Editorials

Looking over this week’s submissions after having attended the Berkeley Zoning Adjustment Board meeting on Thursday, I was reminded of the title of one of Flannery O’Connor’s s beautiful short stories: “Everything that rises must converge.”

That’s a quote from 60s guru Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, here in longer form: “Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge.”

Well, yes, I guess so.

But conversely, there’s that other 60s guru, Tom Lehrer, who taught us that “we’ll all go together when we go.” We seem to be sliding downhill pretty fast here in Berkeley. 

Lately I’ve been making the mistake of going to civic meetings where it’s possible to see this trend in action. Thursday night at the Zoning Adjustment Board commissioners were falling all over themselves trying to duck the responsibility assigned to them by the zoning code for monitoring downtown Berkeley. They’re supposed to decide who the lucky recipients of variances to build the three towers anticipated by the latest downtown plan will be. The winners are supposed to give back enough “significant community benefits” to the city and its residents to justify their hugely enhanced profits. 

Commissioner Hahn, supported by a couple of her colleagues, politely tried to explain this job to the other commissioners, by way of a carefully crafted resolution which asked the City Council for advice, not consent. But it was clear that several of her colleagues wanted the Council to be the deciders instead. 

Hahn was outflanked by Commissioner Pinkston, the Mayor’s appointee, who is a consultant to the building industry, who managed to muddy the waters enough with amendments to Hahn’s resolution that the council could end up doing almost anything, with little the ZAB commissioners can do about it. Though they serve in a quasi-judicial role, they are appointed by councilmembers and can be fired if they disobey their appointer. 

I’m still having a hard time believing that a respected long-time LPC commissioner was fired by the mayor because she thought the view of the Golden Gate from the U.C. Campanile is worthy of protection, and said so. This action seems to have been a favor to the Los Angeles money man who’s behind “The Residences at Berkeley Plaza”, who just can’t be bothered to step down his building to respect the view. 

The truth is that no one in Berkeley needs 18 stories worth of condos blocking the view of the Golden Gate, no matter how much baksheesh the promoters might offer to grease the civic palms. So the “significant community benefit” calculation is a meaningless exercise. The developers almost certainly will get their building, and thus their gold, no matter what. No worries for them. 

Then there’s the Downtown Berkeley Association’s wish list of yet more ways to harass the down-and-out who have the temerity to beg on the downtown streets, even perhaps in the very doorways of said luxury condos. That will be delivered to the City Council meeting on Tuesday by two councilmembers who should know better. 

Tuesday just happens to be St. Patrick’s Day. Father Bill O’Donnell, whose picture is prominent on the Romare Bearden mural which has been relegated to the hall outside the Council chambers in the Maudelle Shirek Building (Old City Hall), must be rolling over in his grave. 

Of course, no concrete step has yet been taken after endless hearings and demonstrations to address the very real concerns which arose from police actions on December 6. Oh yes, there might be another report in the works, delivery date uncertain, but that's all. 

Some members of the wearying, graying band of warriors who do know better have explained it all in this issue’s Public Comment section, should you care. One question which might be asked is, if things are so bad in downtown Berkeley, why are speculators jostling each other to invest there? 

Also pictured on the mural is the late Councilmember Maudelle Shirek, another champion of the poor, for whom the decaying building was named. I was once Maudelle’s appointee on the Landmarks Preservation Commission, at a point when the historic brown-shingle building where meetings which resulted in the Americans with Disabilities Act were first held was threatened with demolition. 

We saved that one, but now the building named for Maudelle herself is undergoing Demolition by Neglect, the City of Berkeley’s favorite cost-saving technique. The council majority is greedily eating the seed corn, allowing our beautiful inherited civic buildings, the ones which given Berkeley its fabled character, to fall to rack and ruin while upping the pay for their legions of aides. 

And yet, with all that new construction in the works, there are no real plans for adding affordable housing . There's a small per-unit assessment which is supposed to go to an affordable housing fund, but it's much, much less than San Francisco extracts from builders there. Trickle-down believers claim that lavish new condos will make other rentals available for low-income residents, but buyers won't be vacating Berkeley apartments, they'll be coming from elsewhere. 

Three new vapid 18-story towers will turn Berkeley into a destination for the same international 1%ers who are buying up the same sort of luxury condos in the same kind of buildings in San Francisco with no plans to live in them for more than weeks out of the year. At best Berkeley will become San Francisco’s spare bedroom for the over-paid techies whose lives revolve around BART, bikes and laptop cafés. 

As I sample civic meetings lately, I’ve noticed that the same core of activists is simultaneously attempting to save what’s good, prevent what’s bad, and protect the vulnerable in Berkeley. And the same core of greedy opportunists is behind most of the undesirable proposals. 

Is it true that everything that rises must converge? If so, is it possible that the assortment of people who are desperately trying to stand up to save Berkeley from itself could join together before the next election to find electable candidates who are not in hoc to the building industry for their campaign finances? 

It’s not liberals or progressives against moderates or conservatives any more. A new electoral coalition, based on a common resolve to tackle the problems which beset today’s Berkeley, is sorely needed. 2016 is just around the corner.