Public Comment

The well orchestrated uproar over CEQA*[1] is similar to the 1930s hysteria over marijuana. Nancy Skinner, Scott Weiner, California Governor Gavin Newsom are all clutching their pearls over the alleged burden it creates for poor, downtrodden developers, and Berkeley's entire city council is apparently happy to applaud weakening it with even more exemptions. But the UC regents didn't lose their case in appellate court over their proposal to build housing on People's Park because of CEQA. They lost it because they were stupid.

The horrors attributed to CEQA are groundless. Two decades of CEQA decisions analyzed by the Rose Foundation[2] documents the fact that CEQA's requirements have not burdened developers or development, but rather have improved proposals statewide which ran the risk of damaging not just the environment but in particular communities of color and historic cultural treasures. Local politicians' close associations with developers may preclude the modest scrutiny provided by CEQA, which is simply designed to make sure that there is thorough discussion of a project's impacts, including environmental impacts. In People's Park's case, it mandated discussion of alternative locations for the project, which the University of California (UC), California's largest landowner, chose not to do. The First Appellate District Court of Appeal's tentative ruling of December 22, 2022 plainly states:

"We do not take sides on policy issues. Our task is modest. We must apply the laws that the Legislature has written to the facts in the record. In each area where the EIR[3] is deficient the EIR skipped a legal requirement, or the record did not support the EIR's conclusions, or both."[4] 

Perhaps it wasn't stupid to think that a legally inadequate brief would be affirmed at a lower court level; UC can presumably count on special favors unavailable to, in this case, small nonprofits. But consider that without CEQA, the simple question, "can this project's goals be accomplished without destroying redwoods, open space, much-needed recreational space and an historic park on the National Register of Historic Places?" might never have been asked emphatically enough to get the regents to take their fingers out of their ears. 

They have to listen now. They have to enumerate the obvious alternative locations for their project in lower court, justify their obvious omissions in the California Supreme Court, or settle for weakening CEQA for their own and other developers' purposes, putting the environment, and communities of color in particular, at even deeper risk. 

Be prepared for self-dealing politicians to offer to take more bites out of CEQA in the name of "student housing" despite the fact that "Project 1" in the regents' proposal demolished rent-controlled housing in a landmarked building and was replaced with high-end, student-only housing exempt from local zoning and contributions to the tax base. 

Your city council had no discouraging words for this plan. Even Kate Harrison, who abstained on the legally disputed agreement signed in a secret meeting between the university and Mayor Jesse Arreguin, refused to explain her lonely abstention. 

But remember this: the regents, as California's largest landholders, could have simply listed their alternative locations for housing. But it would be embarrassing; there's easily 100 acres of land even closer to the main campus than People's Park available, already UC owned, much of which is already zoned for housing. 

And then, of course, there's the rolling empty lawns of the campus itself, the open space that was Evans Hall, the state-wide opportunity to build more campuses, and the option to acquire under-attended Humboldt State University and incorporate it into the UC system without having to build a thing. But the latter would presume the priority of education itself, rather than development. Education, as the continuing sacrifice of UC's respected libraries[5] makes clear, is apparently the last thing on their mind. 

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Carol Denney is a Berkeley writer, musician, cartoonist, and co-founder of the People's Park Historic District Advocacy Group.