Page One

NEW BUS ROUTE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I believe you are throwing the hills into an unnecessary panic. I read the AC Transit description of the new 65 route, and it appears to say—granted, the language is less than easy to decipher—that the 65 will run on weekdays alternately out to the Hall of Science and on the old 8 route, in a loop around Senior, Campus and Shasta.  

It does not say what you reported it to say, that the bus will only run up Euclid, and proceed along Grizzly on “every other weekday.” Common sense should have persuaded Ms. Greenwell, and her editor, to have questioned this “bus every other day” concept. I hope I am correct on this, as I have one person in my family who does not drive and relies on the 65 to get home after work.  

Marian Simpson  

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HARMFUL CONCESSIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In order to balance its budget, one of our city’s best sources of revenue should be sales tax. But our left-leaning City Council majority discourages business by rapidly eliminating parking from our commercial areas. They are preparing to give away city-owned parking lots, worth millions, to their favorite developers. Of course they themselves have free parking downtown, and many city staff have special citywide parking permits.  

Berkeleyans have come up with great suggestions for a better budget. But “the (BCA) powers that be” always do the same old thing—impose fees, fines and taxes, even a tax on our PGE and phone bill. Our taxes and assessments are already the highest in the state! If you feel discouraged about living here and sell your home, expect a hefty property “transfer tax.” 

The politicians waive fees for their favorite developers, who pay no “impact fees” for schools or traffic mitigation as they do in other cities. So our developer fees are among the lowest in the state. Favored developers are also usually given every possible concession such as reduced or no parking, lower setbacks, less open space and increased building height. These concessions are usually harmful to the community.  

You can read about the origins of the BCA’s strategies for controlling Berkeley in the 1976 book by Eve Bach, et al, “The Cities Wealth, Programs for Community Economic Control in Berkeley, California.” Another must read is the 1987 version of “Ecocity Berkeley” by Richard Register (and endorsed by Loni Hancock), whose theorems are now being used to push massive development projects. The book has some good ideas, some humorous ideas and some “Cities Wealth” type ideas clothed in eco-green, but which are mostly about politicians’ and developers’ monetary green.  

Merrilie Mitchell 

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SUPPORT THEATER 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for running the review of “The Bacchae” in your June 24-26 edition. As a member of the cast, I was delighted with the effusive praise from Betsy Hunton. As an actor, I’m delighted whenever a newspaper covers the small theater productions in the Bay Area. While we usually operate with a fraction of a fraction of the budget of a Berkeley Rep or an ACT, I think that, often, the audiences get just as much entertainment and satisfaction from—and are moved just as much by—performances put on by small, local theater companies. That’s a lot of bang for the buck!  

Please continue to cover productions by small, local theater companies and encourage the people of Berkeley and the rest of the Bay Area to share in the magic of live theater. 

Brian Buckley Smith 

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MODEL FOR A NATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Rather than get depressed over the Bush tax cuts, why not collectively redirect the $400 tax break into local services? That would make the Republican idea of local control work for Berkeley, where a majority believe in education and public transportation over war and corporate subsidies.  

I’m pledging $400 to the local schools because I believe in their mission. If we all gave the tax break back to a public service of our choice, we could shed the sense of victimization and again be a model for the nation. 

Eliot Schain 

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ABORTION LAW 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With the bill banning late-term abortion becoming law, it shows that the Democratic Party is taking women voters for granted. In the Senate, the bill to ban later-term abortion was passed with the help of several Democrats, including Minority Leader Tom Daschle. In the House of Representatives, the same bill was passed with the help of several Democrats. All President Bush needs to do is sign it. 

The Democrats didn’t have to defend this procedure. Everyone can agree that it is gruesome. All they needed to do was defend it as a decision that should be up to a woman and her doctor, not anti-choice politicians such as Joseph Pitts, Christopher Smith and Rick Santorum. That’s why I quit the Democratic Party in 1999 and became a registered Green, so I can expose how fake the anti-choice folks in Congress are on their stand on reproductive rights. 

Billy Trice Jr. 

Oakland 

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RENT CONTROL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding Mr. Koenigshofer’s letter to the editor of June 10-12:   

Mr. Koenigshofer’s main argument against rent control, that it interferes with the freedom to contract, can serve as the basis for opposition to minimum wage laws, workplace safety rules, consumer protection regulations—indeed, any public attempt to curb the socially damaging results of leaving the private market (which, after all, consists of a set of contracts between businesses and others) to its own devices. 

