Berkeley’s proposed parcel tax plan died Monday night, almost exactly 24 hours before City Council was scheduled to approve final language to place the measure on the March, 2004 ballot. 

The decision came shortly after the union representing city’s firefighters—depicted as primary beneficiaries of the controversial measure—declared against the tax.  

Mayor Tom Bates officially killed the $7 million tax around 6 p.m., when he publicly announced that he was requesting that City Council withdraw his proposal. 

“Over the past several weeks,” Bates wrote, “I heard from members of the public, neighborhood groups, unions, and others that the tax measure does not enjoy the support necessary to achieve a two-thirds majority in the March election.” 

It was a severe political defeat for Bates, who had counted on the tax as the centerpiece of his plan to offset a major portion of the city’s looming and rising budget deficit. The decision leaves Council only layoffs and other severe budget-cutting measures to close the gap, which is set at $8 million to $10 million next year and is scheduled to rise as high as $20 million in five years. 

And that is without factoring in the local impact of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reduction in the state’s Vehicle License Fees. 

The mayor is already floating one cost-cutting proposal before the city’s labor unions: closing City Hall for a week between Christmas and New Years. 

Five Berkeley neighborhood associations as well as a coalition of neighborhood groups—the Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations—had already announced their opposition to the proposed parcel tax by last Tuesday’s City Council public hearing on the measure. 

But while it was Bates who pulled the plug on the parcel tax, it was the city’s firefighters who dealt the death blow an hour earlier when the executive committee of the 120-member Berkeley Fire Fighters Local 1227 declared its opposition. Given that the parcel measure was officially titled the “Special Tax To Fund Fire Prevention And Protection Services,” and was structured specifically to “maintain [current] staffing levels at Berkeley fire stations,” opposition by the firefighters was a political embarrassment that supporters of the tax could not hope to overcome. 

In a telephone interview Monday evening, Bates said the firefighters’ opposition was “particularly troublesome. ... Since the money was going for the fire service, and they’re not in favor of it, there’s no way this can pass. To pass a two-thirds tax, if you have organized opposition, it’s exceedingly difficult. And if you don’t have some sort of unity in your ability to pass the measure, in terms of a campaign and cohesiveness, it renders it dead on arrival.” 

Bates and the council got the bad news in a blunt e-mail from Fire Fighters president Marc Mestrovich, who wrote that “the executive board feels that the City of Berkeley is using the reputation of the firefighters to get a tax measure passed with language that we feel is not fully truthful to the citizens of Berkeley.” 

Mestrovich explained in a telephone interview that the local’s executive committee acted because, according to information reported at last Tuesday’s Council meeting, only $2 million of the proposed $7 million tax increase would actually go to fire services. “The wording of the measure just wasn’t correct,” Mestrovich said. He said his local favored working with city staff and other unions to “develop a [tax] measure that will best suit the needs of all involved” and put it on the November, 2004 ballot. “That would give us time to make sure things are right and correct.” 

Shortly before Bates called for the withdrawal of the measure, Councilmember Kriss Worthington told the Daily Planet that the firefighters’ decision sounded the death knell to the parcel tax. “A fire tax that’s not supported by the firefighters has zero chances of getting two-thirds of the vote,” Worthington said. Parcel tax votes require a two-thirds majority. 

In his e-mail to Bates and City Council, Mestrovich said that his organization had heard of recent polls circulating around Berkeley that had the parcel tax losing by an astoundingly wide margin, 35 percent to 65 percent, and said that his own poll of firefighters local members living in the city showed the tax losing 6 to 1. 

And Mestrovich later said that the failure of either the mayor’s office or the Revenue Task Force to even inform firefighters that their unit would be the subject of the proposed tax—much less ask their opinion—was one reason the firefighters local rejected the tax. 

“I had information that there was going to be a fire tax coming around, probably about three to four weeks ago,” Mestrovich said. “Did I personally receive a phone call? No.” 

For his part, Mayor Bates was blunt about life in Berkeley without the projected parcel tax revenue. “We’re going to have some difficult belt-tightening,” he said. “It’s going to be hard. There are going to be services that are going to be cut. There are going to be things that we are going to have to do without.” 

Among the cost-cutting measures likely to be put in place, he said, was closing fire stations on a rotating basis and “more than likely” laying off police officers. “It’s not going to be pretty,” he added. “But I’m sure we can get through it. We’ll try to preserve the services that we really think are important, and we’ll try to keep right on trucking.” 

As for what did the parcel tax in, the mayor did not take any of the blame himself, stating simply that, “My sense of it is that it wasn’t right for us to do. The elements just didn’t come together,” adding that, “[the Daily Planet] and all those articles didn’t help us, either. That was devastating.” Asked to elaborate on what articles he meant, Bates said, “It wasn’t the articles. It was a lot of those editorials. And letters to the editor. They were pretty misleading.” 

Asked if he would consider the firefighters’ proposal to rework the parcel tax for the November, 2004 ballot, Bates sounded like a man just having stepped out of the ring from a professional heavyweight fight, and not especially anxious to get back in again just yet. “We’ll just have to see,” he said.

TUESDAY, NOV. 25 

“The Face of Occupation” a presentation by Penny Rosenwasser, of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, Community Meeting Room, 3rd floor, 2090 Kittredge. Sponsored by Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil and Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace.  

Berkeley Special Education Parents Network meets from 7 to 9 p.m. at Ala Costa Center, 1300 Rose St., at Cedar-Rose Park. Guest speakers will be Lisa Noshay Petro and Nina Ghiselli of the East Bay Learning Disabilities Association. For information call 525-9262 or email BSPED@mcads.com 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Charles Fitch will show travel slides, and we will have a Thanksgiving lunch at noon. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke Seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672 or email teachme99@comcast.net 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 26 

“The World Community and International Human Rights: Are Things Getting Any Better?” with Maurice Copithorne, Professor of Law, University of British Columbia, at 7:30 p.m. at International House, Home Room, Piedmont at Bancroft. 642-9460. 

Youth Radio “Give Thanks and Party!” Come dance and donate a can of food to feed the hungry this holiday season, at 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. You must bring a can of food to enter. Youth Radio Cafe, 1801 University Ave. 841-5123. 

Multi-Faith Thanksgiving Service led by Berkeley clergy of all faiths with choir members of the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley and Beth El Junior Choir, at 7:30 p.m. Reception to follow. Congregation Beth El, 2301 Vine St. 848-3988. 

THURSDAY, NOV. 27 

Thanksgiving Day - City Offices are Closed 

Food Not Bombs Thanksgiving Vegetarian Feast, community potluck, with music, food and games at 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Please bring a vegetarian dish to share. Call Terri for more information, 658-9178. www.ebfnb.org  

FRIDAY, NOV. 28 

Thanksgiving Holiday - City Offices are Closed 

Bay Area Women in Black will hold a silent walking vigil to support the new Palestine-Israel Geneva Peace Initiative and to protest US occupation of Iraq. Assemble at 11:50 a.m. at the Bank of America across from the Powell Street BART. Please wear black. Everyone welcome. bayareawomeninblack@earthlink.net 

Bead Artistry: An Exploration of Creativity Nov 28 to 30. Off-loom beading art objects including jewelry sale by featured artists. Berkeley Art Center. 644-6893 www.berkeleyartcenter.org  

Oakland Glass Artists Holiday Exhibit and Sale, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 2680 Union St. Oakland. Also on Sat. and Sun. 832-8380.  

Holiday Kwanzaa and Christmas Gift Show to encourage patronage of black businesses at the Oakland Marriott Convention Center, 550-10th Street, Oakland, Fri. - Sun. 1 to 8 p.m. Admission $5, children free. 

SATURDAY, NOV. 29 

Women of Color Arts and Crafts Fair, featuring paintings, clay sculptures, textiles, jewelry, quilts, decorative functional furniture and wearable art. From 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios every weekend through Dec. 21. 100 professional artists and craftspeople at studio buildings in Berkeley open their doors to the public. Crafts include blown glass, functional and decorative ceramics, ornaments, Menorahs, clocks, lamps and lighting, painted and custom furniture, garden art, bird houses, egg dioramas, floor cloths, clothing, textiles, jewelry, sculpture, photography, paintings, original prints, and other works on paper. All work is handcrafted, many pieces are one-of-a-kind. A self-guided tour presents opportunities to meet the artists and see working craft studios. For a map of participating studios call 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

Soapmaking Do you know where soap comes from? Learn how to make all natural soap from olive, coconut, and palm oils. For ages 12 and older, registration required. From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost $10, $12 for non-residents. 525-2233. 

Strawberry Creek Work Party We'll be planting and putting down erosion control material on the creek bank. We also have a small shady spot that needs the ivy removed and the soil prepared for a small native garden that we'll plant in December. Meet at the Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison at 10 a.m. Please bring sturdy shoes and water, and gloves, if you have them. Everything else will be supplied.  

Shamanic Journeying Meditation, from noon to 1:30 p.m. Free. For information and directions call 525-1272. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 30 

Berkeley Artisans Open Studios For a map of participating studios call 845-2612. www.berkeleyartisans.com 

She Made Holiday Arts Bazaar, with a silent auction to benefit the Women’s Daytime Drop-in Center, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Pro Arts Gallery, 461 Ninth St. Oakland. www.she-made.com 

Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters 10th Anniversary, with food refreshments, music and more. From 4 to 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Prisoner Visitation and Support, an introduction to the interfaith independent visitation program at 12:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends Meeting, 2152 Vine St. at the corner of Walnut. For more information call Arden Pierce at 650-494-1631. 

“The Witness,” a one-woman play which follows the journey of a young woman onto the streets, followed by a discussion of Faithful Fools Ministry, at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Fellowship, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Donations suggested to benefit Fools Street Ministry. 528-5403. 

“Pills Profits and Protest: Voices of Global AIDS Activists” a documentary, followed by discussion at 3 p.m. at Parkway Theater, 1834 Park St. A World AIDS Day benefit for Health GAP, ACT UP East bay and Action=Life Film Collective. Donation $8. For information call 841-4339. www.pillsprofitsprotest.org 

Tibetan Buddhism, Abbe Blum on “Personal Transitions as New Beginnings” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

MONDAY, DEC. 1 

Tea at Four Enjoy some of the best teas from the other side of the Pacific Rim and learn their cultural and natural history. Then take a walk to see wintering birds and dormant ladybeetles, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for residents, $7 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. 

“Rally for Africa's Right to Health” at the Oakland Federal Building, 1301 Clay Street, from noon to 1:00 p.m. Demand that President Bush and Congress allocate the $15 billion for AIDS services in Africa that the president promised in his January 2003 State of the Union Address. The event will feature speakers, including Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and the display of 300 pairs of shoes to symbolize the Africans who will die of AIDS-related causes in the hour that the rally takes place. For more information, call 527-4099. 

ACCI Gallery, Holiday Arts and Crafts Show Gallery hours are Mon. - Thurs. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sat. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 1652 Shattuck Ave. 843-2527.  

www.accigallery.com 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

Berkeley Biodiesel Cooperative Orientation at 7:30 p.m. Call for location 594-4000, ext. 777. berkeleybiodiesel@yahoo.com 

ONGOING 

We Give Thanks Month, Berkeley restaurants, Bar-Ristorante Raphael, Cold Stone Creamery, Downtown, La Note, Semi-Freddi’s, Skates, and Spengers will donate a portion of their proceeds to Berkeley Food and Housing Project during the month of November. 

Holiday Food Drive Help the Alameda County Community Food Bank help people in need. Offer to run a food drive, or donate healthy nonperishable food at Safeway stores, Berkeley Bowl and Bay Street Emeryville. For more information call 834-3663. www.accfb.org 

City of Berkeley Commissioners Sought If you are interested in serving on a commission, applications can be downloaded from www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/general.htm#applications or contact the City Clerk, 981-6900.  

The Online Civilian Conservation Corps Museum is seeking the stories about the CCCs, CCC Enrollees, Staff, or Technical Advisors for publication to this online historical resource. If you would like to participate please send your stories, with name company number and location if known, to CCC Collection, PO Box 5, Woodbury NJ 08096 or email to JFJmuseum@aol.com 

Personnel Commissioner Sought for Alameda County School Board Responsibilities include administration of the Merit System. Meetings once a month. Applications must be received by Nov. 28. For details please contact Alameda County Office of Education, 670-7703. 

Free Smoke Detectors for City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Admin. Office located at 2100 MLK, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Nov. 26, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning 

Council Agenda Committee meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 2:30 p.m., at 2180 Milvia St., Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil/agenda-committee 

Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers, Pam Wyche 644-6128 ext. 113. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/rent 

Parks and Recreation Commission meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Deborah Chernin, 981-6715. ww.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/parksandrecreation 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/peaceandjustice 

Youth Commission meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 6:30 p.m., at 1730 Oregon St. Philip Harper-Cotton, 981-6670. www.ci.ber 

keley.ca.us/commissions/youth 

Zoning Adjustments Board meets Mon., Dec. 1, at 7 p.m.,  

in City Council Chambers.  

Mark Rhoades, 981-7410. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/zoning 

UC HOTEL 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

With regard to the UC Berkeley’s proposed downtown hotel/conference center/museum complex, please note that earlier this year the Planning Commission established a subcommittee under General Plan Policy Land Use 17E, which reads: 

  Convene a Planning Commission task force to evaluate the need for and appropriateness of a new downtown hotel and conference center/ecological demonstration/mixed use project, taking into consideration: 

1. Market demographics 

2. Traffic and transit conditions 

3. Hiring and employment policies 

4. Public amenities and community accessibility 

5. Urban design 

6. Green building principles 

7. Daylighting Strawberry Creek 

8. Special development standards and mitigations. 

The proposed development has the potential to greatly benefit the city. For it to realize that potential, the community at large must have ample opportunity to participate in the planning process. A crucial task of the Planning Commission subcommittee will be ensuring that Berkeley citizens do have such an opportunity. 

As soon as the date, time and location of the subcommittee’s first meeting have been decided, the meeting will be publicly noticed by City of Berkeley staff. 

Zelda Bronstein, Chair 

Berkeley Planning Commission 

• 

UNFAIR ARTICLE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I have generally found the articles in the Daily Planet to be fair, so I was dismayed to read Mr. Artz’ negative characterization of Ms. Sun today (“Shattuck Developer Violates Order, Council to Take Action,” Daily Planet, Nov. 21-24). The “investigation” he refers to must be the Zoning Adjustments Board meeting, where her permit was temporarily revoked. It was not proven at that time that Ms. Sun intends to create a group living accommodation without a use permit. It is my understanding that she intends to apply for all permits (signage, food service, etc.) required when she is ready to develop to that level, and has, at this time, applied for all necessary permits required for what she is doing at this time. As an architect working with many owner-builders, I often work with people who do not want to carry out their long-term objectives right away, and obtain multiple permits on the same property as the development proceeds. Sometimes these permits are separated by years, sometimes only by months, but each one meets the legal requirements for that phase.  

By the way, it seems that Mr. Lauriston’s objections are to the size and height of the project, not it’s use. The suggestion that Ms. Sun will use it for group living in the future is the only way he found to slow down this project, as the size and height are both within legal boundaries, as was confirmed by the Planning Department in the beginning. As ZAB member, Mr. Robert Allen stated in the July meeting, “this is pre-emptive thinking.” I have to agree with him that there is too much pre-emptive thinking and action going on around here, both globally and locally. 

Andus Brandt, R.A. 

• 

RACIST RANT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In regards to the letter from Mr. Labriola (”PC Dunces,” Daily Planet, Nov. 21-24) wouldn’t a more accurate header for the letter have been “Racist Resident Whines”? Mr. Labriola apparently has a problem with people who do not look like him, or of whom he does not approve. 

If this were my world there would be no wars, no suffering and I would not have to listen to or read letters from people complaining about the realities of the world today. There would also be about 34 million less Californians but that is a topic for another letter. I have reconciled myself to the realities of the world that I don’t care for and I do what I can to either change those realities or learn to live with them as best as I can. Mr. Labriola is unaware of or chooses to ignore the millions of Caucasians who have moved to California in the last four decades. Or, perhaps in his narrow world view, hordes of white people do nothing to affect the quality of life in California. I wonder if Mr. Labriola is a native of California?  

Matt Roman  

• 

PLANNING AHEAD 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I was pleased and surprised to read the joint announcement, by Mayor Bates and UC, of plans to build a hotel and conference center on the Bank of America property. This is part of a larger UC plan which involves moving the art museum, the anthropology museum and the film archive downtown; the museums will replace the UC printing plant and the parking lot at Addison and Oxford streets. I also hear the Magnes Jewish museum is planning a downtown move. Even Freight & Salvage will have a bigger building in the arts district. 

Having all this great stuff close together downtown will be very nice. The whole package—hotel, museums, arts district and restaurants—will make Berkeley a great draw for conferences. 

The new hotel and museum buildings could be demonstration sites for green building and ecological urban design. This project is a great opportunity to do great green things while bringing some business into downtown. 

Before this dream becomes reality, we have to deal with a few political problems: taxes, parking and the creek. 

Why does UC have to own the property? We definitely don’t need another tax-free edifice draining the city’s operating funds. If the hotel will be commercial, let it pay commercial taxes. There will be revenue from the hotel tax; it better turn out to more than cover the loss in property tax revenue. Does UC plan to buy up the Durant and Shattuck hotels too? Maybe UC wants to go into hotel business—maybe offer a major in hotel management like Cornell does? 

The museums could pay taxes too. In their new locations, as tourist traps, they might take in enough money to pay taxes, or pay something in lieu of taxes. 

An underground parking garage was mentioned. Will this be a wet garage? The durable blue line down Center Street reminds us that Strawberry Creek flows nearby, beneath the city. Creek water was going to make trouble for the underground parking once proposed under Civic Center. Won’t the same problem arise at the Bank of America site? 

Let’s bring the creek to the surface. The hotel would look great with a babbling brook in the yard. With big money available for the hotel project, surely a piece of it could be dedicated to the long-desired daylighting of Strawberry Creek. 

The conference center shouldn’t need much parking. Given the center’s location within feet of the downtown BART station, visitors arriving by air can ride BART directly from either OAK or SFO. UC’s bus service is nearby; conference visitors won’t need a car to visit campus. If visitors need a rental car for some side-trip, they can get one at the hotel, from City Car Share, or one of the agencies. 

Maybe the hotel can get by with minimal parking. We sure don’t want to increase Berkeley’s car congestion. I say forget about that underground parking garage. After the city gets done implementing the recommendations of the Traffic Demand Management study, there will be more downtown parking spaces available for the hotel. Berkeley residents will free up the spaces by using transit instead of monthly parking. Evening restaurant and theater goers will come by bus. Maybe the hotel could sell transit passes to visitors. 

Another idea: As part of this project, Center Street could be made into a pedestrian mall. A start has been made; several restaurants in the area have deployed sidewalk tables. The pedestrian mall and the sidewalk cafes would be yet another component of the great Berkeley Visitor Center. 

What a vision: a green, transit-oriented, pedestrian friendly tax-revenue-generating conference and visitor center for Berkeley. 

Steve Geller 

• 

OUTSOURCING 

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Although my bumber sticker says “Bring the troops and jobs home,” the fact that my retirement cap was 52 percent of my salary caused me to wonder, should Berkeley “outsource” its jobs to India to balance the budget, rather than continue to support a bloated city staff who have salaries way over the area average by increasing our taxes far beyond the surrounding communities’ average?  

Jeanne Burdette 

Aurora Theatre’s production of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero turns out to be well worth the three years of somersaults Director Tom Ross had to perform to bring it to Berkeley. 

It’s a funny and seemingly simple production which actually raises enough ethical issues to keep you arguing for a significant time after the last lights have dimmed. Perhaps one of the nicest things about the play is that the ideas aren’t thrust down your throat; it can take a while to realize just how many ethical quandaries are raised during the performance.  

Each of the four quite ordinary New Yorkers who constitute the characters find themselves caught between different rocks and hard places—some of them connected, some not. And the question of what each can or should do about their issues is not one that most of us would wish to face. 

The action takes place at night in the lobby of an upscale New York apartment building. A clever piece of staging gives the illusion that the audience looks directly past the security guard’s desk through a window into the street. This permits the audience to watch and hear some of the action—largely between two police officers—when they are out of the guard’s presence. 

Jeff, the security guard (well-played by T. Edward Webster), is a young guy making some kind of effort to get his life together. He sees his job as a security guard as a step up in the world, although he’s much too much of a fly-weight and far too social to be a good fit as a night guard in a solitary lobby. He’s not really a man you’d want to put too much weight on in an emergency. 

