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Year in Photos: A Reporter’s Eye. Photograph by Richard Brenneman.
          Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee members, left to right, Mim Hawley, James Samuels and Patti Dacey discuss possible development schemes during a meeting in April. For more photos of the past year, see A Reporter’s Eye, page 17. The pdf is available on our web site.
Year in Photos: A Reporter’s Eye. Photograph by Richard Brenneman. Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee members, left to right, Mim Hawley, James Samuels and Patti Dacey discuss possible development schemes during a meeting in April. For more photos of the past year, see A Reporter’s Eye, page 17. The pdf is available on our web site.
 

News

LPO Referendum, Probe Deadline Nears

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

Backers of a failed initiative to save Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) will learn next week if they can block a rival ordinance—at least until voters have their say. 

Meanwhile, results of a city attorney’s investigation into the winning campaign will be revealed next Thursday, the same day the new law will take effect unless backers of an electoral referendum on the new law can gathered the needed signatures. 

In the most hotly contested issue in November’s election, Berkeley voters rejected Measure J, a preservationist-backed initiative to save the city’s existing LPO, by a 57-43 margin, after a bitter campaign in which supporters were heavily outspent by a developer-funded campaign by the Chamber of Commerce’s Political Action Committee, Business for Better Government (BBG). 

But the controversy lingers, and the city attorney’s office is trying to find out who funded the extensive, expensive telephone poll conducted in July that asked prospective voters about arguments that would lead them to vote against the initiative.  

So far, no one has admitted to bankrolling the poll, ordered by a San Francisco firm which has worked for Assemblymember Loni Hancock, a former Berkeley mayor and spouse of Mayor Tom Bates, a co-sponsor of the council’s ordinance. 

Results of the city attorney’s investigation looking into the poll and other complaints stemming from the November election will be released Thursday, as the new LPO takes effects, unless ... 

On Dec. 12, the day councilmembers voted 6-2 to adopt the new law, opponents filed papers to force a public referendum, triggering a 30-day period to gather the 4,100 signatures needed to force an up or down vote during the next general or special election. 

If they get the needed signatures—something campaign activist Laurie Bright says “is a better than 50-50 chance”—Berkeley’s election law would block enactment of the new LPO until voters could decide. The law bars calling a special election on the issue, but the question could be included in a special election forced by another issue. 

Otherwise the vote would occur at the next regularly scheduled election. 

 

Controversial features 

The Nov. 7 vote defeating Measure J paved the way for City Council approval of a rival ordinance drafted by Mayor Tom Bates and City Council colleague Laurie Capitelli—a law backed by developers who contend the existing law has led to needless and costly delays caused by battles with project foes who use landmarking petitions as weapons of last resort. 

One key feature of the council’s measure particularly alarmed preservationists, the creation of a new bureaucratic procedure called the request for determination (RFD). 

Praised by developers, the RFD allowed a property owner to file an application with the city seeking a ruling from the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), the council-appointed body which oversees the LPO and rules on landmarking requests. 

Unless the LPC declared that the property qualified as either a landmark or a structure of merit, the two classes of landmarking provided in both versions of the ordinance, the developer would be granted a two-year “safe harbor” period during which the property would be exempt from landmarking efforts. 

Preservationists fear the RFD will allow developers to plot projects without alerting the community, then announce them after they have secured the two-year exemption; developers said they needed the exemption to be able to avoid costly delays from landmarking petitions filed after they’d already commenced critical stages of the development process.  

Councilmembers approved the Bates/Capitelli ordinance July 11, and were scheduled to take the second and final vote during a special meeting two weeks later. 

Instead, Bates pulled the vote off the calendar after preservationists Bright and Roger Marquis petitioned the city clerk to gather signatures for a ballot initiative to preserve the existing LPO, making minor corrections to ensure conformity with changes in state law. 

Before the scheduled second vote and after word had spread of a possible initiative drive, someone spent tens of thousands of dollars on an extensive telephone poll targeting Berkeley residents with questions about specific arguments that could entice them into a no vote on a measure to keep the city’s existing landmark law. 

Many of those issues ended up in BBG’s campaign mailers.  

Callers from Communications Center Incorporated, a polling firm with bases in Spokane, Wash., and Lakeland, Fla., saturated the city with an extensive list of questions prepared by David Binder Research, the San Francisco pollster whose clients have included Hancock, Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom among others. 

Just who bankrolled the calls remains a mystery, and no spending reports were ever filed despite state and city laws mandating the filing of all election-related expenses. 

After complaints were lodged with the city’s Fair Campaign Practices Commission, Deputy City Attorney Kristy van Herick began an investigation, the results of which will be mailed to the FCPC a week in advance of its next meeting Jan. 18. 

Even without adding in the expense of a poll that could have cost upwards of $50,000, the Chamber’s PAC outspent Measure J supporters by as much as four to one. Most of the funds came from developers, although one of the most controversial, Patrick Kennedy, said he gave he gave $5,000 on the condition none of it went to opposing Measure J. 

The biggest bucks came from developers, and from retired software executive A. George Battle, who gave BBG $14,000 four days before the election. 

 

Referendum  

For preservationists, defeat at the polls was a lost battle, not an end to a political war, even when, following the certification of the election returns, councilmembers voted Dec. 12 to approve the mayor’s ordinance—which had been altered shortly before the meeting to include a provision making the law an all-or-nothing measure. 

That legal move blocked any effort to challenge only portions of the law such as the RFD, and forced an up-or-down vote. 

Responding to the news of the referendum, Capitelli said, “Well God bless ‘em. I would hope people would stop and think before signing.” Cisco De Vries, chief of staff for the vacationing Mayor Tom Bates, said, “It’s kind of like that movie Groundhog Day, where the same things happen over and over again.” 

But Bright said Wednesday that community members are responding positively to the 15 to 20 signature-gatherers who can be found throughout the city at any given moment. 

“Despite starting out with one-and-a-half hands tied behind our backs, we’re fairly optimistic,” he said. “We’re trying to get everything right this time, and we’re staying in constant touch with each other.” 

Bright said campaigners are applying lessons learned from the Measure J defeat. 

“We did very poorly in the council districts where very popular councilmembers were strongly opposed to the measure, for instance in district 5 and 8,” the political bases of Capitelli and Gordon Wozniak. “We thought we could get people to vote around their council people, but we were wrong.” 

Instead, the signature gatherers are concentrated on the Berkeley flatlands, home of the strongest Measure J support. Two of those districts, 4 and 7, are home to Dona Spring and Kriss Worthington, critics of the Bates/Capitelli law. Two other districts targeted by the petitioners are 2 and 3, home to Darryl Moore and Max Anderson, who voted for the Mayor’s measure. 

“We’re bolstering the areas where we have the most supporters because they are the people who are the most affected by neighborhood demolitions and overbuilding,” he said.


Battles Over UC Expansion Carry into the New Year

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

Four die-hard protesters, shaken but not stirred, ended 2006 encamped among the branches of a grove of grand old trees threatened by the city’s biggest developer. 

Their symbolic gesture highlights UC Berkeley’s dominant role as both builder and destroyer—creator of massive, tax-exempt edifices and destroyer both of old buildings and of a fragile consensus. 

The latest battle in the ongoing struggle between an increasingly overtaxed and understaffed city government and an university seen by some as imperial and sometimes imperious erupted over the university’s plans to embark on a massive expansion plan in the southeast quadrant of the main campus. 

Among eight projects planned for the area are a major reconstruction of California Memorial Stadium, adding high, luxury skyboxes and new seating to an aging structure built in one of the most hazardous places possible—directly over the Bay Area’s hottest earthquake fault in a wildfire hazard area served by narrow, aging roads. 

To build the first of those projects—a 132,500-square-foot, four-story high tech gym and office complex—university officials plan to demolish the city’s last remaining grove of flatland coastal live oaks, which triggered the protesters’ arboreal ascent and a trio of lawsuits. 

And, as if to dramatize the conflict, the Hayward Fault ended the year with a swarm of spasms of its own, most originating from deep beneath the surface and centered scarcely a mile from the stadium.  

But the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects (SCIP) isn’t the only source of conflict with the city. Immediately adjacent to the SCIP sites is Bowles Hall, a venerable residential hall the university wants to turn into posh living quarters for corporate executives taking classes at a new executive education center planned by the Haas School of Business. 

More rooms would be provided in a second new structure, and a third building would house classrooms and office space for the program. 

Another controversy centers on the university’s plans to add more than 800,000 square feet of new uses outside campus in the heart of downtown Berkeley—the central focus of the committee now working to formulate a new downtown plan for the city. 

(A fourth controversy over university development plans is underway outside Berkeley’s city limits, where the university has temporarily shelved plans to develop a two-million-square-foot complex of corporate and academic research facilities planned for the school’s Richmond Field Station. For more on this project, see the article on East Bay development elsewhere in this issue.) 

 

Downtown dreams 

The university’s plans for downtown Berkeley—first unveiled in the Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for 2020—sparked outrage and a lawsuit by the city that ultimately led to the settlement that mandated the current downtown planning effort. 

The two major sites of planned projects are the block bounded by Oxford, Addison and Center Streets and Shattuck Avenue and the old state Department of Health Services (DHS) high-rise two blocks to the north. 

Plans for two of the university’s major Center Street projects took major leaps forward in 2006. 

Carpenter & Co., the Massachusetts firm chosen by the university to develop a hotel and meeting center, is moving on plans for a 19-story hotel at the corner of Shattuck and Center. That building will house both hotel rooms and condos, as well as meeting facilities and underground parking. 

The university’s Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive capped the year with a public introduction of Toyo Ito, the innovative Japanese architect chosen by the museum to design the building that will fill the eastern end of the block. 

Unlike the museum complex, which remains under university ownership, the hotel and condos are considered a private development—and thus a source of substantial new revenue for city, county and state tax coffers. 

Even without the new projects, the university remains a major property owner in downtown area. 

Under California law, the university pays no property taxes on sites it owns, and the owners of space leased to the university pay no taxes on whatever portion of the site is used by the school for academic purposes. 

However, spaces the university leases to private interests—often corporations working on university-related research projects—do pay a fee equivalent to the property tax that would be otherwise assessed. 

The precise impacts of the 800,000 square feet of proposed university expansion downtown will depend in part on the amount of space that yields revenue to the city. Settlement of the LRDP lawsuit bars any further action by the city to collect through the courts. 

 

DAPAC 

Another condition of the settlement is playing out on the second floor of the North Berkeley Senior Center, where members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) are formulating their recommendations for the new plan mandated in the LRDP accord. 

The committee is charged by the City Council with submitting a draft plan no later than November 2007, or the university will deduct $15,000 for every month of delay from the university’s settlement-mandated $1.2 million annual payment to compensate the city for some of the impacts caused the expansion program. The university has also agreed to pay for half of the costs—up to $250,000—for conducting an environmental impact report on the new plan.  

Some of the funds are paying the salary of Matt Taecker, the principal planner hired by the city to work on the plan. 

Of the commission’s 21 voting members, three were picked by the Planning Commission from its own ranks and each city councilmember picked two. 

Chair Will Travis, one of the two picks of Mayor Tom Bates, tried to keep a tight rein on members, but got off on the wrong foot when he invited UC to name four non-voting representatives to sit on DAPAC without asking the committee. 

A small rebellion followed, and a confrontation with member Patti Dacey—one of his ongoing sources of agita. After admitting he’d goofed, Travis accepted the committee’s compromise number of three. 

Travis also lost a battle to block a move by Planning Commission Chair Helen Burke to create a DAPAC subcommittee to focus on Center Street, and the block between Shattuck and Oxford that will house a university museum/film archive and the university-backed hotel. 

When it came time for a vote, only Travis and DAPAC member Dororthy Walker opposed. Walker is a retired UC Berkeley executive. 

One of the important issues the committee must confront is the role of preservation in the new plan—a battle Taecker recently told preservationists they had already won. 

More controversy is sure to dog the committee during the year to come. 

 

SCIP and not 

While the city’s settlement of the LRDP lawsuit blocked any future legal challenges to most university projects, the agreement specifically excluded the Memorial Stadium area. 

So the city could sue with impunity when elected and appointed officials became increasingly anxious at the scope of the projects included in the SCIP environmental impact report (EIR). 

In addition to the gym—or Student Athlete High Performance Center—the university plans to build a 911-car underground parking lot northwest of the stadium and build a 186,000-square-foot “connection building” integrating faculty offices and meeting rooms for the Boalt Hall, the university’s law school, and the Haas School of Business. 

A major issue yet to be resolved is whether the gym is structurally detached from Memorial Stadium, a question of both engineering and law. Critics note that the university’s EIR didn’t distinguish it from the stadium, in which case the addition would be barred by the Alquist-Priolo Act, which bars new building on or within 50 feet of active faults. 

That same law bans renovations to affected buildings if they exceed half of the structure’s value. Project critics say that figure should be based on the stadium’s existing value, while the university insists that the basis should be replacement cost—two numbers that could vary by eight or nine figures. 

The law also poses legal issues for Bowles Hall, which earlier studies have indicated intersects two separate “traces” of the Hayward Fault.  

Major changes are also proposed to the Gayley Road streetscape, a city landmark and the creation of Frederick Law Olmsted, America’s premiere landscape architect and the designer of New York City’s Central Park. 

The Bowles Hall project wasn’t included in the SCIP EIR, though critics, including Berkeley Planning and Development Director Dan Marks, have charged that the project should have been included with the others because California law bars “piecemealing” of major development projects. 

City officials say they’re worried about traffic congestion that will arise both from construction itself, from an expanded events calendar at the stadium and from the other new buildings nearby. 

But the biggest concerns involve public safety in the event of an earthquake or wildfire. A disaster during a major event would overtax limited city emergency services and cut off residents who live on Panoramic Hill above the stadium. 

The Panoramic Hill Association filed one of the suits challenging the decision by UC Regents to approve the SCIP projects. A third was filed by the California Oaks Foundation, which challenges the proposed chainsawing of the grove. 

A court hearing on the actions has been set for Thursday.


Top Berkeley Developments in ’06

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

Berkeley developers clocked up big wins in 2006, defeating a ballot measure designed to save Berkeley’s Landmark Preser-vation Ordinance and winning approval of projects destined to change the city’s face. 

The Zoning Adjustments Board—which approves permits—ended the year with preliminary approvals for the highly contested project dubbed the Trader Joe’s building, a five-story condo project at 2701 Shattuck Ave., the new West Berkeley bus maintenance facility for the Berkeley Unified School District and the demolition of the Drayage, once a thriving if illegal live/work center for innovative West Berkeley artists. 

The year also witnessed approvals of: 

• a new Berkeley Bowl at 920 Heinz Ave. in West Berkeley, a project which had divided residents and businesses in the area. Construction, though, hasn’t begun. 

• a 171-unit housing-over-commercial project that will occupy a block of West Berkeley at 700 University Ave. and lead to the demolition of a once-landmarked building that now houses Celia’s Mexican Restaurant. City councilmembers overturned a structure of merit designation for the building, clearing the way for demolition. 

That decision also dooms the building housing Brennan’s Irish Pub, a West Berkeley institution slated to occupy a landmarked railroad station that will remain at the lot’s northwestern corner. 

• the Berkeley Unified School District’s plans for an enhanced bus maintenance center, along with offices and classrooms, at 1325 Sixth St. at the corner of Gilman St. 

Though Mayor Tom Bates had asked the district to include commercial space on the Gilman Street edge of the project to enhance commercial uses on that stretch of freeway accessible roadway, the district said they had none to spare. 

• an unopposed ZAB vote to approve a new four story 95,771 square foot mini-storage building at 1120 Second St. 

• a City Council vote to uphold, over an appeal by neighbors, ZAB’s approval of a 30-unit, five-story residential-over-commercial project at 1201 San Pablo Ave.  

Another hotly contested project opened for business, the Library Gardens apartments, located between the Berkeley Public Library and Berkeley High School in the heart of downtown. Construction had commenced with a sledgehammer blow from Bates that began the demolition of a popular downtown parking structure. 

Downtown will lose more parking—at least temporarily—in the coming year when construction begins at the David Brower Center and housing complex planned for the city’s Oxford Street Parking lot. 

A final and equally contested project opened at the end of the year, the new Hills Fire Station at the intersection of Shasta Road and Park Gate at the summit of the Berkeley Hills, built at the cost of nearly $1,000 a square foot. 

 

Previews, others actions 

Several major projects were previewed for city officials and regulatory bodies, though the formal permit process hasn’t begun. 

Two are in West Berkeley and another would add a collection of upscale residences to the ground of a landmarked mansion in the hills. 

Doug Herst, the former owner of Peerless Lighting, proposes a 5.5-acre project that would cover much of two square blocks in West Berkeley and feature a signature biotech building, condos, live/work spaces for artists and spaces for “incubating” business start-ups. 

The city has already adopted one of Herst’s proposals—a new definition of “artist” expanded to include creators of high tech and digital works. 

Preliminary designs for a “green” condo complex at 2747 San Pablo Ave., presented to ZAB at their last meeting of the year, won nearly unanimous praise, both for the building’s environmentally sensitive and resource-conserving design and for a design ZAB members said reflected a rare sensitivity to neighboring residences. 

Representatives of a Southern California developer told the Landmarks Preservation Commission they plan to build seven luxury homes on the grounds of the landmarked Spring Estate at 1960 San Antonio. The mansion would be refurbished, but another landmarked structure would be demolished. 

ZAB declared two liquor stores public nuisances after neighbors and police complained. The board imposed limited hours and other conditions on Black & White Liquors at 3027 Adeline St., and the City Council upheld ZAB’s decision to order the closure of Dwight Way Liquor at 2440 Sacramento St., both because of sales to minor and other operational issues and because of conflicting statements about who actually owned the business. 

 

Ashby BART 

Perhaps the greatest controversy erupted over the City Council’s decision late in 2005 to grant ex post facto approval to an application for a CalTrans grant to formulate plans for what was then labeled a massive housing complex atop the Ashby BART station’s western parking lot. 

Though the application specified a minimum of 300 units—far larger than any other private housing project in the city—project consultant Ed Church said the figure was based on an erroneous calculation of the developable area of the site. 

Outraged neighbors and supporters of the Berkeley Flea Market—which is held on the lot every weekend—raised a ruckus, leading the council to disavow their earlier action and support creation of a task force by the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation (SBNDC), the non-profit picked as the official developer. 

More confrontations followed, and Mayor Tom Bates, neighborhood City Councilmember Max Anderson and Church retreated somewhat, saying he 300-unit figure was based on an errononeous conception of the available lot area. 

CalTrans, bombarded with complaints from neighbors, rejected the grant application, and Bates said he suggested expanding the area for development to the length of Adeline from Shattuck to Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Councilmembers voted a $40,000 to fund a task force picked by Church and SBNDC to develop proposals. But by the year’s end, the task force was in limbo after challenges were raised about private meetings the group had held private meetings without public notice, and whether the panel was governed by the Brown Act, which regulates public meetings in California. 

A polarized neighborhood is waiting to see what happens next. 

 

Artists banished 

2006 also brought an end to two Berkeley havens for artists, the Nexus Collective and gallery and the Drayage. 

The last artists were evicted from Nexus in August following a legal confrontation that pitted a pair of honored non-profits in courtroom combat. The Drayage community was gone even before the year started. 

For 31 years, Nexus had provided a home to a collection of artists and artisans who created works in its studios and displayed them in its gallery, both housed in a collection of buildings owned by the Berkeley East Bay Humane Society at 651 Addison St. 

The fracas arose from the humane society’s need to expand it facilities, and its choice to evict its long-time tenant. A move to landmark two of the buildings, one a brick structure and the other a metal shop building resulted in a decision by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the former and reject the latter. 

But that didn’t stop the humane society, which pressed ahead. Costly litigation only left the artists poorer, and led many to sever their ties even before the eviction became final. 

The last of the artists was evicted in August. 

When the year started, the Drayage was already vacant following eviction orders from the city and protracted negotiations between the owner and angry tenants. 

A former warehouse illegally but innovatively transformed into an imaginative collection of live/work spaces, shops and studios next to the Union Pacific tracks in South Berkeley, the Drayage provided a unique space and a strong sense of community. 

In the end, developer Chris Hudson and Evan McDonald created a limited liability corporation to develop the site and won approval of demolition during ZAB’s last meeting of the year. 

Two similar buildings had already vanished a few years earlier, leaving Berkeley with ever-fewer spaces for working artists. 

Another collective, the Crucible at 1036 Ashby Ave., was forced to move to Oakland after run-ins with city officials in 2002, and the artists who inhabited the live/work spaces in another former warehouse at 2750 Adeline St. were evicted after a sale in 2001.  

Artists in one of the last remaining sizeable live/work buildings at 800 Heinz Ave. ended the year worried about a proposed development next door at 740 Heinz that could shadow much of the building from the natural light the artists say is crucial for their work. 

Plans for that project, proposed by Wareham Development, are still pending. 

 

Trader Joe’s 

With their year-end approval of the Hudson/McDonald project, now known as the Trader Joe’s building, ZAB set the stage for an inevitable appeal by neighbors, who have threatened legal action if they can’t win a change in the plans for a project that will be 148 new apartments and a trendy market for the heavily traveled intersection of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

The developers scored a major coup by landing Trader Joe’s as their principal tenant, ensuring an outpouring of support. 

Strangely for Berkeley, the aggressively non-union chain owned by a German big box retailer which once belonged to the Hitler Youth (albeit membership was compulsory for boys at the time) boasts a following verging on the fanatical. 

Neighbors objected to the size of the project, along with the threat of vanished parking and increased congestion on already crowded neighborhood streets. 

But barring a court ruling to the contrary the project once known as the Kragen Auto Parts project after a current tenant of the mini-mall that now occupies the site seems a foregone conclusion.


