Page One
Letters to the Editor
THANK HEAVEN
Editors, Daily Planet:
Thank Heaven!
Mayor Tom Bates heads the most pro-development Berkeley City Council ever, and during his short tenure has ushered in procedures which control and limit democratic process. With the Rules Committee, proposed condensation of commissions and Mayor's Permit Streamlining Task Force, the council is redesigning Berkeley for the benefit of their political machine and not for the well-being of the people who live here.
I make up songs sometimes when I’m working in my garden. My latest is timely and the melody is from the show tune “Thank Heaven!”:
Thank heaven, for council recess!
Those recesses get longer every year!
Thank heaven, for council recess!
The stress is so much less when they’re not here.
Those plans to build the Flatlands to the hilt
They’re even planning buildings where there’s buildings built,
Thank heaven, thank heaven, thank heaven!
Thank heaven, for council recess!
If you’ve noticed City Council meetings end earlier recently, and you thought that was an improvement, think again. Special budget sessions of the council occur at 5 p.m., hours before the regular televised council meetings at 7. This makes it very difficult for citizens to “follow the money” unless they have a computer with “video streaming” and they know what to watch and when.
So I say, thank heaven the council is on a five-week-long spring recess!
Merrilie Mitchell
•
PARKING
Editors, Daily Planet:
Neighborhood residents are right to say the city should reject the plan to remove parking from the west side of San Pablo between Delaware and University during peak hours “to improve traffic flow and capacity.”
This plan almost seems as if it is calculated to hurt Berkeley. It makes it easier for people to drive to Emeryville to go shopping, and it makes the University/San Pablo neighborhood a less attractive place to shop.
Experience shows that the improvement in traffic flow will only be temporary. Within a few years, traffic will increase to fill the added capacity -- for example, because more people will drive out of Berkeley to shop.
Experience also shows that this plan will hurt businesses in this neighborhood. Their customers use this parking. Even more important, this parking is necessary to create a pedestrian-friendly environment. New Urbanist planners have shown that removing on-street parking makes the sidewalks much less comfortable for pedestrians, because it speeds up traffic and because the traffic is right next to the sidewalk. Parked cars make the sidewalk feel safer by acting as a buffer between traffic and pedestrians.
It is surprising that Berkeley is considering this plan when other cities are doing just the opposite: restoring on-street parking to help revive neighborhoods.
Walter Kulash, the traffic engineer of Winter Park, Fla., turned that city’s main street from a failing suburban strip mall into a popular shopping street by adding on-street parking and by changing the zoning to require new buildings to face the sidewalk. Other New Urbanist planners and traffic engineers are doing the same thing, and they agree that restoring on-street parking is a key to reviving shopping streets.
Can it be that Berkeley’s traffic engineers are ignorant of the new thinking in their own profession?
The University/San Pablo commercial neighborhood is beginning to revive, but it still has many vacant storefronts and one vacant, undeveloped lot. Removing parking for even a couple of hours a day could end this neighborhood’s revival.
Let’s not sacrifice this neighborhood to the sort of 1950’s traffic engineering that is totally discredited today.
Charles Siegel
•
TOO PC
Editors, Daily Planet:
The Napa Valley Wine must have a lasting and enduring mental effect on you people in California. Although a local issue, I believe that everyone should remember one point about Thomas Jefferson.
If Jefferson wasn’t around at the time of our country’s founding, you probably would not have the right even to think of taking his name off that school. Judge him not by our time and standards, but by his time and his accomplishments overall.
I guess trade schools named after Ottmar Mergenthal should be renamed because he is of German ancestry and we wouldn’t want to offend anyone affected by World War II. Even though he lived decades before this and was an American citizen as well.
I am just sick and tired or all this Political Correctness Garbage.
Bill Metzger
Baltimore, Md.
•
NOT RELEVANT
Editors, Daily Planet:
Please inform Marguerite Hughes that she needs to find something to do other than to rally behind changing the name of this school. Thomas Jefferson’s owning slaves is as relevant as her depiction of herself as an African American. Neither of these points makes a difference in the history that this man has left behind him.
Shame on her and on the others who put themselves into relations with those who were held in slavery. One should not judge us by the sins of our fathers — especially a founding father. Find something better to do that is cost effective and not so selfish.
R. Klein
Seattle, Wash.
•
DEBATING HISTORY
Editors, Daily Planet:
If the Jefferson School community (what is that, exactly?) and the school board feel that a change of the school’s name would help the children, then so be it. It is ironic (or maybe it’s appropriate) that the change is proposed for a school known for the inclusion and support of all its students and named after a man who sowed the seeds of destruction of his own society, a man who helped start in motion our ever-widening sense of what human dignity means.
In any case, this is just part of a larger, ongoing debate over how to see and teach history, how to open it up for our children without dumbing it down. It’s an important debate and a natural one for a progressive city. But we need to find a better forum to talk about these things above and beyond the latest flap over curriculum, particular teachers or school names. The way it is now, we end up divided and exhausted, each side whispering about the other side’s perfidy. We can do better. They’re watching us.
James Day
•
STAND STRONG
Editors, Daily Planet:
If the Democrats agree the 2000 presidential election was stolen, as Maureen Farrell states (Letters to the Editor, April 15-17), and Gore won by more than 500,000 votes, why remain silent? Why wasn’t the Supreme Court decision challenged by Democratic Party lawyers?
Also, I don’t understand Farrell’s statement that the Dems and Greens should reconcile. They never conciliated in the first place. The Dems never came to the Greens at any point during the election to offer the Greens anything for their votes. Silence is all we get from the Dems on progressive issues raised by the Greens. Instead, the Dems attempted to attract more Republican votes with a centrist platform. Maybe they will reconsider next time around.
The Republicans have hijacked our democratic system and they are flying it into the towers of civil rights and legality. Unless the Democrats can stand up strong to this gang of terrorists, they will steal the next election just like they stole the last one.
In the meantime, I am sticking with the Greens.
Andre Hicks
•
SAVE A TREE
Editors, Daily Planet:
The following letter was addressed to Mayor Tom Bates, the Berkeley City Council and the Berkeley School Board:
I watched with dismay as many trees were cut down to make room for the new Berkeley High School building. Only one on the building’s street perimeter — a good sized oak on Allston just west of Shattuck — was saved, and for well over a year I’ve been concerned about how construction methods have threatened to doom it.
During grading in an early phase of construction, extra soil was mounded around the lower trunk instead of being hauled away. The contractor may not have been aware that a mature tree cannot tolerate having its soil level significantly altered: This change will almost certainly lead to an untimely decline and likely an early death.
Now recent construction beneath and around the tree has further and dramatically worsened its prospects for survival.
For your information, I am not an arborist, but had a landscaping business for 14 years and have an advanced degree in ecological horticulture.
But first, someone with authority has to decide it is worthwhile to save the tree. I hope you agree that it is. I would welcome your ideas on how to proceed, as well as the opportunity to talk about it, by phone or in person, or even to visit the site with anyone concerned, including the contractor or a school district oversight officer.
Donna Mickleson
The Berkeley Daily Planet encourages Letters to the Editor. Please send them to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com, or by mail to 3023A Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705.
