unions to make comments. Mark Humbert blocked moving the item to consent. Humbert’s issue: If unions had a block of time then so should students.
I am often surprised by people who should know better, like council members and council appointees, of how little they know about the public face of our city government, how things work or what decisions / actions have been taken or are up for a vote.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Both Arreguin and Wengraf have confessed of late as to not reading the documents for the Agenda and Rules Committee on which they sit. They also have failed to demand that the City Manager submit reports in time for publication in the Agenda and Rules packet.
The news media who showed up with their video cameras for the July 11 council meeting were there for the vote on entheogenic/psychedelic plants and fungi for personal use. They missed what should have been the stories, the vote on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and the City Manager’s response to the audit on staff hiring and retention.
The resolution to de-prioritize enforcement on entheogenic/psychedelic plants and fungi for personal use was moved from action to consent and passed with little fanfare.
Humbert received a polite smackdown for insisting that if City unions have time so should students. There is a City/UC/Student Relations Committee (four council members, two UC members, two undergraduate and two graduate students) which has existed for seven years. Robinson also described what Humbert suggested as “othering” of students. Harrison described the importance of line staff and a place for comment. Kesarwani and Wengraf as usual needed clarification/explanations. Humbert withdrew his objection and the resolution passed.
It took until 9:50 pm to get to the Auditor’s Report on “Staff Shortages: City Services Constrained by Staff Retention Challenges and Delayed Hiring.” Translation, more people are leaving Berkeley jobs than are being hired. Over half of the employees surveyed reported looking for another job in the previous year and the hiring process is now at 7.7 months.
Berkeley’s vacancy rate at 19% is second to Vallejo’s at 28%. San Francisco’s is 9%. Berkeley’s Human Resources Department (HR) had the highest vacancy rate at 45%. Not mentioned was that the former manager of HR, LaTanya Bellow, was promoted to Deputy City Manager.
The full report (60 pages), the auditor’s presentation and the City Manager’s response are under item 31 in the July 11 city council agenda. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-regular-meeting-eagenda-july-11-2023
The Employer of Choice Initiative mentioned in the blistering response to the audit from union representative Andrea Mullarkey, was covered in the Activist’s Diary for the week ending March 5, published March 12, 2023. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-03-12/article/50212?headline=A-Berkeley-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-March-5 :
“I am Andrea Mullarkey, a member leader with SEIU. I’m also a librarian. I’m here first to acknowledge the work that went into this audit and to appreciate the elevation of worker voice and how clearly the audit report delineates the problems…already we can hear the City Manager and administration downplaying the findings and making excuses for the circumstances we’re in and blaming others for the problems me and my coworkers were experiencing.
I also hear we are hyping up our Employer of Choice Initiative and I can tell you from my first-hand experience these problems existed before the pandemic...they were not caused by it and have not been resolved since...I can also tell you from first-hand experience that any suggestion of the amount of legislation you all are taking is a problem, that is a distraction…The City Manager has already taken steps to limit the amount of progressive work you do and I have no doubt she’ll seize on this one piece of the audit finding to drive her agenda further, and I’m here to say it’s not appropriate.
As members in a progressive union, we are not interested in seeing you slow down the work you’re doing to advance racial equity, economic equity, and more progressive advances within Berkeley. The other thing I can tell you is that rather than dealing with the structural problems at the crux of this audit, the City Manager has invested in an expensive Employer of Choice initiative. No amount of free food or motivational speakers are going to solve the kind of alienation workers are experiencing.
City Managers refuse to confer with us, or bargain in bad faith with us about our pay and benefits, or when they contract out our work and refused to address the gaping holes and broken structure in our HR Departments, all of which led to grievances which pile up one upon the other. I have literally filed three grievances this week about people not getting paid…And, instead of spending $1,000,000 on the Employers of Choice Initiative, this should be invested through programs and workers that provide them. It’s insulting to workers who could’ve provided this information all along and we have been voicing these concerns in every available menu.
If nothing else is clear from this audit, surely you can see that workers are dissatisfied…A pervasive belief that management doesn’t care about our well-being and we’re thinking about leaving should ring alarm bells for you. When lack of transparency is an alarm bell we repeat, the answer is not lack of consultants…We are the workers who deliver the services and we’re overworked and excluded from the decision…It is increasing clear that we can’t survive in our jobs and you deserve better…I thank the auditor for this truth telling work for workers and with workers on behalf of the public we serve, and now it’s your opportunity and responsibility to address the mismanagement that led to it.”
At 10:41 pm after Mullarkey and other city employees commented on the audit and before the City Manager gave her response, the mayor announced council would not take up the adoption of the Civic Center Phase II Design Concept.
Someone came by handing out a printout of the City Manager’s response ,which was soon on the BUSD room video screens with the City Manager talking through it. One comment to me was, “What was that?” And, that really describes the City Manager’s defensive posturing.
I missed the entire community meeting on the African American Holistic Center (AAHC), however, even though the meeting was officially over, the meeting room was still full when I arrived for the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission. The AAHC will be 6000 square feet as the community requested and a completely new building on the Alcatraz site. There will be more meetings with at least one in August.
The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission (PRW) passed the “Parks, Recreation & Waterfront Commission Report & Recommendation to City Council Regarding Berkeley Waterfront Area Specific Plan.” The Commission Report calls the Keyser Marston study (the consultants hired by the City) a “marketing plan” for “revenue” and that as such should not be used for waterfront area planning.
The Commission recommendations are certainly an improvement over the consultants hired with a price tag of over $1,000,000, but as someone who worries about the impact of our species and our pets on biodiversity, I would have liked the presence of stronger language with specific areas of habitat protections.
If Berkeley is going to operate like the environment, biodiversity, and climate actually matter, then everything picked up must realign to specific protections and planning around nature rather than profit.
Item 9 on the PRW agenda and item 19 on the July 25 City Council agenda are the authorization to amend the existing repayment of the State Division of Boating and Waterways loan of $5,500,000 for the D and E Dock Replacement Project with an internal loan to the Marina Fund from the Worker’s Compensation Fund and to charge the Marina Fund interest for the internal loan. Charging one city entity/cost center (the Marina) to shift city funds from another entity/cost center (worker’s comp funds) smacks of one more way to break the Marina/Waterfront and insist all that marketing and revenue generation is necessary leaving trampling over open space and nature with development as just the cost of doing business.
Before the extended 4th of July holiday the Mayor and Council voted on all the tax increases and the update to the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget
All of us who own property are going to be paying more to get our garbage, recyclables and compostables (green bin) picked up. The new fees will increase every year for the next five years though Harrison inserted the language (approved unanimously by Council) to review rates and alternatives in two years.
If you want to save money on garbage pickup, switch to a smaller size container (20 gallons is the smallest). There is nothing we can do to alleviate the increases on the other fees like the clean stormwater fee and street lighting assessment. The results of all the increases will appear on the property tax statements when they arrive this fall.
Berkeley is on a biennial budget, which means the 2024 budget is tweaking and adjusting what was passed last June in 2022. Streets, street signals, consultants for a street parcel tax, a study on fees for development in the southside, adding a Police Accountability Board Investigator for police misconduct investigations, early intervention in police misconduct, and a study of Universal Income Pilot were all funded.
The 2020 Reparations Now street mural on Ellis which was painted over following a complaint was restored with Councilmember Bartlett initiating the measure with a $1000 contribution from his office funds. Councilmembers Harrison, Robinson, Hahn, Kesarwani and Humbert all contributed. The three who did not contribute were Arreguin, Taplin and Wengraf.
Berkeley’s Health Officer, Dr. Hernandez resigned to take a job in Santa Cruz.
While we’re sitting in Berkeley with temperatures in the comfortable 70’s, it’s been big news the last couple of weeks that the planet just finished the hottest June ever recorded and July 4th was the hottest recorded day on earth.
As I write the heat domes in the U.S. South including Texas are moving into California, New York City and the surrounding area are under flood warnings (this is not the floods in Vermont and the Hudson Valley that started the week), the Minneapolis air quality index is in the unhealthy zone greater than 150 from Canadian wildfires now numbering somewhere around 900, the ocean temperature off Florida reached 98.1° and Farmers Insurance pulled out of Florida. Iowa meteorologist Chris Gloninger made the news after quitting his job in Des Moines, Iowa, over death threats for his coverage of climate change in the weather reports, and Ari Melber on his MSNBC show The Beat asked Bill Nye the Science Guy if this is the new normal.
Bill Nye gave Melber the same answer Michael Mann gave Thom Hartmann some weeks ago. There is no normal. Normal implies stability.
On a heating planet there is no new normal except that it is going to get worse.
Gaia Vince in her book Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World called fire, heat, drought and flood the “Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene”, the driving forces of the future. Before diving into climate migration, Vince described that we are on track to hit 3 - 4°C of warming by 2100 (with mitigation. It could be worse without) and what that will bring. We are at 1.2°C of warming now and will likely blow by 1.5°C by 2030. Her description is pretty bleak , with food shortages, crop failures, large swathes of the planet as unlivable all or much of the year, including the tropics, Europe, much of Australia, South America, Africa, Asia and the U.S. That leaves as livable areas Patagonia, Canada, Siberia and northern Scandinavia.
I couldn’t help but think about Councilmember Bartlett’s measure on the June 27th consent calendar, Berkeley Food Utility and Access Resilience Measure (FARM). FARM was written to protect Berkeley’s food supply and prepare for future food shortages. Part of the discussion at the Health, Life Enrichment, Equity, & Community Committee was how Emeryville is getting the jump on Berkeley with lab grown meats and synthesized foods. I kept wondering how all these lab grown foods will affect the gut biome, and then how soon the crisis will arrive. FARM passed as a referral to the City Manager.
Vince compares our damage to the planet in the span of just the recent 20 years to the asteroid that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years, yago killing off plants, animals and non-avian dinosaurs. Birds survived.
We (our species) have done so much damage to the planet in such a short period of time that there has been no opportunity for the other species to evolve, except maybe the viruses, bacteria and fungi which have evolved to evade medical treatments like antibiotics and antivirals. Birds may have survived the asteroid from space, but I’m not sure they will survive us.
While I was reading the last chapter of Nomad Century with the glowing benefits migrants bring, I glanced at the news banner on my phone, “The Dutch government collapsed after the parties in the ruling coalition failed to resolve a dispute about how to handle migration.” That was July 7. The Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned though he will stay on as a “caretaker government” until a new administration is elected.
Jeff Goodell author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet said this in a Democracy Now interview, “We have not at all come close to grasping the scale and scope of the crisis we are facing.”
Berkeley, which still has a place of influence, is operating as if it is 1990.
Moving on to Berkeley, just exactly what has our City government been up to since I last wrote besides supporting the release 1.3 million tons of nuclear waste water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown into the Pacific Ocean where it will wash up onto our shores? Ben Bartlett called it, “a sin against nature.” Sophie Hahn said nothing, but maintained support for the resolution.
Kate Harrison wrote the Resolution for the July 11, 2023 City Council meeting: to oppose Japan’s Planned Discharge of Wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, with the action to send copies of the resolution to oppose the release of nuclear waste water to Secretary Blinken, Senator Feinstein, Senator Padilla and Representative Lee.
It was close to 9 pm when the vote on the consent calendar was taken. Terry Taplin said that after public comment, he changed his mind and would support the resolution. That was not enough. Mayor Arreguin, and Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani, Susan Wengraf, Rigel Robinson, and Mark Humbert all abstained from supporting the resolution, which meant the resolution lost, leaving Berkeley as essentially supporting dumping nuclear waste water into the Pacific Ocean.
Before the other big item of the evening, the Auditor’s report on hiring and retention of City staff, the Council had to get through the discussion of Sophie Hahn’s Resolution on dedicating time at council meetings for the City of Berkeley unions to make comments. Mark Humbert blocked moving the item to consent. Humbert’s issue: If unions had a block of time then so should students.
I am often surprised by people who should know better, like council members and council appointees, of how little they know about the public face of our city government, how things work or what decisions / actions have been taken or are up for a vote.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Both Arreguin and Wengraf have confessed of late as to not reading the documents for the Agenda and Rules Committee on which they sit. They also have failed to demand that the City Manager submit reports in time for publication in the Agenda and Rules packet.
The news media who showed up with their video cameras for the July 11 council meeting were there for the vote on entheogenic/psychedelic plants and fungi for personal use. They missed what should have been the stories, the vote on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and the City Manager’s response to the audit on staff hiring and retention.
The resolution to de-prioritize enforcement on entheogenic/psychedelic plants and fungi for personal use was moved from action to consent and passed with little fanfare.
Humbert received a polite smackdown for insisting that if City unions have time so should students. There is a City/UC/Student Relations Committee (four council members, two UC members, two undergraduate and two graduate students) which has existed for seven years. Robinson also described what Humbert suggested as “othering” of students. Harrison described the importance of line staff and a place for comment. Kesarwani and Wengraf as usual needed clarification/explanations. Humbert withdrew his objection and the resolution passed.
It took until 9:50 pm to get to the Auditor’s Report on “Staff Shortages: City Services Constrained by Staff Retention Challenges and Delayed Hiring.” Translation, more people are leaving Berkeley jobs than are being hired. Over half of the employees surveyed reported looking for another job in the previous year and the hiring process is now at 7.7 months.
Berkeley’s vacancy rate at 19% is second to Vallejo’s at 28%. San Francisco’s is 9%. Berkeley’s Human Resources Department (HR) had the highest vacancy rate at 45%. Not mentioned was that the former manager of HR, LaTanya Bellow, was promoted to Deputy City Manager.
The full report (60 pages), the auditor’s presentation and the City Manager’s response are under item 31 in the July 11 city council agenda. https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-regular-meeting-eagenda-july-11-2023
The Employer of Choice Initiative mentioned in the blistering response to the audit from union representative Andrea Mullarkey, was covered in the Activist’s Diary for the week ending March 5, published March 12, 2023. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-03-12/article/50212?headline=A-Berkeley-Activist-s-Diary-Week-Ending-March-5 :
“I am Andrea Mullarkey, a member leader with SEIU. I’m also a librarian. I’m here first to acknowledge the work that went into this audit and to appreciate the elevation of worker voice and how clearly the audit report delineates the problems…already we can hear the City Manager and administration downplaying the findings and making excuses for the circumstances we’re in and blaming others for the problems me and my coworkers were experiencing.
I also hear we are hyping up our Employer of Choice Initiative and I can tell you from my first-hand experience these problems existed before the pandemic...they were not caused by it and have not been resolved since...I can also tell you from first-hand experience that any suggestion of the amount of legislation you all are taking is a problem, that is a distraction…The City Manager has already taken steps to limit the amount of progressive work you do and I have no doubt she’ll seize on this one piece of the audit finding to drive her agenda further, and I’m here to say it’s not appropriate.
As members in a progressive union, we are not interested in seeing you slow down the work you’re doing to advance racial equity, economic equity, and more progressive advances within Berkeley. The other thing I can tell you is that rather than dealing with the structural problems at the crux of this audit, the City Manager has invested in an expensive Employer of Choice initiative. No amount of free food or motivational speakers are going to solve the kind of alienation workers are experiencing.
City Managers refuse to confer with us, or bargain in bad faith with us about our pay and benefits, or when they contract out our work and refused to address the gaping holes and broken structure in our HR Departments, all of which led to grievances which pile up one upon the other. I have literally filed three grievances this week about people not getting paid…And, instead of spending $1,000,000 on the Employers of Choice Initiative, this should be invested through programs and workers that provide them. It’s insulting to workers who could’ve provided this information all along and we have been voicing these concerns in every available menu.
If nothing else is clear from this audit, surely you can see that workers are dissatisfied…A pervasive belief that management doesn’t care about our well-being and we’re thinking about leaving should ring alarm bells for you. When lack of transparency is an alarm bell we repeat, the answer is not lack of consultants…We are the workers who deliver the services and we’re overworked and excluded from the decision…It is increasing clear that we can’t survive in our jobs and you deserve better…I thank the auditor for this truth telling work for workers and with workers on behalf of the public we serve, and now it’s your opportunity and responsibility to address the mismanagement that led to it.”
At 10:41 pm after Mullarkey and other city employees commented on the audit and before the City Manager gave her response, the mayor announced council would not take up the adoption of the Civic Center Phase II Design Concept.
Someone came by handing out a printout of the City Manager’s response ,which was soon on the BUSD room video screens with the City Manager talking through it. One comment to me was, “What was that?” And, that really describes the City Manager’s defensive posturing.
I missed the entire community meeting on the African American Holistic Center (AAHC), however, even though the meeting was officially over, the meeting room was still full when I arrived for the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission. The AAHC will be 6000 square feet as the community requested and a completely new building on the Alcatraz site. There will be more meetings with at least one in August.
The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission (PRW) passed the “Parks, Recreation & Waterfront Commission Report & Recommendation to City Council Regarding Berkeley Waterfront Area Specific Plan.” The Commission Report calls the Keyser Marston study (the consultants hired by the City) a “marketing plan” for “revenue” and that as such should not be used for waterfront area planning.
The Commission recommendations are certainly an improvement over the consultants hired with a price tag of over $1,000,000, but as someone who worries about the impact of our species and our pets on biodiversity, I would have liked the presence of stronger language with specific areas of habitat protections.
If Berkeley is going to operate like the environment, biodiversity, and climate actually matter, then everything picked up must realign to specific protections and planning around nature rather than profit.
Item 9 on the PRW agenda and item 19 on the July 25 City Council agenda are the authorization to amend the existing repayment of the State Division of Boating and Waterways loan of $5,500,000 for the D and E Dock Replacement Project with an internal loan to the Marina Fund from the Worker’s Compensation Fund and to charge the Marina Fund interest for the internal loan. Charging one city entity/cost center (the Marina) to shift city funds from another entity/cost center (worker’s comp funds) smacks of one more way to break the Marina/Waterfront and insist all that marketing and revenue generation is necessary leaving trampling over open space and nature with development as just the cost of doing business.
Before the extended 4th of July holiday the Mayor and Council voted on all the tax increases and the update to the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget
All of us who own property are going to be paying more to get our garbage, recyclables and compostables (green bin) picked up. The new fees will increase every year for the next five years though Harrison inserted the language (approved unanimously by Council) to review rates and alternatives in two years.
If you want to save money on garbage pickup, switch to a smaller size container (20 gallons is the smallest). There is nothing we can do to alleviate the increases on the other fees like the clean stormwater fee and street lighting assessment. The results of all the increases will appear on the property tax statements when they arrive this fall.
Berkeley is on a biennial budget, which means the 2024 budget is tweaking and adjusting what was passed last June in 2022. Streets, street signals, consultants for a street parcel tax, a study on fees for development in the southside, adding a Police Accountability Board Investigator for police misconduct investigations, early intervention in police misconduct, and a study of Universal Income Pilot were all funded.
The 2020 Reparations Now street mural on Ellis which was painted over following a complaint was restored with Councilmember Bartlett initiating the measure with a $1000 contribution from his office funds. Councilmembers Harrison, Robinson, Hahn, Kesarwani and Humbert all contributed. The three who did not contribute were Arreguin, Taplin and Wengraf.
Berkeley’s Health Officer, Dr. Hernandez resigned to take a job in Santa Cruz.
June 25, 2023
Two meetings last week focused on mass transit. One was the update to the City Council on the Climate Action Plan and Resilience. The other was Councilmember Taplin’s proposal, at the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Transportation Committee (FITES), to reconfigure University from 6th Street to Shattuck and Shattuck to Durant to create dedicated bus lanes, transit-signal-priority elevated platforms for AC Transport’s 51B, and dedicated bike lanes from 6th to Oxford and Oxford to Durant.
When I can’t walk to where I want to go, I mostly drive unless BART will get me there. I admit my bias.
Saturday, I volunteered to assist with the Point Molate Park Now! Photography Exhibit at the Point Richmond Gallery, 145 West Richmond Avenue, Point Richmond. The photography exhibit of birds and wildlife at Point Molate was fabulous. As for volunteering, it was so well organized I definitely was not needed.
I drove to Point Richmond (9 miles) and even with driving (heavy traffic), parking (several blocks away) and walking from the street parking space, the entire trip took under 20 minutes.
What would that trip look like if I took mass transit instead? The map program gives that trip with a combination of BART, bus and walking, 1 hour and 9 minutes, and there was an alert: “Canceled AC transit bus may affect route.”
Getting us out of our cars requires reliable, efficient (rapid) and frequent mass transit. Then there is mass transit getting us to where we want to go, and feeling safe while we’re getting there. The alternate of bicycling this route, if you’re able, would be 55 minutes.
Today, I watched one of those double body buses turn onto University from Sacramento. I counted eight passengers. Usually, the bus I see is the one that goes north on MLK and turns west on University by Trader Joe’s. Whenever I see that bus it has only one or two passengers.
The question that I am left with is, “Will spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on bus lanes and platforms entice people to get out of their personal cars or Uber and Lyft to switch to the bus?”
Is it enough, if we haven’t solved the requirements of being reliable, efficient, frequent, safe and most of all getting us to where we want to go?
Taplin’s proposal for the 51B comes with a $600,000 funding request for the “studies” for the “Complete Street Corridor” project. Taplin split the project into two studies of $300,000 each.
All the enthusiasm for the project likely comes from turning University Avenue into a corridor of eight and ten story mixed-use buildings of student housing like the proposal for 1598 University, which is under appeal to City Council on October 3, 2023.
The June 21 article “These S.F. Muni lines are more popular than they were pre-pandemic” in the SF Chronicle credits the express lane and boarding platforms as making the difference for the two successful Muni lines, the 22-Fillmore and 49-Van Ness/Mission, but there is more to the story. The buses don’t go to the downtown San Francisco which has vacant office buildings (now at 31.8%), and the 22 and 49 run every six minutes. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/muni-bus-public-transit-18157146.php
The report to the City Council on climate action declared that Berkeley made significant progress, though there is still work to do to become a Fossil Free City. The report is based on the 2020 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory, which places transportation as 46% of GHG emissions and touts a 31% decline from the year 2000 baseline. The report does acknowledge 2020 was the year most of us stayed home.
It is hard not to put a damper on the whole thing. Councilmember Harrison got it right when speaking on the Bird Safe Ordinance. She said “There's a cost to doing the right thing in the environment. Everyone wants to solve the climate and diversity problem. They want to solve with other people sacrificing. We are the problem…”
I’ve picked up the book Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape our World by Gaia Vince. I’ll have more to report next week when I’ve finished it. The book opens painting a picture of what the future looks like with a warming planet of 4°C. It is not a pretty sight, with drought, super storms, heat making large swaths of the earth uninhabitable, and food shortages, all of which will force migration. There is more of course, but the reality of what is coming hasn’t really sunk in, at least not enough to make any significant change in our behavior. We are still acting as if what we do is tweaks here and there, and maybe if we have enough Teslas, which seem to be everywhere in Berkeley, we’ve done our part.
While we sat comfortably in somewhat chilly Berkeley (a heat wave was promised), the South was cooking under a heat dome affecting 69 million people, and in the Midwest and East, 87 million people in 17 states were living in a blanket of unhealthy air from the fires in Canada. This present mess is a taste of the future. Vince warns in Nomad Century that if we aren’t the ones migrating, we will be on the migrant-receiving end. Maybe that is what the developers are hanging on to in case they run out of UC students to fill the multitude of projects that are about to open in Berkeley.
So far Vince has barely touched on biodiversity and nature. If I hadn’t watched Fareed Zakaria’s interview on CNN of French President Emmanuel Macron, who organized and led the summit of world leaders in Paris that just closed, I would not have known that the thrust of the summit was poverty, biodiversity and climate. The big press, (the NY Times, Washington Post) listed it as a climate conference; biodiversity was not even mentioned.
Biodiversity is also missing in another group, the local chapter of the Sierra Club Conservation Committee. I attended my first Sierra Club Conservation Committee meeting with others in order to request support for the Berkeley Bird Safe ordinance and then stayed on as a regular attendee. I’m not sure how housing took center stage. While I agree that we can’t survive as a nation or on this planet if we continue to cover land with housing, I keep going back to Christopher Ketcham’s article “Addressing Climate Change Will Not Save the Planet.” Biodiversity and habitat need to be written into the plan; it is not an either/or. In fact, in planning cities, including this city, just as we have maps of city streets, there should be maps of corridors connecting habitat for wildlife.
We would be in a better spot in supporting biodiversity if Mayor Arreguin hadn’t referred the “rights of nature” to the Peace and Justice Commission back in 2021 where with lots of misdirection and a little help from his appointee. It would be sure to die, and it did.
The Climate Action Plan did include sea level rise and groundwater rise, but left out the part about rising groundwater and toxins seeping into living and work spaces. Tree Canopy earned three paragraphs, with the mention of grants and selecting species which fit into sidewalk growing spaces.
I’m not sure we would have any native trees planted without continued pressure from the community. Native trees are going into the parks, according to Scott Ferris, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, but street trees so far are non-native, a lost opportunity, which means for decades to come they won’t support local biodiversity.
Biodiversity is not taking imported plants from different parts of the planet and sticking them in the ground in Berkeley or some other place. Supporting biodiversity comes from recognizing the inter-relationship of species.
The “host plant relationship” with native species is lost on so many people. Monarch butterflies don’t exist without native milkweed for caterpillars. I didn’t understand it myself until I started taking walks with Erin Diehm and she pointed out yard after yard filled with imported exotics, which are essentially dead spaces for birds and insects. Diehm is responsible for the pollinator gardens which earned a paragraph in the Climate Action Update.
There were two other items on the FITES agenda. Harrison recommends updating the Climate Action Plan to include short-term and long-term costs, e.g. raw materials, manufacturing, production, use, clean-up, acquisition, disposal cost and short-term environmental and health impacts along with alternatives. It is a big bite, when the Climate Action Plan Update at this point for that 46% of GHG attributed to transportation comes from a google app:
https://insights.sustainability.google/
As Harrison pointed out at the Climate Action Plan presentation to City Council, the Office of Energy & Sustainable Development runs on a shoestring.
It often feels like Sustainability is the unwanted stepchild. The money maker for the Department of Planning and Development is development. If the mayor and more councilmembers were reading the stuff I’m reading, I doubt climate and biodiversity would be pushed off in a corner except when the Climate Action Plan update comes due. As for biodiversity that barely got a whiff of attention in the paragraph on Pollinator Gardens.
The other Harrison item at FITES was Deconstruction and Construction Materials Management. Councilmember Robinson had never heard of deconstruction. A number of years ago the Zero Waste Commission showed a film on deconstruction. I couldn’t find that video (there has been a complete turnover of staff and commissioners and then there is the deconstruction and reconstruction of the City website), but here are two.
The Unbuilders at a little over 12 minutes gives the most detail. If you do your own search be sure to include “building” with deconstruction or you will get lead down other bizarre paths. https://www.google.com/search?q=building+deconstruction&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS706US707&oq=building+deconstruction&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDY0NTJqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:098f2efc,vid:SLvYRKw4HHw
Here is a shorter 4 minute version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejjd6E_7SsQ
I think of all the beautiful hardwood floors from Hinks Department Store that are being demolished for 2065 Kittredge. Do we ever think about the forests that are being denuded to give that wood finish in new buildings?
I was told how back in 2018 when the news got out that the developer United Commonwealth Business Holdings destroyed three redwoods, that were supposed to be saved with the construction of 1698 University, Mike Hudson offered to mill the Redwood trees into usable lumber. According to the story, the developer couldn’t slow down for three days for the redwood trees to be milled, so instead they were ground up. That building is still unfinished five years later. As for the continuing removal of trees and grinding them up into mulch instead of usable lumber, that is something contractors seem to do under the auspices of the City, supposedly to reduce fire risk and make way for construction.
Of course, there is always the discussion of cost and whether deconstruction slow down construction of housing. The cost is really short-term profit versus the long-term cost of destruction that is occurring elsewhere, like deforestation. Watching the 12 minute video in the link above addresses both costs.
The Economic Dashboard Update to Council touted the success of weathering the pandemic and recovering. Retail was down, which would be expected with what feels like a steady stream of Amazon Prime trucks in our neighborhoods. The report is worth a scan. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-20%20WS%20Item%2001%20Berkeley%20Economic%20Dashboards%20Update.pdf
Thursday, I attended an hour-long webinar on the program Bird City that started in Wisconsin in 2009. The young speakers from North and South America bubbled over with enthusiasm. Becoming a Bird City requires local government buy-in and support and addressing each of the four categories of best practices, 1) Create, protect and restore bird habitat, 2) Address threats to birds, 3) Engage people in birding and conservation and 4) Encourage sustainable practices. https://birdcity.org/
Berkeley has no chance of becoming a Bird City without turnover of the mayor and the majority of the City Council. On June 6, the evening of the Bird Safe Ordinance, Mayor Arreguin lowered the required height of bird safe glass from 100 feet to 75 feet, when there was no apparent citizen pressure to do so. Even the near-useless supplemental from Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf left the requirement for bird safe glass at ground to 100 feet. Let’s keep in mind, even 100 feet is a compromise.
By the time Arreguin and the City Council finished gutting the Bird Safe Ordinance only about 40% of it was left. The other reminder from that evening was from Wengraf, stating that bird safe glass would impact the quality of life of her constituents. Consideration of the quality of life of the youth who came to speak and future generations never entered her comments. For them the collapse of nature is real and their answer to the view was, “go outside.”
Why does this matter so much? It goes back to the Audubon moto, “Protect Birds & We Protect the Earth.”
Thursday, the Zoning Adjustment Board met and finished in an hour. There were no big projects on the agenda; it was all alterations to single family housing, including one appeal on an outside deck on a house in the hills, 1524 Campus Drive. The appeal was denied and everything else was approved.
I missed two meetings I wanted attend, the Environment and Climate Commission and the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, so I can’t give a report. There are just too many meetings running simultaneously.
At least the presentation to City Council and their vote on the Waterfront Plan is moved to the fall. I expect there will be development dollars written all over it. After all, the City has been busy with shifting funds around for years to break the Marina so development can move in and fantasy projects can take hold.
The Civic Center presentation and vote will come on July 11 with a price tag of somewhere between $125,000,000 and $158,000,000. Then comes how the Mayor and Council plan to sell us into paying for it , including building new council chambers for them. These things always cost more than estimates.
Daylighting Strawberry Creek is up against stiff opposition from the consultants. Anyone who doubts the delightful impact of freeing creeks from culverts should spend a little time at Strawberry Creek Park. Every time I’ve gone to the park, there are always children exploring the creek. It is lovely. At least daylighting the creek comes with State grants.
