Extra

The plus of not finishing my Activist’s Diary for the week by Monday as planned is the March 14, 2023 Tuesday Council meeting is over and the 10:49 pm vote on public comment is in.

The Tuesday evening March 14, 2023 City Council meeting was a good example of how we got to dueling sides and public frustration with the way council meetings are run. And even that takes a little background.

Former Councilmember Droste, in a parting gesture on December 5, 2022, sent an item, “Reforms to Public Comment Procedures at Meetings of the Berkeley City Council”, to be considered by the full council. I first wrote about this in the January 8 Berkeley Daily Planet Activist’s Diary. On January 4, 2023, the Agenda Committee moved Droste’s item to “unscheduled”, where it sat until February 14, when the three Agenda Committee members, Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers Hahn and Wengraf, voted to place it with a negative recommendation as the last action item for the February 28 City Council meeting.

The Droste proposal to limit public comment at City Council meetings was nearly dead on arrival until Councilmembers Rigel Robinson as the author and Susan Wengraf as the co-sponsor stepped in to revive it. They submitted a “supplemental” with modified language to change the proposed procedure from allowing public attendees to make one comment on the entire council agenda to letting them comment twice: once on the consent calendar before it’s addressed by councilmembers and once on all of the agenda items on the action calendar just before it was taken up, before hearing any presentations, staff reports or council discussion. The three exceptions to this schedule were hearings, appeals and quasi-judicial proceedings (court like). 

Per the Agenda Committee transcript from the February 14 meeting, Wengraf had nothing to say at that time about the Droste public comment item, and voted with the others for the negative recommendation and for placing it last on the February 28 agenda. 

On February 28, people who wanted to speak about the proposed change waited until 9:49 pm, only to be told that the item would be rescheduled to March 14. This was at a meeting that was supposed to start at 6 pm, but didn’t start until 6:27 pm, because a 4 pm meeting ran over. Arreguin informed attendees, some who had been waiting nearly four hours, that on March 14 the Robinson / Wengraf alternative to the Droste proposal would be the first item on the action calendar instead of the last. 

When March 14 rolled around, Mayor Arreguin had scheduled a 4 pm special council meeting on the police department’s annual crime report. It ran over, so the regular meeting that was supposed to start at 6 pm didn’t start until 7 pm. 

The regular council meeting began at 7 pm with ceremonial matters, recognition of the Cazadero Family Camp, KALX, adjournments in memory and ten one-minute speakers on non-agenda items, all of this concluding at 7:40 pm. This was followed with the consent calendar (the agenda items that would be approved if no one said anything). Finally, at 8:13 pm the item everyone was waiting for, Item 20, with new rules for public comment, was up, beginning with Arreguin recognizing Robinson to give his presentation offering two options. 

Though Robinson had said on February 28 that he was going to suggest changes to his first submitted “Supplemental” to the Droste measure, “Supplemental 2” was not posted until sometime on Monday, March 13. Supplemental 2 offered a couple of alternatives: public comment at the beginning of the action agenda or public comment at the start of each action item. 

What is important in regards to both of the Robinson / Wengraf alternatives is that all public comment (whether once or before each action item) would be heard and closed before presentations from staff, before the mayor and council engaged in any discussion, and often before supplementals / alternative proposals were known to exist.  

In the forty-six minutes (8:13 pm – 8:59 pm) between Arreguin’s introducing Item 20 and the time public comment opened, we heard Arreguin, Bartlett, Harrison and Hahn speak eloquently about the importance of hearing public comments after initial council discussion takes place and presentations are given so that comment is appropriate to the issues/actions being considered. 

The other five councilmembers (Kesarwani, Taplin, Robinson, Wengraf and Humbert) spoke supporting the Robinson / Wengraf alternatives. They insisted there was no infringement on democracy since residents had plenty of opportunity to comment through phone calls and letters. They argued that changing public comment would advantage more people. Of course in this case any of those letters or calls that arrived before Monday, March 13 would not reflect that there was a second alternative to consider. 

