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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two articles on the Mayor’s Task Force on Permitting and Development. This article addresses the task force process; the next article will address the substance of the recommendations. 

As one of thousands of Berkeley citizens who have in recent years been damaged by Berkeley’s runaway development activities, I am finally pleased to report some good news: The Mayor’s Task Force on Permitting and Development, which entered the fray as part of the problem, has emerged as part of the solution. 

The Task Force is now crossing the “t”s and dotting the “i”s on the final draft of its recommendations to the mayor and City Council. The recommendations, running about 40 pages, were hammered out in about 20 difficult—often contentious—meetings since February. Despite a minor misstep here or there, and barring any errors creeping into the final report, the recommendations will bring Berkeley closer to a more fair, constructive, and transparent development process. Even if the recommendations eventually find themselves collecting dust on a back shelf, as such reports sometimes do, the discussion and process that created them has itself been invaluable. 

As some readers will remember, the 14-member task force, heavily laden with developers and developer-friendly planners, and 100 percent property owners, began its work geared more toward “streamlining” than toward improving the development process. Several developers and “smart growth” advocates entered the task force flush with victory from defeating the height initiative (Measure P) last election, presuming they had a “mandate” to impose big buildings on Berkeley. Though dogged and outspoken, these voices were eventually overridden by the task force majority’s increasingly inclusive and realistic approach to community problem solving. 

Meanwhile, most of Berkeley’s neighborhood leaders, urban quality-of-life advocates, and preservationists, deprived of any official representation on the task force, could only anticipate the worst from such a body, especially given the mayor’s own development agenda. However, what could have been a total disaster for Berkeley became a constructive experience, due to the good will of all parties, and two other important factors.  

First, the mayor wisely required that the task force recommendations be unanimous or near-unanimous. This forced the majority to heed the minority voices representing neighborhood and community interests. While this consensus requirement inevitably diluted the strength of almost all individual policy recommendations, these mostly modest proposals taken together are still plenty to start reforming the development process in a healthy way.  

Second, citizen activists who had not been invited to the party nevertheless showed up—persistently, regularly, vocally, and on the average in greater numbers than task force members. Consigned to the edge of the room and permitted to speak only briefly at certain times, these citizen observers were forced to communicate to the task force mostly in writing and informal discussions. Although most of the task force found this audience to be an annoyance, that dynamic changed over time. Gradually the task force realized that, although these citizens had no official standing from which to speak and therefore frequently “talked out of turn,” they had something important and constructive to contribute. I (and many others) commend Chair Laurie Capitelli and the task force for gradually including these community voices. Chair Capitelli evolved a style of “benign acceptance” and even solicitation of audience comments, judiciously balancing the important audience input against the decision-making and speaking rights of the official task force members. 

As one of these audience members, I learned a great deal from watching the evolution of this mini-community. Here was a group divided into the “voiced” and the “voiceless,” the empowered and the disempowered. In fact, this is not unlike most sociopolitical systems, even supposedly democratic ones. And ironically, it closely mirrors Berkeley’s current flawed development process itself, where the citizens are disempowered and muted by numerous institutionalized and de facto impediments to effective participation.  

But the task force did not just trample over the concerned citizens, though it had the power to do so. Instead, it tolerated and eventually welcomed the excluded voices and their ideas, crafting recommendations that should advance the development process while minimizing the conflict that is ultimately so expensive in time, resources, and bitterness. As for the citizen observers, they never gave up and eventually proved Margaret Mead right: “that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world”—one step at a time. And I think everyone learned that well-intentioned people with good ideas almost always benefit from face-to-face discussions with each other. 

I wish again to compliment both the task force and the observers for their months of difficult and altruistic service to Berkeley. Mayor’s aide Cisco DeVries deserves credit not only for his excellent and hard work, but for his sincerity in welcoming and enabling participation by the whole community. And Chair Capitelli deserves enormous credit for sensitively shepherding this contentious and complex task to completion. Mr. Capitelli will impress the community even further if he shows the same sensitivity when, on the Zoning Adjustments Board, he casts votes on projects that directly affect the lives of hundreds of citizens. I also hope that the consensus-building method of this task force can set an example for others in positions of apparent power: not only developers and the Planning Department on individual projects, but also the mayor and others with development agendas that exceed what the community has thus far endorsed. And yes, even the University of California might benefit from working cooperatively with the citizens of Berkeley. Imagine that! 

Sharon Hudson is a Berkeley resident.