Extra

New: Woman sobs as she recounts fatal shooting in Berkeley

Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN)
Wednesday May 27, 2015 - 09:35:00 PM

A woman broke down in tears on the witness stand today as she recounted an incident in Berkeley last December in which she was wounded and her fiancé was killed in a shooting during a medical marijuana deal that went wrong. -more-


New: Interesting Times: Part 2 (News Analysis)

Tim Hansen
Tuesday May 26, 2015 - 12:54:00 PM

In Part 1 we observed that the times are changing and a new vision of what our future will be like is beginning to emerge. The advances made in energy efficiency will change how we live and the world we create for tomorrow. Today it is not hard to imagine a world with zero-emission autos and highly efficient homes that meet their energy needs with solar electric and solar hot water on rooftops.

Contrary to past beliefs, the goal today isn’t so much to use less energy, as it is to use less oil and produce less greenhouse gas. The idea that automobiles are obsolete so cities should be built very dense to facilitate public transportation, with everyone taking the bus, riding a bike, or walking to conserve energy is no longer persuasive and many people are beginning to wonder if the very concentrated model of development—dense urbanism—isn’t inferior to a more dispersed model of urbanism in terms of oil consumption, greenhouse gas reduction, and quality of life. We all want wonderful, livable cities. Our question is basic: what kind of future should we create?

Today, the dense urbanists are promoting many projects. Let’s look at two proposed for Berkeley, California. The Harold Way project is nearing the end of the planning process. It is a mixed-use project with 300 apartments, made of concrete, steel and glass, eighteen stories high, and will tower over everything else in the area. The second project is a short-term stay hotel with luxury condominiums on top and is located on the Bank America site. -more-


New: Housing First - But Not in Berkeley (Public Comment)

C. Denney
Tuesday May 26, 2015 - 02:31:00 PM

“Service providers” train like Olympic athletes for the moment in spring when the city allows the sweet smell of a small pot of money to drift under their nostrils. Coupled with a city manager’s dry recommendation that their program get zero funding, any previously vocal political opposition to repressive anti-homeless policies starts to get the soft-pedal in case it can save their already cut-to-the-bone program and an already scrambled handful of jobs.

Berkeley consistently brags about its somewhat mythological tradition of compassion for the poor, a compassion not entirely extinguished. There are still a handful of shelter beds; a pretty stagnant, inadequate number in a landscape where people have come to assume their parks, their freeway overpasses, any vacant space will inevitably become, at least temporarily, somebody’s home.

Officials in Utah announced recently that they had reduced their “chronically homeless” population by 91% with a Housing First policy which gave people housing and social work assistance at a cost of $11,000 annually, much less than the $17,000 estimated price of hospital visits and jail and court costs. But Berkeley officials are strangely silent on Housing First policies. -more-



Page One

Press Release: A Victory in the Fight to Save our Historic Post Offices

Margot Smith, Citizens to Save the Berkeley Post Office
Friday May 22, 2015 - 02:02:00 PM

The U.S. Postal Service, now headed by a governing body that favors privatization, is closing and selling off many post office buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, reducing postal services and cutting public sector union jobs. Many of these historic post offices have murals and art created during the 1930s New Deal. The City of Berkeley, however, recently prevailed in federal court, saving its historic post office building. This victory serves as a precedent and example for other communities who want to save their Post Offices. The case also may save union jobs by requiring the USPS to follow the law.

In the fight to save its historic post office building, the Berkeley community had the support of its City Council and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the California State Office of Historic Preservation, and the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO. The APWU formed A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service, which includes 74 national organizations. Berkeley's Congresswoman Barbara Lee now has a bill in Congress, The Moratorium on U.S. Historic Postal Buildings Act, to stave off continuing USPS privatization. In Its report, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that the Post Office building sales were improper and even corrupt. The OIG found that the contract with realty company CBRE, headed by Richard Blum, Senator Diane Feinstein's husband, was improperly executed.

