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University Watch—Someone In the City of Berkeley Is Doing Their Job

Christopher Adams
Sunday April 21, 2019 - 10:57:00 AM

UCB seeks 500% increase in student enrollment over 2020 plan

What’s in a name? Quite a bit sometimes, as readers of the University of California’s latest environmental document have learned. Fortunately for citizens and taxpayers in Berkeley, those careful readers have included City staff and elected officials.

In February the University issued a “Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Report [SEIR]” for a project named “Upper Hearst Development for the Goldman School of Public Policy and Minor Amendments to the 2020 Long Range Development Plan [LRDP].”

The “Upper Hearst Development” as described in the SEIR, consists of the partial or complete demolition of the parking structure at the corner of Hearst and La Loma at the northeast corner of the campus and the construction of a new academic building and an apartment building. University staff and faculty concerned about already scarce workday parking have objected to the demolition of the parking structure. Neighbors have objected strenuously to the overbearing scale of the apartment house next to a quiet neighborhood of historic homes and the failure of the SEIR to analyze the impacts or even to acknowledge them.

However, it was left to the sharp-eyed readers in city hall to examine the rest of the SEIR title “…and Minor Amendments to the 2020 Long Range Development Plan.” In a 456-page comment letter City staff and consultants have essentially accused the University of attempting an end-run around previous environmental studies about University enrollments. The City notes that while the SEIR tries to say that “ the ‘Project’ is nothing more than the expansion of the Goldman School of Public Policy, which involves the demolition of two parking areas and the construction of an academic building and one housing structure…” it is clear the “University is also purporting to analyze the environmental impacts of dramatically increased enrollment—nearly five times the increase anticipated in the 2020 LRDP.” If you are going to do this, the City says, then you must consider these two distinct projects in separate documents and you must do a complete analysis of both. 

In its comments the City notes that the University has tried to gloss over the enrollment increases by calling them a new “baseline.” Not so fast, says the City. The figures hidden in the SEIR represent an increase of 8,000 students over the 2020 LRDP with a projected increase to 11,000 more students by 2023. This means an increase to city population of about 9% with impacts on city services such as police, fire and social services. This will reduce response times for emergency services and possibly require building new facilities. Since the enrollment is a 500% increase over the enrollments in the 2020 LRDP and since the University does not house most of its students, it will also exacerbate the city’s problems with housing and homelessness. 

As the City further explains in its comment letter, the University has attempted an illegal strategy to use the Upper Hearst SEIR as a way to justify its enormous increase in enrollment, by claiming to “tier” the SEIR on the earlier EIR prepared for the 2020 LRDP. Tiering is a concept allowed under the California Environmental Quality Act for conducting environmental reviews in sequence, from the general (the 2020 Long Range Development Plan) to the specific (the Goldman School buildings). The idea of tiering is to avoid duplicating efforts and make the subsequent environmental documents specific to the impacts of the specific project. The problem, as the City notes, is that the enrollment increases described in the Upper Hearst SEIR represent a fundamental change from the enrollments envisioned in the EIR for the 2020 LRDP. The 8,000 students figure in the SEIR is “patently inconsistent” with the previous figure of 1,650 students. Tiering would only make sense if the University were still adhering to its 2020 LRDP. It isn’t. 

The City’s comments don’t ignore the specific impacts of the project. For example, they describe as incomplete and insufficient the discussion of truck traffic generated during construction; they echo citizen’s comments about the impact on historic neighborhoods. But the City’s comments focus on the broader impacts caused by the enormous increases in University enrollment and the University’s attempt to somehow sweep these impacts under the rug of an SEIR for one project at one corner of the campus. 

The City’s motivations are not hard to discern. The first attachment to the basic comment letter analyzes City costs attributable to the University. Even after taking into account increased revenues from sales taxes, vehicle registration fees, and gas taxes, the annual cost to the City has gone from $11 million in 2003 to $21 million in 2018. Police costs attributable to the University have gone up 126%; fire and emergency services costs have gone up 73%. Costs for City staff and outside consultants to generate 456 pages of comments cannot have been insignificant. Clearly someone at city hall has serious concerns. 

For those who want the details, all 456 pages are online at https://drive.google.com/open?id=15u9BmMIpoEltAg6JfumcH5kR6EeP-SVC