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City Councilmembers will face a relatively light agenda when they meet tonight (Tuesday), including a proposed revision to Berkeley’s “by-right” home addition ordinance and two competing resolutions on the demolition of a UC Berkeley landmark. 

Councilmembers Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak have proposed changes to the existing ordinance that allow homeowners to add 499 square feet to their homes “by right.” 

In a two-page item submitted to their fellow councilmembers, Wozniak and Olds said that they offered the amendment “to reduce the confusion (and) tension between neighbors and litigation” that have resulted from the current ordinance. 

As the law now stands, owners can build additions of under 500 square feet without notifying neighbors, who often protest to the city and file suits over lost sunlight and views. 

The Olds-Wozniak measure would allow owners to add 700 feet to their ground floors with a zoning certificate—which doesn’t require notice—but requires an administrative use permit, which requires notice, for all additions to higher floors. 

Because the ordinance currently doesn’t specificy just how high a “story” can be—enabling additions of 20 feet or more in height—the new ordinance would specify a limit, though they didn’t offer a number. 

The resolution calls on the council to direct the Planning Commission to come up with specifics and recommendations within 120 days. 

Competing resolutions focus on the proposed demolition of the Bevatron on the grounds of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

Once the world’s most powerful particle accelerator and the source of internationally acclaimed discoveries, the facility has since been eclipsed by other larger and more specialized accelerators and has been decommissioned. 

At issue is whether to demolish the giant machine and the building which housed it or to preserve them and use the cleanup funds to restore contaminated ground water at the site. 

Councilmembers Gordon Wozniak and Linda Maio have offered a pro-demolition resolution designed to support earlier, similar measures passed by the council, while the Peace and Justice Commission’s resolution calls for preservation and water cleanup. 

Since the property belongs to the U.S. Department of Energy, neither resolution would have binding effect. 

Wozniak is also the author of a proposed revision to the city’s ordinance for posting public notices of proposed changes in land use. 

The measure offers no specifics, other than to recommend that the city manager tell the Planning Department and Planning Commission to consider modifying requirements for post notices of proposed land use changes in a way that doesn’t contribute to urban blight by creating “unnecessary clutter on street light poles and other public places.” 

The measure was inspired by city postings that followed the spring cleanup of notices, flyers and other detritus from streetlight poles and other places in the Elmwood business district. 

Also on the City Council agenda: 

• Second reading votes on the previously approved condominium and soft story building ordinances and the zone and planning changes required before the Gilman Street Playing Fields can be built; 

• A $492,172 addition to the city’s contract with Cale Parking Systems USA to add more of the new parking pay stations in the North Shattuck Avenue and Southside areas; 

• A measure to allow the city to add six Toyota Prius hybrid cars to the city fleet from San Francisco Toyota; 

• A resolution authorizing the city manager to negotiate a five-year contract with the Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department to provide shelter for Berkeley’s homeless over the next five years, with costs not to exceed the $747,120 provided by a federal grant. 

• An appeal by neighbors of a Zoning Adjustments Board action approving a three-car garage addition to a home at 1732-34 La Vereda Road.