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City Council leaves for spring recess from March 27, 2024 through May 6. A six-week spring recess seems to be an unusual length of time, but I couldn’t be happier to see council meetings disappear from my weekly Activist’s Calendar. 

At the Tuesday March 19 council meeting, Mayor Arreguin connected from Mexico by ZOOM and Vice Mayor Wengraf was present in person to run the show. I can’t recall a meeting she has previously attended in person since pre-pandemic though I think there was one. 

I keep thinking I should show up to council in person to capture the atmosphere in the room, but the convenience of walking over to my computer instead wins out every time. 

The person controlling the media cancels out the chanting in the room so the closest I get to the room atmosphere is counting the speakers for each side of a ceasefire resolution proposal and the pleas from the dais to the attendees to control themselves. 

My niece was shocked to learn the mayor and councilmembers in Berkeley are opposed to a ceasefire resolution. She told our book club even Minneapolis voted for a ceasefire. As of Monday evening March 25, so has our neighboring city to the north, Albany. 

Albany used community meetings to open discussion and develop a ceasefire resolution to bring to council which they passed unanimously. As I reported in the last Activist’s Diary, I was told by a commissioner that Berkeley councilmembers pressured their appointees on the Peace and Justice Commission to drop the planning for a community forum on Israel and Palestine. 

The count for speakers on non-agenda items at the March 19 council meeting was fourteen for a ceasefire resolution, three for the council not to take no action (these are the speakers who oppose a ceasefire) and three on other subjects. 

City Auditor Jenny Wong noted the status report from the Department of Public Works on “Fleet Replacement Fund Short Millions & Rocky Road: Berkeley Streets At Risk and Significantly Underfunded” was under Information Reports on the agenda, an unbearably long title to say that our streets are crap and there is no cohesive plan for replacing city owned trucks, cars, etc. I characterize Berkeley streets as the city’s answer to permeable paving. 

There are two petitions being circulated by community groups on Berkeley streets. One is called “Fix the Streets”, found on the website “Berkeleyans for Better Planning”. https://www.berkeleyansforbetterplanning.org/ The other is called “Safe Streets”, on the website “Berkeley Citizens for Safe Streets”. https://www.berkeleysafestreets.com/home  

Whichever one passes in November with at least 50% and the most votes will prevail. Both are parcel taxes which will show up on the property owners’ tax bills. Property owners with very low income can apply for an exemption from parcel taxes. 

I was going to do an in-depth side by side comparison into the difference between the two petitions, but I have decided to make a lighter comparison now though somewhat more detailed than you may wish. 

Since we won’t be voting on the petitions until November we have plenty of time to make up our minds. 

For right now the task is gaining signatures. I am on the “Fix the Streets” side. Please sign that petition. 

The “Fix the Streets” parcel tax is 13 cents on “improvements” on a parcel (property) and it includes repairing/replacing sidewalks with 100% of the cost paid by the city, not the 50/50 sharing between the city and property owners that exists now. Fix the Streets is the same tax for all property owners. 

For renters who never see property tax bills, this will be another line on the long list of add-ons (I counted 32 on my bill). Property taxes begin with the gross assessment of the land value and improvements (buildings). 

Under Proposition 13 the gross assessment starts with 1% of the purchase price (used as the assessed value) and then increases by no more than 2% per year. Change of ownership or new construction will trigger reassessment. Any property that has not changed hands since before 1975 uses the 1975 value as the base. 

Parcel taxes can be a flat tax per parcel with all property owners having the same fee or they can be based on the size of the parcel or the size of improvements i.e. the size of the buildings or livable space. Parcel taxes can be a split roll, where the amount of the tax varies with the use of the parcel, i.e. residential versus commercial. Parcel taxes are not based on the assessed value of the property. Bond measures also appear in the list of add-ons. 

When I spoke with Jim McGrath, who is instrumental in the “Fix the Streets” ballot initiative, a big concern was using the best estimates of the cost to fix our deteriorating streets and sidewalks and how long it would take to complete the task. He expressed his concern for all the small independent businesses that are still struggling. That is why the “Fix the Streets” group uses the same 13 cents per square foot for all property owners regardless of use (residential or commercial). The PCI (Pavement Condition Index) to bring all street to a PCI of 70 (good condition) is for the entirety of a given street not the average. The parcel tax is for twelve years. 