City Council Lauds ’06 Accomplishments

By Judith Scherr
Friday January 05, 2007

Enhanced fire and police protection, housing development, safeguards for creeks and an advisory measure to impeach President George Walker Bush are among the accomplishments City Councilmembers cite for 2006. 

Still, the city’s $300 million budget wasn’t enough to fund all that the citizens and their representatives would have liked and so the 2007 wish lists are lengthy. 

District 6 Councilmember Betty Olds has worked to get a new fire station in her district since she came to office in 1992. Nov. 11, the modern Shasta Road station finally opened, but not without concern on the part of the fire-conscious city. This station, as the others in Berkeley, faces periodic “brownouts,” temporary, rotating closures due to insufficient funding. 

“The firehouse opening was a great thing,” Olds said. “But one of the things I had hoped to do [in 2006] was to have the firehouses open all year.” 

The council will discuss full funding for fire protection when it considers its budget in February. 

Another budget question will be renewing police and social services the council added to Telegraph Avenue and Downtown in July, after the highly-publicized closure of Cody’s on Telegraph. 

Police and social services for the Telegraph-Downtown area were cut several years ago. Making the funding a permanent part of the budget will be a priority for Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring. 

Worthington underscored that it’s not simply additional funding that is important, but a commitment to community-Involved policing, where officers who patrol specific locations get to know people who live in or frequent the area. 

Cody’s Telegraph closure (the store’s remaining stores on Fourth Street and San Francisco were sold in September to Tokyo-based businessman Hiroshi Kagawa) caused the council to take a hard look at the Telegraph commercial corridor.  

The council provided for new cleaning machines and, more important, supported changes in the permitting process which, when approved, will facilitate locating new businesses on the Avenue and allow restaurants to stay open late into the evening. The council will vote on the permit changes this month or next. 

Worthington said he hopes that in the new year the city manager will agree with the 70 merchants who petitioned to allow evening parking in yellow zones on Telegraph. 

Housing is a big issue for many councilmembers. Worthington wants to see what he calls “truly affordable housing” built—housing for families earning $20,000-to-$30,000 annually. He said it was a victory for the council to place $1 million (a loan from the city’s general fund) last year in the Housing Trust Fund for low-income housing. 

Both Councilmembers Linda Maio and Laurie Capitelli point to housing and retail to be built at 1100 Harrison St. as a success. A developer proposed a project that neighbors said was too massive for the area. Capitelli mediated a compromise that he says was a major accomplishment of 2006. 

“Having been a developer in the past, I understood the process,” Capitelli said, explaining that he was able to broker a compromise that minimized the loss of profit for the developer and maximized the reduction of the impact the project would have on neighbors. 

Councilmember Max Anderson lauded another neighborhood compromise proposed in 2006: “Curvy Derby.” For about a decade, the school district has wanted to build a regulation-size baseball field on its property at Martin Luther King Way and Derby Street. But that would entail closing Derby between Milvia Street and Martin Luther King, something farmers’ market aficionados object to —the Ecology Center Farmers’ Market uses the street each Tuesday.  

Last year, however, a group of citizens designed a compromise: reconfiguring Derby to form an arc half way up the block to Milvia. A corner of the baseball diamond would fit squarely in that curvature.  

“After 10 years, it looks like it’s on its way,” Anderson said. The first phase of the project, which is not controversial, is underway—developing new sports fields for the Martin Luther King-Derby-Milvia-Carlton Street block as it is currently configured. 

“I’m hoping over time that we can reach the same sort of consensus on the Ashby BART site,” Anderson said, referring to a proposed housing/retail development that caused an outcry a year ago by neighbors left out of the loop.  

Anderson said he has “slowed the process down” and was “hoping some of the good will can spill over from Curvy Derby.” 

Councilmember Spring points to complex land-use issues where she has had success, such as setting up a multi-commission task force to create an ordinance for applying state density bonus requirements (extra height permitted for developers who include low-income units in a project). 

But sometimes council accomplishments come small, such as when Spring helped save the 40-year-old Channing Way freebox known as the Wishing Well that the city said illegally-encroached on the sidewalk.  

“People come to Berkeley to live because of amenities like this,” nearby resident John Lynch told the Daily Planet in June. “It is a great way to care for the local community.” 

Spring and Councilmember Darryl Moore have worked to better regulate the overabundant Southwest Berkeley liquor stores that attract loitering and criminal activity. While the regulations are still in the works, Moore points to success in shutting down Dwight Way Liquors. “It took eight-to-10 years to get it resolved,” he said.  

Two other important laws passed in 2006. One, a revision of the Creeks Ordinance, designed to protect the city’s waterways, regulates where people can build near creeks and culverts. The other, a revision of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, makes it easier for property owners to demolish older structures. Signatures are being gathered for a referendum on this ordinance.  

While new issues confront the council regularly, old problems that persist will be addressed in 2007.  

Perhaps one of the most difficult to resolve is violence among young people.  

2006 saw three violent deaths among teens and young adults. In February, Juan Carlos Ramos, a Contra Costa College student, was stabbed to death at a teen house party on Contra Costa Avenue and in the same month, 24-year-old Keith Stephens was shot and killed on Carrison Street. In September, Wayne Drummond, 23, died of a gunshot wound to the torso he likely received somewhere in the Telegraph Avenue area near campus. 

One way to address youth violence is giving young people a safe place to go. Moore said he is working on a youth center, something that was proposed years ago. “It’s moving slower than I would have liked,” he said. 

Worthington is hoping that Berkeley will finally adopt a “sunshine” ordinance—“one with teeth,” he said. The law would expand community access to public information and facilitate the public’s participation in city government. A workshop on the ordinance is slated for February. 

Maio would like to find a way to fund the city’s crumbling storm drain system and permanently avoid the flooding Berkeley saw in early 2006. “We are not able to really control [flooding] without major investment in our storm system infrastructure, but I intend to make that a priority in my current term,” Maio said. 


Mixed Results for Local Labor Struggles in 2006

By Judith Scherr
Friday January 05, 2007

While several local long-term labor disputes ended happily for workers in 2006—Berkeley Honda, Alta Bates/Summit and Claremont Resort & Spa employees signed contracts after protracted struggles—workers at the Shattuck Cinema, Doubletree Hotel, UC Berkeley and the Woodfin Suite Hotel will continue to fight for better pay, benefits and working conditions in 2007. 

 

Win at Honda  

It takes a community to build a labor movement, according to Harry Brill, retired University of Massachusetts sociology professor and one of the founders of the Berkeley Labor and Community Coalition. 

The community-worker coalition formed as the Berkeley Honda Labor and Community Coalition, but dropped Honda from its name after the 10-month struggle ended with a win for the workers, members of Machinist Local 1546 and Teamster Local 78. 

Trouble began in June 2005 when new owners refused to rehire about half the Honda workforce and downgraded health insurance and pensions.  

Outraged, customers joined workers, activists like Brill, members of St. Joseph the Worker Church’s Social Justice Committee, the East Bay Labor Committee for Peace & Justice, public officials and others for daily pickets and twice-weekly rallies. The machinists brought in a 15-foot inflatable rat that became a community icon over the months it took for the workers to win back their jobs and benefits.  

Most effective, said Brill in an interview last week, was the community-organized boycott and its support by a unanimous City Council. “We reduced business on the service end by 70 percent,” Brill said, adding that the union would have been unable to sustain the effort on its own.  

Victory was declared in April with the community members ending the boycott and encouraging Berkeley Honda patronage. 

 

Claremont Win 

Another victory had been feted by workers and community members the month before the Honda worker’s victory. The dispute at the Claremont Resort & Spa, the majestic 92-year hotel that straddles the Oakland-Berkeley border, spanned more than four years and affected some 400 hospitality workers. Unionized food-service and hotel employees were working without a contract and spa workers were fighting for the right to organize. 

As with the Honda dealership, sustained outside support was key. “There was a lot of community support and political support,” Wei-Ling Huber, president of Unite HERE, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 2850, told the Daily Planet last week. 

Over the years, picketers included City Councilmembers Max Anderson, Dona Spring, Maudelle Shirek, Kriss Worthington, Mayor Tom Bates and former Mayor Shirley Dean. 

“It was an enormous victory for our union,” Huber said, noting negotiated phased-in raises will eventually bring worker pay up to the area union standard. A key element of the union victory was the unionization of about 130 spa workers. 

One of the difficulties in negotiations was getting hotel management to provide health benefits for employees—particularly spa workers—working less than a 40-hour week. These employees “do not work 40 hours, but they are expected to be available,” Huber said. 

 

Doubletree Hotel Transition 

Local 2850 is also involved in labor issues at the Doubletree Hotel, bought last year from Boykin Lodging by the Canadian-based Westmont Hospitality Group, which took over running the 378-room hotel at the Berkeley Marina in September. 

First unionized six years ago after a year-long struggle that included a City Council-initiated boycott, Doubletree workers had been without a contract since January 2006. When Westmont took over, workers negotiated what Huber calls a “transition contract,” with the new owners. Workers got raises retroactive to January, but “we continue to have challenges in this industry,” Huber said.  

The union is now in negotiations with the new owners for a multi-year contract. Sticking points are raises, health benefits and an improved grievance process. The hotel and workers will be back at the bargaining table this month. 

“We’re thinking of doing public actions if we don’t get the issues resolved,” Huber said. 

 

Shattuck Cinema In Negotiations 

While the hospitality industry becomes increasingly unionized, a movie-theater union is rare. In June, however, workers at the Shattuck Cinema, one of 56 Landmark Theaters, voted overwhelmingly to establish a union. One other Landmark Theater —the one in Cambridge, Mass.—is unionized. 

But neither has successfully negotiated labor contracts. 

“It’s a slow and tedious process,” said Hargitt Gill, organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblies. 

Soon after the union was voted in, the company voluntarily raised wages. Eligibility for partially-employer-paid benefits continues to be an issue, as is the question of the theater becoming a union shop, where every worker must belong to the union.  

If negotiations are not successful, “we will be increasing the pressure, asking for the community to help us put more pressure on Landmark,” Gill said. 

 

Woodfin Workers Want Living Wage 

Emeryville’s Woodfin Suite Hotel is not unionized, but the workers there have wage and work guarantees under that city’s Measure C, a limited living wage ordinance that applies only to hotel workers. 

The Berkeley Labor and Community Coalition, Unite HERE 2850, the Alameda County Central Labor Committee and a number of other unions and organizations have joined the organizing efforts of the Oakland-based nonprofit, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, to support the workers’ demand that the hotel implement Measure C, which, among other requirements, says that housekeepers must be paid one and one-half times their regular salary for each day they clean in excess of 5,000 square feet. (While the hotel says it is complying with the measure, the organizers say the hotel is not in compliance.) 

On Dec. 15 hotel management told some 24 workers there were problems with their Social Security numbers, distributed checks for two weeks advance pay, and told the workers they should fix the Social Security problem within two weeks, or not return to work at all. 

While hotel management said it was being generous by giving workers time to regularize their paper work, workers argued that the company was harassing them for demanding implementation of Measure C. 

The courts agreed that the workers should not be dismissed. On Dec. 21 Alameda County Superior Court Judge Ronald Sabraw granted workers a temporary restraining order, requiring the hotel to either keep employees on paid administrative leave or put them back to work. The order is in effect until Jan. 23. 

 

University Custodians Call for Equity 

UC Berkeley custodians, members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, are also facing unresolved labor issues 

According to the union, a five-year UC Berkeley janitor earns about $12 an hour, while custodians working for five years at the nearby Peralta Community Colleges get $18.30 per hour.  

Speaking to the Daily Planet last week, AFSCME Communications Director William Schlitz pointed to the “executive pay scandal,” where it was discovered last year that the university was paying some of its administrators hundreds of thousands of dollars above their salary.  

“That’s a slap in the face for the custodians,” Schlitz said, promising to raise the level of public awareness of the custodian pay question. “2006 is just the start,” he said. 

 

Alta Bates/Summit Signs Contract 

Over at Alta Bates/Summit Hospital, part of Sutter Health, SEIU United Healthcare West hospital workers were victorious in February after working for two years without a contract. 

At issue was appropriate staffing levels and training, according to SEIU UHW Vice President John Borsos.  

During the protracted negotiations Alta Bates workers staged a walkout, but much of the pressure was put on Sutter to settle through a nine-week strike that ended in November 2005 at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, also a Sutter Health hospital. 

 

City Gets Involved 

Looking to the future, the council passed a resolution in June, calling on Berkeley Bowl management to support the workers’ right to organize at the to-be-built West Berkeley Bowl.  

Councilmember Dona Spring said last week she hopes the council will pass a similar resolution to support unionizing the Trader Joe’s, which just got permits to build at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and University Avenue. None of the more-than-200 Trader Joe’s stores are currently unionized. 

The City Council has gotten involved in workplace issues because of the “fundamental issue of the quality of life in the city,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington, often among picketers or speakers at labor rallies. 

Sociologist Brill summed it up: “Part of building a democratic society is building a democratic workplace,” he said. 

 

 


‘Clean Money’ Lost in 2006 Despite Support in Berkeley

By Judith Scherr
Friday January 05, 2007

2006 was not the year that California or Berkeley checked the power the purse has to skew elections. 

“Clean money”—public financing of elections—was soundly defeated on the state level, with 74 percent of the voters opposing Proposition 89. Berkeley voters bucked the trend, supporting the measure with 64.6 percent of the votes. The measure lost in Alameda County, winning only Emeryville and Albany in addition to Berkeley. 

Locally, the Berkeley City Council torpedoed public financing of elections when it refused in June to place the issue on the November ballot. 

In doing so, the council majority tossed aside the Fair Campaign Practices Commission’s recommendation to let voters weigh in on whether to underwrite the mayor and council races with public money. The council went on to nix a compromise proposal that would have addressed public financing only for the mayor’s race.  

Clean money advocate Sam Ferguson, now a Yale Law School student, worked on the 2006 public financing proposal and had previously tried in 2004 to bring clean money to the city through Measure H, which was defeated by Berkeley voters at the ballot box. 

Considering the Nov. 7 election contributions, Ferguson said election reform is needed in Berkeley more than ever. 

The District 7 campaign turned into a “political arms race,” Ferguson said, noting that challenger George Beier outspent incumbent Councilmember Kriss Worthington by more than two-to-one. Beier spent about $100,000 of which about $45,000 came from his personal wealth—Worthington raised and spent about $45,000. 

“We need to get a grip on this spending before it gets out of control,” Ferguson said, calling public financing of elections “such an obvious reform.” 

Along with Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Dona Spring, Councilmember Darryl Moore has been a consistent supporter of public financing of elections. “I’m disappointed that Berkeley did not put it on the ballot,” he said in an interview last week, noting that public financing levels the electoral playing field. 

“People of color do not have the same kind of income,” said Moore, who is African American. 

Mayor Tom Bates, vacationing in India, said last year that he did not want to support public financing for the November ballot, for fear that if voters rejected it, as they had in 2004, it would be close to impossible to bring it back in the future. 

But Councilmember Laurie Capitelli told the Daily Planet last week that he thinks clean money might not be a valid local issue. 

“I’m not as concerned about the impact of money on elected officials locally because of what we have in place—fairly severe limits on contributions,” he said, referring to the $250 cap on contributions to local candidates by individuals. 

Capitelli said he is more concerned about the cost to the city of public financing. Funding for the mayor-council race, according to the draft measure that did not get on the ballot, would have cost the city about $500,000. For the mayor’s race alone, it would have cost the city about $300,000. 

Longtime clean-money advocate Jesse Townley said believing that spending caps for individual contributors is sufficient is “wishful thinking.” Townley contended that contributors bundle contributions through spouses and business partners. He said he thinks local developers have bought influence and skewed development in Berkeley to favor their interests, rather than those of the neighborhoods. 

“Whether it’s at the local or state or national level, big money muscles in—they want influence,” he said, adding that new local laws should address the influence of political action committees, given the role the Chamber of Commerce PAC played in the November elections. 

The chamber raised about $100,000 to defeat Measure J, the Landmarks Preservation ballot measure, to support Bates and to attempt to defeat Spring and Worthington.  

“Voters should be able to evaluate candidates based on their stances, not based on hit pieces,” Townley said, referring to the negative propaganda produced by the Chamber and the Beier campaigns. “This is no way to run a democracy,” he said, adding that he will be conferring with others about next steps to take to bring clean money to Berkeley elections.


Past Year Dealt Setback for Citizen Oversight of Police

By Judith Scherr
Friday January 05, 2007

2006 was not a good year for Berkeley cops or for those who monitor them. 

The city’s 30-year public police complaint hearings have been shut down since September, significant particularly in a year in which Berkeley police have had to face the conviction of Cary Kent, an almost 20-year officer who stole drug evidence, the arrest of another officer for allegedly shooting his service revolver while drunk off duty and the investigation of a third officer for possible criminal activities. 

Those who monitor the police—especially Berkeley’s Copwatch—also reproach the city agency responsible for police accountability, the Police Review Commission (PRC), contending that it has not stood up to insist on a public discussion of police misconduct.  

“The PRC has not had one substantive discussion of the facts of the Cary Kent case,” said Andrea Prichett of Copwatch. “The first press release on the case was in January [2006] and nothing’s happened in that year.” 

 

Closed hearings 

One blow that has helped in the crippling of Berkeley’s citizen complaint process was the Aug. 31 California Supreme Court decision in Copley Press v. San Diego County. 

Because of the ruling in that case and that case’s similarity to a Berkeley Police Association lawsuit against the city, both concluding that officer discipline is confidential and cannot be aired in public, the city attorney shut down the PRC public police complaint hearings in mid September. 

Unlike Berkeley, after a brief suspension of its hearing process to assess the impact of Copley Press, Oakland’s Citizen’s Police Review Board is continuing to hear citizen complaints against the police. The process, however, has moved behind closed doors. 

Berkeley’s city attorney, however, recommended not resuming hearings locally until Oakland Superior Court has ruled on the BPA lawsuit. In November the city went to court to argue that its hearing process should be affected neither by Copley Press nor by the BPA lawsuit: the Berkeley PRC either sustains a citizen’s complaint or does not, but is not responsible for disciplining officers, City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque argued in court. The Northern California American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend of the court brief supporting the city’s position. 

The BPA countered that a police officer’s right to privacy is violated when the officer is “forced” to respond publicly to a civilian complaint. The judge will rule by February.  

In the meantime, hearing officers continue to investigate complaints, but the commission does not hold hearings on them.  

And, on advice from the city attorney, the commission has put on hold discussions on the Kent case.  

“We’re waiting to hear from the judge on the lawsuit,” said Sharon Kidd, Police Review Commission chair and member of a subcommittee that had planned to examine the Kent case, but which ceased its work in conjunction with the suspension of complaint hearings. 

Kidd said she disagrees with the decision to halt commission discussion of the Kent case. “It’s a criminal matter of public record—the commission made the decision,” she said. “The city attorney wanted us to put everything on the back burner.” 

Copwatch’s Prichett argued, however, that if the commission won’t take up its responsibilities, the City Council should step in—and that councilmembers have been derelict in their responsibilities. “When the PRC breaks down, it is the responsibility of the City Council members to personally attend the meetings,” Prichett said. 

 

Officer Malfeasance  

Early in the year, the police department suffered a blow when veteran Kent pleaded guilty to stealing drug evidence from a locked vault, which he was charged to oversee.  

Police reports showed that 286 envelopes with drug evidence had been tampered with. In addition to methamphetamine and heroin, the drugs Kent was convicted of taking, the tampered envelopes contained Tylenol with codeine, cocaine—powder and rock—unidentified pills, liquid morphine, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and more. Kent pleaded guilty in July to felony charges of grand theft and felony possession of heroin and methamphetamine and is serving a one-year home detention sentence in Contra Costa County. 

Over the year since the case first came to light, Copwatch repeatedly called for a public discussion of the case. They said too many questions had gone unanswered: Was Kent selling the drugs? Should he have been charged for impersonating a police officer when he bought drugs from an informant after he had resigned from the force? Was he the only officer involved? Why was his home not searched? 

 

Other Officers in Trouble 

Further impugning the department’s reputation was the incident of officer Sean Derry who in September was arrested by San Francisco Police after he allegedly shot his service revolver outside his San Francisco home while inebriated. Derry was placed on paid administrative leave immediately after his arrest and will remain so until his case is adjudicated in San Francisco. 

A third incident reported by various media, including the Daily Planet —all using anonymous sources—involves an officer said to be under investigation for allegedly stealing evidence. Like Derry, he has also been on paid administrative leave since August. The Daily Planet is not using his name since it appears that he has not been charged with a crime. 

In an interview Tuesday, Chief Doug Hambleton said press reports misrepresented the facts in the case of the unnamed officer. “Somebody made some wild speculations,” he said, adding that when the investigation is complete, he will clarify facts in the case. 

PRC Chair Kidd said the commission had not been briefed on either the Derry incident or the second one. “Hopefully, we’ll get more information on that from the chief’s report” at the next commission meeting, she said. 

 

BPD Makes Changes 

Asked what the department has done over the year to correct the situation that made it possible for Kent to steal drug evidence, Hambleton said he has tightened up the procedures in the evidence room. 

“The lieutenant in charge of the unit is paying a whole lot more attention to what’s going on,” he said. 

The department has also discussed the need to recognize colleagues who may be using drugs. “We’re paying a lot more attention to that,” Hambleton said, adding in defense of the department, “People don’t come in accusing Berkeley officers of planting drugs or beating people up. The vast majority are fine, outstanding officers who serve the community.” 

The Cary Kent case was “a pretty unusual circumstance,” Hambleton said. 

Drug theft by police from evidence rooms, however, is not that unusual. In April, the Daily Planet interviewed Joseph McNamara, a retired 15-year San Jose police chief who was quoted saying: “The police property room has been a special problem for a number of years ... Many departments have suffered the theft of drugs by sworn and non-sworn personnel.”  

