Rosa Parks Elementary School went solar for a couple of days earlier this month. -more-
Berkeley High School administrators informed students this week about a change in board policy that requires all juniors and seniors who do not want their names and addresses released to the U.S. military for recruitment purposes to sign an “opt-out” form. -more-
Skewered in a city attorney’s report for incompetencies such as housing dead people in low-income apartments and obstructing investigations, Berkeley Housing Authority workers fought back at Tuesday’s BHA meeting, where the City Council approved the city manager’s recommendation to eliminate the positions of all BHA workers except the manager. -more-
A bid to designate downtown Berkeley as a priority development area (PDA) targeted for state-funded high-density development failed by a single vote Wednesday night. -more-
The City Council meeting ended in a complete meltdown just before midnight Tuesday with Councilmember Betty Olds walking out of the meeting followed by Councilmembers Max Anderson and Kriss Worthington. -more-
On Wednesday evening, the Police Review Commission (PRC) approved 3-1 new rules that will govern hearings involving complaints against police officers and set June 7 as its first hearing date since September—an action commissioners say is likely to get the city back in court facing off against the Berkeley Police Association. -more-
UC Berkeley custodians have won their equity raises, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 announced in a press release Tuesday. -more-
A last-minute lawsuit filed this week alleges the Richmond City Council violated state environmental law by signing a $310.4 million contract to provide services for a North Richmond casino. -more-
Tod Mikuriya, M.D., died Sunday at his home in the Berkeley Hills. He was 73. The cause was complications of cancer. In the final days he’d been in the care of his sisters, Beverly, an M.D. from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Mary Jane of San Francisco, and his longtime assistant, John Trapp. -more-
After Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) workers were skewered in a city attorney report for in competencies such as housing dead people in low-income apartments and obstructing investigations, they fought back at Tuesday’s BHA meeting. -more-
The Oxford Street parking lot was closed and bulldozed Monday morning, April 2. That night, nearby businesses had little business. The lot is the site of plans to build a residential housing project (called Oxford Plaza) and environmental center named in honor of the late activist David Brower. -more-
The Berkeley Housing Authority has paid rent on at least 15 units where tenants are dead—as much as two years of rent on the deceased, failed to inspect units where substandard conditions exist, and allowed ineligible family members to “inherit” a unit ahead of others on the waiting list. -more-
Poised to reaffirm its status as a city of refuge for immigrants at tonight’s (Tuesday) City Council meeting, councilmembers are likely to debate the format of the proposal—ordinance or resolution—while supporting the concept of Berkeley as a sanctuary city, a designation made first in 1971 and again in 1986. -more-
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Berkeley Friday, declaring that market forces would solve one of the greatest issues in global warming. -more-
By Judith Scherr -more-
It was good news/bad news in the Bay Area media world last week. -more-
The Berkeley Board of Education will vote Wednesday on whether to approve $750,000 in funds from the Office of Public School Construction (OPSC) and $305,000 in PG&E funds to complete a solar project for Washington Elementary School. -more-
Mayor Tom Bates has added to and clarified some elements in his Public Commons for Everyone Initiative proposal, which the City Council will be asked to address tonight (Tuesday). -more-
Berkeley High School named Cheryl Draper as its new girls’ basketball coach Monday. Draper replaced Gene Nakamura two weeks ago and her team will play their first basketball game in November. -more-
The Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) will once again hear the appeal of an administrative use permit on Thursday that would allow construction at a single-family residential building at 2008 Virginia St. -more-
Nationally known African-American talk show host Tavis Smiley brought his Road to Health Wellness Expo to the Oakland Convention Center recently, with hundreds of residents turning out to the downtown facility on May 11 and 12 to hear presentations on various aspects of healthy living, sample food and products, and get free medical testing by representatives of local health clinics and medical facilities. -more-
Drivers leaving the freeway at the Fifth street exit in San Francisco often find their cars besieged by several men carrying signs: middle-aged or older, many though not all African-American, disheveled, some with teeth missing. Frequently they wave signs, hand-lettered on cardboard boxes, saying things like “I’m a veteran who needs help.” Or “Will take any kind of job.” It’s easy to keep the windows rolled up and drive on. -more-
West Berkeley’s been the top planning controversy in the news in the last couple of weeks. On the southern flank, yet another edgy, vibrant artists’ colony is being pushed out, this one The Shipyard, a prominent contributor to the annual Burning Man extravaganza. On the north, speculators seem to have big plans for the approximately 5 acre home of the former Cal Ink company, once a central player in a small industry. In 1999 Cal Ink (now owned by Michigan’s Flint Ink) was the oldest factory in Berkeley operating at its original location. If information about their plans gleaned from the internet by Public Eye columnist Zelda Bronstein is reliable, some developers might be hoping to parlay the Berkeley City Council’s authorization for the addition of a zoning overlay for auto dealerships into much, much more. -more-
EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES OF BERKELEY DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION -more-
