Public Comment

A BERKELEY ACTIVIST'S DIARY, week ending January 8

Kelly Hammargren
Wednesday January 11, 2023 - 01:16:00 PM

City Council sent Lori Droste off into the sunset as a former two term Councilmember with nearly 1 ½ hours of accolades on December 6, 2022. Sometime before signing off that last evening Droste submitted two proposals that were first seen in the draft agenda for the January 17, 2023 City Council meeting as items 26 and 27 at the January 4, 2023 Agenda and Rules Committee. 

The Agenda and Rules Committee, with members Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf, rarely receives much attention. There are only two or three regular public attendees (I am one) and city staff. 

If you have been following Kevin McCarthy’s quest for Speaker of the House, and the concessions made to get the gavel, including three spots on the House Rules Committee for Freedom Caucus members, then you might have heard Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat from Massachusetts, describe the Rules Committee as the most powerful committee that no one knows anything about. The House of Representatives Rules Committee decides what gets to the floor for a vote. And the rules, McCarthy’s concessions, most of which are in a secret appendix, determine how the House of Representatives will operate. 

Berkeley’s City Council Agenda and Rules Committee does much the same: determines what reaches the final agenda for a Council vote and how Council meetings are managed. For now, the Council Agenda and Rules Committee referred Droste’s parting gestures back to itself for further discussion, but that shouldn’t give anyone any assurance that Council won’t get behind these changes. 

Draft Agenda Item 26 was “Bureaucratic Effectiveness and Referral Improvement and Prioritization Effort (BE RIPE).” This agenda item would limit each councilmember to no more than one major legislative proposal or set of amendments to any existing ordinance per year, with the mayor allowed two proposals. Budget referrals and allocations must be explicitly related to previously established or passed policies or programs. 

Droste’s proposal for limiting legislation and budget referrals would certainly dampen Berkeley’s position as a progressive city, though other than Councilmember Harrison’s natural gas ban in new construction in 2019, Berkeley has fallen off a cliff when it comes to innovation. Looking at submissions, the two councilmembers who would be most affected by limiting legislation are Taplin and Harrison. Every councilmember would feel the pinch on budget referrals. 

Councilmember Taplin turns out a stack of legislative proposals every month, more than what would be reasonably produced by his office staff/legislative aide, with Taplin turning over presentations and responses to questions to others. I can only think of one Taplin proposal that didn’t end up as a referral for the City Manager to finish, and that was the ordinance on giving priority to native plants. By the time it reached a council vote it was so watered down it can best be described as a near meaningless gesture, when what is really needed is recognition of the critical importance of urban forests, support for ecosystems and firm thresholds for native plants which research shows should not drop below 70%. 

The other councilmember that turns in significant legislation is Kate Harrison. The difference between the two councilmembers is that Harrison knows her legislative proposals thoroughly, goes through steps of refinement, and is ready to answer questions, which frequently turns into grilling requiring explaining every facet. Little to nothing is left to finish except implementation if approved. 

Droste’s Draft Agenda Item 27 “Reforms to Public Comment Procedures at meetings of the Berkeley City Council“ consolidates all public comment—non-agenda, agenda, consent and action into a single comment period with a limit on the number of speakers at the beginning of meetings and additional time at the end of meetings, using BUSD (Berkeley Unified School District) School Board as a model. This rule revision is proposed as temporary during COVID-19; however, no one should feel confident if it is passed that this would not be extended. 

This would leave public comment to emails/letters. Since it appears that some council members never finish reading the agenda packet, it invites question about how they do with reading emails/letters. 

I remember sitting at a BUSD board meeting with two others until I was called on at 1:35 am to give public comment. I also remember months ago when Mayor Arreguin said at a public meeting that commenters opposing his plan for a ferry didn’t represent Berkeley. I can think of no better way to create a bubble of sycophants around the mayor and council than to shut down public comment. 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission started off Thursday evening January 5, 2023 ordinarily enough with a demolition referral for the rather non-descript box like commercial building at 1652 – 1658 University last occupied by Radio Shack. There was the usual back and forth over how a new building (size and mass unknown) might impact the existing historical buildings next door. 

Mark Hulbert, “Preservation Architect”, hired by the developer to do the demolition assessment of 1652-1658 University concluded: 

“[T]he subject property and building are not associated with the movement or evolution of religious, cultural, government, social or economic developments of the City (LPO Section A.2). In its mid-University Ave. and mid-20th century commercial development context there are no development patterns of any potential historic importance associated with this property or its ordinary store and office building.” 

The conclusion in the staff report by Allison Riemer, Associate Planner was similar: 

“[A] study of its construction history, ownership and occupancy records revealed no information linking this site to any events or singular episode of primary importance to Berkeley’s history or economic development.” 

Both the Preservation Architect and City staff missed what Fran Cappelletti, Archivist for the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association found. 

