"Should the City of Berkeley change parking requirements for new housing projects to promote "green development" and produce more housing?"

That's the question the city of Berkeley is asking community members to answer in a survey about possible changes being considered to parking requirements for new housing developments. The survey can only be accessed through Sunday, November 29.

The current regulations in the city generally call for one parking space for each unit, but the survey includes various proposed changes that are being considered by the City Council at its meeting on Tuesday.

The proposals include eliminating parking requirements for certain types of housing,removing parking requirements in certain areas, such as ones in close proximity to BART stations, placing a cap on the number of allowed parking spaces for new developments, and requiring transit passes for residents and secure bicycle parking in larger new developments.

City officials say the current mandates increase the costs of housing construction and can take up space that could be otherwise dedicated to additional housing units. No data to support assertions about the outcome of the various proposals is provided.

The survey can be found at https://www.opentownhall.com/portals/257/Issue_9871 .

CONTACT: Justin Horner jhorner@cityofberkeley.info

What most likely comes to mind when reading the title above is the considerable number of deaths caused by the coronavirus. More than a million have contracted the disease and over 250,000 have already died.

However, the decline in longevity in the US is not a new development. In fact, it predates the coronavirus. According to the official records, the decline in longevity began in 2010. Those who were disproportionately affected have not been low income or African Americans or sick senior citizens. They have been white workers between the ages of 45-54. But unlike many whites, they lack a college education, which appreciably limited their job opportunities.

The jobs they had held were mainly well paying,stable manufacturing jobs. But as the result of a serious dive in manufacturing jobs, their work life situation changed dramatically. The only jobs they could obtain were low paying, temporary and intermittent. Also many of these blue collar workers suffered long periods of unemployment. 

As a result of the changing character of their jobs workers became deeply despaired. Dependence on opioids and alcohol became common. And many committed suicide. if their life pattern had not changed, 600,000 would still be alive. 

According to a recent study, researchers found that even a 10% increase in wages would prevent 700 suicides a year nationally (every state was included). 

This year (2020) millions of other Americans may shortly be in very serious trouble. To help those who have been affected. The legislation has provided 2.2 trillion dollars to protect the public from the health and economic impact of COVID-19. The law also includes a thirteen week extension of unemployment insurance  

However, the catch is that the program expires December 31. Unless the program is renewed 12 million Americans will be without income. Of course the consequences are very worrisome. Millions of these Americans will wind up in poverty. 

Among the serious problems of poverty is hunger. The charity organization, “Feeding America”, estimates 54 million Americans currently do not have enough to eat. Moreover, 37 percent of parents have been forced to cut the size of meals for their children or completely skip meals. About 10 percent of mothers with children under the age of five do not have enough food for their children. Indeed, thousands waited on line for food on Thanksgiving day. Clearly, the impending layoff of 12 million workers next month will be devastating. 

What is occurring is a war against working people and their families. Congress and the new administration must be persuaded to adopt progressive, worker oriented laws that will improve the standard of living of working people. There is plenty of money available, particularly from the rich, who are undertaxed and by using various statistical gimmicks some are not taxed at all. Consider the following --- according to the U.S. Census the income inequality between the halves and the have-nots is larger now than anytime in the last 50 years.  

If major reforms are not made in the redistribution of income, the years ahead will be grimmer and grimmer and our lives, shorter and shorter.

It is a Monday in late November, 2020, and I catch Amy Goodman (“Democracy Now”) looking back on the weekend. A couple of months have passed since the massive demonstrations against police brutality, people shaking governments by the collar demanding that the pointless wanton arbitrary killing of black people stop. Organizations had formed and the movement had grown, hoping for a voice loud enough to be taken seriously. There is no democracy or justice when there are voices calling for justice that are not heard. 

Yet here it is, the end of November, and the police killing is still going on. On November 13, two black teenagers are killed by cops in Florida. On November 19, a black man sitting in the back seat of a car, a mere passenger, is hauled out of the car and shot four times by cops. On November 23, a leader of the protests against the police murder of Breonna Taylor is targeted in the middle of the night and shot dead. In the same town, on the same night, a motorist is killed by cops during a traffic stop. He was white. His name was Brian Thurman. Like a black person, he had no one to protect him. And then, as if to reenact these tragedies as farce, a totally crazed man, a person of color, goes running around on Market St. in San Francisco wielding a frying pan and a kitchen knife, escaping a fire in his apartment of uncertain origin, moaning and screaming in inchoate pain, while fighting with a ghost. Maybe, in his duress, he had become a Roman gladiator whose frying pan was a shield and whose kitchen knife was a sword. Those with the ability to feel his distress might interpret him as personifying the total inability to make sense of this world. So he jousts with the psychotic spirit of senselessness. The cops who come to the scene, however, could think of nothing other than using him for target practice -- beanbag rounds, rubber bullets, stun guns, and finally live ammunition. Somehow he survived. They let him live, which means he will be thrown in prison for his impersonation of official insanity. For the cops, his emotional distress was not a cause for empathy. Instead, it rendered him an enemy to be dealt with militarily. 

All this in one “Democracy Now” broadcast, in late November, 2020, four hundred and forty years after the first Slave Codes in Virginia (1682) had established that a black person disobeying a white person could be killed outright. Under those codes, a black woman could not be raped because she did not have the right to say no. A black man could not be murdered because he would have to be granted his humanity first in order for his murder to even be considered "manslaughter." Who was Messerle killing when he shot Oscar Grant in the back? What were the Berkeley cops sitting on when they sat on Kayla Moore and crushed her ability to breath? 

As a final coda to these incidents on Amy’s broadcast, she talks about Chesa Boudin’s decision to open a case against a cop who killed a black man named Keita O’Neil, in 2017. On that day, a white van had been carjacked in one part of town by a black man. Some time later, another white van is seen on the expressway in another part of town. Two cops in a cruiser "decide" it is the stolen van and follow it. The van parks in front of a house, and the driver, who is black, walks calmly toward the cops in their car to find out why they had been following him. No gun in his hand, no scowl in his face, no hurry in his step, he walks over. The cop in the passenger seat of the cruiser shoots him as he approaches. He was in such a hurry to kill this man that he shot through the window of the car door. Obsession. What were the cops who sat on Kayla Moore obsessed with? Handcuffing her in her own home? 

######## 

Let us revisit the details of the incidents reported by Goodman. They belong to the world we live in and pretend to accept. 

A couple of black teenagers in Florida borrow a girlfriend’s car, and start to drive somewhere. Angelo Crooms was driving. He is 16 years old. He had just turned the corner from the street on which the girlfriend lives (this is in a video), and two cop cars driving down the same street see the car and follow it (the rest is on dashcam). The cops see black people in the car and "decide" the car was stolen (the same way the cops in 2017 "decided" the white van they saw was the one carjacked), and follow it. It pulls into a driveway. The cops get out with guns drawn. Their target car backs out of the driveway, and goes around them, trying to get away from them. There is this 16 year old black kid finding himself confronted by men with guns drawn. Does anyone ever think about the terror that a person must go through, facing the threat of getting shot to death by a cop? The driver is killed. A bullet enters the side of car from a right angle, signifying that the shooter was off to the side of the car and not threatened by it (as he later claimed­). In other words, he was not shooting to defend himself. The bullet that made that hole, however, is the one that killed the other young man, Sincere Pierce, who was sitting in the back seat. 

There was no traffic stop, no report of a stolen car, nobody doing anything dangerous; the cops didn’t even check the license plate number. They just had a desire to follow this car, and get out with their guns drawn. Same obsession, a desire to terrorize. It is reminiscent of the killing of Alan Blueford in East Oakland. He was standing around with some friends on a street corner, and two cops approached with guns drawn. He ran, and died. 

You walk toward, you run away, you sit in a car, none of it makes any difference. There are no cops who will protect you from getting killed when you need it. 

Is it important that the cop who did the shooting had problems with excessive force in the past? He had shot other people. Does that explain anything? Yes. What is important is that he was kept on the force. He was apparently the kind of cop the police force liked. He remained uncharged by the department or the DA for any malfeasance. 

Kenneth Jones was sitting in the back seat of a car that was parked by the side of the road, with its hazard lights flashing. There were four black people in it. It is November 19, 2020, in Omaha. A cop sees the car, and he and his partner approach with guns drawn. He is yelling, “show me your hands.” There is no crime being committed, and there was no perceived threat. Nothing is happening that would require police actions. Yet the police are acting as if there were. The presence of a black person becomes a hallucinated crime scene for them. Back in 1682, blackness meant enslavement. In 2020, blackness still means a violation of some kind of unwritten law which men with guns hallucinate. 

Three of the people in the car raise their hands. Jones, in the back seat, does not. Perhaps he has decided that he is not a slave, and he is not a criminal. So no white man has the right to arbitrarily order him to do anything. Especially something that would suggest he wasn’t a self-respecting human being. So he simply sits in the car, parked by the side of the road. 

The cop, on the other hand, has been yelling, “show me your hands.” It is not a request, nor an order (as in the military). It is a transformation of these people’s status in the world. It doesn’t occur to him that he is terrorizing people. Or maybe it does, and that is the purpose. There is a logic to this. When you terrorize people, you often make them do things that will allow you to make your acts of terrorism look like defense against aggression. 

The cop keeps yelling about Jones’s hands. He takes his flashlight and smashes the window of the back door, opens the door, and drags Jones out. If this was a traffic stop, why is he concerned with a back seat passenger? Or rather, what’s his concern with a backseat passenger in the first place? Jones has refused to obey him. The cop is back in 1682, when disobedience could be the cause of being killed. The cop keeps yelling about seeing Jones’s hands. He must have his command obeyed. The next thing that happens is Jones is shot, and falls to the ground. And the cop doesn’t stop. He is still yelling, “show me your hands” while Jones is lying there dying.  

Like a crazed man, he doesn’t know how to stop yelling his order. He has become a command-yelling machine. 

A similar thing happened in West Oakland two years ago. A fight broke out between two men in a strip mall parking lot across the street from the 7th St. BART station. A BART cop goes running over there with his gun drawn, repeatedly yelling “show me your hands.” The two men in the fight, who have been wrestling on the ground, stop fighting, and the one with his back to the cop straightens and raises his hands. The cop who is running over to him shoots him three times in the back, killing him. Against a command-yelling machine, one has no recourse. 

Let us return to our gladiator, Antonio Estrada, wielding his frying pan on Market St. Whoever he thought he was fighting in his extreme distress, he couldn’t hear the cops yelling, “drop the knife, drop the knife.” People standing around on the sidelines were trying to talk to him, trying to get him to stop his performance because the cops were going to kill him. He hears nothing. He jousts at the air. They shoot bean bags at him. He gets up. They tase him, and he gets back up. They shoot him with rubber bullets again. He gets up again. The cops are simply waiting for him to make a single hostile move toward them (as if their assaults hadn’t made hostility an absolutely normal response) so they could kill him and claim that they did it in self-defense. They finally got their chance to shoot him. He doesn’t die. 

