Flash: Council Kills Landmark Law Revisions Pending Election
In an abrupt reversal, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to table the revised Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) it had passed on first reading July 11. -more-
In an abrupt reversal, the City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to table the revised Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) it had passed on first reading July 11. -more-
Thanks to alert citizens and a prompt response by Berkeley firefighters, a Tilden Park hills fire was extinguished before it could spread Tuesday night. -more-
Shirley Dean’s name popped up late Friday on the City Clerk’s list of candidates who have taken out mayoral papers. -more-
The citizens guiding the shape of Berkeley’s new downtown plan staged a second revolt last week—this one focusing on UC Berkeley’s planned hotel complex. -more-
The growing battle over Oakland’s valuable waterfront property development sharply escalated this week, with the coalition opposing the sale of the OUSD downtown properties moving their target from the powerless OUSD Board of Trustees to the powerful Oakland City Council and opponents of the massive nearby Oak-to-Ninth development filing a lawsuit against the project as well as launching a petition drive for a ballot measure to block its implementation. -more-
Removing Telegraph Avenue parking last fall to correct substandard bike lanes was a “colossal blunder,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington. -more-
Councilmember Gordon Wozniak says getting the City Council involved in controversial student elections at UC Berkeley is council business as usual, but others say it is an attack on the independence of student government. -more-
They are everywhere, trying to grab our attention. And they succeed. Public opinion polls claim to adapt statistical research methods to the measuring of beliefs. Scientific? Perhaps, but polling also operates with hidden goals because it is part of the marketplace. -more-
A proposed $3,000 donation on today’s (Tuesday) City Council agenda to Kitchen Democracy from Councilmember Gordon Wozniak’s council office budget has provoked questions on the appropriate use of city funds. -more-
The Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) board meets tonight (Tuesday) for an update on the status of the troubled local housing agency. -more-
Major repairs and renovations will keep alternating lanes closed on Piedmont Avenue for the next three weeks, said Kenneth Emeziem, supervising civil engineer for Berkeley’s Public Works Department. -more-
The race for Berkeley’s city auditor has gone uncontested for eight years. School Board Director John Selawsky wants to change that. -more-
Marcia Levenson treasures her Williard neighborhood and the apartment she has rented for two decades in the area. Because she’s living with a chronic disease, Levenson’s only income is disability payments. Her Section 8 voucher allows her to stay in the neighborhood and limits her share of the rent to 30 percent of her income. -more-
While two rejected proposals for the Oakland Unified School District administrative properties substantially meet several district “baseline expectations and intentions,” the winning proposal by TerraMark/UrbanAmerica does not, an analysis by the Daily Planet has found. -more-
Though an angry Rick Caruso said early Tuesday that he’s pulled the plug on his plans for a $300 million Albany waterfront mall, project foes say they expect him back. -more-
Users of People’s Park met with UC Berkeley officials on Thursday for a park walk-through and discussion of some upcoming projects. -more-
The Berkeley City Council dealt with three development issues Tuesday: a citizen appeal of housing-retail project at 1201 San Pablo Ave., a proposal to charge developers in-lieu fees rather than requiring inclusionary units and the second reading of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance. -more-
Not many disabled people chose to stand up in public and talk about their handicaps. But that’s what Ben Rivers did at the City Council meeting Tuesday. -more-
In describing a tear’s journey from a cheek to the Long Beach Harbor, one Berkeley man sealed his fate as an inductee into the hall of literary infamy. -more-
The sergeant in charge of Berkeley’s drug evidence room copped a plea earlier this year, admitting he stole drug evidence in his charge. -more-
On Wednesday, UC Berkeley unions plan to rally against what they call “drastic changes” in the parking fees for disabled employees, carpool permits, and Bear passes that the university has unilaterally imposed upon their employees. -more-
Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), an Oakland-based environmental health and justice non-profit, has served Pacific Steel Casting with a federal lawsuit, the organization announced Wednesday. -more-
Denise Fore, maintenance director of Redwood Gardens, a senior housing complex near Clark Kerr Campus that is home to around 200 senior citizens, said this week that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will renew their subsidies for the Redwood Gardens complex. -more-
Berkeley’s phantom paintballer is at it again, and police are asking for the public’s help in nailing the serial splatterer. -more-
A Richmond police pursuit ended near the Claremont Hotel Tuesday night but not before a helicopter search and prowling patrol cars alarmed nearby residents. -more-
Norma Harrison, a communist and active member of the Peace and Freedom Party, has announced a bid for school board. -more-
The embattled Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) has a new acting manager, Housing Department Director Stephen Barton announced Thursday. -more-
While foes of the upscale mall planned for the Albany shoreline have apparently won one battle before the City Council, there’s another struggle in the courts. -more-
Someone is polling Berkeley residents by phone, targeting issues revolving around competing landmark ordinances and the upcoming mayoral election. -more-
It seems simplistic, but let’s just go over it one more time. Until the time of the First World War, it was an accepted shared belief, at least among the “civilized” (European-influenced) countries that deliberately killing non-combatants (“civilians”) was an immoral way to conduct a war, even a “just” war. This is a topic that necessarily requires quotation marks, since even supposedly shared beliefs are questioned by some. -more-
