Editorials

With the election of Kate Harrison to fill new Mayor Jesse Arreguin’s City Council seat, Berkeley has entered firmly into a new era. She's smart, energetic and independent. The distinguishing characteristic of the newly elected council majority is that they were all elected without the fiscal sponsorship of the building industry—they’re not beholden to any developers, or even to any great extent to the Building Trades unions.

They are the vanguard of a realistic progressivism that doesn’t believe that we can build our way out of the environmental crisis which is both the cause and the effect of climate change. It’s been almost 20 years since Vice-President Al Gore started promoting what he thought would be a sure-fire campaign winner for 2000, smart growth. It didn’t turn out to be exactly an election winner (though many of us think he actually won that race), but it has endured in one form or another as doctrine for many sincere but poorly informed environmentalists.

What’s changed in recent years is the previous certainty that urban sprawl was the only enemy. In Berkeley and elsewhere many politically active citizens now realize that jamming more and more people into older cities, at least here in Northern California, has failed to prevent movement into the undeveloped periphery. Even worse, it has turned the most desirable cities like San Francisco into enclaves for the wealthy who can afford luxury highrises, and at the same time has pushed the urban poor into former farming communities like Antioch, Tracy and Brentwood, whose residents are forced to drive long distances daily for jobs serving the needs of the city elite. 

This effect is clearly visible in Berkeley, where the University of California is the biggest employer, but doesn’t pay its service and clerical workers enough to live here. These employees typically must drive into town from two hours or more away. 

There used to be a good housing stock of working class family houses in the Berkeley flats, one-story bungalows with two or three bedrooms and a small yard, affordable homes for U.C. employees and also grad students with families. Now these modest houses are being gobbled up by better-paid commuters who work in San Francisco or Silicon Valley but can’t afford to live there. Yes, some of them can crowd onto BART in the morning, but many or most need to drive to work elsewhere. 

Faculty members used to live in the Berkeley hills, but they’re being pushed out by upper-middle class out of town executives and snowbirds who might also have Manhattan or Cambridge pieds-à-terre. Some academics have bought the small houses in the flats which used to be for workers—but others have gone to Lamorinda where they can afford bigger houses with room for gardens. 

The previous now-replaced councilmembers were led (or pushed around) by ex-Mayor Tom Bates and funded by builders and their allies. Voters were fooled—twice—by developer-funded ballot initiative campaigns which persuaded those who didn’t live in downtown Berkeley that it was their civic duty to build, baby, build. 

The main myth in this scenario is that adding “luxury” apartments near BART stops will free up working class housing somewhere in town. (Ironic quotes are mandatory for anyone who’s ever been in one of these so-called “luxury” units.) Face it: they’re aimed at single suckers and students. Anyone with any sense, taste or kids will still prefer a bungalow with a yard. 

The Berkeley voters who bought into the original downtown plan pitched in the original Measure R 1.0 were fooled once by rogue City of Berkeley planner Mark Rhoades and his former colleagues in the city administration. Then they were fooled again into voting down the attempted repealer, Measure R 2.0, well-intended but inartfully-drafted by Jesse Arreguin and Sophie Hahn. 

But when the supremely ugly products of the council-enacted Downtown Plan started to pop up all over town, voters finally realized they’d been had. The last straw was the Bates council’s approval of the monstrosity proposed for 2211 Harold Way. The citizens’ unsuccessful struggle to head it off did have the salutary effect of introducing a lot of people who previously hadn’t known one another, and they came together to win these last two elections as the new Berkeley Progressive Alliance. Most of the BPA candidates were elected in November, including the now-vindicated Arreguin and Hahn, and adding Harrison in this election has solidified their voting bloc into what should be a reliable 6-3 majority. 

Of course, this is still Berkeley, so it’s to be expected that each of the nine will cast the occasional out-of-bloc vote. Bates surrogates Susan Wengraf (District 5) and Lori Droste (District 8) have a majority of voters in affluent areas who typically disdain the travails of those who are feeling urban pressures in the denser, less wealthy downtown districts. Wengraf won handily in November for four more years, but Droste will have to run again in 2018 if she wants to stay on the council. Linda Maio will also be up then, and she will feel even more pressure from the flatlands dwellers in her District 1. And Worthington? Let’s just say he’s voted oddly lately, possibly misjudging what he’ll need to win in 2018. 

The new council has plenty of challenges. Maintenance of public property deferred or abandoned by the Bates regime is everywhere: the Maudelle Shirek Old City Hall, the Berkeley Community Theater, Willard Pool, the Veterans’ Building, Aquatic Park, the Rose Garden, the sewer system…the list is endless. Meanwhile the employee pension system is seriously askew. 

The need for low-income housing for people who already live and work in Berkeley, including our homeless population, continues, though the myth of trickle-down market-rate development has been rejected by the electorate. Berkeley council would do well to follow the example of Berkeley High alumnus Aaron Peskin, now a San Francisco supervisor, who is successfully pushing for substantial percentages of affordable units in every project rather than letting builders get away with in-lieu fees. These have traditionally been leveraged to build city-backed low income housing, but with the Republicans in the driver’s seat in Washington matching funds will be hard to find. 

There’s a big threat on the horizon that will have to be addressed: the burgeoning move on the state level to take zoning control away from local governments, with affordability as a bogus rationale. It’s innocuously titled SB-35 Planning and zoning: affordable housing: streamlined approval process. It’s the successor to a similar attempt by Governor Jerry Brown, introduced by former S.F. Supervisor Scott Wiener on Day 1 of his new term in the state Senate. Our very own State Senator Nancy Skinner, who is backed by the trailing edge of the Bates apparatus, voted Wiener’s bill out of the Senate’s Transportation and Housing committee last week. 

Watch this space for more about this bad bill, and tell the Council to take a stand against it. 

And don’t forget to watch the Berkeley City Council meetings (streamed online, viewable afterwards as video) to see what’s being done in your name by this very promising new bunch. If they don’t seem to be getting what the voters wanted right, let them know about it. Come to the meetings, usually on Tuesday nights, or at least write to council@cityofberkeley.info .