Any normal person would have been able to think, “gee, this guy needs some help.” Not these cops. They were in their own alternate world. They had seen a non-white man with a knife, and they had clicked into a different universe where all they could think about was shooting something at him, probably already dreaming of his final sinking to the ground and breathing his last. Which one is more emotionally disturbed, a man with a kitchen knife jousting with hallucinations, or a man yelling commands at someone he has just shot to death? Which hallucination is more deranging, the one warded off with a frying pan or the one inherent in racial bigotry. 

Does it ever occur to any of these cops that they are creating role models for the rest of society? When they face actual violent situations, do they imagine that it is their brutality that partially engenders it. Or conversely, do they hope that their own violence will spur other kinds in society at large, because that will then translate into overtime pay, or job security. Do they recognize an increase in gun violence as a possible opposition to the call to defund the police? 

When other police departments, such as that in Berkeley, remain silent about the murders committed by their confreres in other jurisdictions, do they become accomplices? Have they become infected by the same bug? When cops act out their machinic attitudes toward people, is it a social illness? Have they become agents of contagion, carriers of a malicious consciousness that they can then spread like a virus? Maybe that’s what happened to Travis Nagdy in Louisville. 

Nagdy was a nobody, a guy who didn’t know who he was. In and out of foster homes, juvies, constructing a record for himself out of small thefts. At one point, he found himself in a demonstration protesting the murder of Breonna Taylor, and it touched him. He heard the story, he listened to things he already knew about from his own experience with police impunity. He joined the drive to make the police accountable. He got a bull horn and found a voice for himself, singing and chanting and speaking – an organizer fearlessly insisting on justice for this woman he had never met. He builds an identity for himself, becoming a social person, someone who knows who he is, and can grasp the world with both hands. He becomes a man who doesn’t just speak truth to power, but goes beyond that to speak truth to the powerless. 

Nobody knows who did it, nor how it happened. But one night, a little after midnight, he is standing on the street on a Monday morning, November 23, and someone shoots him. The rumor claims there was a carjacking, and some shots were fired at random. But he is hit with several bullets, and falls to the ground, dying. In other words, he was targeted. Somebody didn’t want him to become another Fred Hampton, so they made him into another Fred Hampton. 

The cops say they don’t know who did it. They have no suspects. 

It’s a familiar kind of event. One of the men who played an important role in the massive demonstrations in 1999 against the NYC police after they shot Amadou Diallo (thousands demonstrating for days at NY city hall) was set up for assassination. His name was Patrick Dorismond. After the cops who had killed Diallo were acquitted, Dorismond was approached on the street by a man demanding that Dorismond provide him with some drugs. He said he didn’t have any. A fight started, and Dorismond was shot and killed. The man who had approached him turned out to be a narc. That same month, another man named Malcolm Ferguson, who was also an organizer of those demonstrations, was shot to death openly by the police on the street. 

For each story here and now, there is always an earlier version that elucidates it. 

But killing Diallo also epitomizes the obsession being examined here. He was shot 19 times by the cops. What is significant is that the last two bullets to enter his body went through the bottoms of his feet. It wasn’t that they didn’t know how to stop. They wanted to do more than just kill him. 

It is said that there are police officers who “are not like that.” Why don’t they stop the killing? Why don’t they organize against those who give the police a “bad name” (terrorist)? But even the government is like that. Trump and Barr want to put 5 of the people on federal death row to death in the remaining few weeks of Trump’s administration. Trump wants to go out a killer. The cops are small potatoes. 

This is the end of 2020, and the killing just keeps going on.

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is an existential threat to democracy and the survival of the planet. Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd laid out the case for forming a Royal Commission to break up the media giant. Rudd complains of Murdoch’s enormous influence on issues like global warming and his relentless effort to push his right-leaning agenda in Australia. Many would argue that played a pivotal role in ushering in BREXIT and the rise of Donald Trump. Fox News served as the propaganda megaphone for Trump allowing him to trash his enemies and promote his bizarre conspiracy theories. Rudd blamed Fox News for its efforts to delegitimize Barack Obama with grotesque racist “birther theories.”

Michelle Obama said she would never forgive Trump for the anxiety he caused her family. 

Another former Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, complained bitterly about Murdoch's influence as a "climate denier, “dismissing Australia’s massive wildfires on “arsonists”. 

Rudd saved his most biting criticism on Tamp, FOX news and to a lesser extent on the Wall Street Journal. Their collective efforts have created havoc in the world experiencing higher sea levels, higher temperatures, hurricanes and wide-spread flooding. 

Murdoch has large holding in his home country, Australia, the UK and the US. During the past four years he has left an indelible mark on the Republican Party aided by the messianic Trump and FOX News. Republicans dare not cross Trump lest he ends their cherished carriers with a single nasty tweet. 

Carbon pricing to boost renewables and other measures which are now standard fare in most countries in the world have been an abject failure in Australia. 

Our fragile world has received a mortal blow from choosing to be AWOL from the Paris Climate Accord. Once again profits from fossil fuel industries take precedent over the welfare of the planet. 

Murdoch’s impact on Australia was so devastating that one of his son’s, James, bowed out of his father’s empire saying he “can’t stomach it any longer.” His son-in law promised even more radical measures to preserve the Murdoch Empire. Let us hope the “Royal Commission” will trim his empire down to size.

On November 19th, Rudy Giuliani and other members of the Trump legal team held an extended press conference to discuss their claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. While this event will be remembered as the occasion where Giuliani's hair dye dripped down the sides of his face, it was more notable for the bizarre claims made. We shouldn't be surprised, because the press conference is consistent with the Republican "paranoid style" championed by Donald Trump.

Conspiracy Theories: For the last 70 years, there's been a faction within the Republican Party that promotes conspiracy theories. This began with the 1950 claim, by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy, that Communists had infiltrated the State Department. The assertions by the Trump legal team are part of this tradition.

Giuliani began his November 19th press conference with this claim: "There was a plan from a centralized place to execute these various acts of voter fraud...in a number of states." Trump legal team member Sidney Powell elaborated: "What we are really dealing with here, and uncovering more by the day, is the massive influence of Communist money through Venezuela, Cuba, and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States." Powell described the mechanism for interference: "The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here in as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez." She claimed the Dominion company has a relationship with George Soros, adding "There are ties of the Dominion leadership to the Clinton Foundation and to other known politicians in this country." Giuliani told reporters: "I would love to release all the information that I have... Except most of you wouldn’t cover it... The censorship that is going on in this country right now by big tech and by big media, is almost as dangerous as the election fraud that we’re revealing." 

This isn't the only conspiracy that Republicans are concerned about. On November 22nd, Republican Congressman Devin Nunes referred to former President Barack Obama as President-elect Joe Biden's "overlord," calling for a special counsel to take over the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8975595/Rep-Devin-Nunes-claims-Barack-Obama-Joe-Bidens-overlord.html ) 

Conspiracies swirl around Donald Trump. At various times, Trump has tweeted conspiracy theories about the Coronavirus: it was a Chinese bio-weapon; the U.S. numbers are overstated -- the pandemic is not as serious as health authorities say it is; etc. He has also tweeted conspiracy theories about Barack Obama and Joe Biden: they illegally spied on his campaign; Biden is semi-senile and only appears normal because of his use of performance-enhancing drugs; etc. Recently, Trump's most venomous theory is that use of mail-in ballots leads to widespread voter fraud. (https://www.vox.com/recode/21546119/trump-conspiracy-theories-election-2020-coronavirus-voting-vote-by-mail ) 

Many Trump supporters subscribe to the QAnon conspiracy theory (https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html . According to the New York Times: "QAnon is the umbrella term for a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring. QAnon followers believe that this clique includes top Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of entertainers and Hollywood celebrities..." (Trump refuses to disavow this group.) 

Trumpism: Some political observers have dismissed Trump as a performer, observing that he has no deep political beliefs; that he is guided by the maxim: "do whatever it takes to win." Another way to view Trump is as an "extreme" Republican; that he represents long-standing Republican tendencies taken to the extreme. For example, "isolationism:" since before World War Ii, the Republican Party has been the "isolationist" Party; Trump has taken this tendency and promoted objectives such as the U.S. leaving NATO. As another example, since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the political realignment, the Republican party has been the "White folks" Party. Trump has played to this and been the most overtly racist President in modern times. 

Most relevant to the present moment is the fact that, since 1950, the Republican Party has been the conspiracy Party; there has always been an element within the GOP that believed "socialist hordes are at the gates," and promoted stories about "the Communist menace." Once again, Trump has taken this to an extreme. Not by emphasizing Russian communists but rather by demonizing Chinese communists and fomenting a conspiracy theory linking communists/socialists, AntiFa, leaders of Black Lives Matter, and violence in American cities. 

Donald Trump has championed paranoia. He's distributed paranoia through his public statements and the conservative media silo. 

The Paranoid Style: The Republican tendency to engage in conspiracy theories was analyzed in a classic 1964 political essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," (https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ ) written by historian Richard Hofstadter. "There is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind." Hofstadter linked the paranoid style to Joseph McCarthy and Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, Hofstadter described three aspects: 

First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism...The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests. Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents...so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans. 

Summary: Considering Hofstadter's words, It's easy to see Donald Trump's 2020 political campaign as a manifestation of the Republican paranoid style: Trump claimed the United States was under attack by socialists (and Antifa), the Democratic Party had been infiltrated by these socialists, and socialists had subverted the mainstream media -- with "fake news." 

From this perspective, the fact that more than 73 million Americans voted for Trump is not surprising. They did not necessarily vote for the man, they voted in support of the notion that the United State is under attack and Republicans can save it. In 2020, Republican voters were motivated by paranoia. 

Doctors have a definition of psychotic illness, and many say it is a thought disorder. Some say it is "split personality." This is not the same thing as "multiple personality," in which a person has several personalities in one body. The "split" part of it is where consciousness has "split off from reality."

Either of these definitions (a thought disorder or a personality split off from reality) will work for the unfortunate people who have been duped by Donald Trump into believing his set of lies--for example: "Biden won because the election was rigged." At best guess, Trump himself does not believe this.

Psychosis can be compelling. It is awfully hard for a person, after becoming psychotic, to let go of their false beliefs. This is one reason that schizophrenia is so hard to treat. The patient needs to be on board with fighting the illness and must not be following the path of denying the existence of it and resultantly refusing treatment. Yet now we have potentially millions who are suffering from externally induced psychosis. 