It’s his boss, William, whose integrity and values are most deeply challenged during the night. William ( completely realized by Brent St. Clair) has been the “good son” in his family, the one with ambition and habits of hard work. He’s proud of himself and tough on other people who don’t live up to his standards. Self-righteous is probably the right word for William. 

To his total dismay he finds that his “no-good brother” has been arrested for, and is quite possibly guilty of, a particularly disgusting rape/murder. Even worse for William is that his brother told the police that the two of them were together at the movies at the time of the crime. 

At first William is determined to stick to his own standards of honesty of which he is so proud and to refuse to cover for his brother. Then he discovers that the guy will be represented by an attorney who is so totally incompetent that he actually confuses him with another case. The situation is made the worse in William’s eyes because they are African-Americans. He is convinced that his brother will not get a fair trial. 

It is the play’s first, as well as its central ethical struggle. But the other characters have major issues of their own. 

Howard Swain does a powerful job as Bill, the longtime policeman who is responsible for the training of his partner, the anxious young rookie, Dawn. Bill is absolutely convincing as he switches unhesitatingly from one version of truth to another, completely different one. He is a man who is always convinced that he is right, even righteous. It doesn’t matter that he is clearly creating an entirely new “truth” from the one he pronounced minutes before; it is a terrific portrayal of a man who is completely lacking in insight. 

As played by Arwen Anderson, Dawn is one of the funniest characters in the play. The contrast between Dawn’s small, delicate appearance and her tough guy police style is a delight.  

At three months on the job she tries to make every syllable out of her mouth be absolutely nothing but“police talk” and almost succeeds. Those syllables, by the way, are pronounced in the heaviest New York accent you will ever encounter. Dawn’s hero-worship of her double-dealing partner and total lack of insight traps her into her own “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” quandary. 

In Lobby Hero Kenneth Lonergan has achieved an extraordinary goal—one frequently attempted but almost never beyond nit-picking critical complaint. He has actually succeeded in creating a genuinely funny play—peopled by essentially superficial characters—which raises quite important, and even lingering, philosophical issues. 

Some of us would have sworn that it couldn’t be done.

TUESDAY, NOV. 25 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Giving, Receiving, and Flooring It: The Goddess Show” An evening of food, fun, and art at 4 p.m., 120 Kroeber Hall, UC Campus 642-2582. 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: Light on Light Projection Performance at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Sandy Polishuk will discuss “Sticking to the Union: An Oral History of the Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila” at 7:30 p.m. at Black Oak Books. 486-0698. www.blackoakbooks.com 

Poets Gone Wild, with Debra Khattub, Julia Vinogrand, Gail Ford, Clive Matson, Allen Young, and Allen Cohen at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble. 644-0861. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

University Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of David Milnes, performs Brahms Symphony No. 3 and Barber’s Essay No. 2, Cello Concerto with soloist Alexandra Roedder, at 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $3-$10. 642-4864. http://music.berkeley.edu 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Dayna Stephens House Jam at The Jazz House. Donation $5. 649-8744. www.thejazz 

house.com 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 26 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

The Whole Note Poetry Series, Birthday Bash with Mark States, and open mic, at 7 p.m. at The Beanery, 2925 College Ave., near Ashby. 549-9093. 

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7, $5 with student i.d. 841-2082. www.starryplough.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Vienna Teng, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $16.50 in advance, $17.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Jules Broussard, Bing Nathan and Ned Boynton at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

The Funky BuuDee Show at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Dave Rocha Trio at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

THURSDAY, NOV. 27 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Grateful Dead DJ Night with Digital Dave at 10 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $6. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Keni El Lebrijano, flamenco guitarist, at 8 :30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

FRIDAY, NOV. 28 

CHILDREN 

Splash Circus, “In the Magical Forest” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

THEATER 

Wilde Irish Productions, “Endgame” by Samuel Beckett, opens at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $25, with champagne reception. Runs through Dec. 21. 644-9940. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Tokyo Story” at 3:30, 6:40, and 9:20 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The People with Lz Phoenix, Sol Americano and Dr. Masseuse at 9 p.m. at Ashkenez. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Grown and Tremolo perform at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082.  

www.starryploughpub.com  

Jamie Davis at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Diana Darby and Sonya Hunter at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15, no one turned away for lack of funds.  

644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Broun Fellinis at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

Reilly and Maloney, contemporary folk duo at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $18.50 in advance, $19.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

S.T.F.U., The Lewd, Words That Burn, Crop Knox, Eskapo at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

3rd Rail, Fellatia, Jynx at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $6. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Sterling Dervish at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SATURDAY, NOV. 29 

CHILDREN  

A Cornucopia Concert for Thanksgiving, 17th century music, performed on period instruments by Tekla Cunningham and Anthony Martin, baroque violins, and Jonathan Shane Davis,harpsichord, at 8 p.m. at MusicSources, 1000 The Alameda, at Marin. Tickets are $10-$15. 528-1685. 

Dan Zanes & Friends performs roots music for the entire family at 2 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $15-$20 and are available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu  

Splash Circus, “In the Magical Forest” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Late Spring”at 2 and 7 p.m. and “An Autumn Afternoon at 4:10 and 9: 10 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Chamber Music Sundaes, San Francisco Symphony musicians and friends perform Beethoven Trio, Debussy and Beethoven Cello Sonatas, Vaughan Williams Quintet at 3:15 p.m. at St John's Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Tickets are $7-$18 and are available at the door. 415-584-5946. 

Early Music with Healing Muses Eileen Hadidian, recorder and flute, Maureen Brennan, celtic harp, Natalie Cox, renaissance and celtic harp, with Dan Reiter, cello, at 8 p.m. at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Ave., Albany. Cost is $15-$18. 524-5661. 

Carl McDonald with Blazing Fire band, the Caribbean Groovers Steel Band, with special guests Mr. Major-P and Razor Blade at 9:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Moore Brothers and Golden Shoulders at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Geoff Muldaur with Fritz Richmond and Tony Marcus, American roots, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $17.50 in advance, $18.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

“Jah Music for the People” at the 1923 Teahouse at 8 p.m. Suggested donation of $7-$15. 644-2204. www.epicarts.org 

Frank Johnson at 8:30 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Embrace the End, Animosity, 30 Years War, Killing the Dream at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Corner Pocket at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277. 

KGB, Solemite, Limbeck at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $7. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

Nicole McRory at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

SUNDAY, NOV. 30 

CHILDREN 

Dan Zanes & Friends make their Bay Area debut Thanksgiving weekend, performing roots music for the entire family at 3 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall, UC Campus. Tickets are $15-$20 and are available from 642-9988. www.calperfs.berkeley.edu  

Princess Moxie, puppetry and storytelling from 3 to 4 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Adults $4, children $3, children under 1, free. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Splash Circus, “In the Magical Forest” at 2 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College Ave. Cost is $8-$15. 925-798-1300. 

FILM 

Yasujiro Ozu: “Tokyo Story”at 2 p.m. and “I Was Born, But ...” at 5:30 p.m. and “Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?” at 7:25 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Guided Tour: Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at 2 p.m., Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

A Cornucopia Concert for Thanksgiving, 17th century music, performed on period instruments by Tekla Cunningham and Anthony Martin, baroque violins, and Jonathan Shane Davis,harpsichord, at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center. Tickets are $8-$10, children under 12 free. 644-6893. 

Palenque, traditonal Cuban Son dance music at 7:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

The Bobs, a cappella, with special guest Bob Malone, at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage Coffee House. Cost is $18.50 in advance, $19.50 at the door. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Small Brown Bike, The Orange Band, Scissorhands at 5 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

Soundwave Studios Acoustic Showcase at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes On Telegraph. Cost is $3. 848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

MONDAY, DEC. 1 

EXHIBITION OPENINGS 

“Bay Area Blues: Blues Musicians on Site” a digital photography display at Berkeley Public Library opens today and runs through the month of December. 981-6100. 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” in collaboration with Pacific Mozart Ensemble at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $22-$24. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Last Word Poetry Series presents Garrett Murphy and Marianne Robinson from 7 to 9 p.m. at Pegasus Bookstore, 2349 Shattuck Ave.  

Poetry Express, featuring Diana Quartermaine, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Steve Gannon Band and Mz. Dee at 9:30 p.m. at Blakes on Telegraph. Cost is $4.  

848-0886. www.blakesontelegraph.com 

TUESDAY, DEC. 2 

THEATER 

Aurora Theatre Company, “The Play of Daniel” in collaboration with Pacific Mozart Ensemble at 8 p.m. at St. Mark’s Church, 2300 Bancroft. Tickets are $22-$24. 843-4822. www.auroratheatre.org 

FILM 

Alternative Visions: “Superior Elegy” and “Sneak Preview” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I Know Why” with editor Larry Habegger, tales of trouble on the road, at 7:30 p.m. at Easy Going Bookstore, 1385 Shattuck Ave at Rose. 843-3533. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Berkeley Chamber Performances, Wolford-Rosenblum, saxophone/piano duo at 8 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave. Tickets are $15-$20. 525-5211. www. 

berkeleychamberperform.org  

“Edessa and Brass Menagerie” at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Balkan dance lesson with Joe Kaloyanides Graziosi at 7:30 p.m. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Mimi Fox, solo guitar, at 8 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810. 

Ask anyone on City Council about passing a tax hike in Berkeley these days and they’ll say it’s no easy task. Last year only one cause out of four won the hearts and votes of two-thirds of Berkeley’s increasingly stingy voters: a new animal shelter. 

A year later, with the $6.4 million bond languishing in the bank and with no agreeable future home in the offering, shelter supporters and city officials say mustering the votes was the easy part. 

“We’re pretty much stuck,” said Jim Hynes, the staffer from the city manager’s office who is coordinating the land search. 

Hynes has offered to consider purchasing available parcels at University Avenue and Third Street near the railroad; Ashby Avenue and Ninth Street, adjacent to Urban Ore; and Carleton and Eighth streets, across from the Bayer campus—but shelter supporters have rejected them, arguing that these locations, like its current home, secluded at Addison and Second streets, would put the shelter out of sight and out of mind. 

“I don’t see the point of perpetuating the problem by building a new shelter where nobody knows where it is,” said Jill Posner, chair of the City Council Subcommittee on the New Animal Shelter. 

“Visibility equals use. Every time a shelter is hidden away it means more euthanasia, fewer volunteers and less connection to the community.” 

Posner wants a chunk of one of the city’s most sought after pieces of realty—a two-acre site at Sixth and Gilman streets purchased three years ago by the school district as a future school bus yard, but which some in the city view as prime retail space close to the Target slated to rise a few blocks west on the Albany side of Gilman. 

Shelter supporters tried to engineer a buy-and-swap of the three-acre Carleton Street property for the Gilman site, both valued at approximately $3 million, but that fell through when Deputy City Attorney Zach Cowen opined that, by law, the bond money had to be spent on land for the future shelter, not for an eventual swap. 

That meant that the city would have to purchase and trade of the privately owned Carleton Street property and simultaneously trade it to the school district—a nearly Herculean task considering that a private developer would be needed to build on the part of the Gilman land not used by the shelter.  

Posner, though, thinks the deal could have been consummated had Berkeley politicians shown more support. “The site is going to become available,” she said. “The question is will the politicians have the guts to say this is the right place to put a shelter and we’re going to make it happen?” 

Rumors have swirled around city hall that Mayor Tom Bates wants to transform the frontage along Gilman Street west of San Pablo into a shopping district to snag Target shoppers, and neither an animal shelter nor a bus storage yard could generate the potential revenues of retail shops. 

Bates, however, said in an interview with the Daily Planet Friday that his only commercial designs on Gilman were at the Sixth Street corner, and that an animal shelter occupying the back acre off the street front “would be great”.  

“There’s not a lot of commercial opportunities on Gilman,” Bates said. “But if you have a vacant lot, I’d like to explore the revenue opportunities.” 

School Board member John Selawsky said the board was “absolutely open to a property exchange,” but added a deal must come quickly. “We can’t sit on this for another three years,” he said, noting that the district pays roughly $450,000 to rent space for its buses and other vehicles—and after completing other construction projects, it’s ready to proceed with the bus depot. 

The city can use its control of the permit process to make development difficult for the school district, but Bates said that if a swap isn’t engineered by February, “it would be unfair not to let the district go ahead with the property.” 

Further complicating any swap, the site is zoned for Multi Use Light Industrial (MULI), which allows an animal shelter but precludes retail shops. 

A proposal by David Stoloff, Bates’ appointee to the planning commission, to consider rezoning the street caused an uproar and was pulled, with Bates’ backing, before the Planning Commission met two weeks ago.  

“Gilman should absolutely stay MULI,” said Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein. “If we want to maintain art space, we have to maintain the MULI district.” 

Meanwhile, as the search for a new animal shelter continues, Hynes warned that the longer the delay the less the bond would be worth if there is any inflation. 

Posner, though, insisted she would continue hold out for the right site. “Every project needs standards, otherwise we get mediocrity,” she said. “My role is to carry this to the gold standard.”

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.

Drivers on upper Ashby Avenue are getting a graphic reminder of just how fast they’re going, legally or otherwise, thanks to a trio of solar-powered signs that flash their speeds on glowing digital panels. 

“We’ve had chronic speed problems on Ashby for a long time,” explained Hamid Mostowfi, an associate traffic engineer for the city. “So we applied for a grant for the signs from the federal Office of Traffic Safety.” 

The $100,000 in federal monies paid for the three signs and for pedestrian-triggered in-pavement crosswalk lights where Piedmont Avenue crosses Ashby. 

While the signs have been up and working for a couple of weeks, the crosswalk lights are still dark. “PG&E says it will take four to six weeks to bring power to them,” Mostowfi said. 

The pedestrian crossing features not only the in-pavement lights but a pair of advance warning signs that will flash to alert motorists when a pedestrian crosses the heavily traveled street that is also state Highway 13 (Cal Trans had to sign off on the new signs before the city could install them). 

The solar-powered signs and the PG&E-powered lights are only the first stage in a local high-tech traffic revolution. 

Next up: cameras at intersections to capture red light-runners. Mostowfi said his department will bring their proposal to City Council on Dec. 16. 

Though Mostowfi didn’t cite the rationale, cash-strapped cities had been turning to cameras, which not only control a major traffic problem but also produce an endless stream of lucrative traffic tickets without the need to hire additional police officers.

Editors, Daily Planet:  

Upon reading Matthew Artz’s article “Neighbors slam LBNL expansion”, Berkeley Daily Planet of Nov. 21-24, 2003, some corrections concerning traffic congestion need to be made. 

Centennial Drive does not go through the City of Berkeley at all. It is entirely within the boundaries of the university and LBNL properties. The concern of the Panoramic neighborhood is the Rimway road. Portions of it go through that neighborhood and are used by LBNL personnel and visitors. It is very narrow and dangerous. The neighborhood feels it is at its capacity now and any increase in its use will be impossible. The Northside neighborhood has similar concerns. Cyclotron road is the main gateway into LBNL, it starts and ends in the neighborhood. The Warren-Derby corridor and Ashby Avenue in the Claremont/Elmwood neighborhood are a continuous parking lot during the commute hours. Everyone knows all of this—the planners at LBNL, University of California, and the City of Berkeley. Yet all of this planning and expansion goes on without concern or proposals of what to do about the congestion. 

All of the streets into and out of LBNL that are in the City of Berkeley are too old and small to safely accommodate the existing parking and traffic loads. Now LBNL wants to add 1,200 more employees with 600 more new parking spaces. The neighborhood and the entire city cannot possibly absorb the additional 900 cars the long range plan will bring with it. When you consider the long range plan of the university and the new downtown hotel plan the mayor and university have apparently agreed to, it makes matters worse. 

I have been a resident of Berkeley since 1963. Over the past 40 years I have seen Berkeley transform into a city of congestion. As a member of the Transportation Commission I have supported the anti-car interests of Berkeley even though I believe the car it here to stay and no matter what we do or say, its use will continue to grow. 

The point is, if those who plan and control our future refuse to bring meaningful solutions to our congestion problems along with their projects, we are all losers. 

This is also true of those who want a denser Berkeley. On the surface it seems high rise development and apartment buildings will help us solve our congestion problems by putting more people on public transit. While it may be somewhat true, the fact is, it will bring more traffic (cars). All of the large cities are congested with cars no matter what kind of public transit is provided—and congestion is getting worse, not better. 

I have tried to suggest to LBNL and the university that they begin planning an Eco Pass program for their employees. Both organizations reject the idea. They would rather the city be responsible for their part of the congestion problems. 

The Draft Environmental Impact Report transportation/traffic element will study the increased traffic load and the capacity of the street system, as well as other factors. What seems strange about this is that our city streets are already at their capacity during the commute hours and during special events. Yet it can be predicted that the study will give a green light to more cars at the lab. 

Our problems have become so severe that solutions need to be offered in detail before these projects are brought to the public. Only then will they get the support from the community they may deserve. 

Dean Metzger 

Chair, Transportation Commission

Berkeley fourth graders—forced by budget cuts to trade in their violins and trumpets for rhythm lessons and recorders—are banking on unwanted CDs to bring the band back together. 

“It’s got a nice ring,” said Ken Sarachan, owner of Rasputin Music. “Save music in the schools by dumping your unwanted music.” 

Through Dec. 17, anyone tired off watching their most played-out CDs, tapes, records, or DVDs collect dust on the shelf can give them to Rasputin. The store will donate the buy-back price plus an extra 10 percent to the Berkeley music program.  

The campaign will help the music store replenish its used music stockpiles, but more important, might resuscitate Berkeley’s elementary and middle school music programs, decimated by district cuts. 

Last year, the school board—facing an $6 million budget deficit—stopped funding its share of the music program—roughly $100,000. 

The net result: Two music teachers fired, no instrument instruction until the fifth grade, and middle school band and orchestra practice scaled back from five to three days per week, though some middle schools have found money to boost instruction. 

Money from a voter-approved 1994 parcel tax still funds the program, but the nearly $500,000 doesn’t go as far as it did 10 years ago said Suzanne McCulloch, the district’s visual and performing arts coordinator. 

“Medical benefits and workman’s compensation have risen astronomically,” she said, noting that in her three years in Berkeley the district has had to cut the number of Full Time Equivalent music teachers from 12 to 9. 

The teachers have become virtual gypsies, driving from school to school for classes. With their ranks depleted, class size in the elementary schools has doubled and this year administrators and parents agreed there was no point teaching fourth graders to play instruments with 32 kids in the class. 

The high school is not affected by the budget cuts because its funding comes from school-site money to pay for electives, and its most renowned ensemble—the jazz band—is self-sufficient. 

To keep the flow of talent reaching the high school, the music committee has sought to offset lost funds, holding a benefit concert last spring that netted them about $6,000 before turning to Rasputin. 

“This could be the biggie,” said Bob Kridle, a parent of a music student and chairman of the BUSD Music Committee. “If we got two or three pieces from every district family that would be about $100,000.” 

Rasputin on average pays between 50 cents to $6 for CDs, a little more for DVDs, and usually less for records and tapes—all based on demand. So far the average donation has fetched about $1. 

To make donating easy, the committee has set up barrels in all public schools and libraries for donors to dump unwanted disks. Rasputin also accepts donations at the store, and anyone with 50 or more pieces can call 486-8192 for a free pick up. 

While used CD’s might save Berkeley music instruction this year, ultimately only property taxes can do the trick, supporters say. The ballot initiative—Berkeley Schools Excellence Project—that has funded most of the music program is set to expire in three years, and the school board is considering putting an extension with more money for music programs on the November ballot. 

“With the state only testing for math and English, that’s where the money’s going,” Kridle said. “If we’re going to have an arts program were going to have to do it ourselves.”

The achievement gap separating white Berkeley public school students from other racial groups remains profound, according to an analysis of test scores unveiled at last week’s meeting of the Berkeley Unified School District board. 

Results from the California Standards Tests measuring reading, math, science and social studies skills for students throughout the district revealed a steady decline in math scores from elementary schools to the high school and poor results in algebra and writing. 

Neil Smith, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction, said district officials would use the data analysis to improve instruction, but cautioned that until they get detailed analysis from other standardized tests, they wouldn’t read too much into the results. 

In each subject, whites outscored other groups—often reaching proficiency rates close to four times higher than African American students. 

The breakdown for proficiency rates is as follows: 

• Math—Whites 63 percent, African Americans 19 percent, Asians 58 percent and Latinos 27 percent. 

• Reading—Whites 78 percent, African Americans 21 percent, Asians 54 percent and Latinos 27 percent. 

