Features

INAPPROPRIATE PHOTO 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am writing in response to your coverage of the death of 15-year-old Miguel Caicedo (”West Berkeley Go-cart Accident Kills Teenager,” Daily Planet, Feb. 24-26). I see that other readers have written letters focusing on the illegal and dangerous use of go-carts, or on the regrettable deficit of stop signs in the West Berkeley neighborhood where the accident occurred.  

Personally, I am still reeling from the shock of opening the paper to see the unnecessarily graphic photograph (of Miguel’s smashed go-cart underneath the front of the pickup truck) and description of the accident scene. As a newspaper it is your job to report the facts, which often includes compelling details and visuals. However, it is also your job to present such facts in a way that considers the overall context of the story, your audience, and the consequences of your representation of facts. I believe that you have exacerbated an already tragic situation by assuming that the disturbing photograph would have somehow served your readers or strengthened this story. It is unfortunate that my knowledge about this accident has come at the expense of Miguel’s family, friends, and even the truck driver, who all have to live with such an image imprinted on their minds. Your choice to include the photograph was inappropriate, irresponsible, and ultimately disrespectful to the community that mourns Miguel. 

Kris Helé 

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SLEEPWALKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I’m writing in response to Erik Olson’s photo which accompanied an article about a fatal go-cart accident.  

As a photojournalist studying at UC Berkeley, I think about photo ethics. And the photo you ran depicting Miguel Caicedo’s mangled scooter beneath the fender of a truck, with pools of blood running in the street, was in poor taste, an unnecessary illustration of a tragedy and offensive to the family and friends of the 15-year-old.  

Remember the flak newspapers got after 9/11 when they published photos of people falling from the windows of the Twin Towers? The papers argued that although these were grisly portrayals of people dying, what kept this out of the realm of a morbid fascination with fatalities (a la “Faces of Death”) was that 9/11 was an inconceivable horror, the largest modern attack on American soil, and that those photos helped illustrate what no one could imagine or believe.  

The death of Miguel Caicedo is newsworthy. He was young and well loved and his friends held a week-long vigil at a memorial site to show their devotion to him. The grisly representation of the fatal collision that unceremoniously claimed his life is emotionally disturbing, like all roadway accidents must be. But we don’t see pictures of every accident scene in the paper. I think there’s 50, 000-80,000 U.S. roadway deaths a year. A casual snapshot of a bloody wreckage is unusual, and is not typically published not only because it is upsetting to see, but usually it is not in the public’s interest to see (what purpose did the photo serve?). 

I imagine that your editors were sleepwalking when they published this piece. For one, a four-letter word (“fuck,” will you print it again?) appears quite arbitrarily in the text, when paraphrasing the speaker would’ve worked just as well. Secondly, Caicedo’s name was misspelled in one reference.  

I’ve heard plenty of talk about this Daily Planet piece from people who knew Miguel Caicedo—I’ve been photographing the memorials and funeral this past week—and the only thing anyone has to say about your article is “Man, did you see that photo they used? That wasn’t right.”  

Keli Dailey 

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COMMUNITY SAVES LIVES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Recently I listened to a remarkable interview with Father Boyle, a Jesuit Priest, on NPR’s “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.” Father Boyle works with Latino gangs in Los Angeles. At one point he was asked, what works? And Father Boyle answered, “Community. Community saves gang members.” Of course. We all need community. Gang members need community. I need community. And community is the reason I have volunteered for 12 years at Willard Middle School. 

For these reasons I am deeply disturbed and puzzled at the leadership of our schools. For example, right now, every request for school district information must be personally reviewed by the Superintendent. This level of control and lack of transparency is not appropriate for Berkeley. The White House inhabited by Bush operates in this manner. BUSD should be open and transparent. 

When the Superintendent first came, she organized an elaborate system for input, and required every school to conduct a parent meeting in order to develop priorities. I personally attended two of these, one at Willard and one at BHS. The input went in, and nothing has come out. We’ve never found out the results. We’ve never been informed as to how the information is used, nor what decisions, if any were guided by all that effort. 

When I say “Our schools”, I mean all of us, students, parents, teachers, staff, neighbors, administrators, local businesses, all of us, which is what it should be. When I hear BUSD administrators say “our schools” the “our” usually denotes BUSD, and is being used to tell me that I’m excluded. Butt out. 