Most people do not create their own beliefs. Most get their beliefs from others. Most people are afraid to think for themselves. If the whole group in which someone lives is disconnected from observable facts, then the entire group is collectively psychotic. This is not the same thing as the "mental illness" that people have recognized for decades. 

Externally induced psychosis does not make it not psychotic. It is an instance in which the failure to think for oneself is integral to the problem. Those who can think for themselves can observe facts on their own and draw their own conclusions. 

People are being brainwashed by Fox News, by the Republican Party, and by the beliefs of their peers, and by the outgoing President. 

Antipsychotic medication works through weakening the emphasis of the internal and bringing the patient back to her or his immediate surroundings. This allows the patient to track reality, and to function in a manner considered normal. 

The challenge for people with mental illness is, perennially, to stay physically and mentally intact, and to remain housed, medicated, fed and alive. Beyond that, it's gravy. We see Trump splitting off millions of Americans from observable facts. I am not asking the reader to believe me; I am asking for you to observe reality for yourself as best you can. 

It is not a good time to go off medication and run the dire risk of relapsing; it is never a good time for this. These are especially challenging times, and mentally ill people may be facing more challenges than normally. The past year has been incredibly challenging for me. 

This is tangential: President-elect Biden, when he was interviewed while still campaigning, assured everyone on national television that he planned to pardon Trump after he (Biden) is in office. This could be a mistake. If Donald Trump goes free, he can hold rallies, he can do public speaking, and he can rouse millions of people into creating massive chaos in the U.S. On the other hand, allowing Trump to serve a prison sentence would limit his ability to do all of this. Trump's base could be angered by Biden not pardoning Trump. However, Biden must not placate extremists. Secondly, extreme Republicans are never going to be pleased, irrespective of anything. 

Although mental illness doesn't affect conservatives any differently than it does liberals, the way these two groups have evolved affects how mental illness is dealt with. The Republican Party has become anti-science. For people with mental illness to get better, we must respect science. If you believe in God, it is not a big stretch to believe that God created science and has created a universe that behaves in a manner science can analyze. 

We can not follow religious or superstitious notions about the existence of mental illness or its causes. We must always cooperate with doctors in order to adequately treat a mental illness condition. There may be exceptions, such as a psychiatrist who has some problem. In that case, get a second opinion from another psychiatrist. 

Through the George W. Bush administration there has been a “special relationship” or clear pro-Israel tilt to U.S.-Israel relations. Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. During Barack Obama's presidency, there was a more critical relationship toward Israel, the relationship changed from “special” to “normal.”

Under President Donald Trump, however, our relationship with Israel became an "extra special relationship." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not ungrateful about Israel's relationship with the U.S. under Trump, when earlier this year he said that Trump has been “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” And Israel will establish Trump Heights (Ramat Trump in Hebrew), a new community located on the occupied Golan Heights in honor of Trump. 

Trump hardline pro-Israel stance fit easily with the Republican Party and Netanyahu’s government. David Friedman, his ambassador to Israel, is a pro-Israel advocate who once wrote that the two-state solution is “a suicidal ‘peace’ with hateful radical Islamists hell bent on Israel’s destruction.”  

Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; he abandoned efforts to curb Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the West Bank; he ordered the closing of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington; he withdrew U.S. funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which provides financial assistance to Palestinians; and cut bilateral aid to the Palestinian Authority. 

To add insult to injury, on January 20, 2020, Trump unveiled the Trump peace plan (officially titled "Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People”), a Trump administration proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The plan was authored by a team led by Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner. Palestinian leaders were not invited to the negotiations. Netanyahu loved the plan but the Palestinians rejected it out of hand as requiring too few concessions from the Israelis and imposing too harsh requirements on the Palestinians. 

As of 30 January 2020, there are about 130 government-approved Israeli settlements, and 100 unofficial ones, which are home to around 400,000 Israelis in the West Bank, with an additional 200,000 Israelis residing in 12 neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. The Trump peace plan would give Israel the green light to annex about 30% of the territory, which Israel captured in the Six Day War in 1967.  

Palestine, however, is not without blame for the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times Martin Perez, former editor-in-chief of The New Republic wrote, "A result of . . . 40 years of efforts [to bring Palestinians to the negotiating table] was four peace offers the Palestinians rejected, as well as a revivified Hamas in Gaza, attacks in southern Lebanon, two intifadas and unending Palestinian insistence on the right of refugees’ descendants to return to Israel, a policy that would use demographics to destroy the Jewish state."  

Recently, the Trump administration has promoted normalized ties between Israel and the Arab world, reaching deals with Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates but not so far with Saudi Arabia. The deals also are aimed at unifying Arab countries against Iran, their common adversary. While a move toward normalization between Israel and the Arab world is a worthy goal, it may leave the Palestinians further isolated. 

It is unrealistic for the U.S. under Biden to suddenly become neutral in all things Middle East. However, I expect Biden will be less testy toward Israel than Obama was, but not so “extra special” as Trump. In other words, a return to our long-standing “special relationship” with Israel. A first step will probably be a renegotiation of the Iran nuclear accord that Biden helped negotiate and which Netanyahu vigorously opposed. I would also expect a reopening of Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington, restore U.S. funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, restoring bilateral aid to the Palestinian Authority; and reopening the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem. 

Before any peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine can begin, the Biden administration must repair the damage caused by Trump by reducing tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians; restoring the U.S.-Palestinian relationship; and establishing basic parameters for an eventual agreement generally conforming to the principles set forth by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Rev. Billy Talen Versus Black Friday and Jeff Bezos

It's a regular holiday tradition, and we're not talking about turkey and stuffings. As Black Friday approaches, the Rev. Billy Talen and the Church of Stop Shopping Choir is once again confronting the cardinal sin of mindless consumption. This year, the Stop Shopping chorus directed its choral disapproval at "the dirtiest retail company in the country"—Amazon. According to Rev. Billy, Amazon's vast enterprise "puts 1 million metric tons of CO2 into the air every week, while working conditions leave 20,000 of its workers infected with Covid. Human injustice and Earth injustice always show up together."

At noon on Black Friday, Rev. Billy and his bullhorn showed up at the New York mansion of Amazon chief Jeff Bezos to "mourn with us the pain and suffering and death caused by this company" and to "find joy in the presence of workers who fight such a giant." You can link to Rev. Billy's Bezos videos here. 

A License To Be Licentious? 

On November 26, the Chronicle ran a story about the Department of Motor Vehicles exercising its prerogative to deny issuing personalized licenses plates that the DMV deemed "offensive to good taste and decency." It's the abiding conflict between the noble cause of "free speech" and the ignoble curse of "hate speech." 

All that aside, I'm wondering how a local Honda Accord owner managed to acquire DMV-approved plates that bear the startling message: "POOP." 

Be the First One on Your Block to Own One 

Looking for a unique holiday gift? How about an inflatable poo emoji? Back in 2017, a New Zealand environmental group called ActionStation made international headlines when it created a bunch of iconic, inflatable emojis that volunteers used to protest the then-government's plan to lower national water standards.  

According to ActionStation: "We've lent them to various groups for other environmental campaigns, but they're now just taking up space." As the upstart Kiwis put it: "we're channeling our inner Marie Kondo and setting up a pop-up shop to clear our shelves while also raising funds for the campaigns. These pool-sized poo-balloons sell for $15 (plus shipping and handling from Down Under to your doorstep). 

The ActionStation Pop-up Shop also offers T-shirts, books, and bumperstickers. 

Arnie Passman's Pedantic Antics 

Berkeley poet/provocateur Arnie Passman (a shaman form the Sixties and a well-vetted veteran of the legendary underground weekly, The Berkeley Barb) passes along word that The Deejays, his classic history of jive-time radio Disk Jockeys (aka "DJs") has been just been re-issued in paperback. 

The book was originally published in 1971. In a clever bit of repackaging, the new version has been re-titled: The Deejays: The First 50 Years. (No word yet on the sequel.) 

If you'd like to step into the Wayback Machine and learn about the glory days of pre-TV broadcast entertainment, you can order The Deejays direct from the author. The book is priced at $22.50 but the book is being offered to Planet readers for a discounted price of $20. Just mail a check to AP at 2224 Spaulding, Apt. D, Berkeley, CA 94703. 

A Cutting-edge Ad 

For the past week, a full-page ad has appeared in the Chronicle that looks like an homage to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The ad was created to promote STIHL gas-powered chainsaws under the banner: "One Thing We Can All Agree On." 

And what is that "one thing"? It's the "spirit of independence that makes America great" and "maybe that's why more Americans pick STIHL over every other brand…." 

Yep. Nothing says "independence" like a majority acting in lock-step. 

But what makes the ad even stranger is the image of a lean cowboy leaning against a parked truck, facing the sunset at the end of a busy afternoon, holding his trusty chainsaw at his side. He appears to be surveying the day's work as he faces a small pile of logs freshly cut from a backyard tree. 

But here's where it gets creepy. It's not just a pile of cut logs. The pile also includes a skateboard, a child-sized football helmet, and what looks like a football jersey. 

Has anyone seen little Timmy lately? 

Could Trump Become America's Franco? 

On Thanksgiving Day, Reader Supported News sent out a line-up of stories that buoyed my spirits one moment and dashed my hopes the next. A jolting emotional experience—elation followed by deflation. 

The first headline (for a Guardian article) read: "Here's Something to Give Thanks for this Thanksgiving: Our Democracy Survived." 

That was followed by a ProPublica piece headlined: "Trump Races to Bring Back Firing Squads, Electrocutions, Exclude Transgender People from Shelters." 

We need to face an alarming reality: Trump may be leaving the White House but he's not going to disappear. If he's not tied up in court over his tax scams, hush-money, and bribes—or shackled and tucked away in a jail cell—he's going to be bounding around the country stirring up trouble. 

Trump is already engaged in an anti-Democrat media-war-cum-cultural-vendetta that feeds on division and lies. He will target the Biden-Harris administration for destruction on a daily basis, using every wrench, hammer, and crowbar in his toolbox. 

As Jesse Jackson recently warned, Trump's inability to accept his election loss will be answered with "brazen subversion . . . . a clown show marked by wingbat lawyers, delusional tweets, and hailstorms of lies. . . . a counter-reformation right to the edge of succession, if not beyond." 

As Jackson recalls, the last time a presidential election was contested was in 1860, when Abe Lincoln's ascension to the Oval Office (1) prompted the South to succeed from the Union and (2) triggered a bloody Civil War. 

In it's current issue, The Economist observes that the world is facing a "global recession in democracy" and the US is not immune: "Mr. Trump has still done harm, as have the Republican leaders who indulged him." As a result, "Trust in the fairness of elections has been shaken . . . . The threat is not from military coups but presidents and prime ministers as they erode norms and institutions." 

