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-
If you drive west on Center Street into the Shattuck Avenue intersection, you encountered two permanent signs reading “No Left Turn—Except Buses and Bicycles.” But because of Vista College construction on the next block of Center Street, you also encountered a temporary sign ahead saying “Road Closed Ahead.” -more-
Berkeley Design Review Committee will get its final look Thursday at plans for a four-story mixed-use condominium and retail project at 2700 San Pablo Ave. -more-
Fans and foes of East Bay casino proposals have had reasons both to celebrate and to fret in recent days. -more-
A vocal opponent of a plan to decrease the number of car lanes on Marin Avenue has filed suit against Berkeley and Albany to stop the project. -more-
After weeks of briefings on the city’s looming $7.5 million shortfall, Berkeley’s City Council today (Tuesday) will get its first look at next year’s proposed budget. -more-
San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board members will hear the latest developments at Richmond’s Campus Bay waterfront Wednesday morning in downtown Oakland. -more-
This week will mark the 36th anniversary of the My Lai massacre in which more than 560 men, women and children, all Vietnamese civilians, were murdered by soldiers of Company C of the U.S. Army 20th Division. -more-
In Michelle Carter’s Writing in the Public Context class at San Francisco State we are to listen for and write down overheard dialogue that intrigues us, or that we find mysterious, impenetrable, or loaded with hidden meaning. -more-
Big boss man, -more-
The Berkeley Creeks Task Force has now met five times. According to Planning Director Dan Marks, the task force will meet, at most, only 20 more times. If Berkeley's citizens want input on the final creeks legislation they would be wise to address the task force at the March 21 meeting, held at the North Berkeley Senior Center. This is currently the only remaining scheduled meeting specifically designated to take citizen input. -more-
In 1997 Oakland banned the use of pesticides on city-owned property. Since then, the city has made either two, a dozen, nine (according to an IPM document), or about half a dozen exemptions. It all depends on which day you hear Jean Quan or her policy analyst, Sue Piper, make their pesticide presentation. Bad news. Now there’s a push to employ herbicides in the hills, specifically Glyphosate (Roundup) and Triclopyr (Garlon). We urge people to speak up for alternatives to renewed dependence on toxics, the same old Monsanto snake oil. After pesticides have been applied, goat-herders wait a year plus another rainy season before they’ll let goats graze. Good move, as about 20 goats keeled over and died in the Spring of 1998, in the Carneros District of the Southern Sonoma Valley, immediately after drinking runoff from the neighbor wine grape grower’s vineyard. He is a user of Roundup, as well as other herbicides and other pesticides. Let’s not climb the toxic treadmill. Make weeding community service instead.. -more-
The San Francisco Flower and Garden Show takes place this week, replete with rare plants, elaborate and unusual display gardens with themes ranging from high concept to the horticultural equivalent of comfort food, and a myriad of garden-related products and services for sale. -more-
When successful Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo refused to testify before the 1947 House Committee On UnAmerican Activities, he became the stuff of legend—one of the Hollywood Ten, imprisoned for 11 months in 1950, condemned to the blacklist—and selling scripts through third-party “fronts.” -more-
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis said recently that jazz musicians are scared of playing John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. -more-
It’s not often that you see a bird that doesn’t match anything in the field guides—even in Sibley’s Bible of bird identification. But there it was, hanging out with a raft of overwintering common goldeneyes and Barrow’s goldeneyes at the Bayward end of Lake Merritt: a midsized duck with a dark head (showing a purple gloss when the sun hit it) and a backswept crest, a dark back, and pale sides with two vertical hash marks. -more-
The Berkeley Unified School District Board of Directors voted 3-2 Wednesday to kill a proposal to consider a regulation high school baseball field for its Derby Street properties. -more-
Amid news that Berkeley’s Volvo dealership, and the more than $100,000 in annual sales tax revenue it generates, is packing off to Emeryville, the City Council Tuesday debated how to attract new businesses. -more-
The Berkeley public schools Board of Directors voted unanimously Wednesday night to expel a Berkeley High School student for one year for bringing a gun on campus in her backpack last month. -more-
A career Berkeley cop will become the city’s next police chief. -more-
Bombs flew at Monday’s Landmarks Preservation Commission meeting, both literally and metaphorically. -more-
Library workers Wednesday railed against library trustees and a director who they said have ignored their concerns while cutting seven jobs. -more-
A formal demand by city officials that UC Berkeley adhere to its parking tax appears likely to send a second town-gown dispute to the courtroom. -more-
