A deal that Mayor Tom Bates and UC Chancellor Robert Birgeneau heralded Wednesday as ushering in a new era of town-gown tranquility continues to stir controversy in Berkeley where several councilmembers and neighborhood leaders insist the city got a bum deal. -more-
Before Berkeley and UC signed a deal making settlement negotiations secret, Mayor Tom Bates sought a confidentiality agreement with the UC Berkeley Chancellor. -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District took an enormous bite out of its union problems last Tuesday, reaching tentative agreements with its teachers, bus drivers, custodians, instructional assistants and office workers. -more-
After almost four years of trying to negotiate a new union contract, workers at the Claremont Resort and Spa voted Wednesday to go on strike if an agreement is not reached by June 1. According to the union, 94 percent of the workers voted in favor of walking out. -more-
Overriding the pleas of preservationists, Berkeley Planning Commissioners passed changes to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) Wednesday night. -more-
Promising to attract some of the best scientific minds in the country, the UC Board of Regents voted Thursday to compete for the management of the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons research and development laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico in partnership with Bechtel National, Inc. -more-
When Robi Damelin’s 28-year-old son was killed while serving as an Israeli soldier in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, she didn’t know what to do. She was overcome with a mixture of anger, sadness and confusion. Her son was a peace activist and nev er wanted to serve. She couldn’t figure out who or what to blame. -more-
With the blessing of city officials, the owner of an illegal West Berkeley live/work warehouse where 15 tenants refuse to leave has formulated a plan to speed up evictions and safeguard the value of the property. -more-
In an effort to decrease the number of vacant storefronts around town, the Berkeley City Council Tuesday eased parking requirements for new businesses that open on commercial streets. -more-
Berkeley gardener and traffic circle advocate Karl Reeh is learning the hard way: Never negotiate with terrorists. -more-
Parking will no longer be free for local BART riders beginning in January. -more-
Oakland developer Alan Dones told Peralta Community College trustees Tuesday night that he “came to be a partner, not an adversary,” and was withdrawing his controversial proposal for an agreement to develop Peralta-Laney College lands. -more-
Panoramic Hill will become Berkeley’s newest national landmark, a federal official said Thursday. -more-
If you’ve been traveling south on Interstate 880 from downtown Oakland recently—on your way to the A’s game, for example, or maybe to cruise International Boulevard after you’ve perused the offerings in redbook (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll explain some other time)—then you’ve probably noticed the new Bud Lite billboard next to the overpass just before the High Street exit. It shows two teenage-looking female models—one Latina, one African-American—dressed invitingly, staring out indifferently at the passing cars. I think their look is supposed to represent some sort of challenge—try us out if you’re up to it, man, but you’ve got to bring your A game. Anyway, far up on the right-hand corner of the billboard, away from the two young women and the oversized Bud Lite logo, is the message: “Serve Chilled.” Serve chilled? Is that supposed to mean that the best way to break down these young women’s icy looks is to get them beer-drunk? Or does the message mean that it is the women themselves who are supposed to be served—properly cooled-out, of course—to the would-be male consumers driving by in their cars? I think one of our clever friends at the ad agency made this deliberately ambiguous. -more-
The Berkeley City Council, strong-armed by Mayor Bates and the city attorney, has held a series of secret meetings and secret votes about a secret document, culminating on May 24 when the council secretly met and finally voted on a secret final document. Unbelievable! -more-
I am the chief of the cardiology division of Kaiser Richmond where I have worked for 24 years, and I am a resident of Richmond. I rollerblade on the Bay Trail between the Richmond Marina and Point Isabel. I tell my patients to exercise there as well. I rollerblade past the Campus Bay property, a beautiful marshland, sadly contaminated by toxic chemicals. I have been a part of the community movement to demand a safe cleanup of this site. -more-
Aidan Delgado, an Army reservist who witnessed multiple war crimes at Abu Ghraib, returns to the Bay Area May 29, 6 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley. Joined by other nationally known war resisters—Camilo Mejia, Tim Goodrich, Jeff Paterson, Stephen Funk, along with family members of servicemen killed in Iraq—Delgado will present a slide show of atrocities he himself observed in Iraq. Delgado spent six months helping to run the now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. -more-
Damp weather and wind flay away at the paint and tin of an old Quonset hut in San Francisco’s Presidio. And, near the foot of its door, there’s a stone with a message carved onto it. The stone commemorates the work of 60 students and teachers, mostly Americans of Japanese descent, who trained and taught here as linguists and translators during the outbreak of World War II. -more-
New mid-intersection traffic circles have been sprouting up in central Berkeley like mushrooms after a rain. -more-
Berkeley residents will not get the opportunity to view the terms of a high stakes legal settlement with the University of California, university officials said. -more-
Father George Crespin returned to the pulpit Sunday, two days after Oakland Diocese officials cleared him on charges that he sexually molested a boy more than 30 years ago. -more-
Reversing a decision by his predecessor, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau has granted tenure and retroactive pay to embattled Professor Ignacio Chapela. -more-
