Staying home, washing hands regularly still remain critical

The City of Berkeley’s Health Officer and other Health Officers around the region and state recommend that everyone cover their noses and mouths with cloth when leaving home for essential visits to doctor’s offices, supermarkets or pharmacies.

A bandana, fabric mask, neck gaiter or other cloth barrier helps prevent those who have mild or no COVID-19 symptoms from unknowingly spreading it to others. To protect yourself from others, use physical distance.

Do not use surgical masks or N-95s. Preserve the limited supply of medical grade masks such as an N-95 for health care workers or first-responders, who cannot use physical distance to protect themselves, especially from people at their most symptomatic, infectious periods. -more-

Each week, on Wednesday at noon, no matter what your time zone, step outside your door or open your window and make the hills (and the flats) come alive with music. Props or costumes appreciated.

April 1, Noon http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobbymcferrin/dontworrybehappy.html

There are also some YouTube tutorials for learning this 3 chord song on a uke.

Take a photo or video and please link it to facebook.com/AnothrBullwinkelShow along with your location or neighborhood. A list of upcoming songs through April are at AnotherBullwinkelShow.com.

Have fun and stay away from each other while singing! -more-

Health officers in several Bay Area counties and cities on Tuesday extended a shelter-in-place order through May 3 to try to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus in the region.

The previous order, issued earlier this month, was set to expire on April 7. The new order will go into effect at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday and covers six counties -- Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara -- as well as the city of Berkeley.

The county health officers said the order is a complement to the indefinite stay-at-home statewide order issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom on March 19.

The extended order reiterates that all non-essential businesses will remain closed and also clarifies some of the restrictions on public life in the Bay Area. -more-

The Shelter in Place order has been extended to May 3. The peak is still weeks away. Per Mayor Jesse Arreguin's town hall Saturday, Berkeley was only at 19 identified infected persons. We know that will increase.

It is impossible to turn on the television without seeing a story about homemade masks or masks now being made out of sports jersey materials. Nurses, doctors, the entire team need the N95 masks and a full set of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). The homemade masks, masks from sports jerseys do not give the protection that is needed for members of the health care team who are in close contact with COVID-19. A best guess would be that these well-meaning efforts offer little to almost no protection for the working conditions of doctors and nurses, but for your trip to the grocery with social distancing a DIY mask will add some extra protection even if the only effect is to make you conscious of keeping your hands off your face.

Consider this: When a person infected with measles coughs or sneezes, the virus propelled into the air is infectious for up to two hours. Measles carries a fatality rate of 0.2%. The winter flu is 0.1% fatal. The best information available states COVID-19 is airborne for three hours and when those droplets fall from the air or come off the hands of an infected person on plastic and stainless steel the droplets are infectious for days. The true fatality rate of COVID-19 is still unknown given the inconsistency and inadequacy of testing, but it is many times higher than flu and measles. -more-

Today marks the second week of the COVID-19 Shelter in Place Order.

While it is still too early to tell, I remain hopeful that the Bay Area's early physical distancing measures will result in a flattened infection curve. The Bay Area is fortunate to have a group of dedicated public health leaders working together.

I am providing a number of updates on the extension of the order, information on how to apply for the City’s COVID-19 rental, arts, and small business relief funds, and excerpts from my virtual town hall Q&A: -more-

The latest developments around the region related to the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as of Tuesday morning include: -more-

At 8:00pm, it starts. First, the slide of terrace doors opening and the sound of balcony windows being unlatched. Lingering silence is broken as people lean out from above and applaud. Regardless of the neighborhood , the French people clap every evening at this time. Some households play music. Noise-making accoutrements that I don’t have in my home punctuate the patter: cow bells, groggers of sorts, and improbably, kazoos. This is all to appreciate healthcare workers battling COVID-19. I am an American living in the southern French city of Montpellier, and during the pandemic, my favorite activity is to jog during this daily event. Montpellieris a small city­—the population of Orlando—but has the density between that of Boston and Newark. Narrow streets radiate from the medieval center and meander through myriad neighborhoods. So I can jog a short distance but feel that I have covered much ground. -more-

There was a time when my closet was inauthentic.

