Public Comment

It was a very full week and the survival of Ukraine and the Ukrainians hangs over _everything changing minute by minute and hour by hour. It looks like Putin has decided that since the Ukrainians didn’t lie down and welcome the invasion, he will rain down massive destruction until there is nothing left to save. The “Z” on everything Russian presumably representing Zelensky is chilling. 

Locally a lot happened. I heard at the Community for a Cultural Civic Center on Monday that my accidental misreading of a meeting date and publishing that the Civic Arts Commission Visioning Subcommittee was meeting again generated a barrage of pushback from City staff. That clears up where the pressure to stop community planning is generated. The seismic cost estimates are in with $24 million for the Maudelle Shirek (Old City Hall) Building and $20 million for the Veterans Memorial Building. These estimates include finishing only for the seismic retrofits and not finishing, painting, etc for the rest of the buildings. We did not receive the water intrusion cost report. The presentation to council is scheduled for March 22. 

As probably many already heard, the Independent Redistricting Commission voted unanimously in support of the Amber 2 map. Seventeen members of the public attended the zoom meeting and nine spoke. No one opposed the Amber 2 map. There are a few more formalities to step through and the subcommittee is busy finishing their report. The meeting ended at 7:20 pm, early enough to catch the Zero Waste Commission. 

Zero Waste is actually a laudable goal, but attending meetings doesn’t give me any sense that the commission’s current leadership will get us there. This week I picked up an article which said that the world is on track to fill the oceans with so much plastic it will outweigh marine life by 2050. I commented that the commission update on plastic recycling was not helpful to me as a resident. We need direction on what to do. 

We need more ordinary people appointees to the Zero Waste Commission to offset the two who dominate and shut down input from others. Steven Sherman, District 1 appointee, insisted he shouldn’t have to pay for weekly garbage pick-up, because he doesn’t generate enough garbage for weekly pickup. Rather than turning the laborers who do refuse collection into policing who does and doesn’t put out their garbage can for pickup, this could have turned into a teachable moment in how to inform the community on waste reduction, especially since we are doing rather poorly in getting to that zero waste target. Maybe this call-out by name will change the focus from self to community. We can hope. 

The Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability (FITES) Commission took back action on plastic bags from the Zero Waste Commission. That is a good thing. Councilmember Kate Harrison is the FITES Chair and at the Wednesday meeting she spoke about working with Berkeley Bowl to bring ideas forward. 

Number eleven in the Planning Commission agenda was the Approach to Bird Safe Berkeley Requirements. The presentation by Zoe Covello, Assistant Planner, as described last week centered around problematic local ordinances. It was obvious that most (not all – several had been following the issue) of the commissioners did not read the letters from the public nor did it appear they looked independently at the declining bird populations or the American Bird Conservancy website. Commissioners did ask for the science. When Glenn Phillips, the Executive Director of Golden Gate Audubon gave his credentials as a science expert and then proceeded to comment, he was cut off.  

This should be a lesson: As important as letters are as documentation of an issue, don’t expect them to be read. Showing up still matters, even when experts are stymied from presenting facts and science. 

Ben Gould, who was the Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) Chair when the proposed CEAC Bird Safe Ordinance was sent to Council, reminded everyone that it was written over 3 years ago. Then he stated that the American Bird Conservancy model ordinance should be used. 

We think of skyscrapers of being the killer of birds, but the threat of reflective glass and surfaces starts from the ground up. And, that is exactly what we heard from Erin Diehm, who has been following the issue of bird safe glass, bird safe features and dark skies on multiple fronts. 

Those of us who attended and spoke hope we made an impact and the “Approach to Bird Safe Requirements” will come back with the American Bird Conservancy model as the base, with a citywide requirement for 100% of the buildings from the ground up. Even with several commissioners supportive, we can’t expect that action without public pressure. The Planning Commission staff made it very clear that it is the City Manager who determines what is a priority and when staff will return with a finalized version. 

If the City Manager ever comes out pushing for aggressive climate and environmental action, I will need a cupboard full of smelling salts to bring me back from fainting. 

Erin Diehm regularly attends the Design Review Committee, informing committee members on the importance of native plants and habitat and highlighting problem landscape plans that fall below the needed minimum of 70%. In addition, in meeting after meeting, she points to choosing plants that support the leaf chewing insects that become food for birds and complete ecosystems. 