One more tool to help police reorganize evidence storage procedures are recommendations prepared by the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training and submitted to the chief in October. The PRC was slated to discuss the 12-page report at its November meeting, but did not, according to PRC Officer Victoria Urbi. It will likely be on the commission agenda at its next meeting. 

Urbi has cancelled the first PRC meeting of the year, Jan. 10. The commission is slated to meet Jan. 24, 7 p.m., North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.


UC Stadium Tree-Sitter Arrested for Trespassing

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

One of the four tree-sitters protesting the planned demolition of a grove of Coastal Live Oaks at the UC Berkeley Campus landed in new accommodations Wednesday—City Jail. 

The arrest came one day after the Memorial Stadium “tree-in” entered its second month. 

Ariel DeHaviland, 25, was booked on suspicion of trespassing and for violating an order to leave campus and stay away for seven days, said UCPD Capt. Guillermo Beckford. 

Section 626.6 of the California Penal Code allows campus police, acting on the orders of the chancellor or a designated subordinate, to arrest anyone who is “committing any act likely to interfere with the peaceful conduct of the activities of the campus or facility, or has entered the campus or facility for the purpose of committing any such act.” 

If convicted, he could face a maxium of a $500 fine and six months in County Jail. 

DeHaviland isn’t the first tree-sitter cited by campus police, but he is the first to refuse the stay-away order. 

Zachary Running Wolf, the former mayoral candidate, began the protest in the pre-dawn hours of “Big Game” day Dec. 2, and he was soon joined by others. He was the first protester cited after he left his arboreal perch to attend a meeting with faculty. 

Two compatriots have also been cited after coming down from the branches, but DeHaviland is the first to refuse the order to leave. 

Protesters oppose the proposal to demolish the last remaining native oak grove in the Berkeley flatlands. 

UC officials plan to fell the trees to make way for a 132,500-square-foot gym along the stadium’s western wall. That project is currently on hold pending a court hearing Thursday. 

Meanwhile, supporters of the tree-sitters will be holding a Spiral Dance Saturday starting at 2 p.m.


Environmentalists Take Lead in East Bay Land Disputes

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

For some East Bay developers, 2006 was the year of the environmentalist. 

Anxious and stricken neighbors, joined by environmentalists, health care professionals, union members and community organizers, have emerged as a new force in the battle over development in Richmond. 

Enlisting the support of two key members of the state Assembly, they halted—at least for now—two major waterfront developments, forced a change in regulatory oversight and helped propel one of their own into the mayor’s office in November. 

Their compatriots in Albany scored a similar coup, blocking—again, at least for now—a major waterfront mall. 

 

Richmond projects 

In Richmond, a state-authorized Community Advisory Group (CAG) is evolving into a significant force, bankrolled in part by the very developers who had opposed its creation. One of its members, Richmond Progressive Alliance activist and Green Party member Gayle McLaughlin was elected mayor in November. 

For a city that only this year recovered from a crippling deficit that had forced extensive layoffs of city workers and service cutbacks, Richmond ended the year on a confident note, approving the first crucial step in the largest public works project in its history—a $104.9 million Civic Center renovation. 

A month earlier the City Council upheld the environmental impact report (EIR) for the 330-unit, five-story Point Richmond Shores condo project, despite fierce opposition from neighbors who contend the project’s design will mar a significant piece of shoreline and add too much density to a sensitive area. 

Planning commissioners had rejected the document, but a bare council majority gave the crucial authorization. 

The developers—Toll Brothers—have agreed to hold a design charette with neighbors, who have said in response that the move gives them little power. The project is being built on land that had been owned by the city.  

Two major Richmond projects remain on hold—a 1331-unit condo and apartment complex and a neighboring two-million-square-foot corporate academic research park. 

Both were at least temporarily derailed because of efforts of activists alarmed that projects were planned on a site contaminated by a century of chemical manufacturing with heavy metals, organic poisons and other toxic compounds. 

Cleanup efforts had been conducted under the auspices of the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board, but activists—like Sherry Padgett, who works adjacent to the sites, UC Berkeley professor Claudia Carr, who lives nearby, and Ethel Dotson, who grew up in the segregated Seaport Village housing next to the site—demanded a change. 

Padgett and Dotson have both been stricken with cancers, which they suspect may have been triggered by exposure to toxins from the sites. 

Demonstrations, aggressive questioning and the enlistment of support from other activists like McLaughlin and well-connected San Francisco attorney Peter Weiner were given a powerful boost by the actions of Assemblymembers Loni Hancock and Cindy Montanez and, finally, a resolution from a previously reluctant Richmond City Council. 

Early in 2005, the state handed jurisdiction over to the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which is well staffed by experts in the science of toxic substances while the water board lacks even a single toxicologist on its staff.  

DTSC regulations allow residents to create a CAG to share concerns with the agency, and the activists jumped at the opportunity with Dotson taking the lead in circulating petitions calling for establishing a group, initially focused on Campus Bay, the proposed site of the residences. 

When the CAG formed, Padgett and Dotson both joined, and the group is chaired by environmentalist Whitney Dotson, Ethel’s brother. 

Since the CAG’s first meeting in June 2005, the group has expanded its focus to include the university’s Richmond Field Station adjacent to Campus Bay on the northwest, and then to other sites in southern Richmond. 

During the past year, the CAG pressured the DTSC to conduct more extensive testing of the two key sites and adjacent properties, resulting in discovery of wider contamination and the revelation that groundwater had been contaminated with radioactive particles. 

Other CAG accomplishments included forcing the posting of signs near the sites warning of the dangers, and the ending of two programs that brought school age youth onto potentially hazardous areas of the sites. 

Plans for both of the major developments remain on hold, and the group is asking more questions about other sites slated for development in a city where the economic boom created by World War II has left an enduring toxic legacy. 

As the newly elected mayor of Richmond, McLaughlin’s environmentalism can be expected to play an increasing role in city developmental politics, since—unlike Berkeley—it is the mayor who makes appointments to city commissions and committees, subject to approval by the full council. 

 

Albany de-malled? 

Meanwhile, Albany voters, deprived by errors and a court ruling of a chance to vote directly on the issue, elected two candidates opposed to what would have become the largest development in that city’s recent history. 

The City Council’s selection of a third project critic as mayor gives opponents a solid majority on the new council. 

Though Los Angeles developer and Republican fund-raiser Rick Caruso had officially dropped his proposal for a trendy waterfront mall in July, after the 3-2 council majority refused to commit to his project before they had seen an EIR, critics suggested he was only waiting until the election to see if supporters were elected to the two open seats. 

A coalition of environmental groups had circulated petitions for a ballot measure restricting waterfront development and setting up a civic process to plan for acceptable projects on the largest expanse of relatively undeveloped land in the city, the property owned by Golden Gate Fields and its parent, Magna Entertainment Corp. 

After gathering signatures from a fourth of Albany’s registered voters, initiative backers were halted by a court ruling in July that petition backers had failed to give proper legal notice before circulating the petition. 

With no time left to circulate a new petition, the focus of the battle became the City Council election, where project critics Marge Atkinson and Joanne Wile ran as the Save Our Shoreline team against Caryl O’Keefe and Francesco Papalia, who had voiced a willingness to consider the project as submitted. 

Papalia’s own conflicting stances on Prop. 90—he praised it during a candidate’s forum, but later signed an opposition endorsement after his position became an issue—helped earn him a last-place finish, while O’Keefe was narrowly defeated. 

That the project’s would-be developer was a Republican Southern California mall magnate whose fundraising prowess for his party’s Presidential ticket had earned him the sobriquet of “Bush Ranger” (also Australian slang for an Outback bandit) probably didn’t help. 

Magna, meanwhile, is pushing forward with plans to build a new $250 million racetrack 53 miles to the northeast in Dixon, a project contested by a group of local residents there who are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative opposing the project. 

 

Casino plans 

Plans by Native American bands backed by corporate casino interests to build two new Richmond casinos—one, featuring a mall, hotel and entertainment complex inside the city limits, and the other a sleepless gambling parlor in unincorporated North Richmond—continue to advance. 

Meanwhile, the East Bay’s only functioning tribal casino, barred from installing conventional slot machines, is rolling in cash from another form of paydirt—electronic bingo machines which play at a pace nearly as fast as the more traditional slots. 

Casino San Pablo’s payments to the city have quadrupled since the machines were installed, and hit more than $10 million for the year. 

One threat to the bonanza enriching the city and the Lytton Rancheria band of Pomo tribespeople is looming in the form of possible revisions to national tribal gaming regulations that could force a slowdown in play—a proposal strongly resisted by tribes limited to the bingo machines because they haven’t been able to quality for slot machines. 

Of the two current pending proposals for full scale casinos—one in Richmond at Point Molate and the other along Parkway in North Richmond—the latter, dubbed the Sugar Bowl, has moved farthest along the regulatory approval route. 

The first step is federal approval of the tribes taking the sites into trust as reservations, followed by approvals by the National Indian Gaming Commission and the state of gambling compacts that set the terms on casino size and the number of games allowed. 

The Richmond City Council in November approved a $335 million, 20-year pact to provide municipal services to the Scott’s Valley Pomos if their plans for the Sugar Bowl casino are approved. 

The city already has a similar $350 million agreement with Upstream Point Molate LLC, which has put together a proposal to build on city-owned property that once served as a U.S. Navy refueling station. 

Upstream, created by Berkeley developer James Levine, has partnered with the Guidiville band of Pomos, former Defense-Secretary-turned-Washington-lobbyist William Cohen and Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s leading gambling corporation. 

One unknown in the Point Molate equation is the pending sale of Harrah’s, which will become final later this month unless the firm can find someone willing to pay more than the $17.1 billion offered Dec. 19 by two private equity firms.


McLaughlin Takes Office Tuesday

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

Richmond Mayor-elect Gayle McLaughlin, the upset winner in a three-way race, becomes the nation’s first Green Party mayor in a city with a population greater than 100,000 in ceremonies Tuesday night. 

Presiding over the event, which includes the swearing in of four city councilmembers, will be the incumbent McLaughlin defeated, Irma Anderson. 

The inaugural begins at 6:30 p.m. in council chambers in temporary city hall quarters at 1401 Marina Way South. 

McLaughlin won the office Nov. 7 with 7,343 votes, narrowly topping Anderson’s 7,101. A third contestant, Gary Bell, trailed Anderson by more than 2,082 votes. 

Taking oaths for the four council seats are incumbents Jim Rogers and Maria T. Viramontes and newcomer Ludmyrna Lopez, the top three candidates in a field of six running for four-year terms. 

Incumbent Richard Griffin finished in last place. 

Also taking the oath will be Tony K. Thurmond, appointed to the council in July 2005 after the resignation of Mindell Penn. Thurmond ran unopposed for a seat that will be eliminated in two years when the council is reduced from nine members to seven. 

Lopez, a political newcomer, won with the support of RichPAC, the chamber of commerce political action committee and a strong opponent of many of McLaughlin’s ideas. 

The Berkeley-born son of immigrants, Lopez is assistant administrative chief of finance and operations for San Francisco’s Department of Child Support Services. 

Before moving back West she had worked in the federal Environmental Protection Agency programs for cleaning up and developing contaminated property—issues of deep concern in Richmond, and to McLaughlin, who has actively worked for stricter oversight of contaminated shoreline development sites at Campus Bay and UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station. 

McLaughlin invited two speakers to the ceremony, Green Party activist and former San Francisco County Board of Supervisors member Matt Gonzalez and Van Jones, executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in San Francisco.


Property Sale Plans Dominated Oakland School District News

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday January 05, 2007

One of the biggest East Bay political stories of 2006—the proposed sale of the Oakland Unified School District downtown properties—was reported first in the Berkeley Daily Planet. 

“The California Superintendent for Public Instruction is close to a decision concerning the disposal of 9.47 acres of midtown properties owned by the Oakland Unified School District,” the Planet reported on May 15. 

“The properties include the Paul Robeson Administration Building, La Escuelita Elementary, Dewey High School, Met West High School, and the Yuk Yau Child Development Center. The OUSD administration midtown property is in the middle of some of the hottest pieces of publicly owned real estate in Oakland. It sits next to Lake Merritt Channel, the waterway that connects Lake Merritt with the estuary, which Oakland voters granted money to open up as public land in the 2002 Measure DD bond vote. An announcement could be made by the OUSD administrator to trustees as early as this week. Sale or long-term lease of the properties could set off a political firestorm in Oakland, if true.” 

The Planet reports set off a political firestorm in Oakland that lasted through much of the year.  

In mid-June, the Planet reported the OUSD state administrator Randy Ward said that a letter of intent could be signed as early as Monday, June 12, and that Ward’s office would then schedule “public hearings to review options, receive input and discuss the possibility of selling property at fair market value.” 

Three days later, the Planet reported that after months of secret negotiations, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell had signed a letter of intent to negotiate the sale of the downtown properties with an east coast development partnership that included black-owned real estate company UrbanAmerica and TerraMark, a company owned by old school, deep pockets New York real estate and investment firm Fisher Brothers. 

In the next week, the Planet had reported that OUSD Administrator Randy Ward was now proposing borrowing $35 million from the state—the remainder of the district’s $100 million line of credit that had originally led to the state takeover in 2003—to finance the move of the district’s administrative headquarters from the Paul Robeson Building to Carter Middle School in North Oakland, remedying problems in the district’s financial software, and re-establishing a 2 percent reserve fund. 

Members of the district’s advisory board of trustees reported their opposition to borrowing the remainder of the funds, objecting that this would put the district further in debt and make it more difficult to keep the district solvent once local control was re-established. 

The proposed sale of the OUSD properties, coupled with Ward’s announced intention to put OUSD deeper in debt, put a sudden spark into the long-simmering movement to return local control to the Oakland schools. 

In late June, Randy Ward announced his decision to quit his post at Oakland Unified, taking on the position of San Diego County Superintendent. The Planet later reported a story first broken in the East Bay Express that Ward’s resignation grew directly out of his opposition to the proposed land sale. 

Meanwhile, the week before Ward’s surprise resignation announcement, the district advisory board began to mount public pressure for a return to local control of the Oakland schools, unanimously passing a resolution requesting the state superintendent to “direct the State Administrator to immediately work with the Oakland Board of Education to develop and execute an orderly governance transition process, including, but not limited to the Board of Education’s search for a Superintendent, beginning January 30, 2007, and its selection of a Superintendent by July 1, 2007.” 

A month later, the Planet reported that a coalition of district education and political leaders had met that at OUSD headquarters to plot strategies for a return to local control, as well as to try to delay the proposed sale of the OUSD properties. In the same story, OUSD announced a plan for three public hearings on the proposed land sale. 

At the first public hearing in July, the Planet reported that TerraMark/ UrbanAmerica officials unveiled their plan for five high-rise luxury towers for the OUSD properties in a mixed residential-commercial development, including a proposal for an artificial waterfall coming off one of the buildings. The proposal was almost universally opposed by a packed audience at the hearing. OUSD facilities staff analysis showed that the district could net as little as $25 million on the land sale, a figure considerably lower than had been advertised. 

In late July, the Planet published a news analysis of the TerraMark/ UrbanAmerica proposal, concluding that the proposal had not met several requirements which had been originally advertised in the district’s request for proposals, including provisions for affordable housing for teachers and construction of a multi-grade school complex to replace the five schools currently on the property site. 

Shortly afterwards, political pressure against the proposed land sale began to mount, with six members of the Oakland City Council signing a proclamation calling on the state superintendent to delay the sale until the terms could be renegotiated and the deal received school board approval. The Planet later reported that the two remaining City Councilmembers joined to make Council opposition to the immediate sale unanimous. 

In August, the Planet completed an investigation of the events in the state legislature that led to the 2003 takeover of the Oakland schools. A key revelation was that provisions allowing the sale of the OUSD properties was taken out and put back in several times during the time the OUSD takeover legislation went through the Assembly and Senate, indicating that the sale of the property may have been an important reason for the takeover. 

In August, the district held the second of its three public hearings on the proposed sale, with opposition centering around the schools which would be displaced by the sale. State Assemblymember Wilma Chan, who co-sponsored the original state takeover legislation that included the land sale provisions, called for a delay in the proposed sale negotiations until more information about the proposed sale was made public. 

In September, the Planet reported that the OUSD board of trustees proposed that instead of selling the downtown property, the district build a “new, permanent, state of the art education center” on the site. 

Also in September, representatives of the state superintendent’s office and the TerraMark/UrbanAmerica development team said they had agreed to extend negotiations on the sale past the original Sept. 15 deadline. Neither party has issued any further statements about the proposed land deal since that time. 

A month later, however, incoming Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums announced his opposition to the proposed OUSD property sale, confirming that he had earlier met privately with Superintendent O’Connell to voice that opposition. And in December, newly-elected State Assemblymember Sandré Swanson announced the introduction of a bill to immediately return most levels of local control to the Oakland schools, as well as his request for a select committee to investigate state takeovers of local school districts in California.


Building and Controversy at Peralta College District in ‘06

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday January 05, 2007

The four-college Peralta Community College District began the year in the last stages of construction of the newly-named Berkeley City College, with controversy over its last series of construction bonds, and with plans to present a new set of facilities bonds. The year ended with Berkeley City College built, occupied, and with controversy swirling over district bond measures. 

A month-by-month review of how the Daily Planet covered the Peralta Community College District in 2006 follows. 

 

January 

District officials announced that Vista College would have a new name when it opened its new, $65 million campus in downtown Berkeley later this year: Berkeley City College. The name change came at the request of the Vista administration, after a year-long survey of students and faculty groups at the college, as well as in the three communities served by Vista. 

 

February 

In a renewal of a testy debate over Measure E bond expenditures that went throughout 2005, Peralta trustees narrowly (4-3) approved a $2.3 million contract to construct 1,400 new bleachers, put in additional lights, and revamp toilet facilities at the Laney College Stadium.  

In another carryover from a contentious debate that consumed trustees in 2005, a chancellor’s office report concluded that the controversial District Office of International Affairs was not spending “lavishly” on foreign meals, accommodations, and travel, rebuking charges that had been leveled by Trustee Marcie Hodge. 

Hodge had used publicity of her criticisms of the International Affairs Office and its director, Jacob Ng, to fuel her campaign for the District 6 Oakland City Council seat against incumbent Desley Brooks, and her complaints led to a shouting match between trustees at one 2005 trustee meeting, as well as a later censure of Hodge by fellow trustees. 

When the chancellor’s report was released, Hodge told the Planet that “questions still remain” about the International Affairs Office, but on the night that the report was formally presented to trustees, Hodge sat silent and asked no questions, and the controversy died.  

Also in February, trustees authorized a new $390 million facilities bond measure to be put before area voters in the June election. The measure drew criticism from one trustee—Nicky Gonzalez Yuen—who complained of lack of detail in the list of bond projects, and said he feared that it would become a “$390 million slush fund.” 

 

March 

Following a request from the State Community College Chancellor’s office as well as from representatives from Compton, a cautious Peralta Board of Trustees gave Chancellor Elihu Harris limited authority to explore the administrative takeover of the troubled Compton Community College District, but only after inserting language giving the board a greater say in how that administrative takeover would take place. The move was intended to forestall the closure of Compton College following the loss of its accreditation.  

 

April 

Trustees were told this month that construction of the new Berkeley City College in downtown Berkeley is 85 percent complete with a tentative opening date scheduled for mid-July. 

 

May 

Chancellor Elihu Harris announced this month that Peralta was temporarily stepping back from its attempts to rescue the Compton Community College District after Southern California districts indicated they would be available to provide administrative oversight. 

But the Compton controversy spilled over into another local issue, with both the Peralta trustee president and the president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers severely criticizing the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, the statewide organization that revoked Compton’s accreditation and had threatened to revoke Peralta’s. Peralta officials joined the California Federation of Teachers and the California Community College Academic Senate in calling for changes in the commission and its methods of accrediting state community colleges. 

The district released one piece of bad news in May, announcing that due to budget cuts, the Laney College Children’s Center was closing its infant and toddler day care program effective the end of the 2005-06 school year. Laney students with children at the center, as well as Laney faculty members, complained that the notice had not come in time for parents to make other arrangements, and said the closure would have a devastating effect upon student-parents who might have to drop out of school because they had no other place to take care of their children. 

But the district received good news in May when a federal civil jury in Oakland ruled against a lawsuit brought against the district by former Vista president John Garmon, rejecting Garmon’s claims of reverse discrimination, gender discrimination, and retaliation when the college failed to renew his contract in 2004. 

 

June 

Peralta’s $390 million facilities bond measure—Measure A—was passed overwhelmingly by voters in the June election. 

 

July 

Trustees quickly followed up on the Measure A victory, approving a new five-year construction plan that committed $137.8 million of the Measure A Peralta facilities bond money. 

 

August 

The race for the Area 7 Peralta trustee seat began heating up, with community college bond consultant Abel Guillen providing a stiff challenge to incumbent Alona Clifton. Clifton’s campaign ran into trouble when the candidate was forced to file a year’s worth of delinquent, semi-annual campaign finance disclosure reports with the Alameda County Registrar’s Office only days after a newly-formed citizens group had filed a complaint over the issue with the California Fair Political Practices Commission. 

Late in the month, with hallways and classrooms still filled with construction tools and rubble and workers only taking a short break to make way for brief speeches and a hurried open house public tour, Peralta cut the ribbon on the new Berkeley City College campus a day before fall semester classes were scheduled to begin. 

 

September 

Interim Vista College President Judy Walters was named the first president of the new Berkeley City College, but only by one vote among Peralta trustees (4-3). 

 

October 

Peralta’s Measure A and the 2005 abortive Peralta lands development deals surfaced as the key issues in the Area 7 trustee race, with challenger Abel Guillen charging that Peralta had no comprehensive plan for spending the bond measure money, and criticizing the plan—later dropped—for Oakland developer Alan Dones to produce a development plan for Peralta and Laney College property. 