Trump has not vanished nor has he been vanquished. He still has the power to propel a fascist tide that could sweep the country. With stunning suddenness, Trump could become as politically destabilizing to the US as the Taliban is to Afghanistan or as the al-Nusra Front is to Syria. 

War with Iran? Declaration of National Emergency? A Trump Coup? 

Shocking news from the Middle East: Israel is accused of assassinating Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian nuclear scientist. CODEPINK has just posted a petition calling on world leaders—including US President-elect Joe Biden—to "condemn Israel's illegal execution" as "an act of flagrant disregard for international law." 

CODEPINK writes: "We are worried about an escalation to an all-out US-Iran war" that could derail Biden's promise to return to the Iran Nuclear Deal. It has been widely reported that Trump has been planning a US attack on Iran and has tried repeatedly to provoke Tehran. Some observers fear Trump might start a war in order to declare a "state of national emergency" that would allow him to remain in power. 

According to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a president can unilaterally declare war in the event of an attack "upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." (The heavily armed US naval ships that Trump has ordered to patrol the waters off Iran could be seen as tempting targets.) 

As Elizabeth Goitein noted in The Atlantic: "The moment the president declares a 'national emergency'—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—more than 100 special provisions become available to him." Those "provisions" include the power to shut down the Internet, freeze citizens' bank accounts, and declare martial law, sending US troops into American cities to "subdue domestic unrest." 

Goitein's article (published in January 2019) contained this chilling speculation: "[W]hat if a president, backed into a corner and facing electoral defeat or impeachment, were to declare an emergency for the sake of holding on to power? In that scenario, our laws and institutions might not save us from a presidential power grab. They might be what takes us down." 

Singing Songs of Sense and Sedition 

Back in the 1920s, labor leader and political martyr Joe Hill made a good point about the utility of a good song when he wrote: 

"A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over; and I maintain that if a person can put a few cold, common sense facts into a song and dress them . . . up in a cloak of humor to take the dryness off of them, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers. . . ." 

Taking Joe's advice to heart, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—better known as the Wobblies—created a chapbook of lefty tunes that became known as "The Little Red Songbook." 

The Wobblies would frequently show up at Salvation Army events for dueling duets in public places. When the Salvation Army band started to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers," the Wobblies would warble back their own lyrics to the tune. 

Herewith, the Complete Lyrics to Christians at War 

Onward, Christian soldiers! Duty's way is plain;
Slay your Christian neighbors, or by them be slain,
Pulpiteers are spouting effervescent swill,
God above is calling you to rob and rape and kill,
All your acts are sanctified by the Lamb on high;
If you love the Holy Ghost, go murder, pray and die. 

Onward, Christian soldiers! Rip and tear and smite!
Let the gentle Jesus bless your dynamite.
Splinter skulls with shrapnel, fertilize the sod;
Folks who do not speak your tongue deserve the curse of God.
Smash the doors of every home, pretty maidens seize;
Use your might and sacred right to treat them as you please. 

Onward, Christian soldiers! Eat and drink your fill;
Rob with bloody fingers, Christ okays the bill,
Steal the farmers' savings, take their grain and meat;
Even though the children starve, the Savior's bums must eat,
Burn the peasants' cottages, orphans leave bereft;
In Jehovah's holy name, wreak ruin right and left. 

Onward, Christian soldiers! Drench the land with gore;
Mercy is a weakness all the gods abhor.
Bayonet the babies, jab the mothers, too;
Hoist the cross of Calvary to hallow all you do.
File your bullets' noses flat, poison every well;
God decrees your enemies must all go plumb to hell. 

Onward, Christian soldiers! Blight all that you meet;
Trample human freedom under pious feet.
Praise the Lord whose dollar sign dupes his favored race!
Make the foreign trash respect your bullion brand of grace.
Trust in mock salvation, serve as tyrant's tools;
History will say of you: "That pack of G.. d.. fools." 

“A rising tide lifts all boats” is a phrase I’ve heard over and over in relation to improving the lot of the poor, but as sensible as it sounds it didn’t explain why people continue to vote against their own interests. It is our nature to want to have an order of things, an explanation, and when there is none conspiracy theories abound, sometimes so crazy and bizarre it is bewildering how they could take hold. 

Isabel Wilkerson’s second book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, was released August 4, 2020. I finished it Wednesday and listened to conversations with Isabel Wilkerson throughout Thanksgiving Day on both Caste and The Warmth of Other Suns. It took fifteen years for Wilkerson to write The Warmth of Other Suns, and it was ten more before I took it off my book shelf and read it. She never uses the word racism in her writing. Instead, she writes narrative nonfiction telling the humiliating to the horrific, the story of racism through the people who experienced it. 

Wilkerson describes caste through metaphors in her book and in conversations as the frame on which race is built , layered with class. Her writings have changed how I think about race and racism and given framing to recent Berkeley City meetings. 

Last week I wrote, “I’m going to leave my comments to the Fair and Impartial Policing Working Committee 

Group to next week when there will be fewer meetings to review, and the Declaration of Racism as a Public Health Crisis is on the agenda at the City Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity & Community Committee. Just let it be said out loud to everyone who is White, Berkeley is not experienced in the same way if someone is Black” 

The proposal that Cheryl Davila put forward, Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis, a Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley, is dense with information, history, initial actions and a resolution that is thorough. There is no denying that racism is complex and permeates every corner of our lives, although many declare it doesn’t even exist. 

The summer was filled with worldwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations after the video of the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police went viral. Nothing as pervasive as racism and maintaining Whiteness can be reined in with one resolution, even as thorough as it was, but it was a beginning. Was is the key word here, since all the meticulous research and documentation in the original was discarded and replaced with a thin list of things to be considered and actions to be taken dictated by Sophie Hahn. You might think what was left was fine if you didn’t know what was written in the first place. 

This is coming out later than I intended. as I spent my evening reading through one and a half years of City Council agendas and watching clips of meeting videos until I found it, May 8, 2018 at 2 hours 2 minutes into the special meeting. There it was: Sophie Hahn talking about wanting a visionary plan and her earliest memories of the marina, riding in a taxi to the heliport and getting on a helicopter with her family to fly to SFO. She mentioned that of those many trips by helicopter, one of them even made it into a picture in the San Francisco Chronicle. 

While Sophie often talks about her family moving from Kensington to Berkeley so she would be part of the Berkeley school integration program, going to school with Black children doesn’t necessarily result in crossing the divide between what is experienced by someone who is Black and by someone who is White, especially when the person who is White has more than White privilege and sits in the upper rungs of the hierarchy in a university town. 

Isabel Wilkerson uses the metaphor in Caste that America is like an old house: 

“America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought, and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation…The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.” (pp 15-16) 

There was a takedown in the last election of Cheryl Davila, the bristly Black woman who grew frustrated and inpatient and at times angry with being cut off and shut down. We’ve lost an important voice. 

I don’t know Terry Taplin, who won the District 2 seat, and I don’t recall hearing him speak on issues. Looking at who endorsed him and his thin resume,,it looks like he was elevated to run for Council to make everyone comfortable that diversity is maintained, and that by placing him in the position he will know his place. He has big shoes to fill and I hope he surprises us all. 

The Mayor’s Working Group on Fair and Impartial Policing produced a 26 page draft of recommendations on Berkeley Police Department practices. The report didn’t stop with policing, and advanced recommendations for City Council including a section on adopting a system for compliance and accountability. 

At the November 18 meeting, things got testy. Mayor Arreguin pushed the working group to withdraw the section on accountability. So far, the working group has held firm. Truly, what is the point of months of work to create a plan to reduce (seek to eliminate) racially disparate practices if there is no accountability. 

Worth Noting:

Expect a flurry of meetings before City Council begins Winter Recess December 16, 2020 – January 18, 2021

What did and didn’t happen at City meetings November 23 and 24

Monday morning at the Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee, Sophie Hahn completely gutted the measure Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis and Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley to a nothing. (see Activist’s Diary in the Daily Planet www.berkeleydailyplanet.com for more detail). Monday afternoon the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability took up a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy to Address the Climate Emergency. This measure also from Cheryl Davila connects climate and the economy in a different frame, one which focuses on living within the carrying capacity of the earth. When this comes back on the agenda we should all be watching. The 4 x 4 Committee (Rent Board and Council) gave instruction to the City Deputy Attorney Chris Jensen and Steven Buckley from the Planning Department that in reviewing State law and rewriting the local Demolition Ordinance, the ordinance should be strengthened to provide maximum protection of Berkeley housing not minimal.

What’s Ahead 

The Agenda Committee and City Council meetings are taking up all the summary space. There are 42 items listed in the proposed December 15 agenda. Expect items to be moved to consent, postponed and referred to Council Policy committees. The midyear budget will need to be approved and Mayor Arreguin will be anxious to keep the reimaging policing on the agenda. Tuesday evening will be Cheryl Davila’s last City Council meeting. There are only two Council action items and both of them are on parking. 

Wednesday if you are not at the Planning Commission meeting following the housing projects at the BART stations, then please attend the Disaster and Fire Safety Committee. Right now, the Berkeley fire emergency evacuation plan looks like it only makes sense to those who created it. 

Thursday after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police cities all over the country taking a deep hard look at policing. We have our own issues and it looks like the Mental Health Commission bears watching.  

If you wish to be involved in the Civic Center planning email John Caner johncaner@gmail.com to receive the notices for the Thursday 12 – 1 pm meeting notices. 