• Science—Whites 73 percent, African Americans 27 percent, Asians 58 percent, and Latinos 23 percent. 

• Social Science—Whites 71 percent, African Americans 13 percent, Asians 41 percent and Latinos 17 percent. 

More troubling is that for reading and math the achievement gap expanded from lower to higher grades. 

“Something wasn’t being passed on,” said Bradley Johnson, the board’s student representative. 

Students in lower grades scored better in math than higher grades, with algebra posing the biggest problems for district students. While 59 percent of second graders scored as proficient on math tests, only 17 percent of eighth grade algebra students ranked as high. 

Algebra was recently shifted from ninth to eighth grade to comply with state standards, which could explain the poor scores, Johnson said. 

Reading proficiency followed the opposite trend, rising from 42 percent of second graders to 62 percent of 11th-graders, though scores dipped in some grades. 

Writing tests given to elementary and middle school students also showed huge discrepancies between schools, prodding board members to question if the district had a consistent district-wide program. 

Students at Jefferson and John Muir Elementary Schools scored the highest, with 37 and 36 percent of students respectively ranking as proficient. At the other end of the spectrum, only nine percent of Leconte students, and six percent of Malcolm X students scored at the proficient level. 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence told the school board that math and writing skills required grade-by-grade structured lessons and that it’s “imperative that the school system have a specific sequence” to guide students.  

She added that it was hard to read too much into test results because the state has repeatedly “tweaked” the test, making trends over time difficult to discern. 

Board member John Selawsky reiterated that the test results were only part of the overall picture of student achievement, but added that it “was an important part” and that the district needed to use the scores to develop strategies to improve instruction.

“If for one week [America] saw the true face of war, war would be eradicated,” broadcaster and activist Amy Goodman told a supportive crowd of several hundred who turned out to see her receive this year’s UC Berkeley Mario Savio Free Speech award at UC Berkeley’s student union.  

The well-known journalist and host of the radio program Democracy Now, Goodman had one important message to deliver: Change the media and you can change the world.  

Her speech left many glued to their seats, mouths agape, as she interlaced hard-hitting facts with riveting personal stories.  

Known as the diva of alternative media, Goodman has hosted Democracy Now, the nation’s leading alternative news broadcast, for the past seven years. Her show is taped at Pacifica member station WBAI in New York City and aired on stations across the nation.  

According to event organizers, she was picked for the Mario Savio Free Speech award for a host of reasons, but principally, they said, “because Goodman has always asked the questions we’ve thought but never articulated.”  

For many, her weekday morning show is their primary news source, providing in-depth coverage of the leading news stories and more. 

Many fans in the Berkeley audience said they stayed glued to her broadcasts during the events of 9/11 and the war in Iraq to avoid the daily barrage of media hype and hyperbole that they say Goodman cuts through so effectively.  

Thursday’s speech summarized what’s she’s seen throughout this time period and focused specifically on what she knows best: the role of the media.  

“We’ve got to take control of the institutions that feed this war machine, and the most important is the media.” 

As part of the event, the university also awarded the annual young activist award to 20-year-old Rocio Nieves, a member of the Oakland-based Youth Force Coalition, a group working to stop the growth of the prison industrial complex.  

The award, given yearly to young activists, was presented to Nieves for her work with the coalition during their campaign that ended with the halving of Alameda County’s proposed new “superjail” youth detention center.  

“To think that health care sucks in this country and we want to put money into locking people up. . .come on, we have no shame,” Nieves told the crowd as she fought to hold back tears. “To know that we don’t just live in this fucked up society, we try to change it is truly inspiring.” 

The event proved especially meaningful for three UC Berkeley students convicted by a campus tribunal for their actions during an anti-war protest last March. The students, who have been fighting the charges, were asked to stand and received a roaring round of applause after Goodman acknowledged their fight.  

“[Their participation] is a tremendous community service and they should be honored,” said Goodman, a not so subtle dig at the suggested punishment for the students—which includes between 20 and 30 hours of mandatory community service.  

For those interested Goodman’s show, Democracy Now, airs every week day on KPFA 94.1 FM from 6-7 a.m. and again from 9-10 a.m. Information on this week’s shows and other upcoming programming can also be found at the program’s website: www.democracynow.org.

Just days after UC Berkeley released money to pay more than $30,000 in student government (ASUC) expenses from a campaign to oppose Proposition 54, the ASUC has frozen the funds. 

ASUC Judicial Chair Mike Davis ordered the freeze Monday, along with a gag order after right-leaning Senator Paul LaFata lodged a complaint against the Graduate Student Assembly (GA), which in September had earmarked $35,000 to the No on 54 campaign. 

The university has faced heat from both sides of the political divide after agreeing to assume responsibility for student government funds spent on the campaign, but uphold its ban on student governments to participate in partisan politics. 

The ruling, announced last week by Chancellor Robert Berdahl, infuriated both conservatives—who wanted student leaders to pay a price for ostensibly violating university rules by spending mandatory student fees on the campaign—and student government leaders—who argued the university’s interpretation of its rules denied them the right to lobby on issues of concern to students. 

“To say we can’t do political advocacy, that’s outrageous,” said GA president Jessica Quindel, adding that her organization was considering suing the university. “Governments are supposed to be political, we’re not social clubs.” 

The university froze the funds after the Berkeley College Republicans complained to the administration in September that while the school had barred them from using student money to help cover expenses for a visit by UC Regent and Proposition 54 sponsor Ward Connerly, the student government had funded the No on 54 campaign. 

An ensuing university audit of the campaign found $31,187.32 in receipts and $6,662.70 in reimbursements paid for by mandated student fees. 

University counsel Michael Smith said the expenditures violated university policy because student governments, unlike student clubs, are a unit of the university and were thus required to abide by regulations barring them from funding partisan political activities. 

Since the administration determined that the student government received bad advice from its oversight body, the ASUC Auxiliary, it decided to cover expenses owed vendors for campaign propaganda and services from funds generated by ASUC business operations like the student bookstore and the Bear’s Lair. 

Smith said he hopes that by using student business revenue instead of mandatory student fees to cover the debts, the university can head off a lawsuit threatened by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation. 

PLF attorney Greg Broderick said late Monday that he hadn’t received a copy of the university’s ruling. 

Smith acknowledged that the university’s legal reasoning would make funding a political campaign illegal whether funds came from mandated student fees or business operations. 

“The emphasis is on compulsory fees because of recent lawsuits from students [opposing their fee money spent on issues they oppose], but the bottom line principle would apply to any university money, not just compulsory fees.” 

LaFata fears that if ASUC money—even from business revenue—is used to pay the vendors, student government will be vulnerable to lawsuits from outside interests, said one person close to the ASUC. 

Ultimately, the university faces its fiercest opposition from the Graduate Assembly. In an opinion written to Smith, GA attorney Michael Sorgen charged that past California Supreme Court cases held that student governments were not “units of the university,” and even if they were, they retained the right to fund lobbying on partisan issues so long as both sides of the issue had the opportunity to receive funding. 

“Certainly the university defines lobbying more narrowly than the student government,” Smith said.

Every November, I test my memory cells by trying to recall where I’ve spent Thanksgiving for the past 30 years. I do okay for the most recent ten, and then things get blurry. I vaguely remember Thanksgivings at Uncle Bill’s and Aunt Alma’s during the 50s and 60s, but I don’t recall any Thanksgivings between the years of 1970 and 1974. This lapse can’t be attributed entirely to over-indulging in turkey, but can be blamed, in part, on a wayward cousin who always provided me with something to stimulate my appetite (though I never inhaled). 

This year, like the past three, I’ll be spending Thanksgiving at home with my husband, Ralph, and my brother John and his family. The Thanksgiving four years ago, when Ralph and I spent the day in the emergency room at Kaiser, and then went back again that evening, is indelibly stamped into the painful part of my brain. I put the turkey in the oven as the paramedics arrived, and took it out when we came home. Three hours later, before I could serve the pumpkin pie, we were headed again to Kaiser.  

I remember spending several Thanksgivings alone with my brother. Ralph’s twin came up from San Diego to stay with him. I took off guilt-free, knowing that Ralph was in capable, loving hands. 

John and I usually went to Yosemite Valley. Sometimes it would rain while we were there and sometimes it would snow. It was almost never sunny. Ever the optimists, each year we brought skis, climbing gear and rollerblades with us, on the pretense that we would do something other than lie around in the tent. But we never did. 

John would lug his veterinary textbooks along and I’d bring all the paperbacks I’d been meaning to read for the past 10 years. We’d search for the least damp, most level spot at Sunnyside campground. I’d put up the tent while John made a fire. We stashed our instant oatmeal, tuna fish cans and GORP in the anti-bear locker, gulped down a bowl of chicken-flavored Top Raman, crawled into the tent, rolled out our bags, and went to sleep. We didn’t wake up until the next morning. We tried to outwait each other until one of us had to use the outhouse. That’s the person who had to make the coffee outside on the frost-covered picnic table. 

The first year we went to Yosemite I cried when I crawled into the tent. It reminded me too much of Ralph and the good times we once shared inside that little green nylon space before his accident. The tent smelled like Ralph and my sleeping bag smelled like Ralph and my brother’s bag, the one that had once belonged to Ralph, smelled like my husband too. Not the way Ralph smells now in his wheelchair, but the way he smelled when he was healthy and energetic, pitching the tent, gathering firewood, cooking dinner, and drinking beer. But now, after a decade, the tent doesn’t smell of Ralph. It smells like me and my brother and the garage where it is stored the rest of the year. 

One Thanksgiving, my brother couldn’t go to Yosemite. He had too much work to do in his final year of veterinary school He didn’t want to deal with the rain and the snow and the bad smell of the tent. He needed lots of room to spread out his pig, horse and cow textbooks.  

“Think of it this way,” he said on the phone a few days before Thanksgiving when he suggested that I spend the holiday with him in Davis. “You won’t have water dripping down your neck while you sleep. You won’t have cold socks, stiff gloves or frozen underwear in the morning. You won’t have bad coffee or noodles served with twigs. You’ll have a comfortable bed, a microwave oven and a flush toilet.” 

“Can we pitch the tent in your backyard?” I asked. 

“If you want to,” he said. “but I’ll be in the house drinking a hearty Cabernet, studying equestrian parasites and watching a Blockbuster video.” 

I drove reluctantly to Davis. I spread my paperbacks across John’s living room floor and found a horizontal spot on his couch. On Thanksgiving night we ordered Domino’s pepperoni and sausage pizza to be delivered to the house. I made my brother get on the couch with me and eat it in the dark with a flashlight on his head to simulate camping. We balanced the pizza box between us, on our knees. 

“Isn’t this fun?” I asked, shoving another wedge of pizza into my mouth. 

“You betcha,” answered John. Then he got up, went into the bathroom and flushed the toilet, just to prove how much fun it really was.

Striking Southern California grocery workers who set up picket lines at Bay Area grocers last week in solidarity with their Southern California companions returned in force Saturday with over 1,000 supporters to rally outside the Safeway at 51st and Broadway. 

The workers, all members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, were joined by community supporters and members from almost every union in the Bay on their march from the Rockridge BART back to the store in north Oakland. 

Carrying signs and an effigy of Safeway CEO Steve Burd, and with the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Worker Union drill team leading the way, the group stood outside the store demanding that the grocery industry stop what they say is a full scale attack on the health plans of over 70,000 workers. 

Protesters, who successfully blocked the entrance to the store while they rallied, were joined by elected officials including California senate majority leader Don Perata, Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, and Oakland City Council members Ignacio De La Fuente and Jane Brunner. 

Workers say they will walk the Northern California picket lines until the fight in Southern California is over, and they expect to be marching picket lines here again this summer when local grocery contracts expire. 

—Jakob Schiller

Berkeley City Council gets a last chance to finalize language for three election law ballot measures at tonight’s regular Council meeting (7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 25). The proposed changes would add filing fee and/or signature requirements to run for office in Berkeley, lower the percentage needed for a candidate to win, lengthen the time between elections and runoffs, and authorize Council to adopt Instant Runoff Voting in the city once it becomes legally and economically feasible. 

Council will consider fixing the city’s paratransit services problem and authorizing permits for wheelchair accessible taxis during tonight’s 5 p.m. working session. 

Last June, the Daily Planet reported that Berkeley’s paratransit services—which provide several transportation programs for seniors and residents with disabilities—was in “disarray,” with seniors in particular complaining of “limited service, rude taxi drivers and cabbies who refuse to pick up patrons.” 

The city’s Commission on Disability and Commission on Aging has asked the city to issue 10 permits specifically for taxis capable of carrying wheelchair-riding passengers. No such taxis-on-call currently operate in Berkeley, and residents in wheelchairs must reserve rides 24 hours in advance. 

In an information report to be discussed by Council at tonight’s working meeting, City Manager Phil Kamlarz agrees that Berkeley’s paratransit program has “never had sufficient resources to meet the need.” 

Kamlarz’ memo suggests several alternative fixes. The most controversial proposal to be discussed will be a proposal limiting Berkeley’s paratransit services either to “only those people with extremely low incomes” or providing service only to persons certified by East Bay Paratransit, a joint project co-operated by AC Transit and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District.  

Council will also consider, on first reading, an ordinance establishing five permits for wheelchair-accessible taxis in the city, halving the number sought by the Commission on Disability and the Commission on Aging. 

At the 7 p.m. session, Council is also scheduled to re-open its discussion of complaints from neighborhood residents concerning the controversial industrial-strength communications tower currently sitting atop the city’s downtown Public Safety Building. 

Neighbors complain that the communications tower, constructed in 2000, was put up without proper notice and is out of character for their neighborhood and they want it replaced with a smaller structure. While the city manager’s office has conceded that the current configuration of the communications tower “was not included as part of the original design” of the Public Safety Building, Berkeley public safety officials have argued that the tower should stay because it eliminates “dead spots” in communication with mobile police units in certain areas of Berkeley.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of an ongoing series of articles by UC Berkeley journalism students on the paths of Berkeley. 

Tamalpais Path’s 183 concrete steps, from Codornices Park on Euclid Avenue to Tamalpais Road, are paved with history. 

The path starts a few yards from the house where Depression Era documentary photographer Dorothea Lange lived and worked with her husband, economist Paul Taylor. Tamalpais Road resident Paul Schwarz says the steps have been trod by figures with names that adorn the University of California—Sproul, Wurster, Lawrence. 

Like many of the paths in the North Berkeley hills, Tamalpais was laid out in the early 1920s.  

Helen Dixon, who lives in what was once her mother-in-law Dorothea Lange’s studio, said the byway was originally used for residents to descend the hill to the Euclid Avenue streetcar, which stopped running in the 1940s, along with other electric streetcars in Berkeley. 

These days, she hears schoolchildren use it to get to and from their buses on Euclid. “But I’m protected here by the trees, so I don’t see a lot of the traffic,” she said. 

At the top of the path’s first flight of stairs, a worn wooden gate hangs from an ivy-covered fence. The gate guards a trail across Emily Benner’s land, and a section of the north fork of Codornices Creek, a waterfall, the remains of a fern grotto, and a small canyon.  

“My in-laws purchased the property in 1933, or ’34, in the middle of the Depression, when if you had even a little money, it went a long way,” said Benner, 67, a long-time Sierra Club member. 

Her sense of stewardship owes something to memories of her late neighbor, David Brower—former director of the Sierra Club and founder of the Earth Island Institute—who lived up the hill on Stevenson Road.  

In the Sierra Club tradition, she preserves her land as open space. Though it is private property, neighbors sometimes use its paths to reach the Tamalpais steps from Keith Road above the north side of the canyon and creek.  

The sound of the creek and the sight of the canyon offer a respite to those who climb the path. Toward the top, the steps become steep and narrow, where a handrail offers assistance. The ascent is worth the effort, however, for the top offers a view through redwood trees to Mount Tamalpais itself. That is, of course, as long as the fog cooperates.

Berkeley City Council asked citizens to come out to the regular meeting last Tuesday to air their opinions on the proposed March, 2004, parcel tax increase ballot measure. A large number of Berkeley citizens complied, packing Council chambers Tuesday night, and pretty much telling Council to take their tax and shove it. 

The city faces an $8 million to $10 million budget deficit next year, projected to rise to as high as $20 million within five years. Council has proposed a parcel tax measure for next spring’s ballot that would make up half that projected deficit, hoping to institute budget cuts to make up the rest. 

The proposed tax would raise property taxes in Berkeley a little over nine cents a square foot, which would add about $110 to the tax bill for a 1,200-square-foot of property, up to a $913 increase for 10,000 square feet. 

Implementation of the measure requires approval by two-thirds of the voters. 

According to city Budget Manager Paul Navazio, without a new source of revenue, the city faces a 10 percent across-the-board cut next year of all city services. If no cuts are made to fire or police services, those necessary cuts would balloon to between 20 percent to 30 percent of the remaining city budget. 

In anticipation of the pending cuts, Mayor Tom Bates and three members of City Council (Linda Maio, Miriam Hawley, and Gordon Wozniak) have proposed a “budget crisis recovery plan” for debate before Council at its Nov. 25 meeting. Included in the proposed plan are a freeze on most new hiring by the city and a moratorium on all new city expenditures. 

Meanwhile, at the request of the mayor, the city manager’s office will do some more tweaking of the proposed parcel tax before putting it to Council for a final approval of the ballot language Nov. 25. 

Bates asked City Manager Phil Kamlarz to cap the proposed tax at $7 million, eliminating the trigger that would allow the tax to increase in proportion to any potential state cuts to Berkeley’s budget. Bates also requested that the proposed tax be automatically resubmitted to voters for approval in four years, rather than the original six. 

If Tuesday night’s hearing is any indication, however, those alterations may be a case of too little, too late. Some 30 residents spoke their minds to Council, almost all in opposition to the proposed tax, and none citing any previous Council concessions on the measure. 

Berkeley resident Patrick Finley—stressing that he isn’t a landlord—summed up the position of many when he told Council, “The structure [of the proposed parcel tax] is proposed so that the majority can impose on a minority a property tax, so only the few will carry the burden to benefit the many. I say shame on you for your divisive proposal, and your failure to fulfill the trust to manage the city’s revenue.” 

Dorothy Adriennes, an artist, an unemployed single mother, and a Berkeley property owner since 1985, told council she was at her “wit’s end” because of a property tax bill that was already more than $4,000 a year. “I’m one of those persons who is at my limit,” she said. “I need some relief here. The Berkeley artists can’t afford to live in Berkeley.” 

Bob McDow, a Berkeley homeowner and taxi driver, said “a lot of us are fed up. Last November, three of four Berkeley tax measures were voted down, with no significant opposition. This time, there’s organized opposition.” McDow said that if Council did not make significant revisions to the tax proposal, “we will fight it, we will oppose it, and we will defeat it. There is no doubt.” 

Three more Berkeley neighborhood associations—the McKinley Addison Allston Grant Neighborhood Association, the Willard Neighborhood Association, and the Blake and California Streets Neighborhood Association—came out in opposition Tuesday night, bringing to five the number of Berkeley neighborhood groups against the tax. In addition, the Berkeley Alliance of Neighborhood Associations (BANA), an umbrella coalition, has announced opposition to the parcel tax. 

Many speakers questioned why Council didn’t propose other fund-raising measures rather than the parcel tax. 

But to the complaint of some speakers that the proposed parcel tax was a “regressive tax based upon the square footage rather than the value of the property,” City Manager Phil Kamlarz said that state law “limits the types of taxes we can implement. Few, if any, progressive tax raises are possible.” 

A clearly frustrated Mayor Tom Bates took aim at some of the public speakers, saying, “A lot of misinformation was put out tonight [about the nature of the Berkeley budget and the proposed tax cut]. It’s very frustrating to sit here and listen to this misinformation.” 

But Bates seemed almost resigned to the possible—some might say probable—defeat of the measure next March, stating that while he didn’t want to preside over layoffs and radical budget cuts, he would do so if that was the will of the voters. 

Bates, in fact, seemed to be almost publicly preparing for an imminent loss. “We’re trying to craft something that we can present to the voters, and if they turn it down, they turn it down. I used to play football up at Cal,” he added. “I know how to lose. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” 

The remark got one of the few laughs of the night. 

Council got more bad budget news during an earlier 5 p.m. hearing on the city’s labor contracts. While Council has floated the idea of renegotiating the labor pacts as a way of cutting the budget deficit, representatives of several of the city’s major labor unions flatly rejected the notion during the public hearing. 

The city is presently locked into contracts with fire personnel until 2006, with police personnel until 2007, and with all other union-represented city staff until 2008. 

