It was a busy, eclectic night at Berkeley City Hall Tuesday, with the Berkeley City Council moving forward on a range of issues, including changing the city’s condominium conversion mitigation fees, establishing citizen nuisance wood smoke abatement procedures, and raising recreation fees. -more-

Beneath the heated rhetoric and sharp divisions, one fact emerged from a Monday night meeting between Berkeley police, city officials and residents: The desire for a police force that is engaged with the community on a day-to-day basis. -more-

Wat Mongkolratanaram will be back Thursday at the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board meeting to request a use permit modification which will allow the 33-year old Buddhist temple to serve its disputed yet exceedingly popular Sunday brunch throughout the year. -more-

It’s called the case of the “Freshman Fridays” at Berkeley High: Seniors tossing eggs at ninth-graders when they leave school or sports practice, sometimes hitting them in the face. -more-

Berkeley police are conducting extra patrols in a south Berkeley neighborhood where there have been two more shooting incidents after two men were shot to death early Thursday, Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said tonight. -more-

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau kicked off the public phase of a $3 billion fund-raising drive Friday, seeking funds for scholarships, campus improvements, faculty salaries, research—and $600 million for buildings. -more-

Berkeley Planning Commission members, missing two of their most outspoken dissenters Wednesday night, boosted by 50 percent the number of 120-foot buildings to be included in the environmental study for the new downtown plan. -more-

Two men died in a blaze of gunfire on Derby Street early Thursday which left a 26-year-old Berkeley man dead along the curb and a 45-year-old Oakland man behind the wheel of his crashed car. -more-

Berkeley tree-sitters and their supporters returned Wednesday morning to the site of their 648-day vigil to reflect on their ultimately doomed battle to save the grove. -more-

Lawyers representing two civil liberties groups are preparing to wage a legal battle over the Long Haul raid, and other constitutional rights groups are paying close attention. -more-

UC Berkeley police, joined by federal and county law enforcement, raided the Long Haul Infoshop Aug. 27 in search of the source of threats to university researchers who experiment on animals. -more-

On June 20, the residents of the California Hotel in Oakland received notice that they would be required to vacate the building by July 15. The 250 residents, many disabled, some with families, all low-income, were given three weeks’ notice that they would have to find new affordable housing. -more-

Some two dozen people, including street preachers, homeless advocates and union activists, came to Tuesday’s Berkeley City Council meeting, the first of the 2008-2009 session, to condemn proposed noise and use-of-sidewalks laws they said would limit free speech. -more-

UC Berkeley’s CampusLink computer terminals, which provide free public Internet access at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union across from Sproul Plaza, were abruptly shut down by the university, CampusLink officials said Wednesday. -more-

Eugene Evans, the Berkeley Sea Scouts leader convicted of two counts of child molestation in July, was sentenced to a total of six years in state prison by an Alameda County Superior Court judge on Tuesday. -more-

The Berkeley Board of Education last week unanimously approved a plan to put the historic Hillside School at 1581 Le Roy Ave. up for sale. -more-

Workers marched from Berkeley Technology Academy to school district headquarters last week to demand contract renewals and pay raises. -more-

West Campus neighbors won a major victory last week when the Berkeley Board of Education approved plans to rehabilitate the former Berkeley Adult School building on Bonar Street in order to relocate Berkeley Unified School District’s headquarters from the seismically unsafe Old City Hall at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way. -more-

When is a cultural event not a cultural event? That seemed to be the dilemma the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board grappled with last week at a public meeting while reviewing whether the Gaia Building—now owned by real estate magnate and Tribune Co. proprietor Samuel Zell—was violating its use permit. -more-

Oakland City Councilmember Nancy Nadel says that she was “very concerned” about charges made by Nation of Islam Oakland Mosque Minister Keith Muhammad about problems with this summer’s Oakland police “Operation Nutcracker” raids of the Acorn Housing Project, but says that police officials have assured her that the raids were properly conducted and have had the desired result. -more-

The administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums introduced its long-awaited public safety strategy to selected members of the Oakland public last week to a pointedly skeptical reaction, outlining an ambitious program in which each of Oakland’s neighborhoods would be organized for citizen participation, work on local public safety problems would be filtered through area public safety coordinating councils made up of city officials, police representatives, and neighborhood groups, and a citywide public safety policy council would oversee city goals and strategies. -more-

Both sides were claiming victory in a legal battle over Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s long range plans for building 980,000 square feet of new construction by 2026. -more-

Weekend fire demolishes Berkeley hills home -more-

Noted Berkeley neighborhoods, prominent parks and schools, and architectural masterpieces—both secular and spiritual—are all featured during the fall 2008 Berkeley Historical Walking Tour series, which begins Saturday, Sept. 27. -more-

