When Berkeley’s only foster care and adoption agency learned that its office was seismically unsafe, it faced an uncomfortable choice: find money for repairs by May 2006 or face city fines. -more-

Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) members and planning commissioners both wrestled with the same subject last week, the incentives that let builders create larger structures in Berkeley than would otherwise be allowed. -more-

One day before the cutoff of local registration for Golden Gate Elementary Charter School in North Oakland, only 60 percent of students’ families had signed their children up to attend the new school. -more-

Berkeley Unified School District has been put on a list of 150 California school districts needing “program improvement.” -more-

The Berkeley Waterfront Commission rejected landing rights to Spaceship Earth in their bailiwick last week, leaving the 350,000-square-foot blue sphere still in search of a home. -more-

There was no editor’s column in this space last Friday because I was in Concord on Thursday, serving as a judge in the California Newspaper Publishers’ Association’s annual awards contest. Every paper that enters the competition is required to submit a judge for the regional entries, so I went. My assignment, with one colleague, was to review two categories: investigative/enterprise stories and environmental/“ag” reporting, both for less-than-daily papers above 25,000 circulation, the next group above the Daily Planet’s 2004 figures. Next year, we might be in this group, since our circulation is increasing. -more-