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HEIGHT NOT RIGHT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Let me rush to assist Charles Siegel in his faulty research concerning smart growth height recommendations (Letters, Daily Planet, Nov. 11-13). In a handbook for planners and developers published in June, 2003 by the San Francisco District Council of the Urban Land Institute, you will find the following quote: “Building Heights Intent: Buildings in walkable neighborhoods need not exceed three stories to accommodate compact development. Maximum Building Heights: Primary buildings in walkable neighborhoods shall not exceed 35 feet; accessory buildings (garages and second units) shall not exceed 25 feet. Chimneys, vents, cupolas, ornamental parapets, and other minor projections may exceed these height limits by up to 5 feet.” (Note: Buildings in walkable neighborhoods are not to exceed 35 feet, not 35 stories as Mr. Siegel suggested!). 

Reference: Smart Growth in the San Francisco Bay Area: Effective Local Approaches.  

Martha Nicoloff 

co-author, Height of Buildings Initiative, 2002,  

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UC WAL-MART 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Last Saturday, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley held a meeting called “Women in Leadership Conference: The Definition of Success.” One of the speakers was a Wal-Mart executive. 

Wal-Mart is the most sued company in the United States and has a history of union busting. It provides information to its employees on how to get public assistance because it knows it pays less than a living wage. 

The company pays women even less than they do men and denies them promotions. At the moment a federal court in San Francisco is deciding whether a suit brought against Wal-Mart by six women, present and past employees, can be certified as a class action suit. If so, it will affect more than a million women. 

Recently Wal-Mart has been raided by the INS because, through contractors, it employs illegal aliens and overworks and underpays them. 

The meeting was picketed by both campus and the Oakland/East Bay National Organization for Women as well as by various labor unions. 

It is absolutely inconceivable that the University of California should give tacit approval to such an organization by inviting one of their officials to speak. 

Nancy Ward 

Oakland/East Bay 

National Organization for Women 

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SCOUT RECOGNITION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you so much for a positive article on Boy Scouts. There are hundreds of Boy Scouts in Berkeley working on improving their citizenship, leadership and outdoor skills. They should not be the target of the public’s frustration with BSA’s definition of who is morally fit to be a Boy Scout. The National Leadership of Boy Scouts of America based in Texas, has defined how morality should be practiced in scouting, and yet calls for more diversity in scouting. Scouts like Baily give hours to improving Berkeley and the Bay Area.  

This week is their annual Scouting for Food drive. Plastic collection bags are put onto front doors this week and full bags will be collected from door steps on Nov. 15. The Boy Scouts are the single largest food gatherer for the Alameda Food Bank. They will soon be out at store locations selling Christmas wreaths in order to earn their way to camp. Please thank them for the many hours that they also put into cleaning creeks, restoring habitats, and leading flag ceremonies. 

Ellen Georgi 

Crew 24 Advisor 

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DIEBOLD DANGER 

The following letter was addressed to Bradley J. Clark, Alameda County Registrar of Voters. 

Dear Mr. Clark, 

Having had no response to my letter of Sept. 12, I feel compelled to write again to express my deep dismay at the fact that Alameda County purchased Diebold voting machines that have no means of providing an accurate accounting of the votes made on them. 

That fact that Diebold can make changes to the equipment sold to our counties, as was done on machines used in the last two elections, without the election authorities even being informed is absolutely intolerable. It is outrageous that so essential an aspect of our democracy as the integrity of the vote is given over to profit-making companies who claim their software design to be proprietary information. Diebold’s CEO is a major Republican fundraiser who brazenly promised Ohio Republicans to deliver Ohio’s vote to Bush. How can we “trust” his voting machines when the opportunity to corrupt the vote is so readily available. 

If we are to use computer voting machines, they must function as an open source system, open to inspection by election authorities, technical experts, and others concerned to ensure their correct functioning. And they must provide a record on paper of the votes cast. A scanner of paper ballots would be vastly less expensive, more reliable and less susceptible to tampering. 