I’d always been an admirer of the glitz and glamour of the fashion world. But as I became older and more cognizant of the ugly processes that lay behind the beauty the garments offered, owning them became untenable. With factory workers coerced into substandard work conditions, erratic shifts, and unlivable wages, the human cost of fashion is unjustifiable. Clothing is meant to be an empowering exercise in self-expression; how then was it ethical to empower myself at the expense of workers? Instead of focusing on appearance or price, I wanted my clothes’ origins to reflect my humanitarian values. To me, authenticity in fashion means embodying a piece that you believe in, not only in its outward appearance but also its inward significance. As I rediscovered my wardrobe, I identified three key action-items we should all consider when picking out the next piece to decorate our closet. -more-

The University of California at Berkeley said Monday that its Innovative Genomics Institute is creating a pop-up novel coronavirus diagnostic lab with the capacity to process more than 1,000 patient samples per day. -more-

The lengthy commentary by Cody R. McGillivray scolding us all for sheltering in place probably awakens in a certain ratio among us a sense of something familiar. Isn't there some lunacy in letting the economy fall apart while going stir-crazy indoors if we're lucky enough to have a door to close?

Only if you're unconcerned about being an asymptomatic carrier. You may elect to take your chances with exposure since you're feeling well, or if you like the sense of adventure. But the person who picks up the shopping basket behind you may not want to risk their family, their neighbors, or themselves. -more-

The latest developments around the region related to the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as of Sunday afternoon include: -more-

Yesterday United States District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles issued a nationwide temporary restraining order requiring that the Trump administration "make every effort to promptly and safely release" from custody thousands of class members in the Flores v. Barr case. LINK TO RESTRAINING ORDER. Class members in the Flores case include all minors detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement in family detention centers and all unaccompanied minors detained by the HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement. There are over 5,000 children in detention. The order requires prompt release under Paragraph 14 of the Flores Settlement which sets out an order of preference for release including parents, relatives, group homes, and other responsible unrelated adults. -more-

While California is just beginning to deal with the Covid-19 virus pandemic, the biggest healthcare crisis in our history, most politicians seem to exist in a parallel universe. They seem to think that they are doing their job by sending out email blasts with pictures of their smiling faces parroting CDC pronouncements.

Meanwhile, heartless state senators, representatives, and well-financed YIMBY operatives are looking at the tsunami of pain and suffering we are witnessing as just another “opportunity” to promote their extremist, legislative agenda that wrests control of planning and zoning away from local governments. But this time, the consequences for us all are likely to be much worse.

We cannot allow predatory, unconscionable political maneuvering

We have a protected legal right to engage in robust public participation in our political process. But how can we exercise that right when all public gatherings are forbidden, when all public hearings are closed, when even face to face conversations are verboten? The well-intended but meager attempts by local and state government to videotape their meetings and use social media to interact with the public are absurdly inadequate to replace a fully attended public process, while the entire state’s population is under mandatory “shelter in place” order, schools are closed, most businesses are closed, and most people cannot go to work. -more-

How did he know it would come to this? Thanks, Kathleen, for sending this prophetic link. -more-

Berkeley is appealing to the community for donations of protective supplies that can be used by public safety workers and others during the novel corona virus emergency. -more-

The latest developments around the region related to the novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, as of Saturday morning include: -more-

Bernie Sanders won the largest share of votes cast in Berkeley in this year’s Democratic presidential primary. He garnered 20,131 votes, amounting to 40.5% of votes cast for Democratic presidential candidates. -more-

We can learn a great deal about ourselves and the present by remembering the past. Here’s the third installment of my chronological account of what happened in Berkeley during the 1918-19 “Spanish Flu” epidemic. The stories are largely drawn from the pages of the Berkeley Daily Gazette, Berkeley’s hometown paper. A pattern of writing about one week at a time seems to have evolved and is suitable; in that era the Gazette published Monday through Saturday and took Sunday off, so there are six daily issues I am reviewing for each installment.


Introduction

Our story is now in the third week of October, 1918. That was the week that official Berkeley started to get serious about the influenza epidemic, which had already arrived and gained a strong foothold. The coverage in this installment starts with the first official pronouncements on the local flu, then news related to the “Great War”, both internationally and locally, more influenza-related stories, and concludes with other news from the time to set the context, and obituaries of local flu-related deaths.