In 1923, a permit was taken for the West Gate Masonic Association to build a building on that corner (University and Jefferson) for the Masonic Lodge for African Americans. Objections arose from the neighbors who did not want African Americans at this site in any form and went so far as to pressure the City to change the zoning. The City Council did not approve the zoning change, but the construction stopped and the lot sat vacant for twenty-four years until the current commercial building was constructed in 1947. 

Commissioner Finacom asked for a plaque to be at the site to commemorate the history, but was met with pushback and objections from Commission Chair Enchill, “So I think we can find those type of histories and stories throughout the city, and I don’t think there’s enough for me to that that’s a particularly unique story that the developer should be required to provide a plaque here.” Commission Crandall agreed as did the rest of the commissioners. 

Commissioner Finacom stated he respectfully disagreed and spoke to the vanishing collective history. “[I]f there is a plaque, it seeps its way into a public consciousness, because people read it, and they mention it… it actually has a cultural context to the property and the story of Berkeley.” 

Commissioner Chair Encill’s statement that there is nothing particularly unique about the history of 1652 – 1658 University seems to be all the more reason to memorialize how racism ended building a Masonic Lodge for African Americans at the corner of University and Jefferson. How many other stories need to be told and memorialized? 

If we look to the cover story in the December 2022 issue of the Atlantic, “Monuments to the Unthinkable America still can’t figure out how to memorialize the sins of our history. What can we learn from Germany?” by Clint Smith, we should have plaques everywhere. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/12/holocaust-remembrance-lessons-america/671893/ 

Smith gives us a lot to think about. How do we come to grips with the sins of our history and the continuing racism that seeps into every corner of this country? 

Councilmember Hahn put forward the land acknowledgement to remind us of our history, that we are on unceded Indigenous land. Hahn also authored the letter sent by Council to the leaders of the House of Representatives and Representative Barbara Lee to honor the Treaty of New Echota and seat the official delegate nominated by the Cherokee Nation. 

It is a start. 

As I finish this Diary it is 100 years to the day, January 10, 1923 since a white mob burned the Black town of Rosewood, Florida to the ground and murdered six Black residents. Florida is now the state where Governor Ron DeSantis proudly champions legislation designed to limit instruction about racism and privilege in the STOP W.O.K.E. Act https://www.flgov.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Stop-Woke-Handout.pdf 

I did attend the Homeless Services Panel of Experts meeting on January 4, but about halfway through the long rambling discussion that ate up most of the meeting with Sharon Byrne from Santa Barbara, I lost focus. Byrne detailed the effort and collaboration of unlikely partners, redirecting little more than a handful of disruptive chronically homeless persons into housing and productive behavior. No meeting actions were taken other than approving the minutes and agreeing on the meeting agenda. 

After listening to the first two taped interviews in the audiobook The Trump Tapes by Bob Woodward, 2022, 11 hours and 29 minutes I was about ready to hang it all up, but I pushed ahead and finished the entire audiobook. As with nearly every book I pick up, the impact is so much greater by reading or listening in its entirety. Listening to Trump in his own words, adds even more to the question of how it can be that he has a solid core of true believers, somewhere around 30% - 40% of the voting public. 

The Trump tapes are amazing in so many ways, like how Woodward attempted to lead Trump to self-reflection, only for Trump to bark back his grievances and self-aggrandizement. 

Woodward reminds us that a switch of 44,000 votes in Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia would have given Trump and Biden an electoral tie, sending the election back to the House of Representatives where each state would have one vote. Since more states were Republican dominated, Trump would have won. 

Woodward concludes that Trump lives in his own self-inflicted melodrama where “everything is mine, I do what I want” and is totally unfit for office. 

Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows you How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People, by Joe Navarro and Toni Sciarra Poynter, published in 2014, was the perfect reading companion to the Trump tapes. Navarro and Sciarra Poynter describe four dangerous personality types: narcissistic, unstable, paranoid and predator, and they give a check list with scoring for the lay reader. 

I went through the exercise of going through every list, checking the boxes and scoring Trump. I fully expected the outlandishly high score for the narcissistic personality, but I was less prepared for scoring as a predator to land in the dangerous territory too. I should have been ready with all the reports of swindling investors and contractors, the assaults on women, the Trump University scandal, the Fair Housing Act discrimination settlement, the conviction of the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records, the Trump Foundation charity scam and the January 6, 2021 insurrection. 

Remember how pre-election Trump promoters said he will become presidential when he is elected, and how Susan Collins said after the first impeachment that Trump has learned a lesson. He did: He can get away with anything. 

The message throughout the book is that people with dangerous personalities do not change. They are an emotional, physical and financial threat. 

Donald J. Trump fits the profile of a narcissistic personality and a predator. Donald J. Trump is not going to change, and using the profiles we all need to remember he is not just a narcissist, he is also a predator. 

There is one more thing to remember. It took fifteen cycles of voting and a pile of concessions for Kevin McCarthy to be elected Speaker of the House. Let us not forget who McCarthy made those concessions to. Out of the 218 Republican members in the House of Representatives, 121 were re-elected after voting against certifying the election of President Biden on January 6, 2021. We are in for a rough ride with a caucus bent on burning the House down.