 

November 

Reports of trustee candidate Guillen’s charges about the Peralta bond money had raised significant questions about exactly what plan Peralta had to spend the Measure A funds. A Planet investigation revealed considerable confusion over whether or not trustees committed themselves to a specific list of bond projects when it approved the Measure A bond language in February. 

Meanwhile, Guillen defeated Clifton in the November election, replacing her as the Area 7 Peralta trustee. 

 

December 

The controversy over the Measure A bond money continued, with Laney College faculty members meeting with Peralta General Services Director Sadiq Ikharo to clarify how much of the bond money was actually being committed to Laney. After reports in the Daily Planet of significant errors in the list of Measure A projects posted on the district’s website, the list was pulled with no explanation. 

The Planet reported that Peralta appeared to be out of compliance with the formation of a Measure A citizen oversight committee, which was supposed to be in place 60 days following the certification of the bond election. Meanwhile, the Planet also reported that the former bond counsel to the Peralta Community College District believes the list of projects in the Measure A bond ballot statement last June might not have been specific enough to have qualified the measure under the Proposition 39 requirements under which it was passed, leaving the bond measure vulnerable to lawsuit. 

In its first meeting following the election of trustee Bill Withrow to the board presidency and the swearing in of new trustee Abel Guillen, Peralta trustees narrowly (on a 4-3 vote) sent back to district administrators $17 million of a $5 million Measure A bond project authorization request after complaining about details missing from the request papers. 

Meanwhile, the Planet reported a story published in the East Bay Express that a federal grand jury investigating corruption in Oakland politics has now expanded that investigation to look into Oakland developer Alan Dones’ dealings with Peralta. 

 


Curvy Derby Plan Gains Supporters in Field Debate

By Rio Bauce, Special to the Planet
Friday January 05, 2007

A month ago, proponents and opponents of a nearly eight-year dispute over playing field construction at East Campus met and came to an agreement on a single plan: the Curvy Derby plan.  

East Campus neighbors Susi Marzuola and Peter Waller are the masterminds behind the Curvy Derby Plan. This plan brings hope of a compromise, in sharp contrast to the previous two plans (Open Derby Plan and Closed Derby Plan).  

“There is a desire to keep Derby open and build a baseball field,” said Marzuola. “The Curvy Derby Plan is better than the Open Street and the Closed Street plans in my opinion. It’s a compromise.”  

Neighbors of East Campus who had concerns that the Farmers Market would be relocated and thus not properly accommodated and lively supported the Open Street Plan. Berkeley High School students and playing field advocates who had concerns that the Open Street Plan wouldn’t fully accommodate a regulation-size baseball field supported the Closed Street Plan.  

“From my standpoint, if this works better for the community and works for the high school athletes, then our major goal is to give the high school athletes another place to play and thus free up San Pablo Park—it works for us,” said Doug Fielding, chairman of the Association of Field Users, who previously supported the Closed Street Plan.  

The Curvy Derby Plan takes out a few trees and some playing space from the King Childcare Development Center (King CDC) across the street from Iceland and curves Derby Street through that space. 

\ Additionally, the plan reduces the width of the 1900 block of Carleton Street. These two measures allow the regulation-size baseball field to be accommodated within the space. Under the Closed Street Plan, parts of King CDC are cut out to accommodate a fire lane, but under the Curvy Derby Plan that space would be used instead to curve the road and keep it open.  

The Curvy Derby Plan provides more parking spaces and more open green space than the Closed or Open Street plans. While cost estimates have not been provided, Marzuola estimates that “the open street is least expensive,” but that the Curvy Derby plan will be likely less than or equal to the cost of the Closed Street plan. Many in the community are seeking compromise and are thrilled with the new plan.  

“It’s not just baseball,” said Kristin Glenchur, Berkeley High School (BHS) Athletic Director. “There are a lot of sports that could use this field. “The Curvy Derby field appears to meet all of the needs of the student athletes, and as long as it does that, we can support the Curvy Derby plan.”  

The plan provides a regulation-size baseball field with 300’ baselines and a place for bleachers, a batting cage, and dugouts. It includes a 300’ by 180’ multi-purpose field that can be used for a variety of sports, including soccer, rugby, field hockey, football, etc. There will also be one basketball court. Additionally, this plan does not close Derby and keeps the Farmers’ Market at its current location.  

According to official crowd estimates, attendance was at 47 people. The overwhelming majority supported the Curvy Derby Plan. It was reported, by Berkeley Unified School District Public Information Officer Mark Coplan, that two audience members still favpred the Closed Street plan.  

Mayor Tom Bates signed on as a proponent of the Curvy Derby and pledged to work with the community and the School Board to get playing fields on the East Campus site. 

“He’s strongly in favor of the plan,” said Cisco DeVries, chief of staff for Mayor Bates. “His perspective is that this plan has the ability to bridge all differences. It keeps the Farmers’ Market in place and allows a baseball field to be built. It’s not perfect, but the concept is really sound and something we can move forward with.”  

One clear thing emerged from the meeting: a sense of urgency to provide the best quality playing fields that met everyone’s needs.  

“Baseball has been very important throughout my life and right now it is at its peak,” said Geoff Mahley, BHS baseball team. “It would mean a lot to me if I could play on a decent field in what might be the last time I play competitive baseball. Many were concerned with what they call “improper noticing” of the meeting. They felt that BUSD didn’t do enough to get the word out about the meeting.  

“We emailed all previous parties involved in the Derby Street discussions,” said Coplan, defending the BUSD. “We posted notices all around the site. We published an op-ed in the Daily Planet. I feel that the people raising these concerns want more people lobbying their position. If that’s the case, they should bring their people.”  

Coplan informed this reporter that he had talked with B-Tech, previously called Berkeley Alternative High School, and King CDC and informed them of the meeting as well.  

“Their biggest concern is infringing on the space they already have,” explained Coplan. “This plan gives them a whole new green space. They have direct access to the field. As for B-Tech, while the Principal thinks the Closed Street Plan would allow them to put more buildings on the Derby Street side of the facility, he trusts the board will make the best decision for them.”  

The board plans to hear additional comments on the Closed Street project at their Jan. 11 meeting. If there are no furthur comments on that plan, they will proceed to hear a presentation on the Curvy Derby Plan from Marzuola.  

Berkeley Councilmember Max Anderson, whose district includes East Campus, said, “I have been very concerned about this issue. I am pleased to see us come to this place in a process, where up until now, people have been really frustrated. I hope, that here tonight, we can finish what we have to say about the closed Derby plan, and come together in agreement with a compromise plan called ‘Curvy Derby’ which we should thank Susi Marzuola and Peter Waller for creating.”


Police Blotter

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

Grounds for arrest 

Officers are looking for the man who hurled hot coffee into the face of a clerk at the Holiday Express on Christmas Eve, reports Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Ed Galvan. 

The suspect, a registered guest at the hotel, threw the coffee about 1 p.m. on the 24th to punctuate a dispute. 

Berkeley Fire Department paramedics treated the injured man at the scene. The inhospitable guest is being sought for arrest on one count of assault with a deadly weapon. 

 

Lotion commotion 

The objects thrown in the second Christmas Eve imbroglio caused no harm. 

The items—four bottles of body lotion shoplifted from the shelves of the Walgreen’s at 2187 Shattuck Ave—were hurled in a confrontation with a security guard after the booster left the store just before 6 p.m. 

The frustrated, and presumably chafed, thief then fled. 

 

Blackberryed 

A pair of grinches in black sweatshirts used the old I’ve-gotta-gun-in-my-pocket ploy to steal Christmas cheer along with a Blackberry data device and a wallet from a 47-year-old Berkeley woman on Christmas day. 

The perfidious pair approached the woman as she was walking near the corner of 63rd and California streets just after 2:30. After the crime they hoofed it south. 

 

Telegraph robbery 

A clutch of as many as five bandits, headed by a felonious fellow armed with a chromed semi-automatic pistol and clad in a purple hoodie, robbed an 18-year-old Hercules man of his cell phone as he stood outside Larry Blake’s restaurant in the 2300 block of Telegraph Avenue just before 11 p.m. on the 28th. 

Officer Galvan said the victim delayed calling police until he had traveled to the other side of town, and the suspects were long gone before officers arrived. 

 

Campus rat pack 

A 38-year-old man was hurled to the ground, where he was beaten and robbed by a gang of three bandits who attacked him as he crossed the Star of David bridge on the UC Berkeley Campus  

Dec. 30. 

According to campus police, one suspect grabbed the man by the arm and hurled him to the ground, where a second held him down as another robber rifled his pockets. 

When the man tried to resist, the rat packers punched him in the face, then fled with his valuables. 

The victim, who was not seriously injured, called police several minutes later, but the rat pack was long gone by the time they arrived. 

 

Octogenarian resists 

An 81-year-old Pennsylvania man successful battled off the bandit who shoved him to the ground at a gas station in the 1500 block of University Avenue just before 6 p.m. on the 30th. 

“The guy went for his wallet, and he fought him off,” said Officer Galvan. 

The suspect, a darkly clad man in his 20s, was gone by the time officers arrived.


Fire Log

By Richard Brenneman
Friday January 05, 2007

Apartment fires—one caused by a forgotten pan, the other by a forgotten cigarette—ruined the holiday plans of several Berkeley residents, reports Berkeley Fire Marshal Gil Dong. 

A family who lives in an apartment in the 1400 block of 8th Street got a very rude awakening at 3:17 Christmas morning. 

Oil in a frying pan left on a hot stove had caught fire, and the flames spread through the kitchen, causing an estimated $12,000 in damage before firefighters extinguished them. 

The family was forced to spend the holiday away from home. 

The second fire came at 9:46 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, when a cigarette left on a mattress in an apartment in the 3200 block of Adeline Street set the bed ablaze. 

Automatic sprinklers contained the resulting flames, but not before they’d done an estimated $10,000 in damage and sent the apartment’s lone occupant to the emergency room for treatment of smoke inhalation, Dong said.


First Person: Words, Words, Words

By Harry Weininger
Friday January 05, 2007

It was a crushingly hot summer day in Chicago. The kind of day that Chicagoans believe only they are privy to. The kind of day where the sidewalks exhale hot air, steps are uncertain, thinking woozy.  

This oppressive heat had been blanketing the city for days. The city, not living up to its nickname, offered up not even the slightest breeze. Air conditioning was still a rarity, and the dorm provided no relief from the stifling heat. I was dispirited because I couldn’t do anything useful, least of all study. But it was examination time at the university and I had papers due. 

Visiting friends was the only activity I could think of, and so I ambled down 57th Street and into my friend Mort’s apartment. (Those days you could still leave your door open—but that’s another story.) Mort was a few years older, had his Ph.D. and was now in law school.  

The room I entered was just as hot as the outside. Mort was working at a large table, drenched in sweat, a white shirt hanging behind him on a chair. “Mort, what are you doing?” I asked. “I’m working on a paper,” he said. I was stunned. “But,” I protested, “it’s so hot!” Glancing up from his paper, Mort said, “so what?”  

I was dumbfounded. In a flash, my worldview toppled. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could be that hot and one could still think, still work, still be useful. And yet it was so obvious. It was hot, yes. But the work could be done. One could be uncomfortable—even in the extreme—and still work. Why be hung up by the heat? So what?  

These two words energized me and continue to resonate today, more than half a century later. Others, of course, have used the phrase, sometimes in a different context. Jesse Choper, former Dean of Boalt Hall, marshalled so what? skillfully as he challenged students in and out of class to think about the foundation of their arguments. I cannot count the times I ask so what? when I encounter an obstacle or an uncomfortable situation. And invariably the obstacle melts away, or becomes manageable. The problem is there to be dealt with, not to be celebrated. 

All of us have likely had similar experiences, where a single word or phrase—spoken or written by friend or stranger—has had a dramatic and lasting impact on us. What is the source of that power? Is it the inherent truthfulness of the words? The authority or charisma of the person making the utterance? Our relationship with that person? Our need at the time for counsel, and our openness to receiving such wisdom?  

Another such occasion came when my cousin, Ben, family patriarch and eminent psychiatrist in Santa Barbara, saw me distressed after a relationship ended. He said, don’t you know that you only keep that which you set free? This saying has helped me to deal with loss. Its power has not diminished over the decades.  

Whether spoken by a person, read in a book, heard in a movie—or even carved in stone—a phrase that’s rebuffed as trivial by one person can provide great illumination to another. “Don’t take counsel from your fears” was inscribed on a building at the University of Chicago; recalling that quotation has been valuable in stressful situations and often guided me to take effective action.  

I’m fortunate to have had a number of such experiences that triggered insightful and productive changes. Meaningful words may come from ancient wisdom or be constructed on the spot. I’m no longer surprised when I encounter words that trigger deep changes in the flow of life. I cherish these words—and those messengers who, intentionally or not, pass them on.


Opinion

Editorials

Editorial: The Berkeley-ization of Manhattan

By Becky O’Malley
Friday January 05, 2007

New Yorkers, bless their hearts, love to believe that what happens in their city is unique—that they’re somehow exempt from the inexorable laws that govern the universe. The truth is that often bad things happen elsewhere first, but eventually even New York is vulnerable. The elegant writer Adam Gopnik has a piece in this week’s New Yorker magazine’s Talk of the Town section which highlights the grim homogenization which other parts of the country have already undergone, but is just now taking over in Gotham City. He spent several past years in Paris, so he’s now looking at New York with a fresh eye, and he doesn’t like much of what he sees.  

Here’s how he describes what worries him and others who’ve loved the city: “It is the sense that the city’s recovery has come at the cost of a part of its identity: that New York is safer and richer but less like itself, an old lover who has gone for a face-lift and come out looking like no one in particular. The wrinkles are gone, but so is the face. This transformation is one you see on every street corner in Manhattan, and now in Brooklyn, too, where another local toy store or smoked-fish emporium disappears and another bank branch or mall store opens. For the first time in Manhattan’s history, it has no bohemian frontier. Another bookstore closes, another theatre becomes a condo, another soulful place becomes a sealed residence. These are small things, but they are the small things that the city’s soul clings to.” 

That’s where cities and small towns too, all over America, have gone—or, perhaps an even worse alternative, they’ve become ghost towns, without even the boring bank branches and mall stores to support Main Street. It’s happened in Berkeley—where bookstores are closing and being sold to foreign chains, where the Fine Arts theater has been displaced by condos-in-waiting, where non-union mall stores like Trader Joe’s are valued more highly by politicians than Fred’s Market down the street, a pedestrian-oriented family business known for feeding poor people out the back door, or Andronico’s, a small Bay Area chain, also family-owned, with union employees. Berkeley’s erstwhile bohemian frontiers, Telegraph Avenue and West Berkeley, are coveted as sites for even more mall stores. Bruce Brugman in the Bay Guardian of the early seventies warned about the Manhattan-ization of San Francisco, but now we’re seeing the Berkeley-ization of Manhattan.  

We happened to run into a couple of the kind of small business people who were the soul of the old Berkeley over the holidays. They had various theories about what’s happened here, based on their own experience, and when you put their ideas together a picture emerges. One, a skilled craftsman, used to have his shop on Shattuck, back in the days when there was a viable department store, a music store, a kitchenwares store and other businesses that attracted a variety of customers who then patronized his own shop, which he’s now moved to a neighborhood location. He thought the trouble with downtown Berkeley is that it’s no longer a destination—that during the day it’s mostly the kind of mall fast food places which appeal to Southern California-bred undergraduates, plus a few cheap bookstores. The arts venues bring in a different crowd at night, but patrons are not there to shop, just to be entertained, and perhaps to have dinner at the two or three interesting restaurants which stay open after 9:30.  

The other one, a bookseller, agreed with the diagnosis of what’s lacking downtown, but added his own more sinister spin. He begged us to have the Planet investigate who’s bought up all the commercial rental property downtown, because he strongly suspects that investors are keeping rents there high on purpose to drive out small businesses to make room for University of California expansion. This pattern can be observed in New York too, especially in the neighborhoods adjacent to Columbia and NYU.  

Such an investigation is a great idea, but very difficult, because such properties are typically held by faceless real estate investment trusts where it’s hard to identify the principals. The Planet has outted one business school professor who’s the international financial muscle behind a number of the most egregious projects, but there are probably others like him. And there’s no quick way of finding out which local politicians have serious financial ties to property ownership, though developers have been observed doing modest favors for relatives of some Berkeley councilmembers.  

Realtor-councilmember Laurie Capitelli’s current push to limit the term of service of experienced land use commissioners, coupled with the council’s recent revision of the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance, could add up to a drastic emasculation of Berkeley’s traditional land use control structure which has kept the city livable for the past 25 years. Our city is on the cusp of the kind of change which has the potential for shaping its destiny for years to come. Gopnik sees the same dynamic in New York: “…. what we want the city to look like in 2030 will depend on the rules we make now. Aggressive policies for housing, especially low-income housing; a reasonable process of review to help neighborhoods remain neighborhoods; less passive welcome to every form of monster store; more support for tenants and small merchants—all of these things are worth arguing for, and legislating for, too.” We agree—those things are worth arguing for in Berkeley, too. Let’s make it a New Year’s resolution. 


Public Comment

Letters to the Editor

Friday January 05, 2007

PARKING ISSUES 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Here’s some solace for the holidays for those who traditionally lament Berkeley’s parking situation. The week before Christmas I drove down to Oakland for a meeting. I would have taken the BART but I ran late and so hopped in a car. Joy of joys there was a vacant, standard one hour meter on the 2200 block of Franklin where my meeting was to take place. I threw in my five quarters and skipped off smiling. When I returned 59 minutes later here was a friendly uniformed meter man standing by my car talking with another fellow on the sidewalk. A bright ticket envelope held in place by my windshield wiper blew gently in the breeze. “But I paid the meter and it’s just running out now,” I protested to Meterman. With a bashful smile he responded, “No that’s not it” and pointed at the signpost not 10 feet from where we stood. It said “No parking 4-6 p.m.” The time was 4:25 p.m. In old-fashion marketing parlance that’s probably called a “bait and switch.” The enticing meter gave me no clues as to what I was going to be buying. “You’ve got to read the signs,” said my parking cop friend. Of course Berkeley has some “no-parking” lanes for traffic 4-6 p.m. too. But the ones I know-of are meterless. My foray into the murder capital of the area left me unscathed, if a bit fleeced. I have to be thankful that I was saved by the city and so I’ve already contributed my $48.25 to Oaktown for the holidays. Is that tax deductible? Honestly, I think they owe me my $1.25 back. There is a moral to this story for the meter challenged, like myself. When you see one of these metal polls and it reminds you of interactions with something black and white, check to see if its tail is in the air and never forget that you might get skunked.  

Marc Sapir 

 

• 

A DREAM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

This is a true dream story: It came to me around 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 23 at home. Prior to that date I had written no letters of protest or spoken with anyone regarding the UC Regents proposal to locate the UC Athletic Training Facility on the site of a grove of trees. I had considered sending letters to newspapers, and city, university, and state elected officials with some kind of protest, but until this dream I actually did nothing. 

The dream was presented to me as a fully thought-out and detailed report. I woke up and grabbed my ready-to-go dream writing kit (handily placed paper, pencil, and a book to write against) and spontaneously wrote the entire dream. 

Begin the dream: The new UC Athletic Training Center and offices goes on the southwest corner of the campus under the existing athletic practice field at Bancroft and Oxford streets. The relocated athletic practice field goes on top, the new A.T. Center and offices go below. The parking (much less than the 900 proposed for the A.T. Center) goes below and/or in a new expanded parking structure on the existing surface lot and the old bank building between Bancroft and Durant. That site can also take additional uses that relate to the training center such as offices, guest athlete dorms, and expanded student and faculty housing. Possibly tie that southward extension to the redesigned training center with a sky-bridge (or a tunnel). Cover the redesigned practice field (at Oxford and Bancroft) with a (movable) glass or plastic atrium cover. Open up Center Street for the sub-level creek, and add a pedestrian under crossing that serves the campus and the new A.T. Center, and possibly a sub-level shuttle bus link. Enhance BART and AC Transit with a Eco-Pass, especially for users of the new facilities by the public, UC Staff, and students; upgrade passes to nearly mandatory status. End of dream. 

An afterthought: Link the UC Coliseum to the north campus with a tunnel under Piedmont at Stadium Rim Road for pedestrians, bikes, and maybe shuttle busses, but for heaven’s sake, miss the trees. 

Ken Norwood 

 

• 

SPRING OFFERS NO FACTS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

It seems that Councilmember Spring just can’t afford the time to add facts to her statements. She claims that Raudel Wilson’s recent participation in the district elections was “set up by the chamber” but she offers no proof to this allegation. Yes, the chamber endorsed Mr. Wilson. But the chamber also endorsed Mayor Bates and Gordon Wozniak. Did the chamber “set them up” too? 

Also, to accuse a man for wanting to provide better and affordable living conditions for his family, is a low blow, even for Ms. Spring. Again, is there such a thing as a sore winner? Councilmember Spring needs to move on with taking care of the city’s business, as she was re-elected to do. 

Richard Hom 

 

• 

A FEW COLUMN IDEAS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Thank you for Susan Parker’s article on “Christmas in Las Vegas: Part One.” Please, please, please, don’t let there be a part two. Do I really care that Susan had to wait in line? Do I care if she finds some sort of small nugget of Christmas joy to hold onto in the thick of all this line waiting? May I suggest more compelling article ideas for Susan Parker:  

“How I Started My Car this Morning.” 

“Sunday Night Between 8:15 and 8:20 in My Kitchen: Part 3.” 

“Paper Bags.” 

