Public Comment

In the September 25, 2022 edition of the Activist’s Diary, I ended with a recommendation of the book The Privatization of Everthing by Donald Cohen and Alan Mikaelian. If you watched any of forecasts of hurricane Ian, this was made possible through government funding of the National Weather Service (NWS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center and the international cooperation of 193 countries to provide free and unrestricted weather each day. It is an amazing feat. 

Free access to NOAA, weather forecasts was close to lost if Barry Meyers, former CEO of AccuWeather, brother to Joel Meyers, founder of AccuWeather, a private forecasting company, had made his way as a Trump appointee to head up NOAA. It was sexual harassment lawsuits that brought Barry Meyers down, but that still hasn’t stopped private companies like AccuWeather from taking free government funded service and monetizing weather forecasts and suing the government to secure profiteering. 

Next time you use AccuWeather, remember the Meyers brothers, how Barry Meyers in his advisory capacity on the NWS Board in 2017 killed the NWS work on a mobile ap, or maybe you will be like me and do your best to avoid AccuWeather. AccuWeather is just a rehash of all that data collected through international cooperation and our own government. Google is filled with accolades for AccuWeather and links to direct you there. 

The 3 x 3 Committee (3 council members and 3 Berkeley Housing Authority members) was the only City committee to meet during Rosh Hashanah. All other meetings were pushed to Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mayor Arreguin announced at the 3 x 3 that five groups have been selected as potential developers for the North Berkeley BART station and mentioned a November 10, 2022 meeting to review the developers, but these days announced meetings get squishy with short notices, cancellations and rescheduling. The previously announced meeting on bolstering oversight for Measure L is now forecast (but not posted) for 4 pm October 11. 

Concerned citizens need to keep a finger on the city website https://berkeleyca.gov/ to avoid missing important meetings posted at the last possible minute. 

Selection of developers for the Ashby BART station per the mayor is postponed until the Fall of 2023 while air rights and the location of the Ashby Flea Market are worked out. Meetings on planning for the Adeline Corridor Ashby BART Station resume on Monday, October 3 (check Activist’s Calendar or City Website for virtual meeting links). 

Once previously settled plans offered up from the City seem to be unraveling. 

At the Agenda Committee on Wednesday, Councilmember Hahn with co-sponsor Wengraf submitted, “Reconsideration of the Hopkins Corridor Plan in Light of Newly Available Material Information” for the October 11 City Council meeting. It is posted as Agenda item 23 and puts a hold on the May 10, 2022 City Council action for the street redesign of traffic, parking, and bike lanes on the section of Hopkins from McGee to Gilman. This section of Hopkins contains the shops, Monterey Market and created the public uproar. 

Sam Kaplan-Pettus attended the Environment and Climate Commission to request the addition of a Youth appointee to the commission in addition to the nine appointees by the mayor and council. The commission voted to approve the proposal, but the comment that caught my attention was when Sam Kaplan-Pettus said, “I think a lot of the work that commissions do is symbolic, because City Council doesn’t actually have to listen to us.” How true. That insight is one to remember when reviewing whatever is passed by City Council to rescue Measure L. 

Later in the Environment and Climate Commission meeting Kurt Hurley (new city employee) gave a presentation on the new building codes and recommendations as to whether council should exceed the new state codes. The recommendation that EV charging parking spaces be set at 5% (minimum state standard) in new construction met with firm resistance that 5% is wholly inadequate. Range anxiety is already an issue in converting to EV. Certainly, requiring the minimum number of spaces be devoted to EV charging stations will not get the City or us to where we need to be in transitioning to EV. Additionally, fewer charging stations pushes bigger heavier batteries to power vehicles longer distances between scarce charging sites. 

I’ve lost count of the number of Fire Chiefs and interim chiefs since I started attending the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. The newest interim Fire Chief is David Sprague. Sprague gave an enthusiastic presentation of using Measure FF funds to expand and reorganize Fire Department services with filling vacancies a continuing challenge. There was not much response from commissioners as they absorbed the overview of the new plans. 

Sprague was asked about fire prevention inspections. Sprague answered currently properties are inspected only as far as is visible from the front. Back yards in fire zones are not inspected. This was not the desired answer. 

Year-end financial reports were included in the agenda packet for FF and GG. Whatever the voters might have thought Measure FF (2020), wildfire prevention and preparedness, and Measure GG (2008), fire protection and emergency response, covered, these measures are primarily used for the cost of staffing and related benefit expenses. https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/boards-commissions/disaster-and-fire-safety-commission 

The Disaster and Fire Safety Commission closed with what is hard to describe as anything more than the two ladies reading rapidly through their power point presentation for meeting number two out of three meetings for creating a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/community-wildfire-protection-plan 

Looking at the May 2020 FEMA paper on Creating a Community Wildfire Protection Plan, the three scheduled CWPP meetings for the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission may fulfill some requirement. However, it doesn’t look like this is what the U.S. Fire Administration and FEMA had in mind. https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/creating_a_cwpp.pdf 

The Multi-Commission meeting on the Civic Center Vision Plan Project on Thursday morning felt a little thin when it came to commission attendees. Erin Diehm was present from Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, Lisa Bullwinkel and Liz Ozol from Civic Arts Commission and Steve Finacom from Landmarks Preservation Commission. Susi Mazuola went through her slide presentation stopping after each section (Veterans Building, Maudelle Shirek and Civic Center Park) for comments from commissioners leaving 8 minutes at meeting end for the public comment. The meeting was not recorded which is a shame and typical for the City when minds are made up and public meetings are perfunctory. 

