The Berkeley City Councilmember representing the district of embattled Oregon Street homeowner Lenora Moore has sharply criticized the neighbors who brought a lawsuit in Small Claims Court against the 75-year-old grandmother, saying that their action involved a “revenge motive.” -more-
Berkeley officials have taken the first steps toward moving the city’s popular flea market, the market’s attorney said Monday. -more-
Former Berkeley Police Officer Sgt. Cary Kent, 53, pleaded guilty Friday to three felony charges: grand theft, possession of heroin, and possession of methamphetamine. -more-
Cultural uses at the Gaia Building, sewer fees, and adopting the barn owl as the city’s official bird are just a few of the issues the City Council will address tonight (Tuesday) after its month-long spring break. -more-
Two incumbents will vie to maintain their hold on the Berkeley Board of Education, while President Terry Doran says he won’t run again. -more-
Warped lane configurations on Telegraph Avenue and a traffic analysis of proposed mixed-use development on University Avenue topped the list of hot button issues on the Transportation Commission’s agenda Thursday. -more-
Despite heavy rains experienced in Berkeley this year, two of the city’s emergency storm shelters have closed and a third has only a few more days of funding. -more-
Faced with a budget crisis, the Contra Costa Health Department has proposed $12.8 million in cuts that would eliminate 88 jobs and reduce some key services. -more-
Efforts by Richmond environmental activists are playing a major role in reducing developer opposition to laws tightening regulations at contaminated sites. -more-
The Secretary-Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair of the Alameda County Medical Center Board of Trustees abruptly resigned from the board last week, leaving the board without a key financial expert at a time when the center is facing a fiscal crisis and questions about board oversight of its fiscal management. -more-
Just when it seemed impossible for relations between the United States and Iran to get any worse, they have deteriorated once again. The rhetoric and counter-rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear program sounds serious and substantive. However, a little reflection reveals this situation for what it is: a continuing piece of high-stakes political theater that principally benefits the leaders of both nations by shoring up their lagging political fortunes. -more-
The following is an excerpt from Richard Schwartz’s Earthquake Exodus, 1906: Berkeley Responds to the San Francisco Refugees. This is the last in a series of four installments from the book. -more-
There is a 62 percent chance of an earthquake of a magnitude of 6.7 or greater striking the San Francisco Bay Area before the year 2032, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. -more-
A tall, heavy-set man claiming to be “God and the messiah” barricaded himself inside his Ocean Gardens home for 20 hours before surrendering without incident early Thursday. -more-
Berkeley Police Officer Sgt. Cary Kent has not been charged with a crime, but the district attorney’s warrant allowing officers to search his office, locker and computer ties Kent tightly to drugs missing from the department’s evidence vault. -more-
Citizens spoke out before and during the Wednesday night Police Review Commission meeting at the South Berkeley Senior Center, demanding commissioners investigate allegations that Berkeley Police Sgt. Cary Kent tampered with drug evidence locked in the Berkeley Police Department vault. -more-
Want your anti-war protest to get noticed? Don’t pay your taxes. -more-
The countdown has begun. If contract negotiations aren’t reached within a week, Oakland teachers will walk out. -more-
At least 42 candidates have applied to serve on the task force planning the first stages of development at the Ashby BART station. -more-
Berkeley’s legendary ice-skating rink will stay open—for now. -more-
The oft-embattled flagship Pacifica radio station, KPFA, seems to be cruising into its 57th birthday—tomorrow, April 15—on relatively calm waters, with fundraising goals met, the last beleaguered-short-lived general manager gone, a permanent executive director at the national level in place and, last week, the appointment of Interim General Manager Lemlem Rijio. -more-
Tom Butt thinks he’s found a way to get quick action to start fixing Richmond’s sorely overtaxed sewer system—shut down new connections till the job is done. -more-
The gathering at St. Joseph the Worker Church Tuesday morning was a send-off of sorts for Sarah Harper and Cheryl Sommers. The two women had called friends and the media to the church where they intended to speak out in public for the last time before they went to jail for three months. -more-
Despite a recent legal setback, the attorney for ousted Alameda County Medical Center Trustee Gwen Rowe-Lee Sykes said that he is working on continuing legal action against what he calls a “culture of intimidation” at the center “which retaliates, penalizes, and punishes people who point out problems” at the center. -more-
“This is where it all begins,” said Jim Allison, BART spokesperson, as he pointed out the Operations Control Room (OCC) at the Lake Meritt station on Monday morning. -more-
César E. Chávez, the courageous defender of those who work the earth, used to claim that farm workers were an early warning system against environmental destruction. -more-
Traditional summer school isn’t working. -more-
Last Friday we found ourselves in Oakland at lunch time, in fact in the Old Oakland area near Ninth and Broadway where the Friday Farmers’ Market is held. Every farmers’ market has its own personality. -more-
While Ed Church and the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation claim that on Dec. 13 the City Council authorized them to organize a task force to make recommendations to the council regarding development of the west parking lot of the Ashby BART station (“Development Corp. Seeks Task Force,” March 24), in fact the council did no such thing. Neither the resolution passed that night nor the Caltrans grant application it endorsed says anything about a task force. The cover memo from Planning Department Director Dan Marks to the City Council said that the SBNDC suggested that Mayor Tom Bates and City Councilmember Max Anderson appoint a task force, but in its discussions the council rejected that proposal, and took no action to endorse any of several proposed alternatives. -more-
At a March 15 EIR Scoping Meeting, Oakland City Planning Commissioner Michael Lighty described the recently unveiled plans for yet another transit village—this one at the MacArthur BART station—as “radical.” He wasn’t being strictly dismissive, defending developments at BART stations as “logical.” But even he allowed that this project with “signature” twin towers, one 20 stories, the other 22, abutting Hwy. 24—was a bold move by BART, the City of Oakland redevelopment agency, and a private development company headed by Shea Homes. -more-
