Public Comment

Watching climate news is like walking into the opening of the book The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. In the India and Pakistan heat wave, birds fell out of the sky from heat stroke.

On Tuesday May 18, 2022 the temperature in Santa Rosa was 20°F above normal. As I write there is a heat warning covering the entire east coast and our own temperature predictions for the coming week are 10 to 20 degrees above what used to be normal. The red flag fire warning for counties west of Sacramento begins Monday at 11 am. Grass fires in San Jose and Sonoma are already making news. Saturday night in local news there was a flash of Governor Newsom saying that water rationing is coming.

On the good news front Australians, who are required to vote, threw out the conservatives electing Anthony Albanese largely on climate. If all eligible Americans voted would there be enough of us to throw out the anti-abortion, fascist replacement theory Christian nationalist Republicans? I think so, but the big if is voting and who counts the votes.

The Democrats have some cleaning up to do to elect more progressive voices. Summer Lee, Democrat for Congress in Pennsylvania, overcame $2,025,297 from the Democratic dark money Super PAC (Political Action Committee) United Democracy Project (UDP), a PAC for the American Israel Public affairs Committee (AIPAC) to defeat Steve Irwin. Jessica Cisneros, a progressive Democrat, is fighting the same fight against Henry Cuellar, a conservative anti-abortion Democratic Congressman with AIPAC backing in Texas. The election is Tuesday. Meanwhile Berkeley Mayor Arreguin just wrapped up a Jewish Community Relations Council sponsored trip to Israel. 

Sometimes I wonder if the comments made at City meetings even make a difference. The Design Review Committee (DRC) took an interesting turn this week. I used the stark realities mentioned above to remind the DRC about the climate crisis. The second project on their agenda was 2213 Fourth Street a 5-story parking garage with 415 parking spaces. The neighbors spoke, objecting to this huge parking lot adding pollution and traffic next to their homes. I commented about how wrong it is, in this climate emergency, to even be building a parking lot for combustion engine cars especially when the City of Berkeley is eliminating parking from mixed-use apartment buildings.. Erin Diehm criticized the landscape architect’s choosing the plant Nandina, which is poisonous to birds. 

Janet Tam asked the developer about the future of this structure when it was no longer needed for parking. There was no response, but the question became part of the longer conversation. The DRC followed its mandate to review projects from the design perspective and added in their motion to be sent to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB), that the approval of the design did not mean approval of the project and the ZAB should consider the project use. The DRC also said in their motion that planting Nandina should be prohibited. 

The next project 747 (787) Bancroft Way is a 159,143 square foot research and development project one block from Aquatic Park with glass spanning the second, third and fourth floors. The developer planned to use bird safe glass only on the side facing aquatic park, using the rationale that birdsafe glass was only indicated on the aquatic park side because inside shades and curtains on the other sides would protect birds. 

Erin Diehm pointed to the architectural plans showing a reflection of the sky. Birds see the reflection of the sky in the glass, not the curtain or shade behind it and fly into the glass. She described the building as being in the bird flyway and noted the abundance of birds at Aquatic Park. Mark Schwettmann said that standards for bird safe glass are evolving. 

Evolved is the correct word with bird safe glass from ground to 75 feet on all sides. This is the model ordinance from the American Bird Conservancy and the ordinance for New York City. 

Charles Kahn lamented that the DRC can only recommend and not require 100% bird safe glass, because the City of Berkeley has not finalized the ordinance. 

Which brings us once again to how the city of Berkeley manages to give a show of taking action on climate and the environment while stalling that very same action through referrals where they are left to wither and die. It is now thirty months since the City Council referred the bird safe glass ordinance to the Planning Commission. 

There is another failure here. Sustainable Berkeley Coalition was cc‘d on the April 7, 2022 response by Erin Diehm to the Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) prepared by LSA Associates Inc. for the 747 (787) Bancroft research and development project. This was well in advance of the DRC meeting. But Diehm’s response is nowhere to be found in the documents included with the 747 (787) Bancroft research and development project while the LSA 566 page Initial Study / Mitigated Negative Declaration report is included. 

In Diehm’s response, she pointed out the biological richness of Aquatic Park, the gross undercount of bird species and the false statement in the LSA report that “The project site [747 (787) Bancroft] is not located within a migratory wildlife movement corridor”. 

I don’t know how responses to the Mitigated Negative Declaration make it into packets for DRC and ZAB members, or whether this was a mere oversight by staff, lack of coordination or more fallout from the city’s buggy new website, but it is a lesson that we as citizens need to keep a watchful eye on the doings of the City. Given the inaccurate information in the LSA 566 page report, this is starting to smell like a disinformation document and campaign. 

Monday morning at the Council Public Safety, Councilmember Wengraf presented her motion to accept the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission’s recommendation to enforce parking restrictions in Fire Zones 2 and 3 (the hills) with the modification of hiring an additional parking enforcement officer to do the work. It will now make its way into the list of council referrals for the FY 2023 and FY 2024 budget. 

