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To the Editor: 

As might be expected, the community has formed various alliances around the simple proposal to modify height limits of buildings for a 10-year period. (Even these limits can be amended by a two-thirds vote of the City Council.) 

The confrontation is between those who would like Berkeley’s thriving residential neighborhoods to continue and those who want to disrupt the communities by imposing 50-foot, bulky projects more appropriate in the downtown. Opponents of the height limits are mainly development-oriented politicians (both on the left and right), the Chamber of Commerce, the League of Women Voters and Smart Growth planners. This is a similar group to the one that forecast gloom and doom for Berkeley when the Neighborhood Preservation Initiative was on the ballot. But 30 years later the city still benefits from the preservation provisions. 

Martha Nicoloff 

co-author of height initiative 

Berkeley