Public Comment

The Berkeley City Council: A Disastrous Meeting

Harry Brill
Thursday April 28, 2016 - 12:36:00 PM

At the Berkeley City Council meeting on Tuesday night, the Council voted six to three to place on the ballot a more modest proposal than the initiative developed by the City Council's Labor Commission, progressive activists and the union, SEIU. The community measure would raise the minimum hourly wage to $15 next year, in 2017. The hourly wage would continue to rise afterward until it approaches a living wage. The motion made by councilman Capitelli would instead postpone the $15 an hour wage until 2019. This would be one year later than in Emeryville and San Francisco. Also, except for cost of living adjustments there would be no further wage increase. 

The purpose of the Council's decision to put Capitelli's or a similar initiative on the ballot in November rather than enact any legislation is, obviously, to defeat the community ballot. Councilman Jesse Arreguin felt that placing another minimum wage initiative on the ballot was a cynical ploy to deliberately confuse the public. Indeed, It is also possible that due to the confusion, neither ballot measure would win. For the conservative members of the City Council, that would be just fine. And that outcome would certainly be welcomed by the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce. 

Why are most members of the City Council so indifferent to working people being paid poverty wages? The illusion is that the City's elected council is made up of progressives. But that is certainly not the case. They claim that paying substantially higher wages would be harmful to small business. However, the reality is that the Berkeley City Council is a major violator of small business interests. To serve the interests of developers and the financial institutions they have cut available parking spaces tremendously in downtown Berkeley. As a result, it has appreciably reduced the number of shoppers in the downtown area. 

Moreover, its recent decision to demolish a ten screen theater in favor of building a luxury high rise will devastate many small businesses. The theater, which serves about 300,000 movie goers per year, is a magnet business. It attracts many consumers who also dine in the area before or after seeing a movie, and they shop at other small business establishments as well. 

Not least, the City has made no serious attempts to protect small business from the exorbitant rents that they have to pay.  

However, when proposals are made to significantly increase the wages of poverty wage workers only then do we hear about the plight of small business. There is a name for this phenomenon. It is called "hypocrisy."