Two weeks ago marked the beginning of a new round of Israeli-Palestinian violence due to which a neighboring country, Lebanon, soon became the victim of this confrontation. -more-
Berkeley relies on the Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) to safeguard its library system, and we, the citizens and taxpayers of Berkeley, along with the people who staff our libraries, should have some influence on their decisions. -more-
What exactly is the United States’ position in national and international laws of peace and human rights? -more-
Forget the fireworks, the chase is on again—turn on your TV to find out the latest casualties of your monthly police high-speed chase. Although never having been personally impacted by this very American institution, I have long considered it the grossest, most damning hallmark of this nation. -more-
It has been a challenging year for the Berkeley Art Center. In fact, the past few years have increasingly tested our ingenuity and resilience. While we offered professionally mounted exhibitions, undertook lots of adjunct programming, presented opportunities to attend performances of music, spoken word, films and theater performances, our funding decreased. Rising costs accompanied this decline. We have been told that the oil “crisis,” brewing since the 1970s, is the reason postage, maintenance and printing costs increased. Insurance rates skyrocketed; both Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina are blamed for the rise. We watched our communications costs soar, as we increased our use of the Internet to mitigate rising postal rates. Our small staff is dedicated and offers the BAC many volunteer hours without a cost-of-living raise. -more-
It’s a famous cartoon setup: Aliens descend from a space ship, walk up to a human, and demand, “Take me to your leader.” If aliens actually did land in Washington D.C., they’d probably be taken to meet George Bush. After all, he’s the nominally elected president of the United States. Ah, but is he our leader? -more-
I’m not a spokesperson for anyone, but myself. I once thought I might have some insights to share with and about the disabled community but this has turned out not to be true. When an organization that represents this community was looking for local authors to speak at a fundraising event, I imagined I was the perfect candidate. -more-
I just finished a book called Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions, which despite the title is not another pop-psychology tract about gender differences. The author, Richard Francis, is an evolutionary neurobiologist, and the book is a rousing polemic against the sociobiologists and their intellectual heirs, the evolutionary psychologists: scientists who believe that just about every aspect of human behavior is an adaptation to something or other. -more-
Once or so a year, the topic of poverty climbs on the agenda for the developed world. This past weekend it barely surfaced at the meeting of the Group of Eight in St. Petersburg, where energy policy (and the Middle East) held center stage. Poverty was a theme at last year’s G8 meeting, and it will likely come up again next year when the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Russia, Germany, France, and Italy sit down in Berlin to divvy up the global economy. -more-
Forgive me, y’all, but I am always a little skeptical when a politician announces that one of their public policy initiatives has nothing to do with politics but, then, you’ve got to find the timing of this one is a little curious, as well. -more-
Matt, We need to reinforce the cripple walls in our 1906 one-story house. But we live in the Berkeley flats and we are worried about potential flooding. We are not that far above sea level and we don’t think that global warming is a fairy tale. -more-
It’s midsummer, more or less, and the other inhabitants of the garden are showing up in numbers. Aphids and whiteflies and thrips, oh my! The first flush in spring gave rise to another generation or two, multiplying all the way, and most of the birds have about finished raising their first and maybe second broods for the year, so fewer insects are being turned into babyfood. -more-
Max Brand was the pseudonym of Frederick Faust, a pulp writer who had ambitions as a serious poet. Or as he preferred, a serious poet whose day job was spinning cowboy yarns. -more-
I just finished a book called Why Men Won’t Ask for Directions, which despite the title is not another pop-psychology tract about gender differences. The author, Richard Francis, is an evolutionary neurobiologist, and the book is a rousing polemic against the sociobiologists and their intellectual heirs, the evolutionary psychologists: scientists who believe that just about every aspect of human behavior is an adaptation to something or other. -more-
Two retrospectives starting today (Friday) at Pacific Film Archive will illuminate the work of actress Janet Gaynor and director Frank Borzage, both sterling talents in their day but unjustly overlooked in ours. -more-
If you’re a soccer fan still looking for a way to get the poisonous image of Zinedine Zidane’s head-butt out of your mind, the solution may have arrived in the form of a new documentary. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos tells the story of soccer’s arrival in the United States in the late 1970s, when media mogul Steve Ross set out to make the “the beautiful game” a national phenomenon. -more-
The metamorphoses of Madonna, or Elton John changing fashions and overburdening specs ... Judy Garland as Dorothy, belting out “Over The Rainbow” while absent-mindedly petting a pinwheel-headed Toto ... and just how does a paraplegic Venus De Milo line-dance to Zorba The Greek ? -more-
Matt, We need to reinforce the cripple walls in our 1906 one-story house. But we live in the Berkeley flats and we are worried about potential flooding. We are not that far above sea level and we don’t think that global warming is a fairy tale. -more-
It’s midsummer, more or less, and the other inhabitants of the garden are showing up in numbers. Aphids and whiteflies and thrips, oh my! The first flush in spring gave rise to another generation or two, multiplying all the way, and most of the birds have about finished raising their first and maybe second broods for the year, so fewer insects are being turned into babyfood. -more-
The Berkeley Alcohol Policy Advocacy Coalition was misidentified in Tuesday’s Daily Planet. While nonprofit organizations participate in the coalition, BAPAC itself is not a nonprofit organization, as stated in the article. -more-