Extra

A Diary is supposed to just flow, but I find this week I keep starting over to describe what happened at the three meetings of consequence I did attend and being thankful that the Veterans Holiday meant the last city meetings ended on Wednesday.

The commissions are still trying to figure out what to do with their unfinished work and what the loss of their expertise will mean as commissions are merged, commissioners are dumped, and expertise is lost, and wondering how those who remain will take on new responsibilities in areas in which they have little to no experience or knowledge. Cutting the commissions in half also means cutting half of the commissioners. Some commissioners at every meeting where the mergers enter the discussion express their surprise and dismay that their councilmembers did not seek their input and show no interest in hearing it. 

When the opportunity arose at the Parks and Waterfront Commission merger discussion, I gave my observations and opinion in blunt terms grounding my comments with: “I have read every commission and board agenda for years and attended every public meeting on the merging of commissions.” I responded to Gordon Wozniak’s comment that the city council had looked at merging commissions years ago and then reversed course and stopped, with, “this is not the same council.” 

I wasn’t at my computer so I couldn’t give the dates included here, but said that the stage was set to dismantle the commissions when the City Manager gave her presentation on the creation of council policy committees at the city council’s Agenda Committee in the summer of 2018, and the council finalized the creation of six council policy committees December 11, 2018. I told the Parks Commission that the council wasn’t interested in their input. In fact, in my observation and opinion, the council considers commissions a nuisance. 

While I didn’t say it Wednesday, commissions bring forward information and actions that the mayor, the council and the city manager don’t want to hear or enact. If you read the agendas and watch the council meetings, that observation is confirmed repeatedly. 

That brings us to the Parks and Waterfront discussion on the Pier- Ferry meetings. One of the commissioners who attended the last Pier-Ferry meeting related that nearly every attendee found fault with the plans and the mayor brushed them off, saying they weren’t representative of Berkeley. 

It’s more like most of Berkeley isn’t paying attention. There is already too much on their plate in this upside-down pandemic world to care. As long as this boondoggle is paid for by someone else and never hits their wallet, it is sort of a fanciful idea. Never mind that travel by ferry is inefficient, costly and ferries burn the dirtiest fossil fuels. An all-electric ferry costs, according to presentations, $16,000,000, and WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) doesn’t have any of them. 

I said that the decision has been made and it is Scott Ferris’s job to line up the paperwork to make it match the decision. When Scott Ferris said the Pier-Ferry service would be discussed by council in closed session on the 7^th of December, Jim McGrath responded in disbelief because of the inappropriateness of shutting out the public. McGrath also pointed out that wave analysis presented was totally wrong (a big deal for ferries when underestimated). 

The other meeting, I attended on Wednesday was way more positive: the Southside Complete Streets online open house. I found myself on the same side as Shane Kyrpata and most of the other members of the breakout group as we went through the proposals. We all went beyond the proposal for Telegraph and said that it should be closed to cars and limited to pedestrians, biking, transit, include trees and probably restricted hours for deliveries. When I disagreed with other members it was over the width of sidewalks. Everyone else was a bicyclist. I was the only walker. As someone who walks nearly everywhere, sidewalks all over this city are too narrow. You can still comment at https://berkeleysouthsidecompletestreets.org/ 

The last meeting to cover is the November 9^th city council meeting. 

It was nice to have a lighter week, but as the Tuesday evening council meeting dragged on and on, I checked the news banners from the Washington Post and found the summary of recent research on increased heart disease and bedtime. The best bedtime is between 10 pm and 11 pm. Going to bed after 11 pm is associated with increased risk of heart disease especially for women. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/11/09/sleep-bedtime-cardiovascular-disease-health/ the study https://academic.oup.com/ehjdh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ehjdh/ztab088/6423198 

Planning agendas and ending meetings so everyone gets a good night of sleep would mean those items that are pushed to the wee hours to minimize public comment and scrutiny would see the “light of the evening.” The mayor’s action to kill the “Rights of Nature” referral at the October 26 council meeting was at approximately 12:05 am. You wouldn’t know it happened just from reading the annotated agenda. Only four of us had hung in to comment. 

