Editorials

Happy New Year to everyone, plus a belated Happy Holidays to cover all the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas when other demands on my time kept me from adding much that was new to this space. The world is, as usual, packed with problems to be addressed in 2015, but let’s focus on Berkeley for a while.

What are we likely to be obsessing about around here in the new year? Local government in California in this millennium seems to exist as a focus for dissatisfaction, even though the powers of our mayors and city councils to solve problems are increasingly limited, and the will to act seems even more limited.

Let’s just look at three topics which might conceivably attract the attention of more than what John Geluardi used to call the Berkeley 200, those few stout-stomached souls who feel it is their duty to keep track of what city fathers and mothers are up to. 

Two out of three involve land use, which is the only significant remaining decision area for local elected officials. Theoretically, they can say yea or nay to building projects which are outside of those automatically allowed by zoning or adopted land use plans, but Berkeley’s councilmembers more often than not defer to moneyed interests instead of to citizens’ wishes. 

San Francisco’s former Mayor Art Agnos has a good op-ed in today’s Chronicle, Ballot Box Planning Offsets Pay to Play Politics, pointing out that citizen initiatives have accomplished better results in his city than the action or inaction of their Board of Supervisors (the equivalent of the Berkeley City Council). That’s true in Berkeley too. 

The first land use controversy here is the one with the broadest base of support across Berkeley’s political—the temptation is to say spectrum, but that term is much too linear for the many dimensions of opinion which exist within the Berkeley 200. In brief, the United States Postal Service is the semi-privatized outfit which now is charged with delivering U.S. mail. To fund this enterprise, they’ve started selling off the buildings built for postal use with public funds, many of them historic, beautiful and centrally located in America’s towns and cities. 

There’s federal law which is supposed to ensure extensive public process to review proposed sales of such public properties in order to protect their historic significance, but that law is honored more in the breach than in the observance. Berkeley’s downtown post office, a 1914 classic described on the National Register of Historic Places as a "'free adaptation of Brunelleschi's Foundling Hospital in Florence", has already been listed for sale by a real estate firm partly owned by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum. 

There’s an ongoing legal effort on the part of the city of Berkeley to make the USPS follow the law, prodded by a series of citizen protests, demonstrations and petitions. After initiative petitions placed a protective zoning change on the November ballot, councilmembers proactively adopted it, though they could repeal it at any time. 

The best way to protect the building if it’s to be sold would be by enforceable guarantees attached to any sales agreement, but so far what the USPS has offered instead are wishy-washy, toothless “covenants” which the city of Berkeley would not have the power to enforce on buyers. Potential buyers fronted by local developers entered into a sale contract, but withdrew when legal action threatened. 

The city’s lawyers are now trying to get declarations and injunctions from the courts requiring the USPS to follow the appropriate laws in subsequent sales attempts. “Save the Post Office” can be expected to keep the pressure on the city council to continue the legal case—but it’s also likely that the council will be tempted to fold if an appealing proposal is floated by a powerful buyer. 

Attorney Antonio Rossmann of the Rossmann and Moore firm in downtown Berkeley, retained as outside counsel by the city, says that the Postal Service has until January 22 to bring a motion to dismiss his office’s latest petition for injunctive relief on mootness or other grounds, and that they give every indication of wanting to do that. Berkeley has until February 12 to oppose that motion, opponents have until February 26 to reply, and the hearing would then be on March 19. Stay tuned. 

Moving to a more controversial issue, we’ll be hearing a lot more about the 18-story behemoth which is proposed for a downtown site which now houses, among other things, the historic Shattuck Hotel and the 10-screen Landmark Shattuck movie theater. 

Confusing to public perception, the project address is listed as 2211 Harold Way, though the major impact will be felt around the corner on Shattuck. 

