Public Comment

I’ve taken to keeping an eye on the battery status of my phone and iPad, knowing that at any point there might be another power failure. It was just a little over a week ago, when I was watching the late news with a map on the screen of all the power outages, when my house and the neighborhood dropped into darkness.

Most of us are probably in the middle of precipitation whiplash watching pictures of flooded land that until December were drying and dried up creeks and rivers after years of drought. It is difficult to absorb that the future may bring storms with twice as much water as what has already dropped, if we are to believe the impact of warming ocean and air on atmospheric rivers.

It may be difficult to grasp in the middle of back-to-back storms, flooding and mudslides that climate-driven weather disasters are not our biggest threat. The biggest threat is the loss of biodiversity and the collapse of nature. And each of us has the opportunity and responsibility to act. That was the message of Douglas Tallamy Wednesday evening at the Golden Gate Audubon Society. 

In case you missed Tallamy as I did, the recording is already posted on the Golden Gate Audubon website, and that is where I watched it. https://goldengateaudubon.org/speaker_series/natures-best-hope/ 

I confess the whole host plant and special relationship between insects and native plants was lost on me until, on our way to the Y, my swim partner started pointing out which yards with non-native plants were dead zones for pollinators. I thought plants were plants, you pick the pretty one and never having much gardening talent, it didn’t much matter as in my care it would die anyway. Then my swim pointed out the yards with native plants local to our area filled with activity, buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies, caterpillars lunching on their host plants. 

Reading Tallamy’s book the Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees filled the gap for me. Now I understand that monarch butterflies may spend their winter resting on the non-native eucalyptus, when there are no pine, fir or cedar trees to moderate winter temperatures, but unless there is milkweed on which to lay their eggs come spring there will be no monarch butterflies. Milkweed is the only source of digestible food for monarch caterpillars. The host relationship is the same for the pipevine and pipevine butterfly. 

The meaning of ecosystems, the interdependent relationships between plants, animals, insects, fungi, organisms that work together with their physical environment, finally sunk in. 

It is a message that is lost on the city foresters and the Parks Department and unfortunately too many people who are in the position to give direction and make planting choices. From everything I hear and see we have city foresters who think diversity means taking plants from around the world that are drought tolerant and planting them in Berkeley, apparently not understanding there is an evolutionary relationship in nature that developed over hundreds and thousands of years. 

When it comes to the restoration of ecosystems, alien plants are dead zones. This matters. 

Wildlife, nature is affected by climate, but the biggest threat is us; we are the biggest threat to the survival of our own species. 

Tallamy started his talk with this message from E.O. Wilson: Insects are: “The Little Things That Run the World” 

Life as we know it depends on insects. 

If insects were to disappear 

1. Most flowering plants would go extinct;
2. That would change the physical structure and energy flow of most terrestrial habita
3. Which would cause the rapid collapse of the food webs that support amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals (including us).
4. The biosphere would rot due to the loss of insect decomposers.
5. Humanity would be doomed!

After all this rain with waterlogged soil, downed trees, ruined gardens, we have the perfect setting to pull out all of our non-native plants, especially those non-native invasive plants and replace them with California natives. Tallamy emphasized not all native plants are equal and to put our sights on the plants that support the most species (available in calscape). No matter what is the size of your space for plants, Tallamy said there is a place for us in the Homegrown National Park and we have Calscape to help. https://calscape.org/ 

We can restore ecosystems and that was the message Tallamy gave. 

Thursday evening there were seven projects on the Zoning Adjustment Board agenda with the last at 1752 Shattuck, a David Trachtenberg project. In my public comment, I gave David Trachtenberg the award for the evening with the project with the fewest native plants, followed with that, given all the projects he designs in Berkeley, he should do, and hw should know better by now. When I suggested he watch and read Douglas Tallamy, Trachtenberg said he had his book. I continue to wonder if he read it, given the list of plants in the project plans. 

When starting fresh it should be easy to do the right thing. The plan for the 68 unit mixed-use building at 1752 Shattuck gained added height by including seven very low income units to capture the state density bonus. 