Two meetings last week focused on mass transit. One was the update to the City Council on the Climate Action Plan and Resilience. The other was Councilmember Taplin’s proposal, at the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Transportation Committee (FITES), to reconfigure University from 6th Street to Shattuck and Shattuck to Durant to create dedicated bus lanes, transit-signal-priority elevated platforms for AC Transport’s 51B, and dedicated bike lanes from 6th to Oxford and Oxford to Durant.
When I can’t walk to where I want to go, I mostly drive unless BART will get me there. I admit my bias.
Saturday, I volunteered to assist with the Point Molate Park Now! Photography Exhibit at the Point Richmond Gallery, 145 West Richmond Avenue, Point Richmond. The photography exhibit of birds and wildlife at Point Molate was fabulous. As for volunteering, it was so well organized I definitely was not needed.
I drove to Point Richmond (9 miles) and even with driving (heavy traffic), parking (several blocks away) and walking from the street parking space, the entire trip took under 20 minutes.
What would that trip look like if I took mass transit instead? The map program gives that trip with a combination of BART, bus and walking, 1 hour and 9 minutes, and there was an alert: “Canceled AC transit bus may affect route.”
Getting us out of our cars requires reliable, efficient (rapid) and frequent mass transit. Then there is mass transit getting us to where we want to go, and feeling safe while we’re getting there. The alternate of bicycling this route, if you’re able, would be 55 minutes.
Today, I watched one of those double body buses turn onto University from Sacramento. I counted eight passengers. Usually, the bus I see is the one that goes north on MLK and turns west on University by Trader Joe’s. Whenever I see that bus it has only one or two passengers.
The question that I am left with is, “Will spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on bus lanes and platforms entice people to get out of their personal cars or Uber and Lyft to switch to the bus?”
Is it enough, if we haven’t solved the requirements of being reliable, efficient, frequent, safe and most of all getting us to where we want to go?
Taplin’s proposal for the 51B comes with a $600,000 funding request for the “studies” for the “Complete Street Corridor” project. Taplin split the project into two studies of $300,000 each.
All the enthusiasm for the project likely comes from turning University Avenue into a corridor of eight and ten story mixed-use buildings of student housing like the proposal for 1598 University, which is under appeal to City Council on October 3, 2023.
The June 21 article “These S.F. Muni lines are more popular than they were pre-pandemic” in the SF Chronicle credits the express lane and boarding platforms as making the difference for the two successful Muni lines, the 22-Fillmore and 49-Van Ness/Mission, but there is more to the story. The buses don’t go to the downtown San Francisco which has vacant office buildings (now at 31.8%), and the 22 and 49 run every six minutes. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/muni-bus-public-transit-18157146.php
The report to the City Council on climate action declared that Berkeley made significant progress, though there is still work to do to become a Fossil Free City. The report is based on the 2020 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory, which places transportation as 46% of GHG emissions and touts a 31% decline from the year 2000 baseline. The report does acknowledge 2020 was the year most of us stayed home.
It is hard not to put a damper on the whole thing. Councilmember Harrison got it right when speaking on the Bird Safe Ordinance. She said “There's a cost to doing the right thing in the environment. Everyone wants to solve the climate and diversity problem. They want to solve with other people sacrificing. We are the problem…”
I’ve picked up the book Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape our World by Gaia Vince. I’ll have more to report next week when I’ve finished it. The book opens painting a picture of what the future looks like with a warming planet of 4°C. It is not a pretty sight, with drought, super storms, heat making large swaths of the earth uninhabitable, and food shortages, all of which will force migration. There is more of course, but the reality of what is coming hasn’t really sunk in, at least not enough to make any significant change in our behavior. We are still acting as if what we do is tweaks here and there, and maybe if we have enough Teslas, which seem to be everywhere in Berkeley, we’ve done our part.
While we sat comfortably in somewhat chilly Berkeley (a heat wave was promised), the South was cooking under a heat dome affecting 69 million people, and in the Midwest and East, 87 million people in 17 states were living in a blanket of unhealthy air from the fires in Canada. This present mess is a taste of the future. Vince warns in Nomad Century that if we aren’t the ones migrating, we will be on the migrant-receiving end. Maybe that is what the developers are hanging on to in case they run out of UC students to fill the multitude of projects that are about to open in Berkeley.
So far Vince has barely touched on biodiversity and nature. If I hadn’t watched Fareed Zakaria’s interview on CNN of French President Emmanuel Macron, who organized and led the summit of world leaders in Paris that just closed, I would not have known that the thrust of the summit was poverty, biodiversity and climate. The big press, (the NY Times, Washington Post) listed it as a climate conference; biodiversity was not even mentioned.
Biodiversity is also missing in another group, the local chapter of the Sierra Club Conservation Committee. I attended my first Sierra Club Conservation Committee meeting with others in order to request support for the Berkeley Bird Safe ordinance and then stayed on as a regular attendee. I’m not sure how housing took center stage. While I agree that we can’t survive as a nation or on this planet if we continue to cover land with housing, I keep going back to Christopher Ketcham’s article “Addressing Climate Change Will Not Save the Planet.” Biodiversity and habitat need to be written into the plan; it is not an either/or. In fact, in planning cities, including this city, just as we have maps of city streets, there should be maps of corridors connecting habitat for wildlife.
We would be in a better spot in supporting biodiversity if Mayor Arreguin hadn’t referred the “rights of nature” to the Peace and Justice Commission back in 2021 where with lots of misdirection and a little help from his appointee. It would be sure to die, and it did.
The Climate Action Plan did include sea level rise and groundwater rise, but left out the part about rising groundwater and toxins seeping into living and work spaces. Tree Canopy earned three paragraphs, with the mention of grants and selecting species which fit into sidewalk growing spaces.
I’m not sure we would have any native trees planted without continued pressure from the community. Native trees are going into the parks, according to Scott Ferris, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, but street trees so far are non-native, a lost opportunity, which means for decades to come they won’t support local biodiversity.
Biodiversity is not taking imported plants from different parts of the planet and sticking them in the ground in Berkeley or some other place. Supporting biodiversity comes from recognizing the inter-relationship of species.
The “host plant relationship” with native species is lost on so many people. Monarch butterflies don’t exist without native milkweed for caterpillars. I didn’t understand it myself until I started taking walks with Erin Diehm and she pointed out yard after yard filled with imported exotics, which are essentially dead spaces for birds and insects. Diehm is responsible for the pollinator gardens which earned a paragraph in the Climate Action Update.
There were two other items on the FITES agenda. Harrison recommends updating the Climate Action Plan to include short-term and long-term costs, e.g. raw materials, manufacturing, production, use, clean-up, acquisition, disposal cost and short-term environmental and health impacts along with alternatives. It is a big bite, when the Climate Action Plan Update at this point for that 46% of GHG attributed to transportation comes from a google app:
https://insights.sustainability.google/
As Harrison pointed out at the Climate Action Plan presentation to City Council, the Office of Energy & Sustainable Development runs on a shoestring.
It often feels like Sustainability is the unwanted stepchild. The money maker for the Department of Planning and Development is development. If the mayor and more councilmembers were reading the stuff I’m reading, I doubt climate and biodiversity would be pushed off in a corner except when the Climate Action Plan update comes due. As for biodiversity that barely got a whiff of attention in the paragraph on Pollinator Gardens.
The other Harrison item at FITES was Deconstruction and Construction Materials Management. Councilmember Robinson had never heard of deconstruction. A number of years ago the Zero Waste Commission showed a film on deconstruction. I couldn’t find that video (there has been a complete turnover of staff and commissioners and then there is the deconstruction and reconstruction of the City website), but here are two.
The Unbuilders at a little over 12 minutes gives the most detail. If you do your own search be sure to include “building” with deconstruction or you will get lead down other bizarre paths. https://www.google.com/search?q=building+deconstruction&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS706US707&oq=building+deconstruction&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDY0NTJqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:098f2efc,vid:SLvYRKw4HHw
Here is a shorter 4 minute version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejjd6E_7SsQ
I think of all the beautiful hardwood floors from Hinks Department Store that are being demolished for 2065 Kittredge. Do we ever think about the forests that are being denuded to give that wood finish in new buildings?
I was told how back in 2018 when the news got out that the developer United Commonwealth Business Holdings destroyed three redwoods, that were supposed to be saved with the construction of 1698 University, Mike Hudson offered to mill the Redwood trees into usable lumber. According to the story, the developer couldn’t slow down for three days for the redwood trees to be milled, so instead they were ground up. That building is still unfinished five years later. As for the continuing removal of trees and grinding them up into mulch instead of usable lumber, that is something contractors seem to do under the auspices of the City, supposedly to reduce fire risk and make way for construction.
Of course, there is always the discussion of cost and whether deconstruction slow down construction of housing. The cost is really short-term profit versus the long-term cost of destruction that is occurring elsewhere, like deforestation. Watching the 12 minute video in the link above addresses both costs.
The Economic Dashboard Update to Council touted the success of weathering the pandemic and recovering. Retail was down, which would be expected with what feels like a steady stream of Amazon Prime trucks in our neighborhoods. The report is worth a scan. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-20%20WS%20Item%2001%20Berkeley%20Economic%20Dashboards%20Update.pdf
Thursday, I attended an hour-long webinar on the program Bird City that started in Wisconsin in 2009. The young speakers from North and South America bubbled over with enthusiasm. Becoming a Bird City requires local government buy-in and support and addressing each of the four categories of best practices, 1) Create, protect and restore bird habitat, 2) Address threats to birds, 3) Engage people in birding and conservation and 4) Encourage sustainable practices. https://birdcity.org/
Berkeley has no chance of becoming a Bird City without turnover of the mayor and the majority of the City Council. On June 6, the evening of the Bird Safe Ordinance, Mayor Arreguin lowered the required height of bird safe glass from 100 feet to 75 feet, when there was no apparent citizen pressure to do so. Even the near-useless supplemental from Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf left the requirement for bird safe glass at ground to 100 feet. Let’s keep in mind, even 100 feet is a compromise.
By the time Arreguin and the City Council finished gutting the Bird Safe Ordinance only about 40% of it was left. The other reminder from that evening was from Wengraf, stating that bird safe glass would impact the quality of life of her constituents. Consideration of the quality of life of the youth who came to speak and future generations never entered her comments. For them the collapse of nature is real and their answer to the view was, “go outside.”
Why does this matter so much? It goes back to the Audubon moto, “Protect Birds & We Protect the Earth.”
Thursday, the Zoning Adjustment Board met and finished in an hour. There were no big projects on the agenda; it was all alterations to single family housing, including one appeal on an outside deck on a house in the hills, 1524 Campus Drive. The appeal was denied and everything else was approved.
I missed two meetings I wanted attend, the Environment and Climate Commission and the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, so I can’t give a report. There are just too many meetings running simultaneously.
At least the presentation to City Council and their vote on the Waterfront Plan is moved to the fall. I expect there will be development dollars written all over it. After all, the City has been busy with shifting funds around for years to break the Marina so development can move in and fantasy projects can take hold.
The Civic Center presentation and vote will come on July 11 with a price tag of somewhere between $125,000,000 and $158,000,000. Then comes how the Mayor and Council plan to sell us into paying for it , including building new council chambers for them. These things always cost more than estimates.
Daylighting Strawberry Creek is up against stiff opposition from the consultants. Anyone who doubts the delightful impact of freeing creeks from culverts should spend a little time at Strawberry Creek Park. Every time I’ve gone to the park, there are always children exploring the creek. It is lovely. At least daylighting the creek comes with State grants.
June 18, 2023
Berkeley holds a special place, deserved or not, as a city of liberal / progressive ideas and politics.
I’ve read every letter/email sent to the Berkeley City Council before its June 6 meeting that I could find (total 193) in “records online” and only two out of that stack were in opposition to the draft of the Bird Safe Ordinance as passed by the Berkeley Planning Commission with a revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison.
On May 19, 2023, when the draft of the Bird Safe Ordinance still included residential buildings on a phase-in schedule, and before Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf submitted their alternate proposal as Supplemental 2 to exempt residential properties and glass under 12 square feet in area, Dr. Scott Loss, author of the scientific paper referenced and quoted by the Planning Department, and later in the alternate ordinance from Kesarwani and Wengraf, wrote:
“[M]y lab has studied the bird-window collision issue and solutions to address it, for the last decade. In 2014, I published a highly cited and publicized paper estimating that up to 1 billion birds annually die from bird-window collisions in the U.S. alone, making this one of the top threats affecting our native bird populations. In fact, bird-window collisions are such a major threat to our birds that making buildings and window safe for birds was identified in 2019 as #1 in a list of 7 simple actions to help birds and halt and reverse the decline of North America’s bird populations. [underlining by Dr. Loss]
“Individual property owners can make a difference in addressing the bird-window collision issue by treating their glass windows with commercial products (e.g. films and markers placed over glass and do-it-yourself solutions). However, making major inroads to broadly address this issue requires political buy-in and policies that provide guidelines for making buildings more bird-friendly, thus addressing this issue at a meaningful scale that greatly benefits declining bird populations. Policies such as the Bird Safe Berkeley Ordinance are absolutely crucial for reducing bird collisions, and voting to pass this ordinance would immediately make Berkeley a global leader and beacon for environmental action, and a role model for other cities around the U.S. and worldwide.”
The June 6, 2023, email from Peter Saenger, Acopian Ornithological Specialist at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, sent to Council at 11:16 am is best described as a slap down of Kesarwani and Wengraf.
“Dear Council
It has come to my attention that there are two major misstatements being pushed by some of your members.
Saenger named two west coast articles “Preventing Bird-Window Collisions – Seattle Audubon” and the NIH published paper “Bird-Window Collisions at a West-Coast Urban Park Museum: Analyses of Bird Biology and Window Attributes from Golden Gate Park, San Francisco” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26731417/
The most interesting finding in the article Saenger attached is that Acopian blinds, the DIY inexpensive project of parachute cord (researchers used olive colored) hung 3.5 inches apart the full length of the window is an incredibly effective treatment (95% effective) to deter bird-window collisions.
After two bird-glass collisions, Erin Diehm (and spouse) made an Acopian blind for $18 to successfully end bird strikes on the window looking into their native plant garden (see photo). https://www.birdsavers.com
Glenn Philips, Executive Director of Golden Gate Audubon, countered the claim that there are no options for single family houses and residential buildings and cost assumptions with the information that most standard and single and double-hung windows would be compliant with the ordinance since they include a full external screen and add no additional cost and that bird safe glass adds about 8% to the total cost of the window.
The total responses to the question about the proposed Bird Safe Glass Ordinance on the Berkeley Considers web site were 462. “Yes” were 85.1% (393), with 12.8% no (58) and 2.4% (11) other. The opposition cited cost, quoted disinformation that bird safe glass is not energy efficient, railed against regulations, called the ordinance green-washing and nimbyism, called for attention to homelessness and crime and said that cats kill more birds than bird-glass collisions (Aurora, Illinois has an ordinance on that cat problem).
The first commenters on the Bird Safe Ordinance at the Berkeley City Council meeting were Niko, aged five and August, 6.
When six-year old August was lifted to the microphone by his mother to speak on saving birds, what came out was “I’m scared, I’m really scared.” He had what probably felt like an eternity for his fear to build. It was almost three hours of waiting to speak in a room full of strangers with a looming City Council looking down on him from the elevated dais. He had every reason to be afraid.
As a young child his fear was in the moment, without a sense of how the earth is changing, really quite sick according to Joyeeta Gupta, co-chair of the report referenced by Steve Newman in the Chronicle on Sunday, June 4, 2023. Steve Newman started Earthweek: a diary of a planet with “Ailing Earth A report says Earth has exceeded seven out of eight key ecological stability limits pushing it into the ‘danger’ zone.’”
The report in the journal Nature in the article Earthweek, a “Safe and just Earth system boundaries”, is dense with explanations, charts and a world map of hotspots with a part of California along the coast and into the valley in deep red (a hotspot). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8
The easier to read summary in Common Dreams lists the eight boundaries; 1) earth surface temperature (climate), 2) natural ecosystem (biosphere), 3) functional integrity (biosphere), 4) surface water (water), 5) groundwater (water), 6) nitrogen (nutrient cycles), 7) Phosphorus (nutrient cycles) and 8) aerosol loading (atmosphere). https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
The boundary that wasn’t breached was aerosol loading/atmosphere, though New York might disagree on that assessment with smoke turning the sky orange from hundreds of wildfires burning out of control in Canada. https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
There was more bad news on June 6, the day of the council vote on the Bird Safe Ordinance. Another climate milestone could come in the 2030s, about a decade sooner than anticipated: ice free Arctic summers. This is very bad news, as ice reflects the heat of the sun but a dark open ocean absorbs the heat, creating a feedback loop (amplification) speeding up global warming. The Arctic is already reported to be warming two to seven times faster than the rest of the planet, depending on the day and which study or article one picks up.
The Arctic Ice cap for thousands of years acted to keep the world’s climate in balance. With losing that moderating force the jet stream has slipped off the top of the planet. This week the jet stream is drooping down to Mexico, bringing cold weather south that should have stayed in the Arctic. It’s June and some of my friends say they are still using their heaters.
The staff presentation at the council meeting on the Bird Safe Ordinance followed the children.
After a brief presentation from Justin Horner, Associate Planner, City of Berkeley Planning Department, Mayor Arreguin immediately turned to the remaining Public Comment speakers, leaving them to guess what kind of watering down grand compromise Arreguin would propose after they spoke. Representatives from the City of Berkeley Planning Commission were not invited to the table to present.
Jordon Klein, Director of Planning and Development, said the Planning Department would work with whatever was decided.
Glenn Philips, Executive Director of the Audubon Society was able to speak for 4 minutes by asking volunteers to give him their minute.
After public comment closed, Arreguin kicked off his comments asserting the city’s need to build 15,000 units of housing in Berkeley (the actual number in the Housing Element is 8,934).
Councilmember Harrison spoke to her Revision, then she said “There's a cost for doing the right thing in the environment. Everyone wants to solve the climate and diversity problem: they want to solve with other people sacrificing. We are the problem. We use too much plastic, as Councilmember Hahn tried to deal with. We drive too much. We eat too much meat. We are the problem. When this thing comes up, it is kind of hard. It is harder when our planet dies and our children can't live.”
It was evident that Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf had not read the letters from the scientists, or if they read them, they chose to ignore the information.
Wengraf finally got around to her priority at 10:29 pm. “I have to say I was disappointed to find out the Planning Commission did not discuss the impact on views when they discussed the bird safe ordinance. Many of my constituents live in homes with views, and most of the options for bird safe glass would impact the human experience of looking through that glass. They're patterns or etched. The tape would interfere with the view; the film would interfere with the view. The only option that might not interfere with the view is the most expensive option which is UV glass. I feel like that is a very important thing that was not discussed at the Planning Commission and it is important to me as someone who represents constituents who have properties with views and those views are worth a lot of money. And imposing an ordinance that would impact them would have financial implications and also quality of life implications.” [Emphasis added]
The high school and college students who came to speak in favor of the Bird Safe Ordinance as it came from the Planning Commission and Councilmember Harrison who stayed for the final vote are angry and they should be. They are left with the mess, an overheated planet, collapsing biodiversity and a Mayor and City Council that are more concerned about views than the quality of life for their generation and the next generations.
The evening ended with the last comment from Zev Massey, a graduating high school senior.
“My name is Zev…I want to thank you all for coming here and agreeing on a resolution. This is not related to birds. It’s related to youth and our role in politics…A lot of the kids here, it is their first time giving public comment. And, when you go home and think about tonight, I’d like you to think about the lasting impression that you left on these kids, and whether you give them hope that local politics is doing what the citizens and the future generation that will inhabit this earth want from our representatives, or whether a different taste was left in their mouth.”
The Bird Safe Ordinance second reading is June 27, 2023. It will go into effect 30 days later.
While the final version included exemptions for Residential or Mixed Use buildings under 35 feet in height and less than 10,000 square feet, designated historical buildings (landmarked and/or structure of merit), and affordable housing, and Arreguin lowered the height requirement from 100 feet to 75 feet, this makes the final outcome about 40% of what we would have had if in fact the Mayor and City Council had voted for the draft of Bird Safe Ordinance passed unanimously by the Planning Commission and the Revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-06%20Item%2018%20Bird%20Safe%20Harrison%20Rev2%281%29.pdf
Considering the dreadfully awful and ineffective version of Bird Safe Requirements offered by Kesarwani and Wengraf in Supplemental 2 with only eight councilmembers present to vote (Councilmember Bartlett was absent), there were still positive outcomes.
Arreguin started with Harrison’s revision. The exemption for transparent materials under 12 square feet was eliminated, as was the use of a certified biologist. The key provision of Patterned Glazing Treatment as detailed by Harrison in her revision made it into the final version. The ordinance applies to the large mixed use projects of 10,000 square feet or greater. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-27%20Item%2001%20Ordinance%207864.pdf
SB 330 projects comply with the conditions in place at the time of application. For all other projects, no matter when entitled, the ordinance applies when a building permit is needed.
This version of the ordinance puts Berkeley a step forward, but certainly not a leader.
Those of us following the City closely continually place blame on the City Manager. Watching so much unfold in Berkeley lately, I often think we ought to be looking up the other branch of the tree, the one reflecting ambition to climb the political ladder.
I have two books to recommend, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle and Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City by Ben Wilson.
The Great Displacement follows the personal stories of people displaced by climate fueled disasters, hurricanes, wildfires and drought, FEMA buyouts and thoughts about what living in and buying properties in high risk areas means for the future.
Those houses with views Wengraf is so anxious to protect over the quality of life for present and next generations of youth sit in the high fire hazard zone, within feet of the Hayward Fault, in a hillside slide area. When disaster happens, as it eventually will, will retreat be an option on the table? Should further construction in these areas be allowed at all even now?
Will McCarthy poses the question of construction in earthquake zones in the East Bay Times article “Why the Hayward Fault is the epicenter of debate over housing goals vs. earthquake risk.” https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/06/13/why-the-hayward-fault-is-the-epicenter-of-debate-over-housing-goals-vs-earthquake-risk/
The second book, Urban Jungle, is a fascinating history of domestic and wild animals in cities that challenges us to plan the inclusion of nature within cities.
Both books speak to how cities filled with hardscape, buildings, pavements, roads and no place for nature leave us unprepared for the upheaval we can expect from global warming and climate fueled disasters.
Those of us who are concerned about the future of the children and teenagers who showed up for the Bird Safe Ordinance and future generations have a full plate of work in front of us.
Berkeley holds a special place, deserved or not, as a city of liberal / progressive ideas and politics.
I’ve read every letter/email sent to the Berkeley City Council before its June 6 meeting that I could find (total 193) in “records online” and only two out of that stack were in opposition to the draft of the Bird Safe Ordinance as passed by the Berkeley Planning Commission with a revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison.
On May 19, 2023, when the draft of the Bird Safe Ordinance still included residential buildings on a phase-in schedule, and before Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf submitted their alternate proposal as Supplemental 2 to exempt residential properties and glass under 12 square feet in area, Dr. Scott Loss, author of the scientific paper referenced and quoted by the Planning Department, and later in the alternate ordinance from Kesarwani and Wengraf, wrote:
“[M]y lab has studied the bird-window collision issue and solutions to address it, for the last decade. In 2014, I published a highly cited and publicized paper estimating that up to 1 billion birds annually die from bird-window collisions in the U.S. alone, making this one of the top threats affecting our native bird populations. In fact, bird-window collisions are such a major threat to our birds that making buildings and window safe for birds was identified in 2019 as #1 in a list of 7 simple actions to help birds and halt and reverse the decline of North America’s bird populations. [underlining by Dr. Loss]
“Individual property owners can make a difference in addressing the bird-window collision issue by treating their glass windows with commercial products (e.g. films and markers placed over glass and do-it-yourself solutions). However, making major inroads to broadly address this issue requires political buy-in and policies that provide guidelines for making buildings more bird-friendly, thus addressing this issue at a meaningful scale that greatly benefits declining bird populations. Policies such as the Bird Safe Berkeley Ordinance are absolutely crucial for reducing bird collisions, and voting to pass this ordinance would immediately make Berkeley a global leader and beacon for environmental action, and a role model for other cities around the U.S. and worldwide.”
The June 6, 2023, email from Peter Saenger, Acopian Ornithological Specialist at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, sent to Council at 11:16 am is best described as a slap down of Kesarwani and Wengraf.
“Dear Council
It has come to my attention that there are two major misstatements being pushed by some of your members.
- “Research to date has not determined what bird-safe measures are effective for low-rise residential structures.”
- “Data on the Efficacy of Bird-Safe Glass is Not Based on Western U.S. Bird Species.” And “may have created a bias in the effectiveness of recommended mitigations measures.”
Saenger named two west coast articles “Preventing Bird-Window Collisions – Seattle Audubon” and the NIH published paper “Bird-Window Collisions at a West-Coast Urban Park Museum: Analyses of Bird Biology and Window Attributes from Golden Gate Park, San Francisco” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26731417/
The most interesting finding in the article Saenger attached is that Acopian blinds, the DIY inexpensive project of parachute cord (researchers used olive colored) hung 3.5 inches apart the full length of the window is an incredibly effective treatment (95% effective) to deter bird-window collisions.
After two bird-glass collisions, Erin Diehm (and spouse) made an Acopian blind for $18 to successfully end bird strikes on the window looking into their native plant garden (see photo). https://www.birdsavers.com
Glenn Philips, Executive Director of Golden Gate Audubon, countered the claim that there are no options for single family houses and residential buildings and cost assumptions with the information that most standard and single and double-hung windows would be compliant with the ordinance since they include a full external screen and add no additional cost and that bird safe glass adds about 8% to the total cost of the window.
The total responses to the question about the proposed Bird Safe Glass Ordinance on the Berkeley Considers web site were 462. “Yes” were 85.1% (393), with 12.8% no (58) and 2.4% (11) other. The opposition cited cost, quoted disinformation that bird safe glass is not energy efficient, railed against regulations, called the ordinance green-washing and nimbyism, called for attention to homelessness and crime and said that cats kill more birds than bird-glass collisions (Aurora, Illinois has an ordinance on that cat problem).
The first commenters on the Bird Safe Ordinance at the Berkeley City Council meeting were Niko, aged five and August, 6.
When six-year old August was lifted to the microphone by his mother to speak on saving birds, what came out was “I’m scared, I’m really scared.” He had what probably felt like an eternity for his fear to build. It was almost three hours of waiting to speak in a room full of strangers with a looming City Council looking down on him from the elevated dais. He had every reason to be afraid.
As a young child his fear was in the moment, without a sense of how the earth is changing, really quite sick according to Joyeeta Gupta, co-chair of the report referenced by Steve Newman in the Chronicle on Sunday, June 4, 2023. Steve Newman started Earthweek: a diary of a planet with “Ailing Earth A report says Earth has exceeded seven out of eight key ecological stability limits pushing it into the ‘danger’ zone.’”
The report in the journal Nature in the article Earthweek, a “Safe and just Earth system boundaries”, is dense with explanations, charts and a world map of hotspots with a part of California along the coast and into the valley in deep red (a hotspot). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8
The easier to read summary in Common Dreams lists the eight boundaries; 1) earth surface temperature (climate), 2) natural ecosystem (biosphere), 3) functional integrity (biosphere), 4) surface water (water), 5) groundwater (water), 6) nitrogen (nutrient cycles), 7) Phosphorus (nutrient cycles) and 8) aerosol loading (atmosphere). https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
The boundary that wasn’t breached was aerosol loading/atmosphere, though New York might disagree on that assessment with smoke turning the sky orange from hundreds of wildfires burning out of control in Canada. https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
There was more bad news on June 6, the day of the council vote on the Bird Safe Ordinance. Another climate milestone could come in the 2030s, about a decade sooner than anticipated: ice free Arctic summers. This is very bad news, as ice reflects the heat of the sun but a dark open ocean absorbs the heat, creating a feedback loop (amplification) speeding up global warming. The Arctic is already reported to be warming two to seven times faster than the rest of the planet, depending on the day and which study or article one picks up.
The Arctic Ice cap for thousands of years acted to keep the world’s climate in balance. With losing that moderating force the jet stream has slipped off the top of the planet. This week the jet stream is drooping down to Mexico, bringing cold weather south that should have stayed in the Arctic. It’s June and some of my friends say they are still using their heaters.
The staff presentation at the council meeting on the Bird Safe Ordinance followed the children.
After a brief presentation from Justin Horner, Associate Planner, City of Berkeley Planning Department, Mayor Arreguin immediately turned to the remaining Public Comment speakers, leaving them to guess what kind of watering down grand compromise Arreguin would propose after they spoke. Representatives from the City of Berkeley Planning Commission were not invited to the table to present.
Jordon Klein, Director of Planning and Development, said the Planning Department would work with whatever was decided.
Glenn Philips, Executive Director of the Audubon Society was able to speak for 4 minutes by asking volunteers to give him their minute.
After public comment closed, Arreguin kicked off his comments asserting the city’s need to build 15,000 units of housing in Berkeley (the actual number in the Housing Element is 8,934).
Councilmember Harrison spoke to her Revision, then she said “There's a cost for doing the right thing in the environment. Everyone wants to solve the climate and diversity problem: they want to solve with other people sacrificing. We are the problem. We use too much plastic, as Councilmember Hahn tried to deal with. We drive too much. We eat too much meat. We are the problem. When this thing comes up, it is kind of hard. It is harder when our planet dies and our children can't live.”
It was evident that Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf had not read the letters from the scientists, or if they read them, they chose to ignore the information.
Wengraf finally got around to her priority at 10:29 pm. “I have to say I was disappointed to find out the Planning Commission did not discuss the impact on views when they discussed the bird safe ordinance. Many of my constituents live in homes with views, and most of the options for bird safe glass would impact the human experience of looking through that glass. They're patterns or etched. The tape would interfere with the view; the film would interfere with the view. The only option that might not interfere with the view is the most expensive option which is UV glass. I feel like that is a very important thing that was not discussed at the Planning Commission and it is important to me as someone who represents constituents who have properties with views and those views are worth a lot of money. And imposing an ordinance that would impact them would have financial implications and also quality of life implications.” [Emphasis added]
The high school and college students who came to speak in favor of the Bird Safe Ordinance as it came from the Planning Commission and Councilmember Harrison who stayed for the final vote are angry and they should be. They are left with the mess, an overheated planet, collapsing biodiversity and a Mayor and City Council that are more concerned about views than the quality of life for their generation and the next generations.
