Editorials

Well, the gong just sounded for the opening of the Berkeley hunting season. No, it’s not a gun-totin’ hunt, nor are foxhounds on the program, and I’m not sure that hunts of any description start with a gong, but you get the idea. Jesse Arreguin is off and running for the job of Mayor of Berkeley, and the rest of the pack can’t be far behind.

Time was that Councilmember Laurie Capitelli would have been leading the pack at the heels of the first entrant, but that looks a little sketchy at the moment. It seems clear that he took some sort of kickback on the sale of a house to Police Chief Michael Meehan, after voting for the city to give Meehan a half-million dollar loan. The exact details of Red Oak Realty’s internal accounting don’t make much difference—the point is that Capitelli shouldn’t have taken a cent on the deal, regardless of what his payment was called in the books, or how much it was. As we said at length last week, it all just demonstrates poor judgement, not something Berkeley needs in a mayor.

Which kind of opens things up a bit, doesn’t it? 

There are two main parties in Berkeley politics these days. The one running things now, under the auspices of the Hancock/Bates dynasty, might be called the Kansas City party.  

You remember the song, don’t you? 

Everything's up to date in Kansas City 

They gone about as fer as they can go 

They went an' built a skyscraper seven stories high 

About as high as a buildin' orta grow. 

A major part of my forty plus years in Berkeley has been spent under the auspices of the kind of civic boosterism that rivals the small town hubris satirized in this song from Oklahoma. It’s promoted of course by those who would like to do just one more thing to make it even better, at a nice profit to those in the building industry, who have funded most of our recent elections. 

That would include Capitelli and his ilk. 

Here’s a sample dialogue from the show they're putting on: 

“Berkeley is so lucky to have a BART station in our revitalized downtown!” 

“Yes, but let’s get rid of those unsightly beggars and while we’re at it spend a few millions rebuilding the entrance to the trains, oh, and how about adding some more apartments and maybe a hotel or two? This will surely get people out of their cars.” 

Uh-Huh.  

In fact, the other Berkeley party could be called the “Party of Uh-Huh”—a very diverse collection of those who don’t buy into the dominant narrative, but don’t necessarily agree with one another all the time either.  

Let’s unravel a few threads in this patchwork quilt. 

First, and longest lasting, is the group that used to be called “the grumpy old men”. These stalwarts, mostly but not all white, some but not all small-time landlords, believed that the city government was on the path to fiscal ruin, collecting excessive taxes and fees and wasting them on pointless projects and extravagant compensation for city employees. I was first aware of this group sometime in the early 80s. Most of them have now died or moved away to retirement, but the city has not yet come crashing down around our ears, contrary to predictions. The originals been replaced in the civic discourse by a couple of somewhat more sophisticated women, but the tune’s still about the same. Now let’s just call them all “The Grumpies”. 

Then there’s the "Beautiful City” crowd. 

This is not exactly the same as the 20^th century CIty Beautiful movement , which Wikipedia describes thus: 

“Advocates of the philosophy believed that such beautification could promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life, while critics would complain that the movement was overly concerned with aesthetics at the expense of social reform; Jane Jacobs referred to the movement as an ‘architectural design cult.’ “ 

Now, paradoxically, Jane Jacobs has been canonized as her very own cult. In Berkeley’s contemporary version of City Beautiful, the two streams have merged to an extent.  

The Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, for example, recognizes that we inherited a remarkably lovely civic fabric from earlier generations, but they lament the obvious evidence of neglect that has occurred in Berkeley since Tom Bates has been mayor: historic city amenities built in the past, including the old City Hall, the Veterans’ Building and the Rose Garden are rapidly decaying. The lovely clubhouse in John Hinkel Park is gone, another example of demolition by neglect, though the Post Office has gotten a five-year reprieve.  

Many of today’s Beautiful City believers, unlike their predecessors perhaps, recognize a need for social reforms like increased density, especially in the form of affordable housing. They just want whatever is built to be elegantly executed. 

This is where the Beautiful group overlaps with what might be called, for lack of a better term, the Authentic Progressives. These are the people who continue to believe that the major function of government, especially city government, is to provide certain amenities for citizens as a group that they couldn’t afford as individuals. Currently, first and foremost, that would be things like affordable housing, public transit, farmers’ markets, public parks, recreational facities like Willard Pool and the Berkeley Pier, and even (godforbid) parking garages. They also overlap with The Grumpies, because it costs money to build and maintain this stuff, so it’s better not to waste it on foolishness, they think. 

Another substantial strand of Berkeley thought is concerned with civil liberties, especially where less fortunate and most vulnerable citizens are affected. These activists defend the rights of street people of all kinds, and many support the Black Lives Matter movement. 

And these are only a few of the many caucuses which make up the Uh-Huh Party in Berkeley politics. We could go on for pages enumerating them all.  

Ideally, one might hope that all these groups would agree that Berkeley should be beautiful, functional, cost-effective and fair to all, but that’s a tall order. What’s certain is that if they could all manage to vote for the same candidate, they might defeat the Kansas City Party in November of 2016.  

But it would be a mistake to discount the longstanding organizational power of the incumbent Kansas City crowd. Anyone who knows anything about the real Kansas City (and I’m from Missouri) knows that in the olden days it was run by the Pendergast machine. The political organization that put Mayor Tom Bates and his majority, including Laurie Capitelli, in place is still around, though its last anointed candidate lost to upstart Assembly candidate Tony Thurmond (endorsed by Jesse Arreguin). 

It would be a mistake to characterize the November election as a left-right battle, since it will really be a referendum on the status quo emanating from all points on the spectrum. If Arreguin wants to be elected mayor of Berkeley, he’ll need to be able to communicate clearly and effectively to convince all the vast variety of Uh-Huhs who could be his supporters. And if Capitelli now looks iffy as the KC candidate, it will be interesting to see who might replace him. Or even who might try. The name of developers’ advocate Mark Rhoades has been mentioned as a possiblity, but surely not…