Opinion

A few weeks ago we received an email from a member of the Downtown Berkeley Association’s design committee asking if the Planet’s opinion pages would be available for a forum on the future of downtown Berkeley. The idea, not yet adopted A few weeks ago we received an email from a member of the Downtown Berkeley Association’s design committee asking if the Planet’s opinion pages would be available for a forum on the future of downtown Berkeley. The idea, not yet adopted by the DBA or fully fleshed out, was that there would be a two-part process. First, the public would be asked to submit ideas in writing for publication: a kind of “civic visioning exercise” to tap the creativity of Berkeley citizens to think about what Berkeley Downtown might be. That would be followed by a well-conceived scientific phone poll to gauge citizens’ preference for what should be happening downtown. -more-

A professor friend called me on Thursday morning, furious. She’d just heard a radio report on a committee formed to advise the University of California Board of Regents which is recommending that seven U.C. executives, who already make more than $350,000 a year, now need to have raises funded by private donations. Why did that make her so mad? Well, she’s the chair of a science department at a state university, and with seven years experience and a four-course teaching load she has yet to take home $60,000 a year. I was already planning this editorial on the topic, because I’d seen an excellent piece by Tanya Schevitz in the Chronicle earlier in the week with all the facts and figures. An example of shocking data: one senior vice president, a committee member who is listed as making $350k, actually pays taxes on more than $450k, probably because of bonuses on top of his salary. And, if we are to believe the report, he and his cohorts want even more. That’s greed, plain and simple. Obscene greed, actually. -more-