Check for the posting of a Thursday Budget & Finance Policy Committee meeting after Monday. It looks like at least one more meeting is needed before the December 15 appropriations vote. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Budget___Finance.aspx 

Sunday, November 29, 2020  

No City meetings or events found 

Monday, November 30, 2020 

Agenda and Rules Committee, 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm, 

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

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82887417316 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 828 8741 7316 

Agenda Planning for December 15 Regular City Council meeting: CONSENT: 1. Ratify COVID-19 Local Emergency, 2. Settlement 1444 Fifth Street, 3. Minutes, 4. Amend Contract add $120,000 total $370,000 and extend 1 yr with BOSS for Mental Health Clients living at 2111 McKinley, 5. Amend Contract total $1,272,580 and extend to 6/30/2025 with Worldwide Travel Staffing for Nurse Registry Services, 6. Revenue Accept COVID-19 HHS CARES Act funds, 7. Purchase Software $165,000 12/16/,2020 – 6/30/2021, 8. Accept Donation $700,000 from Friends of Tuolumne Camp for construction, 9. Joint Use Agreement between COB and BUSD, 10. Recommendations for T1 Phase 2, 11. Amendments to Use of Force BPD Policy 300, 12. FEMA application for $1,875,000 for South Berkeley Senior Center, 13. Accept $100,914 from Bay Area Air Quality Management District to support electrification of City fleet vehicles, 14. Grant Application $52,000 to Alameda County Transportation Commission COVID-19 for Healthy Streets, 15. Extend Workforce Agreement with labor organization to 6/30/23 for City capital improvement projects, 16. Continue Sole Source Contract Negotiations with Community Conservation Center, Inc and Ecology Center, Inc., 17. Contract with AC Transit for EasyPass bus pass program for COB employees 1/1/2021-12/31/2025 not to exceed $774,453, 18. Change vendors 3rd Party Administrator for COB Employee Commute Benefit program new vendor BRI (Benefit Resource, Inc), 19. $962,000 to Purchase three Model 600x Regenerative Air Sweeper, 20. $4,5554,575 to purchase 11 Side Loader Collection Trucks with Arata Equipment Co, 21. $327,000 to purchase One Vactor Combination Sewer Cleaner Truck, 22. Prohibition of the Resale of Used Combustion Vehicles in 2040, 23. From Auditor Berkeley Streets Significantly underfunded request report back from City Manager by June 15, 2021 and every six months thereafter regarding the status of audit recommendations until reported fully implemented by Public Works Dept., 24. Sponsor 10^th MLK Jr. Celebration, 25. Refer to City Manager to draft ordinance terminating sale of gasoline, diesel, and natural gas passenger vehicles by 2025 (is phase in process) and to promote electric micro mobility alternatives and EV, 26. Procedural Request to Council for FITES committee to continue working on Master Paving Plan, 27. Support Berkeley Baby Book Project, 28. Support extending Census Deadline, 29. Refer to City Manager to develop Outdoor Dining Program, ACTION: 30. Home Occupation Ordinance, 31. Budget Update, 32. Annual Appropriations Ordinance, 33. Berkeley 2020 Pedestrian Plan, 34. Appoint Alexandria Thomas-Rodriguez to the Berkeley Housing Authority, 35. Establishment of Reimaging Public Safety Task Force follow-up to July 14, 2020 Council action on policing. 36. Resolution requesting state legislation for greater flexibility in traffic enforcement, 37. Plaque recognizing childhood home of Kamala Harris, 38. Resolution requesting state legislation to condemn racial injustice and police brutality, 39. Support calling on food companies to implement the requirements of Proposition 12 (Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act passed in 2018 with 12/31/2021 compliance date) as soon as possible by selling only cage free eggs and meat, 40. Affirm Right to Boycott as a Tactic for Social and Political Change, 41. Support loan forgiveness to Berkeley Youth Alternatives, 42. Earmark $2.5 million in Housing Trust Fund for Small Sites program, UNFINISHED BUSINESS FOR SCHEDULING (6): 1. Kitchen Exhaust Hood Ventilation, 2. Surveillance Technology and Acquisition Reports, Use Policy License Plate Readers, 3. Presentation on Homeless Outreach during COVID-19, 4. Annual Commission Attendance/Meeting Frequency Report, 5. Community refrigerators, 6. Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief, REFERRED ITEMS: (8) Impact of COVID-19 on legislative bodies, (9) Reorganizing Commissions, (10) Meeting Protocols on Zoom, (11) Officeholder Accounts, (12) Council relinquishments from budget. (packet 336 pages) 

Civic Arts Commission Public Art Committee, 2 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CivicArtsCommissionHomepage/ 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83365837706 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 833 6583 7706 

Agenda: go to website and choose packet under Public Art Committee to see artwork under consideration 

Tuesday, December 1, 2020 

City Council 

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

Closed Session, 4 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82542038081 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 825 4203 8081 

Agenda: 1. Pending Litigation: Chen v. COB RG19019359, Herman V. COB #0349BC2019-0001, 2. Potential Threat to Public Services or Facilities Consultation with IT Dept. 

Regular City Council meeting, 6 pm 

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

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85819230242 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 858 1923 0242 

Agenda planning for 12/1/2020 Regular Council meeting, CONSENT: 1. 2^nd reading lease Cazadero Preforming Arts Camp, 2. 2^nd reading closure of Camelia/Union Pacific Railroad Corridor, 3.Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) FY 2020/2021-2022/2023 3 year program and expenditure plan, 4. Contract $185,000 1/1/2021 – 6/30/2022 with Resource Development Associates (RDA) to facilitate design of Specialized Care Unit (SCU) by analyzing current mental health crisis system, community engagement, research and data to develop program to re-assign non-criminal police service calls to SCU that will respond without law enforcement, 5. Amend contract add $200,000 FY 2021 & FY 2022 rate $100,000 with Fred Finch Youth Center for Turning Point Transitional Housing, 6. Amend BMC 11.28 Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MHKO), 7. Grant Application FEMA for $1,237,500 for seismic retrofit of MLK Jr. Youth Services Center/Young Adult Project, 8. Grant application $897,000 to SF Restoration Authority Measure AA for feasibility studies for improvements at Aquatic Park, 9. Grant application up to $8,000,000 to CA Proposition 68 Statewide Parks Program for new Park Development at selected Santa Fe Right of Way parcels, 10. Amend contract add $410,000 total $1,235,000 with Freitas Landscaping for additional reduction hazardous vegetation during high-risk fire season, 11. Measure T1 Loan $198,400 to complete Phase 1 Mental Health Adult Clinic renovation, 12. Donation from Regan Nursery Rose Bushes value $1099.78 for roses stolen from Berkeley Rose Garden, 13. Amendments to BESO, 14. Accept $10,000 grant from EBCE for Reach Code Support, 15. 10 yr Lease Agreement with Berkeley Housing Authority for 5^th floor at 1947 Center, 16. Final Map Tract 8533: 1500 San Pablo 175 condo units, 170 residential units, 5 commercial units, 17. Contract $4,968,764 (include contingency $451,706, with Andes Construction , Inc. for Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation, 18. Contract $2,711,556 (includes $246,505 Contingency) with Glosage Engineering, Inc. for Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation, 19. Grant Application for Highway Safety Improvement, 20. Appoint Boona Cheema and Margaret Fine to Mental Health Commission, 21. Resolution calling for State Legislature to align state with UN Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 22. Amend BMC 13.111.020(a) Ordinance 7,727 to further limit 3^rd Party Food Delivery Services from 15% to 10%, 23. Budget Referral to prioritize enhanced lighting in areas of elevated violent crime, 24. Letter Calling on Alameda County and Legislature and Governor Newsom to Strike Racially Restrictive Covenants in certain Property Deeds. 25. Direct City Manager and City Attorney to draft emergency ordinance Personal Liability Protection for Small Businesses - personal guarantee for commercial leases, 26. Resolution calling on BUSD to consider renaming Thousand Oaks Elementary to Kamala Harris Elementary School, 27. Endorse CA Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act for 2022 election, 28. Referral Commission Low-Income Stipend Reform, ACTION: 29. Correction to Fee for increases for Traffic Engineering Hourly Rates, 30. BMC Title 14 and 23 to Reform Residential Off-Street Parking Requirements modify parking minimums, impose parking maximums, amend residential parking, institute transportation Demand Management, INFORMATION REPORTS: 31. Short Term Referral Process, Quarterly Update, 

Wednesday, December 2, 2020 

Board of Library Trustees, 6:30 pm 

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/about/board-library-trustees 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86042306505 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 860 4230 6505 

Agenda: III.A. Budget Priorities FY 2022 & FY 2023 

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Disaster_and_Fire_Safety_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/91846585472 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 918 4658 5472 

Agenda: 4. Amend BMC 19.34 to expand Gas-Shutoff Valve Requirements, 6. City’s Wildfire Evacuation Plan, 7. Public Safety Power Outages 

Energy Commission, 6:30 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Energy_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/96568223032 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 965 6822 3032 

Agenda: 4. Office of Energy and Sustainable Report draft 2022 Work Plan, 5. Energy Commission 2021 Work Plan 

Planning Commission, 7 – 10 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Planning_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/97698036899 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 976 9803 6899 

Agenda: 9. Public Hearing BART Zoning Standards and EIR Scoping Meeting, AB 2923 standards Minimums: 75 units/acre, height 7 stories, Floor Area Ratio (FAR) 4.2 or higher, no minimum vehicle parking, one bicycle parking space/unit, maximum no more than one vehicle parking space per unit, up to 1200 units. EIR submission deadline December 20, 2020 send to ashen@cityofberkeley.info 

Thursday, December 3, 2020 

Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center, 12-1 pm, email johncaner@gmail the meeting covener for zoom links 

Landmarks Preservation Commission, 7 – 11:30 pm http://www.cityofberkeley.info/landmarkspreservationcommission/ 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/97425865599 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 974 2586 5599 

Agenda: 5. 1 Orchard Lane – Landmark or Structure of Merit and 6. Mills Act Contract application 

7. 2740 Telegraph – Rose Garden Inn – Structural Alteration Permit 

8. 1581 Le Roy Ave – Mills Contract application 

9. 1325 Arch - Landmark or Structure of Merit 

10. Discussion Archaeological resources and Native Cultural Heritage in Berkeley 

12. 1227-1229 Bancroft Way - Landmark or Structure of Merit Initiation 

Mental Health Commission, 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Mental_Health_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/93907718571 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 939 0771 8571 

Agenda: 4. Reports a. Update Consultant hiring, b. Auditor data analysis and mental health calls, c. Re-imagining Community Safety Project, 5. Caseload Statistics, 6. Understanding the “Footprint” of policing 

Friday, December 4, 2020, Saturday, December 5, 2020, and Sunday, December 6, 2020 

No City meetings or events found 

_____________________ 

Public Hearings Scheduled – Land Use Appeals 

0 (2435) San Pablo (group living) ZAB - 1/21/2021 

1915 Berryman (Payson House) LPC – 1/21/2021 

1850 Arch (add bedrooms) ZAB – 1/26/2021 

1862 Arch (add bedrooms) ZAB – 1/26/2021 

Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with End of Appeal Period 

2580 Bancroft 12/14/2020 

1560 Beverly Place 11/30/2020 

1530 Buena 12/15/2020 

2607 Ellsworth 12/8/2020 

1136 Francisco 11/30/2020 

2224 Grant 11/30/2020 

170 Hillcrest 12/8/2020 

1437 Lincoln 12/15/2020 

2500 Milvia 12/8/2020 

1200-1214 San Pablo 12/8/2020 

2136-54 San Pablo 12/1/2020 

3001 Telegraph 11/30/2020 

2136-2154 San Pablo #LMIN2020-0004 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications_in_Appeal_Period.aspx 

LINK to Current Zoning Applications https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications.aspx 

___________________ 

WORKSESSIONS 

Feb 16 - BMASP/Berkeley Pier-WETA Ferry, Systems Realignment 

March 16 – Capital Improvement Plan (Parks & Public Works), Digital Strategic Plan/FUND$ Replacement Website Update, 

May 18 – date open for scheduling 

Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations 

Cannabis Health Considerations 

Berkeley Police Department Hiring Practices (referred by Public Safety Committee) 

Update Zero Waste Priorities 

Undergrounding Task Force Update 

Ballot Measure Implementation Planning (tentatively scheduled for 1-19/2021 at 4 pm) 

Removed from Lists 

Update Berkeley’s 2020 Vision 

_____________________ 

This Summary of City of Berkeley meetings is the available published public meetings that could be found and they are important. This does not include the task forces established by the Mayor (those schedules are not available). If anyone would like to share meeting schedules including community meetings to be included in the weekly summary so we can be better-informed citizenry, please forward the notices to sustainableberkeleycoalition@gmail.com before Friday noon of the preceding week. 