Berkeley is poised to become the third city in the nation to require companies that do business with the city to disclose any financial ties with slavery. -more-
The controversial Seagate Building, a nine-story condo-and-commercial project planned for Center Street, has been sold and renamed The Arpeggio of Berkeley. Construction is slated to begin this fall with completion two years later. -more-
Ozzie’s, the soda fountain at the former Elmwood Pharmacy, has been granted a one-month reprieve from its scheduled June 1 closing, said operator Michael Hogan. -more-
Berkeley’s Planning Commission could act on their proposed revisions to the city’s Landmark’s Preservation Ordinance as early as Wednesday night. -more-
Plans for a new 800-acre North Oakland redevelopment district just south of the Berkeley border have been put on hold. -more-
Neighbors of Le Chateau, UC Berkeley’s most infamous student co-op, and the University Students Cooperative Association have reached a tentative settlement on the neighbor’s nuisance suit. -more-
Six months after it was initially authorized by the outgoing Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees, Oakland developer Alan Dones’ proposed exclusive negotiation agreement for development of Laney College lands goes back to the board for final approval tonight (Tuesday). -more-
Almost three months after the Berkeley School Board killed a proposal to consider a regulation high school baseball field for its Derby Street properties, the proposal is back on the table. -more-
After the city tax measures went down to defeat last fall, Tom Bates started talking about “re-inventing Berkeley government.” -more-
Just after I’d written a column about our friend Leroy contacting us from the beyond, but before it was published last week, I got a phone call from his sister, Cleo. -more-
In February the City filed a lawsuit against the university over its Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) and its meaningless environmental impact report (EIR). The university plans to expand by 4000 full-time students (adding to Berkeley’s housing problems), 3500 faculty, staff, and visitors (adding to Berkeley’s traffic and parking problems), and 2.2 million square feet (built who-knows-where and creating who-knows-what problems). The city stated, correctly, that the LRDP/EIR “falls far short of providing adequate information, analysis, or mitigations for the tremendous burden this growth will place on our city.” -more-
So far the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) dispute between the City of Berkeley and University of California has played out with commendable respect for the involved interests. The university published its draft environmental impact report (EIR), the city and community commented on it, and the university responded as it saw fit. The city, visualizing the University’s environmental shortcomings and their economic implications, challenged UC in court—ultimately seeking a better decision through litigation or negotiation. To their credit, the two parties then engaged in negotiations to resolve the city’s concerns by consensus if possible. I praise the city for calling UC’s bluff by commencing litigation that keeps the process open, just as I praise both parties for attempting to produce a final product now and not after years in court. -more-
Terry Francke is right about the purpose of the Brown Act, as stated in its preamble: Government Code Section 54950. In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and the other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly. The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created. -more-
Toy instruments have been used in classical music for their humor and novelty effect at least since Father Angerer’s nineteenth century Toy Symphony (I know, until recently everyone thought it was by Leopold Mozart). Just the other day, in 1948, experime ntalist John Cage wrote a Suite for Toy Piano. -more-
Not long ago, a very wealthy American couple visited a beautiful little village in the south of France while on vacation. They loved what they saw—everything. So captivated were they with the little town that they extended their vacation seven days, giving them time to get to know the locals, until they were all on a first-name basis. During their stay one thought kept racing through their minds: “There must be a way that more people could come here and enjoy such a place!” -more-
The new tree planted at Malcolm X School last month is an alien here, but not an invasive species nor as troublesome as, say, blue gum eucalyptus; I’d call it a perfectly respectable city tree. It’s a northern red oak, native to the eastern part of the continent, and it will pay its biological dues here in due time, when it starts bearing acorns. There might be an organism or three willing to dine on its leaves, too. -more-
Here is an instant critique of the UC-city settlement. While one should be humbled by Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum that it is not the critic who counts, but the man in the arena, in a democracy critics (especially those who volunteered to participate but were excluded from the arena) have an obligation to speak up. While the passage of time may bring greater perspective, at the moment one asks if the city is worse off with this settlement than if they had never filed the CEQA lawsuit in the first place. T he city has limited its future environmental and fiscal options notwithstanding changes in the law—such as the Cal State Monterey Bay case pending before the California Supreme Court that could give the city a CEQA opportunity to exact full mitigation for UC’s impacts—and obtained little prerogative or improvement in return. -more-
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we are pleased to offer for your information a guest editorial, author unknown. It’s a cogent, well-written summary of why the City of Berkeley needs an adequate environmental impact report from the University of California before the university moves forward with its relentless desire to radically change the face of our city between now and 2020. Nothing’s changed—the points made in this piece, placed on the city’s website in February when the lawsuit was filed under the title “Fact Sheet,” are still valid. -more-