There are a number of stories I’ve copied in their entirety because they go into detailed descriptions of how both government officials and doctors viewed the epidemic. This is a long piece; it is two and a half times longer than the second installment which, itself, was twice as long as the first one.

Part of the reason for the increasing length is that as October, 1918, wore on more material about the influenza epidemic appeared in the newspaper. My intention is to give readers a great deal of raw material about Berkeley and its experiences in 1918, so the length has grown, accordingly. I am also not “reading ahead” much in the newspapers to give myself an omniscient sense of what is coming next; rather, I’m taking the papers one day at a time, just as we are experiencing the present COVID-19 crisis and the health, political, economic, and cultural impacts as they unfold.

Here’s a summary of what you’ll find in this installment: -more-

While the world is trying to cope with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, one of the most appalling blunders in the history of U.S. foreign policy.

Contrary to President Trump’s election promise to extricate us from foreign wars, America is ramping up its efforts to send in more troops in response to an alleged attack by Iranian militias on a U.S. base near Bagdad ignoring the will of the Iraqi people who voted unanimously to demand the U.S. leave. This also echoes the sentiment of most Americans.

It is incomprehensible that so many nations supported the U.S. which has a long history of waging wars based on faulty intelligence or outright lies. Perhaps, it was access to cheap oil that explains this madness. To recap the sordid details. Seventeen years ago, the U.S. armed forces attacked and invaded Iraq based on faulty intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Israel swiftly stood in solidarity with the invasion, down to the last U.S. soldier. Iraq’s destruction was swift and menacing with 460,000 U.S. troops, 46,000 UK troops, 2,000 from Australia and a few hundred from other European countries. Former President Bush and Vice President Cheney who used their wealth and powerful family connections to escape the Vietnam war gave the order to launch the “shock and awe” invasion, demonstrating the “awesome destructive power” of the US military. -more-

As the viral blitzkrieg rolls across one European border after another, it seems to have a particular enmity for Italy. The country’s death toll has passed China’s, and scenes from its hospitals look like something out of Dante’s imagination.

Why?

Italy has the fourth largest economy in the European Union, and in terms of health care, it is certainly in a better place than the US. Per capita, Italy has more hospital beds—so-called “surge capacity”—more doctors and more ventilators. Italians have a longer life expectancy than Americans, not to mention British, French, Germans, Swedes and Finns. The virus has had an especially fatal impact on northern Italy, the country’s richest region.

There are a number of reasons why Italy has been so hard-hit, but a major one can be placed at the feet of former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini of the xenophobic, rightwing League Party and his allies on the Italian right, including former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Italy has the oldest population in Europe, and one of the oldest in the world. It did not get that way be accident. Right-wing parties have long targeted immigrants, even though the immigrant population—a little over 600,000—is not large by international standards. Immigrants as a “threat to European values” has been the rallying cry for the right in France, Germany, Hungry, Poland, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands and Britain as well. -more-

We can learn a great deal about ourselves and the present by remembering the past. Here’s the second installment of my chronological account of what happened in Berkeley during the 1918-19 “Spanish Flu” epidemic. The stories are largely drawn from the pages of the Berkeley Daily Gazette, Berkeley’s hometown paper.


We’re now in the second week of October, 1918. My coverage starts with news related to the “Great War”, both internationally and locally, continues with influenza-related stories, and concludes with other local news from the time.

War news

The Great War was in its closing chapters. In occupied France, north of Rheims, German forces were withdrawing and reportedly “burning villages and towns behind the whole front from Lille to Rheims. This is believed to presage a retirement in several sectors” the United Press reported October 7. German supply depots were also apparently being destroyed during the retreat.

A German proposal to discuss peace terms was reported rejected by the Allied governments. United States Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo told the press America “will fight until victory is clinched.”

(There’s a Berkeley connection to McAdoo. On the cornerstone of Berkeley’s main Post Office you’ll find his name, since he was Treasury Secretary when the building was constructed. He had married President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter in 1914, and would later be elected a Senator from California. Although McAdoo was a firm Progressive, if you look at pictures of him as a young man he somewhat eerily resembles today’s Jared Kuchner, another government official who married the daughter of a future president.)