Planning Commissioners sang the praises of the proposed David Brower Center Wednesday night, but city planning staff wondered just how they could fit the complex into existing city zoning laws downtown. -more-
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina—Brazil is scrambling to appear in control of the eco-conflict raging in the Amazon rainforest. After the assassination of 73-year-old environmentalist Dorothy Stang (an American and a nun), Brazil’s president has sought to make up, in weeks, for years of inertia on the Amazon issue. -more-
“The cities of the south shall be shut up, and none shall open them: Judah shall be carried away captive all of it, it shall be wholly carried away captive. Lift up your eyes, and behold them that come from the north: where is the flock that was given th ee, thy beautiful flock?” Jeremiah 13:19-20 (King James Version) -more-
The March 4 Undercurrents column by J.Douglas Allen-Taylor (“When Objective Investigators Become Activists”) contains some serious mis-statements and factual errors that require correction. -more-
Something important was missing from the recent exchange in the Daily Planet’s letters section about Office of Transportation Director Peter Hillier’s untimely departure from the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association’s Feb. 24 meeting on traffic and parking—namely, the “pointed questions,” as letter-writer Jerry Landis put it, that moved Mr. Hillier to declare that he had “been insulted” and to walk out. -more-
Jared Diamond, author of Pulitzer-Prize Winning book Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society, states unequivocally that one of the greatest risks humanity faces is clinging to recipes of the past that worked well for decades, but can no longer work under changed circumstances of the present and future. Collapse, his latest work, hints at a critical failing in the planning/design process in Berkeley. -more-
As a parent-member of the Academic Choice Design Team, I have an emphatic answer to School Boardmember Terry Doran’s question (Daily Planet, Feb. 18), “Does [Academic Choice] lead to a better Berkeley High School or a better Berkeley High School for some students?” Those of us associated with the program all believe that it will lead to a better Berkeley High for all students and are prepared to work to see that it does. A better Berkeley High, as Principal Jim Slemp has said repeatedly, is a Berkeley High that offers many excellent choices so that every student can find a program or school that meets their personal needs. Small schools are great places for some students and BHS is developing a variety of fine small schools. Do CAS and CP Academy make BHS a better school for all, or just for the 500 or so students in those two small schools combined? I’d say they make the whole school better, both because they offer a quality choice to students with specific interests and needs and because other, different programs can adapt and benefit from some of the things that those small schools do well, such as creating community to support students. -more-
Stained yellow teeth, wheezing fits, sudden cravings, bad breath, and eventual death. All symptoms of smoking. But look on the bright side, you won’t need any more cough drops. What a deal, for only as little as $165 per month, for an average smoker. The tobacco industry advertises in order to lure in its biggest target: youths between the ages of 10 and 20. Studies show that teenagers are heavily influenced by tobacco advertising. In 1998, surveys found that the tobacco industry was one of the top 10 advertisers in at least 18 countries. Eighty percent of the American advertising companies believe that tobacco advertising makes smoking more acceptable to youth. Every year the number of dollars the tobacco companies makes increases. Every year the tobacco company spends more trying to get youth to start smoking. The only warning given is the few lines of size five print: may be hazardous to your health. -more-
Berkeley High has produced a number of outstanding individuals over the years and Peter Wright is no exception. -more-
Octavio I. Romano, Ph.D., founder and senior editor of Tonatiuh-Quinto Sol Publications, and emeritus professor in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, passed away on Feb. 26 in Berkeley at the age of 82. -more-
Thirty years ago an extended women’s music and arts performance program was a revolutionary idea; today it’s an expression of a community’s solidarity. -more-
Bittersweet, the new chocolate café on College Avenue, has a small sign but you can’t miss it. The smell of dark, rich chocolate emanates from its front door. -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-
The controversial proposal to develop Laney College and Peralta Community College District lands surfaced briefly and then resubmerged this week, when an item appeared on the Peralta Board of Trustees closed agenda to discuss “real estate negotiations” between Chancellor Elihu Harris and developer Alan Dones, but no report on the negotiations was given to the public in open session. -more-
The BUSD board Wednesday accepted a Second Interim Financial Report on the district’s 2004-05 budget that continued BUSD’s “qualified” budget status and discussed the district teachers’ work-to-rule slowdown over a contract dispute. -more-