In separate reports, City Manager Phil Kamlarz and City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque have found gross incompetence, if not fraud, in the Berkeley Housing Authority. BHA manages a budget of $25,000,000 per year. This is supposed to provide subsidized housing for nearly 1900 needy families. The truth, as reported in the Daily Planet on May 22, is that in too many cases the money goes to ineligible persons, and even to people who are long dead. Finding “egregious violations” of federal rules, and active employee resistance to reform, Kamlarz and Albuquerque ask the mayor and City Council to replace themselves as directors of BHA with a set of Mayoral appointees, and to terminate the employment of 13 full time staffers. Strangely (given the alleged misconduct), the fired employees are to be offered equal or better positions elsewhere in the city bureaucracy. The city will kick in another $947,000 to help BHA to “transition” to something different (what exactly is not described). -more-
There have been many articles on this subject lately. To generalize, it comes down to two very broad reasons. The first is based on the desire for the Democrats to just let the bastard stew in the mess that he created and in the process take the Republicans down with him. The Dems are dreaming of winning back the presidency without having to work very hard. This is probably correct. It insulates the Dems from having to make a courageous stand on principle, an especially odious enterprise for the other corporate dominated party, but, it also makes them culpable for this endless war. This will be the Republican’s defense come next elections: You were with us on this war until it got hard. They have a point. -more-
Residents of the 2400 block of Seventh Street in Berkeley, be warned. A couple of weeks ago my sister’s little poodle, Floy, got her throat ripped out by a neighbor’s pit bull. A young man was walking past our home with this vicious dog on a leash with no muzzle, while Floy was happily romping in her yard. Being a friendly sort, the poodle ran over to greet this dog, and with no warning the pit bull seized her by the throat. There was a terrible struggle, in which my sister’s hand was somewhat mangled. The young man had no idea what to do, so he just kept beating his fist on the dog’s head until it finally relaxed its jaws enough to pull Floy loose. But, oh it was so awful! Her little jaw was crushed and her throat literally tore out. My God, it could have been the little girl who lives across the street! Why didn’t this animal have a muzzle on?! -more-
Despite the many complaints we have heard about its being “stupid,” we commend the City of Berkeley for erecting the 10-foot high self-locking gates at each entrance of the Ohlone Dog Park to prevent unauthorized persons and/or animals from entering the park during the hours in which it is closed. We have several suggestions for further improvements. -more-
Some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Some people say, “What happened?!” -more-
On May 10, the office of Mayor Tom Bates sent out a press release to announce that seven new board members have been chosen for the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA), as part of the effort to salvage the embattled agency from a HUD takeover, and to keep it under local Berkeley control. -more-
I should disclose up front that I do not generally agree with the points of view of the Daily Planet’s editorials. I find many of the editorials offensive, frankly. I was not surprised, therefore, as I read through the May 18 editorial (“Rude, Crude and in Your Face”), to find myself thinking: “What planet is Mrs. O’Malley living on?” -more-
Jonathan Wornick may be an unpleasant human being but he’s not a loose cannon. He’s a Zionist ideologue, doing the job to which he has been assigned: to keep the Peace and Justice Commission from functioning. -more-
Deja vu all over again? The longer the United States and NATO stay in Afghanistan, the more the place is looking like Vietnam: -more-
It’s bug time! The plants in the garden are just starting to thrive and get real leaves; the flowers are midway in their annual sequential display; what was mud is starting to look like future meals. -more-
Woody Allen says “When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past—and when you’re seventy, nearly all of you.” -more-
It’s been a crappy year for wildflowers, but a great one for roses. When I mistook something for a startling pink tree and then realized it was a ‘Cecile Brunner’ rose climbing fifteen feet up a utility-pole guywire, and then did the same double-take for the same cultivar climbing a tree on Sacramento Avenue, I decided to write about roses this week. -more-
BERKELEY ARTS FESTIVAL PRESENTS ‘LOVE’ -more-
Think of Japanese cinema and one of two things probably comes to mind: either the robust, action-filled, western-influenced samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa, or the more refined, restrained and elegant films of directors such as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, or Mikio Naruse. -more-
The night fears and mania of a boy are juxtaposed with two adults’ uncomfortable discoveries of ambiguity, betrayal, abandonment and the unreliability of memory in the brilliant, tortuously overlapping dialogue that powers David Mamet’s semi-autobiographical Cryptogram at the Ashby Stage in a Shotgun Players production. -more-
It’s bug time! The plants in the garden are just starting to thrive and get real leaves; the flowers are midway in their annual sequential display; what was mud is starting to look like future meals. -more-
Woody Allen says “When you're forty, half of you belongs to the past—and when you’re seventy, nearly all of you.” -more-
Due to an edited error, in the May 22 story “Chronicle Newsroom Slashed, East Bay Express Goes Indie” the new ownership of the East Bay Express was incorrectly reported. -more-
SONGS AND POEMS OF BERTOLT BRECHT -more-
In a swirl of scenes that quickly alternate between darkness and light, at first very different in what they show, then interpenetrating, Just Theater stages the Bay Area premiere of Berkeley native Anne Washburn’s “text about message,” I Have Loved Strangers, for just three more performances, through Saturday. -more-
It’s been a crappy year for wildflowers, but a great one for roses. When I mistook something for a startling pink tree and then realized it was a ‘Cecile Brunner’ rose climbing fifteen feet up a utility-pole guywire, and then did the same double-take for the same cultivar climbing a tree on Sacramento Avenue, I decided to write about roses this week. -more-
