Public Comment

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PARKING FEES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The proposal for night parking fees is another one of those “punish us until we are green” proposals. Yes, please, charge us more for less. Purify us. Make us sacrifice until we have saved the earth. Tear down parking lots, and make us pay to park on the streets, then complain that there are lines at the lots that haven’t yet been torn down. Everyone pays, except, of course, Code Pink. (But don’t go overboard, by say, increasing public transit, extending the hours of BART or making rides cheaper, faster, and more convenient.) 

We don’t need to go out anyway. We will all sit in our homes and read books written on recycled rags illuminated by ecologically correct low wattage light bulbs. After all patronizing downtown business wastes the earth’s resources. We’ve already said Fairfax to the UC, Berkeley, Cinema, and Act I and 2 movie houses. That probably isn’t enough. Now the city is determined to get rid of the UA, California and Shattuck, the last three downtown theaters, in the interest of increasing empty storefronts in the neighborhood. I don’t suppose this will do a world of good for the live theaters, the Rep and Aurora. The Freight and Salvage may want to reconsider moving downtown. 

But we, here in Berkeley are all so virtuous. Unfortunately most of the rest of the world will go watch movies in the malls. 

Paul Glusman 

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MASS GROPINGS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Did the police give the media more of a description than just “young males’? If they did, why wasn’t it printed? Who are we looking for? 

Peter Bjeldanes 

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‘SECOND HAND ROSE’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Please let Ms. Snodgrass know that the song “Second Hand Rose” was written well before Barbra Streisand was born so she couldn’t have been the inspiration for the song. 

Rick Kipp 

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SKATE PARK 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I read Mr. Woods column about the skate park and yes, maybe it was a disaster (not his words) but it is what we have. I know it and the surrounding playing fields are also heavily used almost everyday and certainly every weekend. Do I ignore the health issues—almost because what else do we have for the hundreds—if not thousands—of kids and adults who use these parks? Nothing. I wish it were otherwise and we had a fields and open space for our kids but we don’t. Any suggestions we can afford Mr. Wood? 

Bill Newton 

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PARKING PERMITS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Once again, the City of Berkeley has sent out notices for residential preferential parking permits without indicating that persons with low income (under $33,500) are entitled to a half-price discount, from $30 reduced to $15. Proof consisting of income tax forms, a photo ID, and a bill indicating your home address (PG&E or AT&T, etc.) must accompany the application whether in person or by mail. When will the city make it routine to add that information to the notices they send out each year? Are they trying to make money on the backs of poor people? 

Estelle Jelinek 

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WHY THE OAK GROVE MATTERS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Memorial Stadium oak grove needs the community to commit to its protection. This struggle is about more than this valuable grove of trees. It is about democracy and the rights of citizens to have a say in their communities. It is about humans evolving to understand that our survival is intertwined with the health of the natural world and it is imperative that we live in accordance with nature. It is about sane, livable neighborhoods and respecting the history of the land and its peoples. It is about saving the headwaters of our watershed from foolish and dire construction.  

Dear Strawberry Creek, watershed of the Berkeley campus, who has nourished this land for millennium, calls for our help. There are plans to tear into the future by tearing up these sacred hills. This area declared “An Ecological Study Area,” where live the elderberry and the California towee, the mountain lion and fox, banana slug and sweet cicily, is threatened by plans that we did not vote on. 

We must turn the tide of the direction our public university is going. UC should be the front runner in researching how to protect our precious resources and finding alternative sustainable solutions for the public. Instead it is being allowed to run unrestrained and unmonitored into exciting but treacherous technologies without the wisdom of or research into the dangers and downfalls they present. That the nano-technology “molecular foundry” was built without an EIR and runs with little oversight should be alarming to all of us. There are already nano products commercially available without reasonable research into their effects. Highly toxic nano silver is washing out of new nano-socks and into the bay without EBMUD sewage treatment plant operators being aware of it, never mind having the technology to filter it. What effect will this have on the bay and the ocean ecosystems and the bodies of our children? 

We must stand now, for life. This is our line in the sand. This grove of oak trees on Strawberry Creek is wiser and more valuable than a foolish building. Oaks are sacred to many peoples. Oak groves represent community, strength and sustenance. They are our elders and teachers. Community has formed around this grove. We have met, many different folks under (and in) these trees, pledging support for their going on.  

Hold on, hold on. We shall stand in peace before our elders. To protect them, and to share their wisdom. We shall feel our roots in the land we are on. This struggle is central to our connection to earth and soul. Stand with the trees. 

