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Berkeley is poised to become the third city in the nation to require companies that do business with the city to disclose any financial ties with slavery. 

Under the ordinance on the City Council’s Tuesday agenda, the city could void contracts with companies that failed to disclose information or disclosed false data about prior connections with slavery in the United States. The ordinance, which has been passed in Chicago and Richmond, would target big financial and insurance corporations. 

Also scheduled for Tuesday, the council will consider a host of other issues, including: 

• Recommending that the state allow cities to lower the voting age to 16. 

• Urging the county to reduce the number of birds killed at its wind energy sites. 

• Asking the city manager to preserve a city contract with a bicycle messenger company. 

• Lobbying the state to allow local environmentalists to oversee the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s cleanup of Strawberry Creek canyon. • Looking at a dispute over a proposal that neighbors say would super-size a house on Bancroft Way. 

“I think disclosure helps with the healing process [over slavery],” said Councilmember Darryl Moore who co-sponsored the proposal along with councilmembers Max Anderson and Dona Spring. “It helps educate the community that slavery was pervasive throughout the country.” 

Under the proposed law, most companies would have six months to disclose any past involvement with slavery. Insurance companies, which under a state law passed in 2000 are already required to divulge any links with slavery, would have 30 days to make disclosures. New vendors would have to complete the disclosure requirement at the time they sign the city contract. 

To ensure the filings are accurate, both the city and private individuals would be able to file lawsuits to enforce the ordinance. 

Following California’s lead, Chicago in 2002 became the first city ordering vendors to disclose any links to investment or collateral for loans of African Americans enslaved in the United States and living in the city. The law, designed to provide access to records for African Americans to one day seek compensation, forced JP Morgan Chase to disclose that predecessor companies had accepted 13,000 slaves as collateral on loans and took nearly all of them when the plantation owners defaulted.  

In response to the revelation, the corporation has set up a $5 million scholarship fund for African Americans.  

Councilmember Moore said he hoped the Berkeley ordinance might encourage other companies to follow JP Morgan Chase’s lead, but said it was possible that no Berkeley vendors would be affected. 

“I don’t anticipate there would be many banks in California that would have been around at that time,” he said.  

Teenager Vote 

After persistent lobbying from the city’s Youth Commission, the council is scheduled to vote on a proposal asking state lawmakers to allow cities to lower the voting age to 16, and prepare a ballot initiative to lower the voting age in Berkeley once the state acts. 

Robert Reynolds, a Berkeley High senior, has argued before the council that giving 16-year-olds the vote would help generate interest in politics among teens and make them reliable voters for the rest of their lives. 

Councilmember Moore, who is co-sponsoring the proposal with Councilmember Kriss Worthington, said he thought 16-year-olds should at least be able to vote for school board and public school bonds that affect the quality of their education. 

Dead Birds 

Angered over a state study that 4,700 birds are killed every year by the 6,000 twirling wind turbines at Alameda County’s Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, Councilmember Betty Olds is pushing the council to get involved. She wants Berkeley to press county lawmakers to require that wind energy companies find ways to reduce the number of bird deaths by half over the next three years. 

Next week the County Board of Supervisors has scheduled a hearing on the issue at the wind farms that dot the landscape off of I-580 in Livermore. Last year the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the Center for Biological Diversity and Californians for Renewable Energy urged the Board of Supervisors to deny new use permits to wind farm operators that didn’t take action to reduce bird deaths. The organization called for the companies to remove the deadliest brand of turbine and shut down all turbines during the four winter months when the farms produce less energy. 

Bike Messengers 

Councilembers Linda Maio, Anderson and Worthington are asking that the city renew its contract with the Berkeley-based bicycle messenger company Pedal Express to deliver inter-office letters as it had since 1998. Last April, citing that the service was no longer as valuable since city has consolidated its outlying offices downtown, city officials terminated Pedal Express’s contract for a savings of $26,250. 

Lab Cleanup 

With the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory set to clean contaminated soil and groundwater at its campus along the Strawberry Creek Watershed under the direction of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, councilmembers Spring and Worthington are asking the council to lobby the state regulators to establish a citizen advisory board. 

The proposed board would be charged with overseeing the lab’s cleanup effort and would consist of members from creek advocacy groups as well as Berkleyans for a Livable University Environment and the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste. Both of those groups have a history of opposing the university, which Councilmember Spring argued made them well suited for participation on an advisory board. 

“They’ve been active on these issues,” said Spring, adding that she thought the lab had a credibility gap between its statements and actions in protecting the environment.  

Unwanted Demolition 

The council will be asked to settle a dispute between the new owner of 1734 Bancroft Ave. and several neighbors. Residents have had qualms over the house for years, which was at times offered as a homeless encampment by the former owner, who died several years ago.  

Instead of spending an estimated $130,000 to repair the 1,315-square-foot home, the new owner, Christine Lee, whom Councilmember Spring said plans to sell the property, has received a permit to tear down the house and build a two-story, 2,531-square-foot house in its place. The plans have angered neighbors. 

William Taylor, a neighbor who filed an appeal to the permit, argued that the city’s Zoning Adjustment Board should not have issued the permit since the original building could have been renovated. “It is a bad precedent to allow such a structure to be demolished merely because a new owner wants to replace it with something bigger,” he wrote.  

Taylor added that the current home, which he wrote dates back to the turn of the 20th century, was consistent with the scale of buildings on the block, while the proposed house “is just a vertical box filling the property out to its limits.” 

Berkeley Land Use Planning Manager Mark Rhoades held that the ZAB could issue the demolition permit without a finding that the building could not be saved and that the ZAB had found that the project would not be detrimental to adjacent properties, the surrounding area or the neighborhood.?