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Dear Tom, 

As you know, a few days ago immediately before the election of the Planning Commission chair and vice-chair I was abruptly removed from the commission by Councilmember Breland, who had appointed me two and a half years ago. She offered no explanation. Your appointee to the Planning Commission, David Stoloff, appears to have been involved in my removal, along with Commissioner Harry Pollack. 

During that entire time, Councilmember Breland and I had literally no disagreements over policy issues that have come before the commission. Our relationship was always cordial and respectful. So I was startled when she phoned me last week and asked me to support the election of David Stoloff, your appointee, as vice-chair of the Planning Commission. I explained to her that Mr. Stoloff and I were currently on opposite sides of a heated controversy over development in West Berkeley. Since supporting him for vice-chair would appear to be supporting his agenda, I did not think that I could do that. Furthermore, I explained, several commissioners were urging me to run for vice-chair myself, and I thought I could win. However, I said that I had not made a final decision and I would consider it some more. She said I should decide and let her know. 

I wondered why in the world she would want him as vice-chair, since he leans toward representing the interests of developers and the university over the larger community. What could be her motivation? 

About 20 minutes later I received a call from Stoloff. He asked me not only to step aside and vote for him, but also to nominate him.  

This was getting pretty strange.  

I thought that a majority of the commission did not support Stoloff. He needed to get a vote from somewhere to win, and he was trying to get it from his opponent—me—and using Margaret as leverage. He obviously knew that Margaret had just called me and he was following up on it. I repeated to him what I had said to her. 

This was not the first time that Stoloff had approached me. About a month earlier he had asked me to support Harry Pollack for chair and himself for vice-chair. Pollack was originally Shirley Dean’s appointee to the Planning Commission and is now Councilmember Wozniak’s. I told him then that I could not support Pollack for chair because of his role last spring in the suppression of the MU-LI Report, on which I and others had worked long and hard, and I could not support Stoloff either, particularly since the two were running as a slate. The MU-LI Report was a controversial document analyzing problems in the implementation of the West Berkeley Plan in the Mixed Use/Light Industrial district. 

I’ll have to fill you in on some of the back story. 

Two and a half years ago, Joe Howerton, Councilmember Shirek’s appointee to the Planning Commission, asked me if I’d be interested in serving as Councilmember Breland’s Planning Commissioner. I had met Breland years before when we both worked on the West Berkeley Plan. Over the intervening years I had become increasingly dissatisfied with the way that that plan was being implemented by the city. My primary motivation for coming onto the commission was to see if I could help improve the implementation of the plan. 

The plan calls for maintaining the diversity that makes West Berkeley unique and identifies preservation of its industrial character as a key factor. However, the city has permitted significant erosion of the industrial base by the unremitting pressures of gentrification. In particular, the conversion of the old Courtaud factory into offices was shockingly against the spirit of the plan. The city had never even considered opening the building to light industries and arts and crafts. 

When I first came onto the commission, the City Council was considering a moratorium on conversions of industrial buildings into offices in the MU-LI district. The council directed the commission to set up a subcommittee to investigate the problems and report back. I quickly joined the subcommittee. At the time there was a functioning progressive majority on the commission. Most controversial issues were being decided by 5-4 votes, with Joe Howerton, Rob Wrenn, Zelda Bronstein, Gene Poschman and myself usually forming the majority. 

We worked more than six months on our investigation, and finally issued the MU-LI Report, which detailed significant areas where the zoning ordinance could be improved to better implement the industrial and arts and crafts protections of the plan. But just as the subcommittee was issuing the report, Mr. Howerton’s wife became ill, and Joe had to drop off the commission. Maudelle replaced him with Jerome Wiggins. It was at some of Jerry’s first meetings as a commissioner that the MU-LI Report came before us. 

Commissioner Harry Pollack took the lead in opposing the report in a memo claiming that it presented “a distorted view of the plan.” To him, “a key goal of the West Berkeley Plan is fostering the economic development of West Berkeley and maintaining West Berkeley as a primary source of tax revenues.”  

Contrary to Pollack’s claim, this goal is not one of the eight goals clearly detailed in the plan (pages 83-87). 

At the meeting when the commission was scheduled to debate the issues, Pollack quickly made a motion to table, seconded by Tim Perry (who was replacing David Tabb for that one meeting). Stoloff voted to table. A motion to table is not debatable. For some reason the new commissioner and swing vote, Wiggins, was drawn into voting with their camp, and so the commission never discussed the important issues brought out in the MU-LI Report, and never sent it to the City Council. I believe that Pollack manipulated this result because he knew he would lose an open debate. It is seeing this kind of manipulation of process to stifle discussion that later led me to oppose his election as chair.  

Fast forward to last week. The day after the phone calls to me from Breland and Stoloff, Berkeley Design Advocates, of which Stoloff is a past president, held a “charrette” in which they outlined a plan for the conversion of lower Gilman Street from the quiet industrial neighborhood of today into upscale residences and shops. They also proposed a hotel at the waterfront instead of the park that environmentalists have worked decades to achieve. In their scheme, Gilman would become four lanes of traffic. They envision declaring a redevelopment area to speed the gentrification process. At that meeting many people—myself among them—made our voices heard in opposition to this gratuitous development, and in support of the wise policies of the West Berkeley Plan. 

Two days after this, on the eve of the election, I received the call from Breland that I was to be replaced immediately on the commission by Tim Perry, a member of Berkeley Design Advocates along with Stoloff, and a supporter of Shirley Dean. 

With Perry replacing me, Stoloff had his vote, and so got elected vice-chair in this tainted election. 

If this were a third world country, people would call it a coup. 

I ask you, Tom, do you approve of this level of deceit and manipulation? 

You phoned me and said that you were not the one who called Breland, and you had nothing to do with this. I believe you. However, the agenda that Stoloff and Pollack are pushing for West Berkeley is the same gentrifying agenda that you have been promoting. From the time you took office you have been saying that one of your goals is upscale development of lower Gilman Street and Ashby Avenue.  

So this is not really about me, but about development. I am just a person who happened to stand in their way.  

The West Berkeley Plan is up for evaluation next year. I believe that Pollack and Stoloff have shown themselves to be incapable of organizing a fair process for that to happen. Under their leadership, the West Berkeley Plan will be dismantled in back rooms, and the public process will become a dog show. 

You have a clear responsibility for the behavior of your appointee in a matter like this. Neither I nor the many knowledgeable people I have talked to have ever heard of any similar sleazy manipulation in the history of elections on boards and commissions in Berkeley.  

The manipulation of a councilmember and the abrupt termination of a commission member because of a vote for a vice-chair is reprehensible. Are Stoloff and Pollack really qualified to lead the Berkeley Planning Commission? Or should this sad episode of undemocratic tactics disqualify them both from any positions of leadership in this town? 

Are you going to shrug and do nothing? 

If this is what the future holds for Berkeley, I shudder for the fate of my city. 

Sincerely, 

John Curl 

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