To Check For Regional Meetings with Berkeley Council Appointees go to 

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

To check for Berkeley Unified School District Board Meetings go to 

https://www.berkeleyschools.net/schoolboard/board-meeting-information/ 

_____________________ 

This meeting list is also posted on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

http://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html and in the Berkeley Daily Planet under activist’s calendar http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com 

If you wish to stop receiving the Weekly Summary of City Meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com, 

Worth Noting: 

Expect a flurry of meetings before City Council begins Winter Recess December 16, 2020 – January 18, 2021 

What did and didn’t happen at City meetings November 23 and 24 

Monday morning at the Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee, Sophie Hahn completely gutted the measure Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis and Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley to a nothing. (see Activist’s Diary in the Daily Planet www.berkeleydailyplanet.com for more detail). Monday afternoon the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability took up a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy to Address the Climate Emergency. This measure also from Cheryl Davila connects climate and the economy in a different frame, one which focuses on living within the carrying capacity of the earth. When this comes back on the agenda we should all be watching. The 4 x 4 Committee (Rent Board and Council) gave instruction to the City Deputy Attorney Chris Jensen and Steven Buckley from the Planning Department that in reviewing State law and rewriting the local Demolition Ordinance, the ordinance should be strengthened to provide maximum protection of Berkeley housing not minimal. 

What’s Ahead 

The Agenda Committee and City Council meetings are taking up all the summary space. There are 42 items listed in the proposed December 15 agenda. Expect items to be moved to consent, postponed and referred to Council Policy committees. The midyear budget will need to be approved and Mayor Arreguin will be anxious to keep the reimaging policing on the agenda. Tuesday evening will be Cheryl Davila’s last City Council meeting. There are only two Council action items and both of them are on parking. 

Wednesday if you are not at the Planning Commission meeting following the housing projects at the BART stations, then please attend the Disaster and Fire Safety Committee. Right now, the Berkeley fire emergency evacuation plan looks like it only makes sense to those who created it. 

Thursday after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police cities all over the country taking a deep hard look at policing. We have our own issues and it looks like the Mental Health Commission bears watching.  

If you wish to be involved in the Civic Center planning email John Caner johncaner@gmail.com to receive the notices for the Thursday 12 – 1 pm meeting notices. 

Check for the posting of a Thursday Budget & Finance Policy Committee meeting after Monday. It looks like at least one more meeting is needed before the December 15 appropriations vote. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Budget___Finance.aspx 

Sunday, November 29, 2020  

No City meetings or events found 

Monday, November 30, 2020 

Agenda and Rules Committee, 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm, 

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

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82887417316 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 828 8741 7316 

Agenda Planning for December 15 Regular City Council meeting: CONSENT: 1. Ratify COVID-19 Local Emergency, 2. Settlement 1444 Fifth Street, 3. Minutes, 4. Amend Contract add $120,000 total $370,000 and extend 1 yr with BOSS for Mental Health Clients living at 2111 McKinley, 5. Amend Contract total $1,272,580 and extend to 6/30/2025 with Worldwide Travel Staffing for Nurse Registry Services, 6. Revenue Accept COVID-19 HHS CARES Act funds, 7. Purchase Software $165,000 12/16/,2020 – 6/30/2021, 8. Accept Donation $700,000 from Friends of Tuolumne Camp for construction, 9. Joint Use Agreement between COB and BUSD, 10. Recommendations for T1 Phase 2, 11. Amendments to Use of Force BPD Policy 300, 12. FEMA application for $1,875,000 for South Berkeley Senior Center, 13. Accept $100,914 from Bay Area Air Quality Management District to support electrification of City fleet vehicles, 14. Grant Application $52,000 to Alameda County Transportation Commission COVID-19 for Healthy Streets, 15. Extend Workforce Agreement with labor organization to 6/30/23 for City capital improvement projects, 16. Continue Sole Source Contract Negotiations with Community Conservation Center, Inc and Ecology Center, Inc., 17. Contract with AC Transit for EasyPass bus pass program for COB employees 1/1/2021-12/31/2025 not to exceed $774,453, 18. Change vendors 3rd Party Administrator for COB Employee Commute Benefit program new vendor BRI (Benefit Resource, Inc), 19. $962,000 to Purchase three Model 600x Regenerative Air Sweeper, 20. $4,5554,575 to purchase 11 Side Loader Collection Trucks with Arata Equipment Co, 21. $327,000 to purchase One Vactor Combination Sewer Cleaner Truck, 22. Prohibition of the Resale of Used Combustion Vehicles in 2040, 23. From Auditor Berkeley Streets Significantly underfunded request report back from City Manager by June 15, 2021 and every six months thereafter regarding the status of audit recommendations until reported fully implemented by Public Works Dept., 24. Sponsor 10^th MLK Jr. Celebration, 25. Refer to City Manager to draft ordinance terminating sale of gasoline, diesel, and natural gas passenger vehicles by 2025 (is phase in process) and to promote electric micro mobility alternatives and EV, 26. Procedural Request to Council for FITES committee to continue working on Master Paving Plan, 27. Support Berkeley Baby Book Project, 28. Support extending Census Deadline, 29. Refer to City Manager to develop Outdoor Dining Program, ACTION: 30. Home Occupation Ordinance, 31. Budget Update, 32. Annual Appropriations Ordinance, 33. Berkeley 2020 Pedestrian Plan, 34. Appoint Alexandria Thomas-Rodriguez to the Berkeley Housing Authority, 35. Establishment of Reimaging Public Safety Task Force follow-up to July 14, 2020 Council action on policing. 36. Resolution requesting state legislation for greater flexibility in traffic enforcement, 37. Plaque recognizing childhood home of Kamala Harris, 38. Resolution requesting state legislation to condemn racial injustice and police brutality, 39. Support calling on food companies to implement the requirements of Proposition 12 (Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act passed in 2018 with 12/31/2021 compliance date) as soon as possible by selling only cage free eggs and meat, 40. Affirm Right to Boycott as a Tactic for Social and Political Change, 41. Support loan forgiveness to Berkeley Youth Alternatives, 42. Earmark $2.5 million in Housing Trust Fund for Small Sites program, UNFINISHED BUSINESS FOR SCHEDULING (6): 1. Kitchen Exhaust Hood Ventilation, 2. Surveillance Technology and Acquisition Reports, Use Policy License Plate Readers, 3. Presentation on Homeless Outreach during COVID-19, 4. Annual Commission Attendance/Meeting Frequency Report, 5. Community refrigerators, 6. Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief, REFERRED ITEMS: (8) Impact of COVID-19 on legislative bodies, (9) Reorganizing Commissions, (10) Meeting Protocols on Zoom, (11) Officeholder Accounts, (12) Council relinquishments from budget. (packet 336 pages) 

Civic Arts Commission Public Art Committee, 2 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CivicArtsCommissionHomepage/ 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83365837706 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 833 6583 7706 

Agenda: go to website and choose packet under Public Art Committee to see artwork under consideration 

Tuesday, December 1, 2020 

City Council 

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

Closed Session, 4 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82542038081 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 825 4203 8081 

Agenda: 1. Pending Litigation: Chen v. COB RG19019359, Herman V. COB #0349BC2019-0001, 2. Potential Threat to Public Services or Facilities Consultation with IT Dept. 

Regular City Council meeting, 6 pm 

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

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85819230242 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 858 1923 0242 

Agenda planning for 12/1/2020 Regular Council meeting, CONSENT: 1. 2^nd reading lease Cazadero Preforming Arts Camp, 2. 2^nd reading closure of Camelia/Union Pacific Railroad Corridor, 3.Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) FY 2020/2021-2022/2023 3 year program and expenditure plan, 4. Contract $185,000 1/1/2021 – 6/30/2022 with Resource Development Associates (RDA) to facilitate design of Specialized Care Unit (SCU) by analyzing current mental health crisis system, community engagement, research and data to develop program to re-assign non-criminal police service calls to SCU that will respond without law enforcement, 5. Amend contract add $200,000 FY 2021 & FY 2022 rate $100,000 with Fred Finch Youth Center for Turning Point Transitional Housing, 6. Amend BMC 11.28 Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MHKO), 7. Grant Application FEMA for $1,237,500 for seismic retrofit of MLK Jr. Youth Services Center/Young Adult Project, 8. Grant application $897,000 to SF Restoration Authority Measure AA for feasibility studies for improvements at Aquatic Park, 9. Grant application up to $8,000,000 to CA Proposition 68 Statewide Parks Program for new Park Development at selected Santa Fe Right of Way parcels, 10. Amend contract add $410,000 total $1,235,000 with Freitas Landscaping for additional reduction hazardous vegetation during high-risk fire season, 11. Measure T1 Loan $198,400 to complete Phase 1 Mental Health Adult Clinic renovation, 12. Donation from Regan Nursery Rose Bushes value $1099.78 for roses stolen from Berkeley Rose Garden, 13. Amendments to BESO, 14. Accept $10,000 grant from EBCE for Reach Code Support, 15. 10 yr Lease Agreement with Berkeley Housing Authority for 5^th floor at 1947 Center, 16. Final Map Tract 8533: 1500 San Pablo 175 condo units, 170 residential units, 5 commercial units, 17. Contract $4,968,764 (include contingency $451,706, with Andes Construction , Inc. for Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation, 18. Contract $2,711,556 (includes $246,505 Contingency) with Glosage Engineering, Inc. for Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation, 19. Grant Application for Highway Safety Improvement, 20. Appoint Boona Cheema and Margaret Fine to Mental Health Commission, 21. Resolution calling for State Legislature to align state with UN Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 22. Amend BMC 13.111.020(a) Ordinance 7,727 to further limit 3^rd Party Food Delivery Services from 15% to 10%, 23. Budget Referral to prioritize enhanced lighting in areas of elevated violent crime, 24. Letter Calling on Alameda County and Legislature and Governor Newsom to Strike Racially Restrictive Covenants in certain Property Deeds. 25. Direct City Manager and City Attorney to draft emergency ordinance Personal Liability Protection for Small Businesses - personal guarantee for commercial leases, 26. Resolution calling on BUSD to consider renaming Thousand Oaks Elementary to Kamala Harris Elementary School, 27. Endorse CA Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act for 2022 election, 28. Referral Commission Low-Income Stipend Reform, ACTION: 29. Correction to Fee for increases for Traffic Engineering Hourly Rates, 30. BMC Title 14 and 23 to Reform Residential Off-Street Parking Requirements modify parking minimums, impose parking maximums, amend residential parking, institute transportation Demand Management, INFORMATION REPORTS: 31. Short Term Referral Process, Quarterly Update, 