Sander Douglas 

Oakland 

 

• 

GOOD WISHES  

FOR THE PLANET 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

One of the few positive features of our public lives during 2006 has been the continued existence of the Berkeley Daily Planet. While newspapers deteriorate and disappear as sources of information, the Planet continues to offer actual news and opinion, allowing readers to talk back to it and to each other. Thanks to all the staff and volunteers, and may you prosper in the New Year. 

Dorothy Bryant 

 

• 

WHAT ABOUT THE ANIMALS? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The Dec. 19-21 edition reported on the Zoning Board progress on Trader Joe’s, Drayage, Bus Yard, and Condos. What about Berkeley’s animals? 

A bond measure was passed four years ago because voter’s recognized the need for a new city shelter. Where is it? 

The ideal situation is one building, housing Animal Control, Berkeley East Bay Humane Society, and Fix our Ferals. These three organizations work cooperatively and have succeeded in significantly minimizing euthanasia, increasing adoptions, and lowering population by neutering. This is done on a shoestring budget, by hard working staff, and devoted volunteers. 

It is embarrassing and shameful that Berkeley, a city of intelligent and compassionate people, has such limited animal facilities, especially when compared to the San Francisco SPCA, Oakland SPCA, and ARF in Walnut Creek--virtual palaces by comparison. 

Dogs and cats are in kennels and cages due to limited space. Caged animals have increased stress which can delay socialization and adoption. The shelters must devote time and energy for fund raisers and shoring up out- dated buildings that have leaked and flooded in winter rain, time and energy better spent on animal care and public education. 

Some City Council members are vocal in their support but no action has occurred. Who or what is holding up the wishes of Berkeley voters and the well being of our animals? 

Carole Gill 

 

• 

DR. MOHAMMED YUNUS’ PROJECT 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Dr. Mohammed Yunus’ micro-credit project in Bangladesh has become a darling of the West, up to the point of winning for Dr. Yunus a Nobel Prize. However, one should be aware that there is a contrarian view from NGO’s and others on the ground. One can find it by Googling the relevant terms and searching for thorns among the roses. Just to relate a couple of points made by those skeptics:. 

1) The commentary implies that loans are made to the most needy people. In fact, they are made to people with houses and other collateral. 2) Loans may be made mostly to women, but it is naive to assume that in South Asian society women necessarily keep control of the money. 3) It may be that in some cases loans are made to groups of women. According to reports, in Muslim Bangladesh men are taking additional wives in order to maximize their borrowing. In many cases, the business they set up is--guess what—moneylending! This is the traditional best path to economic advancement in rural South Asia. They take the money and re-lend it at higher rates of interest, creating wealth for one family and impoverishing their neighbors. 

The suggestion by some is that the women who receive loans are not so much the agents of new businesses as they are Grameen’s agents for the collection of interest. 

Mark Tatz 

Oakland 

 

• 

DEBATING USE OF ‘NIGGER’ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Regarding J. Douglas Allen-Taylor’s “Debating the Use of the Word ‘Nigger’ ”: 

The word “nigger” was never uttered in the racist family in which I grew up, and still, at age 79, I find it difficult to even write those six letters. I never doubted or even questioned, however, that my parent’s substitute Yiddish word, “shwartza” was always used with contempt. 

To this day, I am still grieved and embarrassed to recall an event which painfully illustrates the power and the destiny of such racism; not only in my family, but blindly tolerated in my schoolroom as well. Even as a young California mother, on a trip back to my old home in Ohio, with my husband and two children, we took photos of the old house, but never spoke to the elderly black man on the porch—with my children a witness to this inhumanity. Sometimes silence is the loudest obscenity of all. 

Such intolerances were finally an important part of the painful dissolution of our marriage. My children and I have grown up together, with a rainbow of friends and partners—an invaluable reeducation, even resulting in miracles such as my black daughter-in-law and grandchild. 

I have encountered many racists along the way, the most painful being senior family members unwilling to accept my inter-racial family. Unlike Michael Richards, most such bigots I have known have been extremely careful to substitute society’s codes for words like “nigger.” What’s missing in Allen-Taylor’s discussions of such terms, is society’s unfortunate need for such obscenities. These six letters, if omitted, would simply be replaced by other profanities. 

Just as sexual pornography, like it or not, can fill a human need, other obscenities can also have importance in our imperfect world. Just as such words as “nigger” have been recognized by courts as evidence of certain racist crimes, we all hear them as an aid in judging the values of others. Bruising words like “nigger” may even be used in lieu of bruising actions. Our constantly evolving language, ugly or beautiful, is, after all, an imperative indication of our feelings and passions, as well as our values. 

Gerta Farber 

 

• 

BLACK-AND-WHITE THINKING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Becky O’Malley of the Berkeley Daily Planet can hardly make a case in defense of religion (“Humans Still Missing Peace at Home,” Dec. 22) with arguments like, “There are no soup kitchens run by militant atheist organizations that I’m aware of. I don’t know of any kind of charitable programs organized by anti-religious people....” This kind of black-and-white view ignores the vast middle of secular organizations: Food Not Bombs, Doctors without Borders, UNICEF, Oxfam, the Grameen Bank, et cetera, et cetera. “Good works” are not the exclusive property of the religious. 

C. A. Gilbert 

 

• 

GLOBAL WARMING 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I recently went to a lecture on global warming. One of the lecturer’s comments was that high temperatures that currently occur only a few times a year, will become common summer temperatures in the next few decades. Furthermore, data from the last 30 years showed that the increase in the highest temperatures was significantly larger than the increase in the average temperatures. If you live in a city with a peak summer temperature of 110 degrees now, in a few decades this may be a common summer temperature, and the peak may go to 120 degrees. 

The data on major storms was more ambivalent, as the feedback between the factors driving them is less well understood. While the lecturer was willing to predict that temperatures would increase, he was only willing to state that a major increase in storm severity was possible. 

The changes in climate are not happening uniformly across the country. Washington D. C., perhaps unfortunately, has shown no significant change over the last 30 years. The entire southern portion of the United States has significantly warmed. So what does this mean for our society? Many people have migrated to the south because of its warmer climate. When its climate becomes inhospitable will many then migrate back north? And if the south becomes too hot, what about Mexico and Central America? If they do migrate north, where will they settle? 

If the editor and many letter writers to the Daily Planet have their way, it won’t be Berkeley. 

Berkeley is already a dense city, and the anti-growth proponents apparently figure we have done our bit. Further growth in Berkeley is viewed as unjustified. From this perspective, growth in Berkeley is driven only by cynical or near-sighted self-interest. There is only one issue - the character of the pro- and anti- people. The developers get rich and we get screwed. If we let them get bigger buildings in the commercial areas they will want to build elsewhere too. The developers are cynically clever too, as witness their including a Trader Joe’s with the apartments planned for University Avenue. But even a benefit like this can be cast in terms of character issues, as only the rich in the hills benefit because then they can drive to it and buy their “...pseudo-ethnic specialties and cheap wine...". 

I feel really screwed. I am not associated with the developer, I’m not rich, I don’t live in the hills, I don’t have a car so I can’t drive to the proposed Trader Joe’s, and if I do bike there instead of Emeryville, I’ll probably still buy the same stuff: cheap cereal, toilet paper and facial tissue, bread, and other basics. Dang, no pseudo-ethnic specialties, and no concern about the impact of the built environment on global warming. 

Robert Clear 

 

• 

CITY COMMISSIONS 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

In a thinly veiled attempt to undercut and reverse Berkeley’s traditional progressive political agenda, the Berkeley City Council will consider a proposal on Jan.16 designed to remove—and bar future—citizen volunteers from the City of Berkeley’s 40 citizen commissions and boards. 

Berkeley City Councilmemeber Laurie Capitelli is the measure’s initiating sponsor. Mr. Capitelli’s proposal would bar Berkeley citizens from serving on more than one city commission. Current policy allows for a citizen to serve on two or three commissions simultaneously if a citizen is prepared to devote the necessary time and energy. 

Mr. Capitelli’s proposal is an attempt to target progressive commissioners on Berkeley’s 40 commissions and boards by preventing progressive-leaning citizens from providing their experience, expertise and public policy recommendations. 

Berkeley’s commission system is the foundation of the city’s public policy discussions and decisions. Traditionally, commission policy recommendations are forwarded to the City Council for consideration and/or action. 

If Mr. Capitelli is so concerned about citizen volunteers serving on more than one city commission, as he purports to claim, he should apply his concern to his own commission appointees. Instead, Mr. Capitelli is attempting to unilaterally force his own personal appointee policy down the throats of his fellow City Councilmembers. 

Mr. Capitelli should stick to worrying about his own 40 commission appointments and let his eight fellow Councilmember colleagues appoint the citizen volunteers they wish to the commissions they see fit (without Mr. Capitelli’s interference). 

I urge Berkeley voters to phone their respective councilmembers to voice their concern about Mr. Capitelli’s anti-democratic proposal. The proposal will be considered by the City Council at its next regular council meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 16. 

Chris Kavanagh 

 

• 

HELP THE LESS FORTUNATE 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

How should we live so that those who are less fortunate than us are included in our actions? We come from many nations in the world but all of us have the same basic wants. We need food and shelter, of course, but all of us, rich and poor alike, want respect from others. The general attitude in our society is that the poor are guilty of some sin: they are lazy or distracted or unwilling to learn English. We feel that they do not deserve the respect we give to full human beings. I think it is high time that we take care of others? needs and share our comforts with those who are less fortunate. Let us treat them with the utmost respect. We might save our money and time fixing societal breakdown later if we can improvise small local ways to help our less fortunate neighbors now. 

Romila Khanna 

 

• 

KILL CONSERVATISM? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Now that liberals won a great victory in the November elections, Bob Burnett says it’s time for the winners to “sink the conservative ideology that has dominated American politics for 25 years.” (“Killing Conservatism,” Daily Planet, Dec. 12). But the ten-part ideology he describes, starting with “Government is bad,” is reactionary, not conservative. Reactionaries dislike government and liberals with equal fervor. Conservatives may not always like government, but they recognize its importance and generally work to improve it, just as liberals do. 

Economist Paul Krugman exposed the reactionary fiscal policy they call “Starving the Beast,” where the beast is government, which reactionaries want to eliminate. Under Bush/Cheney/Rove starving the beast destroys government by creating huge deficits, spending money we don’t have on things we don’t need like war in Iraq, and cutting taxes for corporations and for the rich at the same time. Who among us has not suffered from the induced poverty of governmental entities under this regime? Who among us has not seen the anguished letters from true conservatives bemoaning the reactionary agenda and saying they regret that they can no longer vote for candidates who call themselves conservative, but who once they win office pursue radical change at the expense of cherished institutions and values? 

Reactionaries have cloaked themselves in conservative rhetoric and the media has bought the imagery. Liberals have bought it too, but if they want to win in the future I think they have to start figuring out how to help the real conservatives separate themselves from the reactionaries. This will allow conservatives to pursue their true calling, which is akin to pruning and weeding the garden that the liberals lay out and plant. 

The optimal situation is for liberals and conservatives to work together to make government strong, fair, and efficient, to do well the things that government does best. This will isolate the reactionaries and greatly facilitate their removal from elected office. 

Dan Knapp 

Richmond 

 

• 

JIMMY CARTER IS A LIAR 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I am unable to reconcile the Carter Center’s mission statement with the founder’s recent book. 

Mr. Carter ignores centuries of history, in Hebron and elsewhere. He ignores 80 years of homicidal Arab violence against Jews in the land promised them. He lies about events he did not witness. 

He endorses the ongoing anti-Jewish terrorism embodied in the Hamas Charter and the PLO Covenant. 

I would be grateful if the Carter Center would help me understand how this promotes their declared purpose.  

I would be grateful to know the center’s position about a person who charges money to tell lies that support, among other practices, the training of children to believe that becoming suicide bombers is the greatest future to which they can aspire.  

David Altschul 

 

• 

GEORGE BUSH 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

I think that it’s about time we stopped poking fun at George Bush. His supporters are folks who believe in equal rights for the handicapped. Bush is capable in many areas. He clears brush. He can dress himself. He does speak...so long as you don’t confuse him with questions. He can bathe himself. And he likes to wear a uniform. It’s unreasonable to expect him to wear it in dangerous situations.  

It’s a tribute to our country that such a man can become our president.  

And he was even re-elected. 

Harry Gans 

 

• 

WHAT IF THINGS SPRANG 

FROM THE BAY AREA (AGAIN)? 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

What if our great East Bay born-and-bred composer leaders, Peter Apfelbaum and Butch Morris, long New York- and Planet-acclaimed, were to direct an orchestra of an individual musicians from every United Nations country to open the U.N. General Assembly every year? Once proposed as: 

 

Let’s move the United Nations to Camp Cazadero, 

New York has had it too long. 

Put the Security Council in the redwoods of Sonoma, 

Have ‘em debate it in song. 

Slip Fidel and Daniel through the mouth of the Russian, 

 

We’ll party with love, and by Jove, 

We seek and we’ll hide ‘em, 

The light that’ll guide ‘em is the burning of Bohemian Grove. 

 

And to close the session annually, have our great improvisational vocalists, Rhiannon, Linda Tilley, So-Vo-So, lead a circle of delegates in such wondrous on-the-spot land’s end created sounds as we have grown to celebrate over the past five years from noon to midnight on Dec. 30 at “Sing For Your Life” at the First Congressional Church of Oakland. (Green language, or the language of the birds, is the avion ability to confer with the initiated, and mystically vice versa.) 

Arnie Passman 

 

• 

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced its approval of meat and dairy products from cloned animals amidst widespread concern among scientists and food safety advocates. Despite recent consumer opinion polls showing that most Americans do not want food from cloned animals, cloned milk may soon be sold, unlabeled, in grocery stores across the country, and cloned meat will be next. Scientists say that clones may be inherently unhealthy, with potentially harmful consequences for animal foods derived from clones. Moreover, animal cloning is a cruel technology that results in needless animal suffering. 

The first cloned mammal was the famed sheep Dolly. But after the hype, few followed the story of Dolly’s demise. Just 6 years old when euthanized (sheep of Dolly’s breed generally live to 11 or 12), Dolly suffered from arthritis and lung disease usually seen in much older animals. Sadly, Dolly is not unique among clones. Leading cloning scientists say clones are likely to carry genetic abnormalities, and the lead scientist responsible for creating Dolly has warned that even small imbalances in a clone’s hormone, protein or fat levels could compromise the safety of its milk or meat. 

It appears that once again the FDA has seemingly ignored scientific and public concerns and fast-tracked a decision for the benefit of a handful of cloning companies. It’s time for FDA to put the health and welfare of Americans over corporate profits. 

Cynthia Johnson 

 

• 

ENDGAME IN IRAQ 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

The American public are generally ignorant, uneducated, and politically behind the curve by several years, but they finally got the message about Iraq, as evidenced by the mid-term elections and recent polls. They are prepared for a new message.  

What the Congress should say: To be fiscally responsible, we must protect Social Security and Medicare, revive education, and rebuild the military for the needs of long term security. We cannot afford to continue our presence in Iraq at a cost of two billion dollars per week. Therefore we will authorize sufficient funds to bring the troops home, and no more. 

What the White House should say: Our job is done. Saddam is gone, and replaced by a democratically elected government. Without being in the shadow of U.S. troops, the Iraqi forces will have greater legitimacy and authority, and through their own internal intelligence will be more able to identify and eradicate terrorists who infiltrate from neighboring states. 

What the State Department should say to Saudi Arabia: The partitioning of Iraq is inevitable. Ethnic cleansing has begun as Shiite militias are routing Sunnis from Shia territory. Saudi Arabia should assure the safe relocation of Sunni families, and if necessary, we will pay you under the table to do that.  

The cost of humanitarian resettlement is far less than that of our military presence. Three small stable Iraqi states are less threatening than a large volatile one, and the serious threats to the U.S. are Iran and North Korea. In each case, the U.S. should assist in the development of nuclear power, with full inspection. Even a surreptitious venture into nuclear arms is not necessarily dire, if the U.S. protects its borders and rigorously inspects ships and containers. But the U.S. should make it clear, unilaterally, that if a vehicle appears on an Iranian or North Korean launch pad with the capability of reaching Israel, Europe, or the U.S., it will be destroyed. 

Jerry Landis 

 

• 

LESSONS OF VIETNAM 

Editors, Daily Planet: 

Holidays are a good time to reflect on what went down over the last year, last four years under Bush-Republican domination. Symptomatic of the malaise that enveloped the United States over the past four years is the current quandary President Bush finds himself in; what to do next about Iraq. Dude, his decision to invade Iraq was made in an instant, and he had no problem convincing Congress and the entire nation that it would be a cakewalk. 

Yet, now, the “decider” has put off his decision on the fate of Iraq until next year. Almost four years of war and George W. doesn’t know what to do! 

More than likely we will stay the course to nowhere, and add more troops to a disintegrating theater. More troops in Iraq is like throwing good money after bad. Didn’t the current batch of politicians learn anything from Vietnam? 

Ron Lowe 

Grass Valley


2006: The Year in Editorial Cartoons

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday January 05, 2007

For the year in Editorial Cartoons see the pdf's of pages 14 and 15, available on our web site.


Commentary: Clarifying ABAG’s Role in the Housing Needs Process

By Kathleen Cha
Friday January 05, 2007

The articles and letters printed recently on housing in the Berkeley Daily Planet reflect misunderstanding and confusion about the need to plan for housing locally and region-wide, the state-driven Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process, and the state mandated role of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) in this planning process. 

Housing is being planned for, because even with slower growth in cities like Berkeley, the region continues to experience a severe housing shortage. Bay Area forecasts indicate that by 2015, the Bay Area will grow an economy that will need to support almost 634,000 new residents—4,200 of them are expected to live in Berkeley. Planning for housing needed now and in the future is a necessary, ongoing step to address the affordable housing challenge.  

ABAG, as the regional planning agency and council of governments representing the Bay Area, works with cities and counties to develop a process to distribute regional housing need, so that local governments can identify appropriate housing sites and policies to meet their state-mandated housing goals. ABAG itself does not impose mandates, quotas, or penalties on cities and counties for failing to reach housing goals.  

The statewide housing needs process that is part of the confusion is facilitated as follows: Housing Element Law (Gov. Code Secs. 65580 et seq) requires ABAG and other councils of governments to create a methodology for allocating the region’s housing need. In the Bay Area, the regional housing need is determined by the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and ABAG through consultation. Regional need reflects the number of housing units needed for a range of income levels--from very low to above moderate income. Housing Element Law then requires that each city and county revise the housing element in its general plan to accommodate the housing allocation they receive, and to submit the revised housing elements to HCD for certification. This Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process is done every seven years.  

In preparation for the (2007-2014) RHNA cycle, ABAG established a Housing Methodology Committee in May 2006, composed of elected and appointed officials and stakeholder groups from throughout the region, including San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. The participation and insight of the city and county representatives have been critical in determining the resulting 2007-2014 Draft Regional Housing Needs Allocation Methodology (Draft RHNA Methodology). The draft was released for public review and comment on Nov. 17, with its 60-day comment period ending on Jan. 18, 2007. This draft RHNA Methodology was designed to distribute housing need throughout Bay Area cities and counties and proposes to locate housing predominantly in urban areas and along transit corridors. It is important to remember that housing numbers have not yet been assigned for the next (2007-2014) RHNA cycle, but in the draft RHNA Methodology numbers from the past RHNA cycle were used as examples to calculate how the draft methodology would work.  

While many are reviewing and commenting on this approach, the consensus is that the draft RHNA Methodology responds to the region-wide call for less suburban sprawl, reduced freeway congestion, and other environmental considerations, such as cleaner air. Helping sustain the Bay Area for current and future residents is the basic aim and encouraging transit oriented development is just one way to maximize land use.  

Many kinds of development and housing are needed to balance the jobs and housing in each community. Bottom line, Berkeley and all our Bay Area cities and counties make their own local land use decisions. These include identifying appropriate housing sites and policies necessary to build the housing needed by families and single residents. ABAG’s ongoing role and continuing interest is to help cities and counties address growth challenges collaboratively, strategically, and in the most desirable way for the Bay Area’s cities and counties.  

The draft RHNA Methodology can be downloaded from the Regional Housing Needs section of the ABAG website at www.abag.ca.gov/planning/housingneeds, or requested by phone at (510) 464-7950.  

 

 

Kathleen Cha is senior communications officer for the Association of Bay Area Governments. 


Commentary: Trader Joe’s — For Whom?

By Dean Metzger
Friday January 05, 2007

As the Planet has reported, the project at 1885 University Ave. was tentatively approved by the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) at its Dec. 14 meeting and is scheduled for a final vote on Jan. 11 (note there will be no further public hearing). Had I stayed on ZAB, the project would not have been approved as currently proposed, but my council member dismissed me and saw fit to appoint a pro-development person to the board, who found the project more to his liking than I ever had. 

I do not question Mr. Wozniak’s right under existing law to remove me from ZAB. I do wonder whether the current law is a wise one; essentially it means that Berkeley Commissioners must be rubber stamps for the council members who appoint them. They are effectively prevented from exercising their own independent judgment in the interest of the city as a whole. 

If ZAB is neutralized, who is left to objectively analyze developer proposals? Certainly not the planning department which is funded by permit and other fees paid by the developers themselves. 

Trader Joe’s is a classic example; it is 20,000 square feet larger, and has 25 more apartments than allowed by our zoning laws and the state Density Bonus law. The developer proposed Trader Joe’s as the anchor tenant for this development only after the neighborhood had derailed the original monster project. He evidently felt (correctly, it seems) that a popular tenant on the ground floor would cause the public to overlook all the other defects. 

City planning staff worked hand-in-hand with the developer, and supplied a lot of creative thinking. For example, the Trader Joe proposal was called a “modification” of the earlier, rejected project. This allowed ZAB to ignore the more stringent, neighborhood oriented rules that have come into effect in the meantime. It is another sad example of how our city’s zoning law is twisted and shaped to deliver larger and larger buildings—which may be what staff believes in, developers profit from, but which is not what the citizens want.  