The generation of parking revenue from meters, garage fees and parking enforcement used to be over $10 million per year according to Public Works submissions for the current City budget, but with the pandemic, changing habits, and working from home there isn’t enough money generated to cover the cost of the payments on the $40 million dollar bond for the underutilized Center Street Garage, the parking enforcement officers, the parking services manager and the various contracts with parking meter servicers. 

Now Wengraf wants parking enforcement in the fire zones to begin immediately. Will community safety prevail over more lucrative parking enforcement sites? We shall see. 

Since I was at the Design Review Committee Thursday evening, I don’t know how well parking enforcement was covered in the Wengraf - Hahn Wildfire Preparedness webinar running at the same time. 

At the very end of the Council Public Safety Committee, the chair, Councilmember Kesarwani stated there was an item coming from the City Manager on police tools (controlled equipment). It looks like the City Manager is poised to make an end run around the Police Accountability Board with three councilmembers, Kesarwani, Taplin and Wengraf. 

The discussion at the end of the Budget and Finance meeting on Thursday morning between Councilmembers Droste and Kesarwani on the Land Use Planning Division fee schedule tells us what to expect this Tuesday evening May 24th at City Council on item 16 under Action Items. Droste and Kesarwani were asking about staff time involved in preparing for a challenge to a project approval and whether community members are charged the full cost of bringing an appeal of an approved project to Council. Charging the public an hourly rate for appealing a zoning approval would essentially make challenging a project prohibitive. And, that seemed to be exactly the point. 

Before leaving for the sponsored junket to Israel, Mayor Arreguin emailed to the public an announcement of the achievement of a decrease in the number of homeless people in Berkeley by 5%. Fewer people living on the street is great news. The real question is how many people assisted into “permanent” housing are still housed one, two, three or more years later. Or, did any homeless person cleared from the streets in Berkeley end up in Oakland where the number of homeless people grew? How well our programs are doing to keep people housed permanently is an open question. Follow-up for multiple years after an individual or family is housed and reporting back to the Council and community would tell us to what degree programs are successful and what needs more work. I am probably thinking more about these questions, because I just finished The Turnaway Study. 

The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having? Or Being Denied? an Abortion by Diana Greene Foster, first published in 2020, is available at the Contra Costa and San Francisco libraries. This book is not about the stories of women with late term abortions because of fetal anomalies or a pregnancy threatening their lives. Yet two women in the study who were turned away died of complications of childbirth. 

The Turnaway Study is about ordinary women seeking or denied an abortion in 30 clinics in 21 states from all walks of life, from all racial, ethnic and religious groups, who were followed for five years with interviews every six months and in-depth analysis of their responses.  

No harm was found from abortion and in fact women who had abortions were more likely to have wanted pregnancies later: They were in better health, able to leave abusive relationships, to care for the children they already had and a whole host of other positive outcomes. The difference in outcomes for women denied an abortion validates their reasons for seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy. Sixty percent of women seeking abortions already had children, and the worry about being able to care for existing children was validated through interviews and analysis. Poverty was a prevalent problem as was the difficulty of leaving an abusive relationship. The comparison is stark. After listening to the audiobook, I found so much information in The Turnaway Study that I placed an order to buy it. 

Women are denied abortions all the time in the U.S. because they can’t afford one, there is no clinic nearby or they discover they are pregnant too late to receive an abortion. Young women with irregular periods or women who continue to have their period during pregnancy are most likely to miss cut off dates. Being required to have an ultrasound had no impact on their decision to have an abortion. 

Asa Hutchinson (Republican) Governor of Arkansas was on the Sunday morning show CNN’s State of the Union, with Dana Bash grilling him on the Arkansas abortion “trigger law” he signed. The Arkansas 2019 law defines life as beginning at conception with a complete ban on abortion except to save the life of the mother. Defining life as beginning at conception outlaws the morning-after pill (the medical abortion pill) and many if not most methods of birth control. 

While The Turnaway Study did not include little girls who become pregnant, we must not let that fall off the radar. Just this last week the New York Times published an article on the early onset of puberty. Girls as young as 9 and 10 are entering puberty. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/science/early-puberty-medical-reason.html There was another article in the Washington Post last March. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/03/28/early-puberty-pandemic-girls/ What happens to these little girls, young children with bodies developing sexually and still physically immature? Do we really want pregnant children in grade school? And, now Florida, Texas and other states in the “red belt” appear to be competing on who can pass the most prohibitive laws censoring education on sex, sexuality, identity and race. 

There is a lot at stake this year and in the 2024 elections, especially at the state level where the most restrictive laws are being written. There is no reason to feel secure in California if the Republicans sweep the 2024 elections. They will be poised to pass a national abortion ban. 

If demonstrating is in your blood, there is another on access to abortion this coming Thursday May 26th in San Francisco at 12 noon at 24th and Mission. https://riseup4abortionrights.org/3955-2/ 

The play Roe will be performed right here in Berkeley in the Goldman Theater at the David Brower Center on June 12th at 5 pm and at the Marsh on Thursday, June 16th at 7 pm. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley and Carol Marasovic are putting on these performances. Admission is free.