Had the five been concerned about connecting public comment to the issues/action at hand, the document from Robinson / Wengraf would not have specifically stated: 

“Public comment will occur for each Action item—excluding public hearings, appeals, and/or quasi-judicial matters—in separate but consecutive public comment periods before the Action Calendar is discussed by Council and staff.” [emphasis added] 

By 8:58 pm Kesarwani had already moved to accept the Robinson / Wengraf Alternative 2 with Taplin, Robinson, Wengraf and Humbert in support. 

There were about fifty attendees in the BUSD Boardroom (I was in the board room). We could not see how many were attending on zoom. College student organizations spoke about the inconvenience of having to wait for agenda items to come up for discussion. People who regularly attend council meetings spoke about the importance of commenting after an action item is taken up and discussed. 

After public comment, there was more discussion suggesting that the measure should have been sent originally to the Open Government Commission as well as to the Agenda Committee. The substitute motion was modified to accepting Alternative 2 with the insertion of “and as the item is taken up”. Kesarwani withdrew her motion and the Council voted unanimously for the Hahn-Arreguin modified Alternative 2, with a referral to the Open Government Commission and the Agenda Committee to consider other suggestions from the public for managing council meetings. 

I’m not sure it is enough, but we shall see. 

The North Berkeley BART Housing Site Walk took off as planned on Sunday, March 5. We were split up into four groups. According to Tony Corman of North Berkeley Neighborhood Alliance who followed up with attendees, each group received a slightly different version, part of which depended on what questions people were asking. In the group I joined we learned that the slope of the parking lot from west to east is significant, the parking lot will be in the southwest corner in the complex at Delaware and Acton, and the Berkeley Fire Department ladder truck reaches only seven stories. 

The market rate housing and affordable housing will be separated, with affordable housing on Sacramento on the east side of the access drive (drop-off) through the site. There will be one affordable Bridge Housing building on Virginia on the west side of the access drive, separated from the market rate housing by the BART Station. The height range is six to eight stories with four story edges on Delaware, Acton and Virginia. The bike lanes will be widened to 6 feet in each direction (usual width 4 feet). 

The mix of units for affordable housing will be one-fourth two bedroom and one-fourth three bedroom. The market rate units will be studios, one and two bedrooms. There will be 438 parking spaces, with just 120 spaces for the public. 

You can follow the development and sign up for notices at North Berkeley Housing Partners. https://www.northberkeleyhousingpartners.com/design If you wish more visualization as to what six, seven and eight stories looks like, the Stonefire building at the corner of Milvia and University is eight stories at the highest section 

It wasn’t planned this way, but the topic for the Monday, March 6 evening webinar sponsored by Standing Up for Point Molate and the Sierra Club couldn’t have been more timely. Just two days after the United Nations Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction reached agreement on the “High Seas Treaty” Michael Stocker, Director, Ocean Conservation Research, was speaking on “The Impacts of Human-Generated Sound on Marine Life.” 

The evening presentation was absolutely fascinating. I loved the recordings of animal communication especially after reading Ed Yong’s An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal Hidden Realms Around Us. Stocker played for us the sounds from whales and fish chirping to human generated noise pollution. You can listen at https://ocr.org/sound-library/. 

There is one more thing to think about in preserving Marine Biodiversity, and that is posed in this article “Pescetarians are responsible for many more animal deaths than regular meat eaters.” https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23639475/pescetarian-eating-fish-ethics-vegetarian-animal-welfare-seafood-fishing-chicken-beef-climate. 

The treaty to protect biodiversity is something Berkeley could learn about. Scott Ferris, Director Parks, Recreation and Waterfront told me Wednesday evening the Parks Department would not be planting any more gingko trees. That is nice, but it is a little late now that I see little new gingko tree plantings as street trees all over the flats in the formerly redlined neighborhoods. As I have written many times before, gingko trees may be pretty with their fall colors, but when it comes to supporting nature they might as well be plastic as there is nothing these trees do to support our ecosystems. Even crows who eat almost anything can’t find a speck of food on a gingko tree. 

