Extra

What a week! There is so much to write about I will have trouble keeping this down to a readable length. And, I can’t even cover all of the hot meetings as there were too many running at the same time. The recordings aren’t up yet on the Thursday Council TOPA meeting and then there are the meetings where the record button is never touched. Plus, you will have to read my response to the mayor who wasn’t too happy with what I wrote about him last week. 

The week of meetings started Monday with the Community for a Cultural Civic Center and the report on the water intrusion study. The cost of repairs for water leaks and water damage at the Maudelle Shirek and Veterans Buildings is in. 

Maudelle Shirek (Old City Hall) is $1,480,947, and the Veterans Building is 1,918,262--a total of $3,399,210. This is just for a new roof and repairing leaks throughout the buildings. There may be additional costs like the Civic Arts fee, and we will have to ask about the cost of windows, since dry rot in the windows and frames is extensive. This will likely fall into a balance between being true to historical design or to switching to double pane. Maintenance is not included. The cost estimate for the seismic stabilization for both buildings is still in process, and that is just to bring the level to “Damage Control”, where everyone gets out safely and the building is repairable. https://berkeleycccc.org/what-were-about 

There are still rumblings from people who claim that housing can be built on top of the Veterans’ Building. Swords to Plowshares already rejected such a proposal some time ago, since to take on such a task would require building a “bridge” over the building on which to put the housing, a very expensive proposition. If housing at the Veterans Building is or becomes the priority, that is a very different plan (I am not in that subcommittee). In that situation, my take from the seismic discussions is that we would be looking at something similar to the complex at the northeast corner of Shattuck and University where the buildings were gutted to a shell. 

The Turtle Island Monument, which turns the Civic Center Park fountain into a garden, has been turned over to PGA Architects https://www.pgaarchitects.co.za/ for final design. 

Last Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting dragged on until 12:50 am. The Surveillance Technology Report was moved to March 22, 2022. The evening wasn’t helped by adding the lengthy presentation of the 2021 COVID-19 Response Report to the agenda. 

City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley gave a heaping dose of praise to City staff for their response to COVID-19. When the presentation ended and public comment began, City employees described their dissatisfaction with how they are not notified when exposed to COVID at work, how the ventilation at 1947 Center Street is still a problem (first noted by city employees at council in 2020), how there is no partnership with labor, how City employees are required to be on site when they could perform their work more safely off site, and their comments closed with a request to “judge us on our activity not our presence.” This was quickly followed with the clean-up put in the hands of the Director of Human Resources La Tanya Bellows. The entire show from start to finish was 98 minutes. 

Next came the Street Maintenance and Rehabilitation Policy and Five-Year Paving Plan. The vote fell unanimously on the “equity” plan which has a stronger focus on residential than arterials. Looking at the diagrams from the agenda, it still doesn’t look like much will get fixed. 

The evening finished with unbelievable drama. Councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn partnered in presenting an amendment to the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) Ordinance to address public safety in high severity fire zones. The amendment limits the size, setbacks and number of ADUs that could be added to a lot in the City of Berkeley high fire risk zones. Included is prohibition of rooftop decks and of intrusion into a four-foot setback. Discussion and voting required multiple extensions to the regular closing time. 

Wengraf started with listing fires in the hills. The fires of 1923 and 1991 aren’t the only fires in the Berkeley Hills though. You can read about them here: https://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/spring-2019/september-17-1923-day-berkeley-burned There were also fires in the 1970s (37 homes) and the 1980s (38 homes). 

There is a clause in the SB 9 legislation signed by the Governor in 2021 that eliminates single-family residential zones statewide and provides for increasing density without discretionary review or hearings, with few exceptions. The exception most concerning here allows for limiting housing development if “…the housing development project would have a specific, adverse impact…upon public health and safety…” https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB9&showamends=true 

Hahn gave the best, most thorough, understandable presentation that I’ve seen since she was elected to council. Wengraf showed a 2-minute recording from the 1991 Berkeley Hills fire of people stuck in a traffic jam abandoning their cars to escape on foot with the fire billowing behind them. Twenty-five people didn’t make it out and died in that fire. 