There were good suggestions and some definite criticisms. New council chambers are definitely part of the plan. 

Should these come up again, the presentation of adding a signal in the middle of the block between Allston and Center for pedestrians was strongly rejected. The suggestion to close Center street to traffic was countered with the problem that there needs to be dropoff/pickup at the entrance to the Veterans Building. Allston Way is an important street for east-west bound traffic to and from the downtown and should remain open. External buttressing of the Maudelle Shirek Building is far more desirable than basement bracing which would eliminate the potential for useful community space. The Maudelle Shirek building should be a center for community space, the historical society and community organizations and not city offices. Big trees in the heart of the city should be preserved. Diehm asked for cost comparisons between the levels of seismic stabilization for the buildings. That information was not provided. Lisa Bullwinkel suggested a sculpture garden in front of the Maudelle Shirek Building. Those representing the Arts requested that the level of external seismic buttressing of the Veterans Building be upped to BPON+. 

A number of members of the public requested exploration of daylighting the creek, which Diehm described as magical. And I learned that daylighting creeks, an international movement in building resiliency to climate change, has roots in Berkeley. 

You can see the presentation from the September 29th meeting at the Civic Center Vision Plan Project at https://berkeleyca.gov/your-government/our-work/capital-projects/civic-center-vision-plan-project and email your responses to civiccenter@cityofberkeley.info Any emails I send will also include council@cityofberkeley.info and sustainableberkeleycoalition@gmail.com as all too often comments from meetings and emails on City projects seem to get lost in the ether and never see the light of day if they challenge already determined City decisions. 

Lori Droste wrote in her newsletter that IKE Smart Kiosks would not be coming to Elmwood. The members of the Elmwood Business Improvement District Advisory Board voted against the placement of IKEs. So it was interesting that at the Friday morning Elmwood Business Improvement District Advisory Board meeting, Kieron Slaughter, City of Berkeley Office of Economic Development, announced the planning of placement of an IKE Smart Kiosk at College and Ashby and College and Alcatraz. I checked the map to see if I was imagining that the intersection of College and Ashby was in Elmwood and, of course, Elmwood is plastered right over Ashby and College on the Berkeley online map. So much for neighborhood and business wishes when City minds are made up. 

The business improvement district boards across the city are pretty lacking in members. Elmwood has only three members and only two attended on Friday; the chair is on maternity leave. 

One of the members was complaining of the difficulty of keeping tree wells cleaned up and free of weeds. I was waiting for the person from the City Manager’s office to say something, but nothing until after I raised my hand and spoke to the flexi-pav and rubberway product used on University by BodyRox. Then Slaughter mentioned it was also used at the Downtown Y. 

For the less than handful of times I have attended any of these business improvement district meetings it is obvious why it is so hard to give up any time to attend one. Why should anyone sit on an advisory board and give up time for a City of Berkeley meeting that blows off business requests (IKE Kiosks) and with city staff that don’t share innovations from other areas (flexi – pav) and don’t offer to connect business owners and representatives to the person (Scott Ferris) in the city that could help solve their problem? 

I would love to be writing an Activist’s Diary filled with creative, innovative, engaging, forward thinking actions by City Council and City Administration. Sadly, those actions are few and far between and when something good does come along, sharing doesn’t seem to enter the picture. 

The closest we got to City Council listening to the public was Thursday evening at the appeal hearing of 1201 – 1205 San Pablo Use Permit #ZP2021-0070 ZAB. The planned project is a 6-story mixed-use building on a vacant lot with 66 units (including 5 very low income units), 1680 sq ft of commercial space, 2614 sq ft of usable open space, and 17 to 28 ground-level parking spaces. The project takes advantage of California SB 330 which limits the number of public meetings for review to five and is able to exceed zoning height limits by two floors because of including five very low income units. The neighbors limited their appeal to moving the building parking garage entrance to San Pablo and planting 36” box trees as a barrier instead of 24” box trees. 

One attendee zoomer complained that holding the hearing was a waste of time, but this time council came through and listened. Council voted that the project proponent shall contact CalTrans to request the garage door open on San Pablo and if that is permissible for the architect to redesign the project to relocate the driveway to San Pablo. The neighbors got their 36” box trees and that negotiations on the solar shaded by the project continue. Robinson’s attempt to limit moving the garage door to only if a traffic study proved it to be safer rather than if CalTrans determined moving the garage door was permissible was quickly slapped down by Arreguin. 

Council was sharply criticized for not establishing objective standards to protect solar as neighboring cities have done. 

In closing, Holding the Line: Inside the Nation’s Preeminent US Attorney’s Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department by Geoffrey Berman was just released September 13, 2022 and I have already finished the audiobook from the San Francisco public library. The San Francisco library is simply amazing for access to just published books. 

There are quite a number of reviews of Berman’s book Holding the Line focusing on Bill Barr and the telling by Berman of how the justice department was weaponized under Trump. You need to read all the way through to the end to get the full picture. Descriptions laying out how Bill Barr threw his weight around to advantage Trump and Trump cronies and attempts to “even things out” were spattered through the book. 

Berman paints a picture of the work of SDNY (Southern District of New York) through indictments, like the way they closed in to end the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking operation and to deal with Laurence Doud III, CEO of Rochester Drug Co-Operative (RDC) , in the opioid crisis. There is the back and forth in the Halkbank indictment as Erdogan swung in and out of Trump’s favor. Barr’s involvement in George H. W. Bush’s pardons to dismantle indictments in the Iran Contra affair should leave his meddling in justice under Trump as no surprise, but the ending still carries quite a punch.