City staff and union representatives both said they were continuing negotiations over several labor cost-cutting proposals that would not involve renegotiating contracts.  

The only good news for the city on the labor front on Tuesday was the announcement that city department heads had agreed to a voluntary three percent pay cut to help in the budget crisis.

FRIDAY, NOV. 21 

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Eric Stover, Director, Human Rights Center, “My Neighbor, My Enemy.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $11.50 - $12.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For reservations call 526-2925.  

Family Literacy Night at the Berkeley YMCA, 7 to 9 p.m. Activities include veggie art, pumpkin writing, storytelling. 665-3271. 

Women in Black Vigil, from noon to 1 p.m. at UC Berkeley, Bancroft at Telegraph. wibberkeley@yahoo.com  

Meditation, Peace Vigil and Dialogue, gather at noon on the grass close to the West Entrance to UC Berkeley, on Oxford St. near University Ave. People of all traditions are welcome to join us. Sponsored by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 496-6000, ext. 135. www.bpf.org 

Overeaters Anonymous meets every Friday at 1:30 p.m. at the Northbrae Church at Solano and The Alameda. Parking is free and is handicapped accessible. For information call Katherine, 525-5231. 

SATURDAY, NOV. 22 

Graffitti Paint Out, sponsored by the City of Berkeley. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center, 2180 Milvia St. The City will provide the paint and other supplies. Teams will be dispatched to areas throughout the City and each participant will receive a free “Berkeley Paint Out” T-shirt. It is strongly suggested that any clothing worn to the Berkeley “Paint Out” be suitable for painting and cleaning. For more information, call David Burruto at 981-7003 or email DBurruto@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Dyeing Naturally Discover natural dyes from your backyard. We’ll learn techniques and sources for easy and unusual dyes. For ages 8 and up. From 10:30 a.m. to noon at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. 525-2233. 

Kid’s Garden Club Learn about the power of seeds and plant a new hillside of the Kids Garden. For ages 7to 12 registration required. From 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Cost is $3. 525-2233.  

Greens at Work A local action to improve the health of the planet! Clean up, plant, restore! Meet at 10 a.m. at the southern end of Aquatic Park. Sponsored by Northwest Berkeley Greens and Strawberry Creek Affinity Group. All are welcome. 622-4515. 

Green Living Series: Alternative Cleaning Recipes and Methods A workshop on methods and recipes for cleaning your house with such items as baking soda, vinegar, and borax, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo Ave, near Dwight Way. Cost is $10 EC members, $15 general, no one turned away. 548-2220, ext. 233.  

Eastshore State Park Walk Through Time Citizens for the Eastshore State Park and Save the Bay will offer a walk along the Bay beginning at 9 a.m. at Seabreeze Café off of University Ave. Learn about the history of this greatly transformed Bay shoreline. 452-926. jparsons@savesfbay.org 

Gardening: The Colorful Camellia Sasanqua at 10 a.m. at Magic Gardens, 729 Heinz Ave. 644-2351. 

March to Support Grocery Workers Meet at the Rockridge BART, 5660 College Ave. Oakland, at 1 p.m. for a march on Safeway. Sponsored by the Central Labor Council of Alameda County, AFL-CIO. 632-4242. 

Rights of the Child in the Middle East, a conference with discussions on the role of the United Nations, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Peacemaking, Refugees, and Children’s Education, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Booth Auditorium, Boalt Hall, UC Campus. Donations will benefit UNICEF projects in the region. 540-0830. Iameva@aol.com 

Goalball Invitational Tournament for visually impaired athletes, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Recreational Sports Facility, UC Campus. Sponsored by the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program. For information call 849-4663, ext. 304.  

Lavender Seniors of the East Bay Honors “Lavender Pioneers” from 1 to 4 p.m. in the San Leandro Community Church, 1395 Bancroft Ave., San Leandro. Admission is $25 sliding scale. 667-9655. www.lavenderseniors.org 

Get into the Swing at the Club Swing dance and open house at the Berkeley City Club from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Featuring live music from the 16-piece Class Act Traditional Swing Band, a full bar, and silent auction. Cost is $10. 848-7800. 

Dance for Lesbians and Their Allies, a benefit for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and La Lesbian, at 9 p.m. at La Peña, 3015 Shattuck Ave. Tickets are $20. 849-2568. 

Berkeley African Student Association Fall Banquet, “Problems and Politics Behind Educational Practices in Africa” at 6:30 p.m. in the Lippman Room, Barrows Hall. For details email basaofficers@ 

uclink.berkeley.edu, ww.ocf. 

berkeley.edu/~basa/home 

Alexander Technique Workshop on tension reduction, from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the Berkeley YWCA, 2600 Bancroft Way. Pre-registration recommended. 848-6370. 

Free Emergency Preparedness Class on Disaster First Aid for anyone who lives or works in Berkeley, from 9 a.m. to noon at 997 Cedar St., between 8th and 9th Sts. Register on-line at www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire/oes or by calling 981-5506. 

Yoga for Seniors at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., on Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m. The class is taught by Rosie Linsky, who at age 72, has practiced yoga for over 40 years. Open to non-members of the club for $8.00 per class. For further information and to register, call Karen Ray at 848-7800. 

Car Wash Benefit for Options Recovery Services of Berkeley, held every Sat. from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Lutheran Church, 1744 University Ave. 666-9552. 

SUNDAY, NOV. 23 

Plant a Winter Garden, for children and adults, from 1 to 3 p.m. Meet in the West End Community Garden in People’s Park. Heavy rain cancels. 658-9178.  

Peace Garden Harvest Festival Join us for a day of harvesting vegetables, cooking and eating! Listen to speakers from local food groups and join in discussions of the importance of creating sustainable local food systems. Participate in mural painting, the vegetable grill, and kids’ activitiesfrom 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Fellowship of Humanity Hall, 390 27th St. and 411 28th St, between Telegraph and Broadway, Oakland. 393-5685.  

Hope Rises From the Ashes, Vietnam veteran Mike Boehm will describe 11 years of rebuilding and the rebirth of hope in My Lai, at 3 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland. 

Basic Computer Use and The Berkeley Public Library Catalog will be taught from 1 to 2 p.m. and Getting and Using a Free E-Mail Account will be taught from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Central Library’s 3rd floor Electronic Classroom. Reservations are required. Sign up at the 3rd floor Paging Desk or call 981-6221. 

Haiti, a Celebration of the Bi-Centennial of Independence at 3 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Girl Army Cafe Night benefit for women’s self-defense at 7:30 p.m. at the Long Haul, a reading room, library and community center in South Berkeley located at 3124 Shattuck Ave. Donation of $3-$5 requested, no one turned away. Wheelchair accessible. 540-0751. www.thelonghaul.org 

Berkeley City Club free tour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are sponsored by the Berkeley City Club and the Landmark Heritage Foundation. Donations welcome. The Berkeley City Club is located at 2315 Durant Ave. For group reservations or more information, call 848-7800 or 883-9710. 

Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Amdo on “Meditation and the Four Noble Truths,” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812. www.nyingmainstitute.com 

St. Paul AME Church will celebrate 70 years in the Berkeley community at 9:30 a.m. Newly appointed pastor Rev. Dr. Allen L. Williams will speak. Thanksgiving lunch will follow the worship service. 2024 Ashby Ave. 

MONDAY, NOV. 24 

Tea at Four Enjoy some of the best teas from the other side of the Pacific Rim and learn their cultural and natural history. Then take a walk to see wintering birds and dormant lady- 

beetles, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, in Tilden Park. Registration required. Cost is $5 for residents, $7 for non-residents. Wheelchair accessible. 525-2233. 

Grief Information Session at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center from 6 to 7:30 p.m. If you have lost someone you love to cancer, come for gentle guidance through the basic steps of grieving. 5741 Telegraph. Please RSVP, 420-7900.  

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 6 p.m. at 2022 Blake St. Join us to work on current issues around police misconduct. Volunteers needed. For information call 548-0425. 

13th Medicine Lodge, a gathering for shamanically inclined individuals, from 7 to 10 p.m. Please call 707-367-2282 for location. 

TUESDAY, NOV. 25 

“The Face of Occupation” a presentation by Penny Rosenwasser, of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, at 6:30 p.m. at the Berkeley Public Library, Community Meeting Room, 3rd floor, 2090 Kittredge. Sponsored by Berkeley Peace Walk and Vigil and Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace.  

Berkeley Special Education Parents Network meets from 7 to 9 p.m. at Ala Costa Center, 1300 Rose St., at Cedar-Rose Park. Guest speakers will be Lisa Noshay Petro and Nina Ghiselli of the East Bay Learning Disabilities Association. For information call 525-9262 or email BSPED@mcads.com 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 525-3565. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. Charles Fitch will show travel slides, and we will have a Thanksgiving lunch at noon. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

Tuesday Tilden Walkers We are a few slowpoke Seniors who walk between a mile or two each Tuesday, meeting at 9:30 a.m. in the Little Farm parking lot. To join us, call 215-7672 or email teachme99@comcast.net 

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 26 

“The World Community and International Human Rights: Are Things Getting Any Better?” with Maurice Copithorne, Professor of Law, University of British Columbia, at 7:30 p.m. at International House, Home Room, Piedmont at Bancroft. 642-9460. 

Youth Radio “Give Thanks and Party!” Come dance and donate a can of food to feed the hungry this holiday season, at 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. You must bring a can of food to enter. Youth Radio Cafe, 1801 University Ave. 841-5123. 

Multi-Faith Thanksgiving Service led by Berkeley clergy of all faiths with choir members of the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley & Beth El Junior Choir, at 7:30 p.m. Reception to follow. Congregation Beth El, 2301 Vine St. 848-3988. 

THURSDAY, NOV. 27 

Thanksgiving Day - City Offices are Closed 

Food Not Bombs Thanksgiving Vegetarian Feast, community potluck, with music, food and games at 6 p.m. at Ashkenaz, 1317 San Pablo Ave. Please bring a vegetarian dish to share. Call Terri for more information, 658-9178. www.ebfnb.org  

ONGOING 

We Give Thanks Month, Berkeley restaurants, Bar-Ristorante Raphael, Cold Stone Creamery, Downtown, La Note, Semi-Freddi’s, Skates, and Spengers will donate a portion of their proceeds to Berkeley Food and Housing Project during the month of November. 

Holiday Food Drive Help the Alameda County Community Food Bank help people in need. Offer to run a food drive, or donate healthy nonperishable food at Safeway stores, Berkeley Bowl and Bay Street Emeryville. For more information call 834-3663. www.accfb.org 

City of Berkeley Commissioners Sought If you are interested in serving on a commission, applications can be downloaded from www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ 

commissions/general.htm#applications or contact the City Clerk, 981-6900.  

The Online Civilian Conservation Corps Museum is seeking the stories about the CCCs, CCC Enrollees, Staff, or Technical Advisors for publication to this online historical resource. If you would like to participate please send your stories, with name company number and location if known, to CCC Collection, PO Box 5, Woodbury NJ 08096 or email to JFJmuseum@aol.com 

Personnel Commissioner Sought for Alameda County School Board Responsibilities include administration of the Merit System. Meetings once a month. Applications must be received by Nov. 28. For details please contact Alameda County Office of Education, 670-7703. 

Free Smoke Detectors for City residents and UC Berkeley students who live off-campus. Applications are available from the Environment, Health & Safety office of UC Berkeley, at any Berkeley Fire Station, or at the Fire Admin. Office located at 2100 MLK, Jr. Way. 981-5585.  

Free Energy Bill Payment Assistance The City of Berkeley has money to help low-income households pay their gas and electric bills. For applications contact the Energy Office at 644-8544. TDD: 981-6903. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/energy 

CITY MEETINGS 

Solid Waste Management Commission meets Mon., Nov. 24, at 7 p.m., at 1201 Second St. Becky Dowdakin, 981-6357. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/commissions/solidwaste 

City Council meets Tues., Nov. 25, at 7 p.m., in City Council Chambers, Sherry M. Kelly, city clerk, 981-6900. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/citycouncil 

Planning Commission meets Wed., Nov. 26, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Ruth Grimes, 981-7481. www.ci.berkeley. ca.us/commissions/planning

There are two ways to balance a budget, earn more or spend less. Berkeley’s mayor and city Council have decided to “earn more.” For you or I, “earn more” means work more; for city government it means charge higher fees and create new taxes.  

Recently the Council conducted a symbolic public hearing regarding its proposed parcel tax. Several issues and questions were brought to the Council’s attention. None were addressed. After listening to citizen objections the mayor proceeded to discount the public comment asserting that raising property taxes is the only way for the city to function. 

I would like the mayor and Council to respond to the following concerns: 

1.) Berkeley property owners pay more fees and taxes than any other bay area city. Do we receive better services? 

2.) Why is the ratio of public employees to citizens in Berkeley higher than in any other bay area city? 

3.) Why are city employees paid more and receive greater benefits than their counter parts in cities of similar size? 

4.) What about all the public money given to or lent (at low or no interest) to fund large “non-profit” housing projects in the city? How carefully is this money followed and monitored? Does the community receive a fair ”return” for it’s profound contribution? 

5.) Is the $3,000,000 per year spent to sustain the rent board worth it? Why does its budget keep going up when the number of units it administers goes down? 

6.) Did the city just buy a new recycling truck? How much did it cost? Is the curbside recycling program self-sustaining? In my neighborhood recycling bins are emptied the night before the truck arrives by a grocery cart recycling brigade. Why doesn’t the city stop this or simply turn the program over to this industrious group?! 

7.) How much did those yellow pedestrian flags cost? How many lives did they save? How many times have they been replaced? Why are they displayed on a frat house on Dwight Way? Was this a wise use of public money? How many other equally effective “solutions” does the city fund? 

8.) As a highly taxed, self-employed homeowner without retirement, pension, or medical benefits, I pay for my own use of the YMCA. Why do you think it is my responsibility to pay for city employee to use the YMCA?  

Even though the city has recently increased fees and fines across the board (including garbage collection, building permits, parking permits and parking tickets), the mayor thinks homeowners should cough up an additional $250.00 a year simply on the faith that our government is without waste or excess. Experience tells us that waste is eliminated only when increased revenue is denied. 

There are simply too many unanswered questions and questionable city expenditures to allow for further property tax increases. Besides, it is the most unfair tax in Berkeley. Why should homeowners flip the bill for the tens of thousands of untaxed tenants in the city? Don’t tenants drive on our streets, use the sewers, call the police when they are mugged?  

The problem is not “taxation without representation” but rather “representation without taxation.” The tenant population can vote for every property tax increase, enjoy the ensuing services but never bear the burden of the additional cost. 

The mayor asserts that property tax is the only source of new revenue. This is not true. Considering the unfairness of placing the entire burden on property owners why not institute one of the following: 

1.) Annual Tenant Use Fee? 

2.) Citywide “sin” tax (city tax on alcohol & cigarettes)? 

3.) A general sales tax? 

But before raising any additional revenues the public must demand absolute accountability from our government. The mayor and City Council must understand that there is a limit to what we can or will pay for. We are near that limit now! 

John Koenigshofer is a poet, a painter and builder of small condominium projects in Berkeley.

UC Berkeley plans to develop a downtown hotel and convention center which Mayor Tom Bates hopes will capture both millions in tax revenue in the near future and the imagination of residents by restoring Strawberry Creek sometime later. 

But many remain skeptical about the mega-development, which the mayor said is estimated to cost $150-200 million. 

“This could be a wonderful contribution to the city or a horrendous nightmare,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington. 

The university has a tentative agreement—brokered in part by Mayor Bates—to buy the Bank of America branch at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street and turn it into the centerpiece of a radically different downtown core as early as 2007. 

On the bank’s property would stand the hotel/convention center with between 175 and 200 rooms, a 15,000-square-foot conference center and room for a new Bank of America branch—all above an underground parking garage. 

Next door, the university would evict its printing press and demolish the parking lot at Addison and Oxford streets to transplant three of its highest-profile museums—the Pacific Film Archive, the Kroeber Center, and the Berkeley Art Museum—to the heart of the city’s arts district. 

UC Berkeley issued a Request for Qualification on the property last week, inviting developers to present past plans as the university looks to find a partner for the project. 

The hotel would be the second largest in town and offers tantalizing hotel tax revenues expected to run upwards of $1 million per year for a cash-strapped city facing an estimated $8-10 million budget shortfall next year. 

A survey conducted by the city’s Office of Economic Development found strong demand for a downtown hotel from visitors to the campus who now cluster in hotels and motels around Emeryville. 

What the city would lose in the deal is property tax revenue, which UC Berkeley—a state entity—doesn’t pay. Just how much property tax the bank is currently paying couldn’t be determined by presstime. 

Bates said Berkeley would receive possesory interest taxes, which local governments levy on private companies that posses exclusive use of tax-exempt properties. 

The mayor called the lost property taxes “a drop in the bucket” compared to the hotel tax revenue the city stands to gain—but with a proposed citywide parcel tax hike making property taxes a political hot potato, Bates’ colleagues in Council were leery of allowing another parcel to escape the tax rolls. 

“We in no way should sacrifice that land,” Councilmember Dona Spring said. “We can’t afford to give free rides anymore.” 

Under the terms of the deal, UC Berkeley would own the land but lease the property to a private developer to build and manage. The university refused to divulge the sale price or their financing for the purchase. 

UC Berkeley’s central role in the development worries some officials because it’s immune to Berkeley development rules. 

“The city loses leverage as soon as the university becomes the owner of something,” said Planning Commissioner Rob Wrenn. “UC doesn’t have to pay attention to anything.” 

Bates, though, said only the university had the economic interest and clout to complete the deal, adding that he thought the development would “come to all of our commissions.” UC Berkeley spokesperson Kathleen Maclay said “public comment would be solicited.” 

Maclay also said the university was committed to abiding by the city’s downtown plan which calls for the hotel/convention center to be built to “green” building standards. She said the university had no objections to transforming that block of Center Street into a pedestrian walkway—with the added possibility that Strawberry Creek might once again be daylighted on the site. 

Creek supporters have long cast their gaze on the Bank of America site as the home of a future environmentally friendly convention center that could anchor a “green” block highlighted by the restored creek. “That’s been the vision for quite some time,” Spring said, acknowledging that the plan does not call for or provide money for the creek project. 

Some obvious issues remain. Building underground parking in downtown Berkeley has never proven feasible, and the driveway for the lot would likely have to encroach the future pedestrian area of Center Street. Also, without a waiver from the current zoning laws, the development would have to fit its rooms and convention space into five stories. University and city officials refused to comment on the height of the proposed building. 

“The general concept is not bad at all,” Wrenn said. “It’s all a question of how it’s done.”

To Berkeley City Council: 

The power to tax is the power to destroy. Increasing taxes traditionally forces older, retired, limited income citizens to sell their homes. Many of these people may have voted for you. Will they do so again? 

At the same time you are decreasing city real estate taxes by giving non profits land to build housing that is not needed or wanted. And causing scandal by enriching developers. 

At the same time you are decreasing sales tax revenue by removing parking from downtown. You have just rehabilitated the downtown. We come to the movies and the library. We eat at Mel’s. Where are we going to park when you close the garages and build housing on the lots? 

If people cannot park, they will not come. The result will be decreased sales taxes and decreased property value, as stores move away. You will ruin what you have accomplished. 

Already passed are school district and library bonds, which will soon be adding another $500 to the average parcel owner's tax bill. On top of this, the City is issuing Certificates of Participation without asking for voter approval, for $28 million to purchase and rehab 1947 Center Street. This debt will also be passed along to parcel owners. 

Total proposed tax increases are now approaching $1000 apiece for the average home owner. Increases will be larger for large homes and for apartment buildings. There will be unpleasant consequences for many. There will be many property sales and a forced change over in population. This is what tax increases have always done. Taxpayers are not going to like this. 

Despite the city’s blatant politics in calling this a FIRE PROTECTION TAX, it seems most likely that the citizens will vote down the tax, and maybe, in the next election, vote out Council members. In the last election the citizens voted DOWN 75% s of the tax increases.  

Over the past decade Berkeley has off loaded general fund taxes on the public six times as special taxes: sewer, library etc. This is about $50 million a year now in extra taxes.  

Berkeley has the highest taxes in the state. This is not a secret. See data attached re a few similar sized cities. These cities have not had to raise taxes this year. What is the matter with Berkeley? 

These taxes are caused by a series of City Councils wanting to help everyone and deny no one. 

In the very same agenda as this tax is a list of nearly one million dollars of expenses. There are no alternatives. There is no cost benefit analysis. Any family or business that ran like this would rapidly fail. So will the city. A Council that is on the ball would JUST SAY NO! 