After all the presentations, public testimony, council discussion, and after 12:30 am Councilmember Kesarwani made a substitute motion, seconded by Droste, to throw out the proposed Wengraf/Hahn public safety amendment to the ADU ordinance for high risk fire zones and to use the same ADU ordinance that was passed for the city flats at the previous council meeting. The discussion was chaotic, but the motion initially passed with Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Robinson and Droste voting for it and Harrison, Hahn Wengraf and Arreguin voting against. After the total was announced, with the clock ticking off the last seconds of the meeting, Bartlett said he thought he had voted the wrong way and requested a vote to reconsider. 

Kesarwani, Harrison and Droste had left when another vote was taken to extend the meeting once more, to 12:50 am. The vote to reconsider passed, and the vote on the Kesarwani/Droste substitute motion was retaken, with Kesarwani, Taplin, Robinson and Droste voting yes and Bartlett, Harrison, Hahn, Wengraf and Arreguin voting no. The main motion (Hahn/Harrison with the Wengraf and Hahn public safety amendments) prevailed at about 12:49 am with Kesarwani, Taplin, Robinson and Droste ultimately acquiescing and joining with the majority to record it as unanimous. 

Thursday, the evening of meetings dueling for attention, I attended the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting. It was another late night that didn’t end until 11:20 pm. The commissioners listened intently and responded to public comment. The Amber draft map was the overwhelming favorite. The Blue, Orange and Maroon maps were eliminated. The united waterfront as one district was dropped. 

There will be 2 -3 new draft maps available to the public and committee for scrutiny on February 10th. The next meeting is February 17. An extra meeting is scheduled for Saturday, February 19. The time was not determined, but is likely to be 10 am. 

The Amber map is to remain the same with corrections as requested by the public/South Berkeley to the boundary between District 3 and District 8 to unify the Ashby BART station site to include the Ed Roberts campus in District 3. The corrected Amber map would also realign the District 3 boundary to include more of South Berkeley, so that the NAACP and St. Paul A.M.E. Church would be in District 3. The new border is likely to be Shattuck. 

Using the Amber map as the bas, a second new map and possibly a third map will be created with two student districts and including the corrections to District 3 as above. 

The commission vote on the final map will be February 28. 

I received an email from Mayor Arreguin. He wasn’t too happy with what I wrote about him in my January 22 Activist’s Diary. You will get the details so keep reading. Just in case you never read my Activist’s Calendar to the end, I always include scheduled worksessions and unscheduled workshops and presentations. 

For those who haven’t heard of TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), the subject of these emails, it is this: When a building is going up for sale, TOPA gives the tenants living in it notice and the first right to purchase the building. There are more details and conditions than this broad summary. 

After the TOPA meeting recording is posted I will watch it and report on it in next week’s Activist’s Diary. There has been a strong pushback from property owners and developers and I would expect they showed up Thursday as they have in the past. 

Here is his email, plus verfication from Sarah Scruggs. My response follows the emails. 

[from]Jesse Arreguin: Kelly, I want to respond to this statement in your recent "A Berkeley Activist's Diary": 

All of this brings us to the next question: Why did Mayor Arreguin decide to schedule a special meeting, the council work session on TOPA (Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act), at the very same time as the Independent Redistricting Commission meeting? This looks very much like a deliberate act to dilute the response to TOPA by splitting concerned citizens between TOPA and redistricting. There wasn’t even a whiff of a special meeting on TOPA at the last Agenda and Rules Committee meeting, where dates of work sessions were reviewed. All of this leaves a very unpleasant taste. 

Contrary to what people may think, there is no grand conspiracy to undermine TOPA on my part. Trust me I want people to be at both meetings.  

I did announce at a prior Agenda and Rules Committee meeting that we would be calling a special meeting on January 27th to hold a work session on TOPA. You may not have heard me say it and I am sorry it was not clear.  

Additionally the TOPA Working Group has been doing outreach for weeks on this date. This date was arrived at in consultation with the TOPA Working Group. I did alert the City Manager and City Clerk of this date and was not informed of any potential conflicts when we originally calendared this date. It is also unfortunate that City staff scheduled multiple important meetings on the same date.  

We settled on this date in December and it has been promoted by email, social media and through flyering. I have cced Sarah Scruggs from NCLT and the TOPA Working Group to confirm this. 

Mayor Jesse Arreguin 

************************************************************ 

From:Sarah Scruggs, Northern California Land Trust 

Hi Kelly, The Mayor is correct. Since December, the TOPA Working Group has been sending updates via email about the January 27 TOPA work session to organizations that have endorsed TOPA, as well as individuals that have sent emails in support of TOPA during our past email actions. Apologies that you did not receive the information and happy to add you to the email list. Attached are the flyers that have been passed out around town. 

