Public Comment

Last Monday feels like a month ago. When it comes to water and the drought last Monday was a year ago as the California water year runs from October 1 through September 30. We are starting out from a grim spot and unless this new “water year” happens to be the occasional wet year in a future that with climate change is expected to be perpetual drought. We are in a heap of trouble. In my neighborhood walks, I see way too many wilting, dying and dead trees. Nearly all of California is in the two worst drought categories, exceptional and extreme drought. This has not stopped, the legislature, the governor, ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) of which Mayor Arreguin is the president from planning for adding 441,000 housing units to the bay area and changing zoning law for increasing density across the State with the passage and signing of SB 9 and SB 10. 

As for COVID-19, I’ve been keeping a table with the number of days it took to add another million documented new cases of infection and the crossing of each 100,000 deaths. The table is at the end of this Diary. My preferred update on the state of the pandemic is Michael Osterholm’s weekly podcast which he usually starts with saying he is scraping the mud off his crystal ball. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/podcasts-webinars 

Monday started with the Council Public Safety Committee. Councilmember Wengraf’s recommendation that the Safety Committee work on Councilmember Taplin’s Ghost Gun ordinance turned into an unnecessary detour as it was sent back to council to be referred to the City Attorney. 

Tuesday the Council Land Use Committee met for the sole purpose of extending the date of Taplin’s Affordable Housing Overlay proposal. The affordable housing overlay proposal will be taken up again this coming week on Thursday morning. As council has been so concerned about combining commissions to save staff time, a look at their own practices could use some scrutiny. 

The Tuesday evening council meeting took an unexpected turn on two items with a flood of public commenters giving objections to item 23 and item 18. Item 18, the $6,500,000 7-year lease agreement with Motorola grew objections over encryption that will limit information picked up by police dispatch scanners and that Motorola is a major contractor with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Item 18 did pass on consent with modifications limiting when the encrypted channel could be used. Harrison and Bartlett voted No and Hahn abstained. Because Berkeley is a Sanctuary City prohibiting cooperation with ICE, at the special council meeting Tuesday evening, council will vote on a waiver to the Sanctuary City Ordinance to enter a contract with Motorola. 

Item 23 was Taplin’s proposal to limit commercial trucks over 3 tons on West Berkeley at-risk residential streets and bikeways. Despite City insistence that the amendment to Berkeley Municipal Code 14.56.070 was only affecting commercial vehicles. Public Comment speakers stating objections reported those living in RVs in the area were already receiving warnings to leave. 

There is a problem with commercial trucks detouring through neighborhoods and delivery trucks clogging the streets, but the other side of this is the RV dwellers who are trying to stop their fall through the bottom of the housing crisis. According to the census nearly 20% of the people in Berkeley live in poverty. That is around 24,000 people living in poverty. Even the $15 hourly wage is only $31,200 for a fulltime worker. That isn’t much to survive in a city that sports houses with a median price of over $1,000,000. And, units affordable to those at the bottom of the income ladder have all but disappeared. There is no romance to living each day wondering if today’s RV shelter will still exist tomorrow. 

Wednesday evening at the Police Accountability Board the agenda item Training: Police Department patrol responsibilities; Field Training Officer program by Frank Landru took up a big chunk of the meeting. You can watch Landru describe the patrol officer’s job followed with the description of the 18-week training program for new employees. Fast forward to 1:16:15 in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWKUXFC1a18. The presentation ends at 2:15:09 with questions. All new hires are required to complete the 18-week training regardless of years of experience. Landru reported a 75% - 80% successful training completion rate. 

The video for the Thursday evening Reimagining Public Safety Task Force isn’t posted yet on the website https://www.cityofberkeley.info/RIPST.aspx so I can’t check if I actually heard correctly that NICJR (National Institute for Criminal Justice) was recommending a new police academy as the solution for reimagining public safety. A proposal for a Berkeley police academy was rejected by the council Public Safety Committee months ago as financially infeasible. The meeting sunk into the all too common problems and deficiencies of NICJR cited by the task force members. The task force is not given reports and information in advance and expected to make decisions with a 5- minute presentation, zero attention has been paid to looking at Berkeley Municipal code and what should be decriminalized or eliminated, it is never clear who is in charge and who in the city will take over and why are they not in attendance, why is the focus on calls and there was more. There weren’t answers. And, when it comes to reimagining, there doesn’t appear to be any reimagining in any corner of the police department. Let it settle in that the City Council authorized $300,000 for this. 

The week ended with the Independent Redistricting Commission Saturday afternoon. The entire public meeting was devoted to how to submit maps for the new city council districts. Each district must have a population of around 15,554 with a variation of no more than 1556 or 10%. The deadline for submission is November 15, 2021 at midnight. You can access the meeting video, maps and links through the commission website. Printed maps can also be picked up at the City Clerk’s office. 

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/CABERKE/bulletins/2f41053 

Californians successfully crushed Larry Elder‘s bid to replace Governor Newsom in the recall election, but how many of us knew that Steven Miller the white nationalist in the Trump administration was as a Santa Monica high schooler a frequent caller into the Larry Elder show. I certainly didn’t. Larry Elder is described as a mentor to Miller in the book Hate Monger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda by Jean Guerrero. Miller was according to the book also coached by David Horowitz. The book paints an ugly picture of the work of Stephen Miller which should be no surprise. Miller, Trump’s speech writer, was behind the Muslim ban and child separation at the border. 

I can’t seem to get enough of reading about American decay, corruption and the racism that brought us to Trump. The other book I finished was Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff. It reads more like gossip. Wolff takes us through the last year, the election, January 6^th and Trump leaving the White House and settling in to Mar-a-Lago as his home. I don’t think I will ever understand how someone as delusional and volatile as Trump is to so many a charismatic leader. 

In the September 25 Activist Diary, I recommended the book Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America. The author Eyal Press was interviewed by Chris Hayes in his weekly podcast Why is this happening. It is worth a listen. https://www.stitcher.com/show/why-is-this-happening-with-chris-hayes/episode/dirty-work-with-eyal-press-200233267 

v