I missed the ceremony for the Urban Forestry Tree Planting Grant at James Kenny Park. There hasn’t been any noticeable success in gaining support from Forestry to plant native trees. As I once heard Erin explain, planting non-native trees and plants can be compared to taking away food from children and replacing it with kerosene. 

On the same day as the tree planting ceremony, the New York Times published https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/03/climate/biodiversity-map.html an article with a map of the places in the “…lower 48 states most likely to have plants and animals at high risk of global extinction…California has the most imperiled biodiversity of any state in the contiguous United States.” When we fill our land with non-native plants, as is happening with most of the trees put into the ground by the City of Berkeley, we are contributing to the problem. The same is true when we take home non-natives for our yards and gardens. Calscape https://calscape.org/ gives us an easy guide to choose wisely. 

Here is the link to check out SARS-CoV-1 RNA Levels in Wastewater in the United States from the CDC. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance Whether the presence and amount of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater is increasing or decreasing is a leading indicator of the direction COVID-19 will take in the community. If you go to the map you will see big gaps in where SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater is being measured. Fortunately for us, there are lots of sites in and around the Bay area, and our dots are blue, indicating declining presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater. 

The coming week is filled with proposals, reports, meetings and a press conference on policing. One of the recommendations from the National Institute for Criminal Justice (NICJR) is guaranteed income or universal basic income for families living in poverty. The report is using pre-pandemic statistics as that is all that is available, but it is still alarming that in this highly educated rich city, where the median “sold” home price is now $1.6 million, so many are living in poverty, 19.1%. The rate of poverty for Alameda County is 14.1%. 

I finished the book Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliot, 2021. It is a hard read and very much worth your time. I wanted so much for Dasani, the homeless eleven-year-old whose life we follow until she is nineteen to break the cycle of poverty, but the story of Dasani is real life. The ties to family even a very dysfunctional one are strong much stronger than opportunity which comes with the price of leaving a known identity, siblings and life behind. One of the reviews I read after I finished by Erika Taylor said of the book “… [it] is sure to linger after the last page is turned.” And, that is so true. 

What do we do differently as a society? We see the homeless in the street, the parks, their tents and want to turn away, but rarely do most of us see homelessness, poverty, hunger, through the eyes of a child. 

Giving cash with no strings attached to low-income mothers with newborns was the last segment featured on Saturday’s PBS Newshour. The New York City guaranteed income program is “The Bridge Project”. Referenced in the segment though not by name was the just published “Baby’s First Years”, the study to understand how poverty reduction affects child development by giving a low-income mother $333 a month versus $20 per month https://www.babysfirstyears.com/ 

The Planning Commission held a public hearing on amendments to Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements on Wednesday evening followed with the same material at the Housing Advisory Commission on Thursday evening. Both commissions listened and responded as if there were ample open land to build affordable housing in this 10 ½ square miles of ground called Berkeley. Not all of that 10 ½ square miles is buildable. 

There is the Hayward fault, hillside slide areas and high fire zones on the east, and liquefaction and a future of rising sea level and groundwater on the west. 

While the law has changed and cities can now require including units for low income households in market rate housing developments(inclusionary housing) rather than allowing payment of fees in-lieu of including units, neither commission endorsed this. That should leave one wondering just exactly how Berkeley will meet the state requirement for 43% (3854) of the 8934 units required to be built between 2023 and 2031 to be for extremely low and low-income households. Both commissions accepted the staff-recommended in-lieu fee structure by square foot instead of per unit and the recommended fee amount, despite a healthy showing of housing developers insisting on lower fees and exceptions at the Planning Commission. 

I have yet to see plans for six, seven and eight story multi-use projects pop up in District 5 along Berkeley commercial corridors like Solano from Curtis to The Alameda. There is, of course, the price of land and current zoning, but spreading moderate density housing with inclusionary units throughout the entire city, not just the formerly redlined areas, would be an interesting move. Maybe that is a better approach to changing the face of Berkeley and biased policing than surveillance and programs hinting at “stop and frisk” for South and West Berkeley. Which brings us to the February 2 incident at the Berkeley Drop-in Center. 

The attached letter describing what happened on February 2, 2022 to the Program Manager at the Berkeley Drop-in Center was forwarded to me. There is a Press Conference scheduled for 4 pm Monday and you can bet I will be tuned into zoom to watch it. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82998271252?pwd=TW5pUFVYNHorLzYwZXlwTUJTeDRWZz09