This Thursday, June 2nd, is the big one: the all-important City Council vote on zoning the BART stations. On Thursday, please be a part of it - it's our last chance to influence the council’s vote. Here's what to do: -more-

The Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for Ashby and North Berkeley Stations Transit Oriented Development Zoning fails to apply its own methodology correctly and violates the CEQA guidelines regarding the emissions associated with construction, especially at the proposed heights. As a result, the FEIR falsely claims that the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the proposed zoning do not pass a threshold of significance. -more-

A teen suspected of trying to recruit other students to participate in a school shooting or bombing at Berkeley High School was arrested this week after turning himself in, police said Wednesday. -more-

The Shattuck Cinemas are a cultural treasure for Berkeley residents and the wider East Bay. Pre-COVID, the Cinemas were drawing 275,00 to 300,000 ticket-buyers per year. In 2017, members of Save the Shattuck Cinemas gathered well over 4,000 signatures of movie goers with addresses from all over the East Bay—people attracted to spending time and money in our downtown thanks to the breadth and high quality of films to be seen at the Cinemas, unmatched by any other East Bay theater. -more-

Have you filled out your ballot? Berkeley Citizens' Action (BCA) did NOT do endorsements for this year's primary. Instead, we are sharing the endorsements and recommendations from the following sources. At the end of this email, you can find information about these sources. -more-

Dear Mayor Arreguin and Councilmembers:

As you consider bond measures to place on the November ballot (May 31 agenda, items 37 and 39), I have one plea: Please give me at least one clean measure that I can vote for in good conscience.

Please don’t even think about combining essential and prestige projects into “one big bond” that voters will be forced to vote down (The staff report’s “Option 1”). Please don’t even think about staff’s “Option 2,” nor about the potential combinations that Councilmember Droste helpfully listed in her May 27 newsletter: “repaving and street safety,” or “housing and disaster/climate resiliency.”

Please offer voters at least four separate bond measures, allowing us to vote for things we believe in: -more-

Well, it looks like the Chron has finally gotten the memo. Perhaps someone there even reads the Planet.

On Tuesday of this week, their resident "urban design critic" John King, who lives in Berkeley for his sins, took official notice of the fact that the city is being overrun with Ugly Boxes. Well, he didn't quite admit that, but the net sentiment he expressed is close. Here's his take on what's happening, such as it is:

Berkeley has a downtown housing boom right now. It’s going to transform the city’s character

Yes. As usual, the comments (hard to find) tell the story. Two of my faves:

"Witness Neoliberal crony capitalism's version of Stalin's Five Year Plans", That''s undoubtedly from a genuine Cal graduate.

And another good one called the prevailing style "applique architecture", which I take to mean Ugly Boxes with Some Fancy Stuff Outside.

But here's the breakthrough: In the same issue the good old Chron actually ran an op-ed by someone who brings facts and analysis to the topic. We've told you before about Professor Davarian Baldwin, and here in print he spotlights the major culprit in the "transformation of Berkeley's character" to Boring Boxland.

Read it and weep.

How UC Berkeley has used public power to become a private developer

By the way, if these links don't get you through the Chronicle's pay wall, a Berkeley Public Library card will give you online access to that and many other publications.
-more-

One thing is as clear today as it was in the earliest days of People's Park. People's Park is significant from every conceivable angle. It's as though the park is a historical, architectural, ecological, and cultural prism that insists on being more than a park can possibly be, a significance one hopes is beginning to dawn on the UC regents and the Berkeley City Council.

Even now the park is saturated with the people whose housing and human needs are ignored by the mayor and council's insistence that market rate projects will someday make room for the people dislocated from the low-income housing bulldozed to build them, and that inadequate, temporary shelter in humiliating circumstances is worth trading in one's autonomy and safety. These two chimeras are still waved aloft by local leadership just as clearly as People's Park demonstrates their bankruptcy.

People's Park set Ronald Reagan on his path to his presidency. People's Park is where August Vollmer's famed 1908 effort to professionalize policing met an equally powerful, now nationwide grassroots effort to make policing accountable. People's Park is where the first university accredited, participatory, community-run native plant garden brought together master gardeners, acolytes of Jim Roof, students, hippies, and anyone with a shovel and an interest. -more-

The merchants protest

The conceptual redesign of Hopkins that the council approved on May 10 calls for adding two 4-to-5-foot bike lanes plus a 3-foot buffer between the lanes and parking on the south side of Hopkins between Monterey and McGee—in other words, right in front of Magnani Poultry, Gioia Pizza, Monterey Fish, and other popular shops.

At the May 10 council meeting, Paul Johnson, owner of Monterey Fish, said that all the merchants with whom he had spoken were fine with repaving Hopkins but opposed to bike lanes on the street. Calling the plan “a recipe for disaster” that’s “so dangerous, it’s unbelievable,” he recommended putting the lanes on side streets.

