Editorials

Whither local government? In view of recent more-than-dire predictions about the burden of unfunded liabilities faced by cities like Berkeley, it’s a hard question to address, let alone answer. 

I dutifully attempted to watch the Berkeley City Council meeting on Tuesday. Not only that, I emailed a respectable list of people who sometimes go, sometimes watch online or on cable, and asked them to tell me if, in their opinion, anything happened that the Planet should bring to the attention of the public. 

There wasn’t much response… the only person who provided more than one item of interest was the reliable Jacquelyn McCormick, founder and mainstay of berkeleycouncilwatch.com, a valiant attempt to communicate to Berkeley citizens on a regular basis what the city council is up to. She goes to the council meetings almost every week—and sometimes she and the ever-faithful Merrilie Mitchell are the only representatives of the public in attendance. Sometimes she speaks in public comment time 

Jacquelyn mentioned four topics which sparked a bit of discussion: the dire state of Berkeley’s financial future, specifically regarding pension liabilities, which was the subject of a detailed workshop presentation by the city’s actuary, the conclusion of the city’s contract negotiations with Waste Management regarding disposal of construction and demolition materials, a city-sponsored grant proposal for studying a possible Center Street/Strawberry Creek public space development and a move to postpone action on redrawing council districts so that some students could have a better shot at getting control of a district near the UC Berkeley Campus. 

So I watched all four of these once again, looking for excerptable gems to give Planet readers a feel for the action—but really…not much there. The only bit which seemed worth highlighting for posterity was one student’s earnest plea that the council postpone the public hearing on redistricting, now scheduled for January 17, because it would be the first day of the new school term on the U.C. Berkeley campus and it might be hard for students to show up while they were busy getting settled. 

Come on, guys! That sounds entirely too much like “the dog ate my homework”. If students are sincere in their desire to be full-fledged participants in the city’s public process, they’re going to have do what everyone else does, and fit their public service in with their regular day job. 

Except, of course, that regular people with full time day jobs are rarer and rarer in city circles, now dominated mostly by retirees. A curious apathy seems to have settled over the body politic, where once vigorous and acrimonious dispute were the order of the day. Berkeley’s so-called (dread epithet) progressives, except for councilmembers Worthington and Arreguin, have morphed into complacent burghers. 

Several of the weary citizens who once devoted the better part of entire forty hour workweeks, on top of their real world responsibilities, to Plans both General and Downtown have been replaced on the Planning Commission by shills for the construction industry. Even those commissioners are losing interest, because there’s not much money for building around, even if they are able to shape plans and zoning to their clients’ specifications. 

Realistically, there’s not going to be much money around to do anything for a long time. The council finally did approve applying for a planning grant for the much discussed downtown improvements, but three councilmembers who don’t always agree on everything (Maio, Wengraf, Anderson) voiced doubts that the project would ever materialize because of the parlous state of city finances. One of my correspondents, a reliable progressive on most topics, shared their apprehension. 

Increasingly, no one in Berkeley seems to know what’s going on in their home town, and worse, it doesn’t seem to worry them. At holiday gatherings, I’ve been encountering numerous well-meaning people who are eager to tell me that they really miss the print Planet, but can’t seem to get around to reading it—or any other publication—online. 

Well, I ask them, maybe you could read Berkeleyside…or Berkeley Patch..or the occasional Berkeley stories from the Media News chain online? Nope—in fact most haven’t even heard of any of those. 

And print? Many proudly say they’ve long since cancelled their print Chronicle subscriptions, and they certainly don’t read the East Bay Express. 

These are intelligent educated people who do read the New York Times, who are very worried about the national and international economic crash, who care about Israel/Palestine, about climate change and a host of other Big Picture issues. Some can even be found weighing in on national blogs and op-ed pages on these topics. But they are oblivious to local manifestations of the same problems. They have no idea what’s going on in Berkeley, and frankly they don’t care. 

People living in the Berkeley hills who write whole books, internationally distributed, on locally sourced food don’t seem to notice or care that much of flatland Berkeley is being covered with big buildings which cast long shadows over most of the sunny potential garden space. People who worry in national media about climate change and corporate personhood seem blissfully unaware that the UC/BP alliance threatens to swallow West Berkeley. Pious environmentalists who never fail to renew their Sierra Club memberships don’t know that their state representatives have recently voted for bills which gut CEQA. 

The old saying is that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. (Or you might prefer the risqué version we giggled at in high school: You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think.) 

We do wonder if anyone’s listening, or thinking. We have close to 1000 subscribers who get emails weekly with hot links to important stories, and we get new ones all the time. We have maybe 25,000 page views a week. 

Who are these people, and why do they visit the Berkeley Daily Planet site? Many seem to be former residents who now live elsewhere, but wonder what’s going on in Berkeley. Some are fans of our capable national and international commentators. Who are the local readers, and why? 

Supported by a small coterie of generous unpaid volunteer writers, the two of us here have been struggling for a couple of years to keep the Berkeley public at least semi-informed about what’s happening in our city. It’s a fair amount of work, a kind of stone soup: We supply the stone, and our writers bring the rest of the ingredients. 

It’s miraculous that anyone would do as much as they’ve done for so long with no pay. Some, understandably, have gotten tired of working for free (or just gotten tired) and dropped out, but others have stuck it out. 

We continually wonder if local citizens have simply given up caring—if they believe it’s increasingly unlikely that anything we citizens do can make a difference in what happens to Berkeley. 

Case in point: a new planning director will soon be chosen for Berkeley—applications close December 16. It should be an important hire. Will we get a fresh well-qualified person with new ideas? More likely, we’ll have yet another re-tread, a promotion from within, the kind of placeholder appointments we’ve gotten with recent city managers and city attorneys, and nothing will change for the better. Worst case, we might even get a revolving door appointment who’s spent some time in the development industry. 

But very likely whatever happens will not be noticed by the average Berkeleyan, whether or not the Planet or anyone else reports it. When a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound if no one’s there to hear it? 

As always, it would be interesting to hear what our readers, whoever they are, have to say about the public’s desire to know what’s going on in Berkeley. Your signed opinions are solicited, long or short: Send them to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com . 

And of course if you’re well informed and a good writer who would like to volunteer to add your ingredients to the soup, please let me know: news@berkeleydailyplanet.com. We could use your help. 

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