Editorials

Well, we don’t take many trips, and it’s a good thing for the public interest that we don’t. Every time we leave the country, it seems that something happens. We were in France when Watergate broke. We were in England during Tianamen Square. We were in Italy at the time of 9/11. And those are just about all the vacations we’ve taken in the last 30 years, so we sometimes feel that we’re influencing the course of world history every time we go somewhere.  

The debacle this time—assuming it’s the only one—was on a lower level. Thanks to the Planet, we read on the Internet that the Berkeley City Council has taken the widely predicted dive in its sham contest with the giant U. It looks like the mayor is still playing tight end for the Bears, just as he did in the famous Rose Bowl game of, was it 1955? (Or maybe it was ‘56 and he wasn’t a tight end…but he’s definitely playing on their team, not ours, this time.) 

Granted, the vote last Tuesday wasn’t 9-3, as the new cheap sheet reported it, but it must have felt like that to the stalwart Berkeley Three who stood up for the citizens in the final vote. Berkeley used to have the Moderates and the Progressives, but now we have the Timid and the Tough factions on the City Council.  

The e-mail reviews of their performance, addressed both to opinion@berkeleydailyplanet.com and to me personally, have been quite one-sided so far. The Timids are losing badly in the informal poll. The Toughs (Worthington, Spring, Olds) are being proposed for the new edition of Profiles in Courage.  

There’s a special subset of letters from lawyers whose jaws are dropping at what appears to have happened. (Only a few of these were submitted for publication.) They are aghast at the role played by City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque, who seems to have entered a confidentiality agreement on behalf of the city without the council’s explicit authorization. To lawyers this looks like a breach of her duty to her immediate client—the City Council—and to the people of Berkeley. The lawyers think it’s wrong for the city attorney to have created this situation, depriving the council and public of the opportunity to participate in the agreement as CEQA intended that they should. In the real world outside Berkeley politics a lawyer wouldn’t presume to make such a decision on behalf of a client. 

Now, there’s some evidence that the desire for secret negotiations originated with the mayor, who seems to like going mano-a-mano in these show matches. But even if it did, Berkeley is chartered as a “weak mayor” city. He’s supposed to be not much more than an at-large councilmember, and it was an abrogation of the city attorney’s duty to the council and the citizens to indulge him in such foolish desires by providing and securing the confidentiality agreement. 

My research on this trip is being done in the historic city of Oxford, in England. Battles between town and gown here used to feature weapons more serious than words. My Introduction to Oxford, by Chris Andrews and David Huelin, says that disputes started as early as 1192, when locals complained that scholars had “turned a borough into the semblance of a lodging house.” That seems to be a good description of what Tom Bates has in mind for Berkeley. He and his campaign contributors have already built an enormous number of luxury student tenement lodgings. UC’s new downtown plan, which the council has signed up for without input from the Planning Commission or the citizens of Berkeley, promises to bring many more, along with a new hotel. 

Oxford today looks like the poster city for all of the ideas that are being touted for Berkeley. Main streets have been pedestrianized (Newspeak is local dialect for planners, of course.) This is accomplished by what signs call “rising bollards.” No, that’s not a new faintly dirty Monty Python song—they’re posts which appear and disappear at intersections to restrict vehicles at certain times of day. Other streets feature “humps,” also not a dirty term. Busses travel on the restricted streets in enormous flocks, which is why public transit really does work, as it doesn’t in Berkeley where they’re few and far between. Bicycles are everywhere, but seem to be regarded by many as being in the same category as pigeons. Our hosts, avid bicyclists, are collecting photos of signs on walls, doors and fences warning that bicycles must not be left there or they will be moved, confiscated or summarily demolished. 

All I’ve learned so far about governance in Oxford was gleaned from reading one leaflet posted on the bulletin board at the city’s information centre. In addition to a city council roughly the size of Berkeley’s, Oxford has area committees, perhaps 10 people on each one in every council district. They seem to be able to make all sorts of zoning and other decisions, and even control spending budgets. Area committee members are identified by party on the leaflet: Laborites, Liberal Democrats, Greens, even Conservatives. All in all, it seems that more than a hundred citizens take an active role in running Oxford. This is just what the leaflet says—the reality in Oxford may turn out to be quite different when I look at it more closely next week. But if true, it’s quite a contrast with Berkeley, where the mayor is increasingly unable even to speak courteously to councilmembers at meetings, and is trying to do away with commissions which are only advisory anyway. 

Note to burglars reading this: My house sitters have a big, fierce dog, so don’t even think about it. 

—Becky O’Malley 

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