If the Trader Joe’s project had been subject to existing zoning laws, it would be a project with 82 units, 16 of those affordable. If the state Density Bonus law were applied the project would go to 111 units with 16 affordable units reserved for very low income households. Instead, ZAB has allowed the developer to reduce the required open space by 75 percent, and has relaxed the affordability requirement. Final result: ZAB approved a project with 148 units, with 19 supposedly “affordable” units, of which only half are reserved for very low income families.  

On Nov. 19 I asked planning staff to answer a number of questions. I also asked how the project had gotten so close to approval without any of the information we would normally expect for a proposal of this size. The answers were not forthcoming and three weeks later I was dismissed from the board. I include some of my questions here so you can judge their validity for yourself. 

1. Total Size: Where are the base project calculations for this project? At this time none had been provided. Instead it was left to ZAB itself to discover that the project involved five stories, rather than the three that would have been allowed without a use permit, and that total units exceeded both state and local limits. 

2. Commercial Space. The project includes a cafe, which would normally entail added parking requirements. So far as we can tell, no added parking has been reserved for use by cafe employees and customers. 

3. Setbacks: Why has staff approved reduced set backs along Berkeley Way? The impact on the neighborhood is already too great. Why make the situation worse?  

4. Open Space: Are we going to lower our current standards by 75 percent? How does this make a project “green” to build to the sidewalk? And once having waived the open space requirement for this development, how would the city be justified in imposing it on competing projects? 

5. Nearby Residences: The traffic barrier should be placed in the C1 zone between existing residences and the development—not in a place which separates existing homes from their neighbors. If this requires the entrance to be moved further east, so be it. 

I find it interesting that planning and most of the elected officials consider me to be anti-development. This simply is not true. I am only asking questions which any conscientious commissioner should ask before any project is approved. For example: 

1. What is the project being built for? More student housing? Or are the room sizes big enough for families? Doesn’t the city need a standard? 

2. How does the project affect shadows, light, air quality, views, etc. in the surrounding neighborhood?  

3. How are the increased traffic problems to be resolved? Use reasonable and up to date traffic studies to reveal potential problems and solutions. 

4. What are the detriments/positives this project brings to our city and neighborhoods? 

In most cases, development problems can be mitigated if the planning staff would work with the citizens of Berkeley and the developers. Instead, staff appears to be at the beck and call of the promoters, and avoids the need to mitigate by ignoring detriments entirely. 

If the above principles had been applied to the Trader Joe’s project, Berkeley would have gotten a development the neighborhood could have agreed to. Now the project will be appealed to the city council, where it will probably be approved. The result will at best be unhappy citizens and at worse yet another lawsuit. In the end, Berkeley may lose Trader Joe’s because those who are supposed to know better approved a project that is unlikely to survive the courts. 

If you want a Trader Joe’s at this location, but within a reasonably sized building, you should write to ZAB and the City Council telling them that you want and support a legal project that will be a positive addition to our city.  

 

 

Dean Metzger is former member of the Zoning Adjustments Board. 

 

 

 

 


Columns

Dispatches From the Edge: Awards For The Year That Was

By Conn Hallinan
Friday January 05, 2007

Each year Dispatches From the Edge gives its annual IDBIAART (I Don’t Believe I Am Actually Reading This) Awards for the past year. The following are the Awards for 2006. 

 

Marching Together with Our Allies Award goes to the Bush administration for refusing to allow any U.S. military personnel to attend British inquests on the deaths of United Kingdom soldiers from “friendly-fire” in Iraq. In the latest incident, Lance Corporal Matthew Hull was killed when a U.S. pilot attacked a British convoy near Basra. The White House refused to allow the pilot to attend the inquest. 

British Justice Minister Harriet Harman told the Daily Mail “The families want to know how their loved ones were killed. They have got that right.” Harman went on to say that the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain “demands honesty and openness. They are our allies in Iraq and should respect the grief of the families and not hide from the court. If any of our soldiers were involved in American friendly-fire deaths we would expect them to attend hearings.” 

Harman dressed down the American ambassador over the Bush administration’s stonewalling of the inquest request. She apparently did so without clearing it with Prime Minister Tony Blair—“fresh evidence of the crumbling authority of the PM,” notes the Mail. 

The Justice Ministry had guaranteed that there would be no legal or financial sanctions against the U.S. pilot, but the White House refused to release the name of the airman or allow him to attend the inquest. 

Oxfordshire Coroner Andrew Walker, who conducted the inquiry, strongly supported Harman’s demand for an American presence. Walker also conducted the inquest on two Royal Air Force pilots shot down by a U.S. Patriot missile during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and he found that U.S. Marines had committed an “unlawful killing” when they gunned down British reporter Terry Lloyd during the invasion. 

Hull’s widow, Susan Hull, said, “The people who are left behind want some answers.”  

They are not likely to get them from this White House. 

 

Lt. William Calley Award goes to Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli Knesset member, leader of the right wing, racist Yiseral Beiteinu Party (Israel is Our Home) and newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs. Lieberman advocates the death penalty for Knesset members who talk with Hamas members, urges the destruction of all commercial centers, gas stations and banks in the occupied territories, and calls for expelling all Israeli-Arabs who do not take a loyalty oath to the state of Israel.  

Lieberman’s party has 11 seats in the Knesset, and Hebrew University political scientist Ze’ev Sternhell says he “is perhaps the most dangerous politician in the history of the state of Israel.” 

Asked what he thought should be done with the 10,000 Palestinians presently held without charge by Israeli authorities, he said that all of them should be taken to the Red Sea and drowned—and he, Avigdor Lieberman, would provide the buses to transport them. 

 

Honor Among Thieves Award goes to Ahmed Chalabi, the shady Iraqi exile who fed now-disgraced New York Times investigative reporter Judith Miller phony information about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and pressured the U.S. to dissolve the Iraqi army and dismiss all members of the Baath Party.  

Asked by the New York Times Magazine why Iraq is now such a disaster, Chalabi replied “The Americans sold us out” and “The real culprit in all this is [Paul] Wolfowitz,” the neo-conservative former assistant secretary of defense and now president of the World Bank.  

What should the Americans have done? According to Chalabi, turn Iraq over to him and cleric Muktada al-Sadr.  

 

Adam Smith Privatization Award goes to the U.S. Coast Guard for turning over its $17 billion modernization program—lock, stock and barrel—to Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest arms company, and Northrop Grumman. The two companies turned out ships with hull cracks—a bad idea if you want to use them in the water—cutters whose engines don’t work, an Eagle Eye unmanned air vehicle that crashes, and radios that are not water proofed. The companies also produced a long-range High Altitude Endurance Unmanned Air Vehicle for use in Alaska.  

Unfortunately, the craft can’t operate in bad weather. Who would have thought that would be a problem in Alaska? 

While the Coast Guard easily won the award this year, word in the industry is that the Homeland Security Department will make a strong run at the crown next year. It has handed the Boeing Corporation $7 billion to plan, supervise and execute a strategy to tighten U.S. borders to stop illegal immigration. 

There is a possibility, however, that through a little inter-service cooperation, both organizations might share the award next year. For instance, Coast Guard cutters could be transferred to the deserts of the South Texas border region, where they are unlikely to sink.  

 

Historical Insight Award goes to George W. Bush for comments during his March visit to Pakistan. Asked by journalists if Pakistan would get the same nuclear technology deal that the White House had just signed with India, Bush replied, “I explained that Pakistan and India are different countries with different needs and different histories.” 

Apparently the Pakistanis had no idea this was the case. 

Bush’s award means that the President has won this laurel two years running. Last year he was the hands down winner when he told the Brazilian press: “Wow! Brazil is big.” 

 

Great Moments in Literature Award goes to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) which gave its annual journalism award to Michael Crichton for State of Fear, his novel debunking global warming.  

The book has come under heavy fire from climate experts—Stanford climatologist Stephen H. Schneider called it “demonstrably garbage”—although it was praised by the former chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe, recently replaced as chair by Barbara Boxer (D-CA), calls global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people.” 

Oklahoma is a long way from the coast. 

AAGP Communications Director Larry Nation admitted that Crichton was not a journalist, and that State of Fear was fiction, but maintained the science fiction book “has the absolute ring of truth.”  

 

Rudyard Kipling Award to Brigadier General Edward Butler, commander of British forces in Afghanistan. Speaking about the recent upsurge in fighting, Butler said, “We knew it was going to be a tough fight. The Afghan has fighting in his blood.” 

The commander was speaking from Helmand Province, which Britain has occupied, on and off, for just short of 200 years. 

 

Hearts and Minds Award to the Third Battalion, Eighth U.S. Marine Regiment, in Ramadi, Iraq. A poster in the unit’s headquarters reads: “Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”  

The runner up in this category was a slogan for a unit T-shirt in the same regiment: “Kilo Company: Killed more people than cancer.” 

 

Real Historical Insight Award (posthumous) to T.E. Lawrence for his 1919 dispatch from Iraq: 

“We have been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. We have been tricked into it by a withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse that we have been told. Our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. We are today not far from disaster.” 

 

Lifetime Achievement Award to Stew Albert (Dec. 4, 1939-Jan. 30, 2006) for his courage and intelligence in the battle to end oppression. In the long fight ahead, he will be missed. Slan lan avic, Minstrel Stew. This harp shall praise thee. May we meet again in Tara’s hall.


Undercurrents: Exercising Patience as the Dellums Era Begins

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor
Friday January 05, 2007

Late in the summer of 1864, shortly after his combined federal armies of the West entered Georgia’s largest and most important city, General William Sherman sent a telegram to President Abraham Lincoln with a brief message included. “Atlanta is ours,” Mr. Sherman said, “and fairly won.” 

Something similar could be said by Ron Dellums, who became the new mayor of the City of Oakland this week by virtue of his victory in the elections last June. Those elections were fairly fought, with no taint or hint of scandal concerning their outcome, the citizens of Oakland having come together—uncoerced—and decided upon their own, by majority vote, that Mr. Dellums is their choice to lead the city over the next four years. Such was also the case with Jerry Brown four years ago. 

Mr. Brown has come in for considerable criticism and first- and second-guessing since then—within this column as much as anyplace in and out of Oakland—but that has been almost solely in response to his actions and activities, or lack thereof, during his tenure as mayor. What has been forgotten in recent years is that Mr. Brown came into office with a considerable portion of goodwill, and was given ample time and space to either prove or disprove his abilities and desires. 

In December 2000, for example, I wrote in defense of Mr. Brown’s hiring of his old friend Jacques Barzaghi in the old “Oakland Unwrapped” column (the forerunner of “UnderCurrents”), saying that “by all accounts, Jacques Barzaghi plays an important role in Jerry Brown’s life as friend and confidant, and I don’t see anything wrong with public officials bringing such folk into their administrations.” 

This was written at the beginning of the Barzaghi sexual harassment scandal, some days after the investigation began into the charges that Mr. Barzaghi had verbally assaulted and demeaned a female city employee during an official trip to the presidential inaugural in Mexico City. Even then, a year into Mr. Brown’s first administration, he was still being given considerable leeway. If Mr. Brown’s soul was lost—to broadly paraphrase the old spiritual we used to sing in the black Baptist church—it was nobody’s fault but his. 

Mr. Dellums deserves that same opportunity. 

He comes into the mayorship with his own ideas and plans, but also with considerable, pressing problems left over from the outgoing Brown Administration. Everybody is providing advice, including Mr. Brown who, according to the report on the NBC11 website, providing Mr. Dellums with a plan to fight Oakland’s soaring crime rate. 

According to NBC11, “The plan, drafted by consultants from New York, recommends that the Oakland Police Department set up geographic zones in the city. Each zone would be overseen by a captain.” 

“This way,” the television quoted the outgoing mayor as saying, “you get one top person totally responsible 24 hours a day for crime and the work against crime and the protection of citizens. I think if implemented this will drive down the murder rate It will put police where the criminals are and will match police deployment with criminal activity." 

And all the time, it was that simple. Where were these New York consultants, all these past eight years? 

Meanwhile, what the Dellums administration can only hope for is that it is not pushed into reckless action by pressure built up from the anxieties and unfulfilled promises of the Brown Administration. What Oaklanders—and residents of the surrounding communities so dependent, economically and culturally, on Oakland—need is patience. 

The danger will be to immediately use the city’s murder rate as an indicator of how successful—or unsuccessfull—Mr. Dellums is in pulling us up from the street horror of the Brown years. 

On Thursday morning, the Tribune reported the city’s first homicide of 2007, a man found dead on the street on 89th Avenue, with the paper noting that “Oakland’s first homicide in 2006 happened Jan. 9 and the final tally was 148.” What possible bearing can the date of Oakland’s first homicide of 2006 have on the date of its first homicide of 2007, other than for our good friends at the Tribune to make the not-so-subtle point that this year’s first occurred almost a week earlier last year’s and, by inference, perhaps that means we are in for a bloodier year than last? 155? 175? How long will it be before the papers begin publishing their comparative charts, as if this were a sports contest, and the number of bodies in the Alameda County morgue were somehow analogous to the number of points scored by Kobe Bryant, or home runs hit by Barry Bonds? 

The problem with this statistics-based approach to judging the return of health and safety to our city is twofold. 

The first is that some of the actions which would eventually lead to permanent violence reduction in the long-term may actually cause a spike in violence in the short-term. One of these we have discussed before: open-air drug markets. These are some of the immediate sources of Oakland’s most horrific instances of murder, violence, and crime. Oakland’s open-air drug streets and corners are controlled by a complex array of drug gangs operating under various forms of hierarchy, alliances, and territorial boundaries. When these alliances are stable, there is a lessening of territorial disputes and attempts to take over each other’s turf, thus a lessening of drug-related shootings, thus a lowering of the city’s murder rate. But when police come in a break up some of the more lucrative drug-dealing areas, groups can converge from different factions and different parts of the city to try to fill the vacuum, sometimes resulting in bloody turf wars. The more effective the police are in shutting off these outlets, the more the profits of the drug gangs are squeezed, the more violent become their wars over the remaining profit centers. The danger is that in responding to persistent public calls to lower the murder rate, police are tempted to let things be, and allow many of the long-term, open-air drug dealing to go on unmolested. Perhaps it is this type of thinking which has allowed some open-air drug centers to operate in some of the darker and poorer areas of the city, seemingly unimpeded by police, since the years the crack trade began. 

The other danger to using the homicide rate as our immediate measure of success in city safety is that a serious, adult attack on the long-term causes of Oakland’s crime and violence is not going to have any immediate, measurable effect, not, at least, one that can be put down in a graph on the front page of the Tribune or the East Bay Express. In the last 20 years—coinciding with the rise of the crack trade and the continued erosion of the city’s industrial workplace base—many of neighborhoods and communities have witnessed an enromous period of uncertainty and disruption that have gone virtually ignored by the various city administrations of those times. Pile that on top of the unresolved and swept-under problems of the two centuries previous and you are left with an enormous reservoir of problems that are not going to be resolved with a clever six or seven month program typed into a computer by New York consultants. 

And the problem of crime and violence is only one of Oakland’s present difficulties. There are myriad more. 

Does this make the task hopeless? Impossible? Hardly. But it’s not the sort of task that’s going to be finished in a day. Or a month. Or even a single mayoral administration, no matter how bright and promising it may appear at its offset. 

The administration of the City of Oakland is Ron Dellums’, for the next four years, at least, and fairly won. 

What he needs now is a little space. And some help. 


About the House: The Real Deal About Condo Inspection

By Matt Cantor
Friday January 05, 2007

I’m always afraid to start talking about the practice of home inspection, fearing that it will seem self-serving but hey, I can serve myself! Actually, I think this sort of discussion is valuable and I wouldn’t try to waste your time if it weren’t. I never fail in my awareness that a column becomes birdcage liner pretty darned quick when it doesn’t provide something of worth. 

About 20 percent of the inspections I do involve condominiums and inspecting condos always involves a frustrating and complex problem. What do we do about the other parts of the property that my client isn’t actually buying (or are they?). The tricky thing about this particular nut and the cracking thereof is that while my client may be presented with the other parts as being completely protected against all evil and nastiness, it ain’t necessarily going to work out that way. 

Let me start out by saying when I will do the inside of a condo and be satisfied with this as a complete process. First, I want the condo to be one of many. Let’s say more than 30 and never less than eight as an absolute minimum. Why, you may rightly ask (you’re so smart)? Because as a condo owner, you will generally be financially responsible for a percentage of all maintenance, repair and improvement costs and if you are buying a condo that has only four units, that’s usually going to be 25 percent (although uneven percentage splits are not uncommon). 

Twenty-five percent of the cost of a foundation, a roof or a major pest clearance can still be a great deal of money and it might be nice to have some sense of what’s coming at the point at which you buy. 

On the other hand, if you’re buying into a building or community of 100 units, a 1 percent responsibility isn’t all that great, although a roof job for a very large building can be a whole lot of money. 

So it’s important to consider, in choosing to inspect (or to not inspect) the other parts of the building, whether you may end up bearing some of the costs for a range of repairs that were never discussed during the sale process. 

Let me take a second to clarify, in brief, what I inspect when I do solely the interior of a condo. This is the standard form, by the way, and your realtor may be accustomed to this as the common method (although they may be quite open to an alternative). An interior inspection inspects only those parts that are inside the unit and include the kitchen, baths, usually one interior electrical panel, the force of the shower, the loose toilet, a cracked or stuck window, and so forth. 

The parts that aren’t included are the roof, the exterior of the building, the foundation, the main electrical, water and gas connections, the site, the crawlspace (is it wet?), etc. The unseen items can make up quite a list, although the Home Owner’s Association (HOA) is, as a general rule, financially responsible for all of these components. 

Another reason to inspect all of the building, as opposed to the interior of your unit alone, is that this particular building happens to be older. Now old, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. I’m old and I’m great, but old buildings have problems that modern buildings don’t. They’re more apt to be damaged in an earthquake, unless retrofitting has already been done and done well (I see a lot of poorly done retrofits). They’re more likely to have unsafe wiring, worn out heating equipment and bad roofing.  

By the way, the age of a building is also an issue that I’d use as a basis for whether I’d be willing to do an “interior-only” inspection. 

While you may be only a 3 percent owner in your building, this array of issues might still be important to you (and should be). This isn’t to say that the HOA won’t pay for the things it’s responsible for, but the first thing you, as a buyer, should be determining is: what’s the state of the building I’m considering buying into and putting my body inside of. Is it safe? Will it need major upgrading? Will I have to push to get 25 other folks to bring it up to a reasonable state of safety?  

You may have great success in all these things but it’s fair and reasonable to know that this is what’s on the slate for you to do as opposed to moving into a building that has a clean bill of health and will prove fairly trouble free.  

I don’t feel as though it’s my job to dissuade a buyer from taking on a range of real or potential problems. The property might be a terrific deal and just right for them, all troubles included. The important thing is that the buyer have the chance to see what they’re taking on. Although it may appear that condo ownership is trouble-free, it’s not quite so. I think condo ownership is a great choice for many but it’s not absolution from all care of the home. 

While I like to have the chance to inspect the rest of the building, I must admit that one of the things that will ease my concerns about building issues in general is the presence of a nice big cash reserve held by the HOA. Most HOAs maintain several thousand dollars (obviously varying hugely with size and condition) for the repair and maintenance of the building.  

Some HOAs have very little in reserve and this should always be cause for some discussion regarding the “what-ifs” of home ownership. What if there’s a fire? What is unit C floods unit A because a hose burst on Ms. Friedan’s washing machine and ruined Ms. Steinem’s nice oak floors below? These are the sorts of things that reserves are designed to pay for in addition to the more obvious roofing, painting and so forth. As any homeowner will tell you, there’s always something to pay for when you own a house (or 10 units). 

Knowledge is power and it’s always nice to have a little more power, especially when you’re making a large investment. If you’re buying a condo, an inspection is a darned good idea and spending a bit more to see what the building is like may be wise too. 

Talk to your home inspector when you’re getting ready to do this. Chances are that for an extra hundred or two, you can find out what sort of building you’re moving into. Remember, that other stuff can matter a lot. 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Garden Variety: Hardy and Engaging: Rowntree and Native Plants in New Edition

By Ron Sullivan
Friday January 05, 2007

Oh boy, did I get a great Yule present. Joe gave me a copy of the new edition of Lester Rowntree’s classic Hardy Californians. If no one gave you one, remedy that immediately. 

It’s worth having even if you’ve got a copy of the first edition on your shelf. Additional material by Lester B. Rowntree and Judith Larner Lowry would be worth the book’s price, and there a handy concordance appended that lists the current taxonomic names of the plants in the original, many of which have been reclassified since its publication in 1936. The California Academy of Sciences has collected lots of Rowntree’s personal notes, an invaluable resource these writers present handsomely to the rest of us. 

I just missed Lester Rowntree by a couple of California years. I keep meeting interesting people who knew her personally. I’m just a tad bitter that I never had the chance to meet her myself before she died—at the age of 100—in 1979.  

Her friends and students tell me she was the character a reader meets in her books. This is a very engaging character indeed: knowledgeable, witty, practical, independent in mind and habits, perceptive, and unreservedly in love with the land and the plants she encountered.  

And physically tough. She rambled all over California’s wildlands, over the Sierra and through the deserts, in one of those great clunky old 1930s coupes with running boards—passenger seat removed to make room for her equipment—or on foot, sometimes with a burro named Skimpy to caddy. 

These impedimenta were mostly plant presses, reference books, samples and seeds and storage for them, film holders and big box cameras. She herself required little: a homemade bedroll and garden tools, and presumably a change of clothing, a pot or two, and a stash of beans and raisins. No tent; in bad weather she tucked up in the car. Otherwise, she liked her world first-hand and immediate: 

“The best places of all were in the high mountains, where I knew no one was camping above me. I used to love sleeping at the edge of the snow banks during thaw time to watch the alpines open with the rising sun.” 

