On Wednesday the Planning Commission grappled with diverse recommendations on mixed-use and multi-family residential projects in Berkeley’s commercial districts from the city staff and the Joint Subcommittee on Density Bonus. The commission ultimately voted 5-4 to urge the City Council to take no action on any of the recommendations at this time. -more-

California law requires candidates periodically to report in detail where they get their campaign cash and what debts they’ve incurred. And Berkeley election law says candidates must make public copies of all election materials sent by mail to more than 200 Berkeley residents. -more-

Some 60 UC Berkeley custodians and their supporters marched through campus Thursday afternoon to the chancellor’s office to present their applications for the newly created $282,000 per year post of Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion. -more-

As part of his effort to wrest the District 7 City Council seat from Councilmember Kriss Worthington, challenger George Beier has pledged his efforts to create a student-controlled council district. -more-

Youth safety issues, diversion programs and a possible teen center on Center Street were some of the issues discussed at Tuesday’s meeting between officials from the city and the school board. -more-

Most of the publications I read regularly (the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Nation) have had back-to-school stories carrying on at length about a perceived crisis in childhood nutrition. This year’s version is anxiety about obesity in children—a few years ago the same kinds of articles were being written about anorexia and bulimia, but this year it’s obesity. I’ll leave it to Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Pollan to determine if the epidemiology justifies the perception of crisis, but I can’t help being bemused by the discussions of remedies in these articles, all written for the consumption of the chattering classes, though coming from various points in the left-right spectrum. -more-