I have my bias. I’ve had a driver’s license for over 60 years. I’ve driven in all kinds of weather and road conditions all over this country, across Europe, the German autobahn and even in the center of Rome in congested 5 pm traffic. I was the caregiver for a wheelchair dependent partner and the gdriver of our disability- modified van. I had a parent who was in constant bone pain for whom walking any distance was painful and difficult. And, I’ve had my own personal experiences with injuries, casts, crutches, splints, boots, slings. I’m up to thirteen lifetime fractures. These days I mostly walk for exercise and to be a good climate citizen, leaving using my car for times when walking or BART doesn’t work. 

As I look at who and what is being done in the name of Vision Zero (reducing traffic injuries to zero) some of it is great, some good and some would fall into the “what were you thinking”category. I see an absence of disabled mobility-limited persons and their caregivers in creating and evaluating plans for street infrastructure. I see bicycle enthusiasts filling the center of transportation planning and as participants and endorsers of the “Safe Streets” ballot initiative. 

Until the big Hopkins Corridor Plan blew up, emergency and evacuation routes and the Fire Department were kind of an afterthought, if considered at all in such plans. See “What Has Happened with Hopkins and Why” from April 10, 2023 in the Berkeley Daily Planet for a bigger explanation. https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2023-04-09/article/50248?headline=What-Has-Happened-with-Hopkins-and-Why--Kelly-Hammargren 

The “Safe Streets” ballot initiative is a “split roll” which means that the residential rate is 17 cents per square foot and the non-residential rate is 25 cents per square foot. With “Safe Streets” our neighborhood stores and restaurants will pay almost double the “Fix the Streets” parcel tax, not just big corporations like Bayer and Sutter. Sidewalk repair/replacement billing stays at 50/50 between the property owner and the city. The PCI is the “average”, which means that a street can have potholes in one section and be repaired in the rest, but as long as it averages out it will meet the repair criteria. “Safe Streets” also includes infrastructure to the streets like bus lanes, loading platforms, etc. This is where I worry we will get the “what were you thinking” kinds of changes to our streets. This parcel tax runs for fourteen years. 

Cities always love more money. You will probably see the electeds and other politicians jumping for enthusiasm around “Safe Streets” and certainly bicyclists with their infrastructure change wishes support it. As for the “Safe Streets” promise in the ballot initiative not to use “Safe Streets” funds for bicycle lanes on Hopkins, there is nothing stopping the city from adding in money from the general fund to finish the job without the new parcel tax . 

There is a lot that is going to change in the coming decade. I would really prefer we weren’t put in this bind of choosing one or the other now, but here we are. I am on the “Fix the Streets” side as that does the most good with the least risk of “what were you thinking?” and puts better oversight and evaluation into the mix. 

Last Saturday on Livable California’s Zoom conference review of legislation, one of the attendees said that since Los Angeles implemented “Vision Zero” pedestrian deaths have increased. 

Karen Parolek, who is the chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Commission, member of Walk Bike Berkeley and co-founder and president of Opticos Design, Inc was listed as a planner in the presentation to the Commission on Aging on Wednesday on Missing Middle Housing and Zoning Measures. On LinkedIn her education is listed as a B. Arch, Architecture and Graphic Design from the University of Notre Dame. 

The examples in her presentation of Missing Middle housing, which is duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes, was filled with lovely pictures of buildings surrounded by yards that were inviting and fit into neighborhoods. 

Berkeley is already an incredibly dense city, built up with little space between houses, back yards with small apartment buildings, ADUs/cottages and a shortage of parks. The push is to pack even more in, reducing separations between buildings and setbacks (the space between buildings and the lot line). 

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I wish what Parolek was presenting was where we are going. It is not. Unfortunately, what I see coming out of the City of Berkeley’s gPlanning Department, Planning Commission and the YIMBYs (the group funded by big tech and real estate industry that is pushing building more everywhere) is zoning changes for the city council to approve covering as much land as possible with new developments. 