When schools are part of “our” community, the 65 percent of Berkeleyans who don’t have children attending BUSD, have been willing to support our schools with generous funding: $13 million extra every year.  

BUSD: Be a lot more user friendly; practice democracy which requires honest, open and easy access to information. 

Yolanda Huang 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

In regards to the flooding at Malcolm X School, I’ve been surprised that no one has mentioned the street re-paving that occurred in the summer of 

2002. Many of the streets in our neighborhood were changed by having the street level raised to within two inches of the top of the curb. A neighbor with an at-grade house succeeded in having them redo a section of his street to have a deeper gutter, and he still gets flooded. We are above grade, but this is the first year since 1977 that I’ve seen standing water rippling on our front walkway. I measured the gutter depth around Malcolm X and found that while Ashby has a nice five- to six-inch depth, King to the west has 3.5 to five inches, Ellis to the east (uphill) has only 2.5 to three inches, and Prince, to the south, has 2.5 to four inches. Not only is this less a barrier to high water, but once the flow spreads out over the street and sidewalk, it goes slower and removes less debris, perhaps leading to more blockage. 

Another problem is the (fairly recent) design of the front entryway on Prince Street. From the access ramp at the street there is no uphill slope before another elegant ramp curving down to access some below grade classrooms. In their patio-like entry way, there are some skinny little grates that, not surprisingly, are not up to the task of channeling the overflow from the street. Perhaps we could have an inexpensive competition among local architect students to design something that would channel water out to the street or drains but retain wheelchair access. 

Another solution would be to return to dirt and gravel streets. They are cheap, absorb more water, and have a side benefit of slowing traffic. 

Barbara Judd 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

While just about everyone agrees that the food served to our children in Berkeley schools is of vending machine quality, no district official has done anything to address the problem beyond rhetoric. Perhaps if the superintendent and school board were forced to eat what they serve our children, on a daily basis, we would see some change. Instead, I have witnessed district administrators eating lunch, on several occasions, at the trendy, expensive “Downtown” restaurant.  

The district’s contention that freshly cooked food, prepared on site, would increase costs is nothing more than an excuse to uphold the status quo. As someone who has prepared healthy food for large amounts of people, I have learned how simple and inexpensive it can be. The district would be saving money, not losing money. Unbeknownst to the district, there are many qualified cooks and organizers in our community who have the expertise to enact such a program. We wouldn’t demand the six-figure salaries and obscene benefits packages given away to our current food services director and others. We don’t need to hire any additional bureaucrats from out of town, to show us how it’s done. 

I pose a question to Ms. Lawrence and the school board: Are you willing to try a pilot program in which fresh food is prepared and served on one site for one day a week by qualified cooks? Are you willing to take this small step, or have your words been nothing but the same old rhetoric once again?  

Michael Bauce 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

Your article on the $100,000 overcharging of tenants by former rent control board employee Michael Berkowitz encapsulates all that is wrong with rent control. 

The hypocrisy and irony of a rent control advocate with close ties to the current board thumbing its nose at the system he helped create are well  

documented in the story so they are not worth repeating. However, from a public policy perspective this story illustrates that it is time to re-think rent control. 

Owners have been saying for years that the low annual adjustments granted by the rent board only create a disincentive to landlords who, as a result, eventually opt to sell their properties; most often these properties are never again used as rentals. 

The rent controlled rent for the Berkowitz five-bedroom house that is both close to campus and in a very desirable neighborhood where only wealthy people can afford to buy was $1,335 a month. This is roughly the market rate rent for a one-bedroom unit in an apartment complex.  

Mr. Berkowitz, just like countless other owners, chose to sell his property simply because it is not financially viable to continue renting for $1,335 a  

five-bedroom house that is worth $800,000 (the sales price of the 2820 Derby St. property according to the weekly sales database of the Hills newspapers). Currently the rent board controls about 19,000 rentals while the total number of rentals in 1980, the year rent controls were implemented, was 28,000. That is a staggering loss that mostly results in a one-way ticket from rental to owner occupancy. 

The fact that UC Berkeley is currently building thousands of units is a testament to this process in which students have lost private housing within  

walking distance to campus. 

