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Tuesday’s long-delayed public hearing on Sprint Communications’ North Shattuck cellular antennae application dragged into the early morning hours of this week’s city council meeting, their decision on the controversial installation at least a week away. 

The hearing was held under Berkeley’s Wireless Telecommunication Facility Ordinance, which gives the city power to approve or disapprove new cell phone operation stations. 

Earlier that night, sitting as the Berkeley Redevelopment Agency, the council approved an extension to the ground lease for the low-income Ocean View Gardens apartments on Delaware Street—but not before bowing to tenant complaints and tacking on some oversight provisions. 

Sprint first asked sought city permission two years ago to locate three rooftop cell phone antennae and some basement hardware in a commercial building at the corner of Cedar Street and Shattuck Avenue. The company, which already has 58 antennae in Berkeley, said the new facility was needed in order to correct what they called “dead spots” and poor coverage in areas of North Berkeley. 

Though a coalition of neighbors complained that Sprint didn’t need the new station and that the proposed antennae posed a health hazard, the Zoning Adjustments Board approved the application in December, 2002.  

Then councilmembers took up the matter on appeal from the neighbors coalition, delaying a hearing until they got an independent technical evaluation. Twelve months later, at the request of Berkeley officials, San Francisco-based CSI Telecommunications produced a report concluding that Sprint’s installation complied with federal standards, and declaring that Sprint needed the facility—its only alternative—to “resolve existing coverage problems in the area.” That evaluation was the subject of much of Tuesday night’s hearing. 

After Bill Ruck, a principal engineer with CSI, explained what he called the “pretty arcane and technical” background that led to his company’s conclusion (“I can’t go into this too much, or I’ll put you to sleep,” Ruck confessed), Councilmember Dona Spring said, a little bitingly, “I want to compliment the representative for CSI for doing a very good job advocating for Sprint.” 

That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the hearing, in which two groups of neighbors spent 30 minutes apiece challenging CSI’s findings that Sprint cell phone coverage is poor in North Berkeley, charging that Sprint wanted the new station either to enhance non-verbal cell phone communications (the newly-emerging e-mail and photo by cell phone) or to make Sprint more attractive to a potential buyout by another cell phone firm, or else presenting what neighbors called evidence that area communications emissions already exceed FCC guidelines. 

Mixed in were catcalls and shout-outs by neighbors responding to various points made by the CSI engineer or Sprint officials, discussions of how dead is dead in a cell phone “dead zone,” and an admittedly arcane but somewhat entertaining cross-examination by research scientist and Councilmember Gordon Wozniak of neighbor Dr. Shahram Shahruz, who conducted radio wave level tests in the area, over the proper calibration of power level meters. 

In the end, the council remains open to any written comments which may be coming in, with their final decision to come at their Jan. 27 meeting. Mayor Tom Bates, who missed Tuesday’s meeting to attend a National Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., can cast his vote next week after reviewing the videotape and the written record of the hearing. 

Sitting as the city’s Redevelopment Agency, councilmembers debated whether to add another 22 years to the city’s lease on the Ocean View Gardens low income housing project, from its scheduled end in 2037 on to 2059. 

Ocean View houses are currently rented to residents who are earn 50 to 60 percent of Area Median Income—roughly between $40,000 and $48,000 a year for a family of four. AF Evans Company of Oakland currently leases the site for the 62-unit complex to the City of Berkeley. 

AF Evans officials said they needed the extension to get a $4.3 million loan from the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) and to prevent the Ocean View houses from reverting to market rate housing as early as 2012. 

When the council agreed to the extension, several Ocean View tenants charged that the city and AF Evans representatives had been unresponsive to complaints about alleged substandard conditions in some Ocean View units. The council then amended the lease, imposing city staff inspections of the dwellings, ordering a staff survey of tenants looking into management services at Ocean View, and making AF Evans meet with tenants on a regular basis to address issues of concern. 

Both the extension and the amendments passed unanimously. 

Following a request by Councilmember Kriss Worthington, his colleagues agreed to withhold approval of new rates for Comcast Cable pending negotiations over a revival of discount rates for low-income seniors and disabled citizens. At Dona Spring’s request, fellow councilmembers tabled approval of a plan to extend the Bay Trail to the Berkeley Marina because they didn’t see enough evidence to convince them of the need to cut down nearly 100 trees. 

For the second straight week, Councilmember Margaret Breland didn’t attend due to illness.