Extra

A couple of months ago I heard the buzz of saws and found that the magnificent tree with an incredible canopy that provided much appreciated summer shade was coming down. I watched as the large healthy tree with a thick trunk, probably near 100 years old, the age of the houses on this block was fed into the chipper. I couldn’t stop thinking about what a waste it was to grind up a trunk that could have been milled into lumber for any number of projects.

Margo Schueler took a different approach when she had to remove what she called a wonderful tree, a canary pine and wrote it up in NextDoor.

“Last month we had a large non-native pine taken down from our West Berkeley home. There were many compelling reasons to remove this wonderful tree but we had struggled with this decision for over a decade. Fortunately, we found Mike Hudson on Nextdoor and he was able to mill 5 - 10 foot sections into wonderful lumber now drying in stacks for future building. Cost 65% of the bid to grind and dispose of the tree. Very happy with this direction. Even happier on reading this article ; “Reforestation Hubs Are Saving Urban Trees From Heading to Landfills” Did you know that the US is losing 36 million [urban] trees every year? Several organizations have stepped up with creative solutions to save the wood, reduce carbon emissions and create jobs.

“More wood from cities goes into landfills than is harvested from US National Forests,” says J. Morgan Grove, a research forester at Baltimore Field Station, USDA Forest Service. Thank you Mike!

I went to see the stacked drying wood for myself, amazing! 

The damage and destruction to People’s Park is still painful no matter how it settles, but if those magnificent trees were turned into wood for housing that would at least be more palatable than piles of wood chips. When I spoke with Margo about milling the tree instead of chipping, she told me that Mike Hudson told her he had offered to mill the redwood trees whose roots were destroyed (a condition of the approval had been to preserve the trees) by the developer for the 1698 University at McGee mixed-use project. 

The developer refused the offer, because it would take two days to mill the trees into lumber so the trees were chipped. That was in August 2018. The project still isn’t finished four years later from all appearances. Something is very wrong with this picture, when a developer couldn’t stop for two days out of four years to turn redwood trees into usable lumber. And something is very wrong with a city and a university that doesn’t have a vision or a requirement to change this course, and whose only solution is landfill and piles of mulch. 

From doing a little reading there is a lot of resistance to turning urban trees that are cut down into lumber to make way for developments, expansion or to remove them because of their growing size and proximity to existing structures. Berkeley was cutting down trees to rehab streets until neighborhoods rose up in objection. 

I wish this were the end of the story. The article referenced by Scheuler has a list of resources, that I have yet to check out. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/reforestation-hubs-are-saving-urban-trees-from-heading-to-landfills?utm_source=Next+City+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c28eb8580f-DailyNL_2022_05_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fcee5bf7a0-c28eb8580f-44126641 This morning before I could hit fast forward, the ad for Aspiration.com https://www.aspiration.com/ started to play. It is a promotion for a credit card that theoretically offsets destructive anti-environment choices and behavior with planting a tree with a credit card swipe. The message: Make all that spending feel good. I might have been taken in by such an ad if I didn’t know most of these programs are a failure as far as the trees go. There is a lot more available on the nature of trees and forests, but a good start is listening to The Daily, The Sunday Read: ‘Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?’ https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS81NG5BR2NJbA/episode/MTg2MDZjOWMtNzRmMS00NTI1LThjYTMtOTQzOTNjYTUzMGY0?hl=en 

Saving the world and planting trees requires more than a swipe of a credit card and sticking seedlings in the ground. Whether those seedlings even survive at all is a big question. At the top of the list should be whether the location selected is appropriate for trees, and does the tree species selected support the local ecosystem, meaning is the tree native to the area, and will the tree support native birds and insects? Then there is ongoing care for the first three years or so when a seedling or young tree is taking root. 

Even here in Berkeley with a tree planting grant, it is not guaranteed that the trees selected and planted support local ecosystems. The city is following up with care for the critical early years of the newly planted trees, but I wonder about the “younger” trees that are already here that look to be suffering and dying from the drought especially in the Sacramento Street median. 

