Page One
Forum
New paint job for library
is long overdue
Editor:
I can accept the four months’ tardiness of the completion of renovation to Berkeley’s Main Branch Library, allowing the thoroughness of the project and the importance of the result. However, I would prefer an additional few months’ work for an exterior re-painting. Some mis-begotten genius approved the hideous two-tone “institutional green” scheme a decade ago, which succeeded the lovely russet-and-tan combination.
Keep the copper-green for the base-line frieze, Library stewards, but please repaint the rest.
Phil Allen
Berkeley
Beth El project is worthy
of emulation
The Daily Planet received this letter addressed to Mayor Shirley Dean and city councilmembers:
I am writing to urge you to uphold the decision of the Zoning Adjustment Board to grant Congregation Beth El a use permit to build its new synagogue and school at 1301 Oxford Street. My experience as a member of the congregation assures me that Beth El will be a highly responsible steward of this beautiful piece of property.
As you might know, I am back at Boalt Hall, where I have renewed my academic interest in land use matters. This includes historic preservation. On the basis of that knowledge and my years of involvement in the world of historic preservation as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I also urge you to grant Beth El’s appeal of the Landmarks Preservation Commission vote to deny an alteration permit for the project.
The “historic resourcesæ section of the Environmental Impact Report and the synagogue’s plan show that Beth El is doing an excellent job preserving the history of the site. It has committed to save the few remaining historic features identified by the LPC’s subcommittee in 1998 – the entrance gate, the decorative work on the fence and the historic trees. And it is important to note that no historic building is involved. Similarly, it is important that Beth El’s plan would keep the property as a single unit as it has been throughout its rich history as a gathering place for Berkeley citizens.
Beth El has also gone beyond what is required to sustain the natural history of the site by leaving more open space than other buildings in the neighborhood and by volunteering to restore the neglected open portion of the creek. In addition, the congregation has sacrificed a substantial portion of the parcel by planning no development over the creek corridor to preserve the possibility that the underground section of this waterway could be brought back to its earlier status as an open stream.
To my knowledge few, if any, Berkeley property owners have done more to respect or recreate the history of their sites. This project could well be a model for others to emulate.
Because Beth El has done such careful planning in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations, you should also be concerned that denial of the alteration permit or the use permit could be treated as a violation of the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
For all these reasons, I respectfully encourage you to validate the Zoning Board’s ruling and to grant Beth El’s appeal of the LPC decision.
Ira Michael Heyman
Chancellor Emeritus
University of California, Berkeley
Landlords face discrimination
Editor:
At a recent Berkeley City Council meeting, Berkeley Property Owner Association board member Jim Smith spoke on the subject of discrimination against landlords. He stated that a black person his age having grown up in Washington, D.C. and Virginia has obviously seen a lot of discrimination as he was growing up. He said, however, he has felt more pain from the class discrimination directed at landlords in the city of Berkeley, than he did from the racial discrimination of his youth. I am a black landlord in Berkeley and feel the same way.
Many black landlords in this city, most of whom are Jim’s age or older, grew up in the segregated south. They were raised with a strong work ethic and overcame the odds through their working class struggles. They sacrificed, saved their money and invested in income property. After having succeeding against racial hatred, many now feel they are facing a class hatred coming from rent board members and some city council members. Racism tried to stop us from achieving success, and classism is trying to take it away.
Bailey Jones
Berkeley
If traffic gets any worse – I’m out of here!
Editor:
Jae Scharlin in a July 17 letter to the Planet says that “if people want a lifestyle that includes streets that are easy to drive, parking available, traffic empty or housing on large lots ... they move to Contra Costa County or Marin County.” I have lived on Oxford Street for 35 years and have always enjoyed being in this beautiful city of Berkeley. However, if to continue to live here I must endure noise from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. every day of the year, scramble daily to find a parking place blocks from my home, and a quality of life that is severely diminished, I'm out of here!!!
Carol Connolly
Berkeley
Global loan sharking is exploitation
To the Editor:
Jean Lesher (Forum, July 13) really doesn’t get it. She admits that “For every dollar sent to the poorest countries in aid, $1.30 flows back to rich lenders in debt service payments.” But this global loan-sharking is not an unfortunate or temporary exception of a basically-healthy economic system, but the normal functioning of the basically-rotten profit-oriented system. Despite its many progressive accomplishments during its early years, when it ripped political power and control from the kings, dukes, and emperors and liberated the productive forces for a spectacular spiral of growth and expansion, its motivating force is greed and its basic method is exploitation. It is more vicious in the poor countries which are less able to defend themselves, than here in the heartland, where it currently accomplishes the same result by its manipulation of the politicians and the power industry.
This is not a setup that can be influenced by a handful of respectable, non-violent demonstrators (or even “menacing anarchists”), exercising this form of futile feelgoodism by expressing their disapproval of the way a market economy works in practice. Which is why you will find few revolutionaries in Genoa trying to influence the wealthy leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations. They’re more likely to be back at home, trying to patiently explain to their fellow-workers the need to build an organization that can make some fundamental changes in the way the world operates.
Marion Syrek
Oakland