The evening ended with the last comment from Zev Massey, a graduating high school senior.
“My name is Zev…I want to thank you all for coming here and agreeing on a resolution. This is not related to birds. It’s related to youth and our role in politics…A lot of the kids here, it is their first time giving public comment. And, when you go home and think about tonight, I’d like you to think about the lasting impression that you left on these kids, and whether you give them hope that local politics is doing what the citizens and the future generation that will inhabit this earth want from our representatives, or whether a different taste was left in their mouth.”
The Bird Safe Ordinance second reading is June 27, 2023. It will go into effect 30 days later.
While the final version included exemptions for Residential or Mixed Use buildings under 35 feet in height and less than 10,000 square feet, designated historical buildings (landmarked and/or structure of merit), and affordable housing, and Arreguin lowered the height requirement from 100 feet to 75 feet, this makes the final outcome about 40% of what we would have had if in fact the Mayor and City Council had voted for the draft of Bird Safe Ordinance passed unanimously by the Planning Commission and the Revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-06%20Item%2018%20Bird%20Safe%20Harrison%20Rev2%281%29.pdf
Considering the dreadfully awful and ineffective version of Bird Safe Requirements offered by Kesarwani and Wengraf in Supplemental 2 with only eight councilmembers present to vote (Councilmember Bartlett was absent), there were still positive outcomes.
Arreguin started with Harrison’s revision. The exemption for transparent materials under 12 square feet was eliminated, as was the use of a certified biologist. The key provision of Patterned Glazing Treatment as detailed by Harrison in her revision made it into the final version. The ordinance applies to the large mixed use projects of 10,000 square feet or greater. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-27%20Item%2001%20Ordinance%207864.pdf
SB 330 projects comply with the conditions in place at the time of application. For all other projects, no matter when entitled, the ordinance applies when a building permit is needed.
This version of the ordinance puts Berkeley a step forward, but certainly not a leader.
Those of us following the City closely continually place blame on the City Manager. Watching so much unfold in Berkeley lately, I often think we ought to be looking up the other branch of the tree, the one reflecting ambition to climb the political ladder.
I have two books to recommend, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle and Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City by Ben Wilson.
The Great Displacement follows the personal stories of people displaced by climate fueled disasters, hurricanes, wildfires and drought, FEMA buyouts and thoughts about what living in and buying properties in high risk areas means for the future.
Those houses with views Wengraf is so anxious to protect over the quality of life for present and next generations of youth sit in the high fire hazard zone, within feet of the Hayward Fault, in a hillside slide area. When disaster happens, as it eventually will, will retreat be an option on the table? Should further construction in these areas be allowed at all even now?
Will McCarthy poses the question of construction in earthquake zones in the East Bay Times article “Why the Hayward Fault is the epicenter of debate over housing goals vs. earthquake risk.” https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/06/13/why-the-hayward-fault-is-the-epicenter-of-debate-over-housing-goals-vs-earthquake-risk/
The second book, Urban Jungle, is a fascinating history of domestic and wild animals in cities that challenges us to plan the inclusion of nature within cities.
Both books speak to how cities filled with hardscape, buildings, pavements, roads and no place for nature leave us unprepared for the upheaval we can expect from global warming and climate fueled disasters.
Those of us who are concerned about the future of the children and teenagers who showed up for the Bird Safe Ordinance and future generations have a full plate of work in front of us.
June 11, 2023
Berkeley holds a special place deserved or not as a city of liberal / progressive ideas and politics.
I’ve read every letter/email sent to City Council that I could find (total 193) in “records online” and only two out of that stack were in opposition to Bird Safe Ordinance passed by the Planning Commission and the Revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison.
On May 19, 2023 when the Bird Safe Ordinance still included residential on a phase-in schedule and before Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf submitted their alternate proposal as Supplemental 2 to exempt residential properties and glass under 12 square feet in area, Dr. Scott Loss author of the scientific paper referenced and quoted by the Planning Department and later in the alternate ordinance from Kesarwani and Wengraf) wrote:
“[M]y lab has studied the bird-window collision issue and solutions to address it, for the last decade. In 2014, I published a highly cited and publicized paper estimating that up to 1 billion birds annually die from bird-window collisions in the U.S. alone, making this one of the top threats affecting our native bird populations. In fact, bird-window collisions are such a major threat to our birds that making buildings and window safe for birds was identified in 2019 as #1 in a list of 7 simple actions to help birds and halt and reverse the decline of North America’s bird populations. [underlining by Dr. Loss]
Individual property owners can make a difference in addressing the bird-window collision issue by treating their glass windows with commercial products (e.g. films and markers placed over glass and do-it-yourself solutions). However, making major inroads to broadly address this issue requires political buy-in and policies that provide guidelines for making buildings more bird-friendly, thus addressing this issue at a meaningful scale that greatly benefits declining bird populations. Policies such as the Bird Safe Berkeley Ordinance are absolutely crucial for reducing bird collisions, and voting to pass this ordinance would immediately make Berkeley a global leader and beacon for environmental action, and a role model for other cities around the U.S. and worldwide.”
The June 6, 2023 email from Peter Saenger, Acopian Ornithological Specialist at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania sent to Council at 11:16 am is best described as a slap down of Kesarwani and Wengraf.
“Dear Council
It has come to my attention that there are two major misstatements being pushed by some of your members.
1)“Research to date has not determined what bird-safe measures are effective for low-rise residential structures.”
[Response] How to effectively mitigate bird-wind collisions anywhere, especially low-rise and residential buildings have been scientifically tested and proven for decades. A simple search of the web for “the 2 x 4 rule” or reading one of the countless per-reviewed papers on what works and what does not will show this is true. A short example on this topic is attached. [email and article in records online Supplemental Communications 3]
2)“Data on the Efficacy of Bird-Safe Glass is Not Based on Western U.S. Bird Species.” And “may have created a bias in the effectiveness of recommended mitigations measures.”
[Response] Again, someone is not doing their homework. There are peer-reviewed, published studies on bird-window collisions from every continent, other than antarctica. Collisions do vary between different species, but this is a world-wide issue and what works to mitigate collisions in the eastern US, also works in the Western US, England, Australia, China, Korea, etc. Again, a search of the web will find studies done along the west coast.”
Saenger named two west coast articles “Preventing Bird-Window Collisions – Seattle Audubon” and the NIH published paper “Bird-Window Collisions at a West-Coast Urban Park Museum: Analyses of Bird Biology and Window Attributes from Golden Gate Park, San Francisco” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26731417/
The most interesting finding in the article Saenger attached is that Acopian Blinds, the DIY inexpensive project of parachute cord (researchers use olive colored) hung 3.5 inches apart the full length of the window is an incredibly effective treatment (95% effective) to deter bird-window collisions. Erin Diehm uses this method on the window where she had a bird strike.
Glenn Philips, Executive Director Golden Gate Audubon countered that there are no options for single family houses and residential buildings and cost assumptions with, most standard and single and double-hung windows include a full external screen and add no additional cost (these are compliant with the ordinance) and that bird safe glass adds about 8% to the total cost of the window.
The total responses to Berkeley Considers on the Bird Safe Glass Ordinance were 462, 85.1% yes (393), 12.8% no (58) and 2.4% (11) other. The opposition cited cost, quoted disinformation that bird safe glass is not energy efficient, regaled against regulations, called the ordinance, green washing, nimbyism, called for attention to homelessness and crime and that cats kill more birds than bird-glass collisions (Aurora, Illinois has an ordinance on that cat problem).
The first commenters on the Bird Safe Ordinance were Niko age five and August.
When six-year old August was lifted to the microphone by his mother to speak on saving birds, what came out was “I’m scared, I’m really scared.” He had what probably felt like an eternity for his fear to build. It was almost three hours of waiting to speak in a room full of strangers with a City Council looming in front of him on the elevated dais looking down. He had every reason to be afraid.
As a young child his fear was in the moment without the sense of how the earth is changing and really quite sick according to Joyeeta Gupta co-chair of the report referenced by Steve Newman in the Chronicle on the Sunday, June 4, 2023. Steve Newman started Earthweek: a diary of a planet with “Ailing Earth A report says Earth has exceeded seven out of eight key ecological stability limits pushing it into the ‘danger’ zone.’”
The report in the journal Nature in Earthweek a “Safe and just Earth system boundaries” is dense with explanations, charts and a world map of hotspots with a part of California along the coast and into the valley in deep red (a hotspot). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8
The easier to read summary in Common Dreams lists the eight boundaries; 1) earth surface temperature (climate), 2) natural ecosystem (biosphere), 3) functional integrity (biosphere), 4) surface water (water), 5) groundwater (water), 6) nitrogen (nutrient cycles), 7) Phosphorus (nutrient cycles) and 8) aerosol loading (atmosphere). https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
The boundary that wasn’t breached was aerosol loading/atmosphere, though New York might disagree on that assessment with smoke turning the sky orange from hundreds of wildfires burning out of control in Canada. https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
There was more bad news on June 6, the day of the council vote on the Bird Safe Ordinance. Another climate milestone could come in the 2030s about a decade sooner than anticipated, ice free Arctic summers. This is very bad news as ice reflects the heat of the sun, a dark open ocean absorbs the heat creating a feedback loop (amplification) speeding up global warming. The Arctic is already warming two to seven times faster than the rest of the planet depending on the day and which study or article one picks up.
The Arctic Ice cap for thousands of years acted to keep the world’s climate in balance. With losing that moderating force the jet stream has slipped off the top of the planet. This week the jet stream is drooping down to Mexico bringing cold weather south that should have stayed in the Arctic. It’s June and some of my friends say they are still using their heaters.
The staff presentation followed the children.
Mayor Arreguin immediately turned to public comment after the brief presentation from Justin Horner, Associate Planner, Planning Department leaving speakers to guess what kind of watering down grand compromise Arreguin would propose. Representatives from the Planning Commission were not invited to the table to present.
Jordon Klein, Director of Planning and Development, said the Planning Department would work with whatever was decided.
Glenn Philips, Executive Director of the Audubon Society was able to speak for 4 minutes by gathering volunteers to give him their minute.
After public comment closed Arreguin kicked off his comments with the need to build 15,000 units of housing in Berkeley (the actual number in the Housing Element is 8,934).
Councilmember Harrison spoke to her Revision, then she said “There's a cost by doing the right thing in the environment. Everyone wants to solve the climate and diversity problem. They want to solve with other people sacrificing. We are the problem. We use too much plastic. As Councilmember Hahn tried to deal with. We drive too much. We eat too much meat. We are the problem. When this thing comes up, it is kind of hard. It is harder when our planet dies and our children can't live.”
It was evident that Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf did not read the letters from the scientists or if they read them, they chose to ignore the information.
Wengraf finally got around to her priority at 10:29 pm. “I have to say I was disappointed to find out the Planning Commission did not discuss the impact of views when they discussed the bird safe ordinance. Many of my constituents live in homes with views and most of the options for bird safe glass would impact the human experience of looking through that glass. They're patterns or etched, the tape would interfere with the view, the film would interfere with the view. The only option that might not interfere with the view is the most expensive option which is UV glass. I feel like that is a very important thing that was not discussed at the Planning Commission and it is important to me as someone who represents constituents who have properties with views and those views are worth a lot of money. And imposing an ordinance that would impact them would have financial implications and also quality of life implications.” [Emphasis added]
The high school and college students who came to speak in favor of the Bird Safe Ordinance from the Planning Commission and Councilmember Harrison and stayed for the final vote are angry and they should be. They are left with the mess, an overheated planet, collapsing biodiversity and a Mayor and City Council that are more concerned about views than the quality of life for their generation and the next generations.
The evening ended with the last comment from Zev Massey, a graduating high school senior.
“My name is Zev…I want to thank you all for coming here and agreeing on a resolution. This is not related to birds it’s related to youth and our role in politics…A lot of the kids here, it is their first time giving public comment. And, when you go home and think about tonight, I’d like you to think about the lasting impression that you left on these kids and whether you give them and restored their hope that local politics is doing what the citizens and what the future generation that will inhabit this earth and what we want from our representatives or whether a different taste was left in their mouth.”
The Bird Safe Ordinance second reading is June 27, 2023. It will go into effect 30 days later.
While the final version included exemptions for Residential or Mixed Use buildings under 35 feet in height and less than 10,000 square feet, designated historical buildings (landmarked and/or structure of merit), and affordable housing and Arreguin lowered the height requirement from 100 feet to 75 feet, this makes the final outcome about 40% of what we would have had if in fact the Mayor and City Council had voted for Bird Safe Ordinance passed unanimously by the Planning Commission and the Revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-06%20Item%2018%20Bird%20Safe%20Harrison%20Rev2%281%29.pdf
Considering the dreadfully awful and ineffective version of Bird Safe Requirements from Kesarwani and Wengraf in Supplemental 2 and only eight councilmembers present to vote (Councilmember Bartlett was absent), there were still positive outcomes.
Arreguin started with Harrison’s Revision. The exemption for transparent materials under 12 square feet was eliminated as was the use of a certified biologist. The Key provision of Patterned Glazing Treatment as detailed by Harrison in her Revision made it into the final version. The ordinance applies to the large mixed use projects of 10,000 square feet or greater. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-27%20Item%2001%20Ordinance%207864.pdf
SB 330 projects abide by the conditions in place at the time of application. For all other projects no matter when entitled, the ordinance applies when the building permit is exercised.
This places Berkeley as making a stride forward, but certainly not a leader.
Those of us following the City closely continually place blame on the City Manager. Watching so much unfold in Berkeley, I often think we ought to be looking up the other branch of the tree, the one filled with ambition to climb the political ladder.
I have two books to recommend, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle and Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City by Ben Wilson.
The Great Displacement follows the personal stories of people displaced by climate fueled disasters, hurricanes, wildfires and drought, FEMA buyouts and thoughts about what living in and buying properties in high risk areas means for the future.
Those houses with views Wengraf is so anxious to protect over the quality of life for the present and next generations of youth, will eventually succumb to fire, earthquake or mudslides. When that happens will retreat be an option on the table? Or, should further construction in these areas be allowed at all even now?
Will McCarthy poses the question of construction in earthquake zones in the East Bay Times article “Why the Hayward Fault is the epicenter of debate over housing goals vs. earthquake risk.” https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/06/13/why-the-hayward-fault-is-the-epicenter-of-debate-over-housing-goals-vs-earthquake-risk/
The other book, Urban Jungle is a fascinating history of domestic and wild animals in cities that challenges us to plan the inclusion of nature within cities.
Both books speak to how cities filled with hardscape, buildings, pavements, roads and no place for nature leave us unprepared for the upheaval we can expect from global warming and climate fueled disasters.
Those of us who are concerned about the future of the children and teenagers who showed up for the Bird Safe Ordinance and future generations have a full plate of work in front of us.
Berkeley holds a special place deserved or not as a city of liberal / progressive ideas and politics.
I’ve read every letter/email sent to City Council that I could find (total 193) in “records online” and only two out of that stack were in opposition to Bird Safe Ordinance passed by the Planning Commission and the Revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison.
On May 19, 2023 when the Bird Safe Ordinance still included residential on a phase-in schedule and before Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf submitted their alternate proposal as Supplemental 2 to exempt residential properties and glass under 12 square feet in area, Dr. Scott Loss author of the scientific paper referenced and quoted by the Planning Department and later in the alternate ordinance from Kesarwani and Wengraf) wrote:
“[M]y lab has studied the bird-window collision issue and solutions to address it, for the last decade. In 2014, I published a highly cited and publicized paper estimating that up to 1 billion birds annually die from bird-window collisions in the U.S. alone, making this one of the top threats affecting our native bird populations. In fact, bird-window collisions are such a major threat to our birds that making buildings and window safe for birds was identified in 2019 as #1 in a list of 7 simple actions to help birds and halt and reverse the decline of North America’s bird populations. [underlining by Dr. Loss]
Individual property owners can make a difference in addressing the bird-window collision issue by treating their glass windows with commercial products (e.g. films and markers placed over glass and do-it-yourself solutions). However, making major inroads to broadly address this issue requires political buy-in and policies that provide guidelines for making buildings more bird-friendly, thus addressing this issue at a meaningful scale that greatly benefits declining bird populations. Policies such as the Bird Safe Berkeley Ordinance are absolutely crucial for reducing bird collisions, and voting to pass this ordinance would immediately make Berkeley a global leader and beacon for environmental action, and a role model for other cities around the U.S. and worldwide.”
The June 6, 2023 email from Peter Saenger, Acopian Ornithological Specialist at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania sent to Council at 11:16 am is best described as a slap down of Kesarwani and Wengraf.
“Dear Council
It has come to my attention that there are two major misstatements being pushed by some of your members.
1)“Research to date has not determined what bird-safe measures are effective for low-rise residential structures.”
[Response] How to effectively mitigate bird-wind collisions anywhere, especially low-rise and residential buildings have been scientifically tested and proven for decades. A simple search of the web for “the 2 x 4 rule” or reading one of the countless per-reviewed papers on what works and what does not will show this is true. A short example on this topic is attached. [email and article in records online Supplemental Communications 3]
2)“Data on the Efficacy of Bird-Safe Glass is Not Based on Western U.S. Bird Species.” And “may have created a bias in the effectiveness of recommended mitigations measures.”
[Response] Again, someone is not doing their homework. There are peer-reviewed, published studies on bird-window collisions from every continent, other than antarctica. Collisions do vary between different species, but this is a world-wide issue and what works to mitigate collisions in the eastern US, also works in the Western US, England, Australia, China, Korea, etc. Again, a search of the web will find studies done along the west coast.”
Saenger named two west coast articles “Preventing Bird-Window Collisions – Seattle Audubon” and the NIH published paper “Bird-Window Collisions at a West-Coast Urban Park Museum: Analyses of Bird Biology and Window Attributes from Golden Gate Park, San Francisco” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26731417/
The most interesting finding in the article Saenger attached is that Acopian Blinds, the DIY inexpensive project of parachute cord (researchers use olive colored) hung 3.5 inches apart the full length of the window is an incredibly effective treatment (95% effective) to deter bird-window collisions. Erin Diehm uses this method on the window where she had a bird strike.
Glenn Philips, Executive Director Golden Gate Audubon countered that there are no options for single family houses and residential buildings and cost assumptions with, most standard and single and double-hung windows include a full external screen and add no additional cost (these are compliant with the ordinance) and that bird safe glass adds about 8% to the total cost of the window.
The total responses to Berkeley Considers on the Bird Safe Glass Ordinance were 462, 85.1% yes (393), 12.8% no (58) and 2.4% (11) other. The opposition cited cost, quoted disinformation that bird safe glass is not energy efficient, regaled against regulations, called the ordinance, green washing, nimbyism, called for attention to homelessness and crime and that cats kill more birds than bird-glass collisions (Aurora, Illinois has an ordinance on that cat problem).
The first commenters on the Bird Safe Ordinance were Niko age five and August.
When six-year old August was lifted to the microphone by his mother to speak on saving birds, what came out was “I’m scared, I’m really scared.” He had what probably felt like an eternity for his fear to build. It was almost three hours of waiting to speak in a room full of strangers with a City Council looming in front of him on the elevated dais looking down. He had every reason to be afraid.
As a young child his fear was in the moment without the sense of how the earth is changing and really quite sick according to Joyeeta Gupta co-chair of the report referenced by Steve Newman in the Chronicle on the Sunday, June 4, 2023. Steve Newman started Earthweek: a diary of a planet with “Ailing Earth A report says Earth has exceeded seven out of eight key ecological stability limits pushing it into the ‘danger’ zone.’”
The report in the journal Nature in Earthweek a “Safe and just Earth system boundaries” is dense with explanations, charts and a world map of hotspots with a part of California along the coast and into the valley in deep red (a hotspot). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8
The easier to read summary in Common Dreams lists the eight boundaries; 1) earth surface temperature (climate), 2) natural ecosystem (biosphere), 3) functional integrity (biosphere), 4) surface water (water), 5) groundwater (water), 6) nitrogen (nutrient cycles), 7) Phosphorus (nutrient cycles) and 8) aerosol loading (atmosphere). https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
The boundary that wasn’t breached was aerosol loading/atmosphere, though New York might disagree on that assessment with smoke turning the sky orange from hundreds of wildfires burning out of control in Canada. https://www.commondreams.org/news/planetary-health-failing-7-of-8-earth-system-boundaries-crossed
There was more bad news on June 6, the day of the council vote on the Bird Safe Ordinance. Another climate milestone could come in the 2030s about a decade sooner than anticipated, ice free Arctic summers. This is very bad news as ice reflects the heat of the sun, a dark open ocean absorbs the heat creating a feedback loop (amplification) speeding up global warming. The Arctic is already warming two to seven times faster than the rest of the planet depending on the day and which study or article one picks up.
The Arctic Ice cap for thousands of years acted to keep the world’s climate in balance. With losing that moderating force the jet stream has slipped off the top of the planet. This week the jet stream is drooping down to Mexico bringing cold weather south that should have stayed in the Arctic. It’s June and some of my friends say they are still using their heaters.
The staff presentation followed the children.
Mayor Arreguin immediately turned to public comment after the brief presentation from Justin Horner, Associate Planner, Planning Department leaving speakers to guess what kind of watering down grand compromise Arreguin would propose. Representatives from the Planning Commission were not invited to the table to present.
Jordon Klein, Director of Planning and Development, said the Planning Department would work with whatever was decided.
Glenn Philips, Executive Director of the Audubon Society was able to speak for 4 minutes by gathering volunteers to give him their minute.
After public comment closed Arreguin kicked off his comments with the need to build 15,000 units of housing in Berkeley (the actual number in the Housing Element is 8,934).
Councilmember Harrison spoke to her Revision, then she said “There's a cost by doing the right thing in the environment. Everyone wants to solve the climate and diversity problem. They want to solve with other people sacrificing. We are the problem. We use too much plastic. As Councilmember Hahn tried to deal with. We drive too much. We eat too much meat. We are the problem. When this thing comes up, it is kind of hard. It is harder when our planet dies and our children can't live.”
It was evident that Councilmembers Kesarwani and Wengraf did not read the letters from the scientists or if they read them, they chose to ignore the information.
Wengraf finally got around to her priority at 10:29 pm. “I have to say I was disappointed to find out the Planning Commission did not discuss the impact of views when they discussed the bird safe ordinance. Many of my constituents live in homes with views and most of the options for bird safe glass would impact the human experience of looking through that glass. They're patterns or etched, the tape would interfere with the view, the film would interfere with the view. The only option that might not interfere with the view is the most expensive option which is UV glass. I feel like that is a very important thing that was not discussed at the Planning Commission and it is important to me as someone who represents constituents who have properties with views and those views are worth a lot of money. And imposing an ordinance that would impact them would have financial implications and also quality of life implications.” [Emphasis added]
The high school and college students who came to speak in favor of the Bird Safe Ordinance from the Planning Commission and Councilmember Harrison and stayed for the final vote are angry and they should be. They are left with the mess, an overheated planet, collapsing biodiversity and a Mayor and City Council that are more concerned about views than the quality of life for their generation and the next generations.
The evening ended with the last comment from Zev Massey, a graduating high school senior.
“My name is Zev…I want to thank you all for coming here and agreeing on a resolution. This is not related to birds it’s related to youth and our role in politics…A lot of the kids here, it is their first time giving public comment. And, when you go home and think about tonight, I’d like you to think about the lasting impression that you left on these kids and whether you give them and restored their hope that local politics is doing what the citizens and what the future generation that will inhabit this earth and what we want from our representatives or whether a different taste was left in their mouth.”
The Bird Safe Ordinance second reading is June 27, 2023. It will go into effect 30 days later.
While the final version included exemptions for Residential or Mixed Use buildings under 35 feet in height and less than 10,000 square feet, designated historical buildings (landmarked and/or structure of merit), and affordable housing and Arreguin lowered the height requirement from 100 feet to 75 feet, this makes the final outcome about 40% of what we would have had if in fact the Mayor and City Council had voted for Bird Safe Ordinance passed unanimously by the Planning Commission and the Revision submitted by Councilmember Harrison. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-06%20Item%2018%20Bird%20Safe%20Harrison%20Rev2%281%29.pdf
Considering the dreadfully awful and ineffective version of Bird Safe Requirements from Kesarwani and Wengraf in Supplemental 2 and only eight councilmembers present to vote (Councilmember Bartlett was absent), there were still positive outcomes.
Arreguin started with Harrison’s Revision. The exemption for transparent materials under 12 square feet was eliminated as was the use of a certified biologist. The Key provision of Patterned Glazing Treatment as detailed by Harrison in her Revision made it into the final version. The ordinance applies to the large mixed use projects of 10,000 square feet or greater. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023-06-27%20Item%2001%20Ordinance%207864.pdf
SB 330 projects abide by the conditions in place at the time of application. For all other projects no matter when entitled, the ordinance applies when the building permit is exercised.
This places Berkeley as making a stride forward, but certainly not a leader.
Those of us following the City closely continually place blame on the City Manager. Watching so much unfold in Berkeley, I often think we ought to be looking up the other branch of the tree, the one filled with ambition to climb the political ladder.
I have two books to recommend, The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle and Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City by Ben Wilson.
The Great Displacement follows the personal stories of people displaced by climate fueled disasters, hurricanes, wildfires and drought, FEMA buyouts and thoughts about what living in and buying properties in high risk areas means for the future.
Those houses with views Wengraf is so anxious to protect over the quality of life for the present and next generations of youth, will eventually succumb to fire, earthquake or mudslides. When that happens will retreat be an option on the table? Or, should further construction in these areas be allowed at all even now?
Will McCarthy poses the question of construction in earthquake zones in the East Bay Times article “Why the Hayward Fault is the epicenter of debate over housing goals vs. earthquake risk.” https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/06/13/why-the-hayward-fault-is-the-epicenter-of-debate-over-housing-goals-vs-earthquake-risk/
The other book, Urban Jungle is a fascinating history of domestic and wild animals in cities that challenges us to plan the inclusion of nature within cities.
Both books speak to how cities filled with hardscape, buildings, pavements, roads and no place for nature leave us unprepared for the upheaval we can expect from global warming and climate fueled disasters.
Those of us who are concerned about the future of the children and teenagers who showed up for the Bird Safe Ordinance and future generations have a full plate of work in front of us.
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 [email protected] and [email protected]. 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 [email protected] and [email protected]. 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 [email protected] Any emails I send will also include [email protected] and [email protected] 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 [email protected] Any emails I send will also include [email protected] and [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: Warhuus, Lisa <[email protected]>; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
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 <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Cc: Warhuus, Lisa <[email protected]>; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] If you wish to voice your opinion on the location of the Portland Loo then email [email protected] 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 [email protected] If you wish to voice your opinion on the location of the Portland Loo then email [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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 bedrooms in each unit. Another benefit for the developer/contractor of the quadplex is that when there is ministerial approval (basically sign off by someone at the counter, no public review, no ZAB, no DRC) tenants would not need to be notified so if TOPA ever passes, that tenant opportunity will slip away.
In Patrick M. Condon’s book Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land, page 12 he writes, “…the smartest people in the development game are the land speculators, men and women who make a handy living out of hunting up land that might soon be ‘improved’ by the provision of a new highway, a new transit station or a change in allowable land use…” [emphasis added]
My cynical side says the ordinances to eliminate single family housing zoning and to establish quadplex zoning are just in time “changes in allowable land use” for speculators to scoop up foreclosures for a handy profit when the protections established during the pandemic expire. Top it off with calling people who question or resist, “racists” for a perfect mix and that might summarize Darrell Owens representing Councilmember Droste at the Saturday meeting sponsored by Berkeley Neighborhood Council. The special meeting was called to focus on item 29 Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning in Berkeley under action in the Tuesday evening, February 23 City Council meeting agenda. The Exclusionary zoning is single family homes. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/02_Feb/City_Council__02-23-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
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 bedrooms in each unit. Another benefit for the developer/contractor of the quadplex is that when there is ministerial approval (basically sign off by someone at the counter, no public review, no ZAB, no DRC) tenants would not need to be notified so if TOPA ever passes, that tenant opportunity will slip away.
In Patrick M. Condon’s book Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land, page 12 he writes, “…the smartest people in the development game are the land speculators, men and women who make a handy living out of hunting up land that might soon be ‘improved’ by the provision of a new highway, a new transit station or a change in allowable land use…” [emphasis added]
My cynical side says the ordinances to eliminate single family housing zoning and to establish quadplex zoning are just in time “changes in allowable land use” for speculators to scoop up foreclosures for a handy profit when the protections established during the pandemic expire. Top it off with calling people who question or resist, “racists” for a perfect mix and that might summarize Darrell Owens representing Councilmember Droste at the Saturday meeting sponsored by Berkeley Neighborhood Council. The special meeting was called to focus on item 29 Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning in Berkeley under action in the Tuesday evening, February 23 City Council meeting agenda. The Exclusionary zoning is single family homes. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/02_Feb/City_Council__02-23-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
February 13 - Notes from the editor for the week of February 7 - February 13, 2021
Thankfully, some city meetings were canceled this week so the impeachment trial could take center stage during the day and space was left for the evening rehash.
With only four meetings of significant note and a need for shifting your attention, this Activist’s Diary starts with where you can have the most impact to shape an ordinance or influence a decision, City Council Policy Committees.
It was December 11, 2018 when City Council voted to create six standing Council Committees. After two years with this new arrangement, it still feels like people think the place to comment to influence a decision is at the regular Council meeting. Council meetings are the fallback position when we lose in committee or an item skates through to the regular meeting agenda without going through committee.
The six committees are: 1) Agenda & Rules Policy Committee, 2) Budget & Finance Policy Committee, 3) Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Policy Committee, 4) Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Policy Committee, 5) Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Policy Committee and 6) Public Safety Policy Committee https://www.cityofberkeley.info/citycouncil/. These meetings are during the daytime which makes it harder for people with daytime jobs and responsibilities to attend. This is where coordination with friends, neighborhood and community groups can help to send representatives.
We can’t forget that courage from elected officials can be lacking even here in Berkeley. It is important that our voices are heard and items don’t just slide by. We end up with better results when we participate even when we lose.