In Berkeley, the community organized Citizens to Save the Berkeley Post Office, which fought for their historic building and art for three years. They made the nation aware of the issue with articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. At one point, an official in the Postal Service commented "We shouldn't have messed with Berkeley." -more-



Fund Affordable Housing with Windfall Profits Tax on Rising Rents (News Analysis)

Stephen Barton
Friday May 22, 2015 - 12:59:00 PM

Cities around the Bay Area desperately need money for affordable housing and there is a potential source of funding that is right in front of them. Rents in the San Francisco Bay Area are among the highest in the country and are likely to keep going up for the foreseeable future, creating an affordability crisis for tenants. The only way off the treadmill is to build or buy housing that will be owned by non-profit organizations, land trusts and limited-equity cooperatives. And that takes money, a lot of money. So let’s tax the rising rents that increase the need for affordable housing in the first place. -more-



Public Comment

Significant Community Benefits: an open letter to the Berkeley City Council

Rob Wrenn
Friday May 22, 2015 - 11:53:00 AM

Please vote to reject the recommendation from Mayor Bates and Councilmember Capitelli.

It’s offensive that this item was snuck onto the agenda at the last possible moment and is scheduled as the very last agenda item, an obvious attempt to discourage citizen participation in discussion of this issue, despite the enormous public interest that has been shown to date. This item should be continued to a later meeting when discussion can take place at a more reasonable hour.

Their recommendation is not based on any study or analysis of what developers of tall buildings can afford to pay. The amounts proposed are grossly inadequate and seem to be tailored to accommodate the developers of 2211 Harold Way and other taller buildings in the planning pipeline and to ensure them large windfall profits from their projects. Indeed, since the proposed fees are not based on any independent study and analysis, it is not unreasonable to suspect that they are the product of improper behind the scenes discussions with developers. -more-


Item 35 May 26 Berkeley City Council Meeting: Significant Community Benefits

Kate Harrison and James Hendry
Friday May 22, 2015 - 12:38:00 PM

We are concerned that the proposed community benefits associated with large downtown developments are woefully inadequate based on the City’s own assessment in the Downtown Area Plan and likely profits from City-granted planning permission to increase height at the sites.

The proposed assessment should be evaluated against the numbers the City itself developed as part of the economic analysis accompanying the Downtown Area Plan. For example, that economic analysis indicates that an 18-story project at the corner of Shattuck and Allston (across the street from the proposed Harold Way project) could feasibly support $33,000 in community benefits per unit – nearly $10 million -- PLUS meeting a 20% affordable housing goal twice the City’s current requirement of 10% on site or a $20,000 fee. Since the Downtown Plan indicates that a similar project could support a level of affordable housing twice that required in current statute (20% vs. 10%); the corresponding affordable housing fee should equal $40,000 per unit, or approximately $12 million. This combined total of $22 million is very conservative given continuing rent increases since the 2011 completion of the Downtown Plan. The City Council itself recognized this fact when voted to reexamine the affordable housing fee once the long-delayed affordable housing nexus study is complete. -more-


Bank Fraud

Tejinder Uberoi
Friday May 22, 2015 - 06:09:00 PM

Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland pleaded guilty to conspiring to manipulate the price of U.S. dollars and euros exchanged in the $5 trillion FX spot market. UBS pleaded guilty for its role in manipulating the Libor benchmark interest rate. -more-


Editorial

The Capitelli/Bates Proposal Yields No Benefits for Berkeley

Becky O'Malley
Friday May 22, 2015 - 12:35:00 PM

Our email is aflame with expressions of outrage directed at the Capitelli/Bates proposal to give away the so-called “significant community benefits” payoff which citizens are supposed to get for permitting Los Angeles speculators to acquire entitlements to build a condo tower more 190 feet tall on the site which now houses the Shattuck Cinema and the Habitot children’s center. -more-


The Editor's Back Fence


Columns

THE PUBLIC EYE: Marco Rubio: Back to the Future

Bob Burnett
Friday May 22, 2015 - 01:04:00 PM

The surprising disintegration of Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign has opened up the race for the 2016 Republican nomination, benefitting the other candidate from Florida, Senator Marco Rubio. This is a bizarre political development because Rubio is running as the second coming of George W. Bush. -more-