Berkeleyeans seemed to be in accord with the Washington sentiment. October 7, 1918, 7,000 locals gathered in the Greek Theater for a mass meeting and “unanimously” stood up when asked if they supported a telegram to President Wilson “declaring for no peace except on unconditional surrender and the crushing of the German army.” -more-

Citations will continue for safety-related parking violations

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As people in Berkeley and throughout California stay home to limit the spread of COVID-19, the City is suspending various parking enforcement. Everyone should still follow normal parking rules about fire hydrants, disabled parking zones, bus stops, and other regulations that support safety and access to essential services.

This temporary suspension of rules by City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley is intended to make it easier to shelter in place. Normal daily patterns of traffic and parking needs have changed, and we are all adjusting. We’ll be monitoring the situation, and we may realize that changes need to be made. -more-

What’s new this week? Not much. The president of the United States of America is still stone crazy, a fact which is probably known to at least a couple of members of the crowd of sycophants who surround him, but they’re too cowardly to do anything about it.

Watching the string of campaign appearances disguised as press conferences which Trump has made this week, I’d hazard a guess that Mike Pence is not nuts, though he’s a coward and not terribly bright. When Trump went off the rails with his promotion of chloroquine and other untested remedies and his later rejection of the need for long-term social distancing, Pence did make a modest attempt to correct the record later on, but too little too late. Nevertheless, there have been a number of calls for the Vice President to exercise his powers under the 25^th Amendment to remove Trump from office as unfit to serve, unless and until the legislative bodies overrule him.

But that’s too much to hope for. It’s highly likely that Trump will be in power until January. Is there any way to limit the damage he can do, the number of deaths he can cause, between now and then? -more-

Like many of you, I've been confined to home and glued to the computer/tv. Nothing seems to change--I spent a wasted hour this morning trying to join a Zoom meeting online until I finally realized it's not Wednesday yet. Our faithful correspondents continue to write, though I have not. Thanks to all who volunteer to produce these interesting articles for you. -more-

India is about one third the size of the U.S. with four times the people and much, much poorer. Large numbers of the population are dayworkers, clerks, savants, secretaries, and hawkers – a sea of humanity dependent on subsistent wages in order to survive. -more-

Working people do not need a PhD to realize how the coronavirus and fears that the virus has aroused is impacting the labor market and the economy generally. Unemployment, which has increased tremendously, is expected to grow even more. By how much is difficult to predict. But especially ominous, a senior federal reserve official believes that the unemployment rate could reach 30 percent. In other words, the Great Depression of the 1930s may be making another visit. -more-

Dear Governor Newsom,

Thank you for your leadership during this pandemic.

My city, Berkeley, has the resources it needs to make sure all of us can observe hand-washing and social distancing, but has fallen short of making sure those resources and appropriate messaging are available to various groups at risk throughout the city. In particular, people with no housing are at the mercy of this neglect. They are in special danger of exposure to Covid 19 and inadvertently contributing to its spread.

The wash stations are often out of soap and water, which leaves people with no way to observe best practices for days on end. The People's Park restroom, for instance, has sinks which turn off mechanically after a few seconds dribble of water, and rarely has soap. Sometimes there is no water at all, and sometimes the restrooms are locked, leaving unhoused people, park gardeners, service workers and park users with no safe options. -more-

the recent coronavirus issue has caused a lot of trouble for our country, most of that trouble is not being caused by the virus and the people it kills itself but rather the actions politicians are taking in response to it. These days when photographs of young people out and about having fun pop up on social media people get angry. They fume about how young people are refusing to follow social distancing guidelines and putting public health at risk. Mayor London breed is now talking about shutting down the city’s parks because she claims that people are violating the shelter in place order. All of the politicians that support the shelter in place orders are operating off of a very dangerous fallacy that is ultimately going to cause more problems for our country than even 1 million deaths from coronavirus. We are essence teaching our seniors to live in fear of being killed by their grandchildren when those grandchildren decide to have some. Even worse, we are teaching the grandchildren to harbor hatred and contempt for their elders. -more-

Update: The San Francisco Chronicle has reported that California is asking the federal government to allow the state’s food stamps recipients to use them temporarily for online purchases. [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-asks-feds-to-let-CalFresh-recipients-15151515.php]

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A California friend on food stamps has alerted to me to the fact that in most states, recipients on food stamps cannot use them for online purchases of food. The exceptions are the few states in a pilot program allowing online purchases from designated companies. California is not among those states.