If you pass this tax proposal now, the City will just keeping eating at the public trough, getting fatter and fatter until it will burst when the citizens turn down the tax. Bankruptcy is on the horizon.  

Mr. Kamlarz is a very able man and he certainly knows where the dollars are hidden. Why doesn’t the City Council direct him to balance the budget and report back in a couple of weeks without a tax increase. He can do it and he can do it without cutting the cops and firemen. He can do it by either reopening the MOU or laying off people. 

Items that the casual observer has noted.  

• There are 250 people working in a city hall that used to hold 400. The city has purchased (on time) a $28 million building for the overflow. Why not cut staff, compress space, and get everyone back under one roof. 

• Berkeley is no bigger now that it was 20 years ago. Why does the bureaucracy need to expand—aahh, the extra programs added by Council after Council. Time to cut back, folks. 

• The Housing Dept. has 54 employees and a budget of $15,000,000. This in a town with a housing surplus. They have identified $33,000 in savings for next year according to the budget. I’ll bet Mr. Kamlarz can add a couple of zeros to that number. Who is kidding who here? 

• Prior to the last election the Council approved a pay and pension package rivaled in America only by Congress. It was clear at that time that this was going to cause severe future problems. Perhaps it would be a help for the city to go bankrupt so that a judge can abrogate this ill considered action. I wonder how many of Berkeley’s citizens have such high pay and benefits. One could re-staff city hall with intelligent motivated out of work Berkeleyans at half the current cost.  

• While Berkeley is handing out 8% increases, San Francisco's employees agreed to a 7.5% wage cut. The State of California negotiated a two-year wage freeze with its largest union, and a similar two-year wage freeze and moratorium on step increases was accepted by San Francisco Community College instructors. A two-year wage freeze would go a long way to solving Berkeley’s budget crisis 

• Every neighborhood organization with which I have checked is opposing this new tax. Hard to win an election if the citizens don’t want the tax. 

The Council can show that it cares about this city by 

• Voting not to put this tax on the ballot. 

• Start efficiently managing the city.  

• Stop fooling with a pie in the sky taxes and other destructive ideas like unneeded housing and eliminating needed parking. 

George Oram, Chair, Berkeley Can do Better, Homeowner, Parent, Commercial Tenant Businessman and Employer of over 30 people.  

Critics of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) gave lab officials an earful Monday, arguing that planned expansion at the lab threatens to pollute their lungs, clog their streets and devour their tax dollars. 

“The lab should never have been built there, but it doesn’t have to keep growing,” said Susan Cerny, a local preservationist. 

The occasion of the complaints was a legally mandated Scoping Session that allowed the roughly 40 residents in attendance to weigh in on the Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) that will guide development at the 200-acre Berkeley Hills campus through 2025. 

The plan projects increasing the daily population at the lab by 1,200 to 5,500 and boosting building space by 800,000 square feet to 2.56 million square feet.  

Residents offered a litany of criticisms and suggestions that, by law, the lab must address in the Environmental Impact Report that will accompany the LRDP. Lab officials declined to address the speaker’s concerns, but said in private interviews that it would be difficult to satisfy them. 

The lab’s most promising new field of research—nanotechnology—also proved its most controversial. 

Nanoparticles are 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair, but when effectively manipulated exhibit dynamic properties that proponents say can revolutionize nearly every scientific field from medicine to weaponry. 

Neighbors, though, fear the particles and fibers are so small that they’ll float through standard lab filters and land in their lungs, causing unknown health risks. 

“Not even the Environmental Protection Agency knows the impact of these things, but we’re ready to let them loose in Berkeley,” said Tom Kelly of the Commission on Health. 

Lab officials said most nanotechnology research has been performed in liquid solutions or with the particles bound to other materials—which sharply reduce the risk of emissions. 

Residents called for a review of the future home for nanotechnology research—the Molecular Foundry— which they claimed lab officials snuck through environmental review before unveiling the long range plan. 

Jeffrey Philliber, a lab facilities manager, said that since the foundry had already met all state environmental standards, it won’t be incorporated into the Environmental Impact Report—which, however, will address health concerns about nanotechnology. 

On Tuesday, City Council tabled a recommendation from the city’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission to ask the lab to submit to annual studies on potential nanotechnology health risks from an independent board of scientists. 

Other residents feared that the military would ultimately reap the benefits of the lab’s nanotechnology research, but lab spokesperson Terry Powell said only two percent of the lab’s budget is sponsored by the Department of Defense, none of it classified. 

Many residents were just as concerned about the traffic heading to and from the lab. 

Claiming that Centennial Drive and other commuter roadways were already carrying maximum traffic loads, neighbors urged the lab to work with AC Transit to establish bus service and establish an Eco Pass program to give incentives for workers to ditch their cars. 

Powell said the lab planned to add just 600 new parking spaces for the projected 1200 new workers. But, he said, lab officials had previously rejected Eco Passes because many employees commute from Contra Costa County and therefore wouldn’t benefit from the program. The lab does run a shuttle service every ten minutes from downtown Berkeley. 

“We can’t mitigate the traffic problem by ourselves,” Philliber said, citing a 1998 study that showed the lab accounted for a small portion of rush hour traffic heading through the South Berkeley Hills. 

Lab officials were also quick to reject the city’s plan to seek compensation for city services, including maintaining sewers and access roads. 

Powell said the lab already provides roughly $1 million annually to the city by fielding a fire department that provides first call service to neighborhoods around the lab. Last year, Powell said, the firefighters responded to 650 calls, 70 percent of them from off-campus neighbors. 

Jeff Sherwood, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy, said Department policy precluded it from paying Berkeley for services because the lab rents its property from the University of California. 

Berkeley Assistant City Manager Arrieta Chakos said the city remained undeterred and would seek compensation either from the Department of Energy or the UC Board of Regents after staffers complete a report on the extent of the city’s expenditures towards maintaining the lab. 

Meanwhile, the city is funding a study of expenses related to UC Berkeley, which is also in the process of finalizing its own Long Range Development Plan. 

“It’s our responsibility to develop every type of avenue we can to work with the lab and campus,” Chakos said. “We really feel obliged to push this very early in the process.”

It is time to start thinking about and discussing the renewal of our Berkeley Schools Educational Excellence Project (BSEP). For almost 18 years, in two different measures, Berkeley voters have authorized an additional special tax (a rate per square footage, both residential and commercial, with different rates assigned to each). The current BSEP measure sunsets in 2006; it is likely that the measure will be brought back to the voters much sooner than that 2006 sunset date. 

There are numerous reasons for this; I will enumerate some here. 

1) The money generated from the BSEP special tax is relatively static from year to year. Because it is based on a square-footage formula on developed 

property in Berkeley, annual proceeds do not significantly change from year to year. There is merely a modest Cost of Living Adjustment built into the measure. The result is that over the years the number of teachers and materials the measure is able to contribute has declined as salaries and cost of materials inevitably increase. 

2) There is a willingness and even a will to bring the measure back before the 2006 sunset date by many people involved in BSEP oversight and/or BSEP funded programs. This in part because many in the community would like to see a redistribution of the funds as well as a possible increase in the annual proceeds. 

3) Because of chronic underfunding from the state and federal government, local district’s budgets are severely restricted at this time. There is little or no “wiggle room” for teacher and other employee-salary increases, program expansion, or containment of class sizes. Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) has been in a cost-cutting fiscal crisis for three years, and the prospects from the state and federal government do not look any better for the foreseeable future. 

The BSEP measure has been a model of participatory democracy for the District and for the City of Berkeley. Representatives chosen at each site meet regularly at the District Planning and Oversight Committee to annually review, recommend, and oversee budget allocations from the current BSEP measure, which totals about $10 million. This money has funded an elementary music program, hired over 70 teachers each year, furnished library books, videos, band and orchestra sheet music, musical instruments, and art supplies. The sites have a pool of discretionary funds that they prepare an annual expenditure plan for; sites have funded resource specialists, athletics, tutoring services, art and science teachers, conflict resolution services, library services, and playground supervision, among many other things over the years. 

Over the life of the measure the demands on the BSEP funds increase (BSEP is an essentially static parcel tax), class sizes rise, teachers’ salaries increase, and the funds in BSEP buy fewer and fewer teachers and staff, and have less and less buying power toward instructional materials and other real goods. Some of this is inevitable in a twelve-year tax measure, but the trend has been exasperated due to the severe nature of California’s budget crisis and the severe fiscal constraints this budget crisis has caused the district. Now that there is a Republican governor in Sacramento the prospects for adequate public school funding are even more uncertain, and perhaps more unlikely. We can and must control as much of the fate of our local schools as possible; equitable measures such as BSEP (all students are served, and the site allocation is based on a per-pupil formula) are one way to ensure at least some local control in our classrooms.  

John Selawsky is Vice-president of the Berkeley School Board.

Oop, she did it again. Berkeley developer Christina Sun violated a stop work order issued by the Planning Department when under the guise of weatherizing the roof at her 3045 Shattuck Ave. building, she had construction workers proceed towards finalizing the project. 

City inspectors slapped Sun with a notice of violation last week, after they determined that instead of installing plywood boards with plastic sheathing above to fend off winter rains as authorized, she attached black felt paper to the plywood, which is not used for weathering but as a base for laying shingles. 

Neighbors contend Sun did even more to her unfinished roof including reworking and leveling rafters and finalizing the framing, but when building inspectors responded they only found evidence of the black felt paper. 

The city won’t order her to take down any of the improvements to her roof, said City Planner Debra Sanderson. 

To guard against future violations, Sanderson gave one neighbor a building inspector’s cell phone number to immediately report any future violations. 

“There’s been a problem with her truthfulness or lack thereof,” Sanderson said. “We want this all out in the public.” 

The property entered Berkeley’s pantheon of disputed developments earlier this year when neighbors—concerned that Sun had jacked up her 1.5-story house to three stories with a ground floor shop without a use permit—fought the development. 

An investigation showed that Sun had lied on her application, classifying the building as a single-family dwelling, instead of a group living accommodation, for which remodeling would have required a use permit. 

In July, the Zoning Adjustment Board declared the building—presently a cottage perched above two stories of wooden beams—a public nuisance. Sun has appealed that ruling to City Council which will hear the case in December. 

Should Council rule against her, Sun could either file suit against the city, or submit new development plans. She did not return telephone calls to the Daily Planet. 

Robert Lauriston, a neighbor and opponent of the project, said he was annoyed the city failed to stop Sun from completing the improvements, but thought that the issue was minor. 

“It doesn’t really make a difference,” he said. “If she wins in Council she can finish the project. If she loses she’ll have to take most of it down anyway. It’s just that this sort of thing keeps happening.”

Strawberry Canyon is in the city’s backyard, and for many of us, it’s as if it isn’t even there. How else to explain that in the span of less than a year, a six-story nanotechnology research facility was approved without the benefit of a public hearing, the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zone was selected as the preferred location for six-story Building 49, and a water distribution upgrade project was deemed exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) despite significantly denuding the landscape?  

The natural environment of Strawberry Canyon is rapidly disappearing. In the 1990s alone, LBNL built the Human Genome Center (now part of the Joint Genome Institute with Livermore and Los Alamos Labs) and the Hazardous Waste Storage Handling Facility (HWSHF). UC Berkeley built the impermeable surface of the pictured parking lot. What appears to be clear-cutting is presumably an effort at vegetation management to reduce the risk of fire next to the facility that stores and sometimes treats hazardous and radioactive waste. In the lower right corner is the UCB Botanical Garden hanging on by a thread.  

The LBNL qualifies as a Superfund site with a Hazard Ranking Score (HRS) of 50.35 while meanwhile the Livermore Lab Site 300 Explosive Testing and Waste Dump Site has a lower HRS of 31.58. Rather than cleaning up the core Berkeley Lab site, new construction is pushed out to the perimeter. Infill development is apparently irrelevant to an expansionistic Department of Energy facility operating with the UC Regents’ blessing.  

The lab seeks at this time to prepare a 20-year development plan, known as the Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) and per CEQA law solicits public input. The initial study for the LRDP reports that the 200-acre LBNL site in the Hill area presently includes 1.76 million gross square feet (gsf) of building space and that 25 percent of the site is impermeable surface area. Implementation of the LRDP would increase the lab’s main Hill site total building area to approximately 2.5 million gsf. Estimated impermeable surface area is to be determined. The initial study is available online at www.lbl.gov/Community/env-rev-docs.html.lbl.gov. 

Unless there is a widespread and diverse community-based movement, Strawberry Canyon will be lost to us. If you believe that nature is irreplaceable and that wildlands should be in walking distance rather than driving distance, then you might want to become involved. Discover Strawberry Canyon while it’s still beautiful open space and habitat for wildlife. Our very own backyard is a treasure.  

The 30-day comment period on the Notice of Preparation of an Environmental Impact Report on the LRDP ends Nov. 26, 2003. Comments can be e-mailed to LRDP-EIR@lbl.gov or mailed to Jeff Philliber, Environmental Planning Group Coordinator, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, MS 90K, Berkeley, CA 94720.  

Janice Thomas is President of the Panoramic Hill Association, former Chair of the City of Berkeley’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission, and former Co-Chair of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste.  

UC Berkeley’s Dean of Students Karen Kenney this week issued her ruling on the fates of three students charged with violating the student code of conduct during an anti-war sit-in at Sproul Hall last March. 

After deliberating more than two weeks, Kenney ordered a reportable letter of warning inserted into the files of Rachel Odes and Snehal Shingavi. She also ruled that they must perform 20 hours of community service. 

She gave the third defendant, Michael Smith, a one-semester suspension that would start this spring—a punishment that will be stayed if he follows the panel’s recommendations and successfully completes an anger management course at the on-campus Tang Medical Center. Kenney also ordered that he receive a reportable letter of warning and perform 30 hours of community service. 

The students’ supporters greeted the recommendation to stay Smith’s suspension as a partial victory, but said they are outraged by the recommendation for anger management. 

“For a political offense this is really an unprecedented use of psychological treatment,” said Todd Chretien, a member of the Committee to Defend Student Civil Liberties, an ad-hoc political group formed to defend the students.  

“They are basically slandering Smith as an out-of-control, violent, reckless individual, and we believe the university is trying to smear his character in order to avoid what everybody agrees are political charges.” 

Smith said he wasn’t surprised about the dean’s decision but was taken aback by the suggestion for him to attend anger management classes.  

“I think the motivation that led [the campus judicial officer] to bring charges was the same thing that motivated the dean,” said Smith. “They want to silence dissent on campus and don’t want to see students exercise their right to protest.” 

“I was a little shocked by the decision. It’s almost laughable if it wasn’t so serious. I will fully admit however, to being quite angry about the war and the way the university has reacted to protest. I think we have the right to protest and to let our voices be heard and any time that the university tries to take that away is going to make me angry.” 

The students now have 15 days to appeal the decision to Vice Chancellor Genaro Padilla, whose decision is final. 

Of the 122 students arrested during the Sproul Hall sit-in, the university charged only the three defendants, citing prior conduct records. 

Smith’s charges were the most severe because of his involvement in what the university labeled a “racially motivated” incident involving a group of Asian men. 

Smith hotly disputed the school’s version of the incident during an Oct. 28 hearing, contending that he had confronted a campus police officer because he thought the officer was harassing the Asians. 

Smith and his codefendants claimed the incident was maliciously raised by campus judicial officer Neal Rajmaira to bolster a weak case. 

In the end, the campus tribunal which heard the students’ case rejected the arguments of both Rajmaira and Smith. Panel chair and Physics Professor Bob Jacobson entered only the written report of the incident as evidence.  

The students have consistently assailed the university as the only institution to charge students for actions during the wave of anti-war protests that erupted on campuses across the country when the war in Iraq broke out.  

In her official statement, Dean Kenney said her review of the recommendations was meant to ensure charges are fair and consistent with other cases. Students disagreed, saying the move to target three students out of the 119 arrested was selective, an example-setting repression of free speech rights. 

The defendants also claim their due process right were violated. The students, who initially expected to receive the panel recommendations within a week of the Oct. 28 hearing, had to wait over two weeks. They have 15 days to appeal, but Chretien said that period also includes the time needed by the vice chancellor to review the case and decide, limiting the time they will have to draft their letter. 

The students aren’t allowed to appeal in person, and only written statements will be considered. 

Chretien said he and his fellow codefendants thought they would have the chance to appeal to Kenney before her decision.  

Ann Weilles, a National Lawyers Guild attorney handling the students’ appeal, says she is concerned both with the decision to force Smith into anger management courses and with the consequences of a reportable letter of warning that stays in the student’s file and can be accessed by government agencies and other schools. 

“Snehal might not be hurt that much because he is a graduate student, but if Rachel or Michael want to transfer to a graduate program, they might be denied,” she said. 

Dean Kenney’s decision to authorize the letters coincides with a university report on changes to the student code of conduct that would bar lawyers from speaking for students during disciplinary hearings. University representatives say the decision to amend the code was part of regularly scheduled review already underway before the current case. 

The convicted students say the timing is too close to be coincidental and constitutes proof that the university is trying to rewrite the rules in its favor. They say they’re also worried about the university’s ability to press charges that stay in their file when they are unable to exercise due process rights, including the right to representation by a lawyer. 

As the appeal deadline approaches, the students and their supporters are asking supporters to write the vice-chancellor and demand dismissal of the charges. They’ve also been in contact with Amy Goodman, host of the radio and TV show Democracy Now, who has agreed to address the issue when she receives the Mario Savio Free Speech Award from the University on Thursday. 

“We believe the university’s intent has all along been to impose as harsh a punishment as possible,” said Chretien. “And we feel that they are going to go ahead with these punishments unless they feel community and student heat.”

BOWL BOYCOTT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’ve shopped at Berkeley Bowl for years when it was non-union, even though I support workers’ right to unionize. But the fact that the owner paid a union busting firm customers’ good money and succeeded in reversing the votes of enough workers who signed union cards to change the outcome is quite disturbing, given the anti-union, anti workers’ rights climate all over the country. I called management a few months ago and said that if they persisted in trying to break the union drive with fake fear tactics that I’d stop shopping there. They did; I will. 

Let it be known that I’m withdrawing the thousands of dollars that I spend each year at Berkeley Bowl. I’ll shop elsewhere for a few years. Even though I know the workforce there is young and inexperienced I’m also angry at the false consciousness that would cause some of these young workers to betray their own friends and comrades and change their votes after supporting unionization earlier. As in all of these situations it’s likely that some of the strongest union supporters will be fired or pressured out. The dogs of war, violence, and intimidation who currently have the upper hand in our country will take us down the road to hell if working people can’t stick together in defense of their own lives, let alone defending the rights of people imprisoned or invaded by the U.S. government. If you stop shopping at the Bowl let the management know.  

Marc Sapir MD 

• 

LOOMING DRAFT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In regards to your “Dead-Soldier-a-Day Calendar” cartoon (Daily Planet, Nov. 18-20), I find it compelling to respond to this short-sighted comical depiction. It’s missing the inscription of “Former Berkeley Student.” Despite the fact the military is all volunteer, it is likely probable that a draft will ensue based on our ever increasing presence in Iraq and other places in the world. So, I ask, “Why are CAL students not raising hell?” CAL was a fertile ground in the mid-60s into the mid-70s for significant opposition to the war in Viet Nam. As Stephen Stills wrote in the song For What It’s Worth: “It’s time we stop...Hey..What’s that sound...everybody look what’s going ‘round.....Paranoia strikes deep..into your hearts it will creep...It starts when you’re always afraid..Step out of line....” 

So CAL students, wake up and “hip-hop” into the real world that may cost you your lives. 

Jonathan M. Dietz 

San Rafael 

• 

NO NEW TAXES 

The following letter was addressed to Councilmember Maio. 

Thank you for soliciting my opinion on the proposed ballot measure to increase our property taxes. 

My property taxes for the year 1999-2000 were $2,636. My property taxes for the year 2003-2004 are $4, 663. That is a slightly over 75 percent increase in just four years. How can I possibly be in favor of any further tax increases? 

From my observations as both a temporary staff member and recent consultant for the city, I believe that Berkeley’s fiscal problems stem from sometimes 

throwing money at organizations and groups that have nothing to do with maintaining city functions and facilities, funding items with little hard information about the project, a union contract that does not allow any real layoffs as instead undesirable and incompetent staff are simply placed in another job in another department. 