The anticipated March 7 City Council special meeting on the Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP) never made it off the list of planned special meetings from the Agenda Committee to the City Calendar. Why it was cancelled and rescheduled for March 20 at 6 pm is anybody’s guess. Mayor Arreguin is mum on the topic. 

The initial plan coming from consultants Hargreaves Jones, hired by the City for $1,048,956, (contract # 32000183) created such a firestorm that Martin Nicolaus turned the essays, flyers, letters and public comments by marina park users into the book Love Letters to the Park: Public Response to the Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP) April – July 2022. You can read it at https://chavezpark.org/new-book-love-letters-to-the-park/ and if you wish buy a copy to keep. 

The Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission (PRW) has a new chair, Claudia Kawczynska and the in-person meeting this last Wednesday was quite interesting. 

The real change is the tone, starting with Kawczynska recording the meeting. The public and commissioners asked repeatedly during the preceding year when meetings were on zoom to allow closed captioning and recording. Scott Ferris and Roger Miller, staff secretary for Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission, always declined. According to the Brown Act anyone is allowed to record public meetings. including video recording. 

Wednesday evening attendees were given the option of speaking on non-agenda and agenda items at the beginning of the meeting or choosing to wait on agenda items until they came up for discussion. I waited, of course, but the rest of the attendees chose to speak and left before the end of the meeting. 

There were two speakers about areas for dogs, one on the Berkeley Way mini-park and one asking for mowing in the Cesar Chavez off-leash area. The biggest discussions evolved from Jim McGrath speaking on the Brown Act, asking why what is being planned for the Marina is not public and the impossible task of obtaining records through the Public Records Act. Toni Mester spoke to missing records from the city website on Aquatic Park and was joined by another speaker on the die-off of spotted sharks and fish at Aquatic Park. 

What was so different was that the two new commissioners, Allan Abshez and Reichi Lee, listened intently and asked many clarifying questions including directing questions to Ferris and Miller. 

With two attorneys as commissioners, the attempt to pass off withholding the Berkeley Marina Area Specific Plan (BMASP) informgation from the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission (PRW) as a Brown Act requirement landed like a lead balloon and caused some quick Ferris and Miller back peddling to say it was the practice to wait until council had seen it. 

That evolved into what the purpose of the PRW Commission is, if it is not advisory to the Council. Ferris said that the commissioners could respond to the BMASP as individuals. 

Individual response does not have the same impact nor the in-depth review that comes from full commission consideration. 

Nothing unexpected happened in the rest of the meeting. The PRW capital budget cannot cover all the planned projects with increasing construction costs. Nothing was decided. 

Nothing exciting or unexpected happened at the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB). The appeal of the fence at 870 Santa Barbara was denied. Legalizing some ADUs, an unpermitted addition to an eight-unit apartment building on Benvenue, and a winery with a tasting room on Gilman passed on consent. The ZAB continues to approve adding density in the Hillside Overlay, the high fire hazard zone with the Hayward Fault running through it and hillside slide zones. The new construction of a single-family home and garage on Cragmont in the Hillside Overlay passed on consent. 

If you think that giant chasms opening in the ground are just biblical stories and stuff of fiction, then please watch the PBS Newshour segment on Turkey from February 16, 2023. What once was a flat olive grove is now a chasm deep enough to hold a 13 story building and in some places as wide as football field https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/turkeys-president-faces-scrutiny-after-earthquake-for-construction-standards 

The Budget Committee approved sending the Public Bank East Bay to full council for a vote. The public bank is for city/local governments, not for you and me as individuals. The report on unfunded liabilities and recommendations will go to council after the spring recess. 

Now that few meetings offer zoom, I can’t cover as much as I used to. This week after three meetings on Monday, I skipped the Peace and Justice Commission and the Personnel Board. I stayed up late reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickled and Dimed instead of getting up early for tree planting at John Hinkel Park (there are more trees to be planted). I could not cover the in-person Police Accountability Board (PAB) and the Parks Commission, so I missed the PAB. It was supposed to be recorded, but I have not seen or found the recording.