At a time when Americans are encouraged to isolate themselves across the country, it’s folly to require some of the most vulnerable among us to get on buses (if the buses are still running) and take themselves out to stores when we’re all being discouraged from mingling.

I suggest we ask our governors and congressional delegations across the country to press the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which administers the food stamp program) and Congress (which can authorize funds for it) to expand online purchasing to all states, immediately.

As CityLab has pointed out in a recent article, “This would be a big shift for SNAP [the food stamp program]: Not all states even allow participants to apply for benefits online. Given the disparities in access to the internet, such a program alone wouldn’t support every household in a food desert — but it’s a fix that could expand options for many.” https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/03/coronavirus-food-stamps-snap-benefits-meal-program-hunger/608170/

Here is the USDA’s description of the pilot program that permits recipients in some states to buy food online: https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/online-purchasing-pilot.

In California, the federal SNAP program, providing monthly food benefits to low-income recipients, goes under the title CalFresh and is administered by the California Department of Social Services. [https://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/calfresh].

Contact information: -more-

“Caner’s DBA, along with the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce and the Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District, sent a letter to the city today with suggestions about how to offset the financial losses businesses are experiencing, he said. That included deferring, discounting or waiving fees and taxes; providing interest-free loans of up to $75,000 for businesses that have a 25% drop in gross receipts; and establish a moratorium on new business regulations such as Fair Workweek and Healthy Checkout.” - Berkeleyside March 16, 2020

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While some members of Congress appear to have taken advantage of the Corona virus moment to dump stocks likely to take a swan dive in the pandemic, our publicly-funded business lobbies stepped up to the same greedy plate by writing a letter to the Berkeley City Council suggesting that there be a moratorium on "new business regulations such as Fair Workweek and Healthy Checkout,” according to Berkeleyside's March 16, 2020 issue. -more-

The otherwise excellent article on hand washing has an error: it was not Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley who died from puerperal fever. It was her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft herself, who died two weeks after giving birth to Mary Shelley. So it was the author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" who died of the fever, not the author of Frankenstein. -more-

As the viral blitzkrieg rolls across one European border after another, it seems to have a particular enmity for Italy. The country’s death toll has passed China’s, and scenes from its hospitals look like something out of Dante’s imagination.

Why?

Italy has the fourth largest economy in the European Union, and in terms of health care, it is certainly in a better place than the US. Per capita, Italy has more hospital beds—so-called “surge capacity”—more doctors and more ventilators. Italians have a longer life expectancy than Americans, not to mention British, French, Germans, Swedes and Finns. The virus has had an especially fatal impact on northern Italy, the country’s richest region.

There are a number of reasons why Italy has been so hard-hit, but a major one can be placed at the feet of former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini of the xenophobic, rightwing League Party and his allies on the Italian right, including former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Italy has the oldest population in Europe, and one of the oldest in the world. It did not get that way be accident. Right-wing parties have long targeted immigrants, even though the immigrant population—a little over 600,000—is not large by international standards. Immigrants as a “threat to European values” has been the rallying cry for the right in France, Germany, Hungry, Poland, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands and Britain as well. -more-

The U.S. economy is heading into recession. Washington politicians are trying to prevent this but a prolonged period of negative growth appears inevitable. What should we expect? -more-

Will the COVID-19 pandemic and the expected resulting recession lessen Trump’s re-election chances? The rally 'round the flag effect (or syndrome) may come into play. This is a concept used in political science and international relations to explain increased short-run popular support of the President of the United States during periods of international crisis or war. After all, 9/11 certainly helped George W. Bush get reelected. -more-

My background includes more than thirty-five years of being afflicted with Schizophrenia, Paranoid-type. But my background also includes, long before I became mentally ill, being an avid reader, and about half of that was science fiction. And as a youngster, I was hooked on Godzilla and the original series of Star Trek, and also shows called "Creature Features," "Outer Limits," and the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. So, I know a bit about going into fantasy media. -more-

Chronovirus: Delivered to your Door? -more-

The first U.S. Coronavirus case was reported on January 20th. Since then, 19,155 Americans have tested positive and 250 have died. There are many consequences of this pandemic but it's sure to affect the 2020 presidential election. Here are ten predictions.