Although we live in a dense urban environment, I think we all support conservation. Fortunately, our predecessors did as well. They’ve given us the East Bay Regional Parks—90,000 acres of natural habitat laced with miles of creeks. And here in Berkeley we have access to natural creeks in many public parks and on the UC campus. But these are urban creeks flowing through urban neighborhoods and must be viewed differently from those in natural preserves. -more-
It was a shame to once again read in the Daily Planet an inaccurate and one-sided account of the proposed revision of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (“Preservationists Vow to Take Landmarks Law to Voters,” April 11). -more-
Last summer in these pages John Gertz complained that the “old” Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission was “setting Berkeley’s citizens against one another by condemning one side alone.” He reassured us that the “newer members are unlikely to support anti-Israel resolutions. But neither are they inclined to put forth pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian resolutions. [T]hey are waging a peace campaign—they want peace to return to Berkeley on this issue.” (Daily Planet, July 29, 2005) Now he is suggesting that that same commission, as well as the City Council, “should call the Palestinians to task” for electing Hamas. -more-
On April 18 the Berkeley City Council seems set to pass a new sewer lateral ordinance. This ordinance requires the inspection and repair (as necessary) of sewer laterals to private property at the time of sale or in conjunction with a general property improvement valued at $100,000 or more or plumbing-related improvements valued at $50,000 or more. The inspections and repairs will be done privately, but they will be overseen by City of Berkeley staff at a cost to property owners for the oversight and necessary permits of several hundred dollars. Over the next 20 or so years, the value of these required repairs is estimated to be in the range of $1 million. -more-
I thought about writing this op-ed last summer when Reverend Pat Robertson said that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez should be “taken out,” but I decided to pass on the opportunity. I figured people were making too big a fuss over that. Surely, being a man of the cloth, Robertson had no malicious intent. He’s a good Christian, so when he talked about “taking out” Hugo Chavez, I’m sure he meant taking him out to dinner or something like that, possibly a movie as well, and walking him home after the movie, and then.... Well, we all know that Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor.” -more-
A few people have told me that they missed reading my column in this beloved rag. I’ve missed writing it. (Thank you, friends, for noticing my absence.) -more-
Last week I received an important letter from the United States Navy. This is what it said: -more-
The dawn redwoods don’t mind the soggy weather; they’re leafing out more or less on schedule. I suppose they evolved with wetter weather to begin with, so no surprise there. In other ways, this tree has been full of surprises. -more-
When India’s Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the government’s budget this past February, he trumpeted the country’s vault into modernity. Economic growth is 8.1 percent and is projected to rise as high as 10 percent next year. India has completed its “Golden Quadrilateral,” a multi-lane highway that links New Delhi in the north, Calcutta in the east, Chennai in the south, and Mumbai in the west. The collective wealth of India’s 311 billionaires jumped 71 percent in the last year. -more-
During the last time American political jurisdictions openly maneuvered to keep African-Americans from voting—for you young readers, we’re not talking about Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, but Alabama and Mississippi in the 1950s and early ’60s—there used to be a joke told by black comics about the black fellow who came back home to South Carolina to register to vote after spending many years in New York and Philadelphia, a bachelors degree in American history from Temple and a masters in government from NYU in his pocket. -more-
I know you’re out there. You who are easy prey for handywomen and contractors. You who don’t fix things. Yes, I know you’re there. Well come out of the closet and go boldly where your uncle Filbert never went. Where you mother never dared to tread. Today we are going to hang something on the wall. Yes, You CAN do it. -more-
There’s a lively side discussion going on within a California native-plants email list about how to garden with the least impact. -more-
East Bay composer Clark Suprynowicz and San Francisco playwright John O’Keefe have joined forces for the new opera Chrysalis, “a hallucinatory riff on cosmetic surgery and genetic manipulation,” to be premiered by Berkeley Opera, April 22-30, at the Julia Morgan Theatre on College Avenue. -more-
The dawn redwoods don’t mind the soggy weather; they’re leafing out more or less on schedule. I suppose they evolved with wetter weather to begin with, so no surprise there. In other ways, this tree has been full of surprises. -more-
A match struck in darkness on the “veranda” of a tenement fire escape to light a cigarette is the first illuminating ray in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, at Berkeley Rep, as Williams’ young “double,” would-be poet Tom Wingfield (Erik Lochtefeld) slowly drawls out, in Delta Faulknerian, the introduction to his nostalgic narration of a “memory play.” -more-
It can be tempting to dismiss violent criminals, to simply lock them up and write them off. The details of their crimes justify it for us, allowing us to make them into monsters, to dehumanize and judge them. -more-
Is there really a secret behind the crystal perfume bottle passed down from your grandmother? What about the French landscape you bought at a hotel liquidation sale in Hawaii for $5? Could it be valuable? Join the Appraisal Extravaganza and these mysteries will be solved. -more-
Six major paintings and 10 small landscapes on paper, all in mixed media by Micaela Gardner, are on view through April 30 at Turn of the Century Fine Arts. -more-
I know you’re out there. You who are easy prey for handywomen and contractors. You who don’t fix things. Yes, I know you’re there. Well come out of the closet and go boldly where your uncle Filbert never went. Where you mother never dared to tread. Today we are going to hang something on the wall. Yes, You CAN do it. -more-
There’s a lively side discussion going on within a California native-plants email list about how to garden with the least impact. -more-