Terri Compost 

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UNFATHOMABLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

My recent observations in South Berkeley only proved to me my suspicion that the leadership in the City of Berkeley makes Bush and Cheney seem like innocent, wayward choirboys. 

It seems obvious to me that by authorizing a drug paraphernalia outlet on Ashby Avenue in South Berkeley that the City Council is blatantly pandering to their drug-dealing friends. How is this different than the politics of oil? Let’s just tell it like it is. 

I, personally, do not care if people use if they do in a safe and responsible way. What bothers me is the obvious cynicism, corruption, deliberate and blatant neglect leveled on our SouthSide neighborhood by the shortsighted, misanthropic leadership of the City of Berkeley. 

One wonders why the city could not support the arrival of, say, a noodle shop, or a bread bakery, or even, perhaps, an establishment that served a tolerable cup of coffee…or at least some establishment that served the whole neighborhood. 

John Herbert 

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IHSS IN TURMOIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Since 1994, I have been on the In-Home Supportive Services program (IHSS) that pays for my overnight care as a result of my physical disability, Cerebral Palsy. For over nine years my IHSS was active in Alameda County. 

In 2004, 10 years later, I transferred my case to San Francisco. In November of 2007, my fiancée and I moved back into Alameda County where I was told my IHSS would be transferred back to and until this took place San Francisco would pay for my IHSS.  

As of March 31, San Francisco IHSS—after much delay—would not be involved anymore and Alameda would take over effective April 1st. However, I did not see an intake worker until April 14th and as of yet my case is still pending.  

My workers have not been paid for a month and I was informed on May 1 that the client rights advocate for IHSS had turned my case over to the director of IHSS who I have been unable to get a hold of. In the IHSS telephone information system, my case has been pending since Nov. 20 and my providers are average people who are proud of what they do for me and they deserve to get paid. If I do not receive my IHSS payment soon, one of my attendants who has been with me for 10 years will be forced to go on unemployment and the other will be forced to look elsewhere for work.  

I have spoken to my intake worker once and the client rights advocate on several occasions. After the home visit where I was assessed, I was told that IHSS would enter my information into their system and that my workers would be paid very soon. I wonder how a government agency can get so backed up and so discombobulated that it puts people like me at risk of not being able to do my activities of daily living at risk for bedsores, health and safety issues along with losing great In-Home care attendants who know and understand the severity of my condition. If IHSS is not operating effectively then why do my workers have to go without pay?  

Nick Feldman 

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SHAME ON THE CITY OF BERKELEY 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It’s almost two months since the March 11 “protest” against the Marine Recruiting Station, and, although the discussion in this and other papers’ letters to the editor sections at the time were full of vitriol, they have faded from the public purview. All is forgotten, all is forgiven? 

Not quite. The City Council still has a lot to answer to. They are public servants, and not only is it unacceptable for them to make grand (and empty) ideological gestures without public discussion, it is reprehensible and irresponsible that they apparently never took into consideration the consequences of their vote to “unwelcome” the Marine Recruiting Station. 

To make a bad situation worse, they sponsored the “protest” and offered the park directly across from Berkeley High as the venue...on a school day! In case nobody was looking (or asking) this park is really an extension of BHS on school days. And as anyone who has been there at 3:15 can attest, there are kids all over the park and the adjacent streets at that time. Exactly the time that the “protest” was gathering steam. This was already a recipe for trouble. But it doesn’t end there. There were many busloads of pro-war demonstrators already gunning for a fight—men, mostly, who had been ramping up their generalized anger for some hours. They now only needed to focus that anger. Who better to focus it on than kids—that category of being that is really without voice or power. So, the adults began to taunt and threaten the kids as they came out of school and tried to skate at the ledges. 

Not to worry, the City Council again had apparently decided on the best plan of action. A full wall of Berkeley Police in riot gear (whose overtime pay cost the city $93,000). These police, however, rather than protect the kids, arrested them. 

It was the kids, not the adults, who were arrested. The kids, they say, who were threatening. What, kids just randomly being threatening? 

Now, there are some who have not forgotten March 11. They now have records, and have to do public service. 

Where is the City Council now? Why did they not for see the severe consequences of the actions they put into play? Why do they not ameliorate the damages by interceding on behalf of those kids so unfairly arrested? The City Council prefers to play in the realm of ideological gestures, not realizing that their “moral high grounding” has had truly violent repercussions on the lives of innocent kids. 

