Public Comment

There is a lot to be learned from what happened in Texas this last week. While Texans are rightly angry with Ted Cruz taking off to Cancun to avoid the crisis, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to send some of our City elected officials to Cancun to sit out the rest of their terms as a damage control measure.

Land use, zoning, housing and infrastructure grabbed all the attention this week from Tuesday through Saturday. 

Mayor Arreguin was evidently expecting enthusiasm for the ferry and pier at the Tuesday Council Worksession, since when it didn’t come, he dismissed the public comments, saying, “ I just want to represent that the people that come to our meetings. [While] we respect the comments, they don’t always reflect the vast majority of opinion in the Berkeley community…” 

Berkeley is literally in the WETA (Waterfront Emergency Transportation Authority) boat because the old pier wasn’t maintained and had to be closed. WETA will build a new pier on the condition of adding ferry service. 

A ferry to and from San Francisco sounds sort of romantic, a bygone era, and is presented as a reasonable commuter alternative to BART, bus or simply driving. No one is talking about how long it will take to get across the bay by ferry, just how much taxpayers are subsidizing ferry service, or if Berkeley will be on the hook for financing if the ridership doesn’t materialize. The consultant said fares at $10 per trip cover only 58% of the operating cost. The assumption is being made that after a ferry commute, riders will hang out at the marina and fill out the lagging marina fund. Brennan Cox said that ferries are popular on the east coast and he doesn’t understand why there is not more enthusiasm. I would like to suggest that other forms of transportation are less time consuming, more convenient and it looks like will be less costly. 

The pier/ferry presentation followed the report that 92 people were served/housed during the pandemic homeless outreach effort. Sadly, there are hundreds more living on the street. 

The other Tuesday meeting, the first meeting of the week, was the best, with a presentation for Community for a Cultural Civic Center Park Subcommittee by Margo Schueler on infrastructure. Every time I hear Margo speak I leave with another layer of new knowledge, i.e. the brick permeable surface on Allston between MLK and Milvia should last 85 to 100 years whereas asphalt streets deteriorate and need replacement every 10 – 15 years. There are other benefits too. Bricks slow traffic, lower urban heat, give air to the tree roots enhancing survival, decreasing sidewalk and street uplift, and permeable paving directs water into the ground underneath, decreasing the need for watering. Allston brick was laid by hand, but there are machines that do it. And, Michigan and Iowa are the leaders in permeable paving, because of lower maintenance during the winter. 

Thursday morning, so many people tried to attend the Council Land Use Committee meeting that the number of attempted attendees exceeded the zoom meeting limit of 100. Some texted Sophie Hahn that they couldn’t get in and she in turn shared the problem with her colleagues and city staff. 

When the meeting limit couldn’t be expanded, Christopher Jensen, the Assistant City Attorney, was consulted regarding whether the meeting needed to be canceled and rescheduled and whether any action could be taken. Mr. Jensen’s conclusion was that exceeding the zoom room capacity was no different from exceeding room capacity in an in-person meeting. However he failed to remember that when in-person attendance exceeded capacity people were able to hear the meeting as it happened, and were allowed into the meeting room to give public comment. In a zoom meeting people are just shut out. No action was taken as public comment filled the meeting. 

The agenda items garnering such attention were TOPA– Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act--which was postponed until March, and the Quadplex Zoning proposal from Councilmembers Droste, Taplin and Kesarwani with Mayor Arreguin as Co-sponsor. Declaration of a terrible housing shortage is at a constant roar, with the solution as unbridled building with ministerial approval, even while we are surrounded by a glut of vacant market rate units and construction of mixed-use projects (commercial first floor with housing above) proceeds at a feverish pace. There were move-in-today-lease signs in Downtown Berkeley in attempts to fill vacant units even before the pandemic caused the exiting of students. 

The Quadplex zoning proposal, the main meeting event, allows for building of up to four units on one lot with no limits on the number of bedrooms in each unit. Another proposed benefit for the developer/contractor of the quadplex is that when there is ministerial approval (basically sign-off by someone at the Planning Department counter, no public review, no Zoning Adjustment Board, no Design Review Commitee) tenants would not need to be notified, so if TOPA ever passes, the tenant purchase opportunity will slip away. 

In Patrick M. Condon’s book Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land, page 12 he writes, “…the smartest people in the development game are the land speculators, men and women who make a handy living out of hunting up land that might soon be ‘improved’ by the provision of a new highway, a new transit station or a change in allowable land use…” [emphasis added] 

My cynical side says the ordinances to eliminate single family housing zoning and to establish quadplex zoning are just-in-time “changes in allowable land use” for speculators to scoop up foreclosures for a handy profit when the protections established during the pandemic expire. Top it off with calling people who question or resist “racists” for a perfect mix. That might summarize Darrell Owens, representing Councilmember Droste at last Saturday’s meeting sponsored by Berkeley Neighborhoods Council. 

The special meeting was called to focus on item 29, Resolution to End Exclusionary Zoning in Berkeley, under Action items in the Tuesday evening, February 23 City Council meeting agenda. The supposedly Exclusionary zoning is single family homes. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/02_Feb/City_Council__02-23-2021_-_Regular_Meeting_Agenda.aspx 

As always, I conclude my weekly Activist Diary with what I’m reading. On a recommendation from my sister, I interrupted my week’s plans to read the novel American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. It was a page turner of fleeing violence to enter the US illegally. Don’t pick up this book if you have a long to-do list, as none of that will get done until you finish, at least that is what happened to my week. A companion to this account is one of our 2020 book club choices, A Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Frances Cantu, the account of a border patrol agent. 

I’m running out of library time on The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff and Under a White Sky, the Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deep accounting of collecting our personal data and how that data is used to forecast and manipulate behavior. If you know anyone who played Pokeman that chapter will definitely grab your attention.