Monday afternoon, February 8th in the Agenda Committee, Councilmember Droste’s item Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning got a pass and it was placed as action item 29 in the February 23rd City Council regular meeting agenda. Candace Hyde-Wang in her letter to Council described this item as follows: “The title of the resolution is sadly deceptive. It frames discriminatory housing history in a way that is inaccurate and unproductive. It dresses itself up as a racial equity plan when it actually serves to further wealthy real estate and tech interests. When addressing housing, we need to look carefully and be guided by facts, not false flags.” Co-sponsors to this “false flag” are Councilmembers Taplin, Bartlett and Robinson. You can read the full letter in this week’s Activist Calendar. Berkeley Neighborhood Council will be holding a special meeting February 20 on just this item. https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
The other Droste real estate item Quadplex Zoning will be reviewed at the Council Land Use Committee on Thursday morning February 18th at 10:30. This ordinance would bypass ZAB, the Zoning Adjustment Board review except in a few defined cases. I have attended enough ZAB meetings to know that better projects are possible when there is review and input. And, not an insignificant amount of the time that nudging for better projects, better planning comes from the community.
The Tuesday evening City Council meeting outcome just like the impeachment trial which consumed most of my week and probably yours too, was mostly predictable. Sophie Hahn engaged in her usual tactic when there is an item at the end of the agenda that Council wants to avoid. She dawdled away chunks of time for the “perfect wording” of the amendment to the Home Occupations ordinance, the item that preceded the last item on the agenda, the Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief.
I counted thirty-six speakers including myself and emails who supported the vote of no confidence. Only four from the community supported Police Chief Greenwood. The comments came from people who had observed and experienced racial profiling, people who were part of the Mayor’s Impartial Policing Working Group and experienced upfront Chief Greenwood’s resistance to change. Chief Greenwood was described as corrosive, disconnected from his progressive self-image and in opposition to every attempt at change. His gross overrun of the Department budget was cited by many. Speakers repeatedly stated Chief Greenwood lacks the willingness to productively participate in the community process to reimagine policing in Berkeley. Delays in reporting and lack of follow-through were also noted, but racial profiling and disparate treatment of people of color was the single thread through statement after statement. The Community Policing Equity Report provides confirmation to disparate treatment.
George Lippman laid the problem in the lap of the City Manager. “…The City Manager manages the Police Department. She or this office must be held accountable for the racially discriminatory behavior of the Police Department…” In the end as could be predicted Mayor Arreguin, Councilmembers Taplin, Wengraf, Robinson, Droste, and Hahn voted to take no action on the vote of No Confidence. A few cited a technicality that they didn’t have the authority to give such a vote. Councilmembers Bartlett and Harrison abstained. Kesarwani did not respond and was noted as absent.
This was City of Berkeley business, but as I reflect on the week, I can’t help but see the parallels in what happened Saturday in the impeachment trial and City Council not holding City management accountable. Councilmember Wengraf said she was hopeful. I’m hopeful someone receives the wake-up call to be accountable, change or leave.
Wednesday evening the Parks and Waterfront Commission was my third and final stop in an evening of zooming. The Disability Commission lacked a quorum, the Homeless Commission barely held my attention and Parks was still in session in the middle of reviewing the plans for 600 Addison when I tuned in. 600 Addison is a commercial building project with a west facing glass façade with a spectacular view of the Bay. Normally a project does not come to the Parks and Waterfront Commission, but this project abuts Aquatic Park and plans to use Bolivar Drive as a shuttle thoroughfare. It was Maria Landoni who noted that Bolivar Drive is in Aquatic Park.
It was a review of the project description after the meeting where I found that the developer’s statement that the shuttle would run every 15 minutes during commuter hours really means every 15 minutes from 6 am – 10 am and 3 pm – 7 pm, eight hours of using a park road as a shuttle thoroughfare. I’ve been following this project and there have been improvements. More trees are being saved and planted. Bird safe glass is being considered, but a commitment is sadly missing. Parking has been reduced from 1044 spaces to 924 which is still obscene in a city that eliminated parking minimums and established parking maximums in new residential projects just a few weeks ago.
While the Parks and Waterfront Commission declined to take a vote, when asked for a recommendation, the big question is why should a commercial project be allowed to make a park road on park property its transit corridor for its shuttle. Why has no one insisted that the building is designed for the shuttle to circulate on the east side away from the park where families bicycle, people stroll and birds frolic in the water. Surely there is a way to decrease or rearrange parking (944 spaces), entrance and exit traffic patterns to accommodate a shuttle.
There was one other item at the Parks and Waterfront Commission worth attention, the proposal for a ferry and pier. I couldn't make the numbers add up. Someone at a ferry/pier meeting called ferries a boutique service. It is a poor contender in efficient transportation. A BART car can hold 200 passengers and a 10 car train can transport 2000 people in one trip. A 433 passenger ferry if used as a commuter service would at a minimum double travel time. Projections are that if implemented by 2035 the ridership could be up to 795 unique persons per day. The whole proposal needs a thorough honest economic evaluation and an environmental impact report.
The last meeting of the week worth noting was the McGee Spaulding Neighbors in Action (MSNIA) and the key agenda item was the presentation on TOPA, Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act. This is a very interesting ordinance proposal and there are still parts to be worked out, but it could be very beneficial to tenants and fair to building owners. TOPA would require that before an apartment building can be sold, it has to first be offered to the tenants for purchase. This is an important measure to track and it certainly sparked my interest turning me from lukewarm to a cautious supporter. If you can make it, TOPA is on the Land Use Committee Agenda for this coming Thursday, February 18. Councilmember Harrison organized the MSNIA presentation.
I’ve been finishing my Activist’s Diary with what I’m reading. I needed just one more hour to finish Braiding Sweetgrass, but my time ran out with the San Francisco library and I am back on the waiting list. There is good reason why it is on the best seller list. I finished RUST a Memoir of Steel and Grit. I have to thank book club for this choice. It’s a great book available from our Berkeley Library. RUST is about Cleveland, the steel mill, work, church, relationships, mental illness and politics. Next up is The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
Thankfully, some city meetings were canceled this week so the impeachment trial could take center stage during the day and space was left for the evening rehash.
With only four meetings of significant note and a need for shifting your attention, this Activist’s Diary starts with where you can have the most impact to shape an ordinance or influence a decision, City Council Policy Committees.
It was December 11, 2018 when City Council voted to create six standing Council Committees. After two years with this new arrangement, it still feels like people think the place to comment to influence a decision is at the regular Council meeting. Council meetings are the fallback position when we lose in committee or an item skates through to the regular meeting agenda without going through committee.
The six committees are: 1) Agenda & Rules Policy Committee, 2) Budget & Finance Policy Committee, 3) Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Policy Committee, 4) Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Policy Committee, 5) Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Policy Committee and 6) Public Safety Policy Committee https://www.cityofberkeley.info/citycouncil/. These meetings are during the daytime which makes it harder for people with daytime jobs and responsibilities to attend. This is where coordination with friends, neighborhood and community groups can help to send representatives.
We can’t forget that courage from elected officials can be lacking even here in Berkeley. It is important that our voices are heard and items don’t just slide by. We end up with better results when we participate even when we lose.
Monday afternoon, February 8th in the Agenda Committee, Councilmember Droste’s item Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning got a pass and it was placed as action item 29 in the February 23rd City Council regular meeting agenda. Candace Hyde-Wang in her letter to Council described this item as follows: “The title of the resolution is sadly deceptive. It frames discriminatory housing history in a way that is inaccurate and unproductive. It dresses itself up as a racial equity plan when it actually serves to further wealthy real estate and tech interests. When addressing housing, we need to look carefully and be guided by facts, not false flags.” Co-sponsors to this “false flag” are Councilmembers Taplin, Bartlett and Robinson. You can read the full letter in this week’s Activist Calendar. Berkeley Neighborhood Council will be holding a special meeting February 20 on just this item. https://berkeleyneighborhoodscouncil.com/
The other Droste real estate item Quadplex Zoning will be reviewed at the Council Land Use Committee on Thursday morning February 18th at 10:30. This ordinance would bypass ZAB, the Zoning Adjustment Board review except in a few defined cases. I have attended enough ZAB meetings to know that better projects are possible when there is review and input. And, not an insignificant amount of the time that nudging for better projects, better planning comes from the community.
The Tuesday evening City Council meeting outcome just like the impeachment trial which consumed most of my week and probably yours too, was mostly predictable. Sophie Hahn engaged in her usual tactic when there is an item at the end of the agenda that Council wants to avoid. She dawdled away chunks of time for the “perfect wording” of the amendment to the Home Occupations ordinance, the item that preceded the last item on the agenda, the Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief.
I counted thirty-six speakers including myself and emails who supported the vote of no confidence. Only four from the community supported Police Chief Greenwood. The comments came from people who had observed and experienced racial profiling, people who were part of the Mayor’s Impartial Policing Working Group and experienced upfront Chief Greenwood’s resistance to change. Chief Greenwood was described as corrosive, disconnected from his progressive self-image and in opposition to every attempt at change. His gross overrun of the Department budget was cited by many. Speakers repeatedly stated Chief Greenwood lacks the willingness to productively participate in the community process to reimagine policing in Berkeley. Delays in reporting and lack of follow-through were also noted, but racial profiling and disparate treatment of people of color was the single thread through statement after statement. The Community Policing Equity Report provides confirmation to disparate treatment.
George Lippman laid the problem in the lap of the City Manager. “…The City Manager manages the Police Department. She or this office must be held accountable for the racially discriminatory behavior of the Police Department…” In the end as could be predicted Mayor Arreguin, Councilmembers Taplin, Wengraf, Robinson, Droste, and Hahn voted to take no action on the vote of No Confidence. A few cited a technicality that they didn’t have the authority to give such a vote. Councilmembers Bartlett and Harrison abstained. Kesarwani did not respond and was noted as absent.
This was City of Berkeley business, but as I reflect on the week, I can’t help but see the parallels in what happened Saturday in the impeachment trial and City Council not holding City management accountable. Councilmember Wengraf said she was hopeful. I’m hopeful someone receives the wake-up call to be accountable, change or leave.
Wednesday evening the Parks and Waterfront Commission was my third and final stop in an evening of zooming. The Disability Commission lacked a quorum, the Homeless Commission barely held my attention and Parks was still in session in the middle of reviewing the plans for 600 Addison when I tuned in. 600 Addison is a commercial building project with a west facing glass façade with a spectacular view of the Bay. Normally a project does not come to the Parks and Waterfront Commission, but this project abuts Aquatic Park and plans to use Bolivar Drive as a shuttle thoroughfare. It was Maria Landoni who noted that Bolivar Drive is in Aquatic Park.
It was a review of the project description after the meeting where I found that the developer’s statement that the shuttle would run every 15 minutes during commuter hours really means every 15 minutes from 6 am – 10 am and 3 pm – 7 pm, eight hours of using a park road as a shuttle thoroughfare. I’ve been following this project and there have been improvements. More trees are being saved and planted. Bird safe glass is being considered, but a commitment is sadly missing. Parking has been reduced from 1044 spaces to 924 which is still obscene in a city that eliminated parking minimums and established parking maximums in new residential projects just a few weeks ago.
While the Parks and Waterfront Commission declined to take a vote, when asked for a recommendation, the big question is why should a commercial project be allowed to make a park road on park property its transit corridor for its shuttle. Why has no one insisted that the building is designed for the shuttle to circulate on the east side away from the park where families bicycle, people stroll and birds frolic in the water. Surely there is a way to decrease or rearrange parking (944 spaces), entrance and exit traffic patterns to accommodate a shuttle.
There was one other item at the Parks and Waterfront Commission worth attention, the proposal for a ferry and pier. I couldn't make the numbers add up. Someone at a ferry/pier meeting called ferries a boutique service. It is a poor contender in efficient transportation. A BART car can hold 200 passengers and a 10 car train can transport 2000 people in one trip. A 433 passenger ferry if used as a commuter service would at a minimum double travel time. Projections are that if implemented by 2035 the ridership could be up to 795 unique persons per day. The whole proposal needs a thorough honest economic evaluation and an environmental impact report.
The last meeting of the week worth noting was the McGee Spaulding Neighbors in Action (MSNIA) and the key agenda item was the presentation on TOPA, Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act. This is a very interesting ordinance proposal and there are still parts to be worked out, but it could be very beneficial to tenants and fair to building owners. TOPA would require that before an apartment building can be sold, it has to first be offered to the tenants for purchase. This is an important measure to track and it certainly sparked my interest turning me from lukewarm to a cautious supporter. If you can make it, TOPA is on the Land Use Committee Agenda for this coming Thursday, February 18. Councilmember Harrison organized the MSNIA presentation.
I’ve been finishing my Activist’s Diary with what I’m reading. I needed just one more hour to finish Braiding Sweetgrass, but my time ran out with the San Francisco library and I am back on the waiting list. There is good reason why it is on the best seller list. I finished RUST a Memoir of Steel and Grit. I have to thank book club for this choice. It’s a great book available from our Berkeley Library. RUST is about Cleveland, the steel mill, work, church, relationships, mental illness and politics. Next up is The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
February 6 - What Happened Week of January 31 - February 6, 2021
I picked two meetings this last week as consequential, the Council Agenda and Rules special meeting on Commissions and the Measure O Bond Oversight Committee special meeting.
I’ve been writing about Councilmember Droste’s hatchet approach to commissions discounting the value of work done and dissecting them down to the hours of staff time as though that is all that mattered. Councilmember Hahn came through with alternate framing on Monday with the most important statement, “Commissions that are well organized/do meaningful work will always be a good use of time for Commissioners and Secretaries/Staff.” Hahn made clear she was presenting a “Conversation on Commissions” not a proposal, but it was a welcome change. Those who care about the governing of our City need to keep a close eye and not let these changes slip by without engagement. Monday was not the last of the conversation on commissions.
Hahn’s suggestion of expanding the Animal Care Commission to include “urban habitat, bees, birds, meat, etc.” was welcome music to those of us who care about the environment, but it didn’t gain traction with the rest. The Animal Care Commission has never in the five or so years I have been tracking their agendas fulfilled their current mission. It has been all about how many dogs can be walked at one time by one person.
Hahn named sixteen commissions that should remain as is with review and possible update of the charter/mission. Those are: the Business Districts, Status of Women, Peace & Justice, Disability, Disaster & Fire (add Resilience), Labor, Mental Health, Personnel, ZAB, Civic Arts, Loan Administration Board, PRC/Police Accountability Board, Children Youth and Recreation, Parks & Waterfront, Landmarks and Planning. Reading the Youth Commission’s agendas, they should be added to the list.
The Public Works Commission worried Thursday evening that they would be combined with the Transportation Commission when they already have a heavy load. The Public Works Commission has been producing incredible analysis and reports, far better than what we get from those overpriced consultants that the City is so quick hire. The Public Works Commission paving subcommittee has analyzed down to the multiplier of the impact of the weight of trucks on our streets. Most of us are just frustrated and disgusted by the state of our streets and don’t think about the extra wear and tear from the increasing number of trucks in our neighborhoods or the extra trips from heavy duty vehicles. I certainly never thought about how our neighborhood streets are paved for lighter loads than major traffic arteries and how a detour through a neighborhood to save travel time tears up the pavement.
There is a lot of overlap between Public Works and the Transportation Commissions. The Transportation Commission has been so overrun with bicyclists that they seem to forget there are people in this City that just aren’t physically capable of riding a bicycle and some of the rest of us will never get on a bicycle on a roadway that still has cars. They seem so focused on the bikeways that it feels like the large graceful trees we need to support biodiversity, provide shade in the summer and just beautify our city get second shrift too. Our new Director of Public Works, Liam Garland made a special point Thursday evening that in paving planning removing trees must be a last resort after all other options to save it are exhausted.
The Homeless Commission had a win this week at the Council Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee with their proposal of amending the Source of Income Discrimination Ordinance. This is about people with vouchers which make up the difference between spending 1/3 of their income on housing and reasonable rate of rent. The City Manager response and City staff presentation was to dismiss the Homeless Commission proposal outright as it couldn’t be done and besides there was already money being spent to address discrimination of persons with vouchers seeking housing. The committee voted in favor of the homeless commission with four actions too long to quote here, but you can read the details in the February 4, 2021 annotated agenda at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Land_Use,_Housing___Economic_Development.aspx.
At the other consequential meeting this week, the Measure O Bond Oversight Committee, we lost. Nico Calavita expressed his concerns that setting aside Bond Funds for a proposal for Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) housing, a proposal that was more an idea than an actual plan, would compromise availability of funds to support a higher threshold of affordable housing at the BART station housing projects in planning right now. Berkeley must declare its financial commitment to BART in April. Calavita’s concerns fell on deaf ears. We’ll soon see whether Calivita’s assessment was correct that allocating Bond money in reserve for a sometime in the future BUSD proposal will mean a big shortfall in funds for the Ashby BART station housing project now. One more casualty in the development rush flowing over Berkeley.
The push to gentrify South Berkeley has been in motion for some time and it is gaining steam with the resurgence of twisting redlining into single family homes as the culprit in housing covenants to protect White only neighborhoods. Councilmember Droste’s proposal to eliminate zoning for single family homes is listed as item 31 in the agenda plan for the February 23 City Council meeting. She has the company of Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Taplin as co-sponsors and there are notable writers who carry the same song that single family homes are inherently exclusionary and racist. This might be more convincing if there wasn’t a residual single family home zoning restriction ripe for development picking in South Berkeley in District 2 the former redlined area.
There is so much we, this country, needs to face. It saddens me when the path taken leads to profiteering under the guise of resolving prior injustices.
Richard Rothstein (Berkeley author) gives a very readable history of redlining and segregation in his book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. I was disappointed to find only a few drawers in a lateral file on redlining stuck in an out of the way section of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. I was lucky to have made that visit in 2019 just after Labor Day when there were no timed entrances or time limits.
I’ve been concluding my weekly Diary with what I am reading. President Biden’s speech at the State Department this week announced a return to diplomacy. I just finished The Back Channel A Memoir of Americas Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal by William J Burns, 2018. I picked it up because William J. Burns is President Biden’s nominee for Director of the CIA. Burns started his career as an ambassador to Jordan. Later he was an ambassador to Russia. Burns finished a 33 year career in the US Foreign Service as deputy secretary of state. I found the book worth reading or listening as I had the audio version. I will be looking to see if Heather Cox Richardson writes about him after his confirmation. She wrote about diplomacy in her February 5, 2021 Letters from an American. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-5-2021
This week I am finishing Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and starting our book club choice for February RUST a Memoir of Steel and Grit by Elise Colette Goldbach. Each of us are weaving through this pandemic in our own way. Mine is in tracking the City and reading. I am finding an endless stack of wonderful books. As for the City there are occasional bursts of sunshine in an often dreary string of predictable votes. We’ll see what happens Tuesday evening at City Council when the no confidence vote in the police chief is back on the agenda.
The Oath Keepers have been on my mind a lot lately as my introduction to hearing about this group was through attending City Council meetings and the Council ad hoc subcommittee on Urban Shield. Urban Shield is training exercises for police officers to practice rescuing citizens from imagined terrorists. Observers described the citizens needing rescue as white and the imaginary terrorists as brown. One of the alarms from those opposing participation in Urban Shield was the description of the Oath Keepers as having a prominent place at Urban Shield next to the Alameda County Sheriff’s booth. Now those alarms from 2017 take on new meaning. The Oath Keepers are listed as an American far-right anti-government extremist militia and their current prominence is as militia among the insurrectionists on January 6 attacking the capitol. Several Oath Keepers have been charged with conspiracy.
It is doubtful that Council will do anything other than dismiss the police chief no confidence vote, but there are some who still feel the sting of Chief Greenwood’s statement June 10, 2020 when in response to the prohibition of tear gas that the alternative he stated was to shoot people. Then there is the January 6, 2021 insurrection that puts everything in a different light.
I picked two meetings this last week as consequential, the Council Agenda and Rules special meeting on Commissions and the Measure O Bond Oversight Committee special meeting.
I’ve been writing about Councilmember Droste’s hatchet approach to commissions discounting the value of work done and dissecting them down to the hours of staff time as though that is all that mattered. Councilmember Hahn came through with alternate framing on Monday with the most important statement, “Commissions that are well organized/do meaningful work will always be a good use of time for Commissioners and Secretaries/Staff.” Hahn made clear she was presenting a “Conversation on Commissions” not a proposal, but it was a welcome change. Those who care about the governing of our City need to keep a close eye and not let these changes slip by without engagement. Monday was not the last of the conversation on commissions.
Hahn’s suggestion of expanding the Animal Care Commission to include “urban habitat, bees, birds, meat, etc.” was welcome music to those of us who care about the environment, but it didn’t gain traction with the rest. The Animal Care Commission has never in the five or so years I have been tracking their agendas fulfilled their current mission. It has been all about how many dogs can be walked at one time by one person.
Hahn named sixteen commissions that should remain as is with review and possible update of the charter/mission. Those are: the Business Districts, Status of Women, Peace & Justice, Disability, Disaster & Fire (add Resilience), Labor, Mental Health, Personnel, ZAB, Civic Arts, Loan Administration Board, PRC/Police Accountability Board, Children Youth and Recreation, Parks & Waterfront, Landmarks and Planning. Reading the Youth Commission’s agendas, they should be added to the list.
The Public Works Commission worried Thursday evening that they would be combined with the Transportation Commission when they already have a heavy load. The Public Works Commission has been producing incredible analysis and reports, far better than what we get from those overpriced consultants that the City is so quick hire. The Public Works Commission paving subcommittee has analyzed down to the multiplier of the impact of the weight of trucks on our streets. Most of us are just frustrated and disgusted by the state of our streets and don’t think about the extra wear and tear from the increasing number of trucks in our neighborhoods or the extra trips from heavy duty vehicles. I certainly never thought about how our neighborhood streets are paved for lighter loads than major traffic arteries and how a detour through a neighborhood to save travel time tears up the pavement.
There is a lot of overlap between Public Works and the Transportation Commissions. The Transportation Commission has been so overrun with bicyclists that they seem to forget there are people in this City that just aren’t physically capable of riding a bicycle and some of the rest of us will never get on a bicycle on a roadway that still has cars. They seem so focused on the bikeways that it feels like the large graceful trees we need to support biodiversity, provide shade in the summer and just beautify our city get second shrift too. Our new Director of Public Works, Liam Garland made a special point Thursday evening that in paving planning removing trees must be a last resort after all other options to save it are exhausted.
The Homeless Commission had a win this week at the Council Land Use, Housing & Economic Development Committee with their proposal of amending the Source of Income Discrimination Ordinance. This is about people with vouchers which make up the difference between spending 1/3 of their income on housing and reasonable rate of rent. The City Manager response and City staff presentation was to dismiss the Homeless Commission proposal outright as it couldn’t be done and besides there was already money being spent to address discrimination of persons with vouchers seeking housing. The committee voted in favor of the homeless commission with four actions too long to quote here, but you can read the details in the February 4, 2021 annotated agenda at https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Land_Use,_Housing___Economic_Development.aspx.
At the other consequential meeting this week, the Measure O Bond Oversight Committee, we lost. Nico Calavita expressed his concerns that setting aside Bond Funds for a proposal for Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) housing, a proposal that was more an idea than an actual plan, would compromise availability of funds to support a higher threshold of affordable housing at the BART station housing projects in planning right now. Berkeley must declare its financial commitment to BART in April. Calavita’s concerns fell on deaf ears. We’ll soon see whether Calivita’s assessment was correct that allocating Bond money in reserve for a sometime in the future BUSD proposal will mean a big shortfall in funds for the Ashby BART station housing project now. One more casualty in the development rush flowing over Berkeley.
The push to gentrify South Berkeley has been in motion for some time and it is gaining steam with the resurgence of twisting redlining into single family homes as the culprit in housing covenants to protect White only neighborhoods. Councilmember Droste’s proposal to eliminate zoning for single family homes is listed as item 31 in the agenda plan for the February 23 City Council meeting. She has the company of Councilmembers Bartlett, Robinson and Taplin as co-sponsors and there are notable writers who carry the same song that single family homes are inherently exclusionary and racist. This might be more convincing if there wasn’t a residual single family home zoning restriction ripe for development picking in South Berkeley in District 2 the former redlined area.
There is so much we, this country, needs to face. It saddens me when the path taken leads to profiteering under the guise of resolving prior injustices.
Richard Rothstein (Berkeley author) gives a very readable history of redlining and segregation in his book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. I was disappointed to find only a few drawers in a lateral file on redlining stuck in an out of the way section of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC. I was lucky to have made that visit in 2019 just after Labor Day when there were no timed entrances or time limits.
I’ve been concluding my weekly Diary with what I am reading. President Biden’s speech at the State Department this week announced a return to diplomacy. I just finished The Back Channel A Memoir of Americas Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal by William J Burns, 2018. I picked it up because William J. Burns is President Biden’s nominee for Director of the CIA. Burns started his career as an ambassador to Jordan. Later he was an ambassador to Russia. Burns finished a 33 year career in the US Foreign Service as deputy secretary of state. I found the book worth reading or listening as I had the audio version. I will be looking to see if Heather Cox Richardson writes about him after his confirmation. She wrote about diplomacy in her February 5, 2021 Letters from an American. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-5-2021
This week I am finishing Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and starting our book club choice for February RUST a Memoir of Steel and Grit by Elise Colette Goldbach. Each of us are weaving through this pandemic in our own way. Mine is in tracking the City and reading. I am finding an endless stack of wonderful books. As for the City there are occasional bursts of sunshine in an often dreary string of predictable votes. We’ll see what happens Tuesday evening at City Council when the no confidence vote in the police chief is back on the agenda.
The Oath Keepers have been on my mind a lot lately as my introduction to hearing about this group was through attending City Council meetings and the Council ad hoc subcommittee on Urban Shield. Urban Shield is training exercises for police officers to practice rescuing citizens from imagined terrorists. Observers described the citizens needing rescue as white and the imaginary terrorists as brown. One of the alarms from those opposing participation in Urban Shield was the description of the Oath Keepers as having a prominent place at Urban Shield next to the Alameda County Sheriff’s booth. Now those alarms from 2017 take on new meaning. The Oath Keepers are listed as an American far-right anti-government extremist militia and their current prominence is as militia among the insurrectionists on January 6 attacking the capitol. Several Oath Keepers have been charged with conspiracy.
It is doubtful that Council will do anything other than dismiss the police chief no confidence vote, but there are some who still feel the sting of Chief Greenwood’s statement June 10, 2020 when in response to the prohibition of tear gas that the alternative he stated was to shoot people. Then there is the January 6, 2021 insurrection that puts everything in a different light.
January 30, 2021
My last note from the book How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt is, “Democracy is a shared enterprise.” Haven’t we learned that over the last four years and some of us would say over the last twelve. We can’t just vote and then tune out, of course, most of us were unable to tune out during the last four years with Trump continually sucking up media attention, news banners, notes filling our email boxes, social media posts and endless worrisome conversations with friends and family. It is nice to have a break, but even now that brief peace seems to be slipping away. And all of this brings me to this week’s summary of what happened and a bit of what is ahead.
“Democracy is a shared enterprise” is not just for national politics it is for local city politics too. If we don’t watch and participate, the hope of affordable housing at the BART station projects will slip away. Look at this coming week’s Measure O Bond Oversight Committee Special meeting at 6 pm on Wednesday https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Measure_O_Bond_Oversight_Committee.aspx Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/93950296629. If the Measure O funds are assigned to BUSD-Sponsored Educator Housing then there won’t be Measure O Funds to contribute to affordable housing at the BART stations and that will give the gentrifiers a huge boost in South Berkeley.
The Council Agenda and Rules Committee at 3 pm on Monday Is the next step in getting rid of those pesky Commissions that push forward measures that the Council and City Manager would much prefer to ignore.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/Policy_Committee__Agenda___Rules.aspx
Of course, there are those commissions and commissioners who use the easy path not to include other represented groups and needs in other words other commissions.
The Planning Commission put forward their plan for eliminating parking minimums and establishing parking maximums without ever including the Disability Commission or the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. Their plan was adopted by Council on Tuesday. The Disability Commission was essentially shut down by the City Manager and the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission was severely restricted in meeting since March 2020. These two Commissions should have been included and now the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission is trying to figure out how to track what the Planning Commission is doing.
All this brings together the siloing of City management, functions, and staff. One would think that City staff that support the Boards and Commissions could contribute to cross pollination of ideas from one segment of the City to another, but that doesn’t seem to be a priority. It is so much easier to shut down.
I finished off the week by attending the Santa Fe Right of Way as a potential new park meeting Saturday morning. This wasn’t given any special attention in my Activist’s Calendar, but I had hoped that at least one attendee had seen the post from my calendar. Every once in a while I receive an email that my efforts to post City meetings is appreciated, but I wonder every week if the time spent creating the calendar is worth the effort if no one reads it. The Community Calendar is useful, but in the six years I have been tracking City meetings there are always at least one commission meeting and usually several that are missing. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/communitycalendar/ The mere fact that it is so difficult to track what is happening with Berkeley City meetings is why I started this effort.
There were a few more things that happened at City meetings this last week. Igor Tregub stated at the Peace and Justice Commission that the Mayor was proposing to combine the Peace and Justice Commission with the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission.
The City Council Budget & Finance Committee heard the staff presentation and public comment on the Property Tax Measures and Restore Tax Equity by changing the square footage through a comprehensive verification process. This issue has been going on for months. Mayor Arreguin certainly got testy during the meeting with the public and went after Councilmember Harrison in an attempt to stop her from further commenting on the issue and making suggestions for the future. Harrison didn’t stop talking. Hopefully she can find the band width to put forward the needed measures, i.e. at least correcting under measured livable space at the sale of property.
There are too many meetings running simultaneously to catch everything and we need to keep an eye on WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) and the BMASP (Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan). There will be a presentation on February 16th to Council. The suggestions for revenue and activities at the meeting on Thursday were all pretty mundane and unimaginative. I have an idea for revenue, kick out those G—awful restaurants and give those to several of the talented chefs in the area. I’ve eaten at the two restaurants in the Marina three times and it was three times too many.
This is a little shorter today as the personal to do list is stacking up. There will be more next time and I will fill you in on my reading. I am almost done with The Back Channel by William J. Burns who President Biden tapped for the CIA.
My last note from the book How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt is, “Democracy is a shared enterprise.” Haven’t we learned that over the last four years and some of us would say over the last twelve. We can’t just vote and then tune out, of course, most of us were unable to tune out during the last four years with Trump continually sucking up media attention, news banners, notes filling our email boxes, social media posts and endless worrisome conversations with friends and family. It is nice to have a break, but even now that brief peace seems to be slipping away. And all of this brings me to this week’s summary of what happened and a bit of what is ahead.