Wednesday, December 2, 2020 

Board of Library Trustees, 6:30 pm 

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/about/board-library-trustees 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86042306505 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 860 4230 6505 

Agenda: III.A. Budget Priorities FY 2022 & FY 2023 

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Disaster_and_Fire_Safety_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/91846585472 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 918 4658 5472 

Agenda: 4. Amend BMC 19.34 to expand Gas-Shutoff Valve Requirements, 6. City’s Wildfire Evacuation Plan, 7. Public Safety Power Outages 

Energy Commission, 6:30 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Energy_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/96568223032 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 965 6822 3032 

Agenda: 4. Office of Energy and Sustainable Report draft 2022 Work Plan, 5. Energy Commission 2021 Work Plan 

Planning Commission, 7 – 10 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Planning_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/97698036899 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 976 9803 6899 

Agenda: 9. Public Hearing BART Zoning Standards and EIR Scoping Meeting, AB 2923 standards Minimums: 75 units/acre, height 7 stories, Floor Area Ratio (FAR) 4.2 or higher, no minimum vehicle parking, one bicycle parking space/unit, maximum no more than one vehicle parking space per unit, up to 1200 units. EIR submission deadline December 20, 2020 send to ashen@cityofberkeley.info 

Thursday, December 3, 2020 

Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center, 12-1 pm, email johncaner@gmail the meeting covener for zoom links 

Landmarks Preservation Commission, 7 – 11:30 pm http://www.cityofberkeley.info/landmarkspreservationcommission/ 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/97425865599 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 974 2586 5599 

Agenda: 5. 1 Orchard Lane – Landmark or Structure of Merit and 6. Mills Act Contract application 

7. 2740 Telegraph – Rose Garden Inn – Structural Alteration Permit 

8. 1581 Le Roy Ave – Mills Contract application 

9. 1325 Arch - Landmark or Structure of Merit 

10. Discussion Archaeological resources and Native Cultural Heritage in Berkeley 

12. 1227-1229 Bancroft Way - Landmark or Structure of Merit Initiation 

Mental Health Commission, 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Mental_Health_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/93907718571 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 939 0771 8571 

Agenda: 4. Reports a. Update Consultant hiring, b. Auditor data analysis and mental health calls, c. Re-imagining Community Safety Project, 5. Caseload Statistics, 6. Understanding the “Footprint” of policing 

Friday, December 4, 2020, Saturday, December 5, 2020, and Sunday, December 6, 2020 

No City meetings or events found 

_____________________ 

Public Hearings Scheduled – Land Use Appeals 

0 (2435) San Pablo (group living) ZAB - 1/21/2021 

1915 Berryman (Payson House) LPC – 1/21/2021 

1850 Arch (add bedrooms) ZAB – 1/26/2021 

1862 Arch (add bedrooms) ZAB – 1/26/2021 

Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with End of Appeal Period 

2580 Bancroft 12/14/2020 

1560 Beverly Place 11/30/2020 

1530 Buena 12/15/2020 

2607 Ellsworth 12/8/2020 

1136 Francisco 11/30/2020 

2224 Grant 11/30/2020 

170 Hillcrest 12/8/2020 

1437 Lincoln 12/15/2020 

2500 Milvia 12/8/2020 

1200-1214 San Pablo 12/8/2020 

2136-54 San Pablo 12/1/2020 

3001 Telegraph 11/30/2020 

2136-2154 San Pablo #LMIN2020-0004 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications_in_Appeal_Period.aspx 

LINK to Current Zoning Applications https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications.aspx 

___________________ 

WORKSESSIONS 

Feb 16 - BMASP/Berkeley Pier-WETA Ferry, Systems Realignment 

March 16 – Capital Improvement Plan (Parks & Public Works), Digital Strategic Plan/FUND$ Replacement Website Update, 

May 18 – date open for scheduling 

Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations 

Cannabis Health Considerations 

Berkeley Police Department Hiring Practices (referred by Public Safety Committee) 

Update Zero Waste Priorities 

Undergrounding Task Force Update 

Ballot Measure Implementation Planning (tentatively scheduled for 1-19/2021 at 4 pm) 

Removed from Lists 

Update Berkeley’s 2020 Vision 

_____________________ 

This Summary of City of Berkeley meetings is the available published public meetings that could be found and they are important. This does not include the task forces established by the Mayor (those schedules are not available). If anyone would like to share meeting schedules including community meetings to be included in the weekly summary so we can be better-informed citizenry, please forward the notices to sustainableberkeleycoalition@gmail.com before Friday noon of the preceding week. 

To Check For Regional Meetings with Berkeley Council Appointees go to 

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

To check for Berkeley Unified School District Board Meetings go to 

https://www.berkeleyschools.net/schoolboard/board-meeting-information/ 

_____________________ 

This meeting list is also posted on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

http://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html and in the Berkeley Daily Planet under activist’s calendar http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com 

If you wish to stop receiving the Weekly Summary of City Meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com, 

Worth Noting: 

Expect a flurry of meetings before City Council begins Winter Recess December 16, 2020 – January 18, 2021 

What did and didn’t happen at City meetings November 23 and 24 

Monday morning at the Council Health, Life Enrichment, Equity and Community Committee, Sophie Hahn completely gutted the measure Declare Racism as a Public Health Crisis and Threat and Safety Issue in the City of Berkeley to a nothing. (see Activist’s Diary in the Daily Planet www.berkeleydailyplanet.com for more detail). Monday afternoon the Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability took up a Just Transition to a Regenerative Economy to Address the Climate Emergency. This measure also from Cheryl Davila connects climate and the economy in a different frame, one which focuses on living within the carrying capacity of the earth. When this comes back on the agenda we should all be watching. The 4 x 4 Committee (Rent Board and Council) gave instruction to the City Deputy Attorney Chris Jensen and Steven Buckley from the Planning Department that in reviewing State law and rewriting the local Demolition Ordinance, the ordinance should be strengthened to provide maximum protection of Berkeley housing not minimal. 

What’s Ahead 

The Agenda Committee and City Council meetings are taking up all the summary space. There are 42 items listed in the proposed December 15 agenda. Expect items to be moved to consent, postponed and referred to Council Policy committees. The midyear budget will need to be approved and Mayor Arreguin will be anxious to keep the reimaging policing on the agenda. Tuesday evening will be Cheryl Davila’s last City Council meeting. There are only two Council action items and both of them are on parking. 

Wednesday if you are not at the Planning Commission meeting following the housing projects at the BART stations, then please attend the Disaster and Fire Safety Committee. Right now, the Berkeley fire emergency evacuation plan looks like it only makes sense to those who created it. 

Thursday after the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police cities all over the country taking a deep hard look at policing. We have our own issues and it looks like the Mental Health Commission bears watching.  

If you wish to be involved in the Civic Center planning email John Caner johncaner@gmail.com to receive the notices for the Thursday 12 – 1 pm meeting notices. 

Check for the posting of a Thursday Budget & Finance Policy Committee meeting after Monday. It looks like at least one more meeting is needed before the December 15 appropriations vote. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Budget___Finance.aspx 

Sunday, November 29, 2020  

No City meetings or events found 

Monday, November 30, 2020 

Agenda and Rules Committee, 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm, 

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

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82887417316 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 828 8741 7316 

Agenda Planning for December 15 Regular City Council meeting: CONSENT: 1. Ratify COVID-19 Local Emergency, 2. Settlement 1444 Fifth Street, 3. Minutes, 4. Amend Contract add $120,000 total $370,000 and extend 1 yr with BOSS for Mental Health Clients living at 2111 McKinley, 5. Amend Contract total $1,272,580 and extend to 6/30/2025 with Worldwide Travel Staffing for Nurse Registry Services, 6. Revenue Accept COVID-19 HHS CARES Act funds, 7. Purchase Software $165,000 12/16/,2020 – 6/30/2021, 8. Accept Donation $700,000 from Friends of Tuolumne Camp for construction, 9. Joint Use Agreement between COB and BUSD, 10. Recommendations for T1 Phase 2, 11. Amendments to Use of Force BPD Policy 300, 12. FEMA application for $1,875,000 for South Berkeley Senior Center, 13. Accept $100,914 from Bay Area Air Quality Management District to support electrification of City fleet vehicles, 14. Grant Application $52,000 to Alameda County Transportation Commission COVID-19 for Healthy Streets, 15. Extend Workforce Agreement with labor organization to 6/30/23 for City capital improvement projects, 16. Continue Sole Source Contract Negotiations with Community Conservation Center, Inc and Ecology Center, Inc., 17. Contract with AC Transit for EasyPass bus pass program for COB employees 1/1/2021-12/31/2025 not to exceed $774,453, 18. Change vendors 3rd Party Administrator for COB Employee Commute Benefit program new vendor BRI (Benefit Resource, Inc), 19. $962,000 to Purchase three Model 600x Regenerative Air Sweeper, 20. $4,5554,575 to purchase 11 Side Loader Collection Trucks with Arata Equipment Co, 21. $327,000 to purchase One Vactor Combination Sewer Cleaner Truck, 22. Prohibition of the Resale of Used Combustion Vehicles in 2040, 23. From Auditor Berkeley Streets Significantly underfunded request report back from City Manager by June 15, 2021 and every six months thereafter regarding the status of audit recommendations until reported fully implemented by Public Works Dept., 24. Sponsor 10^th MLK Jr. Celebration, 25. Refer to City Manager to draft ordinance terminating sale of gasoline, diesel, and natural gas passenger vehicles by 2025 (is phase in process) and to promote electric micro mobility alternatives and EV, 26. Procedural Request to Council for FITES committee to continue working on Master Paving Plan, 27. Support Berkeley Baby Book Project, 28. Support extending Census Deadline, 29. Refer to City Manager to develop Outdoor Dining Program, ACTION: 30. Home Occupation Ordinance, 31. Budget Update, 32. Annual Appropriations Ordinance, 33. Berkeley 2020 Pedestrian Plan, 34. Appoint Alexandria Thomas-Rodriguez to the Berkeley Housing Authority, 35. Establishment of Reimaging Public Safety Task Force follow-up to July 14, 2020 Council action on policing. 36. Resolution requesting state legislation for greater flexibility in traffic enforcement, 37. Plaque recognizing childhood home of Kamala Harris, 38. Resolution requesting state legislation to condemn racial injustice and police brutality, 39. Support calling on food companies to implement the requirements of Proposition 12 (Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act passed in 2018 with 12/31/2021 compliance date) as soon as possible by selling only cage free eggs and meat, 40. Affirm Right to Boycott as a Tactic for Social and Political Change, 41. Support loan forgiveness to Berkeley Youth Alternatives, 42. Earmark $2.5 million in Housing Trust Fund for Small Sites program, UNFINISHED BUSINESS FOR SCHEDULING (6): 1. Kitchen Exhaust Hood Ventilation, 2. Surveillance Technology and Acquisition Reports, Use Policy License Plate Readers, 3. Presentation on Homeless Outreach during COVID-19, 4. Annual Commission Attendance/Meeting Frequency Report, 5. Community refrigerators, 6. Vote of No Confidence in the Police Chief, REFERRED ITEMS: (8) Impact of COVID-19 on legislative bodies, (9) Reorganizing Commissions, (10) Meeting Protocols on Zoom, (11) Officeholder Accounts, (12) Council relinquishments from budget. (packet 336 pages) 

