Columnists

I’ve pulled out the bucket to catch water in the shower while my neighbor is watering his roses. It is April 2^nd. The snowpack is 38% of normal for this time of year and the drought map is already showing the entire state of California in drought with large swaths in severe drought (orange) and extreme drought (red). https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ In fact, looking at the drought map, half the country looks to be in trouble and the dry season for the west has just started.

Denial seems to be the skill that most of us do best.

As much as I prefer the convenience of walking over to my computer instead of hauling off to a meeting in person, connecting with others is lost, as is knowing who is in the zoom room audience at city meetings. If the special Design Review Committee (DRC) this week had been in person, there are a lot of questions I would have asked the neighbors who will be backed up to 1201 – 1205 San Pablo at Harrison. The neighbors did not object to construction on the empty corner lot, they welcomed it, but it is the height and size of the project in preliminary design review that left them asking for relief. The little 800 square foot house next door will be dwarfed by the new 6-story building sitting just a few feet from its small yard.

I would have liked to ask whether they knew about the City’s plans to fill the San Pablo corridor with mid-size mixed-use (the description of apartments atop a ground floor of commercial space like restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores) apartment buildings? Did they know when they asked if any of the mature trees on San Pablo would be removed by the project that the city foresters favor: planting smaller non-native imported trees. The same non-native trees that don’t support the insects birds need to feed their hatching young? -more-