“Democracy is a shared enterprise” is not just for national politics it is for local city politics too. If we don’t watch and participate, the hope of affordable housing at the BART station projects will slip away. Look at this coming week’s Measure O Bond Oversight Committee Special meeting at 6 pm on Wednesday https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Measure_O_Bond_Oversight_Committee.aspx Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/93950296629. If the Measure O funds are assigned to BUSD-Sponsored Educator Housing then there won’t be Measure O Funds to contribute to affordable housing at the BART stations and that will give the gentrifiers a huge boost in South Berkeley.
The Council Agenda and Rules Committee at 3 pm on Monday Is the next step in getting rid of those pesky Commissions that push forward measures that the Council and City Manager would much prefer to ignore.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/Policy_Committee__Agenda___Rules.aspx
Of course, there are those commissions and commissioners who use the easy path not to include other represented groups and needs in other words other commissions.
The Planning Commission put forward their plan for eliminating parking minimums and establishing parking maximums without ever including the Disability Commission or the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. Their plan was adopted by Council on Tuesday. The Disability Commission was essentially shut down by the City Manager and the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission was severely restricted in meeting since March 2020. These two Commissions should have been included and now the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission is trying to figure out how to track what the Planning Commission is doing.
All this brings together the siloing of City management, functions, and staff. One would think that City staff that support the Boards and Commissions could contribute to cross pollination of ideas from one segment of the City to another, but that doesn’t seem to be a priority. It is so much easier to shut down.
I finished off the week by attending the Santa Fe Right of Way as a potential new park meeting Saturday morning. This wasn’t given any special attention in my Activist’s Calendar, but I had hoped that at least one attendee had seen the post from my calendar. Every once in a while I receive an email that my efforts to post City meetings is appreciated, but I wonder every week if the time spent creating the calendar is worth the effort if no one reads it. The Community Calendar is useful, but in the six years I have been tracking City meetings there are always at least one commission meeting and usually several that are missing. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/communitycalendar/ The mere fact that it is so difficult to track what is happening with Berkeley City meetings is why I started this effort.
There were a few more things that happened at City meetings this last week. Igor Tregub stated at the Peace and Justice Commission that the Mayor was proposing to combine the Peace and Justice Commission with the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission.
The City Council Budget & Finance Committee heard the staff presentation and public comment on the Property Tax Measures and Restore Tax Equity by changing the square footage through a comprehensive verification process. This issue has been going on for months. Mayor Arreguin certainly got testy during the meeting with the public and went after Councilmember Harrison in an attempt to stop her from further commenting on the issue and making suggestions for the future. Harrison didn’t stop talking. Hopefully she can find the band width to put forward the needed measures, i.e. at least correcting under measured livable space at the sale of property.
There are too many meetings running simultaneously to catch everything and we need to keep an eye on WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) and the BMASP (Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan). There will be a presentation on February 16th to Council. The suggestions for revenue and activities at the meeting on Thursday were all pretty mundane and unimaginative. I have an idea for revenue, kick out those G—awful restaurants and give those to several of the talented chefs in the area. I’ve eaten at the two restaurants in the Marina three times and it was three times too many.
This is a little shorter today as the personal to do list is stacking up. There will be more next time and I will fill you in on my reading. I am almost done with The Back Channel by William J. Burns who President Biden tapped for the CIA.
January 23, 2021
There was a stack of City meetings this last week, but it was hard to hold my attention on anything until after Wednesday. I think it was an absolute first that Tuesday evening City Council moved the entire regular meeting agenda to consent and ended at 9 pm. We did hear at the earlier 4 pm Council meeting on the adoption of ballots passed by the voters that the application process for the Police Accountability Board will be starting soon at least by February and an executive search firm will be used for the Director of Police Accountability.
The planned Civic Arts Commission Civic Center Visioning Subcommittee gave way to the inauguration and was rescheduled for Monday, January 25th.
The Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee did meet and voted to recommend no action by Council on the measures from the Community Environmental Advisory Commission to prohibit the sale of carbon-based fuels and use of city streets for operating combustion vehicles by 2045. They also voted to recommend no action on the measure Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy also called “doughnut economy.” Interestingly Time Magazine published an article on the doughnut economy Friday, January 22, Amsterdam Is Embracing a Radical New Economic Theory to Help Save the Environment. Could It Also Replace Capitalism? https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics/.
As for transportation and climate, Mayor Arreguin has embraced with enthusiasm the dirtiest and most inefficient mode of transportation as the path to pay for replacing the Berkeley Pier. The City is marching forward and held Community Meeting #1 Pier/Ferry Study Thursday evening https://www.cityofberkeley.info/parks/pier/. The meeting started with the presentation of several plans followed with breakout sessions to discuss and give input to which plan is preferred. This is the usual Berkeley procedure, do not provide full open disclosure, but instead declare overwhelming support, put forward several plans to reach the desired end and ask the public which one is preferred.
We were divided into four breakout groups and I fully expected to be the only attendee in group #4 lacking enthusiasm for ferry service and doubting the demand for it. Much to my surprise others were more outspoken in opposition to ferry service addressing concerns to the impact on recreation and disturbing wildlife, questioning large boats and describing them as a poor solution when there isn’t a demand. John Tillolson shared how he tried the ferry after the earthquake and it was so inefficient and time consuming that he gave it up. Another attendee called ferries a boutique service and stated we shouldn’t be spending a lot of money subsidizing them. My question on fuel and GHG emissions was answered with WETA has no electric ferries. In all, group #4 gave no pier selection leaving the moderator Christina Erikson trying to dance around the complete lack of enthusiasm.
As a little history on how we got to this place of using WETA to pay for a new pier, on June 5, 2018 the voters narrowly (50.7%) approved measure RM3 to raise bridge tolls to fund the Bay Area Traffic Relief Plan. This measure is supposed to relieve traffic and enhance public transportation in bridge corridors https://ballotpedia.org/Bay_Area,_California,_Regional_Measure_3,_%22Traffic_Relief_Plan%22_Bridge_Toll_Increase_(June_2018). The Water Emergency Transportation Authority WETA is taking a chunk of the money to expand ferry service. Did any of us understand that RM3 would be used to expand the dirtiest and most inefficient mode of transportation? I doubt it. If we accept the ferry, WETA will pay for the pier for landing.
Failing infrastructure seems to be the focus of a number of city and community meetings and the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) is another. Liam Garland, Director, Public Works attended the Thursday CCCC noon meeting to lay out the next steps for assessing the water intrusion at Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) and the Veterans Building. Garland reminded CCCC attendees that while the Veterans Building is in better condition, these buildings especially Maudelle Shirek are in states of major disrepair and Berkeley has many unfunded needs, i.e. $250 million in street repairs. Allana Buick & Bers, Inc. will do the evaluation of the water intrusion and provide an estimate of the cost of repairs.
The other “elephant in the room” is how will these buildings perform in a major earthquake and what is needed to stabilize them. Ann Harlow asked why do we need another seismic study, haven’t there been enough studies already? Susi Marzuola, architect, who was on the Gehl team said that the seismic question kept coming up and the team didn’t have the answer. As someone who was present when Council took the vote to assess Maudelle Shirek for future use after discussion of how unsafe the building was in the event of an earthquake, I have to wonder how did Gehl spend $376,000 creating a plan and not do the most fundamental part of it, a thorough seismic study.
At least we finished the week with a new president, so as much as there are challenges at every turn, there is hope.
I finished the book, The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder and now have an even deeper understanding of how close we really have been to losing what is left of our democracy and why Snyder wrote On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. I’ve started reading Touching the Jaguar by John Perkins who wrote Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. It looks to be an easier read.
There was a stack of City meetings this last week, but it was hard to hold my attention on anything until after Wednesday. I think it was an absolute first that Tuesday evening City Council moved the entire regular meeting agenda to consent and ended at 9 pm. We did hear at the earlier 4 pm Council meeting on the adoption of ballots passed by the voters that the application process for the Police Accountability Board will be starting soon at least by February and an executive search firm will be used for the Director of Police Accountability.
The planned Civic Arts Commission Civic Center Visioning Subcommittee gave way to the inauguration and was rescheduled for Monday, January 25th.
The Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee did meet and voted to recommend no action by Council on the measures from the Community Environmental Advisory Commission to prohibit the sale of carbon-based fuels and use of city streets for operating combustion vehicles by 2045. They also voted to recommend no action on the measure Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy also called “doughnut economy.” Interestingly Time Magazine published an article on the doughnut economy Friday, January 22, Amsterdam Is Embracing a Radical New Economic Theory to Help Save the Environment. Could It Also Replace Capitalism? https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics/.
As for transportation and climate, Mayor Arreguin has embraced with enthusiasm the dirtiest and most inefficient mode of transportation as the path to pay for replacing the Berkeley Pier. The City is marching forward and held Community Meeting #1 Pier/Ferry Study Thursday evening https://www.cityofberkeley.info/parks/pier/. The meeting started with the presentation of several plans followed with breakout sessions to discuss and give input to which plan is preferred. This is the usual Berkeley procedure, do not provide full open disclosure, but instead declare overwhelming support, put forward several plans to reach the desired end and ask the public which one is preferred.
We were divided into four breakout groups and I fully expected to be the only attendee in group #4 lacking enthusiasm for ferry service and doubting the demand for it. Much to my surprise others were more outspoken in opposition to ferry service addressing concerns to the impact on recreation and disturbing wildlife, questioning large boats and describing them as a poor solution when there isn’t a demand. John Tillolson shared how he tried the ferry after the earthquake and it was so inefficient and time consuming that he gave it up. Another attendee called ferries a boutique service and stated we shouldn’t be spending a lot of money subsidizing them. My question on fuel and GHG emissions was answered with WETA has no electric ferries. In all, group #4 gave no pier selection leaving the moderator Christina Erikson trying to dance around the complete lack of enthusiasm.
As a little history on how we got to this place of using WETA to pay for a new pier, on June 5, 2018 the voters narrowly (50.7%) approved measure RM3 to raise bridge tolls to fund the Bay Area Traffic Relief Plan. This measure is supposed to relieve traffic and enhance public transportation in bridge corridors https://ballotpedia.org/Bay_Area,_California,_Regional_Measure_3,_%22Traffic_Relief_Plan%22_Bridge_Toll_Increase_(June_2018). The Water Emergency Transportation Authority WETA is taking a chunk of the money to expand ferry service. Did any of us understand that RM3 would be used to expand the dirtiest and most inefficient mode of transportation? I doubt it. If we accept the ferry, WETA will pay for the pier for landing.
Failing infrastructure seems to be the focus of a number of city and community meetings and the Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) is another. Liam Garland, Director, Public Works attended the Thursday CCCC noon meeting to lay out the next steps for assessing the water intrusion at Maudelle Shirek Building (old city hall) and the Veterans Building. Garland reminded CCCC attendees that while the Veterans Building is in better condition, these buildings especially Maudelle Shirek are in states of major disrepair and Berkeley has many unfunded needs, i.e. $250 million in street repairs. Allana Buick & Bers, Inc. will do the evaluation of the water intrusion and provide an estimate of the cost of repairs.
The other “elephant in the room” is how will these buildings perform in a major earthquake and what is needed to stabilize them. Ann Harlow asked why do we need another seismic study, haven’t there been enough studies already? Susi Marzuola, architect, who was on the Gehl team said that the seismic question kept coming up and the team didn’t have the answer. As someone who was present when Council took the vote to assess Maudelle Shirek for future use after discussion of how unsafe the building was in the event of an earthquake, I have to wonder how did Gehl spend $376,000 creating a plan and not do the most fundamental part of it, a thorough seismic study.
At least we finished the week with a new president, so as much as there are challenges at every turn, there is hope.
I finished the book, The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder and now have an even deeper understanding of how close we really have been to losing what is left of our democracy and why Snyder wrote On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. I’ve started reading Touching the Jaguar by John Perkins who wrote Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. It looks to be an easier read.
January 15, 2021
If all the newspapers I subscribe to arrived as paper additions, my house might look like the one I entered as a nurse years ago with newspapers in a mound filling the living room to the ceiling and the bedroom where I found my patient was so full of papers and magazines that I couldn’t see the size of the bed or the rest of the room. I miss daily newspapers in hand, but limit myself to just the Sunday paper to read and set aside for my parrot Zorro. It is interesting how older articles take on a different meaning and that is what happened when I pulled out Joe Matthews editorial on City Councils should be bigger. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Why-California-s-city-councils-should-be-bigger-15523287.php
Now that we are giving our Mayor and City Council members pay raises, enlarging the Council has little appeal and less justification with one Councilmember per 15,000 residents. Besides, we have a readymade city structure with commissions to foster city engagement and new ideas. As I wrote last week Berkeley commissions provide significant contributions. They could still use a review of the mission statements, broader diversity, more complete minutes and encouragement to dispense with meeting rules when engagement of attendees is of benefit. The Agenda and Rules Committee announced on Monday that a special meeting will be called to discuss the Councilmember Droste proposal to reorganize and eliminate not quite half of the commissions. If saving money/the city budget was really the issue there are a lot places to look starting with consultants. Police overtime is supposed to be getting a hard look.
Since the three members of the Agenda and Rules Committee, Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn, couldn’t see beyond the BDS Movement, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions to end Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, they voted for no action on The Right to Boycott submitted November 28, 2020 by Cheryl Davila. It is unfortunate they didn’t see the broader issue. Maybe the Peace and Justice Commission can take this up as non-violent peaceful boycotts are an important part of free speech.
Maybe the three members could tune into Democracy Now https://www.democracynow.org/
more often. In all this chaos we’ve been living under I certainly like the calm monotone of Amy Goodman although she almost broke out in laughter the day she reported on the Rudy Giuliani press conference in front of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping next to the Fantasy Island Adult Books and across the street from Philadelphia Crematories.
A worthwhile commission that is likely safe from the reorganizing axe is the Youth Commission composed of members between the ages of 12 and 25. Councilmember Rigel Robinson who is signed on as a supporter of the commission reorganizing extolled the work of the Youth Commission on Monday. The Youth Commission just as in its title addresses issues of youth. They did not make a final appointment of their representative to the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and will be meeting Tuesday for that purpose.
If you happened to notice that the three banners, BE YOU, YOU’RE OKAY, IT’S NOT A DUMB IDEA, by local artist Susan O’Malley that could be seen from Civic Center Park have disappeared, they are down for repairs of the bolts holding them and will go back up. Susan O’Malley who was pregnant with twins died suddenly. A painful loss to all. The little girls survived only a week. The banners are “temporary” which brings up another issue pointed out by the Civic Arts Commission Public Art Subcommittee on Friday, the length of “red tape” to have a permanent art exhibit.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) continues to move along. The Civic Arts Commission Civic Center Visioning Subcommittee is taking up the uses of the Veterans Building and Maudelle Shirek (old city hall). They will meet this coming Wednesday.
It is hard to stay focused on City meetings when the cloud of the January 6 attempted coup hangs over us and the safety and security of President elect Biden and Vice-President Harris in this transition, Inauguration and after is a constant worry. I keep thinking back to the book Caste and the Taylor Branch quote from page 352, “…if people were given the choice between democracy and Whiteness how many would choose Whiteness…” Stuart Stevens went further in his book It Was All a Lie to write that the Republic Party is the White party. Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, item 25 in Tuesday’s agenda does not feel like enough.
We have made different ways of carrying ourselves through this pandemic and constant chaos. I will be relieved when the news gets boring and a calming voice takes over, but there will still be a lot to do. My love of reading was given an enormous boost during these months of sheltering and it’s not going away. I’ve barely started the Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder, but I did finish the Address Book by Dierdre Mask and The Color of Water by James McBride. Since nearly all my reading is loans from our fabulous libraries, I’ve started a journal to keep notes so I am giving proper credit to any quotes.
The Address Book is a fascinating look at the implications of the absence and presence of a street address and the history that surrounds how addresses have been created. It’s a non-fiction book that is a lot lighter in content than my usual selections. There is a chapter on the homeless describing the complications encountered by not having an actual street address. Consider all the places where giving a street address is requested or required for example applying for a job or finding a place to live. Maybe this is a task for the Homeless Commission to ensure that every homeless person who wants a real address is able to get one.
If all the newspapers I subscribe to arrived as paper additions, my house might look like the one I entered as a nurse years ago with newspapers in a mound filling the living room to the ceiling and the bedroom where I found my patient was so full of papers and magazines that I couldn’t see the size of the bed or the rest of the room. I miss daily newspapers in hand, but limit myself to just the Sunday paper to read and set aside for my parrot Zorro. It is interesting how older articles take on a different meaning and that is what happened when I pulled out Joe Matthews editorial on City Councils should be bigger. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Why-California-s-city-councils-should-be-bigger-15523287.php
Now that we are giving our Mayor and City Council members pay raises, enlarging the Council has little appeal and less justification with one Councilmember per 15,000 residents. Besides, we have a readymade city structure with commissions to foster city engagement and new ideas. As I wrote last week Berkeley commissions provide significant contributions. They could still use a review of the mission statements, broader diversity, more complete minutes and encouragement to dispense with meeting rules when engagement of attendees is of benefit. The Agenda and Rules Committee announced on Monday that a special meeting will be called to discuss the Councilmember Droste proposal to reorganize and eliminate not quite half of the commissions. If saving money/the city budget was really the issue there are a lot places to look starting with consultants. Police overtime is supposed to be getting a hard look.
Since the three members of the Agenda and Rules Committee, Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn, couldn’t see beyond the BDS Movement, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions to end Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, they voted for no action on The Right to Boycott submitted November 28, 2020 by Cheryl Davila. It is unfortunate they didn’t see the broader issue. Maybe the Peace and Justice Commission can take this up as non-violent peaceful boycotts are an important part of free speech.
Maybe the three members could tune into Democracy Now https://www.democracynow.org/
more often. In all this chaos we’ve been living under I certainly like the calm monotone of Amy Goodman although she almost broke out in laughter the day she reported on the Rudy Giuliani press conference in front of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping next to the Fantasy Island Adult Books and across the street from Philadelphia Crematories.
A worthwhile commission that is likely safe from the reorganizing axe is the Youth Commission composed of members between the ages of 12 and 25. Councilmember Rigel Robinson who is signed on as a supporter of the commission reorganizing extolled the work of the Youth Commission on Monday. The Youth Commission just as in its title addresses issues of youth. They did not make a final appointment of their representative to the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force and will be meeting Tuesday for that purpose.
If you happened to notice that the three banners, BE YOU, YOU’RE OKAY, IT’S NOT A DUMB IDEA, by local artist Susan O’Malley that could be seen from Civic Center Park have disappeared, they are down for repairs of the bolts holding them and will go back up. Susan O’Malley who was pregnant with twins died suddenly. A painful loss to all. The little girls survived only a week. The banners are “temporary” which brings up another issue pointed out by the Civic Arts Commission Public Art Subcommittee on Friday, the length of “red tape” to have a permanent art exhibit.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) continues to move along. The Civic Arts Commission Civic Center Visioning Subcommittee is taking up the uses of the Veterans Building and Maudelle Shirek (old city hall). They will meet this coming Wednesday.
It is hard to stay focused on City meetings when the cloud of the January 6 attempted coup hangs over us and the safety and security of President elect Biden and Vice-President Harris in this transition, Inauguration and after is a constant worry. I keep thinking back to the book Caste and the Taylor Branch quote from page 352, “…if people were given the choice between democracy and Whiteness how many would choose Whiteness…” Stuart Stevens went further in his book It Was All a Lie to write that the Republic Party is the White party. Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, item 25 in Tuesday’s agenda does not feel like enough.
We have made different ways of carrying ourselves through this pandemic and constant chaos. I will be relieved when the news gets boring and a calming voice takes over, but there will still be a lot to do. My love of reading was given an enormous boost during these months of sheltering and it’s not going away. I’ve barely started the Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder, but I did finish the Address Book by Dierdre Mask and The Color of Water by James McBride. Since nearly all my reading is loans from our fabulous libraries, I’ve started a journal to keep notes so I am giving proper credit to any quotes.
The Address Book is a fascinating look at the implications of the absence and presence of a street address and the history that surrounds how addresses have been created. It’s a non-fiction book that is a lot lighter in content than my usual selections. There is a chapter on the homeless describing the complications encountered by not having an actual street address. Consider all the places where giving a street address is requested or required for example applying for a job or finding a place to live. Maybe this is a task for the Homeless Commission to ensure that every homeless person who wants a real address is able to get one.
January 8, 2021
The focus of the Activist’s Diary is local politics and what happens at our public City meetings. Even in a light week it’s impossible to attend them all. Most of the commission meetings are not recorded and reading through the minutes of too many is a worthless endeavor.
Councilmember Lori Droste as the author with Rigel Robinson and Rashi Kesarwani as co-sponsors are proposing a Commission Reorganization for Post COVID-19 Budget Recovery. Mayor Arreguin as the leader who is responsible for the expanding the number of commissions in his tenure seems to have revived some enthusiasm for the reorganizing. Droste stated on Monday that there was no real basis for choosing to reduce the number of commissions to twenty from thirty-eight. The premise is reducing the number of commissions will have significant positive impact on the City Budget.
Given that going through the agendas of the boards and commissions has ruined my Friday evenings for years and deprived me of a good nights sleep, I can’t think of anyone who would be happier to wipe a number of these off the slate starting with the Animal Care Commission that spent three years as I recall voting and then revisiting, voting and revisiting, voting and revisiting how many dogs professional dog walkers could walk at once 4, 6, or 8 dogs. This particular commission is listed under the City Manager and maybe she ought to take a look at it.
It is unfortunate that so many of the commissions have been shut down during the pandemic. It would have been a good time for Councilmembers to join zoom and see their appointees in action. Then maybe those commissioners who really just warm a seat or at worst obstruct could be replaced. Shutting down the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission at 9 pm, because the chair wants to stop is not a reason to quit when there is work to be done.
There are commissioners that provide significant contributions to the city with some commissions producing analysis and reports that are more thorough and useful than those coming from the City hired consultants (a place to look at spending). The Public Works Commission is on a roll and their recommended five-year paving plan is in the proposed January 26 agenda. The Public Works Commission also produced the Information Report Phase 3 to Underground Utility Wires. It is so dense the agenda packet for January 26 was broken into two packets. There are other commissions and task forces that have produced stunning star work.
The functioning of the city was once described to me as a four-legged table: 1) City Council, 2) City staff, 3) Boards and Commissions and 4) the city at large – the public. City government can be messy with commissions sometimes making recommendations that staff and the Council do not wish to consider. The commission process brings forward ideas and from holiday reading Tyranny of Meritocracy by Lani Guinier diverse groups develop better solutions. With each Council member making an individual appointment that doesn’t bode well for ensuring commissioner diversity. Diversity here is not just race, class, education or life experiences it also includes persons with disabilities and mobility limitations, the young and old. A successful city needs a broad array of voices, but the most important factor is commitment to finding solutions.
One last piece from the Monday Agenda Committee, item 19 in the proposed January 19 City Council agenda, Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, a Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley. Councilmember Hahn stated she was “very Comfortable” with the committee recommendation. She would be, of course, as she authored the revision which I described in November 27, 2020 https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2020-11-27 Activist Diary as “thin” in content. With all that has happened this week, the rampage on the Capitol by a mob carrying Trump and Confederate flags, bent on overturning the November 3 election it feels like the revision isn’t near enough. The Declaration is much easier to read now listed as item 25 in the final agenda. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/01_Jan/City_Council__01-19-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
It was hard to focus on anything after Wednesday afternoon, January 6, 2021. As I tried to follow the news, I found I was only half listening at the Planning Commission and Public Works Commission. In the Planning Commission workplan table from staff, the Bird Safety Ordinance (bird safe glass and dark skies) fell to the bottom sort of like the place where injured and dead birds can be found after crashing into glass. Whether commissioners can prioritize bird survival over developer profits remains to be seen. Berkeley sits in the migration flyway, but unfortunately it is the developer fees that finance the Berkeley Planning Department. Birds don’t carry cash on their wings to pay the way to moving up on the workplan priority list.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center meeting Thursday noon was a little easier as it fell during a press lull. There will be more at the next meeting on the plan for assessment of water intrusion. The committees are getting off the ground with Park group as the only committee that met over the holidays. John Caner is completing the paperwork for Berkeley Partners for Parks as the fiscal agent. A draft for the website berkeleycccc.org is being reviewed by the group with comments due preferably by Monday.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the books I read in 2020 (41 in total) especially How Democracies Die (2018) by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt and It Was All a Lie (2020) by Stuart Stevens. In How Democracies Die the authors warn any politician who meets even one of the following four criteria should be cause for concern 1) Disrespect for norms – rejection of democratic rules, 2) Denial of legitimacy of opponents, 3) Toleration or encouragement of violence, 4) Willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents including the media. Trump fit all four.
I’m almost done with Fear by Bob Woodward. Next Up is The Road to Unfreedom (2018) by Timothy Snyder who also authored On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
The focus of the Activist’s Diary is local politics and what happens at our public City meetings. Even in a light week it’s impossible to attend them all. Most of the commission meetings are not recorded and reading through the minutes of too many is a worthless endeavor.
Councilmember Lori Droste as the author with Rigel Robinson and Rashi Kesarwani as co-sponsors are proposing a Commission Reorganization for Post COVID-19 Budget Recovery. Mayor Arreguin as the leader who is responsible for the expanding the number of commissions in his tenure seems to have revived some enthusiasm for the reorganizing. Droste stated on Monday that there was no real basis for choosing to reduce the number of commissions to twenty from thirty-eight. The premise is reducing the number of commissions will have significant positive impact on the City Budget.
Given that going through the agendas of the boards and commissions has ruined my Friday evenings for years and deprived me of a good nights sleep, I can’t think of anyone who would be happier to wipe a number of these off the slate starting with the Animal Care Commission that spent three years as I recall voting and then revisiting, voting and revisiting, voting and revisiting how many dogs professional dog walkers could walk at once 4, 6, or 8 dogs. This particular commission is listed under the City Manager and maybe she ought to take a look at it.
It is unfortunate that so many of the commissions have been shut down during the pandemic. It would have been a good time for Councilmembers to join zoom and see their appointees in action. Then maybe those commissioners who really just warm a seat or at worst obstruct could be replaced. Shutting down the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission at 9 pm, because the chair wants to stop is not a reason to quit when there is work to be done.
There are commissioners that provide significant contributions to the city with some commissions producing analysis and reports that are more thorough and useful than those coming from the City hired consultants (a place to look at spending). The Public Works Commission is on a roll and their recommended five-year paving plan is in the proposed January 26 agenda. The Public Works Commission also produced the Information Report Phase 3 to Underground Utility Wires. It is so dense the agenda packet for January 26 was broken into two packets. There are other commissions and task forces that have produced stunning star work.
The functioning of the city was once described to me as a four-legged table: 1) City Council, 2) City staff, 3) Boards and Commissions and 4) the city at large – the public. City government can be messy with commissions sometimes making recommendations that staff and the Council do not wish to consider. The commission process brings forward ideas and from holiday reading Tyranny of Meritocracy by Lani Guinier diverse groups develop better solutions. With each Council member making an individual appointment that doesn’t bode well for ensuring commissioner diversity. Diversity here is not just race, class, education or life experiences it also includes persons with disabilities and mobility limitations, the young and old. A successful city needs a broad array of voices, but the most important factor is commitment to finding solutions.
One last piece from the Monday Agenda Committee, item 19 in the proposed January 19 City Council agenda, Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, a Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley. Councilmember Hahn stated she was “very Comfortable” with the committee recommendation. She would be, of course, as she authored the revision which I described in November 27, 2020 https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2020-11-27 Activist Diary as “thin” in content. With all that has happened this week, the rampage on the Capitol by a mob carrying Trump and Confederate flags, bent on overturning the November 3 election it feels like the revision isn’t near enough. The Declaration is much easier to read now listed as item 25 in the final agenda. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/01_Jan/City_Council__01-19-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx
It was hard to focus on anything after Wednesday afternoon, January 6, 2021. As I tried to follow the news, I found I was only half listening at the Planning Commission and Public Works Commission. In the Planning Commission workplan table from staff, the Bird Safety Ordinance (bird safe glass and dark skies) fell to the bottom sort of like the place where injured and dead birds can be found after crashing into glass. Whether commissioners can prioritize bird survival over developer profits remains to be seen. Berkeley sits in the migration flyway, but unfortunately it is the developer fees that finance the Berkeley Planning Department. Birds don’t carry cash on their wings to pay the way to moving up on the workplan priority list.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center meeting Thursday noon was a little easier as it fell during a press lull. There will be more at the next meeting on the plan for assessment of water intrusion. The committees are getting off the ground with Park group as the only committee that met over the holidays. John Caner is completing the paperwork for Berkeley Partners for Parks as the fiscal agent. A draft for the website berkeleycccc.org is being reviewed by the group with comments due preferably by Monday.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the books I read in 2020 (41 in total) especially How Democracies Die (2018) by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt and It Was All a Lie (2020) by Stuart Stevens. In How Democracies Die the authors warn any politician who meets even one of the following four criteria should be cause for concern 1) Disrespect for norms – rejection of democratic rules, 2) Denial of legitimacy of opponents, 3) Toleration or encouragement of violence, 4) Willingness to curtail civil liberties of opponents including the media. Trump fit all four.
I’m almost done with Fear by Bob Woodward. Next Up is The Road to Unfreedom (2018) by Timothy Snyder who also authored On Tyranny Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.
December 18, 2020
The week of December 13 City meetings started with the Council Budget and Finance Committee review of financial reports and Mayor Arreguin’s proposed Annual Appropriations with a $5 million additional allocation to the Police Department overtime budget. On hearing an additional $5 million to the police department, I couldn’t stop thinking about the incident I wrote about last week, seeing 10 uniformed officers, 5 patrol cars, 5 meter-maid traffic vehicles all hanging out at McGee and Hearst with an empty dented meter-maid vehicle by the light post. I wondered is there nothing else to do in a city of over 100,000? My walk partner said it out loud.
Councilmember Kate Harrison suggested an allocation of $2.5 million and holding $1 million in reserve pending review of police overtime staffing at the end of the next quarter. The final proposal passed at Council on Tuesday evening was $3.5 million to police overtime and $1 million in reserve as submitted by Teresa Berkeley-Simmons, Budget Manager.
This week was a lesson in how just a couple of words can dramatically change accountability in a policing policy or remove protections to preserve manufacturing space in West Berkeley.