During my time working for the city I observed at close hand staff that spent the day at personal pursuits, staff that were not at work at all but claimed 

that they were and were paid, staff that said they were too busy to do their job and then spent the entire morning in personal conversation, staff that couldn’t handle simple job responsibilities—such as basic ccomputer functions, filling out forms, etc.—but were paid over $60,000 annually. I literally ran into full-time staff, whose hours I knew, out jogging or at the YMCA taking classes during work hours not remotely near lunch break. 

I observed City Council vote to approve a bond measure one week and during the second and final approval of that same bond measure add 50 percent to the bond measure without noticing their mistake. I observed bond measures that have been funded, that we are charged additional taxes for, and yet the money is not used for what it was intended. 

We now also know that there are people who have property for which they get no tax bill or are under-billed. 

To give you a touch of personal background, I moved to Berkeley over 20 years ago as a staunch advocate of unions and rent control—even while then and previously owning rental property. In other words, I am hardly “conservative.” I still approve rent control and unions, just not Berkeley’s. 

In response to your proposal, I simply cannot afford additional increases in Berkeley city services or property taxes. Home owners and small property owners need a tax rollback and more care and efficiency in their city government, not yet another tax increase. 

Sorry, 

Sasha Futran 

• 

OUT OF TOUCH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The City Council is woefully out of touch with reality. Reality for many Berkeley residents means real or impending layoffs or cutbacks on hours worked. Yet while the city council proposes yet another parcel tax on the upcoming budget, they are also proposing to pay city employees wages and benefits for volunteering.  

The program, Berkeley Champions, would allow city employees up to 40 hours per year of paid leave to volunteer for Berkeley’s youth. It requires that employees use an equal amount of their own time prior to requesting paid leave through the program. This still amounts to being paid half normal wages and benefits for 80 total hours of volunteer time. The program lists fiscal impacts such as “improved image and reputation” for the city and “retention” of city employees.  

Many residents are worried about retaining their jobs and the roof over their heads. City employees receive adequate compensation and benefits. These include paid fitness club memberships to the tune of over $272,000 for 513 employees. I doubt if retention is much of an issue when budget problems will lead to likely layoffs. A reduced staff with more employees out on paid volunteer time could add to problems. Surely it would be more appropriate during our fiscal crisis that employees use vacation time and free time for volunteer activities like the rest of us do. If the city and councilmembers are concerned about their image and reputation among the voters they will rethink this program. Now is not the time for this well intentioned program. 

Do I support volunteering and mentoring for Berkeley’s kids? Absolutely! Without financial compensation, in true community spirit. 

Robin Wright 

• 

ESCAPED TAXES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding the so-called “escaped taxes,” It seems that Anne Marie Hogan, Berkeley City Auditor, has not done her job. Ms. Hogan states she was aware of possible problems with the computer program used for identifying commercial properties subject to these taxes, which could result in some escaping taxation through omission. She says she sent a memorandum to city authorities stating her concern. 

Apparently that was the end of her concern. These questions should be asked: To whom was the memo sent and when? Why has a copy of the memo not been made public? What was the reply, if any, and from whom? What efforts, if any, were undertaken to correct the problem? And last, did Auditor Hogan follow up her own memo, and if not, why not? 

Evelyn Giardina 

• 

13 THINGS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here are 13 things I love about living in Berkeley, or the reasons I’m willing to pay more parcel tax.  

1) Totland, and other well-equipped, clean parks for my daughter to play in.  

2) The well-trained, sympathetic police officer who came to my house to take a vandalism report. 

3) Libraries with long hours and enthusiastic librarians. 

4) Having someone on city staff to call when there’s graffiti in my neighborhood. 

5) The nurses and health educators at Berkeley High who patiently deal with big and small problems everyday.  

6) The health department services for the uninsured, and the public health benefits for all of us that come from taking care of those in need. 

7) Being able to call a planner about zoning violations, and proposed projects. 

8) Commissions and staff to listen to all of our citizen input. 

9) The bike bridge, traffic calming, and the new bus shelters. 

10) Efficient trash pick-up and street cleaning. 

11) Berkeley Arts Center and the Senior Centers. 

12) Youth recreation and sports programs; low-cost summer camps. 

13) The tool lending library.  

These are just a few of the things that make our city special and livable for people of all ages. It takes staff to run them, and I think as citizens we should appreciate all that they do, and avoid cutting staff.  

Carol Dorf  

• 

BUDGETARY ISSUES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Naive, hopeful me; I thought with a decisive (self-styled) progressive Council majority, I’d see pro-active leadership staking out budgetary issues that would provide a lever for some necessary, fundamental reforms. The situation is dire. We needed leadership to rise to the occasion. 

Council had plenty of time. They knew Berkeley’s budget would face a serious deficit. But instead of committing their authority to fighting for closing state tax loop holes that allow oil companies to avoid paying billions, fighting for high income earners paying as much taxes as lower earning payers, and fighting for the reduction of the prison complex budget, Council instead chose to preserve the status quo and tax Berkeley homeowners. 

Fighting for equity might have threatened Council’s Democratic Party credentials, financial support, and job security. In addition, the property tax has  

churned up anger and resentment against unionized city workers. Council is responsible for the current anti-union resentment. Council has played into the hands of Berkeley’s Right.  

We no longer have a progressive Berkeley City Council. (The centrists have won out again.) What we have instead are accountants, adept at jiggling and selling unfair taxes, amounting to another short-sighted, short-term bailout. 

Maris Arnold 

• 

PC DUNCES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In regards to your cute, little, upbeat article “Latino Youth Prevail in Central Valley” (Daily Planet, Nov. 18-20), wouldn’t a more accurate headline have been “Over-breeding Latino Hordes on Verge of Permanently Ruining the Quality of Life in California”? 

Because you know as well as I that that’s exactly what’s going on. The only difference is, you politically correct dunces won’t actually speak the truth until it’s 20 years too late. And then, only to check in with your useless “solutions” to all the unsolvable problems that you helped to create in the first place. 

Be sure to check back with me in 20 years, baby, if only for a sick laugh at what’s left of California. (And I guarantee you will still remember this letter 20 years from now, unfortunately, as opposed to most of the forgettable drivel you publish.) 

Peter Labriola 

• 

FIREFIGHTER FAUX PAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am a Berkeley resident and a San Francisco firefighter. In 2000, I also co-founded a camp for young women to teach about leadership and the fire service called Camp Blaze. 

I am frustrated with your word choice in your Nov. 11-13 article entitled “Firemen Describe Inferno.” As you well know there are a number of women working in the fire service around the Bay Area (yes, in Berkeley too) and throughout California. Using the word firemen, though while accurate to describe the gender of the Berkeley firefighters’ mentioned in your article, excludes firefighting women from public awareness. 

Women make up a small percentage of the firefighters nationwide, but that proportion is much higher here in California and higher still in the Bay Area. The citizens of our city and our state need to know that all firefighters are not men. Many young women still have no idea it is a career path option, and media representations such as yours continue to shroud our profession in mystery. 

Not all firefighters are men. Can we refer to what it is we do and not our gender? 

Alissa Van Nort 

• 

EDUCATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Michele Lawrence sees a right-wing political agenda aimed at undermining public education! How is that Michele? Is it by exposing the failed policies and teaching method experiments championed by the left-wing dominated school system in this country for the past 40 years? Is it by expecting a teacher to exhibit some basic knowledge of the subjects which they are teaching? Is it by testing the children to see if they can pass an exit exam by their senior year which is written on a ninth and tenth grade level? Is It giving parents a choice to opt out of this failed system? 

The schools are constantly crying that they have no money and that the class size is too large. The real problem is political correctness. The warped notion that we should mainstream everyone and that all classes must be “diverse” has resulted in dumbing down and an inability for teachers to control the classroom. Too much time and energy is diverted from teaching motivated and interested students. Students who do not want to learn or behave should be put into “special” classes as they were when I went to school. We had 35 to 40 students in a room and somehow we learned. 

The “small schools” program will not work because it must reflect the make up of the larger student body as a criteria.  

Michele Lawrence says “we’re robbing underachieving kids of their social capital.” What these “underachieving kids” really need is discipline (bad right-wing word) and to learn some manners and study skills, which does not take a lot of money. They are robbing normal achieving kids of an education! I know many public school teachers who send their children to private school for this very reason. It is like a chef who will not eat in his own restaurant. 

Michele Lawrence seems obsessed with her hatred for the political right, while it is the left who has destroyed our educational system. They are being exposed and are looking to cast blame else where. 

MIchael Larrick 

One of y’all out there has got to help me out with this one—you really do—cause I’m a little bit puzzled here. 

I was working on a story about FCMAT, the Financial Crisis Management Assistance Team, the Bakersfield-based public group which got started by the legislature in 1991 to help the Richmond schools get out of a financial crisis, and has sort of grown like Topsy ever since. Now they’ve got their hands in school districts all over the state, including Oakland and Berkeley. The state is now doing an audit of FCMAT, partly because the group has gotten so big, nobody up in Sacramento seems to know exactly what it’s actually doing. Or supposed to do. 

Anyways, I was reading over FCMAT’s “comprehensive assessment” of the Berkeley Unified School District from July of this year, and under the section concerning “empower staff and community,” the FCMAT folks wrote: “Of paramount importance is the community’s role of local governance. … A key to success in the Berkeley Unified School District is the re-engagement of parents, teachers, and support staff. Berkeley parents care deeply about their children’s future and want to participate in improving the school district and enhancing student learning.” 

Well, ha!, says I, I bet they didn’t say that when the evaluated the Oakland Unified School District. (If you believe former Oakland Superintendent Dennis Chaconas, Robert Gammon of the Oakland Tribune, and just about everybody on the Oakland School Board, FCMAT was instrumental in taking participation away from parents in Oakland. In fact, partly due to FCMAT’s diddling while Oakland schools burned, Oakland’s elected School Board was stripped of all power by the state legislature, and the Oakland schools are being run by a state-selected administrator.) 

Shows what I know. In its overview of its Assessment and Recovery Plans for the Oakland Unified School District, FCMAT writes: “Of paramount importance is the community’s role of local governance. ... A key to success at Oakland is the re-engagement of parents, teachers and support staff. Oakland parents care deeply about their children’s future and want to participate in improving the school district and enhancing student learning.” 

Me being the curious type, I checked around, and it seems like according to FCMAT’s various reports, parents in the West Contra Costa (Richmond) Unified School District and the West Fresno Elementary School District also care deeply about their children’s future, yada-yada, etc. I mean, didn’t they go anywhere where the parents didn’t give a rat’s ass about what went on in their schools? 

Okay, maybe I’m being picky. I know that the FCMAT folks are busy down there, what with having been asked to assist in some 300 local school district and county education offices since they were set up, so sometimes they might have to cut corners by just going to the old paragraphs and sticking in a new school district’s name. And, after all, FCMAT hires a lot of professional-type folks (using our money, of course, not theirs) to go into these various school districts and do comprehensive evaluations and printed reports, and I know they must be doing something, because their reports are so thick, and really difficult to carry around. Like the guy said about the night goggles in “Jurassic Park,” if it’s heavy, it must be important. Or something like that. 

Still, that got me to wondering about what FCMAT is doing in all these places, and why. As far as I can tell, the Alameda County Office of Education appointed FCMAT as Berkeley Unified School District’s fiscal adviser back in 2001 after the county office determined that BUSD was not balancing its budget. Under the enabling legislation FCMAT was asked to conduct a “systematic, comprehensive assessment” of the school district in five areas: 1. Community Relations, 2. Personnel Management, 3. Pupil Achievement, 4. Financial Management, and 5. Facilities Management. Why Berkeley needed help with “community relations” (whatever that is) when their problem only seemed to be some calculators might be a mystery to you. It is to me. Still, FCMAT has been busy in Berkeley ever since, hiring consultants (with our money), making assessments and recommendations in these five areas, and turning out heavy reports. 

So here comes Oakland, poor Oakland, which ran into some budget problems of its own a couple of years ago, causing the Alameda County Education Office to call in FCMAT as Oakland Unified School District’s financial advisers. The enabling legislation that appointed FCMAT required the company to conduct a “systematic, comprehensive assessment” of the school district in five areas: 1. Community Relations, 2. Personnel Management, 3. Pupil Achievement, 4. Financial Management, and 5. Facilities Management. Odd how Oakland needed the same “systematic, comprehensive” help that Berkeley did. You wonder who writes this enabling legislation. 

Gets even more interesting when you discover that the California state legislature decided that both the West Contra Costa (Richmond) Unified School District and the West Fresno Elementary School District also needed help from FCMAT in the exact same five areas, including that intriguing “community relations” thing. All of which FCMAT gets paid to comprehensively report on using somebody’s money, and you can bet it’s not their own. 

Anybody out there got a theory about this?

Six UC Berkeley student photographers say they may sue the Daily Californian for copyright infringement after the independent student-run paper severed ties with them for refusing to sign away all future rights to their pictures. 

“Student newspapers shouldn’t treat students this way,” said UC School of Journalism student David Krantz, who refused to comply with the paper’s demands. “If we’re volunteering time, energy and experience we expect to retain our copyrights.” 

A copyright guarantees freelance photographers ownership of their pictures so that after the picture runs in a newspaper, they can sell it to a different publication. 

Freelancers traditionally have sold one-time use rights to their photos, although some publishers have demanded all domestic rights and others have demanded both domestic and foreign rights. 

“The first golden rule to stay in business as a freelance photographer is: Keep your copyright,” said Dan Krauss, a freelance photographer and former UC Berkeley student who has resold pictures that previously ran in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. 

But Daily Californian attorney Rachel Matteo-Boehn insisted that the photographers are not freelancers, but staffers, and staff photos traditionally are the property of the paper. 

In July, the Daily Californian ordered all photographers to sign right-to-hire contracts, effectively making the paper the sole owner of all pictures taken on assignment—which the paper then stores on compact discs.  

The Daily Californian promised to grant photographers use of the pictures for portfolios, but insisted on keeping the copyright. 

Most photographers complied, but Krantz and the other five refused, insisting that they were freelancers, and should be able to retain their copyright privileges. 

Staff photographers typically agree to surrender ownership of their pictures in return for a steady salary, health benefits, and equipment. Photographers for the nonprofit Daily Californian shoot digital images, either with the paper’s cameras or their own, and are paid according to a sliding scale that tops out at $11 per picture. 

“Student papers worked in the past because there’s pretty much been an understanding: ‘Hey, here’s free labor, in exchange we get published,’” said Jigar Mehta, also a student at the School of Journalism. “But it’s unacceptable asking us to volunteer our time and labor and then also asking for our copyrights.” 

But when it comes to copyrights, professional freelancers warn that the Daily Californian’s policy is quickly becoming the rule, not the exception, in an era of increasing media consolidation. 

“In the past few years more and more newspapers have started demanding exclusive rights from freelancers,” said Mark Loundy of the National Press Photographers Association. “It’s a threat to the very existence of freelance photography as a profession.” 

The Associated Press started the trend several years ago, but since a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Tasini vs. the New York Times, more papers have followed suit. 

In its 7-2 decision, the justices held that fees paid to freelance reporter Jonathan Tasini covered only the printed article, not different forms of the stories the Times offered to computerized databases like LexisNexus. 

The ruling benefited Tasini, but ultimately hurt freelancers. Publishers simply rewrote contracts demanding more copyright privileges, said Victor Pearlman, general counsel for the American Society of Media Photographers. 

“Between the Tasini decision and the consolidation in ownership of the media, publishers are bargaining from a position of strength and asking for more rights.” 

They are not offering more money however. The going rate for a photograph from a major daily is $200 - $350, unchanged from 20 years go, Loundy said. 

He added that large newspaper chains often don’t have uniform policies on copyrights, and many newspapers often demand copyrights initially but then relent if the photographer rebuffs them. 

Locally, ANG—publisher of the Oakland Tribune and other Bay Area dailies—said they don’t demand all-inclusive copyrights, nor does the Daily Planet. The Contra Costa Times, owned by Knight Ridder Inc. said they use only staff photographers in the Bay Area.  

Renowned freelance photographers have taken up the cause of the UC Berkeley six, fearing that if college newspapers demand copyrights, young photographers will learn to accept the same demands from future employers. 

“It’s obscenely wrong in the context of an educational setting,” said Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Rick Rickman. “A college newspaper is the place to educate people, not to give away their property.” 

The students insist the stalemate has hurt them more than the paper. “There’s always a new crop of people who are hungry to see their name in a byline,” Mehta said. “For us the Daily Cal is one of the few consistent jobs in town. It makes it harder when you’re trying to collect clips for a portfolio.” 

Their attorney, Barbara Friedman of San Francisco’s Bingham and McCutchen law firm, said she had offered the paper a host of compromises but none proved satisfactory. “I said give me your dream list—electronic rights, database rights. We’ll give you non-exclusive rights for all time—just don’t take the copyright.” 

But Matteo-Boehn said the offers would cause logistical headaches for the paper that has to manage its files on a tight budget. “If a newspaper has different deals with its photographers it makes it impossible to function.” 

She added that the contract offered to photographers included a licensing agreement that she believes the paper would interpret to allow photographers a cut from any future sales. The Daily Californian issued a statement on the dispute, but would not answer questions about the licensing agreement. 

A student-initiated lawsuit would seek to affirm ownership of the thousands of pictures they have shot for the Daily Californian before the contract flap. Though neither Krantz nor Mehta have resold any of the pictures, they insist those pictures—stored at the paper’s office—belong to them. Matteo-Boehn disagreed saying, “It has always been the policy of the Daily Californian that such materials are owned by the Daily Californian.” 

“The Daily Californian offers students a great deal of opportunity, but they need to be able to manage their facilities and still fulfill their mission as a training paper,” Matteo-Boehn said. 

“If [the students] feel like it’s a bad deal they can market themselves in other places.”

Berkeley officials say the city is owed less than originally estimated from property fees and assessments they say were inadvertently not billed to several buildings in the city. 

The new total is close to $250,000, some $19,000 less than originally estimated by the city manager’s office. 

But City Finance Director Fran David told Berkeley City Council Tuesday night that while the city is still investigating to see if any more properties have been accidentally dropped from the tax rolls, the total “escaped revenue” sums are expected to top out at between $500,000 and $600,000. David indicated that this figure “is much smaller than defined in media.” 

David said in a later interview that she was referring to estimated reports “in the media” that fees and assessments for two million square feet of property had been missed by the City of Berkeley. David said she could not recall which media this estimate appeared in. The Daily Planet has never included such an estimated figure in any of its stories on the “escaped taxes” issue. 

The “escaped taxes” controversy has been growing in Berkeley in recent weeks after a citizen complaint and a follow-up Daily Planet story revealed that several recent property developments had not been billed city fees and assessments. 

Two weeks ago, at Mayor Tom Bates’ request, City Manager Phil Kamlarz released a preliminary list of seven properties owing such back taxes over the past four years. David’s report was intended as a follow-up to Kamlarz’ list. 

Meanwhile, in response to the controversy, Councilmember Dona Spring has called for a full investigation of the taxes billed and paid, fee waivers, and local and federal legal compliance of three of the developments on Kamlarz’ list—the Berkeleyan and the Gaia Building, built by developer Patrick Kennedy, and Oak Court, built by developer Avi Nevo. 

Tuesday night, at the request of Councilmember Betty Olds, Council expanded the investigation to include all city development projects approved since 1997. Kamlarz said he would report back to Council with results of that investigation in two months. 

Assessments were not levied on three of the properties on the list—the Gaia Building, Oak Court, and Acton Courtyard—because the buildings were still operating under temporary certificates of occupancy, in accordance with what was then city policy. 

In her report to Council, Finance Director David said city policy has now been changed so that occupied buildings with temporary permits will be automatically added to the city’s tax rolls. 

David reported that her office has dropped two of the properties from Kamlarz’ “escaped taxes” report. She gave a few more details on two more, and removed more than $19,000 in missed taxes from another. 

David said city staff research showed that the more than $19,000 originally believed to be owed by the Bank of America on its 1536 Shattuck Ave. branch was in error, and that no taxes were owed. A Daily Planet check of records at the Alameda County assessor’s office disclosed that the property is listed under several different adjacent addresses, at least one of which is being billed for Berkeley fees and assessments. 

David also said that the Redwood Gardens senior housing development at 2951 Derby St. was tax-exempt because of nonprofit status, and had been erroneously included in the original list. 

She said the 9,500-square-foot EIDS Electronics Building at 2508 Channing Way, owned by Highway 61 Property Management Company, and the 22,000-square-foot Body Time products and Wilderness Travel warehouse and office complex at 1101 8th St. had not been assessed, and would be billed by the city for back fees and assessments for an amount yet to be calculated. David said in a later interview that staff was still investigating why the city had failed to tax these two buildings.

