Public Comment

I don't speak CEQA. The California Environmental Quality Act is a dazzling piece of legislation with a lot of moving parts, and I rely on others to help navigate its waters. But the "scoping" opportunity on April 27, this Monday, and the letters we can send up until May 15, 2020 (5:00 pm), have a purpose; to require the university to explain itself. 

The university's plan is to ignore the many alternative locations it has to build its usual ugly, for-profit, expensive housing. It is inconvenient land just now because it makes the destruction of parks and landmarks look even more gratuitous. The surfeit of now-university land acquired by eminent domain, real estate deals, and the donation of large original land tracts from decades ago underscores the false dichotomy favored by the university: that we can have housing or parks and historic landmarks, but not both, including the magical building at 1952 Oxford build in 1930 by famed architect Walter H. Ratcliffe Jr., which will be 100 years old in ten years and is a useable building even today. 

The "scoping" opportunity open until May 16 (letters can be mailed or emailed to the address below) is likely to have historians and preservationists point out the losses to California and national architectural history, the collapse of any sensible balance between density and open space, and the oddity, if not the danger, of rolling ahead with a public comment period during a pandemic crisis. 

But my prayer is that others will write about the decades of having to suffer living with the poor planning of the university. Our state's natural disasters have a perfect parallel in the obligation the university thinks Berkeley should have to shoulder to accommodate the thousands of students it over-enrolls and the predictable court cases and street battles which have cost lives and made planning for a family, a business, or even a simple life all but impossible. 

The university has not apologized - yet - for the role it played in the death of James Rector, the blinding of Alan Blanchard, the factor it was in calling out the National Guard, the CS gas that affected even a childcare center, the hemorrhaging of public money into SLAPP-suits against activists, the years-long publicly-funded court cases required for the City of Berkeley and nearby neighborhoods to stand up for local and state laws which healthy town/gown relationships would obviate. 

There are those among us who know how to mourn the poem that wasn't written, the painting that never made its way to canvas, the play that never got traction in the community's collective imagination because of the university's war on culture, open space, landmarks, visible poverty, community laws and values, and what the state legally considers historic and educational resources. 

Those of you who can manage a stamp during the pandemic, or have access to email, here is where to write: 

To: Raphael Breines, Senior Planner Physical & Environmental Planning, University of California, Berkeley, 300 A&E Building, Berkeley, CA 94720-1382 

Email: planning@berkeley.edu 

Subject: LRDP Update and Housing Projects #1 and #2 EIR)