Police Chief Greenwood submitted an amendment to the Use of Force Policy passed by City Council on July 23, 2020 inserting the words “strive to” so the Use of Force Standard would read, “…officers shall strive to use the minimum amount of force…” The Police Review Commission (PRC) rejected this insertion determining it would water down the use of force policy to a semblance of effort making it difficult to hold a police officer accountable for excessive use of force.
On Tuesday evening after much discussion that pushed the Council meeting until 12:30 am the final solution adopted by Council to 300.1.2 Use of Force Standard substituted “a” for “the” and added “within a range” in the definition of Minimal amount of force. The final wording, “…In all cases where physical force is used, officers shall use a minimum amount of force…”
At the Planning Commission on Wednesday evening, item 10. Business Support Zoning Amendment Referrals-Research and Development, did not look like much, a change of adding a word here and there, expanding the definition of what qualified as Research and Development until Rick Auerbach spoke representing the West Berkeley. West Berkeley is the area where there are land use protections to support light industry, artisans, manufacturing, labs. The change in the definition would unravel protections. Commissioner Ben Beach asked for continued discussion with impacted stakeholders balancing existing policy goals rather than open season displacement of businesses that we are trying to protect. He was joined by Commissioner Robb Kapla who asked why expand R&D in protected areas, why not have R&D which is office work in offices.
Protected uses in West Berkeley provides jobs which are often filled by high school graduates and persons of color. When it was clear that representation from the West Berkeley Plan was not contacted, there was a statement from the Commission secretary about the email list as cover for the absence of contact with West Berkeley and impacted industries.
It was Jordon Klein from OED (Office of Economic Development) now acting Director of Planning who unintentionally clarified the R&D amendment intent by adding technology to the definition. Instead of renting space at 50 cents to $1.50/sq ft for light manufacturing/protected uses, expanding the definition and moving in technology space could lease for $6.00/sq ft.
When Planning Commission members asked more pressing questions like why couldn’t tech work which is basically office be in other locations like the downtown, Jordon Klein said he was calling in the cavalry and brought Steven Buckley in for the rescue. No decisions were made and it was left with staff to meet with Mr. Auerbach (who had been left off the contact list). City staff were asked to review the impacts of changing the definition, to consider an overly if there was a site with long term non-use and to look at other spaces for offices for technology.
The question here is will Berkeley sell out to the big developer or will Berkeley retain its values to keep a place for industry, manufacturing, artisans and the people who fill those jobs? There is lots of vacant space in the downtown, ground floors in mixed use buildings that could benefit from tech worker’s needing office space rather than unraveling the protections to West Berkeley. Maybe there should be a change in thinking about what makes the city “vibrant.” It certainly isn’t store front commercial space that sits empty.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) continues to move along and is using [email protected]. Thanks to John Caner and conversations with Tipping Structural Engineers and the City it looks like with a little fund raising, the seismic evaluation that wasn’t included in the report from Gehl could finally get done. The three sub-groups are forming. Lisa Bullwinkel the Chair of the Civic Arts Commission reported that the Commission has a subcommittee Civic Arts Visioning which can work on uses of the Veterans and old city hall building https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CivicArtsCommissionHomepage/ Deb Durant and Erin Diehm will co-lead the park planning group. The Park sub-committee formed a google group [email protected]. Deb Durant is the contact for the Turtle Island Fountain Monument https://turtleislandfountain.org Ann Harlow [email protected] offered to be the contact for fund raising and the CCCC accepted the suggestion to use Berkeley Partners for Parks as a fiscal agent.
We can’t seem to get anywhere on moving the Bird Safe Berkeley Requirements through the Planning Commission and while some of the developers are becoming more receptive to native plants, dark sky and downward lighting it will take more than good will to make the changes that the Design Review Committee can only suggest and recommend. We need the Bird Safe ordinance passed.
The news on the spread of the pandemic is all bad. It will take months for everyone to get vaccinated. If people behave as badly over the coming holidays as they did over Thanksgiving nurses like me who haven’t worked in an ICU for 45 years might get called up. In California we’ve gone from under 9000 new cases per day a week before Thanksgiving to over 63,000 new cases on Wednesday. The number of deaths are climbing and that number will continue to get higher as ICU beds become out of reach. If you get hospitalized and I get called up, don’t expect kind words, I have a mouth like a sailor. My sympathies are with the farm workers, grocery store staff, nurses, doctors, hospital housekeepers.
If you need some suggestions on reading while staying at home, I definitely recommend It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens on the Republican party and Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. Disloyal by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, is on the Berkeley Library lucky day shelf.
I am looking forward to no City meetings and have a stack reading catch up. The Secret Life of Groceries was on the lucky day shelf and I expect that will be an important partner to the presentation by Nilang Gor on Vision 2025 for Sustainable Food Policies at the Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee on Monday. I could use some help on putting the meeting audio with the presentation visual. We’re killing ourselves and the planet with a meat-based diet.
The Community Advisory Group (CAG) for the BART station developments is still hearing from community members who don’t want mid-range high apartments in a single story and 2-story neighborhood. It is unlikely they will get their wish, but planning is moving along and there will be more community meetings in the new year. Parking for BART users who live in the hills is another issue to watch.
The week of December 13 City meetings started with the Council Budget and Finance Committee review of financial reports and Mayor Arreguin’s proposed Annual Appropriations with a $5 million additional allocation to the Police Department overtime budget. On hearing an additional $5 million to the police department, I couldn’t stop thinking about the incident I wrote about last week, seeing 10 uniformed officers, 5 patrol cars, 5 meter-maid traffic vehicles all hanging out at McGee and Hearst with an empty dented meter-maid vehicle by the light post. I wondered is there nothing else to do in a city of over 100,000? My walk partner said it out loud.
Councilmember Kate Harrison suggested an allocation of $2.5 million and holding $1 million in reserve pending review of police overtime staffing at the end of the next quarter. The final proposal passed at Council on Tuesday evening was $3.5 million to police overtime and $1 million in reserve as submitted by Teresa Berkeley-Simmons, Budget Manager.
This week was a lesson in how just a couple of words can dramatically change accountability in a policing policy or remove protections to preserve manufacturing space in West Berkeley.
Police Chief Greenwood submitted an amendment to the Use of Force Policy passed by City Council on July 23, 2020 inserting the words “strive to” so the Use of Force Standard would read, “…officers shall strive to use the minimum amount of force…” The Police Review Commission (PRC) rejected this insertion determining it would water down the use of force policy to a semblance of effort making it difficult to hold a police officer accountable for excessive use of force.
On Tuesday evening after much discussion that pushed the Council meeting until 12:30 am the final solution adopted by Council to 300.1.2 Use of Force Standard substituted “a” for “the” and added “within a range” in the definition of Minimal amount of force. The final wording, “…In all cases where physical force is used, officers shall use a minimum amount of force…”
At the Planning Commission on Wednesday evening, item 10. Business Support Zoning Amendment Referrals-Research and Development, did not look like much, a change of adding a word here and there, expanding the definition of what qualified as Research and Development until Rick Auerbach spoke representing the West Berkeley. West Berkeley is the area where there are land use protections to support light industry, artisans, manufacturing, labs. The change in the definition would unravel protections. Commissioner Ben Beach asked for continued discussion with impacted stakeholders balancing existing policy goals rather than open season displacement of businesses that we are trying to protect. He was joined by Commissioner Robb Kapla who asked why expand R&D in protected areas, why not have R&D which is office work in offices.
Protected uses in West Berkeley provides jobs which are often filled by high school graduates and persons of color. When it was clear that representation from the West Berkeley Plan was not contacted, there was a statement from the Commission secretary about the email list as cover for the absence of contact with West Berkeley and impacted industries.
It was Jordon Klein from OED (Office of Economic Development) now acting Director of Planning who unintentionally clarified the R&D amendment intent by adding technology to the definition. Instead of renting space at 50 cents to $1.50/sq ft for light manufacturing/protected uses, expanding the definition and moving in technology space could lease for $6.00/sq ft.
When Planning Commission members asked more pressing questions like why couldn’t tech work which is basically office be in other locations like the downtown, Jordon Klein said he was calling in the cavalry and brought Steven Buckley in for the rescue. No decisions were made and it was left with staff to meet with Mr. Auerbach (who had been left off the contact list). City staff were asked to review the impacts of changing the definition, to consider an overly if there was a site with long term non-use and to look at other spaces for offices for technology.
The question here is will Berkeley sell out to the big developer or will Berkeley retain its values to keep a place for industry, manufacturing, artisans and the people who fill those jobs? There is lots of vacant space in the downtown, ground floors in mixed use buildings that could benefit from tech worker’s needing office space rather than unraveling the protections to West Berkeley. Maybe there should be a change in thinking about what makes the city “vibrant.” It certainly isn’t store front commercial space that sits empty.
The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) continues to move along and is using [email protected]. Thanks to John Caner and conversations with Tipping Structural Engineers and the City it looks like with a little fund raising, the seismic evaluation that wasn’t included in the report from Gehl could finally get done. The three sub-groups are forming. Lisa Bullwinkel the Chair of the Civic Arts Commission reported that the Commission has a subcommittee Civic Arts Visioning which can work on uses of the Veterans and old city hall building https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CivicArtsCommissionHomepage/ Deb Durant and Erin Diehm will co-lead the park planning group. The Park sub-committee formed a google group [email protected]. Deb Durant is the contact for the Turtle Island Fountain Monument https://turtleislandfountain.org Ann Harlow [email protected] offered to be the contact for fund raising and the CCCC accepted the suggestion to use Berkeley Partners for Parks as a fiscal agent.
We can’t seem to get anywhere on moving the Bird Safe Berkeley Requirements through the Planning Commission and while some of the developers are becoming more receptive to native plants, dark sky and downward lighting it will take more than good will to make the changes that the Design Review Committee can only suggest and recommend. We need the Bird Safe ordinance passed.
The news on the spread of the pandemic is all bad. It will take months for everyone to get vaccinated. If people behave as badly over the coming holidays as they did over Thanksgiving nurses like me who haven’t worked in an ICU for 45 years might get called up. In California we’ve gone from under 9000 new cases per day a week before Thanksgiving to over 63,000 new cases on Wednesday. The number of deaths are climbing and that number will continue to get higher as ICU beds become out of reach. If you get hospitalized and I get called up, don’t expect kind words, I have a mouth like a sailor. My sympathies are with the farm workers, grocery store staff, nurses, doctors, hospital housekeepers.
If you need some suggestions on reading while staying at home, I definitely recommend It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens on the Republican party and Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. Disloyal by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, is on the Berkeley Library lucky day shelf.
I am looking forward to no City meetings and have a stack reading catch up. The Secret Life of Groceries was on the lucky day shelf and I expect that will be an important partner to the presentation by Nilang Gor on Vision 2025 for Sustainable Food Policies at the Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee on Monday. I could use some help on putting the meeting audio with the presentation visual. We’re killing ourselves and the planet with a meat-based diet.
The Community Advisory Group (CAG) for the BART station developments is still hearing from community members who don’t want mid-range high apartments in a single story and 2-story neighborhood. It is unlikely they will get their wish, but planning is moving along and there will be more community meetings in the new year. Parking for BART users who live in the hills is another issue to watch.
December 11, 2020
Despite all the legal scholars stating the Texas lawsuit was frivolous without merit, I still worried. It was a relief to receive the news that the Supreme Court dismissed the latest bid to overturn the November 3 election. The mere fact that 17 attorneys general and 126 congressional Republicans signed on to the Texas suit should give all of us pause. A closer election could be the end of what is left of this democracy.
On page 352 in Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste, she quotes Taylor Branch historian of the Civil Rights Movement, “If people were given the choice between Democracy and Whiteness, how many would choose Whiteness?” The answer is staring at us.
On July 14, 2020 Berkeley City Council passed the Omnibus Motion on Public Safety. This motion was to put into action policing reform in Berkeley. It follows by two years the release of Center for Policing Equity (CPE) Report of disparate treatment of Blacks in Berkeley.
I fully expected Councilmember Bartlett’s proposal to develop a progressive police academy called the George Floyd Community Safety Act to fill the entire City Council Public Safety Committee meeting Monday morning, but the item was withdrawn as too expensive to pursue in this economy. The next item the Ordinance Regulating Police Acquisition and Use of Controlled Equipment was continued with the City Attorney reviewing the ordinance before the next meeting in January bringing the meeting to a quick end.
The two unscheduled items from Cheryl Davila were left in abeyance. Terry Taplin had related prior to the meeting that he did not wish to advance less lethal weaponry and fire extinguishers for homeless encampments. It is not surprising, that dealing with the controversial issues of tear gas, pepper spray, disorientation devices, etc. was left unscheduled, but it is unfortunate that a discussion around fire extinguishers is not coming forward. The total acres of land consumed in wildfires (over 4 million acres - 9,279 fires) in California in 2020 was more than double the previous record. This should make everyone receptive to considering all avenues to reduce fire risk. At least Fire Chief Brannigan was invited to the January Safety Committee meeting to provide information on evacuation plans.
Early on in the Adeline Corridor planning meetings, I must have looked and sounded pretty naïve as an older Black woman took me aside to tell me how things really work in Berkeley. She explained it just a show, there would be lots of meetings asking for input and then they go ahead and do what they always planned. I stopped attending several meetings in after listening to the consultant presentation on how the Adeline Corridor should look like University Avenue in Palo Alto.
Tuesday evening the Adeline Corridor Specific Plan was on the City Council agenda. After years in the making, Mayor Arreguin lead the charge with his motion to discard the community work that went into the recommendations before the Council from the Planning Commission. Councilmember Hahn spoke to the cost of losing community trust, that a plan that took years shouldn’t be changed at the 12th hour, the trade-offs haven’t been studied. Harrison spoke to how the Mayor’s motion would water down the required inclusionary affordable housing.
The Adeline Corridor is the former redlined area and was the heart of the Black neighborhood and Black owned businesses. Now it is the target of gentrification. There was a substitute motion from Councilmember Ben Bartlett supporting the recommendations from the Planning Commission which gained only three supporters, Hahn, Harrison and Bartlett.
In the end Harrison was the only councilmember who held to principle. The annotated agenda with the Mayor’s motion does not specify how many floors will be added and how that works out in the requirements for inclusionary affordable housing, but it is clear that the developers and gentrification won the day even if not every caller for more floors/bigger buildings understood their part. The North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance might want to take a lesson from Friends of Adeline.
In the Tuesday 4 pm Council meeting, the tenant eviction protection emergency ordinance did pass.
Early Wednesday afternoon my walk partner and I were passed by four police officers on bicycles. We saw them again at the North Berkeley Post Office talking to an older Black gentleman who was sitting while Black on the stone wall near the door. About a half hour later in our swing back to our homes when we reached the intersection of McGee and Hearst it was filled with police officers and police vehicles up and down the street, five cruisers and the crime scene van, five “meter maid” traffic vehicles, ten uniformed officers. We arrived well after the accident, a meter maid vehicle with a dented front end was sitting by the light post and knocked over stop sign.
What added interest to the citizen observation of police presence was the discussions, presentations and exchanges at the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group on Wednesday and the Budget and Finance Committee on Thursday.
There was a testy exchange between the Mayor and the Police Chief Wednesday as Chief Greenwood complained about the budget cuts as if the Berkeley Police Department was singled out for budget cuts. Mayor Arreguin responded that because of COVID-19 impacts on City revenue all City departments were asked to cut 15%. The police department’s budget cut was 12% not 15%. On Thursday at the Budget and Finance Committee there was a lengthy presentation complete with charts by David White ending with police department overtime budget requirement of $6,313,890. $5,000,000 is included in the FY 2021 Summary of needs AAO (Annual Appropriations Ordinance). Andrea Pritchett asked the question I had been thinking, “what is the criteria for staffing?” The Mayor asked further questions about staffing.
Chief Greenwood said the staffing from 11 am to 2 am was 16 beats, 16 officers, plus commanders, supervisors. You can listen to the details in the Policy Committee Audio files for December 10. Councilmember Harrison had a lot to ask and say about Overtime use. With the BPD taking up 45% of the City budget, digging into how the department is managed and staffed can’t happen too soon.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Budget___Finance.aspx
I have attended only the last two meetings, November 18th and December 9th of the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group. As the group winds down and finalizes their report, there was a certain amount of frustration besides the exchange over the police department budget.
Jim Chanin stated in contrast to BPD the Oakland Police Department started their own focus groups on disparate treatment. Chanin said, “I see no initiative from the department…there is no buy-in from BPD to look at disparities.” (Why Blacks are stopped more often than Whites and way out of proportion to population) He went on to describe BPD as stonewalling and obstinate. Later in the meeting he requested that the analysis from George Lipman be included with the report stating that not one shred of paper or report had been received from BPD. The section in the report on Compliance and Accountability remains.
It is not possible to attend every meeting when a number of them are running simultaneously and others overlap. I missed the Commission on Disability, the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, the Community Health Commission and the Police Review Commission. I did attend the Parks and Waterfront Commission and as usual learned a lot. The Parks and Waterfront Department is responsible for the City’s trees and per Scott Ferris the department is in the process of planting 400 trees. I sure wish we had map of where they are going and what kind of trees we are getting. I’d love to know how they are picked and which birds will be attracted to make their nests in them. The other highlight of the meeting was the presentation by Erin Diehm. On the agenda was the 600 Addison research and development project across from Aquatic Park. Erin informed us there are 192 species of birds and that trees next to expanses of glass are actually more dangerous to birds. There is a misconception that bird safe glass isn’t needed when it is blocked by trees, but the opposite is true as the glass reflects the trees making it look like more trees to a bird instead of a wall of glass that they don’t see and fly into.
I’ll give an update in next week’s edition on the Community for a Cultural Civic Center. The group will meet one more time this month, December 17th and then take a break until January.
I didn’t finish my reading for this week as I had planned so it will be another week with Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and (ebook-Berkeley) It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens. There is so much dense information in Stamped from the Beginning that I am looking for a hard copy. How to Be an Anti-Racist by Kendi worked fine as an audiobook. If you are interested in President Obama’s new book A Promised Land, put in a hold request now. I think I am number 415.
Despite all the legal scholars stating the Texas lawsuit was frivolous without merit, I still worried. It was a relief to receive the news that the Supreme Court dismissed the latest bid to overturn the November 3 election. The mere fact that 17 attorneys general and 126 congressional Republicans signed on to the Texas suit should give all of us pause. A closer election could be the end of what is left of this democracy.
On page 352 in Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste, she quotes Taylor Branch historian of the Civil Rights Movement, “If people were given the choice between Democracy and Whiteness, how many would choose Whiteness?” The answer is staring at us.
On July 14, 2020 Berkeley City Council passed the Omnibus Motion on Public Safety. This motion was to put into action policing reform in Berkeley. It follows by two years the release of Center for Policing Equity (CPE) Report of disparate treatment of Blacks in Berkeley.
I fully expected Councilmember Bartlett’s proposal to develop a progressive police academy called the George Floyd Community Safety Act to fill the entire City Council Public Safety Committee meeting Monday morning, but the item was withdrawn as too expensive to pursue in this economy. The next item the Ordinance Regulating Police Acquisition and Use of Controlled Equipment was continued with the City Attorney reviewing the ordinance before the next meeting in January bringing the meeting to a quick end.
The two unscheduled items from Cheryl Davila were left in abeyance. Terry Taplin had related prior to the meeting that he did not wish to advance less lethal weaponry and fire extinguishers for homeless encampments. It is not surprising, that dealing with the controversial issues of tear gas, pepper spray, disorientation devices, etc. was left unscheduled, but it is unfortunate that a discussion around fire extinguishers is not coming forward. The total acres of land consumed in wildfires (over 4 million acres - 9,279 fires) in California in 2020 was more than double the previous record. This should make everyone receptive to considering all avenues to reduce fire risk. At least Fire Chief Brannigan was invited to the January Safety Committee meeting to provide information on evacuation plans.
Early on in the Adeline Corridor planning meetings, I must have looked and sounded pretty naïve as an older Black woman took me aside to tell me how things really work in Berkeley. She explained it just a show, there would be lots of meetings asking for input and then they go ahead and do what they always planned. I stopped attending several meetings in after listening to the consultant presentation on how the Adeline Corridor should look like University Avenue in Palo Alto.
Tuesday evening the Adeline Corridor Specific Plan was on the City Council agenda. After years in the making, Mayor Arreguin lead the charge with his motion to discard the community work that went into the recommendations before the Council from the Planning Commission. Councilmember Hahn spoke to the cost of losing community trust, that a plan that took years shouldn’t be changed at the 12th hour, the trade-offs haven’t been studied. Harrison spoke to how the Mayor’s motion would water down the required inclusionary affordable housing.
The Adeline Corridor is the former redlined area and was the heart of the Black neighborhood and Black owned businesses. Now it is the target of gentrification. There was a substitute motion from Councilmember Ben Bartlett supporting the recommendations from the Planning Commission which gained only three supporters, Hahn, Harrison and Bartlett.
In the end Harrison was the only councilmember who held to principle. The annotated agenda with the Mayor’s motion does not specify how many floors will be added and how that works out in the requirements for inclusionary affordable housing, but it is clear that the developers and gentrification won the day even if not every caller for more floors/bigger buildings understood their part. The North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance might want to take a lesson from Friends of Adeline.
In the Tuesday 4 pm Council meeting, the tenant eviction protection emergency ordinance did pass.
Early Wednesday afternoon my walk partner and I were passed by four police officers on bicycles. We saw them again at the North Berkeley Post Office talking to an older Black gentleman who was sitting while Black on the stone wall near the door. About a half hour later in our swing back to our homes when we reached the intersection of McGee and Hearst it was filled with police officers and police vehicles up and down the street, five cruisers and the crime scene van, five “meter maid” traffic vehicles, ten uniformed officers. We arrived well after the accident, a meter maid vehicle with a dented front end was sitting by the light post and knocked over stop sign.
What added interest to the citizen observation of police presence was the discussions, presentations and exchanges at the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group on Wednesday and the Budget and Finance Committee on Thursday.
There was a testy exchange between the Mayor and the Police Chief Wednesday as Chief Greenwood complained about the budget cuts as if the Berkeley Police Department was singled out for budget cuts. Mayor Arreguin responded that because of COVID-19 impacts on City revenue all City departments were asked to cut 15%. The police department’s budget cut was 12% not 15%. On Thursday at the Budget and Finance Committee there was a lengthy presentation complete with charts by David White ending with police department overtime budget requirement of $6,313,890. $5,000,000 is included in the FY 2021 Summary of needs AAO (Annual Appropriations Ordinance). Andrea Pritchett asked the question I had been thinking, “what is the criteria for staffing?” The Mayor asked further questions about staffing.
Chief Greenwood said the staffing from 11 am to 2 am was 16 beats, 16 officers, plus commanders, supervisors. You can listen to the details in the Policy Committee Audio files for December 10. Councilmember Harrison had a lot to ask and say about Overtime use. With the BPD taking up 45% of the City budget, digging into how the department is managed and staffed can’t happen too soon.
https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Budget___Finance.aspx
I have attended only the last two meetings, November 18th and December 9th of the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group. As the group winds down and finalizes their report, there was a certain amount of frustration besides the exchange over the police department budget.
Jim Chanin stated in contrast to BPD the Oakland Police Department started their own focus groups on disparate treatment. Chanin said, “I see no initiative from the department…there is no buy-in from BPD to look at disparities.” (Why Blacks are stopped more often than Whites and way out of proportion to population) He went on to describe BPD as stonewalling and obstinate. Later in the meeting he requested that the analysis from George Lipman be included with the report stating that not one shred of paper or report had been received from BPD. The section in the report on Compliance and Accountability remains.
It is not possible to attend every meeting when a number of them are running simultaneously and others overlap. I missed the Commission on Disability, the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, the Community Health Commission and the Police Review Commission. I did attend the Parks and Waterfront Commission and as usual learned a lot. The Parks and Waterfront Department is responsible for the City’s trees and per Scott Ferris the department is in the process of planting 400 trees. I sure wish we had map of where they are going and what kind of trees we are getting. I’d love to know how they are picked and which birds will be attracted to make their nests in them. The other highlight of the meeting was the presentation by Erin Diehm. On the agenda was the 600 Addison research and development project across from Aquatic Park. Erin informed us there are 192 species of birds and that trees next to expanses of glass are actually more dangerous to birds. There is a misconception that bird safe glass isn’t needed when it is blocked by trees, but the opposite is true as the glass reflects the trees making it look like more trees to a bird instead of a wall of glass that they don’t see and fly into.
I’ll give an update in next week’s edition on the Community for a Cultural Civic Center. The group will meet one more time this month, December 17th and then take a break until January.
I didn’t finish my reading for this week as I had planned so it will be another week with Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and (ebook-Berkeley) It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens. There is so much dense information in Stamped from the Beginning that I am looking for a hard copy. How to Be an Anti-Racist by Kendi worked fine as an audiobook. If you are interested in President Obama’s new book A Promised Land, put in a hold request now. I think I am number 415.
December 4, 2020
So much seems to change in a week when it comes to the pandemic and yet it is just what we’ve been told for months. Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota https://www.cidrap.umn.edu said in his podcast last August when he talked about the public health measures to slow the pandemic, “we can pay now or we can pay later.” So here we are in the “pay later” after weeks of lulling ourselves into thinking we could manage with halfway measures, “bubbles” and taking off masks (facial coverings) in gatherings and restaurants as if eating in groups didn’t count. This has already been months and despite vaccines on the horizon, we need to prepare ourselves for a longer haul before this is over. There is still a lot to be learned including how long the vaccines last before another is needed.
As for the week we just finished, it is hard to believe the last day of November was Monday. The Monday afternoon Council Agenda and Rules Committee turned out to be more interesting than expected. The Use of Force Policy is back on the proposed December 15 Council agenda. As I have stated previously, the Police Review Commission (PRC) is very deliberative in their actions and policy review. Through their process they determined to remove the words “strive to” from the Use of Force Policy #300. The PRC voted with near unanimity (one abstained) that the inclusion of “strive to” would make use of force accountability impossible.
Reading the submission by Police Chief Greenwood and from the City Manager justifying reinserting “strive to” into the Use of Force Policy 300 now item 45 in the December 15 Council agenda reminded me of Bill Barr’s prelude to the Mueller Report (I did listen to the reading of the entire Mueller report while swimming). It muddies everything. How Council votes on the end run from the Police Chief around the PRC will indicate where we really are in the “reimaging of public safety (policing).”
There were other items that I expected the Agenda Committee to remove or push off to some commission or council committee, but they stayed on in the consent calendar and I am afraid that mentioning them here might be their demise. There were several callers asking the Police Chief No Confidence Vote to be scheduled and others calling in supporting the implementation of the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act passed by the voters in 2018 to be implemented ASAP instead of the end of 2021 as required. The reorganizing of Commissions discussion was put off to January.
Cheryl Davila’s last Council meeting was Tuesday evening December 1 with Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson as one of the early callers recognizing Cheryl for her work and speaking to their many conversations. You can watch it all on the 6 pm meeting video starting at 40 minutes into the meeting and continuing for nearly 1 ½ hours. Cheryl gave her response at 2 hours and 14 minutes into the meeting and it was wrenching. It was not the ordinary goodbye, brush the 4 years under the rug and say thank you and everything was wonderful. Follow the link to the December 1, 6 pm meeting. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx
It was around 10:40 pm Tuesday when the Mayor closed down the Council meeting stating there was not enough time to take up Zoning Ordinance amendments to reform off-street residential parking requirements. The amendments reduce and eliminate off-street parking minimums and establish parking maximums. You can use the same link given above to put your nose into the proposed ordinance item 40 in the December 15 agenda. And, you can also read the budget update item 42, annual appropriations item 43 and Use of Force item 45. I am grateful for meetings ending before 11 pm and hope that this becomes the regular practice.
On Wednesday, I opted for the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission so I could learn more about the City’s Wildfire Evacuation Plan. The discussion was limited to a presentation on red flag alert communications and the recommendations for pre-emptive evacuation none of which was helpful in review of how the hills will evacuate in a real wildfire or the rest of us for that matter if a fire is spreading in our densely populated city of over 100,000 and a future with fewer cars.
The deadline for commenting on the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) for the mixed-use housing projects at the Ashby and North Berkeley BART stations is December 21, 2020 https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Land_Use_Division/Final%20NOP.pdf. Email your comments to [email protected]. If you check the City budget documents you will find a line item for $310,000 for the EIR.
The Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met Thursday at noon and renamed itself the Community for a Cultural Civic Center. It was obvious from listening, that the group needs to review the proposal from Gehl in addition to the CCCC plan to research restorations of historical buildings that have successful reuse plans and those that fail. It is likely (there was some limited discussion) that soon CCCC will break into three subgroups, one with a focus on the Veterans Building, one on old city hall and one on the park. The most interesting information was after the meeting ended when Deb Durant described the Turtle Island project and answered my many questions. Turtle Island Fountain Monument has been approved under T1. https://turtleislandfountain.org The CCCC group is open and anyone can join, just email John Caner the convener at [email protected] for meeting announcements.
The last meeting of the week the Mental Health Commission also brought disappointments. The expected report from the City Auditor was not provided. Dr. Warhuus did attend and spoke to membership of the Re-imagining Community Safety Project. She promised there would be monthly updates to the Mental Health Commission and updates would be posted for the public, however, how updates for the public will be posted is still in the planning phase as is the entire project.
With being in another Shelter-in-Place, this one until January 4, it looks like there will be lots of time for reading. I sort of feel like audio books is cheating, but the Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco Libraries have great collections of current audiobooks and ebooks too. I like to have one of each going. Up this week (audiobook-Oakland) Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and (ebook-Berkeley) It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens. Check out the libraries
So much seems to change in a week when it comes to the pandemic and yet it is just what we’ve been told for months. Michael Osterholm, epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota https://www.cidrap.umn.edu said in his podcast last August when he talked about the public health measures to slow the pandemic, “we can pay now or we can pay later.” So here we are in the “pay later” after weeks of lulling ourselves into thinking we could manage with halfway measures, “bubbles” and taking off masks (facial coverings) in gatherings and restaurants as if eating in groups didn’t count. This has already been months and despite vaccines on the horizon, we need to prepare ourselves for a longer haul before this is over. There is still a lot to be learned including how long the vaccines last before another is needed.
