Public Comment

My neighbor and I are out looking in anticipation for little bites in the leaves of the plants in the strip between the sidewalk and the street. I call it the median, though a new friend constantly corrects me that the median is in the middle of the street. The strip has many names like road verge, parkways, medians, berms, hellstrip. It’s really owned by the city, but we’re responsible for maintaining it. 

I got help to dig up, pull out the weeds in my strip and my neighbor hired the same “helper” to take out the concrete. We’ve been going to the native plant stores and put in native plants, for birds, butterflies and caterpillars. We thought we had lost the caterpillars, but I got a text there were two. I’m thinking, I might have to put up a sign on the sidewalk, “caterpillar crossing” when they leave the plants to form their chrysalis and return as a butterfly. I planted the pipevine inside the front yard. 

Erin Diehm who introduced me to the thrill of native plants said it might be three or four years before I see the pipevine caterpillars and the black and iridescent blue pipevine butterflies. In pre-pandemic days as we walked together to the downtown Y, she would point out the yards with native plants with skippers, bees and butterflies and she would point out the yards with non-native imported plants as dead zones with no pollinators flitting from plant to plant. 

I shudder when I think of both the massive and focused herbicide and pesticide spraying to maintain big green lawns when I visit family in the Midwest. This along with monoculture, alien 

/non-native plants, urban sprawl, glass architecture and climate change is why we’ve lost a third of the birds in North America and are sitting on the edge of the collapse of nature. 

With all the swirling bad news, finding caterpillars is brightening my day. 

When I see the development plans at the Design Review Committee (DRC) and Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB), I feel like the designs are for a past that is gone, not a warming future especially not an excessive heat warning day. Those building plans with bedrooms with no windows become deadly in a power failure. 

The 1598 University project (the bedrooms have windows) came back for final design approval to DRC on May 16 with a new architectural firm DJR out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. DRC rejected the changes DJR made to the design by Trachtenberg Architects and sent them back to the drawing board. DJR returned on June 20 bringing back the featured shading over windows and full samples of the exterior finish. The building exterior/finish was much improved, but landscape plans had a row of Canary pines. 

Mary Muszynski, MLA (Master of Landscape Architecture) is the DRC member with the responsibility for assessing and advising on project development landscape plans. 

Muszynski addressed the Canary pines in a way that was a first for DRC. She said that Canary pines are a highly flammable tree with resin and even though 1598 University is in the flats and not in one of the very high fire hazard severity zones, highly flammable trees should not be planted next to residences. 

Muszynski also asked DJR to reduce cultivars and increase native plants. 

It is summer, it is hot, we need to think and act differently which takes us to the property insurance crisis in the very high fire hazard severity zones (VHFHSZ). 

First to the Insurance Crisis Panel arranged by Councilmember Wengraf. 

I live in the formerly redlined area of Berkeley, the flats, not the wildland urban interface (WUI) or in fire zone 2 (Berkeley Hills) or 3 (Panoramic Hill). 

Here are my takeaways from the webinar: 1) If you own property in one of the high risk wildland urban interface fire areas or happen to sit in the same zip code, when you get that homeowner insurance policy cancellation notice or giant rate hike, check if you can change your status through home hardening measures (measures to make your property more resistant to wildfire). 2) Get to work immediately to find a replacement even if the actual cancellation may still be a couple of months or more away. 3) If you find an insurer the advice is jump on it as the offer can quickly slip away. 4) When all else fails, there is the California Fair Plan. 5) The California Fair Plan is intended to be temporary while searching for an insurer and may not (more like will not) offer the full coverage homeowners seek in normal circumstances. 

Though the name California Fair Plan makes it sound like it is a State of California sponsored backstop it is not. 

You can watch the Insurance Crisis webinar at https://youtu.be/76TV56X3dLk?si=GVAHverDe632u5Hk 

There wasn’t a lot of detail on the California Fair Plan by the panel. For a better understanding of the Fair Plan, Livable California sponsored an in-depth session which can be watched at: https://youtu.be/OWCewh-_26g?si=Czvbxeeeel2FOW8G&t=1 

The property insurance crisis is much broader than just California and Florida. ‘How ‘Kitty cats’ are wrecking the home insurance industry” by Jake Bittle originally published in Grist and republished in the Guardian gives a taste to how the cumulative impact of smaller catastrophic storms fueled by climate change are hitting the home insurance markets in the Midwest, plains and south. https://grist.org/extreme-weather/home-insurance-midwest-climate-disasters/ 

None of this is good news. 

When catastrophic events hit, they make a splash in the news cycle for a couple of days and then disappear. In Jake Bittle’s book The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, Bittle takes us into the personal stories of how people’s lives and community are impacted and changed from the Four Horsemen of the Anthropocene, fire, heat, drought and flood. This book is definitely worth reading and not just because the section on fires is close to home, the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa and the Camp fire that destroyed Paradise. As for floods, I will never look at Houston the same way.  

If you don’t have a TV with connection to CNN or didn’t watch the series Violent Earth you can still watch episode 2 Wildfire for $1.99+ https://www.vudu.com/content/browse/details/Violent-Earth-Wildfire/3305747