Features

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Tom Bates delivered a proposal that could bridge the city’s creek divide.  

But his compromise plan, crafted with councilmembers Miriam Hawley and Linda Maio, came too late for the City Council to agree to take a vote or for Bates to escape a rebuke from three colleagues over how the plan was distributed. 

The plan, which will be discussed further at the next council meeting on Nov. 9, calls for the formation of a task force, under the supervision of the Planning Commission, to study the city’s embattled creek ordinance. 

Bates’ plan effectively nullifies a staff recommendation last week to send the issue to the Planning Commission with a directive to eliminate restrictions on new construction within 30 feet of a creek or underground culvert. 

Creeks were not the only issue Tuesday to get pushed into November.  

The council postponed a vote to guarantee up to $3 million in loans for a proposed affordable housing project after learning that federal regulators are investigating the developer, Jubilee Restoration, on charges of nepotism and misallocating funds (see story page one).  

Also, acting on a planning commissioner’s report, the council unanimously reversed its vote from last week to establish new zoning rules for University Avenue. Instead it will give the plan further study on Nov. 9. 

Bates’ compromise plan would create a task force to review creek issues and make recommendations regarding the ordinance and city creek policies by May 2006. The 13-member body, under the supervision of the Planning Commission and staffed by the Planning Department, would consist of appointees from councilmembers, the mayor, and the Planning, Public Works, Parks and Recreation and Community Environmental Advisory commissions.  

All appointments would be made in December following the election of new councilmembers.  

The city’s 15-year-old creek ordinance, which affects roughly 2,400 property owners, prohibits new construction of roofed buildings within 30 feet from the centerline of an open creek or underground creek culvert. Creek advocates, who want to strengthen the ordinance, and a group of homeowners that want to weaken it have battled in recent months over the proper venue to consider changes.  

Neighbors on Urban Creeks has demanded the issue go to the Planning Commission and creek advocates, fearing that the commission is stacked against them, have called for an independent task force. 

While the content of the mayor’s plan for creeks won praise from both sides, the way Bates presented it caused fireworks. 

Peering into a crowd of creek advocates sitting on one side of the aisle all with a copy of Bates’ proposal and their opponents on the left, who claimed they didn’t even know a compromise was in the works, Councilmember Betty Olds demanded an explanation.  

“I don’t want this glossed over,” she blurted out during time set aside for public comment. “This certainly isn’t very democratic.” 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said he was “concerned” that creek advocates had good connections in the city and could get a copy of the report. 

Noting what she sees as a recent trend, Councilmember Margaret Breland declared, “We should stop putting these items on the agenda at the last minute.” 

Last week the council declined to consider a vote on the staff recommendation because they didn’t receive a copy until hours before their meeting. 

“I apologize,” said Bates responding to the criticism. “It was worked out in the last few minutes of the day, Monday. That is the nature of this kind of compromise.” 

Bates said his office provided 30 copies of the proposal at the council meeting and the plan was also on the mayor’s website Tuesday afternoon. 

Creek advocate Juliet Lamont said she and other creek supporters downloaded their copies of the plan. “I check the website everyday,” she said. 

The homeowners group, Neighbors On Urban Creeks, however still suspected foul play. “It was a done deal before anybody walked into the meeting,” said Trudy Washburn. Other members of the group questioned why the report was on the mayor’s website but not the city’s. 

Under the mayor’s plan the task force would have until next April to deliver a budget and work plan to the Planning Commission and then have until the following May to recommend changes to the ordinance. The taskforce is not accounted for in the city’s budget and Bates did not estimate how much the body would cost. 

The task force discuss the issue of financial responsibility for repairing culverts that sit underneath private property. Many of the culverts are near the end of their useful lives, and currently the city contends that homeowners should be responsible for the repairs. 

If the task force failed to deliver recommendations by the 2006 deadline, Bates’ plan calls for suspending the prohibition of new construction within 30 feet of a culverted creek. 

That didn’t sit well with creek advocates and their allies on the council, who otherwise backed the plan. 

“The clause will encourage obstructionists to delay the taskforce,” Lamont said. 

Councilmember Maio assured creek advocates that if their opponents tried to stall, the council would step in. Despite their concerns over how the plan was distributed, councilmembers Wozniak and Olds both said the compromise had good potential. 

At times during the meeting, members of Neighbors on Urban Creeks held signs reading “No Taskforce on Creeks,” but afterward they seemed resigned to the mayor’s proposal. 

“We just have to make sure it’s a balanced taskforce,” said former mayor and group member Shirley Dean. 

University Avenue 

By a unanimous vote, the council reversed itself on new zoning rules for University Avenue and demanded a staff report to determine the effects of a new residential-only building option. 

Last week the council voted 5-3-1 to pass the first reading of the zoning rules over the objection of residents who wanted the Planning Commission to further study the residential-only component. A second vote needed to approve the plan now won’t come until after the council receives the staff report. 

Members of Plan Berkeley, a group organized around building on University Avenue, argued that the residential-only buildings could balloon from three stories to five because of a state law that grants developers extra building density for projects that include affordable housing.  

Since the city interprets the law to grant developers more space based on the number of rental units, Plan Berkeley members feared developers would choose not to include ground floor retail so they could build bigger buildings than would otherwise be allowed. 

Adding to their concerns, earlier this month Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill increasing the density bonus, from 25 percent to 35 percent, allotted to developers who satisfy certain requirements. 

Neighbors received crucial support Tuesday from Planning Commissioner Gene Poschman. He wrote that the amended state law could make the residential-only projects approximately 94 percent larger than buildings with similar zoning standards. 

Fire Department Negotiations 

Berkeley will likely lose the service of one of its two fire truck companies during evening hours after city negotiators and the firefighters failed to agree on a one-time reduction of scheduled raises. 

The truck company is scheduled to close between 6 p.m. and 8 a.m. every day starting Nov. 8. The closure is estimated to save the city $300,000 in overtime expenses.  

The City Council has exacted similar concessions from other unions to help it close a $10 million budget deficit.  

Unlike other city unions, the firefighters’ contract lacked a clause allowing the city to unilaterally reduce their salary increase. The City Council rejected a union offer to tie the salary giveback to a one-year contract extension with a six percent raise in return. 

No future negotiations are scheduled, though Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna said the city would be open to additional offers from the union. 

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