1.The Coronavirus pandemic will not be over quickly and, therefore, it will affect the conduct of the presidential election. The Democratic convention is scheduled to open July 13th. It seems unlikely that it will convene in its normal form.

Recently, Donald Trump stated that he expects the pandemic to go on until "July or August." Some experts believe it may go for a year or more -- until a vaccine is developed to deal with the Coronavirus. Therefore, it's likely that the pandemic will be with us for, at least, the next six months and dramatically affect the conduct of the presidential election.

2. The pandemic will affect the economy. It's obvious that the Coronavirus pandemic will impact the economy: the stock market (DJIA) has fallen over 10,000 points; there's been a spike in unemployment claims; and economists are predicting that the U.S. economy has slipped into a recession -- with negative growth for at least the next two quarters.

To say the least, times are dire. Americans have to fear the Coronavirus and the collapse of our economy. (It seems the two are intertwined; the economy will not recover until the course of the pandemic is more predictable.) -more-

I watched the Presidential primary debate between Sanders and Biden (a week will have passed before you are reading this), and people with disabilities didn't get lip service. -more-

Italy is the worst case scenario for the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic of what could happen in this country. Presently, as of March 15, Italy has 24,747 cases with 1,809 deaths — a rise of 368 or 25% in the death toll in just 24 hours. Italy is now in a nationwide lockdown in a bid to curb the spread of the COVID-19. -more-

A Sign of the Times

This morning, an NPR reporter mentioned the upcoming November election and added a qualifier: "... assuming human civilization survives that long."

Another Sign of the Times

I had a small bout of surgery two weeks ago and was due to return to the hospital to have the sutures removed. Given the restraints of our geo-endemic pandemic, I sent off an email asking if the appointment was being postponed.

The helpful hospital folks suggested a delay was a possibility but they had an alternative: I could take out the sutures myself in the comfort of my own home.

Right: a Do-It-Yourself suturectomy!

The doctor's email provided the following quick course in removing surgical stitches:

"Use a small nail scissors with the pointy tip, to cut under the knot and pull the suture out with forceps/tweezers at home. It would be great if someone could help you."

A more detailed Five Step Procedure followed, along with a link to "a step-by-step video on taking out your stitches at home."

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On March 4, Canadian mezzo-soprano Simone McIntosh gave a mesmerising performance of the song-cycle Harawi by French composer Olivier Messiaen as part of the second Schwabacher Recital of 2020 in the Taube Atrium Theatre in San Francisco. Readers may check out my review of this recital in the March 7 online issue of Berkeley Daily Planet. This event was of such impact and importance in our Bay Area musical life that I decided to follow up by engaging Simone McIntosh in a dialogue about Messiaen’s Harawi. Due to the Shelter in Place restrictions imposed, however, due to the coronavirus, my dialogue with Simone McIntosh had to be online through email. Here, with few revisions, are the results of our online dialogue. -more-

Worth Noting:

The only City meeting scheduled for the week of March 29 – April 5 is the Agenda and Rules Committee at 2:30 pm Monday, March 30 which will review the proposed agenda for the April 14 City Council meeting.



The Agenda meeting will be conducted exclusively through videoconference https://zoom.us/i/269315640 and teleconference 1-699-900-9128 meeting ID: 269315640 if you wish to comment *9 (your phone number will appear on the videoconference screen).



The Agenda Meeting Packet is 334 pages. The proposed April 14 agenda is found on pages 11 – 29. The Consent items are primarily contracts. The Action calendar includes: 40. Opting up residential and commercial customers of EBCE (East Bay Community Energy) to Brilliant 100 and Municipal accounts to Renewable 100 (completely 100% renewable). 41. Requiring 20% inclusionary units in new developments in Qualified Opportunity Zones. 42. – 45. Are the proposals on eliminating carbon based fuel transportation by 2040 and 2045. These goals miss the 2018 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) warnings and actions that need to be taken by 2030.

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

-more-