Johnson also warned that the construction process would not be “a three-to-four month” undertaking but rather a project that would likely go “right through the holiday season and into the following year. By the time you people get done with this, we’re all going to be out of business.” -more-

First some caveats: I am not a Roman Catholic; I just voted again for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.Calif) as my Representative; I support a woman’s right to an abortion; and I am certainly not a religious scholar. But I do take issue with San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s directive to local priests to deny House Speaker Pelosi Holy Communion because of her support for abortion rights. -more-

A tangential note:

One of the Big Fatal Mistakes of inexperienced persons who embark on self-employment is to undervalue oneself, and as a result, to undercharge. Customers do not respect this. When the price of something is too low, people invariably perceive that something is wrong with it. This detracts, and it is a reason that many entrepreneurships fail. Yet, there are many types of salesmanship applicable to many situations.

In the case of being a mental health consumer seeking help to move ahead in life, salesmanship may be needed to convince the appropriate people to go along with what you want. You may need to do some convincing that you are a viable person, one who can do very well in life with the necessary help. You may also need to explain exactly what is in your way, and in what ways you need a reasonable level of help. And here, it is also necessary that you don't undervalue yourself. This morning or yesterday morning, I forget which, I was on the phone with one of the many people responsible for my treatment, when I mentioned that I placed a classified advertisement in which I'm trying to offer copyediting services to the public. The mental health professional had a perplexing reaction. So, I said to him, in a chiding tone, that I have a life outside of just being a mental health consumer. -more-

A Memorial Day Column: The United States of Warmerica

The folks at Progressivememes.org have prepared a pictorial statement that does justice to the dark side of Memorial Day. Instead of honoring generations of dead American soldiers, the statement recognizes the victims of the Pentagon's deadly global adventures. The text reads as follows:

I stand with the millions of people murdered by US wars and proxy wars.

Native Americans. Africans (slaves). Vietnam. Cambodia. Honduras. Guatemala. Indonesia. Nicaragua. Iran. Syria. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Yemen. Ukraine,

According to Brown University's Costs of Wars project, US wars since 9/11 have killed over 900,000 people and cost $8 trillion.

The statement includes this footnote:

Senior US diplomats warned that aggressive NATO expansion was unnecessary and would result in a war. The US went ahead with it to provoke and weaken Russia. The RAND Corp. study, "Overextending and Unbalancing Russia," specifically recommended arming Ukraine and warned of Russia's likely military response.

The Mental Illness of Pro-gun Demagogues -more-

There were a lot of things wrong in the 1950s when I was growing up, redlining, classism, deep racism, segregation, poverty, little opportunity for Blacks or women, abortion was illegal, gays were closeted, McCarthy was ruining lives with his communist conspiracies, but one thing I never had to worry about was being so pulverized by a weapon of war that DNA would need to be used to identify who belonged to the mass of unrecognizable bloody flesh on the floor in a school classroom. And that is because no one could walk into a gun store and buy an AR-15, an assault weapon or similar gun or guns that hold high capacity magazines. There were not more guns than people. There were not weapons of war sold at your local store. There wasn’t an ad “CONSIDER YOUR MAN CARD REISSUED” to buy an assault weapon. https://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/12/gun-ads-bushmaster-mattel/

The problem is the guns and the answer is not turning teachers into marksmen with AR 15s on their desks or slung over their chests. When I hear the phrase, “they’re coming to take your guns away” all I can think is “I wish.”

In Australia in 1996 there was a firearm massacre in Tasmania in which 35 people died. The Australian government responded and united and did just that, they took the guns away removing semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession, roughly 650,000 guns and established strict laws on who could possess a gun. https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback In 2019 after the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, New Zealand banned assault weapons.

Background checks, if even that measure could be passed is not enough. There needs to be a national ban on assault weapons and large capacity magazines and access to ammunition needs to be controlled too. That is what we need to be marching for. -more-

Worth Noting – Big Week Ahead after Monday off for Memorial Day Holiday:

Tuesday morning at 11 am the Police Accountability Board (PAB) subcommittee will continue work on police equipment policies and reporting. Tuesday evening is City Council the budget and with more budget referrals on the agenda.

Wednesday evening at 7 pm the Planning Commission will have a presentation on standards for middle size multi-unit housing. These are duplexes to eight plus units in projects up to three stories in height. The size of the packet is misleading as there is a lot to absorb in the 16 pages on middle housing.

Thursday at 6 pm is the special City Council meeting on the Ashby and North Berkeley BART housing projects. Be prepared for a long night as the two opposing sides make their case, the "build it tall 12 stories to twenty stories or more" and the "build it moderate size 7 stories with lots of affordable housing." The Planning Department staff recommended 7 stories as did the Community Advisory Group (CAG).

Bad news on tracking approved projects in the appeal period. Samantha Updegrave, Zoning Officer, Principal Planner wrote the listing of projects in the appeal period can only be found by looking up each project individually through permits online by address or permit number https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/Online-Building-Permits-Guide.pdf

Tuesday, May 31, 2022 -more-