This week it was the Objective Standards Recommendations for Density, Design and Shadows that landed after 11 pm. Homeowners with solar have been righteously concerned that new construction would block their solar panels from sunlight. The proposal from Hahn, Arreguin, Harrison and Wengraf only addressed providing some protection to properties backed up to buildings along commercial corridors and nothing for homeowners in residential areas. The alternate proposal from Droste , Kesarwani and Taplin considers the impact on solar only when it is greater than a 50% loss. Since residential solar has been limited to what is needed for the household, that means a 50% loss; 50% of the solar panels are useless. 

So, after weeks and months and years of failing to define objective standards for buildings, failing to define rooftop solar protections, just shy of 5 hours and 45 minutes into the meeting (well after 11 pm) Councilmember Taplin moved to “table” the objective standards item. Arreguin initially abstained and then changed his vote to yes to join Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Hahn, Robinson, Wengraf and Droste to end discussion and end establishing any standards at all. Councilmember Harrison abstained. 

For all the effort from the City of Berkeley Sustainability to encourage residents to invest and adopt rooftop solar, the mayor and the council majority just killed it. There is only one councilmember who consistently stands for climate action, the lone member to abstain, Kate Harrison. 

There will be something before the Planning Commission and Council next year, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. There is a mindset in Berkeley that wants to maintain the aura of a progressive city while kicking actual action to the curb. 

This failure to protect solar in Berkeley has the backdrop of a failed COP26 (Conference of the Parties – the twenty-sixth time 197 countries have gathered to agree on an environmental pact). No wonder climate action is such a failure. We can’t even get solar protections in Berkeley. This is so counter to the announcement from the University of California Irvine, “Wind and solar could power the world’s major countries most of the time.” Storage and non-fossil fuel sources could fill the rest. https://news.uci.edu/2021/11/05/wind-and-solar-could-power-the-worlds-major-countries-most-of-the-time/ 

The confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. crossed another million in just 12 days on November 13, 2021 to total 47 million. Those of us who follow the numbers know this is an undercount especially with home testing that is never added to the confirmed tally (unless they show up for medical care). The incidence of new cases is going the wrong direction, up 

We need to figure out how to live with COVID perpetually at our doorstep. As a surge in one part of the country dissipates the virus takes hold in a new location. The virus keeps finding weak spots and that isn’t too hard with the pockets of the unvaccinated and the scattering of vaccinated who generated enough immunity from the vaccine to weaken the impact of a COVID infection, but not enough immunity to fend it off completely, “breakthrough” COVID. 

In closing, the story of inmate firefighters filled the front section of the November 14^th San Francisco Chronicle. 

I had heard for years on “Democracy Now“ about inmate firefighters: How the inmate crews fight fires along with the “regular” fire crews, risk their lives and are paid not even minimum wage ($2 - $5 per day plus $1 - $2 per hour when on a fire line) and can’t work as a firefighter when released from prison. I always thought of the inmate crews as male. 

Jaimie Lowe tells the stories of a handful of women inmate fire fighters (including Shawna Jones who died in the Mulholland Fire just a few months from parole) in the book, Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires published in 2021.  

Inmate crews save California about $100,000,000 per year according to the Corrections Department. Firefighting is considered voluntary but the book challenges that premise. Can it be voluntary “when an inmate is trying to avoid sexual assault, violence, trauma, mental and physical degradation, poor nutrition, solitary confinement and retaliation? She might be looking for any alternative.” 

Lowe wrote that the women inmate crews were described as the best at clearing breaks as they were more exacting than the men leaving nothing to burn. 

Before AB 2147 was signed by Governor Newsom in 2020, there was no hope for inmates to leave prison and join a fire crew, a career in which they were already trained and experienced. Negotiating the stages of legal petitions is no simple task. A certificate from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) must be secured to have records expunged. Next it must be approved by a judge. A district attorney can block the process. And, all that is followed with competing for the job. 

The book is real life. Not all the women were able to break the cycle that got them into trouble in the first place. The adjustment on release from prison was hard. The one who moved on with real success was hired as a firefighter. That should give us something to think about. 

You can find interviews online and the ebook is available at our local libraries.