As for the week we just finished, it is hard to believe the last day of November was Monday. The Monday afternoon Council Agenda and Rules Committee turned out to be more interesting than expected. The Use of Force Policy is back on the proposed December 15 Council agenda. As I have stated previously, the Police Review Commission (PRC) is very deliberative in their actions and policy review. Through their process they determined to remove the words “strive to” from the Use of Force Policy #300. The PRC voted with near unanimity (one abstained) that the inclusion of “strive to” would make use of force accountability impossible.
Reading the submission by Police Chief Greenwood and from the City Manager justifying reinserting “strive to” into the Use of Force Policy 300 now item 45 in the December 15 Council agenda reminded me of Bill Barr’s prelude to the Mueller Report (I did listen to the reading of the entire Mueller report while swimming). It muddies everything. How Council votes on the end run from the Police Chief around the PRC will indicate where we really are in the “reimaging of public safety (policing).”
There were other items that I expected the Agenda Committee to remove or push off to some commission or council committee, but they stayed on in the consent calendar and I am afraid that mentioning them here might be their demise. There were several callers asking the Police Chief No Confidence Vote to be scheduled and others calling in supporting the implementation of the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act passed by the voters in 2018 to be implemented ASAP instead of the end of 2021 as required. The reorganizing of Commissions discussion was put off to January.
Cheryl Davila’s last Council meeting was Tuesday evening December 1 with Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson as one of the early callers recognizing Cheryl for her work and speaking to their many conversations. You can watch it all on the 6 pm meeting video starting at 40 minutes into the meeting and continuing for nearly 1 ½ hours. Cheryl gave her response at 2 hours and 14 minutes into the meeting and it was wrenching. It was not the ordinary goodbye, brush the 4 years under the rug and say thank you and everything was wonderful. Follow the link to the December 1, 6 pm meeting. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Agenda_Index.aspx
It was around 10:40 pm Tuesday when the Mayor closed down the Council meeting stating there was not enough time to take up Zoning Ordinance amendments to reform off-street residential parking requirements. The amendments reduce and eliminate off-street parking minimums and establish parking maximums. You can use the same link given above to put your nose into the proposed ordinance item 40 in the December 15 agenda. And, you can also read the budget update item 42, annual appropriations item 43 and Use of Force item 45. I am grateful for meetings ending before 11 pm and hope that this becomes the regular practice.
On Wednesday, I opted for the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission so I could learn more about the City’s Wildfire Evacuation Plan. The discussion was limited to a presentation on red flag alert communications and the recommendations for pre-emptive evacuation none of which was helpful in review of how the hills will evacuate in a real wildfire or the rest of us for that matter if a fire is spreading in our densely populated city of over 100,000 and a future with fewer cars.
The deadline for commenting on the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) for the mixed-use housing projects at the Ashby and North Berkeley BART stations is December 21, 2020 https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_and_Development/Level_3_-_Land_Use_Division/Final%20NOP.pdf. Email your comments to [email protected]. If you check the City budget documents you will find a line item for $310,000 for the EIR.
The Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met Thursday at noon and renamed itself the Community for a Cultural Civic Center. It was obvious from listening, that the group needs to review the proposal from Gehl in addition to the CCCC plan to research restorations of historical buildings that have successful reuse plans and those that fail. It is likely (there was some limited discussion) that soon CCCC will break into three subgroups, one with a focus on the Veterans Building, one on old city hall and one on the park. The most interesting information was after the meeting ended when Deb Durant described the Turtle Island project and answered my many questions. Turtle Island Fountain Monument has been approved under T1. https://turtleislandfountain.org The CCCC group is open and anyone can join, just email John Caner the convener at [email protected] for meeting announcements.
The last meeting of the week the Mental Health Commission also brought disappointments. The expected report from the City Auditor was not provided. Dr. Warhuus did attend and spoke to membership of the Re-imagining Community Safety Project. She promised there would be monthly updates to the Mental Health Commission and updates would be posted for the public, however, how updates for the public will be posted is still in the planning phase as is the entire project.
With being in another Shelter-in-Place, this one until January 4, it looks like there will be lots of time for reading. I sort of feel like audio books is cheating, but the Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco Libraries have great collections of current audiobooks and ebooks too. I like to have one of each going. Up this week (audiobook-Oakland) Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and (ebook-Berkeley) It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens. Check out the libraries
November 26, 2020
“A rising tide lifts all boats” is a phrase I’ve heard over and over in relation to improving the lot of the poor, but as sensible as it sounded it didn’t explain why people continue to vote against their own interests. It is our nature to want to have an order of things, an explanation and when there is none, conspiracy theories abound sometimes so crazy and bizarre it is bewildering how they could even take hold.
Isabel Wilkerson’s second book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents was released August 4, 2020. I finished it Wednesday and listened to conversations with Isabel Wilkerson throughout Thanksgiving Day on both Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns. It took fifteen years for Ms. Wilkerson to write The Warmth of Other Suns and it was ten more before I took it off my book shelf and read it. She never uses the word racism in her writing. Instead, she writes narrative nonfiction telling the humiliating to the horrific, the story of racism thru the people who experienced it.
Ms. Wilkerson describes caste through metaphors in her book and in conversations as the frame on which race is built layered with class. Her writings have changed how I think about race and racism and given framing to recent Berkeley City meetings.
Last week I wrote, “I’m going to leave my comments to the Fair and Impartial Policing Working
Group to next week when there will be fewer meetings to review and the Declaration of Racism as a Public Health Crisis is on the agenda at the City Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee. Just let it be said out loud to everyone who is White, Berkeley is not experienced in the same way if someone is Black”
The proposal that Cheryl Davila put forward Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, a Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley is dense with information, history, initial actions and a resolution that is thorough. There is no denying that racism is complex and permeates every corner of our lives, although many declare it doesn’t even exist.
The summer was filled with demonstrations worldwide of Black Lives Matter after the video of the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police went viral. Nothing as pervasive as racism and maintaining Whiteness can be reined in with one resolution even as thorough as it was, but it was a beginning. Was is the key word here as all the meticulous research and documentation was discarded and replaced with a dictated thin list of things to be considered and actions by Sophie Hahn. You might think what was left was fine if you didn’t know what was written in the first place.
This is coming out later than I intended as I spent my evening reading through one and a half years of City Council agendas and watching clips of meeting videos until I found it, May 8, 2018 at 2 hours 2 minutes into the special meeting. There it was Sophie Hahn talking about wanting a visionary plan and her earliest memories of the marina riding in a taxi to the heliport and getting on a helicopter with her family to fly to SFO. She mentioned that of those many trips by helicopter one of them even made it into a picture in the San Francisco Chronicle.
While Sophie often talks about her family moving from Kensington to Berkeley so she would be part of the Berkeley school integration program, going to school with Black children doesn’t necessarily result in crossing the divide between what is experienced by someone who is Black by someone who is White especially when the person who is White has more than white privilege and sits in the upper rungs of the hierarchy in a University town.
Isabel Wilkerson gives the metaphor in Caste that America is like an old house.
“America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought, and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation…The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.” (pp 15-16)
There was a take down in the last election of the bristly Black woman who grew frustrated and inpatient and at times angry with being cutoff and shutdown. We’ve lost an important voice. I don’t know Terry Taplin who won the District 2 seat and I don’t recall hearing him speak on issues. Looking at who endorsed him and the thin resume it looks like he was elevated to run for Council to make everyone comfortable that diversity is maintained and that by placing him in the position he will know his place. He has big shoes to fill and I hope he surprises us all.
The Mayor’s Working Group on Fair and Impartial Policing produced a 26 page draft on recommendations for Berkeley Police Department practices. The report didn’t stop with policing and advanced recommendations for City Council including a section to adopt a system on compliance and accountability. At the November 18 meeting, this is where things got testy. Mayor Arreguin pushed the working group to withdraw the section on accountability. So far, the working group has held firm. Truly, what is the point of months of work to create a plan to reduce (seek to eliminate) racially disparate practices if there is no accountability.
Monday afternoon the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) took up a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy to Address the Climate Emergency. This measure also from Cheryl Davila connects climate and the economy in a different frame, one which focuses on living within the carrying capacity of the earth. This is very forward looking. Kate Harrison brought some numbers into the discussion from her research in developing the natural gas ban in new construction and recommended that before we can reach out beyond our city (and close bay area neighbors) we need to get our own house in order, meaning if we, inhabitants of the Bay Area, continue at our current rate of consumption and using up resources we need at least 7 planet earths to sustain us. When this item goes back on the FITES agenda we should all be watching and we really need a Council work session to introduce the concept to us.
The last meeting of the short work week was the 4 x 4 which consists of four members from the Rent Board and four Council members. The surprise was the response to the presentation from the City Deputy Attorney Chris Jensen and Steven Buckley from the Planning Department. Jensen and Buckley have been working on a rewrite of the City Demolition Ordinance for over a year and rather than using California state law as the floor on which to build a strong local ordinance with maximal protections of Berkeley housing they were using it as the upper limit.
Nothing seems to happen in a hurry when it comes to City governing. In that search through one and a half years of agendas, I found a referral from Mayor Arreguin to the City Manager in 2018 to research the Portland Loo, acknowledging the serious shortage of public restrooms in Berkeley.
I finished Caste and Rage. Caste has been described as the most profound book of the century, a classic. Now I have to catch up on my reading for book club What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forche. Isabel Wilkerson’s book on Caste with her references to Nazi Germany is pushing me to finish In Hitler’s Bunker by Armin D. Lehmann with Tim Carroll. Wilkerson said in several of her many conversations she was reading a book a day in her research for Caste. I used to think a book a month was a tough goal to meet. I doubt I’ll get through these in a week.
“A rising tide lifts all boats” is a phrase I’ve heard over and over in relation to improving the lot of the poor, but as sensible as it sounded it didn’t explain why people continue to vote against their own interests. It is our nature to want to have an order of things, an explanation and when there is none, conspiracy theories abound sometimes so crazy and bizarre it is bewildering how they could even take hold.
Isabel Wilkerson’s second book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents was released August 4, 2020. I finished it Wednesday and listened to conversations with Isabel Wilkerson throughout Thanksgiving Day on both Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns. It took fifteen years for Ms. Wilkerson to write The Warmth of Other Suns and it was ten more before I took it off my book shelf and read it. She never uses the word racism in her writing. Instead, she writes narrative nonfiction telling the humiliating to the horrific, the story of racism thru the people who experienced it.
Ms. Wilkerson describes caste through metaphors in her book and in conversations as the frame on which race is built layered with class. Her writings have changed how I think about race and racism and given framing to recent Berkeley City meetings.
Last week I wrote, “I’m going to leave my comments to the Fair and Impartial Policing Working
Group to next week when there will be fewer meetings to review and the Declaration of Racism as a Public Health Crisis is on the agenda at the City Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee. Just let it be said out loud to everyone who is White, Berkeley is not experienced in the same way if someone is Black”
The proposal that Cheryl Davila put forward Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, a Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley is dense with information, history, initial actions and a resolution that is thorough. There is no denying that racism is complex and permeates every corner of our lives, although many declare it doesn’t even exist.
The summer was filled with demonstrations worldwide of Black Lives Matter after the video of the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police went viral. Nothing as pervasive as racism and maintaining Whiteness can be reined in with one resolution even as thorough as it was, but it was a beginning. Was is the key word here as all the meticulous research and documentation was discarded and replaced with a dictated thin list of things to be considered and actions by Sophie Hahn. You might think what was left was fine if you didn’t know what was written in the first place.
This is coming out later than I intended as I spent my evening reading through one and a half years of City Council agendas and watching clips of meeting videos until I found it, May 8, 2018 at 2 hours 2 minutes into the special meeting. There it was Sophie Hahn talking about wanting a visionary plan and her earliest memories of the marina riding in a taxi to the heliport and getting on a helicopter with her family to fly to SFO. She mentioned that of those many trips by helicopter one of them even made it into a picture in the San Francisco Chronicle.
While Sophie often talks about her family moving from Kensington to Berkeley so she would be part of the Berkeley school integration program, going to school with Black children doesn’t necessarily result in crossing the divide between what is experienced by someone who is Black by someone who is White especially when the person who is White has more than white privilege and sits in the upper rungs of the hierarchy in a University town.
Isabel Wilkerson gives the metaphor in Caste that America is like an old house.
“America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought, and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation…The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.” (pp 15-16)
There was a take down in the last election of the bristly Black woman who grew frustrated and inpatient and at times angry with being cutoff and shutdown. We’ve lost an important voice. I don’t know Terry Taplin who won the District 2 seat and I don’t recall hearing him speak on issues. Looking at who endorsed him and the thin resume it looks like he was elevated to run for Council to make everyone comfortable that diversity is maintained and that by placing him in the position he will know his place. He has big shoes to fill and I hope he surprises us all.
The Mayor’s Working Group on Fair and Impartial Policing produced a 26 page draft on recommendations for Berkeley Police Department practices. The report didn’t stop with policing and advanced recommendations for City Council including a section to adopt a system on compliance and accountability. At the November 18 meeting, this is where things got testy. Mayor Arreguin pushed the working group to withdraw the section on accountability. So far, the working group has held firm. Truly, what is the point of months of work to create a plan to reduce (seek to eliminate) racially disparate practices if there is no accountability.
Monday afternoon the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) took up a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy to Address the Climate Emergency. This measure also from Cheryl Davila connects climate and the economy in a different frame, one which focuses on living within the carrying capacity of the earth. This is very forward looking. Kate Harrison brought some numbers into the discussion from her research in developing the natural gas ban in new construction and recommended that before we can reach out beyond our city (and close bay area neighbors) we need to get our own house in order, meaning if we, inhabitants of the Bay Area, continue at our current rate of consumption and using up resources we need at least 7 planet earths to sustain us. When this item goes back on the FITES agenda we should all be watching and we really need a Council work session to introduce the concept to us.
The last meeting of the short work week was the 4 x 4 which consists of four members from the Rent Board and four Council members. The surprise was the response to the presentation from the City Deputy Attorney Chris Jensen and Steven Buckley from the Planning Department. Jensen and Buckley have been working on a rewrite of the City Demolition Ordinance for over a year and rather than using California state law as the floor on which to build a strong local ordinance with maximal protections of Berkeley housing they were using it as the upper limit.
Nothing seems to happen in a hurry when it comes to City governing. In that search through one and a half years of agendas, I found a referral from Mayor Arreguin to the City Manager in 2018 to research the Portland Loo, acknowledging the serious shortage of public restrooms in Berkeley.
I finished Caste and Rage. Caste has been described as the most profound book of the century, a classic. Now I have to catch up on my reading for book club What You Have Heard Is True by Carolyn Forche. Isabel Wilkerson’s book on Caste with her references to Nazi Germany is pushing me to finish In Hitler’s Bunker by Armin D. Lehmann with Tim Carroll. Wilkerson said in several of her many conversations she was reading a book a day in her research for Caste. I used to think a book a month was a tough goal to meet. I doubt I’ll get through these in a week.
November 20, 2020
There were so many meetings this week, I could not cover everything. Thursday evening, I was listening to the Richmond Planning Commission with my earphones from my computer while I listened to the Berkeley Design Review committee on my iPad. I missed the Fair Campaign practices which looked very interesting with all the election complaints and the joint Parks and Waterfront Commission and Public Works Commission on the final list for T1 Phase 2.
I am still feeling my way around with this column with what to include and still leave it at a readable length, so please keep reading and as for reading I will place at the end what books I am reading this week.
The pandemic bad news. The Johns Hopkins Friday tally of total cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. was 11,911,261 which means that with nearly 200,000 new cases every day we will cross 12 million on Saturday. The news on the vaccines is promising, but availability to ordinary folks is months away. All that socializing with bubbles happy talk on November 9th from the Mayor’s Town Hall has disappeared and been replaced with do not travel, do not have in person Thanksgiving celebrations with people outside of your household and curfews. Why is all this socializing over food and drinks so bad? You take your mask off. I used Johns Hopkins data for the chart, but my daily tracking is with https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Total Number of Identified Cases of COVID-19 Infection in the United States
The week started with the Agenda and Rules committee where some of us worried there would be movement forward on Councilmember Droste’s proposal to reorganize the City’s commissions. We received a reprieve for the moment with Droste extending the time frame for review until March 1, 2021. The other item of worry was modifying the status of the BMASP (Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan)/Berkeley Pier-WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) Ferry from design to planning. Wind surfers complained at the T1 meetings that the proposed placement of the pier for the ferry would seriously impact recreation uses in the bay. The City Manager withdrew the agenda item.
Monday evening at the Children, Youth and Recreation Commission, Scott Ferris said there were three proposals for the Berkeley Pier and Ferry, there would be focus groups in December, public meetings in January, a Council vote in February and presentation to WETA in March. I looked over my past weekly summaries and the first mention of a presentation on the Berkeley Pier and Ferry was October 2019 as unscheduled. On January 6, 2020 it appeared as a “worksession” for October 20, 2020. On September 8, 2020 the “worksession” on the BMASP/Berkeley Pier -WETA Ferry was rescheduled to February 16, 2021. It looks like we can expect the usual, a drop from the consultants with “don’t you love it” and a quick vote for approval. I would like to see the data that demonstrates all this makes any sense.
The Tuesday evening Council meeting ended early (shock) and finished off with public comment by a woman whose name I did not catch who was hysterical about how afraid she was of the downtown with people shooting up drugs, discarded syringes and homeless harassing her and her children. I was kind of wondering where all this happened as I haven’t seen it myself in my walks down town. There are more homeless on the street that is for sure, but as for being afraid, I actually liked it better when we had the group at the post office. I always felt they were keeping an eye on the goings about town.
Wednesday the Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met with Mayor Arreguin and District 4 Councilmember Kate Harrison. CCCC has come to agreement on two things 1) we oppose building new council chambers in the park and 2) any seismic retrofitting of old city hall and the Veterans building should be at least to the seismic performance level of damage control which would leave buildings that are repairable if we finally get that overdue major earthquake on the Hayward fault. Neither one disagreed with NOT having new council chambers built in the park and the Mayor added that the contract with BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) is 10 years (2018-2028) with an option for a 10-year renewal.
We also learned that it was the Mayor who pushed for a park design to close Center Street and Allston Way, interesting. The Mayor has to my knowledge never owned a car, cared for a disabled person or had children, not that any of these things are required to understand the complications and impacts of this plan but it does help. The proposal for the Veterans building is to make it a performance center. If Center Street is closed, then someone with a disability can’t be dropped off at the entrance, a person in a wheelchair can’t transfer from a disabled vehicle into the chair near the building. If we disregard the difficulties of the disabled, what is done to bring equipment to the building that might be used in performances. It is possible to have the area filled with golf carts hauling people and equipment around, but it just demonstrates a lack of thought to the impact on people and a self-serving fantasy for a grand park that eliminates classes of people. As someone who tried to make life as normal as possible and bring joy to a disabled partner dependent in a wheelchair, I find this more than upsetting.
As for closing Allston Way, when Berkeley High is in session on site, there are over 3000 students and Allston Way is the main entrance and drop off point for students. If Allston Way is closed that pushes drop-off from cars to the Milvia bike lane or MLK Jr Way which is a main traffic artery. Managing traffic on Center and Allston with partial or complete closing for events can work as it does now, but permanently that is just …!
I’m going to leave my comments to the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group to next week when there will be fewer meetings to review and the Declaration of Racism as a Public Health Crisis is on the agenda at the City Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee. Just let it be said out loud to everyone who is White, Berkeley is not experienced in the same way if someone is Black.
The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee took up discussion of terminating the sale of new combustion vehicles by 2025 and resale by 2040. Passing an ordinance to terminate the resale of combustion vehicles in Berkeley by 2040 actually makes sense as then it could be required when selling a new or used car to inform the buyers the day is coming when they will be stuck with a vehicle they can’t drive or sell.
Now on to why I tried to listened to two meetings at the same time. The City of Richmond is rushing through approval of building housing with 2000 to 4000 units on top of the Zeneca site, a site of toxic waste left by the industries that used to operate at this location. The new Council to be installed in January would likely reject as foolish putting new housing on a toxic dump. Many months ago Cheryl Davila submitted an agenda item to send letters in opposition to building housing at this site including a letter to the City of Richmond. Berkeley Council declined with the reason Berkeley couldn’t ask another City to take or to oppose an action. A compromise to eliminate Richmond and send to other entities fell apart. So here we are with unanimous approval by the Richmond Planning Commission to forward recommendation for approval of the “Campus Bay Project” to the City of Richmond Council. The description by the developer’s consultant to add chemicals and bacteria to remediate the site sounded rather fantastical and it was followed with they would put up barriers where they couldn’t decontaminate the soil. It is more like turning lead into gold and I think we can all see who will get the gold. No one asked pressing questions of the process before they gave their unanimous vote.
And, then there was the 600 Addison (across from Aquatic Park) commercial research and development proposal which claims to be zero net energy because at some time in the future this all electric building will get its electricity from 100% renewable sources. This is an interesting twist that all electric buildings can otherwise bypass construction to reduce energy consumption by claiming zero net energy through attaching it to the grid.
The Design Review Committee ooh and aah over the revised 600 Addison plans were clear. The revised project plans are better with scaling back the buildings, saving more trees and reducing parking by 100 spaces to 944, but when Berkeley is eliminating parking requirements for housing projects how can anyone in good conscience declare 944 parking spaces as environmentally sound and reasonable. Sixty percent of GHG in Berkeley are from transportation. Just a simple exercise of estimating VMT (vehicle miles traveled) with filling the parking lot to only 80% and travel from around the Bay Area came to 21,700 miles driven per day to and from work. Add, to this some cities like Palo Alto are deciding not to build along the shoreline due to SLR (sea level rise). Check the supplemental communication for November 19, 2020. There is still much to be considered. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Zoning_Adjustment_Board/600_Addison_-_ZP2019-0215.aspx
This is more than enough for one sitting. Wishing you the best for the Thanksgiving Holiday, be safe, wear your mask, call friends. Next year will be better if we can make it through pandemic fatigue.
There were so many meetings this week, I could not cover everything. Thursday evening, I was listening to the Richmond Planning Commission with my earphones from my computer while I listened to the Berkeley Design Review committee on my iPad. I missed the Fair Campaign practices which looked very interesting with all the election complaints and the joint Parks and Waterfront Commission and Public Works Commission on the final list for T1 Phase 2.
I am still feeling my way around with this column with what to include and still leave it at a readable length, so please keep reading and as for reading I will place at the end what books I am reading this week.
The pandemic bad news. The Johns Hopkins Friday tally of total cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. was 11,911,261 which means that with nearly 200,000 new cases every day we will cross 12 million on Saturday. The news on the vaccines is promising, but availability to ordinary folks is months away. All that socializing with bubbles happy talk on November 9th from the Mayor’s Town Hall has disappeared and been replaced with do not travel, do not have in person Thanksgiving celebrations with people outside of your household and curfews. Why is all this socializing over food and drinks so bad? You take your mask off. I used Johns Hopkins data for the chart, but my daily tracking is with https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Total Number of Identified Cases of COVID-19 Infection in the United States
The week started with the Agenda and Rules committee where some of us worried there would be movement forward on Councilmember Droste’s proposal to reorganize the City’s commissions. We received a reprieve for the moment with Droste extending the time frame for review until March 1, 2021. The other item of worry was modifying the status of the BMASP (Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan)/Berkeley Pier-WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) Ferry from design to planning. Wind surfers complained at the T1 meetings that the proposed placement of the pier for the ferry would seriously impact recreation uses in the bay. The City Manager withdrew the agenda item.
Monday evening at the Children, Youth and Recreation Commission, Scott Ferris said there were three proposals for the Berkeley Pier and Ferry, there would be focus groups in December, public meetings in January, a Council vote in February and presentation to WETA in March. I looked over my past weekly summaries and the first mention of a presentation on the Berkeley Pier and Ferry was October 2019 as unscheduled. On January 6, 2020 it appeared as a “worksession” for October 20, 2020. On September 8, 2020 the “worksession” on the BMASP/Berkeley Pier -WETA Ferry was rescheduled to February 16, 2021. It looks like we can expect the usual, a drop from the consultants with “don’t you love it” and a quick vote for approval. I would like to see the data that demonstrates all this makes any sense.
The Tuesday evening Council meeting ended early (shock) and finished off with public comment by a woman whose name I did not catch who was hysterical about how afraid she was of the downtown with people shooting up drugs, discarded syringes and homeless harassing her and her children. I was kind of wondering where all this happened as I haven’t seen it myself in my walks down town. There are more homeless on the street that is for sure, but as for being afraid, I actually liked it better when we had the group at the post office. I always felt they were keeping an eye on the goings about town.
Wednesday the Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met with Mayor Arreguin and District 4 Councilmember Kate Harrison. CCCC has come to agreement on two things 1) we oppose building new council chambers in the park and 2) any seismic retrofitting of old city hall and the Veterans building should be at least to the seismic performance level of damage control which would leave buildings that are repairable if we finally get that overdue major earthquake on the Hayward fault. Neither one disagreed with NOT having new council chambers built in the park and the Mayor added that the contract with BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) is 10 years (2018-2028) with an option for a 10-year renewal.
We also learned that it was the Mayor who pushed for a park design to close Center Street and Allston Way, interesting. The Mayor has to my knowledge never owned a car, cared for a disabled person or had children, not that any of these things are required to understand the complications and impacts of this plan but it does help. The proposal for the Veterans building is to make it a performance center. If Center Street is closed, then someone with a disability can’t be dropped off at the entrance, a person in a wheelchair can’t transfer from a disabled vehicle into the chair near the building. If we disregard the difficulties of the disabled, what is done to bring equipment to the building that might be used in performances. It is possible to have the area filled with golf carts hauling people and equipment around, but it just demonstrates a lack of thought to the impact on people and a self-serving fantasy for a grand park that eliminates classes of people. As someone who tried to make life as normal as possible and bring joy to a disabled partner dependent in a wheelchair, I find this more than upsetting.
As for closing Allston Way, when Berkeley High is in session on site, there are over 3000 students and Allston Way is the main entrance and drop off point for students. If Allston Way is closed that pushes drop-off from cars to the Milvia bike lane or MLK Jr Way which is a main traffic artery. Managing traffic on Center and Allston with partial or complete closing for events can work as it does now, but permanently that is just …!
I’m going to leave my comments to the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Group to next week when there will be fewer meetings to review and the Declaration of Racism as a Public Health Crisis is on the agenda at the City Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee. Just let it be said out loud to everyone who is White, Berkeley is not experienced in the same way if someone is Black.
The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee took up discussion of terminating the sale of new combustion vehicles by 2025 and resale by 2040. Passing an ordinance to terminate the resale of combustion vehicles in Berkeley by 2040 actually makes sense as then it could be required when selling a new or used car to inform the buyers the day is coming when they will be stuck with a vehicle they can’t drive or sell.
Now on to why I tried to listened to two meetings at the same time. The City of Richmond is rushing through approval of building housing with 2000 to 4000 units on top of the Zeneca site, a site of toxic waste left by the industries that used to operate at this location. The new Council to be installed in January would likely reject as foolish putting new housing on a toxic dump. Many months ago Cheryl Davila submitted an agenda item to send letters in opposition to building housing at this site including a letter to the City of Richmond. Berkeley Council declined with the reason Berkeley couldn’t ask another City to take or to oppose an action. A compromise to eliminate Richmond and send to other entities fell apart. So here we are with unanimous approval by the Richmond Planning Commission to forward recommendation for approval of the “Campus Bay Project” to the City of Richmond Council. The description by the developer’s consultant to add chemicals and bacteria to remediate the site sounded rather fantastical and it was followed with they would put up barriers where they couldn’t decontaminate the soil. It is more like turning lead into gold and I think we can all see who will get the gold. No one asked pressing questions of the process before they gave their unanimous vote.
And, then there was the 600 Addison (across from Aquatic Park) commercial research and development proposal which claims to be zero net energy because at some time in the future this all electric building will get its electricity from 100% renewable sources. This is an interesting twist that all electric buildings can otherwise bypass construction to reduce energy consumption by claiming zero net energy through attaching it to the grid.
The Design Review Committee ooh and aah over the revised 600 Addison plans were clear. The revised project plans are better with scaling back the buildings, saving more trees and reducing parking by 100 spaces to 944, but when Berkeley is eliminating parking requirements for housing projects how can anyone in good conscience declare 944 parking spaces as environmentally sound and reasonable. Sixty percent of GHG in Berkeley are from transportation. Just a simple exercise of estimating VMT (vehicle miles traveled) with filling the parking lot to only 80% and travel from around the Bay Area came to 21,700 miles driven per day to and from work. Add, to this some cities like Palo Alto are deciding not to build along the shoreline due to SLR (sea level rise). Check the supplemental communication for November 19, 2020. There is still much to be considered. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Zoning_Adjustment_Board/600_Addison_-_ZP2019-0215.aspx
This is more than enough for one sitting. Wishing you the best for the Thanksgiving Holiday, be safe, wear your mask, call friends. Next year will be better if we can make it through pandemic fatigue.
November 13, 2020
It is hard not to be drawn into the pandemic that is raging across the country and it is disappointing to hear Berkeleyans planning social get togethers thinking somehow all this concern about Coronavirus doesn’t apply here. This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to exponential spread of COVID-19. It was even more disappointing to hear our Health Officer say last Monday that celebrating Thanksgiving with up to three families all of whom are “bubbled” and not socializing beyond that group would be fine. The problem is not everyone defines what it means to “bubble” the same way. I am not confident that current luck of low incidence in Berkeley will hold.
This column is about what happened locally in City meetings and community groups so let’s get to it.
Cheryl Davila is losing her seat in District 2. Unless someone else picks up the mantel for climate, the environment, the unhoused, addressing racism and asking the penetrating questions on the City budget and spending, we are in for significant impact on these issues.
Kate Harrison can’t do it alone and I don’t see much of anything beyond window dressing for the rest of the crowd. Sophie would call the single use container significant, but so far that is going nowhere. We’re in a pandemic and piling up more plastic with each outing.
Cheryl has put forward a number of complicated proposals that sit in Council Committees. The Monday Council Policy Committee Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee meeting that was to take up declaring Racism as a Public Health Crisis, A Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley was cancelled. If I hadn’t recorded the agenda earlier one wouldn’t even know it was there as the key item.
