On Monday a Fremont judge granted an injunction that broadens his earlier order, which banished one named tree-sitter, to include all occupants of the trees, as well as to bar their supporters from the Memorial Stadium oak grove. -more-

The number of Berkeley homeowners and businesses with rooftop solar collectors could multiply in the next few years, if a complex financing proposal pans out. -more-

The citizens’ oversight committee for the Peralta Community College District Measure A facilities bonds, which has not issued required minutes or a report on its activities for the year and a half since the bond measure was passed, descended into something close to disarray this month with confusion over its membership. -more-

Point towers are out for downtown Berkeley and 10-story apartment buildings are in—or eight floors for office and commercial buildings. That’s the solid consensus emerging from Monday morning’s meeting of DAPAC’s Land Use subcommittee—the six-member panel tasked with writing the new downtown plan’s central chapter. -more-

Dow Chemical, the company whose very name sparked violent student protests during the Vietnam War era, is coming back to the UC Berkeley campus. -more-

On a typical foggy Friday morning, just before 10 a.m., mothers and a few grandmothers wheel their toddlers to the front of the West Branch Library, waiting for the doors of the library to open admitting them to the toddler story hour. Once inside, strollers are deposited along the short hallway into the community meeting room. -more-

Alameda County election officials are saying that letters sent out to county voters this week indicating the recipients were not registered by party was done by mistake, and no changes have been actually made to registered voters’ party affiliation. -more-

A group of LeConte neighbors turned up at the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) meeting Thursday to protest a proposed three-story second unit at 2837 Fulton St. that, they said, was out of character with the neighborhood and would have visual and shadow impacts on the adjacent LeConte Elementary schoolyard. -more-

The half-billion-dollar biofuel contract between a British oil company and UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL), and the University of Illinois should be signed “within the next couple of weeks.” -more-

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) will vote on whether to nominate the Berkeley High School (BHS) Campus Historic District, at 1980 Allston Way, to the National Register of Historic places Thursday. -more-

Robbery -more-

UC EXPENDITURES -more-

When our students look back in time, it will be easy for them to recognize this as a key moment in history. The signing of the “bioenergy” agreement between British Petroleum and the University of California, Berkeley for a reported $500 million will be clearly visible then, in the future, as a very big step indeed, a decisive step in the wrong direction. -more-

We fought a long hard fight to win democratic elections for KPFA’s Local Station Board (LSB). One of the most important reasons for that was so that listeners could be informed by the candidates of the issues and problems and their proposed solutions. Imagine, if back in 1999 we had had the ability to communicate with all the members and to elect—and recall—the board of directors (through our elected delegates on the LSB). -more-

Concerned Listeners very much appreciates the Berkeley Daily Planet’s coverage of the current KPFA LSB elections. -more-

When I was considering running for the KPFA Local Station Board, a number of old-time activist friends told me I was crazy. There is a sectarian fringe, they said, that has placed all their hopes for getting access to an audience by gaining control over KPFA. At the same time, they explained, there was a staff that had grown comfortable with the way things are, and that would resist any effort to change things. Anybody who would put him or herself in the middle of that minefield was just plain nuts. -more-

In his well-researched Oct. 23 commentary on the cons of increasing the density of downtown and Berkeley as a whole, Neil Mayer provided me with two major negative points concerning increased density: 1) That it produces gritty, undesirable urban conditions, or 2) that increased density leads to gentrification and the ousting of working families. -more-

The debate about development in Berkeley has been polarized for decades, but a moderate position is emerging in the current debate over downtown height limits. The moderates support smart growth but oppose high-rises. I myself am a long-time advocate of smart growth. I have supported all the pedestrian-oriented infill projects built in downtown and on transit-corridors during the past 20 years, including the Gaia Building. But I am completely opposed to building 16-story or 12-story towers downtown, because I want to preserve downtown’s human scale. During the current debate over downtown density, both extremes—anti-development advocates and pro-high-rise advocates—have made misleading claims. -more-

I was sitting outside at a restaurant, on Center Street in downtown Berkeley, when my friend Martin the mailman approached. -more-

It was after 11 p.m. last Tuesday, and the council chamber was nearly empty, when Dave Blake stepped up to the lectern and used his two minutes of public comment to warn the council that its secretive ways were undermining Berkeley’s ability to generate revenue at the ballot box. Describing himself “as a citizen who’s been involved in raising money for the city”—Blake has campaigned for measures to fund the city’s library, parks and warm water pool—the former Zoning Adjustments Board member obliquely referred to the failure of the four city tax measures in November 2004: “A lot of people think that the reason we’re no longer successful in passing items in this city,” he said, “is that we’re not generating the feeling of trust between the council and the people in the city … I don’t think we’re going to be passing any two-thirds measures in the near future, unless we start to be open and clear about big decisions like this one.” -more-

These are hard times in America. There’s broad agreement our nation has lost its way and the U.S. is no longer “the shining light on the hill.” We don’t trust our leaders or believe national politicians care about the common good. Americans are uncertain and depressed. -more-

Eighty-one years ago Joseph Grinnell, director of UC’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, sat in his corner office at the edge of Faculty Glade watching a crew of arborists at work on a venerable coast live oak. Or, as he put it in his essay “Tree Surgery and the Birds,” “ ‘tree surgeons’ … under directions of a ‘landscape architect.’ ” His contempt is evident. Over the years, Grinnell had observed 46 species of birds in that oak. And he noted the removal of bits of the tree that had attracted particular species of birds: the decaying stub where the downy woodpecker drummed, the white-breasted nuthatch’s favorite foraging ground, the flycatcher’s perch. -more-

As long as we've had motion pictures, we've used them to scare ourselves. The medium is perfectly suited for it. Even the earliest filmmakers saw the potential, employing double exposures, trick shots, spooky sets and dramatic lighting to illuminate the darker side of the imagination, to bring to life the ethereal netherworlds and distorted figures of the collective unconscious. -more-