It is essential that before the 2004 primary election Alameda County voting machines be retrofitted to provide a paper trail, that there is no open line to the voting machine maker during an election, and that any technical servicing be checked and certified before the machine is used. To accept the makers’ insistence on proprietary technology rather than an open source system is a betrayal of U.S. voters and the democratic process. The voters of Alameda County rely on you to guarantee the integrity of our voting system and this cannot be done with software and machines whose functioning is protected as a “trade secret.” 

I look forward to hearing your plans for ensuring the integrity of the Alameda County voting system. 

Charlene M. Woodcock 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

There is a relatively simple procedure which could have reduced the recent seven-hour traffic jam on the new Zampa Bridge. 

This procedure is “Alternate Merging.” My wife and I saw it at an on ramp to a freeway outside Calgary about twenty years ago where was a sign with alternate arrows pointing upward. 

What that means is that vehicles from different lanes have to merge together without closing up and forcing one lane to stop. It works no matter how many lanes must merge at different points, the two lanes move along at the same speed. It’s basically just common courtesy. A small cure for road rage. Closing up may be cited as a moving violation. 

I tried to get this system started here in California by writing letters to three members of the California Traffic Controls Device Committee (CTCDC), which is part of a nationwide Uniform Traffic Control System. 

I got no answer from the CTCDC then or later after I made a public comment at a meeting they held at the Caltrans in Oakland after which I had lunch with some of the members. 

At one time I appealed to the Caltrans ombudsman, who supposedly looked into it. Later he said “They did all they needed to do for you,” which was nothing. 

Caltrans’ attitudes toward employee suggestions and citizen complaints leave much to be desired. While I was at Caltrans, I had made many very practical suggestions which were largely ignored. That’s why I have written hundreds of mini-essays about transportation problems since retiring. 

Charles Smith 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Chris Kavanaugh of the Berkeley Rent Board asserts that “…property tax increases-along with over a dozen other city, county and utility taxes, fees, assessments, etc, --are passed through to Berkeley renters as part of the (AGA) Annual General Adjustment” (Letters, Daily Planet, Nov. 7-10).  

Kavanaugh is either ignorant or willfully dishonest. There is nothing secret or esoteric about it. Year after year the rent board has granted AGAs that are far less than the increases in fees, costs, taxes and expenses. The rent board has sometimes employed consultants (paid for with tax payer money) to determine a fair annual rent increase but have subsequently ignored these consultants’ recommendations. 

The increase in garbage collection costs and utilities alone are often greater than the entire monthly rent increase granted by the AGA. No compensation is granted for increase in maintenance costs or structural upgrades, the price of which has significantly increased due to rising material and labor costs. Nor is there compensation for increases in insurance costs and related required upgrades.  

The rent board has increased its per unit fee. The city has added housing inspection fees. Business license fees are assessed against landlords. The county annually increases tax assessment (2 percent, as per Proposition 13). Building permit costs have skyrocketed!  

In the midst of this, the rent board waste $3,000,000 a year in public money operating its unjust and Byzantine system. 

Kavanaugh constantly comes to the boards defense mouthing untruths and never addressing the fundamental injustices perpetrated by rent control. What motivates his blind allegiance to this absurd and unfair system? Perhaps, he personally benefits from it!? 

Mr. Kavanaugh, do you or any other board members enjoy the random benefits of this system? That is, do you or any members of the rent board live in a rent-controlled unit?  

Please answer Chris. As an elected official the public needs to know what is behind your misrepresentations. 

John Koenigshofer 

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The following letter was addressed to Mayor Bates and City Council. 

I am writing on behalf of the LeConte Neighborhood Association board to urge you not to place a parcel tax measure on the March 2004 ballot. 

Our association objects to this tax for several reasons: 

1) It’s not fair to expect taxpayers in Berkeley to bear the full burden of the current fiscal mess. City staff should share the burden by reopening their union contracts and agreeing to smaller raises. Union contracts negotiated in fall 2002 increase city employee compensation by 33 percent over six years. That’s an average increase of 5.5 percent a year. Not only are there large annual pay increases, but staff in some job categories are receiving extra “equity increases,” and pensions have been increased by over 30 percent with the 2.7 at 55 formula (three percent at 50 for police). 