Response 

My source of information is city meetings and city records so whatever discussions and negotiations were going on inside or outside of city hall there wasn’t any notice to the public of the January 27 worksession on TOPA until it appeared in the Agenda and Rules packet published on the Committee homepage sometime on Thursday, January 20, 2021. The content of the special January 27 meeting was also listed on the City Council Agenda Index webpage with a document dated January 20, 2022. I picked up the notices on Friday January 21 when I went through city meetings to prepare the Activist’s Calendar for the week of January 23 – January 30, 2022 and commented in my Activist’s Diary January 22, 2022 edition. 

The City Council 2022 Meeting Schedules adopted on January 18, 2022 lists worksessions on January 20, February 15, March 15, April 19, June 21, and July 19. There is no listing of a January 27, 2022 worksession, a meeting date that Mayor Arreguin states in his email was settled in December. He blames others for scheduling meetings in the same evening of January 27. 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/City_Council__Meeting_Schedule.aspx 

Arreguin states he announced the TOPA worksession at a prior Agenda and Rules Committee meeting. Even though I attended the January 4, 2022, January 10, 2022 and January 24, 2022 Agenda and Rules Committee, I listened to the recordings for an announcement of the January 27, 2022 worksession on TOPA. There was no mention at either the January 4 or January 10 meeting. There was only a reference to the published worksession calendar in the packet on January 24, 2022 with no verbal mention of TOPA. There is not documentation of either a scheduled or planned to be scheduled worksession on TOPA in any Agenda and Rules Committee agendas prior to the January 20^th packet. There is also nothing in the minutes of the Agenda meetings of either a scheduled or planned to be scheduled worksession on TOPA going back to May 10, 2021. 

I also looked through the emails from Mayor@CityofBerkeley.info The emails used to send us announcements, alerts, information. The January 26, 2022 email includes, COVID booster requirements, Redistricting, Omicron, New Hotel, Tonga Tsunami, Public Input on Recruiting the Director for the Police Accountability Board. There is nothing on TOPA. The January 15 email includes only a call for input on the Paving Plan. The January 12 email is the announcement of the MLK Jr Breakfast, The January 6 and 8 emails are on COVID and protection from Omicron. 

The December 23, 2021 email from the Mayor is a recap of all the successes of the year with much on housing, but there is no mention of TOPA finally making it out of the Land Use, Housing and Economic Development Committee on May 20, 2021 with a positive qualified recommendation. 

At the May 20, 2021 Land Use Committee, the motion began with “Recommendation to: 1. Send the item to the full Council incorporating the Mayor’s May 20, 2021 amendments…” 

Many of us have been wondering what happened to TOPA. This has been a long haul for tenants seeking passage of TOPA and it isn’t over. TOPA first appeared in the Agenda and Rules packet on February 24, 2020 and from there it was referred to the Land Use Committee. 

I would hope that no one is bullied into being paraded out to take the fall, because in this case as chair of the Agenda and Rules Committee, Mayor Arreguin had plenty of opportunity prior to January 20, 2022 to correct any omission of a planned meeting on TOPA for January 27. Arreguin also had months to add TOPA to the list of worksessions/workshops to be scheduled. The mayor also had the months between the end of May and December and certainly from September 2021 on to schedule a worksession on TOPA or bring it directly to council for a vote. 

Arreguin has been mayor and chaired the Agenda Committee since 2016. He was a councilmember before that. Arreguin is the author of TOPA. He knows how the City system works. He should also know by now that I pay attention and he will know now that I do my homework and far too often I don’t clean up my emails. 

If all this gets to better city meeting planning and posting of future meetings than this has made my day a better one. There is much work still to be done. 

In closing my latest reading, The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang who lives right here in Berkeley. I love books that challenge my thinking and give a different perspective. Most of my reading on race and racism up to this point has focused on African Americans and the genocide of the indigenous People in America. Caspian writes about who and what is “White” : his search for self identity as the son of Korean immigrants and as an Asian man in America and father of a bi-racial daughter. Caspian challenges the lumping of Asians together as one group when there are so many different cultures and perspectives. I thought a lot about another challenge to “lumping” of cultures together, the time when I saw the first iteration of Culture Clash in AmeriCA. I can’t remember the year, but google has it as 2002.