The Tuesday City Council meeting ended abruptly at 11:01 pm (as predicted) in the middle of discussion of item 12. on Security Cameras and lighting in high crime areas. It was not unexpected that there would be extended discussion on another item to run out the clock so item 22 the No confidence Vote of the Police Chief wouldn’t come up and could be postponed for another 60 days. What was surprising is that nothing in the Action Calendar was addressed and there was not so much of even an apology to Lisa Warhuus from Health, Housing and Community Services for not getting to the presentation: Report on Homeless Outreach during COVID-19. It would be fair to interpret from the absence of an apology, that it was all preplanned to run out the clock on another item before getting to the presentation.
Wednesday the Parks and Waterfront Commission met to review and finalize their recommendations for T1 Phase 2 in advance of the joint meeting with the Public Works Commission that will happen on the 19th. The Parks Commission is basically settled on recommendations with taking money away from Aquatic Park “Dreamland” and placing it toward improved lighting at Ohlone Way. Without going into the entire unpleasant discourse from the chair, Mr. McGrath, regarding the process at the Public Works Commission let it be said that Mr. McGrath ought to not let his ego get in the way of cooperation. He was reminded by this attendee that he was speaking in a public forum.
This is not the first and probably not the last that some commissions are so accustomed to having the public drop off after an item is addressed or not attend at all, that they forget we are still present and listening. And, as long as this column continues and I attend or receive a reliable description, behavior will be reported.
Thursday was packed with overlapping meetings and four evening meetings all running at the same time. Choices were made.
November is the mid-year review with additional allocations to budget spending approved by Council in December. As usual, department reports are not available for study in advance of the meeting. City revenue is down by almost 16%. The Police Department has overspent its annual overtime budget by 108% in the first quarter. The Marina Fund, Public Works, and Parking Funds are all losing money.
Cheryl Davila asks the penetrating questions and Mayor Arreguin and Lori Droste fell to thanks and needing more study. The presentation on Encampment Management / the Homeless was interesting in that the organizational chart, as attendee Maxina noted, looks like the funding is to bureaucracy not direct service. She gave the example simple things like needle collection boxes are left to volunteers. The next meeting is supposed to be at 10 am November 19, but it is not posted yet.
The Citizens for Cultural Civic Center has a tentative meeting with Mayor Arreguin and Council member Harrison on Wednesday at 1 pm. The announcement is not out yet. This is an open community group. John Caner is the convener. Email [email protected] to join. The regular meeting is on Thursdays from 12 – 1 pm. The group is in agreement that no City Council Chambers should be built in the park and a letter to that is being finalized to be sent to City Council.
The challenges ahead are what should become of old city hall, the veterans building and the Civic Center Park. The cost of seismic retrofitting and restoration for reuse of these buildings is going to be around $100 million. The $376,000 spent on consultants for a civic center plan did not provide the middle ground of retrofitting to damage control and consultants didn’t consider other possibilities like maintaining the shell giving a historic appearance from the park with a new inside that is functional.
The absolute highlight of the week was the Public Works Commission on Thursday evening which left me with the feeling if every commission functioned like this what a fine city we could have. The T1 subcommittee was thorough in their ranking of projects and the full commission discussion was inviting. The top ranked priority is city sidewalks, followed by streets. The disabled members of the community would agree with this conclusion. The full presentation should be posted on the commission website before the joint meeting on November 19th.
It is hard not to be drawn into the pandemic that is raging across the country and it is disappointing to hear Berkeleyans planning social get togethers thinking somehow all this concern about Coronavirus doesn’t apply here. This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to exponential spread of COVID-19. It was even more disappointing to hear our Health Officer say last Monday that celebrating Thanksgiving with up to three families all of whom are “bubbled” and not socializing beyond that group would be fine. The problem is not everyone defines what it means to “bubble” the same way. I am not confident that current luck of low incidence in Berkeley will hold.
This column is about what happened locally in City meetings and community groups so let’s get to it.
Cheryl Davila is losing her seat in District 2. Unless someone else picks up the mantel for climate, the environment, the unhoused, addressing racism and asking the penetrating questions on the City budget and spending, we are in for significant impact on these issues.
Kate Harrison can’t do it alone and I don’t see much of anything beyond window dressing for the rest of the crowd. Sophie would call the single use container significant, but so far that is going nowhere. We’re in a pandemic and piling up more plastic with each outing.
Cheryl has put forward a number of complicated proposals that sit in Council Committees. The Monday Council Policy Committee Health, Life, Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee meeting that was to take up declaring Racism as a Public Health Crisis, A Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley was cancelled. If I hadn’t recorded the agenda earlier one wouldn’t even know it was there as the key item.
The Tuesday City Council meeting ended abruptly at 11:01 pm (as predicted) in the middle of discussion of item 12. on Security Cameras and lighting in high crime areas. It was not unexpected that there would be extended discussion on another item to run out the clock so item 22 the No confidence Vote of the Police Chief wouldn’t come up and could be postponed for another 60 days. What was surprising is that nothing in the Action Calendar was addressed and there was not so much of even an apology to Lisa Warhuus from Health, Housing and Community Services for not getting to the presentation: Report on Homeless Outreach during COVID-19. It would be fair to interpret from the absence of an apology, that it was all preplanned to run out the clock on another item before getting to the presentation.
Wednesday the Parks and Waterfront Commission met to review and finalize their recommendations for T1 Phase 2 in advance of the joint meeting with the Public Works Commission that will happen on the 19th. The Parks Commission is basically settled on recommendations with taking money away from Aquatic Park “Dreamland” and placing it toward improved lighting at Ohlone Way. Without going into the entire unpleasant discourse from the chair, Mr. McGrath, regarding the process at the Public Works Commission let it be said that Mr. McGrath ought to not let his ego get in the way of cooperation. He was reminded by this attendee that he was speaking in a public forum.
This is not the first and probably not the last that some commissions are so accustomed to having the public drop off after an item is addressed or not attend at all, that they forget we are still present and listening. And, as long as this column continues and I attend or receive a reliable description, behavior will be reported.
Thursday was packed with overlapping meetings and four evening meetings all running at the same time. Choices were made.
November is the mid-year review with additional allocations to budget spending approved by Council in December. As usual, department reports are not available for study in advance of the meeting. City revenue is down by almost 16%. The Police Department has overspent its annual overtime budget by 108% in the first quarter. The Marina Fund, Public Works, and Parking Funds are all losing money.
Cheryl Davila asks the penetrating questions and Mayor Arreguin and Lori Droste fell to thanks and needing more study. The presentation on Encampment Management / the Homeless was interesting in that the organizational chart, as attendee Maxina noted, looks like the funding is to bureaucracy not direct service. She gave the example simple things like needle collection boxes are left to volunteers. The next meeting is supposed to be at 10 am November 19, but it is not posted yet.
The Citizens for Cultural Civic Center has a tentative meeting with Mayor Arreguin and Council member Harrison on Wednesday at 1 pm. The announcement is not out yet. This is an open community group. John Caner is the convener. Email [email protected] to join. The regular meeting is on Thursdays from 12 – 1 pm. The group is in agreement that no City Council Chambers should be built in the park and a letter to that is being finalized to be sent to City Council.
The challenges ahead are what should become of old city hall, the veterans building and the Civic Center Park. The cost of seismic retrofitting and restoration for reuse of these buildings is going to be around $100 million. The $376,000 spent on consultants for a civic center plan did not provide the middle ground of retrofitting to damage control and consultants didn’t consider other possibilities like maintaining the shell giving a historic appearance from the park with a new inside that is functional.
The absolute highlight of the week was the Public Works Commission on Thursday evening which left me with the feeling if every commission functioned like this what a fine city we could have. The T1 subcommittee was thorough in their ranking of projects and the full commission discussion was inviting. The top ranked priority is city sidewalks, followed by streets. The disabled members of the community would agree with this conclusion. The full presentation should be posted on the commission website before the joint meeting on November 19th.
November 6, 2020
It was a relatively quiet week for City meetings all things considered, which means there was only one City meeting at a time. Monday was a test of endurance with one meeting after another which pales in the challenge of the rest of the week to stay focused between toggling back and forth between election vote counts and Worldometers daily count of new COVID-19 new cases. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ The pandemic is raging and California is not escaping. Just two weeks ago the California seven-day daily average of new cases was 3300. Now that number is 4740. Johnston Medical is out of medium Moldex N95 respirator masks and Moldex has told them not to expect any more and Worldometers reported 132,540 new cases on Friday.
The proposed ordinance for regulating the Police Acquisition and Use of Controlled Equipment is off to the City Attorney for review and will come back to the Public Safety Committee in two weeks. As expected Police Chief Greenwood complained about the reporting requirements for the use of controlled equipment.
A proposal to refer to the City Manager to develop a program for Outdoor Dining was passed out of the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee. It should appear on a future Council agenda.
Now to the real news. The Mayor Arreguin said to put Droste’s measure “Commission Reorganization for Post-COVID 19 Budget Recovery” on the agenda for the next Agenda and Rules Policy Committee (November 16). He gave no clue as to how he felt about the measure, but there certainly appears to be pressure to gut Berkeley’s Commissions and the group Droste as the author with co-sponsors Robinson and Kesarwani have found the perfect mechanism to ride, COVID-19 and budget and the near complete rule by the City Manager to shutter the commissions during the pandemic.
What is interesting is that Droste with her co-sponsors only give attention to the staff hours they can measure. There is complete and total disregard for the hundreds of hours the appointees donate in service to our community. If Droste, Robinson and Kesarwani see so little value in commission work then maybe they need to take a hard look at who they appoint and the positions they leave vacant.
I have attended many of these city meetings, more than I can ever count and while there are a few appointees who seem to only warm the seat, there are many, the majority, who give of their incredible expertise and experience and we are better for it. Democracy is messy and I certainly don’t agree with every decision from every commission, and some meetings are agonizing to sit through, nonetheless, I can say without hesitation that for most of the members, I appreciate their dedication to serving and the contributions they make.
It isn’t easy to find people willing to serve and I would expect it might be harder after this punch in the gut, but would I dismantle the system if given the opportunity even when reading through every one of those commission agendas has ruined many of my Friday nights? The answer is no. There are improvements that can be made and while some commissions should probably meet less frequently there are other commissions that need to meet more often or at least establish subcommittees to work through tasks.
I would like to see the meetings turned into City podcasts. Then there would be a record beyond cryptic minutes and I could listen at 1 ½ speed.
Two of the commissions that did not make even the mention of inclusion in a paragraph in the Droste 14 page document are the two commissions that have been carrying the Bond Measure T1 load, the Parks and Waterfront Commission and the Public Works Commission. We can thank Bryce Nesbitt of the Public Works Commission for introducing us to the Portland Loo https://portlandloo.com on Wednesday evening at the joint Parks and Waterfront Commission and Public Works Commission T1 meeting. If followed up that could provide more public bathrooms with savings and safety. Amazing, one would think from reading the Droste document commissioners only fill-up/waste staff time and are devoid of ideas and solutions.
As for T1 not every need or ask will be filled, but I am relieved to see planning for the African American Holistic Center is still on the list. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/MeasureT1Updates.aspx
Thursday morning the Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center, the group convened by John Caner (email [email protected] to join) met with Marc Steyer of Tipping Engineering as an invited guest. It was a good discussion made better by sharing the chart of the five levels of seismic retrofitting of existing buildings found on page 669 in part 32 of the 33 part 903 page packet from September 22 City Council meeting Civic Center Plan (ugh!). The group reached a general agreement that the seismic study of old city hall needs to be done and the goal of retrofitting should be to have a building that can withstand an earthquake and be repairable. That Seismic Performance Level is called Damage Control and it was not included as a possibility in the documents from the Gehl consultants.
Last on a positive note, since it now looks like the first woman Vice President grew up in Berkeley, Steve Finacom announced at the end of a long night at the Landmarks Preservation Commission that he will present at a future meeting landmarking the apartment building where Kamala Harris grew up.
It was a relatively quiet week for City meetings all things considered, which means there was only one City meeting at a time. Monday was a test of endurance with one meeting after another which pales in the challenge of the rest of the week to stay focused between toggling back and forth between election vote counts and Worldometers daily count of new COVID-19 new cases. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ The pandemic is raging and California is not escaping. Just two weeks ago the California seven-day daily average of new cases was 3300. Now that number is 4740. Johnston Medical is out of medium Moldex N95 respirator masks and Moldex has told them not to expect any more and Worldometers reported 132,540 new cases on Friday.
The proposed ordinance for regulating the Police Acquisition and Use of Controlled Equipment is off to the City Attorney for review and will come back to the Public Safety Committee in two weeks. As expected Police Chief Greenwood complained about the reporting requirements for the use of controlled equipment.
A proposal to refer to the City Manager to develop a program for Outdoor Dining was passed out of the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment & Sustainability Committee. It should appear on a future Council agenda.
Now to the real news. The Mayor Arreguin said to put Droste’s measure “Commission Reorganization for Post-COVID 19 Budget Recovery” on the agenda for the next Agenda and Rules Policy Committee (November 16). He gave no clue as to how he felt about the measure, but there certainly appears to be pressure to gut Berkeley’s Commissions and the group Droste as the author with co-sponsors Robinson and Kesarwani have found the perfect mechanism to ride, COVID-19 and budget and the near complete rule by the City Manager to shutter the commissions during the pandemic.
What is interesting is that Droste with her co-sponsors only give attention to the staff hours they can measure. There is complete and total disregard for the hundreds of hours the appointees donate in service to our community. If Droste, Robinson and Kesarwani see so little value in commission work then maybe they need to take a hard look at who they appoint and the positions they leave vacant.
I have attended many of these city meetings, more than I can ever count and while there are a few appointees who seem to only warm the seat, there are many, the majority, who give of their incredible expertise and experience and we are better for it. Democracy is messy and I certainly don’t agree with every decision from every commission, and some meetings are agonizing to sit through, nonetheless, I can say without hesitation that for most of the members, I appreciate their dedication to serving and the contributions they make.
It isn’t easy to find people willing to serve and I would expect it might be harder after this punch in the gut, but would I dismantle the system if given the opportunity even when reading through every one of those commission agendas has ruined many of my Friday nights? The answer is no. There are improvements that can be made and while some commissions should probably meet less frequently there are other commissions that need to meet more often or at least establish subcommittees to work through tasks.
I would like to see the meetings turned into City podcasts. Then there would be a record beyond cryptic minutes and I could listen at 1 ½ speed.
Two of the commissions that did not make even the mention of inclusion in a paragraph in the Droste 14 page document are the two commissions that have been carrying the Bond Measure T1 load, the Parks and Waterfront Commission and the Public Works Commission. We can thank Bryce Nesbitt of the Public Works Commission for introducing us to the Portland Loo https://portlandloo.com on Wednesday evening at the joint Parks and Waterfront Commission and Public Works Commission T1 meeting. If followed up that could provide more public bathrooms with savings and safety. Amazing, one would think from reading the Droste document commissioners only fill-up/waste staff time and are devoid of ideas and solutions.
As for T1 not every need or ask will be filled, but I am relieved to see planning for the African American Holistic Center is still on the list. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/MeasureT1Updates.aspx
Thursday morning the Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center, the group convened by John Caner (email [email protected] to join) met with Marc Steyer of Tipping Engineering as an invited guest. It was a good discussion made better by sharing the chart of the five levels of seismic retrofitting of existing buildings found on page 669 in part 32 of the 33 part 903 page packet from September 22 City Council meeting Civic Center Plan (ugh!). The group reached a general agreement that the seismic study of old city hall needs to be done and the goal of retrofitting should be to have a building that can withstand an earthquake and be repairable. That Seismic Performance Level is called Damage Control and it was not included as a possibility in the documents from the Gehl consultants.
Last on a positive note, since it now looks like the first woman Vice President grew up in Berkeley, Steve Finacom announced at the end of a long night at the Landmarks Preservation Commission that he will present at a future meeting landmarking the apartment building where Kamala Harris grew up.
October 30, 2020
As usual there are interesting tidbits of information that are gained by attending City meetings that usually don’t show up in the minutes and this is exactly what is intended to be shared in the Activists Diary.
Item 36 on the September 15 City Council agenda was a Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief. If you attended that evening you would recall that Council members talked away the evening on earlier items and then abruptly ended the meeting on time with no extension at the stroke of 11 pm. It seems that even the Mayor thought escape from taking a stand on the no confidence vote was possible by just running out the clock, but on Monday Jesse Arreguin, Sophie Hahn, and Susan Wengraf learned in their task as members of the City Council Policy Agenda and Rules Committee that they do have to include the items not addressed at previous council meetings. That means you will see the Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief as the last item on November 10th agenda. Don’t be surprised if you also see the same kind of blathering to run out the clock again.
Wednesday evening, I chose to attend the Police Review Commission (PRC) over the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission only to hear today that I missed Susan Wengraf’s appointee Robert Flasher make some inane comment during the discussion regarding Grizzly Peak to just take a tranquilizer and not worry, Oakland would burn not Berkeley. It is so disappointing that most commission meetings are not recorded so I could verify first-hand the exact words. Of course, there is always the possibility of a heavy hand or foot on erasing recordings, that has happened too in Berkeley.
As for the PRC, it was moving along methodically on the Acquisition and Use of Controlled Equipment Ordinance until the committee chair brought up a 1992 Policy adopted by City Council that “The BPD [Berkeley Police Department] take direct supervisory responsibility for all mutual aid units deployed to the maximum amount allowable by law…advise such units that they will be expected to comply with [BPD] regulations and policies.” Police Chief Greenwood opined that no outside agency would come into Berkeley for mutual aid if they were required to work within Berkeley City Policy. As pointed out in the PRC October 28 meeting communication from John Lindsey-Poland that if outside agencies do not abide by Berkeley policies then there is no point in having policies. The entire “hot-potato” issue was left unsettled. This isn’t the first time this threat that restrictions would mean another police force or the sheriff would never come to Berkeley in an emergency. Seems like there should be homework with other neighboring cities to learn if they hear the same when use of force police policy restrictions are before Boards and Councils.
The last scheduled T1 public meeting, the 2016 bond measure, was Thursday evening. As expected there were many requests for funding and several complaints about the proposed location of a new pier and ferry to the marina. The newly formed Civic Center Cultural Community Group described in last week’s Activist Diary put in their bid for $1 million to shore up/protect the Old City Hall and Veterans building from failing due to neglect. Seems that the $376,000 to the consultants from Gehl for assessment of the aging buildings did not result in an engineering study that would give direction to the preservation of the buildings. All that money went to the grand scheme for redesign of the park and possible uses of the historical buildings instead of an actual assessment of the structures. In the morning meeting of the Civic Center Cultural Community Group convened by John Caner agreement was reached that Council chambers should absolutely not be built in the park.
The pickleball players were again out in impressive numbers to plead their case for money dedicated to more courts, but not everyone is excited about tennis balls being swatted across nets by people wielding paddles for 12 hours a day. That was the surprise at the City Council meeting on Tuesday. It seems the swatting of balls with paddles is pretty noisy and a trip the pickleball courts at Cedar-Rose proved the complaining neighbors to be correct. The bulk of the Tuesday evening Council meeting was devoted to the presentation by City staff on the response to COVID-19.
The Council members were duly impressed by the presentation, Lessons Learned in Organizational Management During Crisis and COVID-19 Response and we were all reminded of the chaos at the beginning of the pandemic. While impressive numbers were given in the low incidence of infection in Berkeley what was missing according to the statements at the Thursday T1 meeting was that seven City employees whose jobs required them to be onsite in aging City buildings contracted COVID-19. The building at 1947 Center where permit applications are processed was named repeatedly for poor air circulation and followed with requests for new HVAC (heating ventilation air conditioning) systems to provide safe working conditions.
Not to take away any credit to management and staff for their response to the pandemic, important factors in the local low incidence of infection are UCB is essentially closed with classes online, most Berkeley residents are responsible enough to follow public health guidelines and most important Trump is nearly entirely rejected by this community. All this aside no one should take comfort or become careless with the local low incidence of infection.
COVID-19 is still present and it is a raging across the country and increasing in California. Just yesterday I listened to podcasts that soon we could be seeing more than 100,000 new infections a day. Yesterday tipped the scale with more than 90,000 new cases and today that number totaled 101,461 new cases. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
There is plenty to cause concern even if we see Biden and Harris elected. With a new record in southern California and surging infections across the country nearly everywhere, doctors, nurses and therapists can’t fill the gaps by traveling to a single or limited number of hotspots. Many of the drugs needed in the treatment of COVID-19 patients are in short supply and so is PPE. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-29
The report as good as it was in describing how City employees were reassigned, it didn’t tell us how our community is surviving or suffering with the loss of jobs and businesses.
As usual there are interesting tidbits of information that are gained by attending City meetings that usually don’t show up in the minutes and this is exactly what is intended to be shared in the Activists Diary.
Item 36 on the September 15 City Council agenda was a Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief. If you attended that evening you would recall that Council members talked away the evening on earlier items and then abruptly ended the meeting on time with no extension at the stroke of 11 pm. It seems that even the Mayor thought escape from taking a stand on the no confidence vote was possible by just running out the clock, but on Monday Jesse Arreguin, Sophie Hahn, and Susan Wengraf learned in their task as members of the City Council Policy Agenda and Rules Committee that they do have to include the items not addressed at previous council meetings. That means you will see the Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief as the last item on November 10th agenda. Don’t be surprised if you also see the same kind of blathering to run out the clock again.
Wednesday evening, I chose to attend the Police Review Commission (PRC) over the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission only to hear today that I missed Susan Wengraf’s appointee Robert Flasher make some inane comment during the discussion regarding Grizzly Peak to just take a tranquilizer and not worry, Oakland would burn not Berkeley. It is so disappointing that most commission meetings are not recorded so I could verify first-hand the exact words. Of course, there is always the possibility of a heavy hand or foot on erasing recordings, that has happened too in Berkeley.
As for the PRC, it was moving along methodically on the Acquisition and Use of Controlled Equipment Ordinance until the committee chair brought up a 1992 Policy adopted by City Council that “The BPD [Berkeley Police Department] take direct supervisory responsibility for all mutual aid units deployed to the maximum amount allowable by law…advise such units that they will be expected to comply with [BPD] regulations and policies.” Police Chief Greenwood opined that no outside agency would come into Berkeley for mutual aid if they were required to work within Berkeley City Policy. As pointed out in the PRC October 28 meeting communication from John Lindsey-Poland that if outside agencies do not abide by Berkeley policies then there is no point in having policies. The entire “hot-potato” issue was left unsettled. This isn’t the first time this threat that restrictions would mean another police force or the sheriff would never come to Berkeley in an emergency. Seems like there should be homework with other neighboring cities to learn if they hear the same when use of force police policy restrictions are before Boards and Councils.
The last scheduled T1 public meeting, the 2016 bond measure, was Thursday evening. As expected there were many requests for funding and several complaints about the proposed location of a new pier and ferry to the marina. The newly formed Civic Center Cultural Community Group described in last week’s Activist Diary put in their bid for $1 million to shore up/protect the Old City Hall and Veterans building from failing due to neglect. Seems that the $376,000 to the consultants from Gehl for assessment of the aging buildings did not result in an engineering study that would give direction to the preservation of the buildings. All that money went to the grand scheme for redesign of the park and possible uses of the historical buildings instead of an actual assessment of the structures. In the morning meeting of the Civic Center Cultural Community Group convened by John Caner agreement was reached that Council chambers should absolutely not be built in the park.
The pickleball players were again out in impressive numbers to plead their case for money dedicated to more courts, but not everyone is excited about tennis balls being swatted across nets by people wielding paddles for 12 hours a day. That was the surprise at the City Council meeting on Tuesday. It seems the swatting of balls with paddles is pretty noisy and a trip the pickleball courts at Cedar-Rose proved the complaining neighbors to be correct. The bulk of the Tuesday evening Council meeting was devoted to the presentation by City staff on the response to COVID-19.
The Council members were duly impressed by the presentation, Lessons Learned in Organizational Management During Crisis and COVID-19 Response and we were all reminded of the chaos at the beginning of the pandemic. While impressive numbers were given in the low incidence of infection in Berkeley what was missing according to the statements at the Thursday T1 meeting was that seven City employees whose jobs required them to be onsite in aging City buildings contracted COVID-19. The building at 1947 Center where permit applications are processed was named repeatedly for poor air circulation and followed with requests for new HVAC (heating ventilation air conditioning) systems to provide safe working conditions.
Not to take away any credit to management and staff for their response to the pandemic, important factors in the local low incidence of infection are UCB is essentially closed with classes online, most Berkeley residents are responsible enough to follow public health guidelines and most important Trump is nearly entirely rejected by this community. All this aside no one should take comfort or become careless with the local low incidence of infection.
COVID-19 is still present and it is a raging across the country and increasing in California. Just yesterday I listened to podcasts that soon we could be seeing more than 100,000 new infections a day. Yesterday tipped the scale with more than 90,000 new cases and today that number totaled 101,461 new cases. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
There is plenty to cause concern even if we see Biden and Harris elected. With a new record in southern California and surging infections across the country nearly everywhere, doctors, nurses and therapists can’t fill the gaps by traveling to a single or limited number of hotspots. Many of the drugs needed in the treatment of COVID-19 patients are in short supply and so is PPE. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars/episode-29
The report as good as it was in describing how City employees were reassigned, it didn’t tell us how our community is surviving or suffering with the loss of jobs and businesses.
October 24, 2020 - the beginning - first What Happened
It is October 24, 2020 and Berkeley along with a large swath of northern California is under another red flag warning with power shutoffs looming for those living in the highest risk areas. What a difference it would mean if the mixed-use projects (apartment buildings with a restaurant or commercial space on the first floor) in Berkeley were built like Soleil Lofts in Herriman, Utah. https://archive.curbed.com/2019/8/27/20835206/apartment-solar-salt-lake-city-loft
It sounds like a futuristic fantasy, an apartment complex covered with solar and filled with storage batteries to make the complex a virtual power plant. Of course, there are the reasonably priced units and appealing amenities. It is an interesting project to watch and study and a stark contrast to Berkeley which can’t seem to even process an ordinance to require bird safe glass in new construction.
The plus side of zoom is the possibility to tune into meetings that would otherwise be impossible to track. The downside of attending is to see how work is batted back and forth between council, policy committees and the handful of commissions and quasi legislative bodies that are allowed to meet during the pandemic. This week of zoom brought some unexpected surprises and I expect that by revealing them I will be off at least one invite list.
As mentioned in the Activist’s Calendar not everyone is excited by the Civic Center Plan. Tom Bates and Loni Hancock joined the Civic Arts Commission subcommittee meeting on Civic Center Visioning Friday morning. While some of us thought Tom and Loni were actually retired from city business it was evident, that they are still quite active. Tom and Loni voiced they didn’t think the new city council chambers should be built in the park. Their suggestion was the new council chambers could possibly be built behind the post office. It seems there is a group that has been meeting with John Caner to come up with alternative plans. The Civic Arts Commission members have their eye to including a visual arts center as so much emphasis has been placed on performance arts.
It is all very interesting that while segments of Berkeley have their eye to grandiose plans to gentrify Civic Center Park in the model of San Francisco Civic Center grounds the remaining small activist Black community in South Berkeley is struggling for attention for an African American Holistic Center. The international consultants Gehl look to have secured their jobs through mission creep and an enthusiastic council dreaming of new duds instead of sharing underutilized space with BUSD. The payment to Gehl is at this point only $76,000 over the initial allocation of $300,000, but we can expect that to continue to grow. Should we be surprised that the proposal to assess the seismically unsafe old city hall to develop a plan to retrofit it so council could return is turning into the push and pull of Berkeley’s power brokers looking for their piece of the action. It should be interesting. All of this, swirls in the middle of a pandemic that is gaining steam with super spreader rallies across the country and increasing business closures.
Berkeley for the present has avoided rampant spread of COVID-19 infections. The 90-page report from the City to be presented at the Council meeting on Tuesday on the response to COVID-19 is sort of interesting in what wasn't presented, a section on communication and coordination with Alta Bates Sutter Hospital.
It is October 24, 2020 and Berkeley along with a large swath of northern California is under another red flag warning with power shutoffs looming for those living in the highest risk areas. What a difference it would mean if the mixed-use projects (apartment buildings with a restaurant or commercial space on the first floor) in Berkeley were built like Soleil Lofts in Herriman, Utah. https://archive.curbed.com/2019/8/27/20835206/apartment-solar-salt-lake-city-loft
It sounds like a futuristic fantasy, an apartment complex covered with solar and filled with storage batteries to make the complex a virtual power plant. Of course, there are the reasonably priced units and appealing amenities. It is an interesting project to watch and study and a stark contrast to Berkeley which can’t seem to even process an ordinance to require bird safe glass in new construction.
The plus side of zoom is the possibility to tune into meetings that would otherwise be impossible to track. The downside of attending is to see how work is batted back and forth between council, policy committees and the handful of commissions and quasi legislative bodies that are allowed to meet during the pandemic. This week of zoom brought some unexpected surprises and I expect that by revealing them I will be off at least one invite list.
As mentioned in the Activist’s Calendar not everyone is excited by the Civic Center Plan. Tom Bates and Loni Hancock joined the Civic Arts Commission subcommittee meeting on Civic Center Visioning Friday morning. While some of us thought Tom and Loni were actually retired from city business it was evident, that they are still quite active. Tom and Loni voiced they didn’t think the new city council chambers should be built in the park. Their suggestion was the new council chambers could possibly be built behind the post office. It seems there is a group that has been meeting with John Caner to come up with alternative plans. The Civic Arts Commission members have their eye to including a visual arts center as so much emphasis has been placed on performance arts.
It is all very interesting that while segments of Berkeley have their eye to grandiose plans to gentrify Civic Center Park in the model of San Francisco Civic Center grounds the remaining small activist Black community in South Berkeley is struggling for attention for an African American Holistic Center. The international consultants Gehl look to have secured their jobs through mission creep and an enthusiastic council dreaming of new duds instead of sharing underutilized space with BUSD. The payment to Gehl is at this point only $76,000 over the initial allocation of $300,000, but we can expect that to continue to grow. Should we be surprised that the proposal to assess the seismically unsafe old city hall to develop a plan to retrofit it so council could return is turning into the push and pull of Berkeley’s power brokers looking for their piece of the action. It should be interesting. All of this, swirls in the middle of a pandemic that is gaining steam with super spreader rallies across the country and increasing business closures.
Berkeley for the present has avoided rampant spread of COVID-19 infections. The 90-page report from the City to be presented at the Council meeting on Tuesday on the response to COVID-19 is sort of interesting in what wasn't presented, a section on communication and coordination with Alta Bates Sutter Hospital.