Dr. JoAnn Conrad 

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ROBBERIES COMMON IN BERKELEY HILLS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have been disturbed by the recent reports that armed sidewalk robberies are becoming the norm in the Berkeley hills, especially in the neighborhood surrounding the Graduate Theological Union (GTU). But anyone who has lived or studied there full well knows that people in and around the GTU have been, for years, assaulted by the so called, Margaret Hamilton-like “Berkeley Parking Authority,” whose amply-provided force has assured that even the most minor infraction is duly fined with the infamous $30.00 parking ticket. (As a side note, I am amazed that a city like Berkeley allows for such abuse, and that nobody has organized a city-wide demonstration so far.) At my friend’s place on Oxford street, scores of tow trucks and meter-maid-mobiles line up daily at 3:40 p.m. to begin towing cars parked in a no parking zone beginning at 4:00 (towing at 4:01). It’s not clear why the zone converts to “no parking” as, unlike other cities, a new lane does not open up. It’s just another example of the predatory behavior that extracts dollars from citizen’s pockets. 

I find it ironic, but not surprising, that Berkeley can amply staff their minion of parking ticketers, while failing to provide the necessary police coverage that prevents rogue, armed bandits from roaming peaceful neighborhoods and robbing people like seminarians and monks of their meager wages. But then again, the “Parking Authority” has been doing so for years. 

Once again we see where the city of Berkeley’s concerns lay. 

Rev. John Handley 

PhD Student, Graduate Theological Union 

Fairfax (Marin County) 

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BUS RAPID TRANSIT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Bruce Wicinas writes that Berkeley should not passively accept the design that AC Transit proposes for Bus Rapid Transit, that a local landscape architect has already produced several alternative designs with exciting new possibilities, that AC needs Berkeley’s help to design a scheme that preserves the downtown environment. 

I agree completely, but I am puzzled by Wicinas’ claim that Alan Tobey suggested otherwise. Tobey’s earlier letter simply said that the city has adopted a general policy favoring BRT with exclusive bus lanes on Telegraph Avenue, by unanimous vote of all the councilmembers and of then-mayor Shirley Dean. He never suggested that the city has endorsed a final design. In fact, there is not yet a final design or even a final route proposed for BRT in south campus and downtown. After the Planning Commission chooses a preferred alternative for the route, we can begin to develop a final design for that preferred alternative. At that point, I think it would invaluable to have the sort of collaborative design process that Wicinas suggests to develop the detailed design that is best for Berkeley. 

BRT is being adopted by cities around the nation and the world because it is the most cost-effective method of providing better public transportation. Chicago has just approved a BRT plan for that reason - one more major city adopting BRT since my last letter to the Planet. BRT can have the same transportation benefits in Berkeley that it has in other cities, and with the sort of design that Wicinas writes about, it can also give us a more pedestrian-friendly, vital, and economically successful downtown. 

Charles Siegel 

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THAI TEMPLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A bad case of NYMBYitis has infected the neighbors of Berkeley’s Mongkolratanaram Thai Temple.  

One neighbor’s reportedly said “I have no complaints. I’d rather have them than Section 8 housing.” What a bigoted thing to say. I guess he doesn’t want “those kind” in Berkeley.  

As the president of a non-profit that has low-income apartment project for seniors and the disabled on the Monterey Peninsula, I can truthfully say our Section 8 residents are the best. No wild parties or gang-bangers there. 

Larry Hawkins 

Seaside 

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NO NEW TAXES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

A preliminary review of the City of Berkeley-commissioned Berkeley Voter Survey, geared to elicit positive responses to potential new tax measures, indicates scant local appetite for new taxes. So I hope that Berkeley city officials drop that subject and move on to what voters really seem to want, according to the poll—better city revenue management. In these hard times, the city needs to cut city expenses (fewer staff, recession of new contracts if necessary, fewer bells and whistle programs, fewer developer subsidies) and re-prioritize city spending into what residents really want—effective public safety above all. 

A recent article on Berkeley home foreclosures indicates more than 200 homes in the foreclosure system. Prices are declining. It may get much worse before it gets better. 

There is a wealth of important census-type data embedded in the Berkeley Voter Survey and the city should engage an independent statistician to put it all together in a useful format. Just two examples of many—there is data on the modest income level of most Berkeley homeowners (average looks about $100,000) and there is evidence that about half of residents with children are not using Berkeley public schools! 

So instead of thinking of ways to increase the local tax burden, city and school officials need to engage in a Reality Check on the Real World.  