Can any supporter of the proposed tax increase name a single city or county in the Bay Area that has negotiated such large increases in compensation costs in the current economic and fiscal climate? Certainly not the cities of San Francisco or Oakland, where unions agreed to new worker contributions toward pension costs, and certainly not Alameda County, where unions agreed to a one-year contract extension with no pay increase. 

We need equality of sacrifice. Right now, taxpayers are being asked to make all the sacrifices through higher taxes and reduced services. The large compensation increases are a major source of the current deficit. Reducing the size of those increases has got to be part of any fair and equitable response to the deficit. This needs to happen before any tax increase is put on the ballot. 

2) The Daily Planet reports that seven city developments didn’t pay the existing city parcel taxes over the last four years. The city should get its house in order and ensure that everyone is paying existing taxes before asking voters to create a new tax. 

3) The city is not the only public entity that may need a tax increase. What about the Berkeley schools where class size has increased sharply? What about Alameda County with its healthcare safety net in a state of collapse? Berkeley voters should know about whether the schools and the county will be asking for tax increases before being asked to decide on a tax increase for the city. If there is going to be a city tax increase, it should wait until November. 

4) Many residents of our neighborhood have questions about how current revenues are spent and also wonder whether there aren’t other ways to increase revenues. Alternatives to a parcel tax should be thoroughly explored. Each department should consider how fees and collectable fines should underwrite projects being considered. 

Residents of our neighborhood have traditionally voted in favor of parcel taxes and bond measures by large margins. But if a parcel tax of any size is put on the ballot in March, we predict that there will be strong opposition. 

Karl Reeh, President 

LeConte Neighborhood Association  

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Stack up the bodies—in Iraq, from Oakland murders, from homicides of innocent persons resulting from unauthorized chases by Oakland police officers. All victims just as dead; most acts essentially as unjust and preventable—two more in the last category Monday night. 

The police say they ended the chase, for reasons of safety, “seconds before the wreck,” according to the Oakland Tribune. Consider the fate of an ordinary citizen who should make such a statement to the police. Reasons of safety dictate not to begin a chase of a car going 70 mph on city streets, and what rules exist say such chases are permitted only upon knowledge that the fugitive has committed a violent crime. No such knowledge has been revealed in this chase. 

Same old story in Oakland, ramped up: One person thuslso killed in this city in November 1999, one in September 2002 and one in August of this year. I probably missed some. More notches on the cops‚ speedometer this month ˆ two down in one act. Yes, they do it elsewhere, but particularly in California, many in the Bay Area, most in Oakland. In a civil action resultant from the 1999 event, two witnesses, who claimed the police lied in respect to alleged violence as an excuse to chase, chose not to testify, due to their illegal-alien status. Time and time again, OPD officers do not play by their department‚s hot-pursuit rules [19 pages of them, dated 18 May 98]. 

What is the fix? A solution, of course, would not exonerate such fugitives; but the liability of each participant in chases resulting in such collisions should reflect that person‚s relative capability of avoiding damage and injury. One has to assume that the capability of a qualified police officer on duty greatly exceeds that of an inebriated, drugged, frightened, injured and/or otherwise-incapacitated fugitive. The instant fugitive is reported to have been decidedly drunk; and for driving while so incapacitated, his punishment must be great. However, it remains that the police had clear brains and able bodies and did not have authority under the cited OPD rules to chase, for any length of time, this 70-mph vehicle on city streets. 

The most basic solution is modification of California Vehicle Code 17004.7, which determines a police jurisdiction‚s liability in such „accidents‰. This code section merely states that to avoid such liability, the jurisdiction must have a written policy; but it does not specify any substantive restrictions on chases be within such. When Dion Aroner was our state assemblywoman, I asked her to pursue legislation to correct this situation. She refused. We should all write her replacement, Loni Hancock, in regard to pursuing this. No other fix will accomplish anything until such change is accomplished. Only the CHP investigates such local-jurisdiction collisions. The CHP has one of the worst records around, of maiming and killing as a result of high-speed chases. Nobody‚s prison time will ever lessen this sort of wholesale killing of innocents in Oakland and throughout California. 

Raymond A. Chamberlin