The book’s title is utilitarian: Hardy Californians are plants that will thrive in gardens that get seriously cold in winter. The phrase contradicts the idea then prevalent that all California plants were semitropical or at least tender.  

“Hardy” and “tender” mean something particular to gardeners that their common usage doesn’t convey. Much as “theory” does not mean “wild guess” to scientists – it means a tested explanation for concrete facts—“hardy” means “cold-tolerant” and “tender” means the opposite. The toughest plant on Earth might be a shoreline shrub who endures gales, salt spray, and annual drought, but has never faced deep freezes and is therefore tender.  

Rowntree’s voice is frank and forward in her book, and her first-person style makes the acquaintance with our native plants even more a pleasure. She includes growing advice that needs very little modification for us here and now’ to summarize: Know where your plants come from and how they grow there, to know what they’ll like.  

Read it yourself. It’s a good introduction to brilliant and hardy Californians, in both senses. 

 

 

Hardy Californians: A Woman’s Life with Native Plants. Lester Rowntree.  

(New, expanded edition).  

University of California Press, 2006,  

ISBN-13 978-0-520-25051-2. 

$19,95 

 


Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Friday January 05, 2007

FRIDAY, JAN. 5 

THEATER 

Azeem’s “Rude Boy” at 8 p.m. at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way and runs Thurs.-Sat. through Jan. 27. Tickets are $15-$22. 800-838-3006. 

Rough and Tumble “43 Plays for 43 Presidents” Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m. at La Val’s Subterranean Theater, 1834 Eucid Ave. through Jan. 27. Tickets are $15-$20. 499-0356. www.randt.org 

Shotgun Players “The Forest War” Thurs.-Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., through Jan 14. Sliding scale $15-$30. 841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org 

“We’ve Come Undone” Written and performed by Kayhan Hirani, monologues inspired by stories from Arab, Muslim, American and South Asian communities, at 7:30 p.m. at Revolution Books, 2425 Channing Way. Free, donations accepted. 384-1816. 

EXHIBITIONS 

Deborah Muse “Paintings and Quilts” opens at La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Ave. and runs to Feb. 24. 849-2568. 

Don Clausen Oil Paintings Abstract and Portaits at Alta Galleria, 2980 College Ave., #4. Runs through Feb. 4. 421-1255. 

“Looking Through the Children’s Eyes” Mixed media works by JoeSam. Opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14th St., Oakland. Runs through Jan. 30. 465-8928. 

“A Deluxe Autonomy: Piedmont’s First 100 Years” on display in the Oakland History Room on the second floor of Oakland’s Main Library, 125-14th St. 238-3222. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Salvadora Galan sings ancient Spanish popular songs at 9 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $12. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Ric Alexander, jazz saxophonist and his band at 5 p.m. at Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts. 238-2200 

Lady Bianca Taste of the Blues at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

2007 West Coast Open Human Beatbox Battle at 9 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $10. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Tribute to Ornette Coleman at Free Jazz Fridays at 8 p.m. at 1510 8th St. Performance Space, Oakland. Cost is $5-$15. 415-846-9432. 

Houston Jones, roots, rock, Americana at 8 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Camogie, with Robin Flower, Libby McLaren, Mary McLaughlin and Danny Carnahan at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Beep at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Grace Woods and Katie Cajigas at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Temple of Roots, Jesse Brewster Band, The Tranchermen at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Acts of Sedition, Dangers, First to Leave, Bluegill at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

The Skin Divers at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790. www.beckettsirishpub.com 

Zoe & Dave Ellis at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$7. 548-1159.  

Mark Hummel’s Blues Harmonica Blow-Out at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $22-$30. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com 

SATURDAY, JAN. 6 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Bay Area Poets Coalition open reading from 3 to 5 p.m. at Strawberyy Creek Lodge, dining hall, 1320 Addison St. Park on street, not in lodge lot. 527-9905. 

Saul Landau, author and filmmaker at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$10. 849-2568. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Goyamoon at 8 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center. Cost is $10. 849-2568. www.lapena.org 

Rim Shot at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $7-$10. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Babtunde Lea & Friends at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $12. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Thompson’s String Ticklers and The Knee Knockers in a Breakin’ up Xmas Square Dance at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $12, $5 for ages 5-18, free for 5 and under. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com  

Sotaque Baiano, Brazilian, at 8 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159. www.shattuckdownlow.com 

Katherine Peck and Michael Burles at 7:30 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

Roy Rogers & Norton Buffalo at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Macy Blackman Quartet at 9 p.m. at Downtown. 649-3810.  

Elliot Baker, folk rock, at 8 p.m. at Spuds Pizza, 3290 Adeline St. Cost is $7. 558-0881. 

The Pine Needles, The Bittersweets, Amber Rubarth at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. All ages show. Cost is $8. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com 

Only in Dreams, Point Taken, Lionheart, Break Cadence at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St., an all-ages, member-run, no alcohol, no drugs, no violence club. Cost is $5. 525-9926. 

SUNDAY, JAN. 7 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Interventions” Works by Tony Bellaver, Barbara Foster and Scott Serata. Opening reception at 2 p.m. at Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut St. in Live Oak Park. Exhibit runs to Feb. 10. 644-6893. 

“Fire in the Heart” Paintings by Foad Satterfield influenced by African art opens at the Community Gallery, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, 2450 Ashby Ave., and runs through March 2. 204-1667. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Bobs, a cappella at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $24.50-$25.50. 548-1761. www.freightandsalvage.org 

Mo’Fone! at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $10. 841-JAZZ. www.AnnasJazzIsland.com 

Don Neely’s Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, vintage ‘20s and ‘30s dancing, at 5 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $20. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Philips Marine Duo at 11 a.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344. www.nomadcafe.net 

“Voices of the Heart” Turkish and Latino songs, at 4 p.m. at The Breema Clinic, 6201 Florio St., Oakland, at College and Claremont. 428-1234. 

MONDAY, JAN. 8 

EXHIBITIONS 

“Dellums’ Inaugural Week Exhibit of Oakalnd Artists” with student work from local Oakland schools and works by local Latino artists on display at the Oakland Public Library, César Chávez Branch, 3301 East 12th St., Oakland. 535-5620. 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Phyllis Whetstone Taper will read from her novel “On Kelsey Creek” and talk about life in the 1920s Lake County at 7 p.m. at Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Jean Lamour and David Applefield at 7 p.m. at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave. 849-2087. 

Leonard Pitt, Berkeley author and chocolate aficionado, will speak about his new book, “A Small Moment of Great Illumination - Searching for Valentine Greatrakes the Master Healer” at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. www.hillsideclub.org  

Actors Reading Writers “Transplants” works by John Candeleria and Firoozeh Dumas at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave.  

Poetry Express with Jeanne Lupton at 7 p.m. at Priya Restaurant, 2072 San Pablo Ave. berkeleypoetryexpress@yahoo.com 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Blue Monday Jam at 7:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100. www.uptownnightclub.com 

Parlor Tango at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Buster Williams “Something More” at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200. www.yoshis.com  

TUESDAY, JAN. 9 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Vikram Chandra reads from his new book “Sacred Games” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Yuliyan Yordanov, Balkan folk dance, at 7 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $5. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com 

Ellen Hoffman and Singers’ Open Mic at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $6. 841-JAZZ.  

Mark Erelli at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $17.50-$18.50. 548-1761.  

Debbie Poryes & Friends at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Buster Williams “Something More” at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10-$18. 238-9200.  

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 10 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

Nomadic Rambles Storytelling, hosted by Ed Silberman at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Berkeley Poetry Slam with host Charles Ellik at 8:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $5-$7. 841-2082  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

The Crucible’s Fire Ballet “Romeo and Juliet” Wed. - Sat. at 8:30 p.m. at 1260 7th St., Oakland, through Jan. 20. Tickets are $30-$55. 444-0919. 

Trovatore, traditional Italian music at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Ed Johnson & Novo Tempo Trio at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $8. 841-JAZZ.  

Cumbiamba Eneye, Aluna at 8:30 p.m. at Ashkenaz. Cost is $15. 525-5054.  

Julio Bravo, salsa, at 9:30 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Salsa lessons at 8 p.m. Cost is $5-$10. 548-1159.  

Paul Manousos at 8:30 p.m. at the Uptown Nightclub, 1928 Telegraph, Oakland. Cost is $5. 451-8100.  

Kleptograss with Eric Thompson, Laurie Lewis, Tom Rozum, Scott Nygaard and Paul Shelasky at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Frank Gambale Natural High Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200. w 

THURSDAY, JAN. 11 

EXHIBITIONS 

Art to Action on Berkeley Creeks Photographs Opening reception at 5 p.m. at River of Words Gallery, Sawtooth Building, 2547 8th St., #13B. 848-9358. 

“Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Non-Violence” Books, posters, speechs and other items on display in honor of King’s birthday at te Oakland Public Library, Rockridge Branch, 5366 College Ave. 597-5017. 

“La Raza Uprising” Photographs by Francisco J. Dominguez. Reception at 6 p.m. at The Asian Resource Gallery, 310 8th St. and Harrison, Oakland.  

FILM 

A Theater Near You “Army of Shadows” at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu 

READINGS AND LECTURES 

“A Legacy of Beauty: The Life and Work of Julia Morgan” presentation by Mark Wilson at 7:30 p.m. at Chapel of the Chimes. Sponsored by Oakland Heritage Alliance. Donation $8-$10. 763-9218. www.oaklandheritage.org  

“The Art of Gaman” Lecture by Delphine Hirasuna on the arts and crafts of Japanese Americans detained in WWII internment camps, at 1 p.m. at the Oakland Museum of California, 10th and Oak Sts, Oakland. 238-2200. 

Bocalicious Spoken Word at 7 p.m. at Nomad Cafe, 6500 Shattuck Ave. 595-5344.  

Vendela Vida reads from “Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500. 

Rachel Sarah reads from “Single Mom Seeking Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches from the Dating World” at 7:30 p.m. at East Bay Jewish Community Center, 1414 Walnut St. Sponsored by Black Oak Books. 486-0698.  

MUSIC AND DANCE 

Rebecca Riots at 8 p.m. at Freight and Salvage. Cost is $18.50-$19.50. 548-1761.  

Fourtet with Kasey Knudsen at 8 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island, 2120 Allston Way. Cost is $5. 841-JAZZ.  

Travis Jones & Friends at 7 p.m. at Caffe Trieste, 2500 San Pablo Ave., at Dwight. 548-5198.  

Go Go Fightmaster, Doublestroke at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $6. 841-2082. 

Fun with Finnoula at 9:30 p.m. at Beckett’s Irish Pub, 2271 Shattuck Ave. 647-1790.  

Frank Gambale Natural High Trio at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $12-$20. 238-9200.


Arts and Entertainment Around the East Bay

Friday January 05, 2007

NEW SHOW AT BERKELEY ART CENTER 

 

An opening reception will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday for an exhibition of works by Tony Bellaver, Barbara Foster and Scott Serata at the Berkeley Art Center. The show runs through Feb. 10. 1275 Walnut St., in Live Oak Park.644-6893.  

 

HOLIDAY SQUARE DANCE AT ASHKENAZ 

 

Thompson’s String Ticklers and The Knee Knockers will be the featured performers at Ashkenaz’s “Breakin’ Up X-Mas Square Dance” at 7 p.m. Saturday. Admission is $12 for adults, $5 for ages 5-18, and free for children under the age of 5. 1317 San Pablo Ave. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com.  

 

A ‘FIRE BALLET’ VERSION OF ‘ROMEO AND JULIET’ 

 

The Crucible will stage its “fire ballet” production of Romeo and Juliet at 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays through Jan. 20. 1260 Seventh St., Oakland. $30-$55. 444-0919. 

 

HITCHCOCK CLASSICS IN EL CERRITO 

 

The newly refurbished Cerrito Theater in El Cerrito will kick off a series of four classic Alfred Hitchcock thrillers this weekend with Vertigo (1958), the seminal classic starring Jimmy Stewart filmed on the steep streets of San Francisco. The film shows at 9 p.m. Friday, 5 p.m. Saturday and at 5 p.m. Sunday. Later films in the series include Rear Window (1954), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960), starring Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and Janet Leigh as a woman on the run after stealing money from her employer. 10070 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito. www.picturepubpizza.com.


Moving Pictures: ‘Painted Veil’ a Long Journey Over Rough Terrain

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday January 05, 2007

Based on a novel by Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil, opening today at the Albany Twin, tells a mannered and melodramatic tale. The actors are great—Edward Norton and Naomi Watts deliver fine performances as a couple navigating the difficult terrain of both their young marriage and of cholera-ravaged rural China—but it’s just not enough to carry the weight of a burdensome drama. 

Watts plays a spoiled and rather petulant young woman who finds herself married, almost against her will, to Norton’s considerate if dull and overly studious young scientist. When her infidelity threatens their fragile marriage he vengefully drags her—over the longest and most arduous route possible—to China, where he is to contribute his knowledge and skill to lessening the impact of a cholera epidemic.  

What follows is an intriguing micro/macro staging of themes as the two resist, resent and finally come to respect each other, the drama unfolding against a backdrop of British colonialism in which the two cultures find themselves in precisely the same predicament.  

It is a story with great promise and great intentions, but it just doesn’t come off. Aside from the tediously Eurocentric perspective, the trouble is that the enormity of the epidemic, as well as the increasingly relevant themes of Western imperialism and occupation, render the domestic portion of the drama trite and uninteresting. In the context of a never-ending “war on terror” and a disastrous occupation of Iraq, the problems of two little people just don’t amount to a hill of beans, to paraphrase another, more successful geopolitical melodrama. In fact, Casablanca is an instructive example in this case. Michael Curtiz’s 1942 film solved this dilemma by making its characters larger than life and with emotions to match. The Painted Veil by contrast keeps its characters small and thus they are overwhelmed by the international political drama that is intended as their backdrop. 

The Maugham novel was written in 1925 as part of the then-popular Westerners Adrift In The Orient genre. Though director John Curran and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner made changes to the story, leavening some of its bleakness with greater understanding between characters and cultures, they curiously retained much of the novel’s chauvinism. While the action concerns cultures getting to know and appreciate one another, the construction of the film itself still sees the Chinese merely as picturesque background material, and indeed much of the understanding the cultures need to come to involves the silly natives simply learning to appreciate the intelligence and integrity of their white savior. Likewise, the domestic plot covers the same ground, with Watt’s selfish young hussy eventually being made to comprehend and bow down to the Great Man that is her husband. Sure, both the husband and Westerners in general are presented as flawed and fallible, but in the end the message is clear: Daddy knows best. 

The film hits a few other snags along the way. Too much of Curran’s direction seems borrowed from the Merchant-Ivory playbook of costume drama adaptation, a school of filmmaking capable of reaching great artistic heights but which in lesser hands revels in overwrought staging, with a tendency to lean too heavily on clothing and set design to establish tone.  

But the most damning flaw comes in the clichéd final scene, when Watts runs into a former lover on the street. The whole scene is ludicrous, seeking to wrap up the film with one of those ubiquitous bookend sequences that place the protagonist right back where she began. The full-circle conclusion is a valid device of course, but it is frequently abused in so many simplistic mainstream productions, and here it is handled clumsily. The gratuitous encounter only undermines the film’s aspirations toward artistry, confirming the triteness of its design. And to top it off, once she finishes the conversation, Watts turns to walk away while the camera pulls back to over-emphasize the symbolism as she steps across the streetcar tracks, leaving behind a former life and a former self and crossing over to a higher plane.  

After two hours of tedium, we’re hard-pressed to care. 

 

THE PAINTED VEIL 

Directed by John Curran. Written by Ron Nyswaner. Based on the novel by Somerset Maugham. Starring Edward Norton, Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber. Rated PG-13. 125 minutes. Playing at the Albany Twin. 

 

Photograph: Naomi Watts and Edward Norton play a young couple navigating the difficult terrain of a troubled marriage against a backdrop of cholera-ravaged China.


The Theater: Local Stage in 2006 Was Worthy of a Curtain Call

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday January 05, 2007

The dawn of a new year, as I reflect on the stage performances of 2006 ... if the old holiday adage is true, that good things come in small packages, it’s particularly true of theater in the East Bay. Last year held a few welcome surprises, and they were mostly on the boards trod by small companies. 

Incredibly, there are more than 400 theater companies and projects in the Bay Area, maybe five or six times the number 20 years ago or so. With such a wealth of ever-changing productions, it means a greater range of styles and material to choose from than ever—and that no single spectator or reviewer can even begin to keep track of, much less see, all of it. 

That also means just what the past year’s experience has borne out: any time a spectator feels jaded that the possibilities of the local stage have been plumbed, she or he will be proven wrong—very likely by some unassuming show dropped in on in some unexpected venue. Nobody, in any sense, has seen it all. 

A couple of cases in point: approaching Alameda’s Altarena Playhouse production of Death of a Salesman, I wondered how much even a venerable community theater could mine from a much-produced and discussed postwar classic, a difficult play even for the greatest of professionals. But Sue Trigg’s direction and a good ensemble brought out lyrical and wryly humorous elements, seldom seen in stagings of Miller plays, in an integral performance, a triumph by any standards.  

And fledgling Ten Red Hen put on a poor mouth production of a big commercial (and usually hi-tech) musical as The 99 Cent Miss Saigon at the Willard School Metal Shop. By playing it straight, as they flaunted “cheap” production values, Ten Red Hen somehow registered a critique of the play’s view of the war in Vietnam, and an unlikely venue became a lively cabaret. Their Clown Blue debuts in March. 

Some smaller companies consolidated their gains in experience, setting new horizons for the future. TheatreFIRST, with their excellent production values and international, socially thematic focus, made themselves the only resident troupe in downtown Oakland in their Old Oakland Theatre on 9th off Broadway. Shotgun Players, who found a home at Ashby Stage, produced an important theater lab series on offnights and, with their past three shows (Ragnarok, Love Is a Dream House in Lorin and The Forest War), including their first commissions, seem to be developing a kind of broadly populist house style of storytelling. And Stan Spenger, founder of Subterranean Shakespeare, put on a lively Richard III at the Berkeley Art Center. He also showed a good hand with Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler for Actors Ensemble, who elected him president of the Berkeley community troupe. 

Community theater has been thriving, not only with Actors Ensemble and Altarena, but with the splendid, mostly amateur Masquers of Pt. Richmond and the more semi-pro Contra Costa Civic, both celebrating many decades of playing. 

An unusual community project realized onstage, the medieval Islamic fable about human stewardship of the world, Island of Animals, brought director, adaptor and scholar Hafiz Karmali from Paris for a joint production with a truly diverse cast, by Fremont’s Afghan Alliance and Golden Thread, the vigorous and important producer of the ReOrient play festival and other cultural events concerning Middle Eastern identity. Occasionally, Golden Thread has joined forces with Oakland’s Darvag, playing in both English and Farsi, for audiences of all ages and cultures. 

Central Works continued in its years of excellence at the Berkeley City Club, a revival of cofounder Gary Graves’ Andromache showing some of the dense theatricality of its Racinean inspiration. Fledgling Ragged Wing staged its second show with The Snow Queen, and will be opening its own physical-style version of The Tempest later this month. 

Some smaller companies, like Oakland’s Eastenders, with their one-act festivals on themes like “100 Years of Political Theater” and “Sex Acts,” and brand-new Arclight, have produced shows in San Francisco—and other memorable performances have been passing through, like Russian actor-director Oleg Liptsin’s stylized show of Beckett’s Happy Days that Antares Ensemble produced, or SF’s Exit Theater in-residence troupe Mugwumpin’s riffing off “Frankie & Johnnie” at Shotgun’s Lab. Woman’s Will staged all-female Shakespeare in the parks and Brecht-Weill’s Happy End at Luka’s Taproom. 

Small opera companies put on several of the most energetically theatrical shows, with Berkeley Opera’s brilliantly staged premiere of Clark Suprynowicz’s Chrysalis—with a wry libretto about a cosmetics exec and her in-the-mirror doppelganger by Berkeley playwright John O’Keefe—and Oakland Opera Theater’s two innovative stagings (Anthony Davis’ extraordinary “X”--the life of Malcolm X, to be reprised this spring—and Philip Glass’ Les Enfants Terribles, Cocteau’s tale of incest (reset in French Indochina) coming first to mind.  

The Marsh in the Gaia Buiding downtown proved itself much more than a venue for solo performance, as its stage saw a profusion of improvisation, works-in-progress, family shows and its founder’s own compound of poetry, choral music, dance and narrative—a kind of personal re-creation myth, Aphrodisia. 

Excellence played in bigger, more established venues, too. Aurora—which started small, in the City Club—staged a fine Master Builder, with founder Barbara Oliver directing James Carpenter and Lauren Grace in an exciting revival of Ibsen’s ironic anatomy of middle class illusions. 

At Berkeley Rep, Glass Menagerie, tinged with the bittersweet Tennessee Williams’ sometimes Chaplinesque comedy, was topped by Rita Moreno’s triumphant break from typecasting as an exotic in her portrayal of Southern Belle-manque Amanda with true Pirandellian humor. CalPerformances featured international touring shows, notably Ratan Thiyyam’s stage poem of the Indian Army occupation of his native Manipur, while the UC performing arts departments produced an ambitious, ongoing new program of diverse contemporary works.  

And to touch again on Arthur Miller, Berkeley’s Joy Carlin scored a hit, directing a splendid cast in a strangely funny late Miller morality play of sorts, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, at the SF Playhouse, near Union Square. 

With this wealth of performance and more, whether you catch a musical outdoors at Woodminster or an interclub competition of conjurors and mentalists at the Oakland Magic Circle, the truth strikes home, from the threat a great director once made of returning to the audience—just to be a spectator again: “that’s the greatest profession in the world!” 