On a happier note you can read “They Fought the Lawn. And the Lawn’s Done” about how Janet and Jeff Crouch changed state law in the process to change minds about native plants. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/climate/native-plants-lawns-homeowners.html 

I attended the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on ZOOM on one computer and captured the transcript of the Police Accountability Board (PAB) meeting through ZOOM, save transcript on another. The computerized voice capture isn’t perfect, but close enough for meeting content. 

The PAB had two agenda items I’ve been following, the complaints against the Police Downtown Bike Unit which upended the appointment of Jennifer Louis from interim chief to Chief of Police on November 15, 2022 (check the November 20, 2022 Activist’s Diary) https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2022-11-20/article/50077?headline=A-BERKELEY-ACTIVIST-S-DIARY-Week-Ending-November-20--Kelly-Hammargren and the report of misconduct by Jennifer Louis in 2017 when Andrew Greenwood was still Police Chief. 

The accusation of sexual harassment leaked to the public on December 29, 2022. I might have missed it if I hadn’t turned on the late night news on KRON4. The Los Angeles Times has the most complete report, but these days you need a subscription to read it. 

Jennifer Louis was accused in 2017 of sexual harassment, misconduct. After an independent investigator sustained the complaint, Chief Greenwood moved to suspend Louis for five days. Louis appealed the suspension and City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley reduced it to a written reprimand and one-on-one training. Then in 2020 according to the LA Times the report was removed from Louis’s file. 

I was expecting the PAB to discuss the content of what happened, but instead the discussion was about getting the information, especially from Internal Affairs.  

My questions and concerns revolve around the response by the City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley undermining Police Chief Greenwood, and why the whole affair (employee complaint, investigation, reprimand with a letter that was later removed instead of a suspension) did not reach the Mayor and City Council and the Police Accountability Board during consideration of awarding Jennifer Louis the permanent position as Chief of Police? 

Furthermore, how is it that the officer that owes a “clean” file to the city manager is recommended by the same city manager to be appointed interim chief in 2021 and “permanent” police chief in November 2022? Did this affair in its entirety, essentially a tap on the wrist, set the stage where Berkeley Police officers could send racist texts, arrest quotas, harass the homeless, and act with impunity as described by Brandon Woods, Public Defender for Alameda County at the November 15, 2022 City Council meeting? Is this City administration environment why a 20-month search for a new police chief (from the outside) turned up empty? 

The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission does not record meetings and requests for recording meetings or even turning on closed captioning falls on deaf ears. And the description “deaf” is not used lightly. The subject of closed captioning, live transcription and allowing attendees to save meeting transcripts is the subject of the complaint I brought to the Open Government Commission that will be discussed on January 19, 2023. 

Scott Ferris, Director of Parks, Recreation and Waterfront, reported a T1 funding gap of around $4,500,000 due to an increase in construction costs by about 25% and that priority projects were facilities, roads and restrooms. Ferris’s proposal to remove $300,000 from the Civic Center Turtle Island Monument Project was met with firm resistance from the Parks Commission. The estimate to renovate the African American Holistic Center is about $1,000,000 less than what it would cost to tear down the existing building and start from scratch. All of these estimates were made before we have felt the full impact of the destruction from our winter storms. 

The list of unfinished projects will go back to the joint subcommittee of Parks and Infrastructure and Transportation and eventually City Council. 

Brennan Cox, Parks Commissioner and landscape architect, voted in the end with the rest of the commissioners to support the Turtle Island Monument Project’s latest design. His comments prior to voting captured the state of affairs and much that I agree with. 

“This has gone on too long, something should be built, I don’t think we should build something to build something…The design is not moving enough for me” Cox said he spent a lot of time looking at monuments/memorials and went on to name some: the National African American Museum, the National Veterans Memorial, the Kindred Spirits: Choctaw Native American Monument, the exhibit by Wei Wei at Alcatraz.  

When my turn to speak came I answered Martin Nicholaus’ question of whether the monument includes a snapping turtle. I answered in the affirmative and added that snapping turtles are illegal to possess or release in California. 

Ferris still has no estimate for the cost of the latest design or any timeline, though he stated that his experience shows he can get it done on time. 