An item in the Sept. 4 Police Blotter incorrectly reported the location of a shooting. A shooting on the 2900 block of Sacramento Street on Sept. 2 did not occur at Johnson’s House of Style but at another address on that block. -more-

On Sunday we took our grandkids to the Santa Cruz county fair in Watsonville, a cornucopia of old-fashioned delights and some new ones too. The animals proudly displayed by the 4-H club members who raised them are hands-down favorites, especially the competition for dressed-up goats, perhaps a unique specialty found only in Watsonville. It inevitably reminded some of the adults in the group of the recent lipstick-on-a-pig discussions in the national political arena. If you put a tutu on a goat, does that make her a ballerina, or is that a sexist question aimed at poking fun at Sarah Palin? -more-

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BHA FLOUTING THE LAW? -more-

I read Barbara Gilbert’s commentary (Sept. 11) with great interest and I second her opinions wholeheartedly. -more-

This week our household received a slick and colorful PR brochure from Phil Kamlarz, our dear city manager, describing what Berkeley is doing to improve its infrastructure and how much the city cares about its residents (was that the upshot, I wasn’t quite sure). With all due respect (luv ya Phil, no offense) to the city manager’s office, and whoever conceptualized this mailing, a fancy brochure is not what our households need in these rough economic times. -more-

The City Council voted unanimously to put Measure FF on the ballot after reviewing the city’s report on the unacceptable state of Berkeley’s four branch libraries, which are seismically unsafe, cramped and in need of repair. They did so because time is of the essence. It is critical that we renovate all our branches to ensure they are safe, modern buildings that will serve our community now and into the future. We can’t afford to wait one more day. When it comes to public safety, there is no time to waste. -more-

Democrats always bring a knife to a gun fight. They believe that “the issues” should predominate in their campaigns (even though they often cave on them—see offshore drilling). Republicans always set up the same ambush, every four years, and the Democrats walk into it, like Charlie Brown kicking Lucy’s football. -more-

Charles Siegel apparently put on green-tinted blinders before examining AC Transit’s BRT proposal and the arguments for measure KK (last week’s Daily Planet). With these blinders on, any proposal with “bus” in the title looks good, regardless of the cost or the projected benefits. With his blinders on, Mr. Siegel can’t see the difference between a $250 million boondoggle and a well-crafted proposal to improve rapid transit in the East Bay. I urge Mr. Siegel to take off his blinders and take a hard look at the current AC Transit proposals. If he does a thorough, clear-sighted assessment of what’s being proposed, I think he will come to the same conclusion that I have: BRT as proposed is a foolish waste of precious transit funds. -more-

Thank you for your sober, detailed coverage of the police incident at KPFA (“Rough Arrest at KPFA Stuns Station, Community,” Sept. 4). -more-

The “Friends of BRT,” whose membership soars into the single digits, are adroit at pulling the wool over their own eyes. Charles Siegel, one of the most ardent of the “Friends,” in his Sept. 11 commentary, makes a laundry list of false statements to attack the ballot argument for Measure KK. -more-

I live on the 2600 block of Benvenue Avenue, southside of campus. Most students who cause hell in our neighborhood seem to be young men who think it their right to live here for their undergrad years and drink, dope, play loud music, dump their raw garbage on the sidewalk, have parties that spill onto the streets. Frequently, they are in an athletic program at Cal. -more-

Keith Olbermann’s Countdown has its Worst Person In The World award each night. Today we present the Worst Blog or Column Entry in the East Bay. -more-

A familiar American aphorism is “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” In 2000, Karl Rove convinced Americans that a relatively unknown Texas governor could be a competent president. In 2008, John McCain’s Rove, Steve Schmidt, argues that an even more obscure Alaska governor will make a credible vice president and likely 45th president. Are Americans about to be fooled again? -more-

Natural history writers don’t get a lot of perks. But the California Academy of Sciences, which reopens Sept. 27, did invite a bunch of us ink-stained wretches to a mid-afternoon buffet at the newly reconstituted museum in Golden Gate Park on Sunday (tasty microcheeseburgers, samosas, and chicken-on-a-stick) and let us wander among the exhibits, -more-

Legendary lumberman Zimri Brewer Heywood (1803-1879) left behind many legends. Retracing his history through original 19th-century documents (see “Zimri Brewer Heywood: Separating Fact From Myth,” Sept. 4, 2008) reveals that while some of the oft-recounted stories have no basis in fact, there are others, largely unknown until now, that are just as absorbing as the myths. -more-

I built my house from barley rice -more-