You can get a good round-up of what’s up here on the Berkeleyside website. One update to that story is that now today, January 2, is now the last day to submit your comments on the draft environmental impact report mentioned in the story, since opponents succeeded in getting the deadline extended. There’s still time to email asage@cityofberkeley.info with your point of view, though what effect that might have is debatable. 

Over the holidays, at parties and elsewhere, I chatted with several people who have belatedly had OMG moments as plans for this project filtered into their selective consciousness. Film fans in particular are just waking up to what will be lost if it proceeds as proposed. It might be too late. 

Berkeley is full of Big Picture people who are slow to react to react to what’s going on under their nose until it’s too late. Typical comment from a partygoer: “I voted against Measure R, and I’ve never opposed any development, but this one is just too much.” (If you don’t even know what R was, you might be one of those people.) 

I heard that lament everywhere this season, both at an elegant soiree in the Claremont Hills and at our customary lefty New Year’s Eve party, where traditionally the Internationale is sung at midnight instead of Auld Lang Syne. (Perhaps tellingly, no one seemed to remember the words any more: many of the altacockers who used to know them by heart have passed on. We tried Siri but she was clueless as always.) 

As a result of pressure created by the ultimately unsuccessful Measure R 2.0, project purveyors have announced a variety of concessions in their plans. They are now flacking a new six-screen theater for the complex, though the first version eliminated the theater altogether. 

However, once demolition has taken place on that big downtown block, no more movies for a long, long time. Any replacement theater would be five years out at best. 

And really, all you have to say about this proposal is “Fine Arts”, the name of the pioneer Berkeley art film house which Patrick Kennedy demolished for a much more modest development amid promises, promises to replace it which the city didn’t enforce and which were never kept. The theater’s gone, gone, gone, though the marquee lingers on as a reminder of what went down. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen with the Landmark Shattuck Cinemas? 

The Harold Way project struggle will play out in the next few months. There’s a good account of organizing efforts by opponents in this issue’s Public Comments section. The next opportunity to tell officialdom what you think will be next Thursday, Jan. 8, at the Zoning Adjustment Board meeting at the Maudelle Shirek Old City Hall on Martin Luther King Way, at 7 p.m. The announced topic will be what community benefits if any this complex would provide, theoretically a major consideration affecting whether backers get the many approvals they would need to go forward. 

The third big issue in the new year will be the Berkeley Police reaction to various fraught situations. At the top of the list: Why on earth did Berkeley’s city officials, specifically the city manager and the police chief, decide to authorize cops to tear-gas and club peaceful protesters on Telegraph on December 6, during the demonstrations following the decision not to charge the killer of Michael Brown in Ferguson? Yes, yes, we all know that smash-and-grabbers did their best to exploit the situation, and they should have been arrested, but the good guys in the group were the ones attacked by the BPD with no obvious justification. 

Mayor Bates was hors de combat that night, attending a political testimonial dinner in South County with his wife the senator, and other councilmembers were also out of the action. Who decided on the gassing? 

To compound matters, Bates and his council allies then cancelled the next city council meeting to avoid hearing citizen complaints, and moved the subsequent one to an out-of-the-way school site. Instead, he proposed special city council meetings, one at 10 on a Saturday morning, January 17th, and another on January 20^th at 5:30, for a discussion of “police relations”, whatever might mean. Final decision on the agenda will be made on Monday at the council’s agenda committee. 

According to an email from Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, “there is nothing on either agenda [for the special meetings] that directly relates [to] the use of teargas or the police response on Dec. 6th. Also we cannot take action at both meetings [because] they are essentially work sessions.” 

He said that he wants to place three items on the January 20th council agenda to take action on these issues, including mandating changes to standing orders regarding police procedures and calling for an independent investigation into exactly what happened on December 6. The council majority could axe these ideas. One variable is how newly-elected District 8 Councilmember Lori Droste will vote. 

The Berkeley public has a short attention span. It’s not clear whether these three pressing issues have legs to propel them very far into 2015. We’ll wait and see.