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Letters to the Editor
BERKELEY HIGH LIBRARY
Editors, Daily Planet:
Thank you for running the article highlighting our beautiful new Berkeley High School Library in the Berkeley Daily Planet (“Berkeley High Library Will Reopen in January,” Daily Planet, Dec. 26-29), and thank you Matthew Artz for writing it. After nearly 10 years of planning, building and equipping, our school is eager to make use of the new facility. We’d love to have Matt return to visit us once we are open and settled in with everything in place—perhaps later in January. There will be a public celebration of the library and the whole facility on March 13 to which you are also invited.
A quick clarification for your records: Though we were very short on space in the interim library, all of our new books were housed there, only the older B Building books were stored in the portables offsite.
Staff, parents and community members have put in a lot of their own time getting everything ready. Parents have spent long hours this first week helping to organize books in the library, unpacking stacks of boxes in the beautiful new College Counseling Center (located directly across from the library), while staff spent long hours here during the holiday break, and the enthusiasm has been electric. And we can’t forget the contractors and the workers who have also worked very hard to make this happen. Their pride in this beautiful building is evident.
Our high school community is grateful to everyone for the commitment to make this new library possible and to you for your interest in notifying the public
about our success.
Susie Goodin
BHS Library Move Coordinator
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DEBUNKING MAIN STREET
Editors, Daily Planet:
Once again, community activists have been proven to be correct in their judgment of and opposition to the downtown boondoggle known as “Main Street USA.” Eddie Bauer’s pending closure underscores the volatile combination of corporate chains and overvalued commercial real estate. The value, in no small part, pumped up by the inflow of public funds to benefit a handful of downtown interests.
When Berkeley’s other commercial corridors (San Pablo Avenue, University Avenue and Upper Solano Avenue) are examined, two common features emerge—the majority of businesses are, for the most part, locally owned enterprises and very few vacancies. University Avenue, given the number of Southeast Asian stores and restaurants (60 plus) is a regional shopping draw. San Pablo is where you go for a wide variety of goods and services. Upper Solano speaks for itself. It is likely that any one of the first two corridors contribute more to the city coffers than the downtown district yet they receive less than their share of funding in proportion. Perhaps benign neglect is the best policy when we see the results of the “house beautiful” attitude of the City Planning Department combined with the greed of local developers.
Rather than propping up a moribund downtown plan that has a dismal record and brought with it harassment and criminalization of street musicians, vendors, and the homeless, the City of Berkeley should put its efforts into encouraging and assisting the development of locally owned endeavors. And, as far as the “Arts District” is concerned, two points need to be made. Who can afford the price of admission and why is Berkeley’s original “arts district”—West Berkeley—given such short shrift when millions in public funds have been used to create an artificial play district for a minority of well off folks?
Stephen Dunifer
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TREE HAZARD
Editors, Daily Planet:
The Berkeley Daily Planet recently ran my opinion piece in which I decried the inability of the City of Berkeley to remove an obvious tree hazard (“Berkeley Officialdom Ignores an Impending Danger,” Daily Planet, Jan. 2-5). On Jan. 6, Gerta Farber wrote a letter to the editor in which she was very generous with my money, suggesting that I should not have spent the $1,800 to repair the damage to my car and, instead, have redirected it to hiring a company to remove the tree. Thanks Gerta. Then, I not only would have a car that didn’t run, I would have an issue with the city about destroying one of their trees without permission. I hope you don’t go around removing trees that belong to someone else--you could get in big trouble. Actually, though, most of the money was paid by my insurance company, and I doubt Allstate was up to (or legally allowed to) spend the money on tree removal. And where did you, Gerta, get the idea that the city was “compassionate”? I guess you never had to fill out forms for three hours in the Planning Department to register a simple address change from one law office to another. And pay a bunch of money beside for the privilege of wasting those hours.
The point is that we pay taxes, probably close to the highest taxes in the western world, for the city to provide services. The city acts with alacrity when something might fall down on the heads of the city bureacracy—witness the earthquake-proofing of government buildings. But they do nothing about hazards to residents and visitors. I would think that these taxes could pay for someone to make safe a city-owned tree, or sweep glass off of city-owned downtown sidewalks (instead of spending lots of money soul-searching about why Eddie Bauer and Huston’s went out of business). Yes I guess we all could do these things ourselves, but, then, why are we paying the city to do it?
By the way, after the article ran, red cones have gone up on the block and it looks the city may now have been embarrassed enough to do something about the tree. The glass, meanwhile, still glitters on the sidewalk, and, on a sunny day, one might squint and pretend we have winter ice, just like cities in other parts of the country.
Jeez. I’m beginning to sound like a Republican or something.
Paul Glusman
EDITOR’S NOTE: Since this letter was written, the tree has been removed.
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Editors, Daily Planet:
Sharon Hudson may have been uncharacteristically unfair in her op-ed piece to blame Polly Armstrong for “watering down” the concern that the Zoning Department staff is seen by some to be overly favorable to building-permit applicants ( “City Report Fails to Cite Pro-Developer Staff,” Daily Planet, Dec. 19-22). Ms. Hudson complains that the final text, (“There is concern that the staff members appear to act as advocates for or against an application”) is just “spineless drivel.”
As a member of the task force, I remember pointing out that in the almost 200 applicant-neighbor situations that I have mediated (as a volunteer with the Berkeley Dispute Resolution Service), a surprising number of applicants say that they are dismayed that the zoning staff has allowed the neighbors too much control over their desire to add on to their house. Of course the staff is not responsible; the right of neighbors to protest new construction is well-embedded in Berkeley’s Zoning Ordinance.
Single-family residences, which are the main users of mediation, were discussed at a separate time from large-scale development. In retrospect we might have tried to cram too much into that one sentence. Maybe two separate sentences would have better clarified the two different attitudes. Public concern about large projects is much more intense than that about adding a bedroom to someone’s house.
Ms. Hudson knows that the task force was careful to conclude and include only those items that were generally agreed on. There were no 7-to-6 vote decisions between good guys and bad guys. Ms. Armstrong, nor anyone else, could not have watered down anything without generalized support.
Ms. Hudson knows this because she, along with other concerned citizens, were at all the meetings, and were de-facto “members” of the task force. Their spoken commentary was valuable and listened to. Her on-going written commentary was well thought out, and her two recent articles in the Daily Planet, pace the Armstrong comment, were a judicious reflection of the work of the task force.
Victor Herbert
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Editors, Daily Planet:
If you don’t like America then move to Iraq. We will all be happy to see you idiots leave.
Jim Hamel
