Editorials

It wasn’t easy, but the Daily Planet managed to get an advance look at the Planning Commission’s agenda and packet for Wednesday. Among the items we noticed was a proposal from the planning director to raise fees on most planning and zoning permits by 10 percent “to cover higher cost-of-living, equity and fringe benefit rates.” Also, he wants to place a 15 percent surcharge on discretionary applications to pay for “the cost to maintain the General Plan and the Zoning Ordinance.”  

Now, the ordinary Berkeley citizen, ever skeptical of corporate influence on public policy, might be pleased by this at first glance. Finally, she might say, the nasty developers are being forced to pay their own way. But just a minute. It’s not quite that simple. In the first place, the fee hikes apply to everyone, not just the big guys. Want to rebuild a deck? That’s going to cost you a bit more, in order to fund the latest round of staff pay increases. Never mind that, with the current state fiscal crisis, some staffers in, for example, Santa Cruz, have agreed to decreases to help their city’s bottom line. 

And what about the new fees which are supposed to pay for “maintaining” the General Plan and Zoning Ordinances? Exactly what do homeowners’ taxes go for, if not for enforcing these laws? Well, in fact, the current controversy about the University Avenue Strategic Plan is about just that— the city’s had eight years to update the Zoning Ordinance to match the plan, and it still hasn’t happened. And might never happen. The staff’s progress report on that boondoggle didn’t make it into this week’s Planning Commission packet, even though it’s on Wednesday’s agenda. It’s one of those infamous TBD documents—To Be Delivered to the Commissioners Whenever, certainly too late for Plan Berkeley to distribute it to the public at large. The timing can’t help but reinforce public suspicion that the promised zoning revisions will turn out to be yet another attempt to evade the citizen-approved plan on behalf of developers.  

But won’t the new fees at least save taxpayers money by dinging developers? The proposal notes that “the purpose of increasing and adding new fees is to recover the cost of providing services as much as possible, thereby minimizing the need for General Fund support.” Surely that’s A Good Thing. The director speaks optimistically about a goal of “full recovery”—a planning department completely funded by pay-as-you-go levies on projects. But this strategy contains a hidden built-in incentive toward increased development. No projects? No budget, no staff increases, maybe even layoffs. In the eyes of staffers, Not A Good Thing.  

Call us idealists, but we think the staff should be paid from the General Fund to enforce plans and zoning laws. It’s just a cleaner deal that way. One of the main citizen complaints is that land use plans are honored more often in the breach than in the observance. The proposed Seagate building (generator of many lucrative fees for the Planning Department even under the existing schedule) is believed by many to violate Downtown Plan guidelines, and the Big Ugly Boxes growing on University Avenue flagrantly contravene the University Avenue Plan .  

It’s also staff’s legal contention that Berkeley as a charter city can violate its own land use plans if it wants to, and that might unfortunately be true. If it’s not, there are always plan amendments, which a majority of the City Council can approve. They will probably be tempted to amend the West Berkeley Plan on behalf of the Berkeley Bowl’s proposed megastore. 

Citizens are not now getting what they’re already paying for, given the current dismal level of fealty to hard-fought adopted land use plans. They might eventually be tempted to look for other remedies.  

A Planet correspondent forwarded a column by the Miami Herald’s redoubtable foe of exploitative development, columnist (and satiric mystery author) Carl Hiassen. A new statewide ballot initiative, the Florida Hometown Democracy Amendment, would give citizens the final vote on projects requiring changes to local comprehensive land-use plans. In Hiassen’s pungent prose: “such a radical notion-- giving voters a direct say over projects that affect their lives -- is viewed as pure poison by the special interests that hold power.” He describes Florida’s so-called Growth Management Act as “a polite charade in which the public’s input is sought, acknowledged, then often ignored.” Sound familiar?  

Now, Berkeley is not exactly Florida, where development controversies have traditionally been so lurid they’ve inspired two great crime novelists, Hiassen and John McDonald. But Hiassen’s take on how citizens get steamrollered by the growth professionals rings true in many details. His conclusion, which I can’t improve on, is this: 

“In theory, of course, we shouldn’t have to go out and vote on every major development. In theory, the people we elect to office should be able to make those decisions competently and free of secret influence. 

“In theory, the interests and welfare of a neighborhood should carry just as much weight as those of... any…big powerful company. 

“Maybe things really work that way somewhere in the universe, but not here in Florida. 

“Not in real life.” 

And not always in Berkeley, either. 

—Becky O’Malley›