Civic Arts Commission Public Art Committee, 2 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/CivicArtsCommissionHomepage/ 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83365837706 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 833 6583 7706 

Agenda: go to website and choose packet under Public Art Committee to see artwork under consideration 

Tuesday, December 1, 2020 

City Council 

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

Closed Session, 4 pm 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82542038081 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 825 4203 8081 

Agenda: 1. Pending Litigation: Chen v. COB RG19019359, Herman V. COB #0349BC2019-0001, 2. Potential Threat to Public Services or Facilities Consultation with IT Dept. 

Regular City Council meeting, 6 pm 

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

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85819230242 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 or 1-877-853-5257 Meeting ID: 858 1923 0242 

Agenda planning for 12/1/2020 Regular Council meeting, CONSENT: 1. 2^nd reading lease Cazadero Preforming Arts Camp, 2. 2^nd reading closure of Camelia/Union Pacific Railroad Corridor, 3.Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) FY 2020/2021-2022/2023 3 year program and expenditure plan, 4. Contract $185,000 1/1/2021 – 6/30/2022 with Resource Development Associates (RDA) to facilitate design of Specialized Care Unit (SCU) by analyzing current mental health crisis system, community engagement, research and data to develop program to re-assign non-criminal police service calls to SCU that will respond without law enforcement, 5. Amend contract add $200,000 FY 2021 & FY 2022 rate $100,000 with Fred Finch Youth Center for Turning Point Transitional Housing, 6. Amend BMC 11.28 Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MHKO), 7. Grant Application FEMA for $1,237,500 for seismic retrofit of MLK Jr. Youth Services Center/Young Adult Project, 8. Grant application $897,000 to SF Restoration Authority Measure AA for feasibility studies for improvements at Aquatic Park, 9. Grant application up to $8,000,000 to CA Proposition 68 Statewide Parks Program for new Park Development at selected Santa Fe Right of Way parcels, 10. Amend contract add $410,000 total $1,235,000 with Freitas Landscaping for additional reduction hazardous vegetation during high-risk fire season, 11. Measure T1 Loan $198,400 to complete Phase 1 Mental Health Adult Clinic renovation, 12. Donation from Regan Nursery Rose Bushes value $1099.78 for roses stolen from Berkeley Rose Garden, 13. Amendments to BESO, 14. Accept $10,000 grant from EBCE for Reach Code Support, 15. 10 yr Lease Agreement with Berkeley Housing Authority for 5^th floor at 1947 Center, 16. Final Map Tract 8533: 1500 San Pablo 175 condo units, 170 residential units, 5 commercial units, 17. Contract $4,968,764 (include contingency $451,706, with Andes Construction , Inc. for Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation, 18. Contract $2,711,556 (includes $246,505 Contingency) with Glosage Engineering, Inc. for Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation, 19. Grant Application for Highway Safety Improvement, 20. Appoint Boona Cheema and Margaret Fine to Mental Health Commission, 21. Resolution calling for State Legislature to align state with UN Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, 22. Amend BMC 13.111.020(a) Ordinance 7,727 to further limit 3^rd Party Food Delivery Services from 15% to 10%, 23. Budget Referral to prioritize enhanced lighting in areas of elevated violent crime, 24. Letter Calling on Alameda County and Legislature and Governor Newsom to Strike Racially Restrictive Covenants in certain Property Deeds. 25. Direct City Manager and City Attorney to draft emergency ordinance Personal Liability Protection for Small Businesses - personal guarantee for commercial leases, 26. Resolution calling on BUSD to consider renaming Thousand Oaks Elementary to Kamala Harris Elementary School, 27. Endorse CA Recycling and Plastic Pollution Reduction Act for 2022 election, 28. Referral Commission Low-Income Stipend Reform, ACTION: 29. Correction to Fee for increases for Traffic Engineering Hourly Rates, 30. BMC Title 14 and 23 to Reform Residential Off-Street Parking Requirements modify parking minimums, impose parking maximums, amend residential parking, institute transportation Demand Management, INFORMATION REPORTS: 31. Short Term Referral Process, Quarterly Update, 

Wednesday, December 2, 2020 

Board of Library Trustees, 6:30 pm 

https://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/about/board-library-trustees 

Videoconference: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86042306505 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 860 4230 6505 

Agenda: III.A. Budget Priorities FY 2022 & FY 2023 

Disaster and Fire Safety Commission, 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Disaster_and_Fire_Safety_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/91846585472 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 918 4658 5472 

Agenda: 4. Amend BMC 19.34 to expand Gas-Shutoff Valve Requirements, 6. City’s Wildfire Evacuation Plan, 7. Public Safety Power Outages 

Energy Commission, 6:30 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Energy_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/96568223032 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 965 6822 3032 

Agenda: 4. Office of Energy and Sustainable Report draft 2022 Work Plan, 5. Energy Commission 2021 Work Plan 

Planning Commission, 7 – 10 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Planning_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/97698036899 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 976 9803 6899 

Agenda: 9. Public Hearing BART Zoning Standards and EIR Scoping Meeting, AB 2923 standards Minimums: 75 units/acre, height 7 stories, Floor Area Ratio (FAR) 4.2 or higher, no minimum vehicle parking, one bicycle parking space/unit, maximum no more than one vehicle parking space per unit, up to 1200 units. EIR submission deadline December 20, 2020 send to ashen@cityofberkeley.info 

Thursday, December 3, 2020 

Citizens for a Cultural Civic Center, 12-1 pm, email johncaner@gmail the meeting covener for zoom links 

Landmarks Preservation Commission, 7 – 11:30 pm http://www.cityofberkeley.info/landmarkspreservationcommission/ 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/97425865599 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-6833 Meeting ID: 974 2586 5599 

Agenda: 5. 1 Orchard Lane – Landmark or Structure of Merit and 6. Mills Act Contract application 

7. 2740 Telegraph – Rose Garden Inn – Structural Alteration Permit 

8. 1581 Le Roy Ave – Mills Contract application 

9. 1325 Arch - Landmark or Structure of Merit 

10. Discussion Archaeological resources and Native Cultural Heritage in Berkeley 

12. 1227-1229 Bancroft Way - Landmark or Structure of Merit Initiation 

Mental Health Commission, 7 – 9 pm 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Commissions/Commissions__Mental_Health_Commission_Homepage.aspx 

Videoconference: https://zoom.us/j/93907718571 

Teleconference: 1-669-900-9128 Meeting ID: 939 0771 8571 

Agenda: 4. Reports a. Update Consultant hiring, b. Auditor data analysis and mental health calls, c. Re-imagining Community Safety Project, 5. Caseload Statistics, 6. Understanding the “Footprint” of policing 

Friday, December 4, 2020, Saturday, December 5, 2020, and Sunday, December 6, 2020 

No City meetings or events found 

_____________________ 

Public Hearings Scheduled – Land Use Appeals 

0 (2435) San Pablo (group living) ZAB - 1/21/2021 

1915 Berryman (Payson House) LPC – 1/21/2021 

1850 Arch (add bedrooms) ZAB – 1/26/2021 

1862 Arch (add bedrooms) ZAB – 1/26/2021 

Notice of Decision (NOD) and Use Permits with End of Appeal Period 

2580 Bancroft 12/14/2020 

1560 Beverly Place 11/30/2020 

1530 Buena 12/15/2020 

2607 Ellsworth 12/8/2020 

1136 Francisco 11/30/2020 

2224 Grant 11/30/2020 

170 Hillcrest 12/8/2020 

1437 Lincoln 12/15/2020 

2500 Milvia 12/8/2020 

1200-1214 San Pablo 12/8/2020 

2136-54 San Pablo 12/1/2020 

3001 Telegraph 11/30/2020 

2136-2154 San Pablo #LMIN2020-0004 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications_in_Appeal_Period.aspx 

LINK to Current Zoning Applications https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Land_Use_Division/Current_Zoning_Applications.aspx 

___________________ 

WORKSESSIONS 

Feb 16 - BMASP/Berkeley Pier-WETA Ferry, Systems Realignment 

March 16 – Capital Improvement Plan (Parks & Public Works), Digital Strategic Plan/FUND$ Replacement Website Update, 

May 18 – date open for scheduling 

Unscheduled Workshops/Presentations 

Cannabis Health Considerations 

Berkeley Police Department Hiring Practices (referred by Public Safety Committee) 

Update Zero Waste Priorities 

Undergrounding Task Force Update 

Ballot Measure Implementation Planning (tentatively scheduled for 1-19/2021 at 4 pm) 

Removed from Lists 

Update Berkeley’s 2020 Vision 

_____________________ 

This Summary of City of Berkeley meetings is the available published public meetings that could be found and they are important. This does not include the task forces established by the Mayor (those schedules are not available). If anyone would like to share meeting schedules including community meetings to be included in the weekly summary so we can be better-informed citizenry, please forward the notices to sustainableberkeleycoalition@gmail.com before Friday noon of the preceding week. 

To Check For Regional Meetings with Berkeley Council Appointees go to 

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

To check for Berkeley Unified School District Board Meetings go to 

https://www.berkeleyschools.net/schoolboard/board-meeting-information/ 

_____________________ 

This meeting list is also posted on the Sustainable Berkeley Coalition website. 

http://www.sustainableberkeleycoalition.com/whats-ahead.html and in the Berkeley Daily Planet under activist’s calendar http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com 

If you wish to stop receiving the Weekly Summary of City Meetings please forward the weekly summary you received to kellyhammargren@gmail.com,