SENIOR POWER: Raising canes

Helen Rippier Wheeler, pen136@dslextreme.com
Friday May 22, 2015 - 01:07:00 PM

Use a cane? Never! Perish forbid. Everyone will think you’re old! But a cane can really help, and not just for walking. The American Association for the Advancement of Science reports the use of canes and other mobility devices is on the rise among older adults. There may be a relationship between your hearing loss and a balance problem. The “assistive cane” is a walking stick used as a mobility aid for better balance. The white cane is a walking stick for mobility or safety of the blind and visually impaired. Hand rails on both sides of every corridor everywhere for everybody! -more-


ON MENTAL ILLNESS: The Problems of a Relapse When Older

Jack Bragen
Friday May 22, 2015 - 12:34:00 PM

If someone beyond age thirty with a schizophrenic or bipolar illness has an episode of mania or psychosis, there is a significant possibility that they will not survive this. An episode of severe psychosis is a huge stress on the body. When someone is approaching or beyond forty years old, a psychotic episode could trigger a heart attack. When an older person is put in "four-point" restraints by hospital staff (usually because of being difficult to control) this can also trigger a cardiac episode. -more-


Arts & Events

La Clemenza di Tito, by Mozart, on Sunday, June 7

William Ludtke
Friday May 22, 2015 - 03:11:00 PM

Mozart's last opera, La Clemenza di Tito, will be presented on Sunday, June 7 at 8 PM by The Handel Opera Project in conjunction with The Berkeley Chamber Opera. In the cast are Eliza O'Malley, Elizabeth Baker, Kathleen Moss, Shannon Latimer, Martin Bell and Michael Desnoyers as Tito, accompanied by a chamber orchestra conducted by William G. Ludtke. -more-


San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Justin DeFreitas
Friday May 22, 2015 - 02:04:00 PM

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival celebrates its 20th anniversary at the Castro Theater in San Francisco May 28–June 1 with an expanded program that adds an additional full day to the event. -more-


FILM REVIEW:Counting from Infinity: It's a Math-erpiece

Gar Smith
Friday May 22, 2015 - 01:11:00 PM

If you are looking for a total break from movies involving wise-cracking action heroes battling it out in Hollywood's latest CGI-fest, you might want to seek out Counting from Infinity—a quiet, simple, and smartly seductive documentary about a humble mathematician named Yitang Zhang.

The film—produced by Oakland-based director George Csicsery and partly shot in Berkeley—was screened at a special one-night event at Berkeley's Elmwood theatre on May 21, with the director and a panel of local mathematicians on hand to celebrate the event.

-more-


Back Stories

Opinion

Editorials

The Capitelli/Bates Proposal Yields No Benefits for Berkeley 05-22-2015

The Editor's Back Fence

Don't Miss This 05-24-2015

Public Comment

Significant Community Benefits: an open letter to the Berkeley City Council Rob Wrenn 05-22-2015

Item 35 May 26 Berkeley City Council Meeting: Significant Community Benefits Kate Harrison and James Hendry 05-22-2015

Bank Fraud Tejinder Uberoi 05-22-2015

News

New: Woman sobs as she recounts fatal shooting in Berkeley Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN) 05-27-2015

New: Interesting Times: Part 2 (News Analysis) Tim Hansen 05-26-2015

New: Housing First - But Not in Berkeley (Public Comment) C. Denney 05-26-2015

Press Release: A Victory in the Fight to Save our Historic Post Offices Margot Smith, Citizens to Save the Berkeley Post Office 05-22-2015

Fund Affordable Housing with Windfall Profits Tax on Rising Rents (News Analysis) Stephen Barton 05-22-2015

Columns

THE PUBLIC EYE: Marco Rubio: Back to the Future Bob Burnett 05-22-2015

SENIOR POWER: Raising canes Helen Rippier Wheeler, pen136@dslextreme.com 05-22-2015

ON MENTAL ILLNESS: The Problems of a Relapse When Older Jack Bragen 05-22-2015

Arts & Events

La Clemenza di Tito, by Mozart, on Sunday, June 7 William Ludtke 05-22-2015

San Francisco Silent Film Festival Justin DeFreitas 05-22-2015

FILM REVIEW:Counting from Infinity: It's a Math-erpiece Gar Smith 05-22-2015