Election Section

Ann and Dean Metzger write in the March 4-7 Daily Planet that the University of Michigan has been “a partner in many capital improvement projects” in the city of Ann Arbor and that the University of California campus in Berkeley should follow Michigan’s lead. 

It already does. For the past three quarters of a century the University of California has partnered repeatedly with the City of Berkeley in planning and financing public street improvements. 

In the early 1930s, the university gave the city of Berkeley land to widen Bancroft Way west of Dana Street, based on the recommendations of a transportation consultant who had been jointly engaged by university and city to evaluate the impacts of constructing Edwards Stadium. 

Later, when the Student Center/Student Union complex was built north of Telegraph and Bancroft, the university again apparently contributed land to widen additional blocks of Bancroft, from Barrow Lane to Dana. 

And again, in the mid-20th century, when the city wanted to reconfigure Oxford Street to carry through traffic around downtown Berkeley, the university cooperated by cutting into the western edge of the campus to provide space for the street widening. Today, Oxford is four lanes wide with a landscaped median, thanks to this contribution of university land. 

More recently, in the 1990s, the university encouraged the city to apply for a Federal ISTEA grant to improve the pedestrian streetscape on Center Street, between the BART Station and Oxford. 

The university put up matching funds which resulted in the highly successful sidewalk improvements. When the city didn’t have sufficient staffing to administer the design contract for the work, the university provided staff, gratis, to work with the design consultants; the city exercised ultimate approval over the design. 

The university also cooperated with the city and students in the mid-1990s to fund an extensive Southside Pedestrian Lighting Study. Part of the outcome of this was a university contribution of a quarter of a million dollars to improve the street lighting along Piedmont Avenue, a city street. 

The university has also contributed to various intersection improvements on city streets, including current pledges of hundreds of thousands of dollars to help improve intersections along Hearst Avenue. 

In fact, in May of 2004 the Northside Neighborhood Association wrote to city officials applauding this project and stating “this is a great example of how the city, the university and the community working together can achieve positive solutions for the challenges that we face.” Mr. Metzger, in his capacity as a member of the Transportation Commission, was one of the recipients of that letter. 

The university also maintains, for free, the landscape of part of at least one city owned street, the historic portion of Piedmont Avenue north of Bancroft Way. And a few years back the university pledged matching funds for a city grant application to restore the historic streetscape on Piedmont from Gayley to Dwight; unfortunately, that grant was not funded by the state. 

Last but not least, the Metzgers—and you, dear reader, and I—should remember that every time we, as Berkeley residents, drive on Gayley Road across the eastern edge of the campus or take a jaunt up Centennial Drive through Strawberry Canyon to get to Grizzly Peak Boulevard or Tilden Park, we’re driving not on city streets but on campus roadways that have been made available for public use for several decades. 

Berkeley citizens regard those throughfares as vital parts of the public street network but they are, in fact, entirely constructed, maintained, and improved by the university. Last summer, for instance, the university repaved much of Gayley Road. 

Finally, the Metzgers applaud the University of Michigan’s contribution of some $14,000,000 annually to the City of Ann Arbor but apparently don’t 

realize that $6 million of that money represents the University of Michigan’s annual water bill, presumably paid to the City of Ann Arbor as the local water district. 

I suppose if the University of California were to claim the water payments it makes to East Bay MUD as part of its “contributions” to local government 

it could assert an equally heroic figure. 

I wish I could claim my water bill as a public spirited “contribution” to local government! 

It just goes to show that if the grass seems to be greener elsewhere, Michigan for instance, someone is probably paying to water it. 

Steven Finacom is an employee of UC Berkeley and a Berkeley resident.?