The first project reviewed at the Thursday Design Review Committee (DRC) was a 5-story mixed-use building at 1820 San Pablo between Hearst and Delaware, the location of the former Albatross bar. To understand how the building is allowed 5 stories when the permitted number for this location is 4 stories,, this additional floor is the reward known as a “density bonus” for designating 4 units as very low income in a base project of 33 units. Setting aside four units for very low-income households, the project gained a density bonus of 11 more units and another floor making the total five floors and 44 dwelling units. 

Brad Gunkel, the architect, for 1820 San Pablo was trying to add design interest so this 5-story block would not look like just another BUB (big ugly box). What Gunkel thought would be a nice addition to the design, untreated wood starting on the third floor for the northern third of the building facing San Pablo, was the subject of considerable objection first noted by West Berkeley resident Phil Allen and then the DRC members. All agreed that the untreated wood would not age nicely as Gunkel described and would instead deteriorate within a few years and require replacement. Charles Kahn DRC member expressed concern, saying that, “rather than being a gift to the neighborhood, this would degrade and would be more a curse…” The DRC voted unanimously to continue review with a list of requested revisions and modifications to be incorporated before proceeding to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). 

The second DRC project at 2403 San Pablo at Channing, the former Omega Salvage Store, is a co-housing condominium project with 1, 2 and 3-bedroom units for a total of 36 units, with a large communal kitchen and great room and over 10,000 square feet of open space (six times more than required) designed by the people who plan to live there and are looking toward a future of aging in place. It is a lovely project and passed out of committee with an ask to make the San Pablo ground floor exterior more interesting. My vote would be to add a mural. 

Committee member Steve Finacom said this about the co-housing project, “I’m very positive about this and I wish we saw more projects like this in terms of massing and setback and height, because all the issues that came up in in most of the previous projects we’ve seen, the huge buildings built at property line that overshadow neighbors and that don’t have any real open space, that’s all addressed here…” 

My neighbor who normally doesn’t follow projects, though he hears a fair amount of complaining about them from me, took a cruise through recent projects approved by ZAB with the two R & D projects in West Berkeley grabbing his attention. He commented: “Why are they building parking lots for people to drive to work instead of housing so they can walk, I bet there is a lot of housing that could go up instead of those parking lots…” He is right. 

There was a lot of complaining about the parking lots when the projects were being reviewed, but none of us thought to suggest that housing ought to go on the sites instead of cars. That won’t happen next time, but to actually require housing instead of parking lots, that demands city action. And city action invariably falls into the cycle of referrals to the city manager and the Planning Commission whose agenda is tightly controlled by the Planning Department where little bubbles up. 

The Community for a Cultural Civic Center (CCCC) met on Monday with Mayor Arreguin invited to discuss the $650,000,000 general obligation bond that will be on the November ballot. It wasn’t really clear what passing the bond would mean for restoring the Maudelle Shirek (old city hall) and the Veterans Buildings. The mayor started with enthusiasm for raising funds and said the revitalization “could” be funded with the bond, but then diverged to tapping Congresswoman Barbara Lee for $50 million for the Civic Center as being reasonable. It was all pretty “vague” with the list of other things for bond spending like “complete streets” bike and pedestrian plans, sidewalks, waterfront, etc. 

Arreguin said the bond package would be spread over 48 years instead of the usual 30 to bring down the cost to $40.91 for each $100,000 of assessed value. This is the projected annual cost to property owners, not total cost of paying back the money to investors (the bond holders) as that was estimated to be around $1.2 billion in the August 3 Council meeting discussion and documents. And even that number is in question given the last-minute revisions from the Finance Department (instigated by citizen Lomax finding calculation errors) and all the variables of spreading the bond tranches (sliced portions of the bond) over 20 – 30 years with repayment over 48 years. 

The update on the Turtle Island Monument Project is mixed. The project was conceived to remake the fountain as a monument to honor and recognize local Native American history and has close to $1 million in funding, which is all good. But, the current difficulty is the consultants hired to finish the design and implement the project are resistant to participation from the indigenous people who are native to this area, the Lisjan/Ohlone who the project is supposed to honor. The Lisjan/Ohlone have no reservations or protected land. The description of shutting down the voices of the Native Americans made me think of the Sioux Tribe orphan Mose in William Kent Kreuger’s novel, This Tender Land. As a small child Mose was discovered next to his murdered Indian mother with his tongue cut out. 

The Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) started on Wednesday morning with a planning workshop that could be titled “Dream Big.” It is a plan for expanding ferry service from 10 terminals and 6 routes to something like 21 terminals and 29 routes, with 18 vessels currently, needing 61 vessels for the most expansive proposal, with somewhere in between for more moderate dreaming. https://weta.sanfranciscobayferry.com/sites/default/files/weta-public/currentmeeting/b081722aDECK.pdf 

The problem is always funding including how to fund WETA for current service. The answer to how to finance expansion, the purchase of all those new vessels and build new facilities is supposed to come sometime this fall in another workshop. As summarized last week fares made up only 16.7% of the revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022. It is all the other federal, state subsidies, ballot measure J (Contra Costa Transportation Authority) and a share of bridge tolls that supports WETA. Next time you are in a traffic jam at the Bay Bridge, instead of being frustrated, think If all of these cars weren’t driving across the bridge, there wouldn’t be enough money for WETA ferries to stay afloat. 

The question which isn’t being asked is how many transfers or modes of transportation are we willing to use to get to a desired location, though the inconvenience of ferry boarding locations does occasionally come up. 

I live in the flats near the high school. As I drove to the Marina, I thought about what it would be like to use a ferry to commute to San Francisco. Getting to a Berkeley ferry would require a bus, drive or bike ride, then the ferry ride, followed with BART, bus or bike on the other end. Ferry locations just aren’t convenient unless you live next door and are maybe headed to a ballgame in SF. In the WETA survey, ferries as a means of transportation for commuting to and from work rated the lowest as desirable and as transportation to an event as the highest. I never considered the ferry when I lived in SF and worked in Oakland after the earthquake. It was bus to BART to shuttle. As soon as the bridge opened I was back in my car for the convenience. 

There are always people excited about expansion of ferry service whether it makes sense or not and a city representative from the Hercules area filled that role. 

One question on electric ferries was answered. Electric ferries must be small or they are just too slow to compete with other modes of transportation including heavy fuel oil or marine diesel-powered ferries. 

In closing, I can’t help thinking about Smedley Butler every time I hear about Haiti and sending Haitian asylum seekers back to Haiti. The U.S. made mess in Haiti started before 1914, but it was in that year that the invasion by the marines was planned and Smedley Butler became the ongoing leader of the occupation. 

Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines and the Making and Breaking of America’s of America’s Empire by Jonathan Katz is an absolutely fascinating book looking at history and regime change through the war hero Smedley Butler beginning with his joining the marines at 16 and ending in 1934 when Smedley Darlington Butler blew the whistle and testified before a two-man panel of the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities on the planned fascist putsch by American industrialists. 

In 1924 Smedley Butler was granted a leave of absence from the Navy and inducted as director of the Department of Public Safety of the City of Philadelphia, where Butler introduced war tactics into policing in the city of Philadelphia. 

An interesting twist in the 1934 coup in planning is the American Liberty League, with founders from the American elite multimillionaires of manufacturing and oil and the losing candidates to FDR and the New Deal. Their declared aim was to “combat radicalism, preserve property rights, uphold and preserve the constitution.” A book I finished a couple of weeks ago, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America , by Kevin M. Kruse, picks up in the 1930s where the planned coup ended. Did the elites find religion as the next useful path to sway the public into rejecting social programs? That is for us to decide. 

Regime change is our country’s history, and it looks like what goes around comes around. 2022 is a critical election year and who wins this year’s elections will determine the future of democracy. An August 2022 NBC poll of 1000 registered voters found the number one concern is “threats to democracy.” It was rated ahead of cost of living, jobs and the economy, immigration, climate change, guns, abortion, crime, other and COVID in that order. 

I recommend both books, Gangsters of Capitalism and One Nation Under God and if I can keep up on my reading there will be a stack of interesting suggestions in the coming weeks.