Public Comment

Where I grew up, May 1 was a celebration of spring with leaving surprise baskets of candy on doorsteps and then running away. I didn’t learn about May 1 as International Worker’s Day until years later after I left that little town in Minnesota. May 1 is also the birthday of a friend who caught COVID-19 in January 2021 and is still struggling with what we call “long haulers syndrome.” An attendant for her daughter went partying over New Years and brought it in.

I am sharing the story of my friend as the COVID-19 pandemic is not over even as the incidence of new cases in the US is dropping and California is looking good. For some like my friend COVID may never be over. Please do all you can to persuade unvaccinated 16 year olds and older in your circle of friends to get their COVID-19 vaccines and complete the two shot regimen.

The week of meetings started with the Land Use Policy Committee, which had one item on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act). There were 41 speakers, most of whom opposed TOPA. This is a complete reversal from the last meeting on TOPA, which was flooded with speakers supporting TOPA.

My personal opinion is that even if passed, TOPA won’t do much to change the housing ownership landscape except for a handful of people. Buying a house can be challenging enough for a family or individual. And now, what happens if you put unrelated neighbors joining together to buy a property into the mix? That can get very complicated.

The final outcome of establishing the Council’s Agenda and Rules Committee can be seen in the May 11 Council meeting posted in the Activist’s Calendar. The current M.O. is to move nearly everything to the Consent category or else to turf it to another committee. Councilmember Kesarwani’s recommendation for developing a universal checklist for ADUs was sent to the Land Use Committee, and Councilmember Harrison’s proposal to establish a Pilot Climate Equity Action Fund was sent to the Budget Committee. Mayor Arreguin’s high-sounding resolution committing to what’s called the “C40 race to zero” by 2045 was moved to consent.

When I joined 350 Bay Area in 2012, carbon dioxide at 350 parts per million was still a thing. C02 was 420.54 ppm by April 30, 2021.

Zero emissions by 2045 is just too late. 

It is a myth to believe we can stay under temperature rise of 1.5°C without dramatic change. Temperature rise went from 0.8°C in 2018 to ≈1.2°C in 2020. A 2019 paper by Timothy Lenton, Professor of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter, on tipping points is finally getting attention in the media. Lenton suggested we are looking at 3.0°C by 2070, and 10 meters (32.8 feet) of sea level rise (SLR) is already baked into the system. The unanswered SLR question is how fast, decades or centuries. 

The drought map that really caught my attention is that of the full U.S. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, not the one of California that came with the warning that the Bay Area is in extreme drought https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/. At the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission on Wednesday it was noted that July is now predicted to be the peak of the fire season. Looking at the UNL map, we need to keep those N95 masks handy for a heavy fire season. An article I read over a year ago may have it right: The place to ride out climate change and SLR is Duluth, Minnesota at the tip of Lake Superior. 

Others have described the successful outcome of the Ordinance Regulating Police Acquisition and Use of Controlled Equipment at council on Tuesday evening. I was on edge through the entire three-hour-plus discussion. Even though Arreguin started the discussion stating that he supported the Harrison version, I’ve attended too many meetings to feel confident it would survive without compromise hits. 

Kesarwani submitted the pro-police alternative, which was followed with Taplin’s questions to the city manager and interim police chief. Droste did her usual dance of questions and feigning to not understand. The Kesarwani alternative and questions gave the opening to the declaration that it took 374 hours over two months to meet the use of force documentation requirements. That makes one wonder what is going on with policing. 

As 11:40 pm approached and the vote was called, Kesarwani passed. When Wengraf voted yes for the Harrison version, the rest stepped in line to make the final call unanimous. 

The Budget and Finance Committee is continuing to hear the department budget proposals, pushing councilmember requests like traffic circles and climate action funding to the end. Last year, deep in the pandemic with revenue falling, there was an across-the-board 15% cut for every department except the police. The police budget was passed with a 12% cut. 

The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force was the last meeting of the week. The meeting started with public comment from people identifying themselves as business owners describing terrible scenes of rampant frightening drug use in the business corridors and ended with public commenters critical of policing describing harassment and excessive use of force. In between the city auditor Jenny Wong went through the audit of police response. 

The report is thorough, though it would be worthwhile to map the police responses by location/beat, a step Wong said could not be completed in the tight time frame. The beat would be especially helpful since both the City audit and the Center for Policing Equity report found the same biased policing of people of color. 

The “reimagining” task force is supposed to look at what part of policing should or could be replaced with mental health and/or social service workers or other positions like the proposed berkDOT , which would move minor traffic violations from police into a new Berkeley Department of Transportation. 

Police data on mental health and homeless is absent or not searchable. Only 11.7% of responses were identified through audit as mental health related. Even a simple check box could improve this reporting.  

I like to finish with what I’m reading. I heard an interview with Tessie Castillo about her journaling class with death row inmates in North Carolina. When Tessie broke with the instructions from her mentor to keep the class secret and wrote an op-ed n the Raleigh News and Observer about seeing the humanity in the prisoners, the prison warden ordered the class to end. Tessie stayed in contact with the prisoners and the journaling continued through exchange of letters. The book Crimson Letters:Voices from Death Row is a compilation of essays from four of the prisoners. The essays are very personal, revealing and worth reading.