For those who believe that if something is good for you it has to taste bad, Vital Vittles bakery might be the cure. 

Located at 2810 San Pablo Ave. in what used to be an old fire house, Vital Vittles has been offering up some of Berkeley’s finest organic treats for a quarter century, specializing in whole grain breads baked from flour milledon site. 

They are also proud to announce a new line of sweets that will be unveiled today (Friday) in an open house at the bakery. Tasters are invited to come by and sample the brownies, cookies and cakes all made with the same whole grain flour that has made their bread so popular. 

Started by Kass Schwin and her ex-husband, Vital Vittles originally opened as a flour mill but has come to be known for their quality bread. 

Back when they first opened as a mill, Schwin said a lack of good flour was responsible for plenty of bad bread around the area. As a self-labeled “child of the 70s,” Schwin says she was drawn to quality, healthy products and decided to take the challenge along with her husband to mill organic whole grain flour that she hoped would jazz things up.  

“The idea back in the 70s was to live off the land and live organically,” said Schwin. “No one was making good bread when we started except the Tasajara bakery, which is hard to imagine.” 

Schwin and her husband bought a mill, started importing whole oats and began to distribute the flour around the Berkeley area. The transition to bread didn’t come until later and was unexpected. 

Schwin says the first loaves were actually made as examples to be used at a street fair and represented the quality of breads that could be produced with their flour. Fair goers expressed more interest in the bread than the flour, and after the loaves sold out, customers repeatedly implored the Schwins to bake more. 

That encouragement was enough to convince them to establish a small-scale baking operation that turned out around 200 loaves a day. Success and a lot of hard work have paid off, and the business has grown into a full-scale bakery that now produces around 2,200 loaves daily with a staff of 15-20 employees using a pair of ovens that bake 210 loaves at once. 

Reincarnated as a bakery, Vital Vittles produces hearty, healthy breads that outweigh, literally, most other breads. Their whole grains are milled the day before the dough is mixed, keeping the ingredients fresh and healthy. Unlike other bakeries, says Schwin, the quick turnaround allows them to baked goods to retain nutrients such as wheat germ oils that would otherwise go rancid if stored too long. 

Among their list of achievement is their 2002 taster’s choice award from the San Francisco Chronicle food and wine section. According to the review conducted by several of the Bay Area’s top food critics, other breads “crumbled” next to theirs. 

They’ve also traveled to outer space with astronaut Janice Boss, who took a loaf with her on one mission; been the salivation of one mom who suffered from acute morning sickness; and received countless love letters attesting to their quality. 

“This is a love letter, I have never written one for bread before…,” begins one of the letters hanging in Schwin’s office. 

Creative thinking has led them produce a wide variety of healthy, whole grain products. Everything is vegan and strictly kosher. 

Vital Vittles bread include fruit, multigrain, rye, sourdough—and almost anything else imaginable. Schwin says the most popular loaves are their Holiday Persimmon, Raisin, and Flax Seed Oat—with the raisin bread placing second in an international competition.  

The cookies and sweets—another extension of the original philosophy—have actually been in stores since December, but will officially be unveiled at the open house. Sweet lovers will be glad to know that Schwin had them in mind when she and the bakery tried to produce a product that would allow customers a guilt-free opportunity to indulge their sweet cravings.  

“People only eat so much bread,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to make a healthy chocolate something or other.” 

She didn’t stop at chocolate, and besides producing two kinds of brownies she’s come up with a list of other sweets that include cookies, honey buns and cakes. Many of the cookies are high-fiber, and use only organic oils and raw cane sugar. 

“If people eat my sweets instead of Pepperidge Farms, they’re going to be helping themselves,” Schwin says. 

Just in time for the holiday season, Vital Vittles is offering gift boxes. They’ve also recently updated their website to take credit cards, allowing people to purchase their products around the world. Shoppers can also find their cookies now in local stores, including Berkeley Bowl, Rainbow Grocery, Whole Foods, El Cerrito Natural Grocery, Berkeley Natural Grocery, and Piazza’s. 

Open house visitors can sample the new sweets and a tour of the bakery. The event runs from 9:30 a.m. to noon. For more information please contact them at 644-2022 or at their website at www.vitalvittles.com

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of this tribute to a veteran Berkeley activist is her daughter-in-law. 

Longtime Berkeley and Mendocino area activist for social change, Anne Weymouth Deirup, died Oct. 30 from cancer. Her understanding of the need for change, her strong principles and her organizing skills made her a mentor for many others. 

She was born in 1918 on the Stanford campus into a family of scientists. Her parents were Frank Weymouth, head of the Physiology department at Stanford, and Alice Jenkins Weymouth, a scientific illustrator.  

She married Torben Deirup in 1937. They soon moved to Berkeley where they attended UC. Anne started out in Architecture, and graduated with a degree in city planning. 

Her main interest in life was pursuing and promoting social change, and in city planning, she saw the potential to facilitate change. After a stint working in a city planning department, she became disillusioned with how decisions were made. She became a draftsperson and worked for many engineering firms over the years. 

She and Torben had four children: Caroline Grimes, Karl, Paul and Nancy Deirup. Karl died in 1972. 

Anne and Torb were active in union organizing and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. 

Anne was very active in Berkeley politics, especially focusing on school improvements. Her involvement in Berkeley public schools started when Caroline was a child. Caroline found racist books in the school library, and together they would work to get those books out of the library. She continued to do whatever she could to promote equality in the school system and was very active in the movement to integrate the schools. 

During the 1950s, Anne was involved in civil rights struggles including integrating Woolworth’s in Berkeley. She was one of the last witnesses in the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in San Francisco, and her speech to the committee was broadcast in the Rotunda of City Hall and over to Civic Center Plaza, where crowds of students were gathered.  

Here is an excerpt from her testimony: 

“I consider the members of this committee to be dedicated people, and I would very much like to cooperate with this committee. But…I’m even more convinced that you’re dedicated to the destruction of the freedom of thought, the freedom to speak and of assembly and of association. You are dedicated to the preservation of white supremacy and of segregation and of lynchings. 

“I, too, am a dedicated, principled individual, dedicated to the preservation of democracy, freedom of thought and association, equality and dignity, for all our people! I am dedicated to the promotion of better education for all of our children. And for peace!”  

As the students became agitated, the riot police came and turned fire hoses on the crowd, including Caroline and Karl, who were washed down the steps of City Hall. 

During the 60s and 70s, she was involved with many progressive political campaigns, including the campaign to elect Louise Stoll to the School Board. She and Torben visited China and Mongolia on a Teachers’ Union tour in 1972.  

Anne was also active in the Gray Panthers and Women for Peace. She was a lifelong feminist. 

In 1980 she moved to Mendocino, where she continued her activism in the Gray Panthers, Save the Redwoods and other groups. She toured the Soviet Union with the Gray Panthers Peace Cruise. 

She is survived by Torben Deirup, Caroline and Joe Grimes, Paul Deirup and Cameron White, Nancy Deirup and Jon Haagen-Smit, and grandchildren Michael Pozos and Brenda Santos, Nathan and Anja Grimes, Kirsten and Keith Deirup, Tora and Sonja Haagen-Smit, and Tristan Peterson, and great-grandchildren Miguel, Marcello and Mireya Pozos and Tassilo Grimes. 

Her many years and experience in various struggles made her a role model. Her friend Mattie Scott wrote in a poem about her:  

Gentle warrior: fierce friend… 

Early in the morning singing your song of justice 

And late at night when the many strong voices are spent, 

Still we hear your music: 

We will hear it in our dreams. 

There will be a memorial service in Mendocino on Sunday, Nov. 30, and another gathering in Berkeley on Jan. 11. Friends should call (707)937-4310 or (510)526-2939 for information.

Road Rage Victim Dies 

George Ronald Barillas, 43, of Berkeley died Tuesday from gunshot wounds sustained last month in what police believe was a road rage incident. Police said the dispute between Barillas and another driver apparently began on I-80 and continued after they left the freeway at Ashby Avenue.  

The pair pulled into a parking lot west of Seventh Street, where the other driver shot and fatally wounded Barillas at approximately 11:25 p.m. on Oct. 24. Investigators say they believe the shooter was driving a late model, full-size dark American-made SUV or pick-up truck, last seen driving west on Ashby towards Interstate 80. He is described as a black male, age 17-20, and possibly muscular or heavyset. Barillas is Berkeley’s fifth murder victim this year. Police encourage anyone with information about the case to call the BPD Homicide Detail at 981-5741. 

Carjacking 

Police are seeking the carjacker who robbed an 87-year-old resident of the 1600 block of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and made off with his car. Police said the victim walked into his garage to perform an errand and found the carjacker, who pulled a knife and stole the man’s cash, then forced him back into the house, where he stole more money before taking the victim’s car keys and taking off in his 1991 white Mazda Protege.  

Ohlone Greenway Arrests 

Police arrested two Berkeley youths for attempted robbery after they allegedly pulled a knife on a man walking along the Ohlone Greenway at Cedar Rose Park. Police said the boys sneaked up behind the victim, brandished the weapon and demanded his money. The victim ran towards the street screaming and flailing his arms, flagging down a driver on Cedar Street, who called police. A search turned up the two youths at the intersection of Gilman and Talbot streets, and the victim positively identified both. Police are investigating to see if the pair has any connections to a series of youth assaults perpetrated on the Greenway in recent months.

Honoring UN Convention  

Commemorating the 14th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the United Nations General Assembly, the East Bay chapter of the United Nations Assembly-USA is sponsoring a conference Saturday entitled “The Rights of the Child and the UN Role in the Middle East.” 

The event will take place at Booth Auditorium at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Eva Brook, a member of the East Bay chapter’s board, the UN Assembly is a worldwide organization established to educate people about and promote the work of the United Nations. Conferences such as Saturday’s are scheduled at least twice a year and address current issues facing the international organization. 

She said the convergence of the anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the violence now plaguing the Middle East prompted the assembly this year to invite a number of local and national speakers to address an issue she says has generated enormous amounts of concern. 

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified UN treaty,” she said. “Only two UN countries haven’t signed it.” 

Invited speakers include Raymond Sommereyns, Director of the Outreach Division for the Department of Public Information for the UN; Maher Nasser, Chief of the New York Liaison Office of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East; and Saudamnini Siegrist, a project officer for UNICEF’s (UN Children fund) Office of Emergency Programs. Chairing the panel is University of San Francisco Professor Stephen Zunes. 

After the morning presentation by the speakers, there will also be four afternoon workshops. A reception follows at UC Berkeley’s International House from 5 to 7 p.m. 

For more information, contact Eva Brook at (925) 389-7557. 

Church Seeks Early Members  

As it prepares for its 125th anniversary next May 1, St. Joseph the Worker Parish is looking for former parishioners, alumni and alumnae of both St. Joseph the Worker Elementary School and Presentation High School. 

Names and current addresses or questions may be sent to 125th Anniversary Committee, 1640 Addison St., Berkeley 94703 or phoned in to 845-6266, extension 24. 

Protest at Long’s Drugs 

Led by the Berkeley based Berkeley Tobacco Prevention Coalition, a group of concerned citizens and organizations confronted Long’s Drug store at their Walnut Creek headquarters Thursday over what they say are broken promises concerning tobacco sales in the stores. 

According to Ron Freund, a member of the Berkeley Tobacco Prevention Coalition, the event coincided with the national Great American Smokeout Day, a tradition started by the American Cancer Association to commemorate all those who have died from diseases related to smoking. 

Protesters say their main gripe with Long’s is changes to company policy that have re-written store rules concerning tobacco sales. 

Freund said that in May, 2002, several groups received a commitment from the company’s CEO to implement policies to curb tobacco sales at stores—including allowing local store managers to decide whether or not to sell tobacco at their stores, which prompted six branches to discontinue their sales. Stores were also supposed to adhere to a policy that banned in-store cigarette advertising and to publish the number for the California Smoker’s Help line in their advertisements. 

A subsequent management change resulted in the discontinuation of all these policies, Freund said, leading to Thursday’s confrontation. 

At the headquarters, Freund said protesters received an eight-point response that did not directly address any of the issues raised. They also asked to meet with new company CEO Warren Bryant, and were rebuffed. 

Freund said the march is only part of what will be a sustained campaign to reinstate the abandoned policies.

With business booming at the Berkeley Bowl, the battle to unionize store employees that ended with a vote of rejection a few short weeks ago already seems a distant memory to most customers. 

Though the banners, balloons and buttons have vanished, many employees and the union’s lawyer say the fight is far from over. 

David Rosenfeld, the attorney working with United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Butcher’s Union Local 120, this week filed a series of unfair labor practice charges against the store, charging that the Berkeley Bowl “engaged in a deliberate and outrageous effort to sabotage the right of its workers to be represented by a union and to bargain a decent collective bargaining agreement.” 

The union claims the store fired union supporters, offered and provided increased benefits to bribe employees, and threatened to reduce hours and/or layoff employees if the union won—all of which Rosenfeld, organizers and pro-union employees say, swayed the vote. 

“The company engaged in a lot of unfair labor practices which caused the workers to vote no,” said Rosenfeld. “[Berkeley Bowl] has nothing to lose because they won the election and can fight the litigation for years.” 

Rosenfeld has asked the National Labor Relations Board to issue an order forcing the Berkeley Bowl to bargain with the union and establish a contract. He said he thinks the charges are substantial enough to force the agreement if the NLRB follows the letter of the law, but added that the litigation process could last two to three years. 

With their defeat in the election, pro-union workers must now wait a year before they can file for a new election. 

Since their defeat, pro-union employees say they’ve taken the down time to catch up on sleep, homework and family time and struggling with the same issues that promoted them to begin organizing for a union.

ROME—The Vittoriano monument in central Rome, towering over the bustling Piazza Venezia, is usually one of the city’s most chaotic traffic areas and foremost tourist destinations. 

The huge white monument, commonly referred to as the ‘wedding cake,’ was transformed into a place of national mourning, solemnity and patriotism this week when the caskets of 19 Italian soldiers killed in a bomb attack in Iraq were placed there for public viewing. 

Tens of thousands lined the streets on Monday to pay their respects to the 19 soldiers, the highest number of Italian military killed abroad in a single attack since World War II. Visitors laid flowers and notes on the massive white steps of the monument, creating a cascade of bouquets, covering the marble steps underneath. 

Thousands more returned to the monument on Tuesday, the day of the state funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Initial speculation that the high number of deaths in a war unpopular with a majority of Italians could fuel anti-war sentiment in the country has not come to pass. In the first few days after the attack it appears the opposite may be true. 

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who sent thousands of soldiers to Iraq this spring after the fall of the government there, pledged this week to keep Italian troops in Iraq. In the past week, Italian flags have become a more common sight hanging from apartment windows around Rome. Rainbow PACE flags, a popular sign of war protest are still visible in large numbers around Rome, but the colors have faded in many of them. 

“I hope the killings could increase the feeling against the war,” said Luciana Milella, 27, a resident of Rome who came to the steps of the Vittoriano monument on Tuesday. “But I think it is possible that it will increase support for it. I have noticed that feelings of country love have broken out at a high level. Nationalism is growing in Italy. I don’t think that’s a good thing. I love my country, but I don’t want to fight in the name of my country and kill other people.” 

Milella said she felt compelled to visit the monument, to take part in the public mourning, to try to understand what had happened to her countrymen and to her country. “I wanted to realize this massacre,” she said. 

The crowd on the sidewalk grew in the late afternoon as school groups arrived and workers stopped by on their way home. The river of flowers on the steps grew deeper by the hour. Teenagers cried into each others arms, parents explained the scene to their children and tourists and Romans mingled silently, some clasping the hands of the guards on duty. 

The deaths of the soldiers left many Italians shaken. The Roman daily newspaper La Repubblica reported the Nov. 12 suicide-bombing in Nassiriya with the headline “La strage degli italiani” (“The Slaughter of the Italians”). Many of the letters attached to flowers left at the Vittoriano in Rome read, “Grazie Eroi” (“Thank You Heroes”) and referred to the dead soldiers as Italy’s “19 Angels.” A few also read “Viva L’Italia,” making the point that this war was now Italy’s battle as well. 

Foreigners also paid their respects at the monument. “To the families of the soldiers lost and the people of Italy, we truly feel your sorrow,” wrote Bill Knoll of Florida on a note attached to a bouquet of flowers. 

“I feel so little in this situation, like I can do so little,” said Fabio Piemonte, 20, a student in Rome. “I just watched the funeral on television and I came here. I felt like there was nothing I could do. I hope these deaths were not in vain. I am against the war. War is evil always. I hope this changes something.”  

Others said the killings will make more Italians see that the war is their fight as well and will persuade the country that the U.S.-led war is justified. 

“The deaths of the soldiers will help unify the right and the left politicians behind the war,” said Antonio Gramoccone, 60, a resident of Rome. “Hopefully it will help Italy to participate more in the war. I am convinced we have to be a friend to America and to the American people.” 

On his way home Tuesday, Piero Gaspa, 42, a hospital psychologist, pulled his motor scooter to the edge of the monument, pulled a stack of cards from his jacket and tucked them beside the flowers on the steps. The 15 cards were made for the soldiers by his 9-year-old daughter and her classmates.  

Gaspa said the war and the deaths of the Italian soldiers had been a constant subject of discussion at family dinners and in his children’s’ classes over the week. While he said that he does not like war, he feels conflicted about the military activity in Iraq. 

“I’m very realistic,” Gaspa said. “I think it was necessary to get rid of Saddam Hussein and to fight for democracy for the people of Iraq. I think that the deaths of the Italian soldiers will likely increase Italian involvement in the war.” 

Michael Howerton is the former managing editor of the Daily Planet.

Lately I’ve been feeling warmly nostalgic for that comfy old Cold War. 

As war goes, it seemed so much more manageable than what we’ve got on our plate today. The moral issues were more easily navigated and actually dying seemed like a pretty vague abstraction. Well, it seemed that way to me at least, but I might have been naïve. After all, I was only 11 years old when President Reagan joked that he’d just outlawed Russia and that the bombing would begin in five minutes. 

On second thought, can you even be naïve when you’re 11? Or is mindless bumbling ignorance just where you ought to be at that developmental stage? 

I was old enough not to have been taught that cowering under my desk would save me from the nuke, but still too young to be allowed to watch The Day After. The night it came on I played cards in the bedroom with my mom and tried to catch the little snippets of dramatized Armageddon that were floating up through the heat grate from the TV downstairs. 

The problem with the current state of affairs is that I can actually imagine dying from terrorism. 

I grew up in the age of AIDS and crack cocaine, so biological and chemical warfare don’t seem so far-fetched. And suicide bombings? Please. Who among us hasn’t joked about which of our colleagues might “go postal?” We’re already primed and ready to expect suicide attacks at our schools and workplaces. Death by nuclear bomb, on the other hand, is too much of an abstraction to scare me. It’s the kind of fire and brimstone fairy tale that us secular seventies children were taught to firmly ignore.  

I much prefer total human annihilation via nuclear vaporization to the current state of piecemeal terrorism and the war against it. Much better to go out in a bang alongside the entire human race than to wait around for the bombings, lose your mother one day, maybe your internal organs the next. I remember thinking that if I did happen to survive the nuclear winter at least I wouldn’t ever be picked last for the dodgeball game again. Plus I’d get to kill squirrels with slingshots. 

The trouble is that when George Bush and Osama bin Laden say “God is on my side,” I think they really believe their own rhetoric. By contrast the old Soviet/American animosity felt a little contrived. I’m sure the average Russian and the average American disagreed over who would get the upper hand if Lincoln and Lenin came up on each other in a dark alley, but that was fairly tame jingoism. The Sputnik thing was a bummer, but nobody was willing to kill or die for it. Instead, we just started taking more science classes.  

Mostly I imagine the Russian and American military planners of the day trying to say the right things so that they could hang on to their mid-level bureaucratic jobs and go home in the evening to a vodka or a Bud. It was kind of like the A’s and the Yankees: sure, we hated each other, but nobody had to actually be Satan. I guess the Russians loved their children too. Nowadays I can imagine Osama bin Laden murdering his favorite just because he thinks it would confuse the heck out of us. 

The Cold War was also nice because it reined us in. I’m sure that there was a Middle Eastern country or two that we wouldn’t have minded invading in the eighties, but it simply wasn’t done. Would have upset the whole balance of power. I know, I know—we did lots of secret nasty stuff all over the world. But that’s just it: It was secret and I didn’t have to feel guilty that the taxes coming out of my paper route were funding an occupying army. Now it’s all out in the open and even though I try to pretend I’m Canadian whenever Paul Wolfowitz comes on TV, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m tainted by association. 