March 19 was the last day of filing an appeal of the Landmarks Preservation Commission NOD (Notice of Decision) for 2274 Shattuck Avenue currently the closed United Artists movie theater. When 2274 Shattuck is demolished for a student housing project, the only hint of its former use will be what little is left of the movie marquee in the Shattuck-facing façade of the new project. 

In Berkeley, the city that was formerly known as the center for viewing independent and foreign film, only the Elmwood is left, with three screens, unless you count the single screening room in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). In the last few years 20 film screens went to the chopping block to be demolished. This is an enormous loss. 

The item of the evening that drew a crowd to respond was the single action item 9 on the agenda “Adoption of a Master License Agreement Template for the Non-Exclusive Installation of Small Cell Telecommunications Facilities on City Owned and Maintained Streetlight Poles in the Public Right-of-Way”. Councilmember Hahn ggmotioned to move the item to consent, but Councilmember Bartlett intervened, saying that many people had shown up to speak and Council should hear them. 

There were 24 speakers. I was one. My issue was not Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), I thought the contract should have been beefed up to cover the city’s responsibility if a light pole with equipment on it needs to be removed for public safety in a weather or other emergency. That situation does not allow for the contract-prescribed 10-day notice. The other speakers were there to declare their EHS symptoms and object to the contract. 

The best article I found on Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) is from the NIH National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7201940/ 

The article is long. The symptoms the speakers declare are real, but linking the symptoms to electromagnetic fields (EMF) as the cause is where research, studies and science come up empty. 

You can put me down with my RN credentials as an EHS, EMF skeptic, however a friend reminded me that birds and other species in nature migrate by electromagnetic fields. There is a lot to learn about the world we live in. Just pick up Ed Yong’s wonderful book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Chapter 11 is Magnetic Fields. 

The Master Lease passed with a yes by everyone present. 

In my Friday morning podcasts it was “ceasefire” whiplash,with Phyllis Bennis on Democracy Now going right into the word salad in the U.S resolution for the U.N. Security Council that uses the words “immediate ceasefire” while not actually calling for a ceasefire. 

Over the weekend Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, called out the U.S. as playing games and the U.S. vetoes to a ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council as a disgrace. 

As I am finishing up on Monday, March 25, 2024, the U.S. abstained instead of casting a veto allowing the UN Security Council to pass a resolution for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel Hamas War. Russia and China were unsuccessful in inserting/keeping the word “permanent” with ceasefire so it is only during Ramadan. 

Even with that resolution nothing is stopping the number of bombing and raids climbing with more Palestinian deaths and injuries. 

I will continue to send back requests for campaign donations with no money and the words “permanent ceasefire” and “stop arming Israel” a practice I shared with a friend who says she throws them in the trash. 

By Friday night I had had watched clips of the disgraceful attacks by Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz on President Biden’s nominee on Adeel A. Mangi who would have been the first Muslim American federal appellate judge. But, it was the Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masteo of Nevada who sank the nomination by saying she would not vote for Adeel followed by Senator Joe Manchin. 

There seems to be a continuous string of investigations into anti-Semitism. The ceasefire mural Free Palestine by Berkeley High students was item 2 in the March 27 City Council closed session as anticipated litigation. 

I looked up the list of Jewish judges. It is long covering screen after screen. Elena Kagan is the eighth Jewish Supreme Court Justice. I found three Muslim American judges in the federal court system and now none will have advanced as far as the federal appeals court. According to online sources about 2% of Americans identify as Jewish and 1.1% of Americans identify as Muslim. 

I finally finished Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman published in 2019. I switched to the audiobook a long 26 hours and then back to the ebook to take notes for my reading journal. The book carries the reader through assassination after assassination: how methods for killing succeeded or failed, who approved them and how techniques became more sophisticated through the years, stopping occasionally to include those who were tortured by the Israelis before being murdered. The book is brutal. When drones were added to their killing repertoire, I thought about how the U.S. used drones to kill in the war in Afghanistan. 

As the book closes Bergman writes of his last conversation with Meir Dagan who transformed the Mossad. After all Dagan had done directing the Israeli assassination killing machine, at the end of his life as he was dying of cancer, Dagan concluded that only a political solution with the Palestinians, the two state solution, could end the 150-year conflict.