The decision-making process of the Berkeley City Council needs an attitude adjustment, or a procedural update, or something. In an effort to make sure that important tasks can be completed at a reasonable hour, the new council majority has moved up the start time to 6 p.m., which in theory could get the ceremonial matters and the consent calendar out of the way before tackling the harder stuff at seven.
But at the first meeting under the new schedule, the meeting time was extended at 11:15, no better than it ever was, and so an urgent major proposal before the council was postponed for two more weeks.
As a simpleton who shall be nameless might tweet, SAD!
The major problem, one which has been the major problem in the approximately forty years since I’ve been watching the Berkeley City Council on and off, is that the only reliable way to get the attention of even the best-intentioned city council is to have as many concerned citizens as possible show up in the flesh to make their case in what’s become one or two minute sound-bytes. This problem is not unique to Berkeley, although many who live here and subscribe to the theory of Berkeley exceptionalism would like to think so. I’ve seen the same phenomenon on the Santa Cruz city council, even though they start their meeting in the afternoon with a break for dinner.
It’s fashionable to deride the public comment part of city council agendas as crazy people just sounding off, but in fact I’ve observed, not just once but many times, that citizen input can be the only way elected officials learn about serious problems. The most striking recent example was in Santa Cruz, where the police learned in public comment time that they’d been hornswoggled by ICE into participating in a round-up of undocumented people who had no connection to crime during what they thought was a drug bust, contrary to city policy. (To their credit, the police made a public apology the next day, though the damage was done.)
The very important topic which was left hanging this week by the Berkeley City Council was correcting more than a decade of neglect by requiring developers to include of a substantial number of on-site units for lower-income tenants in the speculative luxury housing which is flooding into Berkeley at the moment. The council didn’t even pass the second best alternative: requiring, in lieu of units, a substantial financial contribution toward construction of affordable housing on other sites.
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