So I guess the bottom line is: Up with the Wall! Man your missile silos! It was a kinder time, a gentler age, when the world was dominated by two essentially sane superpowers, neither of whom wanted to be the first to push the button that would bomb us back to the swamp age. 

Back then bin Laden would have been small time. What’s that you say? You’ve got some airplanes and an inter-office envelope full of white powder? I’m shaking in my lead-lined boots. Back in the day we would have given a creep like him a few million dollars, or the Soviets would have, and he would have gone back to his palace and slaughtered a couple hundred of his closest friends. 

Ah, the good old days.

ORANGE COUNTY—Rachel Walters is among 71,000 Southern California grocery workers who are either on strike or locked out at Albertson’s, Ralphs and Vons supermarkets as they fight to keep company-paid health care, the best and often only reason for putting up with erratic part-time hours and low wages.  

If the nationwide supermarket chains get the 50 percent cut in health benefits they now want, Walters says, the cost of employee premiums for family care will shoot up from $0 to $95 per week over three years. Walters says she will have to pay at least $700 per month for medication to treat her multiple sclerosis, which she says would make it pointless to continue working as a Vons grocery clerk.  

“It’s not worth it to me to work only part-time hours so that I have to scrounge for the rest of the money for my health care,” she says.  

Walter’s departure wouldn’t bother supermarket owners, however, because the purpose of another one of their contract proposals—a two-tiered wage system—is to gradually weed out experienced and union-savvy workers like her and replace them with much lower-paid workers who will have even fewer health benefits.  

Strikes or threats of strikes against the grocery store chains, also over the issue of heath care, have also occurred recently in Oregon, Arizona, Indiana, West Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana and parts of Canada.  

Walter’s situation exposes one of corporate America’s most successful union-busting strategies since Congress gave it the Taft-Hartly Act in 1947: draining the limited resources of unions with entrenched battles over health benefits in order to win concessions on wages, pensions and job security. As long as Americans and their unions remain addicted to a for-profit health care system with its skyrocketing premiums and co-payments, corporate employers will maintain the upper hand in future contract negotiations.  

As Greg Congers, president of UFCW Local 324, representing 25,000 grocery workers in and around Orange County pointed out recently on a Los Angeles radio talk show, “Until politicians get the guts to ... discuss this incredible problem of 44 million Americans who have no health care coverage at all ... these kinds of (union-busting) things are going to be happening to union members across the country.”  

A little over a half-century ago, most union leaders supported a single-payer system that would provide quality and affordable health care for all, while freeing up union resources to fight for higher wages and better working conditions. But any chance for a tax based single-payer health care system was squelched by a corporate backlash against a surge in union membership from 1932 to 1947 and accompanying social reforms. Fearful of Red-baiting cries of “creeping socialism” that came with the Cold War, labor leaders and their Democratic Party allies dropped single-payer health care like a hot Commie potato and have been loyal to company-provided health benefits ever since.  

By 1980 that loyalty resulted in an inflationary whirlwind of health care costs way out of proportion to inflationary trends. It also split workers into two factions: those who had health care and those who did not, a division that corporations, including the supermarket chains, have adroitly exploited.  

After the start of the strikes and lockout on Oct. 11, the supermarket chains quickly published full-page advertisements in major Southern California newspapers that implied to thousands of regular customers now honoring picket lines that greedy grocery workers were to blame for their shopping inconveniences. The supermarkets, the ads said, were “more than fair” to ask their employees, who make “as much as $17.90 an hour,” to “pay a very small portion of their own health care coverage” so that “skyrocketing” costs won’t be passed on to customers.  

The ads were deceitful. Most grocery clerks are part-timers working for about $13 an hour and the supermarket chains’ drastic cuts in health benefits and other regressive contract proposals weren’t mentioned. But the recent decision of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union to redirect picket lines from Ralphs to other stores reflects the employers’ ability to use our for-profit health system to gradually erode public support for the union and wear down strikers, many of whom have left picket lines for other work due to lost wages and forthcoming cancellation of their health benefits.  

Universal single-payer health care would take away that corporate sledgehammer, unite all workers, fortify their right to organize and increase union bargaining power. A recent ABC-Washington Post poll shows that a majority of Americans support single-payer heath care. With presidential elections coming, there is no better time to push for it than now.  

But instead of organizing union members to fight for real health care reform, most union leaders continue to waste precious resources on Democratic Party presidential candidates tied to special interests. Their costly “universal” health care schemes not only aren’t universal but also would enrich insurance providers and increase America’s dependency upon them.  

It’s time for rank and file union members to steer organized labor away from continued self-destruction.  

John Earl is a freelance writer and union organizer and reformer.

If you tuned into radio-station KECG recently, you may have caught an interview with the woman who runs the cafeteria at El Cerrito High. Some students at the school were complaining that food quality had fallen off, so they had “The Cafeteria Lady” in to give her side of the story. 

Or maybe you heard the KECG show on teenage sexuality and sexually-transmitted disease. Or the one on the experiences of students recently immigrated to the United States. Or the broadcast that dealt with homicide in Richmond. 

Or maybe you’ve never heard of KECG. I hadn’t. 

KECG is the radio station that operates out of El Cerrito High School, also known as “Radio One.” 

Their antenna is right there on the roof of the school, and they’ve had an FCC license for twenty-five years. You’ll find them at 88.1. 

KECG programs are planned and coordinated with students, and (mostly) broadcast by students, focusing on what students think about and care about while giving airtime to adult concerns (school board elections, for instance, and city council meetings). There’s also vocational training that dovetails with the station’s activities. 

KECG alums have gone on to land jobs in public radio, at other local stations, and in the movie and audio industries. Broadcasting both on the Internet and over the airwaves, the station routinely field calls from as far away as Minnesota, and the most common question asked is how to set up a student station like KECG. 

So a question arises. Since Bay Area high schools have a standing invitation to broadcast their own programming through KECG, why don’t they do it? 

If you guessed money (usually a safe answer when it comes to education in California), you’re wrong. Berkeley High—which has an audio studio in their music building—was briefly connected to KECG five years ago. Then the staff and principal changed, and somehow, despite the whirring, well-intentioned machine that is the Berkeley School District, the signal was lost. Since then, no one has answered Phil Morgan’s calls. 

Philip Morgan manages the station. He grew up in Pasadena and Los Angeles, where his mother was an elementary school principal and his father a Seventh Day Adventist minister. He’s bearish, lumbering, with an easy smile. He seems to move without fear of deadlines, and when he speaks, it’s obvious that he’s not so interested in quick execution and delivery as in a clear thought, a well-crafted sentence. 

“The piece of equipment that a school would need to be a part of what we do here, it’s called a Hotline,” Phil tells me, pointing to a thin, black box with a few blinking lights. “It costs $2800. With that, a microphone, a stand, a pair of headphones, any school around here could pipe in their own programming. Announcements, interviews, live sports coverage of school athletic events, concerts in their auditorium, whatever they wanted to do.” 

“Is it worth it?” I ask him. “Would anyone hear the broadcast?” 

“We’ve got a signal that reaches all the way down to Oakland, over to San Francisco, to Mill Valley. I’ve picked it up in Sebastopol. We go as far north as Pinole on our second frequency, 97.7.” 

“And you’d like to broadcast programming from other schools?” 

“We already do it. Pinole uses our station for their morning announcements, so parents can hear what’s going on at the school. We’ve had Richmond, too, and North Campus.” 

“Where’s that?” 

“Hercules. We’ll be broadcasting for Hercules High School pretty soon. Believe me, we’re trying not to be secret. We want the community to know we’re here.” 

“Okay,” I say, “so why aren’t schools lined up to do this? Just to get coverage on who’s running for school board in a particular town—that’s free publicity. Then there’s kids who want to talk about what they’re excited about, what’s tormenting them, get some job-training at the same time … this seems like a whole lot more than free coffee and donuts you’re offering.” 

“Tell me about it. We went to Albany High a few years ago to talk about the station. The kids were excited, of course. Who wouldn’t be? But we never heard from the school.”  

“Have you hooked up with other schools?” 

“Fremont. But their studio was broken into and they never came back to us after that.” 

“But any Bay Area school could broadcast through your station without charge. Just the couple of thousand for the modem connection, which it sounds like some schools, like Berkeley High School, already have.” 

“Our studio here, this is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not to mention the license from the FCC. Our situation would be almost impossible to replicate. But getting programming on the air from kids, from schools—that’s what we’re here for. We don’t charge for that.” 

I ask him how he pays for his own station’s activities. In these days of draconian budget cuts it seems a little too good to be true. 

“It’s a basket of funds,” Phil says. “It’s not just one thing. We’ve got monies through something called R.O.P.—that’s Regional Occupational Programming. Then contributions from corporations and businesses. Other funds from the school district. The district decides how they want to spend what they’ve got, and, you know, I think they see this is something that more than justifies itself.” 

I teach an after-school program myself, one day a week, at Berkeley High. It’s a class in composition, funded by the American Composers Forum. In the five years I’ve been teaching it, I’ve been struck by the inability of the school to absorb the fact that we exist. Once or twice a year, I have to visit the main office when we’re locked out of the classroom. I am always met by the same bafflement. Who am I? Do I belong here? 

To an extent, it’s understandable. Berkeley High’s a big school. They have their hands full, and we’re beyond the periphery of their day-to-day concerns. Yet, hearing Phil tell how KECG fell through the cracks and reflecting on my own experience, I had to wonder if this is a system that is inadvertently chasing away valuable programs because it doesn’t know what to do with them. 

Is it possible that the school district—and not just ours—is it possible that they are inadvertently discouraging people and programs that would be invaluable adjuncts to our educational system, a system that everyone agrees is struggling to be viable? Could it be that these extracurricular activities are being set up to fail? 

Phil Morgan responds like the pragmatist he is. “I’ve got a background in school administration,” he told me. “When I make calls, pay a visit, and nothing happens I move on.” 

I call Albany High School. Principal Ron Rosenbaum has never heard of KECG. I tell him about it, then ask who’s assigned to work in something that’s not a standard part of the curriculum. 

“I don’t know whose job it was in the last administration,” he says. “But in this one, it’s my job.” 

Would he be interested in hooking up Albany High with KECG? 

“We would certainly be open to that,” he says. 

Berkeley High is a tougher nut to crack. I get Assistant Principal Mike Hassett on the phone. He’s clearly not interested in talking to either me or KECG. “Rick Ayers has some idea about doing something with the studio in the New Year,” he tells me. “You’d have to talk to him.” I get a number. [Later, neither Mr. Ayers nor Mark Copland, the Public Information Officer, return my calls.] 

“Is the studio being used at all right now?” I ask Hassett. 

“As a classroom.” 

How, I ask, are new programs worked in at Berkeley High? 

Hasset says there’s something called a “Shared Governance Team” that meets twice a month and reviews ideas like this. It’s made up of teachers, union reps, and administration. I allow as how this isn’t really what I’m asking. I want to know if there’s someone who makes sure new programs are welcomed, integrated into the school’s activities. 

“Look, guy, I’m busy here,” Hassett says. “I don’t know what else to tell you.” 

Though many claims are made for the Bush Administration’s shake-down of public education—the so-called “No Child Left Behind” law—anyone who wades through the website at edu.gov will notice a void where there might be a call for fresh ideas. Programs that haven’t been tried and deemed worthy aren’t invited to the party. This is a curious omission unless one presumes, as those who crafted this initiative must have done, that the era of trying new things is over, that all the necessary experiments have been made; that, in fact, innovation is problematic. 

Watching the struggle for simple day-to-day survival that seems to rule our local schools, it’s hard to avoid the notion that this aversion to change, to adding new pieces to the curriculum, has become esconced at our own schools. 

At KECG, the excitement of the control room environment speaks for itself. Philip Morgan gives his broadcasting class from 8:15 to noon every day at El Cerrito High, and once students are ready, they’re put before the microphone. Perhaps the last word should go to one of Phil’s students Tashiana Scott-Cochran, who, with a partner, created and hosted a blues program for KECG in the late nineties: 

“On Tuesdays from 9: 32 -10:32, my partner, Frederika Valle, and I conduct a lesson in the blues. Our show consists of musicians such as Big Mama Thorton, Elder Roma Wilson, Katie Webster, and Clifton Chenier. Each Tuesday we try harder to bring our listeners something better than the week before. I feel that is why our show has been a success. 

“Many of the older people who listen to KECG find it hard to believe two seventeen-year-olds find old time jazz and blues so uplifting. Well, for all of those in doubt, the Tashi and Rikki show is serious business and we treat jazz and blues with the utmost respect. For me, the jazz and blues segment of KECG is the most universal aspect of the radio station. Everyone knows what it is to ‘have the Blues.’ When you hear songs like Katie Webster’s ‘When Something’s Wrong with My Baby,’ you feel her heartache. We all love and feel loss and music helps to heal us. That is why I feel our show is so important. 

“We discover hidden secrets about ourselves, such as that music moves us and calls us to dance and that music can also make us want to cry… I told my mother about our blues show at school, mentioning Big Mama Thorton. My mother exclaimed, “I know her! She used to play on the corner of West Grand Avenue by the California Hotel. She sung the blues.” These are life’s hidden treasures which are found at KECG.” 

PULL QUOTE: 

Believe me, we’re trying not to be secret. We want the community to know we’re here.” Phil Morgan, KECG Station Manager 

The Jul. 22 story “Waterfront Artwork: An East Bay Tradition” mistakenly reported that statues of Snoopy and his nemesis the Red Baron built last year by local youth had fallen into San Francisco Bay. The statues remain nailed to posts in the waters by the Berkeley Marina. 

Dave Williamson took the photograph that appears on page 11 of the Nov. 18 edition, rather than Erik Olson.

The Feet of Clay award for this week is shared by two recipients, Sen. Diane Feinstein and the American Association of Retired Persons, for supporting the bogus Medicare bill which the Republicans have already shoved through the House with support from some Democrats. Senator Diane’s presence on any list of sellouts comes as no surprise to those who have followed her career, but if you’re too young to have encountered the AARP first-hand, you might wonder what’s gone wrong there. 

Some blame administrator Bill Novelli, a PR man who took the helm at AARP two years ago. But that’s too simple. 

Many outraged commentators (all the usual suspects, from Paul Krugman on down) have pointed out that the organization has been captured by its money-making schemes, notably prescription drug and insurance sales. The Medicare bill which is now being debated in the Senate gives generous payoffs to insurance vendors and privately-owned HMOs. (The Republican majority leader, Sen. Frist of Tennessee, is funded by a family fortune gleaned from ownership of one of the biggest private HMO chains.)  

What is not generally understood is that the AARP has built up a big business selling insurance to members who tend to believe what the organization tells them because of its carefully cultivated do-goody aura. For many who are starting to worry about an unprotected old age, it seems like a known quantity—a safe source for a little added protection which just might come in handy some day. 

That’s what my late mother-in-law thought when she signed up for an AARP hospitalization policy to supplement her well-funded University of California faculty medical benefits. She was a smart woman who successfully managed her own finances throughout her long life, but she got fooled on this one.  

When my husband took over her financial tasks, after she reached 88, he asked what the AARP policy covered that Medicare and UC didn’t. She didn’t know. It didn’t cost much, about five dollars a month, and she thought it must be good for something. Since she could no longer hear well on the phone, he called AARP to ask. They wouldn’t talk to him about it—“confidentiality,” they said. So she sent them a signed letter authorizing them to talk to him. They still wouldn’t say what the policy covered—“only in writing,” they said. So she wrote to them and asked them to write back. After many months had passed, they sent a printed document which purported to outline the conditions under which the policy would pay off. A number of family members, boasting among them many advanced degrees, membership in the California bar, and years of business experience, read it and tried to figure out what it meant. No luck. It seemed to be gibberish. 

Meanwhile, my mother-in-law was undergoing repeated hospitalizations under varying circumstances. Every time she was treated, the hospital sent the bill first to AARP, which always declined to pay, so then either UC’s carrier or Medicare eventually paid it. AARP never could find exactly the right circumstances for her coverage to kick in, and she finally died without having received a penny of benefits from her 20 years or more of payments.  

The AARP has no strong motivation to strengthen government insurance like Medicare. Doing so might mean that worried old people could rely on Medicare to pay all their medical bills, with no incentive to buy this kind of expensive supplemental “protection” from private insurers.  

Five dollars a month doesn’t seem like much, but when you multiply it by many, many AARP members paying in over possibly 20 or 30 years, and taking very little out, it begins to add up to big money for the organization. An insurance company which is hyped as an advocacy group enjoys a privileged position in the marketplace. This translates into supporting a fat AARP bureaucracy with big salaries for executives. An efficient single-payer government health care system would markedly reduce insurance company revenues. There would be no room for lucrative little scams like my mother-in-law’s hospitalization policy. It’s no wonder the AARP likes the current proposal better. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Daily Planet. 

Vox populi is out in full throat after the proposed parcel tax, as anyone who reads the opinion pages of this paper will know by now. City Council’s hearing on Tuesday gave public voice to sentiments which have been circulating in small meetings and on the Internet for two months or more. 

Why should this be so? Have Berkeley voters, three decades after Proposition 13, suddenly become cheapskates? Has the economic downturn hit harder here than elsewhere? Has the rise in property values (the median home is now worth at least half-a-million) brought a flood of Republicans to town?  

The interesting thing about the current anti-tax outcry is the great variety of voices which have joined the chorus. The usual suspects—formerly known as the Grumpy Old Men, but now joined by a few women— are singing their usual refrain: taxes are too high, waste is everywhere, we’re coddling slackers, and we won’t put up with it. This is not new. What is new are the increasingly loud, though still sotto voce, comments from people who regard themselves as dedicated progressives, who have always been willing to pay the piper in order to buy government services which they regard as necessary. Why are such people lending their covert or overt support to criticisms of the proposed tax hike?  

First and foremost, the city’s current union contracts are regarded as ridiculously generous by those who understand such things. The Daily Planet has received spreadsheet after spreadsheet from people with local government experience and/or academic background in economics, designed to demonstrate that the built-in union wage increases over the next five years are what’s breaking the back of the budget. The consensus seems to be that city employees, even at middle management levels, have negotiated sweetheart deals for themselves, instead of representing the public interest in the employer-employee relationship. At last Tuesday’s Council meeting, one councilmember wailed that “we can’t do anything about it now.” Layoffs, of course, would bring the issue to the table in an unpleasant way. 

Berkeley employees, unlike those in other cities such as Oakland, maintain in the face of this criticism that they won the bargaining fair and square, and now the city will have to stick with it, regardless of reductions in state funding. The unions have come up with a package of proposals, as yet unexamined, which are supposed to balance the budget and still allow the wage increase deals to go forward. We’ll see how well they work. 

Another strong critical chorus comes from what an old City Hall reporter used to call “the Berkeley 400” (they probably number more like 2,000). These are the citizens who take a strong and active interest in what government is doing. They populate the city’s boards and commissions and turn out in droves for public hearings. They vote in every election, make generous campaign contributions, and talk to their friends and neighbors. Every city has people like this, but cities with well-educated populations like Berkeley, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz produce more of them per capita. 

People in this group have for at least 10 years been very annoyed with the ongoing culture of the city’s planning department (and its supporters in the city attorney’s office) which they have gotten to know intimately because of their involvement in a succession of controversies. Many of them believe that they have expended an enormous effort to take the creation of Berkeley’s General Plan and areas plans away from a city manager and a succession of planning directors who wanted to use Berkeley as a lab for the latest development trends. Some of them have clashed with the planning department or the city attorney’s office over particular development projects.  

Such critics may be adherents of either of Berkeley’s two putative parties, the Progs and the Mods, or they may disdain both. Some spearheaded the drive to draft Tom Bates for mayor and now regret it.  

The mayor’s Sacramento-style Government by Task Force bears a good deal of the responsibility for the angry mutterings now emanating from the Berkeley 2000. Planning groupies smoked out the developer-loaded Permitting and Development Task Force and have been making their voices heard. But the Task Force on Revenue managed to meet largely in private with few citizens in attendance, and with few discordant voices solicited. The results are predictable.  

And the stakes are high. If pressed, few angry citizens really want to shut down essential city programs. But they’re tired of being dissed by politicians and city employees, and opposing the parcel tax is one of the few ways they can express their frustrations. Recent revelations that the city hasn’t bothered to collect taxes on properties owned by well-wired developers didn’t help. If something isn’t done, and soon, to restore public confidence in government, we risk throwing out the baby with the bath water in the next election, if the parcel tax even makes it on to the ballot. 

Becky O’Malley is executive editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet.