Public Comment

This Diary is going to cover a lot of territory. It’s August and at least things look quiet for the week ahead. Looking back, there is so much that happened.

The Berkeley City Council is finally on summer recess through September 12th. Thank goodness! I so hope they stay away for the remainder of the summer. We could use weeks of peace to recover from CoB (City of Berkeley) WHIPLASH.

July 27, 2022 was the date that City Council was supposed to leave town or at least close up shop until mid-September, but Mayor Arreguin scheduled a special council meeting for August 3 dedicated to ballot initiatives. The mayor must have reconsidered how he handled the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure from the 4 x 4 Committee at the July 26th council meeting. By Monday afternoon Arreguin had resurrected it, placing it as the last item on the August 3 special council meeting agenda.

On Tuesday afternoon, on the day before the meeting, I received an email from someone I don’t know, Geoff Lomax (evidently my email is being shared – thank you and I mean that sincerely) saying that the calculation of the total debt service payment (the expected cost for property owners) in the city’s documents for the General Obligation Bond ballot measure was off by as much as 50%. And that wasn’t in the good direction: if he’s right, any of us who are property owners would actually be paying almost double what the City initially estimated.

On the website ("blog") of a new organization called Within Our Means Berkeley, Geoff Lomax is identified as a volunteer. His analysis can be found here. Some of the group’s supporters (“endorsers”)can be seen here. The site does not specifically identify its organizers. 

I heard more about this error at National Night Out when I talked to one of these endorsers who is a neighbor of mine. It all fell into place when I saw the “Revised material – Finance (Supp 2)” from Henry Oyekanmi, Director of Finance, with the document header, “Revised tax statement figures for both $600 million and $650 million tax statements.” https://berkeleyca.gov/city-council-special-meeting-eagenda-august-3-2022 

Lomax’s analysis seems to have pushed the city’s revision, but can we rely on the city’s 22% adjustment as the final answer when there was so little time to review their package? That was the next question posed in the WOM blog. 

The council debated for nearly three hours whether the bond should be $600 million or $650 million and whether the “median” should be used instead of “average” to help property owners calculate the impact to their property tax bill. At times it felt that they were almost giddy with the prospect of the big spending bond package. 

The bigger question for me is; Does a $650,000,000 General Obligation Bond that residents of Berkeley are going to be paying for either directly or indirectly for the next 48 years, with fuzzy spending and numbers, even make sense? And even if it did make sense, can we really expect commission oversight to prevent the funds from sloshing around to cover budget overruns or pet projects, when right now commissions that have been assigned oversight responsibility for much smaller ballot measures complain that they are not provided the financial information, the documentation they need to fulfill their responsibilities. 

The council finally ended discussion at 12:05 pm. Droste was absent for the entire day, leaving the unanimous vote count as eight in favor of the bond. Arreguin, Hahn, Wengraf and Kesarwani will author the ballot argument in support of the bond. 

After a brief break, next up was Vice Mayor Harrison’s ballot initiative to tax residential units vacant for more than 182 days. This is a ballot measure that I have supported from the beginning. Berkeley has more than its share of housing that has been vacant for years and some for decades. It is past time for these vacant units to be brought back for housing, or if they stay vacant for the owners to pay a tax on that vacancy. 

Arreguin signed on to the revision, which brought a sigh of relief from supporters, since Wengraf, Taplin, Kesarwani and Droste have previously questioned a tax on vacant residential units. Taplin was a little cagey about his position: he suggested that the ballot measure should go to committee for further review. It has always been a question of where Sophie Hahn would land. Hahn said earlier in the meeting (which she attended by phone) that she was in favor of the measure, but I’ve seen her say one thing and vote the opposite so many times that I sat on the edge of my chair when her name was called to vote not once but six times before she got through. 

Her vote would determine the outcome of whether the ballot measure would pass or fail. It was unclear if she had just dropped off the call because of technical problems or changed her mind. Finally, she was able to speak through her phone, voted yes and the ballot measure passed with Wengraf as a resounding no and Kesarwani and Taplin abstaining. 

The Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance Ballot measure, which came from the 4 x 4 Committee joining City Council and Rent Board members, was the last agenda item of the day. By the time that discussion started at 2:37 pm, we had all been on Zoom since 9 am. Hahn, who could only connect by phone, dropped off the call after the Vacancy Tax passed, so when the vote came to support the option of designating units in new construction as rent-controlled when they are created as the result of demolishing a building with rent-controlled units, it lost with one vote short of the needed five. Bartlett, Harrison, Robinson and Arreguin all voted for the option of designating the new units as rent-controlled (one new for one rent-controlled demolished). Kesarwani and Taplin abstained. Wengraf voted no. 

The section on Eviction for Good Cause for the Golden Duplexes did not come up for a vote (lack of support). The only vote that was held was the vote to suspend the current ordinance that ends rent control if the annual average rate of vacant units exceeds 5% over a six-month period. We should still keep an eye on this, as with all the massive construction of large multi-unit buildings we may soon reach this threshold. I wouldn’t be surprised if that condition arises, pressure would come from the big international investors like Blackrock to end rent control. 

In the end Soli Alpert, representing the Rent Board, said the cost of a ballot initiative could not be justified with only one section of the Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance measure being passed by council and the rest failing. 

This is a good time to pay attention to Kesarwani’s comments and watch how she votes. Elisa Mikiten just announced she is running against Rashi Kesarwani in District 1. Mikiten is currently chair of the Planning Commission and was previously on the Police Review Commission. 