 

Contributed photo : One of the best of 2006: Berkeley Opera staged the premiere of Clark Suprynowicz’s Chrysalis, a wry libretto about a cosmetics exec and her in-the-mirror doppelganger by Berkeley playwright John O’Keefe.


Howard Wiley Makes Recording of his Angola Project

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday January 05, 2007

“Don’t switch the groove up at the beginning of the solo,” says Oakland saxophonist Howard Wiley across the studio to his drummer, Sly Randolph, then counts out a cue for the rest of the ensemble of singers and instrumentalists. 

The drums roll mordantly like a New Orleans funeral march, two basses (Devon Hoff and David Ewell) strike up, two violins (Yedua Caesar and Vivian McBride) sound mournfully, and soprano Janine Anderson comes in singing high, melismatic notes as Wiley intones on tenor below her—and the recording of “Trouble of the World” for the CD of Howard Wiley and the Angola Project gets back on track on the Friday before New Year’s at Coast Recorders, Mission Street, San Francisco.  

The CD of Howard Wiley and the Angola Project—inspired by field shouts and spirituals from Angola State Penitentiary, Louisiana—will be released Feb. 1 on Wiley’s own label, High Cotton Productions. 

“We’re looking for promotion and distribution,” said Rob Woodworth of the Jazz House, formerly on Adeline Street in Berkeley, where he met Howard Wiley a few years ago. 

“Howard would come in very late, after his gigs, to the Tuesday night jam sessions and blow the doors off,” Woodworth said. “I had to find out who this guy was, what he was all about.”  

Woodworth now works with Wiley, helping with business and promotion for the Angola Project, and Howard continues to play for jazz house events, recently improvising with a dancer for a Free Jazz Friday in Woodworth’s series near West Oakland BART (www.thejazzhouse.org). 

Wiley’s Angola Project began two years ago, when his old friend Daniel Atkinson, who had been looking into the music from Angola Penitentiary, “cornered me,” as Howard puts it, and made him listen to the field recordings. 

“I didn’t want to listen,” he said, “Who would want to listen to prison music, I mean the subjects that come to mind. But Daniel played ‘Rise and Fly,’ and it was music from the soul, the kind of songs I’d only read about, from slavery, sharecropping, chain-gangs, but kept alive, and has the same thing that attracted me to Coltrane playing ‘A Love Supreme.’ It’s out of Blues and church music, but so different. I compare it to food, what my mother puts in her pies: is it the cinnamon, what is it? But it’s got it.”  

Now the group’s starting up again after a glitch. Howard clowns around bawdily for a minute, getting the players and singers giggling—an onstage habit, too—then sketches in a little more of what he wants. Gradually, over a few takes, the number fills out, more body’s added by those taking part. Danny Armstrong joins in, making a muted trombone talk eloquently as Janine’s voice spirals up to the ceiling. 

“Danny just retired from the Postal Service,” says scat singer Lauren Benedict, in the booth between numbers. He also plays with singer LaVay Smith and other popular Bay Area groups. “He’s up on a level with any trombonist in the country,” Howard will say later. 

Armstrong isn’t the only local luminary in the session. Vocalist Faye Carol is back in the corner, scatting to “Trouble of the World,” singing, “Soon will be done/Trouble of the world/Trouble of the world/Coming home to see my God.” 

And as the group was setting up for the number, a man in a hat briskly exited down the corridor, carrying a saxophone case—David Murray, long a national figure in jazz, who Howard met when the World Saxophone Quartet played a tribute to the Grateful Dead at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. 

“He did a talk later, when the East Side Arts Alliance in Oakland opened their new space, then played afterwards, and I played with him,” Wiley said. “A fellow Bay Area saxophonist. I knew he’d gone to school with my uncle and my father, and when I mentioned it, he said, ‘I know your people!’ He laid down some extremely powerful and passionate tracks. David Murray and Faye Carol listen to them from the ’70s or last week at the studio—timeless.” 

The Angola Project debuted live some months back at the Mission District’s Intersection for the Arts, with a cellist instead of violins. The next live appearance will be at Jazz At Pearl’s in North Beach, Feb. 23 and 24. This summer, Howard and Daniel will be taking a trip south, back to Angola. 

“The Project is ever-evolving,” says Howard, “Always expanding more and more ...” 

Daniel’s in the booth, talking about the harsh conditions at Angola, “a model prison farm!”—and about Howard, up and running all day, usually on “a couple little instant pancakes ... but I don’t think he’s eaten at all today.” The videographer documenting the whole process scurries up and down a ladder, adjusting lights. Howard looks askance at Anderson and nods, and she starts up “Trouble of the World” again, really warbling it out, as the basses pick up, and the violins play pizzacato under a low, sassing trombone solo. Howard purses his lips, arching his eyebrows, listening, then he and his superb trumpeter, Geechi Taylor, join in as the old spiritual (”I heard it first by Mahalia Jackson”) really takes off. 

 

For more information on Howard Wiley and the Angola Project, see www.howardwiley.com


About the House: The Real Deal About Condo Inspection

By Matt Cantor
Friday January 05, 2007

I’m always afraid to start talking about the practice of home inspection, fearing that it will seem self-serving but hey, I can serve myself! Actually, I think this sort of discussion is valuable and I wouldn’t try to waste your time if it weren’t. I never fail in my awareness that a column becomes birdcage liner pretty darned quick when it doesn’t provide something of worth. 

About 20 percent of the inspections I do involve condominiums and inspecting condos always involves a frustrating and complex problem. What do we do about the other parts of the property that my client isn’t actually buying (or are they?). The tricky thing about this particular nut and the cracking thereof is that while my client may be presented with the other parts as being completely protected against all evil and nastiness, it ain’t necessarily going to work out that way. 

Let me start out by saying when I will do the inside of a condo and be satisfied with this as a complete process. First, I want the condo to be one of many. Let’s say more than 30 and never less than eight as an absolute minimum. Why, you may rightly ask (you’re so smart)? Because as a condo owner, you will generally be financially responsible for a percentage of all maintenance, repair and improvement costs and if you are buying a condo that has only four units, that’s usually going to be 25 percent (although uneven percentage splits are not uncommon). 

Twenty-five percent of the cost of a foundation, a roof or a major pest clearance can still be a great deal of money and it might be nice to have some sense of what’s coming at the point at which you buy. 

On the other hand, if you’re buying into a building or community of 100 units, a 1 percent responsibility isn’t all that great, although a roof job for a very large building can be a whole lot of money. 

So it’s important to consider, in choosing to inspect (or to not inspect) the other parts of the building, whether you may end up bearing some of the costs for a range of repairs that were never discussed during the sale process. 

Let me take a second to clarify, in brief, what I inspect when I do solely the interior of a condo. This is the standard form, by the way, and your realtor may be accustomed to this as the common method (although they may be quite open to an alternative). An interior inspection inspects only those parts that are inside the unit and include the kitchen, baths, usually one interior electrical panel, the force of the shower, the loose toilet, a cracked or stuck window, and so forth. 

The parts that aren’t included are the roof, the exterior of the building, the foundation, the main electrical, water and gas connections, the site, the crawlspace (is it wet?), etc. The unseen items can make up quite a list, although the Home Owner’s Association (HOA) is, as a general rule, financially responsible for all of these components. 

Another reason to inspect all of the building, as opposed to the interior of your unit alone, is that this particular building happens to be older. Now old, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. I’m old and I’m great, but old buildings have problems that modern buildings don’t. They’re more apt to be damaged in an earthquake, unless retrofitting has already been done and done well (I see a lot of poorly done retrofits). They’re more likely to have unsafe wiring, worn out heating equipment and bad roofing.  

By the way, the age of a building is also an issue that I’d use as a basis for whether I’d be willing to do an “interior-only” inspection. 

While you may be only a 3 percent owner in your building, this array of issues might still be important to you (and should be). This isn’t to say that the HOA won’t pay for the things it’s responsible for, but the first thing you, as a buyer, should be determining is: what’s the state of the building I’m considering buying into and putting my body inside of. Is it safe? Will it need major upgrading? Will I have to push to get 25 other folks to bring it up to a reasonable state of safety?  

You may have great success in all these things but it’s fair and reasonable to know that this is what’s on the slate for you to do as opposed to moving into a building that has a clean bill of health and will prove fairly trouble free.  

I don’t feel as though it’s my job to dissuade a buyer from taking on a range of real or potential problems. The property might be a terrific deal and just right for them, all troubles included. The important thing is that the buyer have the chance to see what they’re taking on. Although it may appear that condo ownership is trouble-free, it’s not quite so. I think condo ownership is a great choice for many but it’s not absolution from all care of the home. 

While I like to have the chance to inspect the rest of the building, I must admit that one of the things that will ease my concerns about building issues in general is the presence of a nice big cash reserve held by the HOA. Most HOAs maintain several thousand dollars (obviously varying hugely with size and condition) for the repair and maintenance of the building.  

Some HOAs have very little in reserve and this should always be cause for some discussion regarding the “what-ifs” of home ownership. What if there’s a fire? What is unit C floods unit A because a hose burst on Ms. Friedan’s washing machine and ruined Ms. Steinem’s nice oak floors below? These are the sorts of things that reserves are designed to pay for in addition to the more obvious roofing, painting and so forth. As any homeowner will tell you, there’s always something to pay for when you own a house (or 10 units). 

Knowledge is power and it’s always nice to have a little more power, especially when you’re making a large investment. If you’re buying a condo, an inspection is a darned good idea and spending a bit more to see what the building is like may be wise too. 

Talk to your home inspector when you’re getting ready to do this. Chances are that for an extra hundred or two, you can find out what sort of building you’re moving into. Remember, that other stuff can matter a lot. 

 

Got a question about home repairs and inspections? Send them to Matt Cantor at mgcantor@pacbell.net.


Garden Variety: Hardy and Engaging: Rowntree and Native Plants in New Edition

By Ron Sullivan
Friday January 05, 2007

Oh boy, did I get a great Yule present. Joe gave me a copy of the new edition of Lester Rowntree’s classic Hardy Californians. If no one gave you one, remedy that immediately. 

It’s worth having even if you’ve got a copy of the first edition on your shelf. Additional material by Lester B. Rowntree and Judith Larner Lowry would be worth the book’s price, and there a handy concordance appended that lists the current taxonomic names of the plants in the original, many of which have been reclassified since its publication in 1936. The California Academy of Sciences has collected lots of Rowntree’s personal notes, an invaluable resource these writers present handsomely to the rest of us. 

I just missed Lester Rowntree by a couple of California years. I keep meeting interesting people who knew her personally. I’m just a tad bitter that I never had the chance to meet her myself before she died—at the age of 100—in 1979.  

Her friends and students tell me she was the character a reader meets in her books. This is a very engaging character indeed: knowledgeable, witty, practical, independent in mind and habits, perceptive, and unreservedly in love with the land and the plants she encountered.  

And physically tough. She rambled all over California’s wildlands, over the Sierra and through the deserts, in one of those great clunky old 1930s coupes with running boards—passenger seat removed to make room for her equipment—or on foot, sometimes with a burro named Skimpy to caddy. 

These impedimenta were mostly plant presses, reference books, samples and seeds and storage for them, film holders and big box cameras. She herself required little: a homemade bedroll and garden tools, and presumably a change of clothing, a pot or two, and a stash of beans and raisins. No tent; in bad weather she tucked up in the car. Otherwise, she liked her world first-hand and immediate: 

“The best places of all were in the high mountains, where I knew no one was camping above me. I used to love sleeping at the edge of the snow banks during thaw time to watch the alpines open with the rising sun.” 

The book’s title is utilitarian: Hardy Californians are plants that will thrive in gardens that get seriously cold in winter. The phrase contradicts the idea then prevalent that all California plants were semitropical or at least tender.  

“Hardy” and “tender” mean something particular to gardeners that their common usage doesn’t convey. Much as “theory” does not mean “wild guess” to scientists – it means a tested explanation for concrete facts—“hardy” means “cold-tolerant” and “tender” means the opposite. The toughest plant on Earth might be a shoreline shrub who endures gales, salt spray, and annual drought, but has never faced deep freezes and is therefore tender.  

Rowntree’s voice is frank and forward in her book, and her first-person style makes the acquaintance with our native plants even more a pleasure. She includes growing advice that needs very little modification for us here and now’ to summarize: Know where your plants come from and how they grow there, to know what they’ll like.  

Read it yourself. It’s a good introduction to brilliant and hardy Californians, in both senses. 

 

 

Hardy Californians: A Woman’s Life with Native Plants. Lester Rowntree.  

(New, expanded edition).  

University of California Press, 2006,  

ISBN-13 978-0-520-25051-2. 

$19,95 

 


Berkeley This Week

Friday January 05, 2007

FRIDAY, JAN. 5 

Impeachment Banner Fridays at 6:45 to 8 a.m. on the Berkeley Pedestrian bridge between Seabreeze Market and the Berkeley Aquatic Park, ongoing on Fridays until impeachment is realized. www. Impeachbush-cheney.com 

Report on Lebanon with Dr. Paul Larudee on his visits during the summer of 2006, at 7 p.m. at St. Joseph the Worker Church, 1640 Addison St. Free. 845-4740. 

“Who Killed the Electric Car?” A documentary and presentation by the Sierra Club at 7:30 p.m. at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland. Donation of $5 acccepted. www.HumanistHall.net 

Red Cross Blood Drive from noon to 6 p.m. at MLK Student Union, UC Campus. To schedule an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com (code UCB) 

Circle Dancing, simple folk dancing with instruction at 7:30 p.m. at Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut St at University. Donation of $5 requested. 528-4253. www.circledancing.com 

SATURDAY, JAN. 6 

Save the Oaks Spiral Dance led by Reclaiming Collective, to celebrate the tree-sitters’ one month anniversary defending the trees, at 2 p.m. at the oak grove just below Memorial Stadium on Piedmont Ave., north of Bancroft Ave. and International House. 548-3113. www.SaveOaks.com 

Sick Plant Clinic Dr. Robert Raabe, plant pathologist, and Dr. Nick Mills, entomologist, will diagnose plant illnesses and recommend remedies. Bring a piece of the plant in a securely sealed container. A zipperlock bag is ideal. From 9 a.m. to noon at Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Dr. 643-2755. 

Code Pink Bake Sale from 2 to 5 p.m. at the top of Solano Ave. Money raised will help fund activists against the war working in Washington D.C. 524-2776. 

Help “Save The Bay” Plant Natives from 9 a.m. to noon at Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland. RSVP requested. 452-9261 ext. 109. www.savesfbay.org  

French Broom Removal Help remove this invasive plant from our parks, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Redwood Regional Park, Oakland. We provide tools. Meet at Skyline Gate staging area, 8500 Skyline Blvd. Oakland. 925-756-0195. www.ebparks.org 

“Slug and Salamander Sleuths” Investigate the slippery lives of these creatures through story, song, nature walk, and craft, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 636-1684. 

Kid’s Garden Club for ages 6-9 to explore the world of gardening, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Dress to get dirty. Cost is $6-$8, registration required. 636-1684. 

“The Mosque of Paris: A Forgotten Resistance” Documentary film and presentation on how the Muslim community of Paris saved Jews in Nazi-occupied France. Discussion with Dr. Annette Herskovits who survived the the Holocaust as a child in France. At 7 p.m. at Berkeley UU Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar at Bonita. Sponsored by the UU Social Justice Committee. 528-5403. 

“Cuba and Latin America, Adelante!” Interview with author and filmmaker Saul Landau by Casa Cuba’s Karen Lee Wald, at 7:30 p.m. at La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $7-$10 sliding scale. 636-1684. 

Movies that Matter “The Last Temptation of Christ” at 6:30 p.m. at Neumayer Residence, 565 Bellevue St. at Perkins, Oakland. Free. 451-3009. http://joyfulharmony.org  

Freedom from Tobacco Quit Smoking Class from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and runs for six Saturdays. Option of free acupuncture included. For information call 981-5330. quitnow@ci.berkeley.ca.us 

Sickle Cell Presentation and Discussion at 3 p.m. at the African American Museum and Library, 659 14th St., Oakland, in conjunction with the “Can We Spare Some Change? - A Change in Attitude” Exhibition. 637-0200. 

Sunset Walk in Emeryville Meet at 3:30 p.,m. behind Chevy’s Restaurant at the small parking lot for an hour walk through the Marina. Rain cancels. Wheelchair accessible. 234-8949. 

Luna Kids Dance Open House from 1 to 3 p.m. at Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, Studio C, 2640 College Ave. 644-3629. 

The Berkeley Lawn Bowling Club provides free instruction at 10:30 a.m. at 2270 Acton St. 841-2174.  

Petite Pooches Playgroup for small dogs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., one block north of Solano on Ensenada at Talbot. 524-2459. 

SUNDAY, JAN. 7 

“Hoot with Winter Owls” Learn the night-time calls of owls that inhabit Tilden’s forests and discover fact, fiction and fables about owls at 11 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 636-1684. 

“Open Garden” Join the Little Farm gardener for composting, planting, watering and reaping the rewards of our work, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. Cancelled only by heavy rain. 525-2233. www.ebparks.org 

“Newt Hunt” Every winter, newts return to our freshwater ponds to breed. Catch a glimpse of the incredible mating behavior of newts from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Area, Tilden Park. 636-1684. 

“Sausal Creek Canyons Hike” Join a challenging one-way hike through Sausal Creek canyons and green hillsides to reach gorgeous bay views from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. We will return to our starting place by bus. Bring snacks, water, layered clothing, good hiking boots, sun or rain gear as necessary, and bus fare. Reservations required. 415-255-3233. www.greenbelt.org 

Lake Merritt Neighbors Organized for Peace at 3 p.m. at the colonnade at the NE end of the lake. 763-8712. lmno4p.org 

Tibetan Buddhism with Sylvia Gretchen on “Timeless Advice from the Tibetan Tradition” at 6 p.m. at the Tibetan Nyingma Institute, 1815 Highland Pl. 843-6812.  

MONDAY, JAN. 8  

National Organization for Women Oakland/East Bay Chapter meets at 6 p.m. at the Oakland YWCA, 1515 Webster St. The speaker will be Robin Nanni, president of Local 535 Service Employees International Union. 287-8948. 

Berkeley CopWatch organizational meeting at 8 p.m. at 2022 Blake St.548-0425. 

TUESDAY, JAN. 9 

“Stop the Violence - Share the Dream” to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr at noon at 300 Lakeside Drive, Second Floor Auditorium. 464-7139. 

Berkeley High School Governance Council meets at 4:15 p.m. in the Community Theater Lobby. Agenda items include Update on UC approved courses, Maintenance and Safety Plans and Attendance Policy. 644-4803. 

Why You Need A Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-5190. 

Opportunities Abounding Public Forum on Arts Education Explore ideas on creating equitable classrooms sponsored by Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership, Alameda County Office of Education at 6 p.m. at the Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave., Oakland RSVP appreciated. www.artISeducation.org 

“How to be Healthy through Holistic Therapy” with Su Jok, a therapy that uses stimulation of acupuncture points on the hand and foot to bring symptom relief, at 7 p.m. at El Cerrito Library, 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Free, all welcome. 526-7512.  

Red Cross Blood Drive from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Port of Oakland, 530 Water St. To scheduale an appointment go to www.BeADonor.com (code PORT) 

Navigating with National Geographic Learn how to use a GPS with National Geographic mapping software at 7 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. 527-4140. 

Family Storytime at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org 

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830. 

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 10  

Oakland Celebrates the Dream in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 78th Birthday at 11:30 a.m. in Frank Ogawa Plaza, 14th St. and Broadway. 444-2489. 

Shoreline Restoration and Celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Life for middle and high school students from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline. Registration required. 704-4030. 

Volunteer in the Native Plant Nursery Help us reach our goal to plant 10,000 native wetland plants at Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline Park this winter. From 1 to 3 p.m. RSVP requested. 452-9261 ext. 109. www.savesfbay.org/bayevents  

Poetry Writing Workshop, led by Linda Elkin, at 7 p.m. at the Albany Library, 1247 Marin Ave. 526-3720, ext. 17.  

Financial Topics and You: College Funding at 6 p.m. at the Oakland Public Library, 125 14th St., Oakland. 238-3134. 

Julia Morgan School for Girls Admissions Information Meeting at 7 p.m. on the campus of Mills College, Oakland. For information and to register call 632-6000, ext. 125. 

The Culture of Japan at 1:15 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 981-5190. 

Avalanche Safety Lecture with Dick Penniman at 6 p.m. at REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $20. 527-4140. 

New to DVD “Quinceanera” at 7 p.m. at the JCCEB, 1414 Walnut St. 848-0237. 

Walk Berkeley for Seniors at 9:30 a.m. at the Sea Breeze Market, just west of the I-80 overpass. Everyone is welcome, wear comfortable shoes and a warm hat. 548-9840. 

THURSDAY, JAN. 11 

Storytime for Babies & Toddlers at 10:30 a.m. Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043. 

World of Plants Tours at 1:30 p.m. at the UC Botanical Garden, 200 Centennial Drive. Cost is $5. 643-2755. 

ONGOING 

Peace Action West, a local non-profit which promotes peace and justice, is looking for volunteers to do data entry, stuff envelopes and other tasks. Located across from the Berkeley Bowl. 849-2272, ext. 104. 

Magnes Museum Docent Training Open to all interested in Jewish art and history. Classes begin Jan. 18th. cultural.arts@sbcglobal.net 

CITY MEETINGS 

Housing Advisory Commission meets Mon., Jan. 8, at 7:30 p.m., at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5400. 

Peace and Justice Commission meets Mon., Jan. 8, at 7 p.m., at the North Berkeley Senior Center. Manuel Hector, 981-5510.  

School Board meets Wed. Jan. 10, at 7:30 p.m., in the City Council Chambers. Mark Coplan 644-6320.