Extra

I missed more meetings than I attended this week and even with one snafu I really have to thank the City Clerk’s office for their quick posting of meeting minutes and presentations, often up in just a day. I wish we could have the same kind of posting from the commissions, but those are getting further and further out, definitely not within the two-week requirement passed by the city council.

Monday morning, the council Public Safety Committee approved the budget referral for Councilmember Taplin’s Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR). Whoever is doing the documents coming out of Taplin’s office deserves recognition as the ALPR presentation is really quite good and worth the few minutes it takes to scroll through it. The other agenda items were continued. It will be interesting to listen to the pitch on resuming the Red-light program, since I heard at the McGee Spaulding Neighbors in Action meeting that these cameras actually increase accidents when drivers slam on the brakes in moving traffic to avoid a red light penalty. 

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/Home/Policy_Committee__Public_Safety.aspx 

I missed the November 1, 2021 Agenda and Rules Committee meeting and could not satisfy my curiosity as to what justification Mayor Arreguin gave for the enormous raise from $301,428 to $386,160 for Dee Williams-Ridley, the city manager. The meeting recording titled 11-1-2021 is actually July 12, 2021. I am really wondering what the City Manager has done to earn a 28.11% raise. From my view of tracking Berkeley since November 2014, I can’t say that Berkeley is better off since Dee Williams-Ridley was hired as city manager on March 9, 2016. 

The Mayor used a chart of 13 cities to justify raising the city manager’s salary. If Arreguin had really looked at his chart he would have seen that Berkeley is the smallest in physical square miles and 11^th in a list of thirteen in population in his list. That certainly doesn’t justify boosting a salary that will place the Berkeley city manager ‘s salary as 3^rd from the highest, above city managers with much larger responsibility. 

As far as I can tell from Arreguin’s record, he has never done anything as an adult other than be a councilmember or mayor. It’s not that I believe the sales pitch that government should be run like a business, but I do believe that broad life experiences make for better, more honest politicians, especially when the politician has employable skills other than elected office or as a lobbyist to elected officials. The kind of dependence that comes from not having other employable skills is not good for us or him. Watching council as I do makes actions appear that the next coveted elected office is more important than the present. 

That still leaves the question of what can possibly justify a 28.11% raise. Is this just so some people can trot around spouting their importance and place because of the size of their salary? And the mayor can raise his importance by the high salary of the City Manager? I’m not opposed to paying salary to someone who has demonstrated their worth, but Berkeley is not in a leading position. 

For those of us who attended the Public Works Commission meetings and follow the equipment replacement orders in the city council agendas it is obvious someone was coasting in their job prior to the arrival of Liam Garland in July 2020. From all appearances he walked into a mess. We need to look no further than the condition of our city streets as an example. All of those needed neglected repairs are now going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and we as citizens will be facing the decision in how to respond to the planned ballot measure in 2022 to finance the work. 

Given the state of affairs of city infrastructure, where was our city manager as things were falling apart. Was she not paying attention or was she choosing to ignore the situation. How did it get so bad that not even one street was repaved in 2018. https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/12/06/berkeley-wont-pave-any-streets-in-2018-pavement-continues-to-deteriorate 

There could be a positive side if we take this fumbling and turn it into an opportunity to put climate and the environment as our top priority and look outward to other cities and the world for twenty-first century innovation. If we are going to add density with more buildings then we need to “green” the streets. Why aren’t we considering planting trees in the street as a barrier between bike lanes and transit and cars. Trees are better as a barrier than curbs. Trees clean the air, give us oxygen, slow traffic, counter heat island effect (heat thrown off buildings and pavement). And, if we choose trees thoughtfully by how many species they sustain in addition to drought tolerance, we support ecosystems and habitat for nature. Milan has a goal to plant 3 million trees by 2030. If the goal is as our council has voted to reduce parking and cars, then streets offer great opportunity. But can Berkeley city government look to the future instead of the past? 

