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The Berkeley City Council went into extra innings on the Sprint cellular facility appeal last Tuesday night, using up four separate ballots before finally upholding Sprint’s application to put three antennas on the roof of a commercial building at 1600 Shattuck Ave. After all of that voting, it was actually a single non-vote—an abstention by Mayor Tom Bates—that was the deciding factor. 

Sprint originally applied for the antenna permit in 2002, and over the objections of an ad hoc coalition of neighborhood residents, the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) approved that application in December of that year. The neighbors then appealed the ZAB decision to the city council, which took a full year to receive an independent expert’s analysis, hold a public hearing, and then come to a final decision. Tuesday night’s meeting was the last night for city council to act, or the ZAB approval decision would automatically go into effect. 

Bates’ abstention at Tuesday night’s meeting on a vote to deny the Sprint application resulted in a rare council 4-4-1 tie, a failure of council to act, and an invoking of that automatic approval provision. 

After the meeting, Bates said he knew that his failure to vote, and the resulting standoff, would result in a Sprint victory. 

“This was a difficult one,” the mayor said. “But I just didn’t think there was enough in the record to justify denying their application.” 

That didn’t sit well with former Mayor Shirley Dean, who Bates defeated in an election two years ago. “If that’s what [the mayor] believed, why didn’t he just vote that way?” Dean said in a telephone interview. She accused the mayor of “wimping out.” “I was flabbergasted,” Dean added. “I personally would have denied the application, but that’s not the point. You could make an argument either to deny or to uphold the application, and you could defend it either way, because there was plenty of material on both sides. But not to make a decision—it just floors me. The city council and the mayor have a responsibility to make a decision. That’s their job. I don’t understand walking away from it like that.” 

Sprint currently has some 50 cellular antennas spread throughout Berkeley, but the company said it needs the new facility to boost what it calls unacceptable cell phone service in North Berkeley. Neighbors of the proposed Shattuck Avenue and Cedar Street facility—in a building which houses a Starbucks Coffee Shop, Barney’s Gourmet Hamburgers, and Café de la Paz—argued that the facility was both a health hazard and not needed by the company. Sprint threatened Berkeley with a lawsuit if the application was denied.  

The council initially voted down 3-3-3 Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s motion to approve the Sprint application (Spring, Breland, Maio voting no; Worthington, Bates, Olds abstaining). Councilmember Margaret Breland, who has been ill for several weeks, voted by telephone. The city council then split down the middle on Maio’s motion to deny the permit (Worthington, Spring, Breland, Maio voting yes; Shirek, Olds, Hawley, Wozniak voting no; Bates abstaining). Following that vote, which had the effect of upholding ZAB’s approval of the application, Maio asked for reconsideration of her “no” vote on Wozniak’s original motion to approve the application. In a statement directed to the audience, Maio said that reopening the vote was the only way that the council could add protections to the permit for restaurant workers who might have to do repairs on the roof in the vicinity of the antennas. With both Maio and Bates changing their votes to “yes”, the council voted 6-2-1 (Spring, Breland voting no; Worthington abstaining) to approve the permit, with added protections that included increased rooftop security measures. 

The city council approved City Manager Phil Kamlarz’ timetable for implementing the recommendations of the Mayor’s Task Force on Permitting and Development. The 14-member task force met for much of last year, returning with a list of proposed changes in the permitting and regulation of Berkeley development projects. The city manager has recommended that some 30 of those changes be implemented by the end of the year. 

The council also directed city staff and the Planning Commission to return to the council by May with recommended changes in the zoning ordinance to conform to the University Avenue Strategic Plan. The strategic plan, which is part of the city’s General Plan, has height and building setback requirements that are more restrictive than those currently allowed in the zoning code for the University Avenue area.?