Public Comment

Open Letter to the Berkeley Parks Commission:

I wish to register concern over the 600 Addison proposal threatening Waterfront Park, a Berkeley gem home to abundant local and migratory wildlife, a valuable resource for our under-served West Berkeley neighborhood which is barely hanging onto its natural character due to overcrowding. 

Berkeley is severely under-parked, a dearth noted by by famed planner Walter Hegemann in his 1915 city plan report: "Oakland owns only about one-tenth of the park area it should have according to good American standards, and Berkeley has only about one-sixth of Oakland park acreage. This backwardness is especially hard to understand because these cities in their early youth have had the great fortune to feel the influence of Frederick Law Olmsted, the elder, the great American genius of park-culture." 

Any plan that removes trees, obscures skyline, or creates shadows for this WPA-born treasure should be soundly rejected. Our 1986 Public Parks and Open Space Protection Ordinance* was a city-wide vote requiring that all open space and parks not only be protected and fully funded and maintained, but also obligating the city to expand opportunities for recreational and open space, a requirement which can only be overturned by another city-wide vote. This was done expressly to counter the pressure from private entities wishing to prioritize profits over the public health, a pressure even more extreme today, 34 years later. 

Please keep me in formed of any actions taken in this matter. The pandemic is no time to radically alter what few parks we have. People are scrambling to hold their lives and families together right now, and, with respect, no one with common sense can argue that the city's pandemic-produced procedures and processes are accessible. 

If 600 Addison is up for sale, the City of Berkeley should, according to our ordinance, be working to acquire it through eminent domain to create a local urban park for severely under-served West Berkeley to reduce the pressure of current overcrowding and, in addition, provide an off-leash area for the dog owners who currently let their dogs run unleashed through Waterfront Park's and Cesar Chavez Park's natural settings. Dogs do need space to play and run, a use that directly threatens our wildlife and public safety if unrestricted. If you as commissioners are not hearing a clear voice from the city's planners about the threat to our storied Waterfront Park, its wildlife, and the current strain upon it from nearby high-rise developments which offer only their roofs as "open space", you are hearing with clarity the erosion of our community's values. 

The Works Progress Administration worked to integrate public works and recreational and open space needs, to enhance and expand cultural opportunities such as our local pageants and festivals which celebrated Aquatic Park Lake and commemorated the victims of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you are not hearing voices that recognize the extreme loss of these cultural resources during the pandemic, please supply that voice yourselves as commissioners. This is part of what the citizens of Berkeley have the right expect from you. Especially if the current crop of city planners has no sense of our community history and the legacy of creating and protecting open, natural settings. Pitting this need against housing is a false choice people with any sense of history know is a fallacy; honest planning for real communities always includes open space and recreational needs. 

Waterfront Park's and Cesar Chavez Park's natural preserves and native plant settings are not just creations which tell Berkeley's user-developed story of celebrating our connection to nature; they are an important part of the flyway for migratory birds and nesting areas for local wildlife. We are down to one burrowing owl which currently does not even use the space the city sought in good faith several years ago to protect with thousands of dollars of public funding by erecting an art fence. The space set aside, with good intentions, is too full of off-leash dogs to be safe - according to the owls. 

Thank you for your service during this difficult moment in time, and please use this moment to make sure proposals that come your way reflect values which include our community's reverence for natural settings, wildlife, and New Deal history.