At the other end of the spectrum, rent control has a corrosive effect on vacant units when there is a high vacancy rate. The current ordinance in fact  

admits to this by providing a clause by which the City Council can repeal rent control if the vacancy rate goes above five percent. The latest informal survey  

shows the vacancy rate hovering around 10 percent since November 2002. Here is the thinking that prevails in a punitive rent control environment such as Berkeley’s during a high vacancy rate period: An owner knows that he may rent to a tenant that will remain in the unit a very long time. That new rent  

will be virtually frozen in the foreseeable future as a result of rent control. Therefore the landlord is reluctant to offer the unit at a lower price and tenants are forced to pay a rent higher than necessary. It’s a situation where the landlord loses, the tenant loses, the city loses, the state loses, merchants see fewer sales, etc. 

Just do the math: A 10 percent vacancy rate translates into conservatively 4,000 fewer tenants living in Berkeley. That is a staggering loss of revenue for a cash-strapped city as fewer dollars flow as fees for telephone service, cable, sewer, business license fees, new auto taxes, etc. Just this past November, Cambridge Massachusetts—Berkeley’s ideological sister city—said no to a city ballot initiative to bring back rent control by a 61 to 39 percent margin after a 1994 statewide initiative repealed it. Cambridge’s voters compared rent control with what the market delivered during the past 10 years and they overwhelmingly chose the free market. It’s time for Berkeley to follow that lead.  

Robert Cabrera 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

I applaud Matthew Artz for writing the article about how “Bush Law Sabotages School’s Effort to Leave No Child Behind” (Daily Planet, Feb. 13-16) is wrongly giving Washington Elementary School a bad reputation. As a mother of a first grader at Washington, I felt really bad when I got the school district’s letter stating that Washington is a “needs improvement” school and I can opt to transfer my child to another Berkeley school. By the way, I heard from our Leadership Team meeting that not one Washington family opted to transfer. Last year, when I was searching for a school for kindergarten, I visited four schools in my zone and one private school. We selected Washington. Why? Because for my family, it is the best choice. My son is an intelligent and confident child, so I knew that he would be fine in public school. He had completed three years of Montessori preschool and was a good candidate for private school. But, I felt that a private school would be too homogenous. Frankly, how many families can afford $9,000 tuition a year? Not only am I interested in good academics, I want him in an environment that reflects the Bay Area in race, culture and economics, because social development is important too. 

Since being at Washington for two years now, I’m impressed with the school. I’m part of the Leadership Team, which comprise of the principal, staff,  

teachers and parents. As a group, we help make spending decisions together. I like this inclusion. Honestly, I’m learning more about Washington every year and I like what I see. Of course, I’m not happy about everything at Washington, but that would be unrealistic. Are there better schools than Washington? That is a personal question each family needs to search out for themselves. It upsets me when I hear that parents avoid Washington because of what they hear rather than what they see and experience for themselves. 

We need good parents and kids at all Berkeley schools so I hope that families take the time to research schools by visiting them. 

Mimi Chin 

Washington Elementary School Parent 

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Editors, Daily Planet: 

For over five months now I have been part of a community group that respects the need for commercial development along San Pablo Avenue, but would like the City of Albany to respect our wishes to leave the neighboring streets residential. In less than five months, we have drafted a well-thought out and detailed Alternative E to the Planning and Zoning Commission’s commercial expansion proposed along San Pablo Avenue and we have attracted over 400 supporters from all over the city (not just the so-called “NIMBYs”). By contrast, it took some members of the commission more than seven years to come up with a radical expansion proposal that only he and one other member can support with a straight face. Unfortunately, these two have married themselves to a proposal that would ruin the spirit of Albany for no other reason than to preserve their fragile egos. 

Four-story buildings built up to the property line of single family homes would destroy the neighborhood—plain and simple. A radical increase in large commercial buildings would increase crime, traffic and pollution; such changes would have a negative impact not only on the neighboring streets but anyone living in Albany AND anyone attempting to drive through Albany, especially via San Pablo Avenue. This is not a case of “NIMBYism.” Keep in mind that San Pablo Avenue runs through the majority of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. You could be the next homeowner with a Wal-Mart opening in your backyard. I am amazed and appalled that the powers that be have let the voices of a few drown out the voices of hundreds. We just want to be heard! 

We have started a petition and urge potential supporters of reasonable, respectful development to contact us before the next Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on Tuesday, March 9. We have a hotline at 527-0923, and our website is http://stopsanpabloexpansion.com. 

Kamala Appel 

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