In the early days of the 20th century, some judges used Mr. Koenigshofer’s  rationale to overturn the first versions of social legislation: laws protecting female employees against dangerously long work hours. Later on, the judiciary rejected this notion of the sanctity of contracts and recognized that public welfare justifies government intervention in a wide variety of “private” economic relationships. 

At least Mr. Koenigshofer’s line of thinking places rent control where it belongs, as part of the body of sensible economic regulations that have tamed the savage tendencies of laissez-faire capitalism. 

These regulations are under assault from the extreme right. Accepting Mr. Koenigshofer’s logic would take us where some of the more brazen ideologues surrounding George W. Bush want to go, back to the glorious days when unbridled freedom to contract enabled workers to be paid starvation wages, consumers to be poisoned, and renters to be gouged. 

Randy Silverman 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Two years ago, Berkeley Unified hired a new food services director. In the first year of her administration, Food Services lost $800,000. This year, according to BUSD budget reports, Food Services lost $900,000. During this period, food services administrators’ salaries increased by over $100,000 while the entire department has only 35 mainly part-time workers. The three full-time administrators' salaries and benefits total about $250,000. $900,000 would pay for quite a few teachers.  

It’s no secret why Food Services is losing money. In an era where even McDonald’s and Jack in the Box are featuring salads, the new director terminated the popular farmers’ market salad bars as a cost-cutting measure. Instead cottage cheese and cling peaches became staples on the salad bar.  

A very expensive food preparation unit (estimated at $200,000) was purchased and placed on the black top at Berkeley High School. It has cooking facilities, refrigeration, the works. Yet, this food unit only sells pizza, soda, water and juice.  

And in a school of 3,000 students, the director of food services only manages to sell four to six orders of pizza a day. No wonder the department is losing money, hand over fist.  

Two years ago, the director of the very successful Santa Monica program applied for the job, and we didn’t hire him. Santa Monica’s food services has a farmers’ market salad bar in every school. Each school has regular cafeteria staff plus a salad bar manager. The Santa Monica Food Services department is so successful, they fund a school garden volunteer coordinator and a part-time horticulture teacher at their high school.  

How long do we give someone before we decide that this person is not competent. Is two years and a loss of $1.7 million enough? I would much rather have teachers or music or librarians or sports than cottage cheese and cling peaches with a $900,000 bill.  

Yolanda Huang 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Chris Kavanagh (of the Berkeley Rent Board) continues to expose his grandiose self-dellusions in his letter of June 20 when he asserts that the “Rent Board is perhaps the city’s most critical elected body.” Critical indeed if the great function of government is to build useless and counter productive bureaucracies that create and enforce random and unfair regulations.  

Kavanagh, like any good Orwellian Bureaucrat, speaks from the platform of regulatory minutia but never addresses the larger issues of fairness or justice. He never explains the logic of a rent subsidy program that makes no effort to determine whether or not its recipients need or deserve such subsidies. He is apparently indifferent to the terrible injustices arising from the program he enforces and assumes the case by case abuse of citizens is excusable in the service of the board’s ideological predisposition.  

Explain Chris how you justify forcing a landlord to subsidize the housing costs for a tenant who has a higher income than that landlord?  

Explain why you are indifferent to the fact that the policies you enforce have prompted a decrease in small scale, “mom and pop” rental housing and promote a consolidation of such housing in the hands of large, impersonal, corporate type owners?  

Explain Chris why it doesn’t bother you that citizens, relying on their own character and discernment, are prevented by your agency from negotiating agreements with one another and instead subjected to Draconian governmental intrusion?  

Chris, do you not find it ironic and unjust that a senior citizen on a fixed income can be compelled by your agency to provide subsidized housing to an individual who is younger, earns more and comes from a privileged background?  

Do you not comprehend how such ironies and injustices hurt not only their immediate victims but also the broader social contract between government and citizen?  

Lastly, Chris, I am curious, do you or any of the other Rent Board members enjoy benefits of the program you so actively enforce and defend? Simply Chris, how many of you live in rent controlled units? 

John Koenigshofer