The next day the Community for a Cultural Civic Center met and the discussion continued. One member asked how the Turtle Island Monument represents the local Indigenous Peoples the Ohlone. It doesn’t. The Ohlone creation story is of an eagle, a hummingbird and a coyote not a turtle. 

The saga continues, no cost estimates, no timeline, a T1 fund shortage. This still looks to me like Lucy pulling the football. 

Before the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there never would have been the need for a 10-year child in Ohio to travel to Indiana for a medication abortion. While access to abortion and contraceptives is a fundamental right in California, the Peace and Justice Commission ensued researching the availability of information and access to reproductive health services for Berkeley High and UC Berkeley students. Most of the meeting evening was consumed with the discussion of the results of their research which ended in a report that will be sent to council supporting hiring two community health educators as suggested by Lisa Warhuus PhD, ORSCC, Director of Health, Housing and Community Services. 

No mention was made in the Peace and Justice discussion or report of Berkeley City College students, nor did there seem to be any mention of middle school and grade school. The average age for menarche in the U.S. is 12, but some little girls start menstruating years earlier, even as young as 8. Sadly, the need for reproductive health services reaches to children. 

BNC (Berkeley Neighborhoods Council) finished the week. The agenda as always is so full, we could really use two meetings to cover it all. What you won’t catch elsewhere was the presentation on the reconfiguration of San Pablo. There is an open website to submit comment. https://www.alamedactc.org/programs-projects/multimodal-arterial-roads/sanpabloave 

In contrast to the City of Berkeley, the team for the San Pablo Avenue Corridor Project looks to establishing a parallel bike network. Meaning that instead of Road Diets and taking away traffic lanes, the San Pablo Corridor Project plan is to place the bike routes on quieter parallel streets. 

The reconfiguration of Hopkins with removing traffic lanes, parking and adding bike lanes in front of the Monterey Market and block of businesses continues to create an uproar and for good reason. The whole redesign is justified by a fatal accident that occurred April 14, 2017 at 6:30 pm when a driver failed to yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. The entire redesign doesn’t end distracted driving, but it does make Hopkins more confusing to navigate for everyone, narrow an evacuation route and put the survival of local businesses at risk. 

When I finish here, the Housing Element is waiting, all 1428 pages of it. It is a reading task that I have been dreading. The Housing Element is how Berkeley will add enough new housing to meet the assigned Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 8,934 units with 3,854 of them for extremely low income, very low income and low income households between now and December 31, 2031. It is the only agenda item for the special City Council meeting Wednesday, January 18 at 4 pm. 

The draft came with adding 19,098 units, basically 14,016 market rate and moderate income to get to 3,854 affordable units and a statement to the effect that so much of Berkeley is ruined with non-native plants, we might as well cover the city with housing. 

The final version is supposed to be proposing squeezing around 15,000 additional units into this 10.5 square miles we call Berkeley. That should turn Berkeley into a city of wall to wall cement. Not terribly appealing except for the land owners who can expect big profits from upzoning for bigger buildings and the developers who will build them. By the time Berkeley is built over with housing and coffee shops there might be more several more atmospheric rivers to send weather disaster refugees to our doorsteps along with the burgeoning classes of UC Berkeley students.  

The reading I did finish was Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the US Department of Justice Against His Critics by Michael Cohen. I read Cohen’s first book Disloyal and found the inside scoop fascinating. Revenge is Cohen’s perspective on how Trump used the Department of Justice against him. I kept reading Cohen’s second book expecting it to get better. It didn’t. 

Despite this there is an important message: It is grievance politics. It is about getting even, something it looks like we will be living with for the next two years with the Republican majority in the House. If Trump runs in 2024 and manages to win, revenge will be on the platter. 

The stack of books on Trump seems endless and there are many that are better written and more thorough like The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by Peter Baker and Susan Glaser. At 752 pages or 29 hours if you pick up the audiobook as I did, there is little that is left out. I am anxious to see how that book compares with the copy of January 6 Report by the January 6 House Committee that arrived this week. 

Last week I wrote about Bob Woodward’s book The Trump Tapes. The podcast The Political Scene with David Remnick and Bob Woodward discussing the book, Trump and reporting, is worth a listen. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bob-woodward-on-his-calls-with-trump/id268213039?i=1000594674083