Wednesday meetings finished with Carol L. Rice, Wildlife Resource Management, and Cheryl Miller, Registered Landscape Architect, giving a well-practiced presentation that they defined as the first of three meetings on the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) at the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission. It sounded as if they were hired as consultants and their presentation along with the two meetings to follow, one in September and one in December, is to fulfill some state mandate. 

As far as meeting the goal to better prepare the community for the growing threat of wildfire, I would classify the presentation as 1 on a scale of 10. I can’t comment on this year’s meeting by councilmembers Wengraf and Hahn on wildfire in urban wildland interface, but prior year presentations from councilmembers were so much better than this run through a power point--but then I haven’t fully explored the new CWPP page to the city website. This may all be better than first appearances. https://berkeleyca.gov/safety-health/disaster-preparedness/community-wildfire-protection-plan 

The Hillside Fire Safety Group showed up in generous numbers for the CWPP presentation and is still fixated on eucalyptus trees. 

I saw the text on a proposal for council action suspending the prohibition of the use of pepper spray and teargas just as the Disaster and Fire Safety Commission closed. It constituted the Brown Act’s minimal 24-hour notice for another City Council Special meeting at 8:15 pm Thursday evening (the posting notice went up at 8:14 pm). The AGENDA: 1. Discussion and possible action regarding the temporary suspension of the June 9, 2020 policy prohibiting the use of tear gas, smoke and pepper spray for the duration of the City Council recess [emphasis added] From: City Manager. 

This is all about People’s Park, where UC Police donned riot gear and marched in to clear the park of people and then trees. 

The mayor must have gotten a flood of pushback as the cancellation notices for the new meeting started to appear Thursday morning. Relief was the word of the day, but let’s not forget how we got here. 

The destruction of Peoples Park is another chapter in this ugly history. This was decades in the making. The entire scene smacks of an institution determined to exercise its hold on this city and People’s Park, to leave no doubt who has the hands of power. There are absolutely other places to build, but that wasn’t the point for UCB. It is power and the groveling of our elected at its feet that got us here. It all adds another layer of bitterness to the scene. https://www.peoplespark.org/wp/ 

And just in case your memory is short you might want to reread Mayor Jesse Arreguin: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.  

I walked up to see for myself the damage wrought by UCB. Words can hardly describe the heartbreaking scene and even the pictures don’t capture the impact of standing in the middle of the park surrounded by felled giant tree trunks lying like corpses amidst piles of branches with shriveling leaves. Towers of mulch fill empty spaces and when I looked up, a flock of birds circled overhead as if lost searching for the stately oaks and redwoods that once were their refuge. Devastating! 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) on Thursday evening was less than stunning as was the commission’s assessment of the new 8 story student housing project with 188 units at 2065 Kittredge. There can be no more than 5 meetings to review a project (SB 330) so the LPC was essentially stuck with approving a project that all of them found lacking in appeal and design. Bill Shrader, developer is still whining that he can’t have natural gas in the new building though I do agree with him that an open café/coffee shop on Allston across from the Y will have more traffic and a better chance of success than moving it to the corner of Harold Way and Kittredge across from the library as was requested by Commissioner Denise Hall Montgomery. The Shattuck Cinemas will soon be demolished to make way for the project. And the LPC dismissed the request from Commissioner Finacom who was unable to attend but sent written notes including a request that pictures be taken and preserved of the murals and artwork in the Shattuck Cinema theaters before they are demolished. 

Before I picked up the book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perloth, I had never heard the term zero-day. Of course, I understood that systems can be hacked and read about cities and companies held hostage in the press. I’ve had my credit card hacked and replaced numerous times and shudder when I need to use my old computer with the operating system that can no longer be updated. I just didn’t know the word for a hole in security, a vulnerability in software that can be used for malicious intent like the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in May 2021 is called zero-day. 

I have my reservations about how much spyware I bring into the house. I certainly would never have an Alexa to collect personal data or put appliances or devices on the internet just for convenience. It is bad enough that my iPhone tracks me everywhere and now my data could be picked up by IKE as I stroll through Berkeley commercial areas. These are the little things that those of us not skilled in coding can recognize. 

Perloth’s book is about so much more. In her epilogue she writes that her intended audience is for those of us not deep into cyber security. 

The cyber invasions by Russia take up a lot of writing space. It was a huge surprise that some of the most skilled hackers are coming out of Argentina. Seems that being in a country that lacks broad digital access is actually a motivator for teenagers to learn how to hack into systems. Another piece of news was that two decades ago American teams from Berkeley, Harvard, and MIT dominated the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), the oldest and a prestigious contest of its kind with over a hundred countries represented. These days US teams don’t even make the top ten finalists. The winners are Russian, Polish, Chinese, South Korean and Taiwanese. a 

Perloth doesn’t hold any punches. Section VII, Boomerang, chronicles how withholding notification from companies like Microsoft of zero-days discovered by the US NSA came back to bite us. 

If you wish to pick up This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends, it is available as an ebook at all the local libraries (Oakland, Contra Costa, Alameda County, San Francisco) except Berkeley. 

One more thing, I heard at National Night Out that Charles Clarke is moving out of the area. If you don’t attend City Council meetings then you missed Charles Clarke’s dry sense of humor as he detailed points on issues, always in wonderfully entertaining ways as he dove into the heart of the matter. Even when I found myself on the other side, which was most of the time, I always admired Clarke’s incredible research and tenacity. I will miss him and hope he puts all his talent to good use wherever he lands. If you know Charles personally, I don’t, please pass on a thank you for me.