Public Comment

It has begun. The race for the California State Senate seat is on. Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin will be filling out his dance card in his run for State Senate. Nancy Skinner is termed out. https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Candidates/list.aspx?view=intention&electNav=124

Some rumors have State Senator Nancy Skinner coming back to Berkeley to run for mayor with the rumored reason being her retirement income isn’t enough. The other rumor is that Skinner and Arreguin will be endorsing each other to change places. I hear second hand Berkeley Councilmember Sophie Hahn also has her eyes on running for mayor.

Barbara Lee seems to be falling for the lure of running for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat; we can expect a feeding frenzy for Lee’s House seat. I hope Lee comes to her senses and finishes out her career in the House rather than going down with a loss in a statewide race and leaving us with a list of unsatisfactory choices to fill her shoes in Congress. Nancy Pelosi endorsed Adam Schiff, but I am hearing from friends that they are supporting Katie Porter. Even my out-of-state sister wanted to talk this week about how great Katie Porter would be as a California Senator.

Age keeps coming into the picture with President Biden, who is now 80. (I do support a second Biden term, though after reading Amy Klobucher’s book Antitrust I wish she was VP). Barbara Lee is 76. Adam Schiff is 62. Katie Porter is 49.

This is going to be an interesting year of musical chairs as we move to the March 2024 California primary.

I have long speculated that Arreguin’s actions revolved around his next career move. Since the holders of the money to fill the dance card weigh heavily in the real estate industry (including developers/builders/construction), should we expect more compromising sounding language from the dais that does nothing in order not to offend those campaign contributors? 

There was a lot of writing from the dais by Arreguin on the appeal of 2065 Kittredge by the union workers at the last City Council meeting. In the end all that language, all those flowery sounding amendments for working and hiring conditions got them nothing. The project developer, Bill Shrader, with owners incorporated as CA Student Living Berkeley, LLC of the international Student-Living – CA Ventures, walked away with the only requirement of turning in an affidavit of how many union workers and local workers within 10 miles actually worked at the job site when the building is finished. 

Arreguin’s Hard Hat ordinance about conditions and protections for workers, the center of the worker appeal, ended up as a referral to the city manager. A lot of what happens at the Berkeley City Council are referrals that leave the public believing something was actually accomplished, when it is just another line on someone’s or some commission’s referral list. 

The first test for Arreguin, now that his intent to run for State Senate is in the open, will be tomorrow, Tuesday evening, February 14k at the regular City Council meeting, as Agenda Item-13, Citywide Affordable Housing Requirements. The vote from January 17 on affordable housing has to be redone to correct the language. Will Arreguin go for the Taplin-Humbert proposal that gives even bigger discounts through expanded exemptions to the developers than the first round on the affordable housing in-lieu mitigation fee, or will Arreguin stand with Councilmember Harrison’s 13b. Revised Material and look out for Berkeley’s best interests, eliminating discounts and limiting exemptions? 

If you missed or forgot what happened with the first go around on changing the in-lieu fee to being calculated by square feet instead of counted by units, that was summarized in the January 22 Activist’s Diary https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-22/article/50158?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-week-ending-Jan.-22-2023--Kelly-Hammargren 

In case you need a brush up on housing terms, “Housing Buzz Words Explained” can be found here: https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-01-22/article/50157?headline=Housing-Buzz-Words-Explained--Kelly-Hammargren 

At the Monday Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) meeting, Councilmember Kate Harrison informed the group that the results of the Civic Center survey were that the three top priorities for the Civic Center Park are biodiversity, daylighting the creek (restoring the creek to its natural state) and seating in the park. 

Thursday was the Civic Center update to the super commission subcommittee (Arts, Parks, Landmarks and Infrastructure). As all too usual for city meetings, the presentation and slides were not available to the commissioners in advance of the meeting, but they are posted now. https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Berkeley-Civic-Center-presentation-design-concepts-Feb2023_0.pdf 

The consultants have given up the promenade through the center of the park, but they are still holding on to bulb outs and other narrowing alterations to MLK Jr Way at the Civic Center. So far, they are ignoring that MLK Jr Way is an emergency evacuation route. The consultants were weakly open to daylighting the creek, and said they would save existing trees and develop a tree succession plan. 

Landmarks Commissioner Finacom’s long list of comments on the Maudelle Shirek Building included the comment that a new single use council chamber was deadly to gaining public support. Instead it should be a flexible multi-purpose room used by council and for other purposes. And, that with so many city and community activities needing meeting space, creating a public policy center as a new program with space should be a flat no. He also suggested adding a kitchen to make the building usable for events. 

Parks Commissioner Diehm supported Finacom’s comments and added that she understood that an application for a grant on exploring daylighting the creek had already been submitted. Commissioner Cox nixed the consultants’ suggestion of food trucks and said the city should be supporting local merchants. And while he liked the idea of an amphitheater, the topography is the opposite of a natural grade for an amphitheater. 

John Caner pushed a performance center with stage in the park. Wyndy KnoxCarr had questioned how the buildings would be managed. She was also glad to see that the playgrounds for children for younger and older children were together, no longer separated. 