Ithaca, New York just voted to decarbonize every building in the city. Ithaca is starting with electrifying city buildings and then moving on to every remaining building, the entire city. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/11/03/ithaca-new-york-decarbonize-electrify/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main&crl8_id=48151be1-3e0a-4d97-8ca5-c264e9794457 

Pittsburg passed a Dark Sky ordinance. https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2021/september/light-pollution-ordinance.html 

Berkeley can’t even finish implementing a bird safe glass ordinance passed by council November 12, 2019. And what is the manager doing to ensure this important piece of legislation is implemented? This an even sadder note after picking up today’s SF Chronicle and reading Earthweek that the soundscape of birds is quieter and less diverse over the past 25 years as bird populations plummet. Nearly 3 billion birds have disappeared from North America since 1970. https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/#:~:text=The%20first%2Dever%20comprehensive%20assessment,among%20birds%20in%20every%20biome. 

The is so much that could be done with leadership and elected officials that look to a future for the planet instead of their careers. Just look to the National Wildlife Federation’s Blog and other cities. https://blog.nwf.org/2019/09/native-plant-challenge-calling-all-cities-to-plant-native/ 

The great sadness I have for Berkeley is seeing the clinging to old history when Berkeley was a leader some 50 years ago and a mindset that hovers in the same period. It’s a lot to overcome for those who are trying to move into the future. 

This brings us to the Thursday special council meeting to establish council priorities for the 2023-2024 budget process. The meeting which drove Thomas Lord to write about the climate emergency. When I got home and tuned into the meeting, the adjacent graphc was on the screen with the consultant talking: 

Climate and the environment was 7^th out of nine in priority. Councilmember Harrison spoke that if this meant spending more money on policing she had a lot of concerns. Councilmember Hahn said climate is an existential threat. Councilmember Wengraf said everything should be filtered through equity and climate and that she didn’t like silos, everything is interrelated. Councilmember Taplin said he supported the priorities. Councilmember Robinson said he appreciated the process. Councilmember Droste was bubbling over with enthusiasm for the process. 

Where does this leave Berkeley? With a council majority, city management and consultants who don’t see climate and the environment as a priority. It certainly explains why there is so much empty rhetoric and Mayor Arreguin killed the rights of nature. 

Arreguin tried to clean up the city image after the Thursday debacle with the Friday evening 5:49 pm constant contact mass emailing declaring climate as a crisis and extolling Berkeley’s “greening” actions on climate. Greenwashing is more like it. Greenwashing is when something is presented as being “green” but is just empty show. Berkeley would be nowhere without Councilmember Harrison carrying the city through the natural gas ban in new construction. And, that was an enormous effort where a team of experts so large in number lined up to speak at the July 2019 council meeting making the ban impossible to block. 

In the email, Arreguin tries to make it sound like he initiated the Deep Green Building Initiative. Hahn gathered the community experts who put the initiative together. My role in the committee was to give input as to what was needed to see it implemented. I opposed the initiative as being voluntary saying no developer would participate and none have. Hahn said making standards required would never get passed by council. Watching council, she was right and changing council players in the intervening years doesn’t make aggressive action on climate and the environment look any brighter. The Energy Commission saw BESO (Building Emissions Saving Ordinance) as needing a major overhaul, again it was limited by what city council and city administration will tolerate. What we got is slight improvement. 

The Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday held a hearing on the BART housing projects at the Ashby and North Berkeley stations, but took no action. 

I like to close with my latest reading. I wish these two books were required reading for every adult American then maybe we would finally see Guantanamo closed and the military budget slashed. 

I heard Mansoor Adayfi interviewed September 27, 2021 on Democracy Now shortly after the publication of his book Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and found in Guantanamo. The interview is an introduction, but nowhere near the power of hearing his words. I chose the audiobook when Mansoor Adayfi described why it was so important to him to have a woman narrator and not a man. It was men who kidnapped and sold him to the CIA when he was 18. It was men who tortured him, men who imprisoned him. It was women who treated him nicely. https://www.democracynow.org/2021/9/27/mansoor_adayfi_guantanamo_book 

I followed Adayfi’s book with the Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock. If I had any doubts which I didn’t that we needed to end the Afghanistan war, this book would settle it. All the corruption fostered by American money, the complete incompetence, the arrogance, the list is long. I finished the audiobook, but if you even listen to the first quarter or first half, I would be surprised if you weren’t frankly appalled by what was found in the “lessons learned” through the freedom of information act. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/05/the-afghanistan-papers-review-craig-whitlock-washington-post 

Both books were published in August 2021 and are available through the San Francisco library. 

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