Barbara Gilbert 

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DECEPTIVE MEASURE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

On June 3, you will be asked to vote on measure F which re-authorizes, increases, and extends the utility users tax in the unincorporated parts of Alameda County. Many of you reading this live in cities and won’t have to pay the tax and will derive no benefits from it. So, why are you being asked to vote to tax someone else? Because the County Board of Supervisors thinks the tax is more likely to pass if voted on countywide. 

The supervisors could have legally restricted the vote to those of us who will pay the tax (10 percent of the county population) but they don’t trust us to pass it. This is unfair, and the supervisors know it. 

The measure is also deceptively worded. The supporters promise to spend the money on libraries, sheriff and planning, but the legally binding language of the measure (the fine print) says “ There is no legal obligation that the funds be used for any particular purpose.” This is dishonest. Welcome to politics, Alameda County-style. 

Please vote no on F, and make the supervisors create a special district so that we in the unincorporated areas can vote on our own taxes and services. 

Steve Rosenberg 

Castro Valley 

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UNHOLY ALLIANCE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

We, the people of Berkeley, should propose a citizen-initiated proposal to end the unholy alliance between the developers and some of the councilmembers.  

This proposal should say, “If a councilmember has accepted money from a business or individual, either directly or indirectly, then he must recuse himself when a matter that would benefit that entity comes before the City Council.” 

What is happening is that many developers have purchased some of the councilmembers through generous campaign contributions. Developers themselves, their key employees and their family members contribute “bribes” to the councilmembers campaign funds. In turn, those dishonest councilmembers vote positively on their requests to the city council, instead of recusing themselves.  

Legally, the city council often decides these proposals in a “quasi-judicial” capacity. And they should recuse themselves from voting when a matter comes up, but many dishonest councilmembers don’t.  

When these dishonest councilmembers vote, they vote to give money to those developers who have purchased those councilmembers. They vote to given the developers money from the low-interest loan-fund, outright grants, zoning change and other goodies that spell M-O-N-E-Y. 

Sometime ago. Councilmember Gordon Woziak wrote an article on www.KitchenDemocracy.com expressing his opinion on a permit proposal before the city council. At that time, the then city attorney Manuela Albuquerque advised him to recuse when that matter comes before the city council. And he did recuse. Manuela’s argument was that since the councilmembers are acting in a “quasi-judicial” capacity when deciding on such matters, they must be totally impartial. 

At that time, I asked Manuela, “By your logic, councilmembers should also recuse when they accept money from a developer and a matter that gives money to that developer comes before the city council.” Manuela had answered that the Supreme Court had decided that it would not be conflict of interest. 

But still the citizens can put forth an initiative that bans such dishonest conduct be councilmembers. So lets discuss this matter publicly and pass such an initiative. 

Irshad Alam 

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THE COST OF OIL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

As the rising cost of oil continues to punish the consuming population, it is odd that the issue of nationalizing the U.S. oil majors seldom comes up. As a practicing geologist I think that nationalization needs to be put on the agenda. 

The U.S. oil majors apparently decided to drive the market as high as possible, short of some psycho-social breaking point due to widespread fraud and petty theft (eg. gas tank siphoning). The OPEC decision to resist U.S. pressure to expand oil extraction, declared that the high prices are a result of U.S. economic mismanagement. The United States is understandably coy—the secretary of state is a former member of the Chevron board of directors. (Senator Biden defended Chevron against China’s higher bid for Unocal). 

Consider the consequences of not nationalizing U.S. oil majors. To take one familiar example, Chevron, teaming with (the French oil company) Total, for a Basra oil field, defends the occupation (expecting the U.S. oil majors to get Iraq oil deals out of the Iraqi congress; a prospect abhorrent to the Iraqi population). Chevron’s bloating from recent acquisitions of Texaco and Unocal, only increases its “corporate bullying”; in the Unocal purchase for example Chevron’s CEO O’Reilly claimed at the end of 2005-06, that to buy Unocal, it was necessary that gas prices, around $2 a gallon at the time, needed to rise to $3 a gallon to finance the deal.  

The U.S. oil majors have been predicting imminent shortages of oil ever since the 1920s to keep gasoline prices high; (crude in the 1970s was “coming out of our ears”—said USGS Director McKelvey in 1978 before President Carter removed him). These days O’Reilly claims scarcity really is here (his “peak oil” scenario, also disputed by the USGS). The truth may be that the North American land mass, in oil shale, has an oil supply sufficient for centuries. If runaway global warming interferes with the familiar glacial/interglacial cycles it will likely be due to oil abundance. 

So I believe an effort should be made to nationalize the U.S. oil majors, with the aim of making oil available in a timely, efficient and predictable fashion. 

Fred Hayden 

Albany