When it came to my turn, I expressed my disappointment that there is not more about connecting the Civic Center to the downtown and expanding the potential for festival space into the downtown. I also commented that so often consultants have a misconception of biodiversity and think that bringing in plants from China and the Mediterranean make it a diverse setting, when what is needed to create and restore intact ecosystems is at least 70% native plants. I was surprised by the number of commenters who followed me on native plants. 

Lawrence Abbott challenged the consultants to reach out to the California Native Plant Society, stating that everything starts with the plants and if non-native plants are used they might as well be plastic, because insects can’t eat the nonnative plants and the entire ecosystem collapses. 

At the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on Wednesday, Planning Director Scott Ferris reported that the T1 funds were short $7 million to $8 million to complete the already approved projects. I asked what happened in the intervening eight days, when Ferris reported to City Council at the special 4 pm meeting on January 31, that the T1 funding gap was $3.2 million to $4.5 million. Ferris said rebuilding the African American Holistic Center made the difference. At the Council meeting Ferris reported that the cost of rebuilding, said to be needed because the proposed existing building is in such bad shape, would be maybe $1 million more than a remodel. 

There were many comments at the T1 special Council meeting that the City was not engaging with the African American community. It certainly appears that with a plan to tear down and rebuild this should be revisited. With this major change in the cost estimate of constructing rather than reuse remodeling, the African American Holistic Center faces more postponements. 

How the 2018 ballots Measure P’s funds for homeless services are being used was the subject of questioning at the Budget and Finance Committee by Councilmember Harrison. She started with asking how a sprinkler system in Old City Hall (Maudelle Shirek Building) fits into Measure P funds when the homeless are sheltered there for a very limited time of the year. Councilmember Kesarwani asked if there was a strategic plan (there isn’t) and what it costs to shelter a person and get a person into permanent housing. 

Everyone can feel better now that the Here/There homeless encampment on Adeline is closed. We don’t have to face the failures of our society as we drive by, and it looks better for the musical chairs mentioned earlier, but the real problem, exposed at the Budget and Finance Committee, is that no one representing the City of Berkeley administration who was present at the Budget meeting (including Dee Williams-Ridley, City Manager, Peter Radu, Assistant City Manager, Lisa Warhuus, Director of Health Housing and Community Services and Joshua Jacobs from Health, Housing and Community Services) seemed to have any idea of how many people are served with Measure P funds. 

The projected expenditures for FY 2023 Measure P funds are $25,482,864. As I called around to check if I was on the right track that there were no reports of persons placed and for how long, I learned that one of the first things approved by the Homeless Services Panel of Experts and approved by Council was spending P funds for housing families and children, but that the program was never implemented. 

The other piece missing is when homeless people are housed, how many end up back on the street without shelter and how soon that happens. 

Reading meeting agendas as I do for the Activist’s Calendar and attending as many city meetings as I can to report back to you, the Homeless Services Panel of Experts, which was supposed to oversee Measure P funds, seems to be a pass through for however the city administration has decided to allocate the funds. What I think we should all know is how many individuals were helped by the various programs, how many were moved off the street, how many were placed in housing and how many of those placed are still in housing at six months, one year, two years and five years. And when it comes to children, being homeless as a child is the path to being homeless as an adult. 

The Zoning Adjustment Board had only three items on the agenda, no big projects. They all passed on consent and the meeting ended at 7:41 pm. The big multi-unit projects including 2190 Shattuck, the 25 story project at the current Walgreens site, come this week to the Design Review Committee. 

The book finished this week was The Complete Guide to MEMORY: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind by Richard Restak, MD. It was filled with memory exercises and the recitation of brain science that didn’t strike my interest. I almost sent it back to the library unfinished, but kept reading in the hope that the book would get better and it did. 

In the last two chapters Restak veered off course from memory exercises into politics and the use of disinformation, misinformation and the corrosive effects of falsifications on individual and collective memory, even quoting George Orwell, “Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.” 

Restak followed Orwell with comments on Russia and China and the drive to create a common vision of the past and future, to suppress alternative points of view and then moved on to the U.S. South, how history taught in school, then reported in the media, and how this embeds as true in memory.  

This brings us to what is going on right now in Florida to shutter access to books and classes on Black history. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders dipped into the buzz words to stoke right/conservative fears and anxieties in her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address. She infused her speech with “critical race theory,” “WOKE fantasies,” “indoctrination,” “radical left,” and references to transgender persons with Democrats “can’t define a woman is” all while touting Republicans stand for freedom and normalcy against crazy. Crazy seemed to be a better definition of her own views and speech. Banning books, censuring classes, and taking away the right of women to control their own bodies doesn’t sound like freedom to me. 

My father used to quote Tip O’Neil: always tell the truth, then you don’t have to remember what you said yesterday. Telling the truth doesn’t seem to matter much anymore as new lies replace the old ones. The memory from yesterday is erased and filled with a new version today. 

Restak did not get into how the constant lying and replacing one story with another from “the former guy” fits into memory, but for improving memory he likened it to exercise. Stop depending on our devices and focus. His advice on alcohol is if you are still imbibing at 65, stop, which he followed with citing studies on the impact of alcohol on heart rate, irregular heart rhythms and blood pressure and finished with alcohol is toxic to the brain.