Public Comment

Let's abandon our parks. It won't take much.

Parks nationwide are one of the most bipartisan, easily supported ideas on earth. But Berkeley has found a way to divide people over their existence, their purpose, and reduce parks to their potential commercial worth, with little opposition from current leadership.

People's Park is victimized by the University of California's greed, neglect, and disinformation such that even the Sierra Club failed, despite UC's alternative sites, to take a stand against its possible conversion to housing. Cesar Chavez Park is at risk of being converted to a ferry-ride parking lot with absurd, unnecessary concessions. Civic Center Park, despite its historic origins and connections to world famous architects, runs the risk of being destroyed by civic leadership with no understanding of its historic foundations, and Willard Park, despite community opposition, is at risk by a plan for a large, rentable building in its center opposed by neighbors.

The loss of habitat, open space, natural landscapes has powerful public health implications. Our town's plans used to champion these needs, but have been altered by successive assaults by the same developers who pooh-pooh the elemental California Environmental Quality Review requirements as excessive and burdensome. 

What happened is money, and the easy language it speaks to politicians eager to please developers, whose nimble ways with the internet prove more valuable than common sense. Few trees can show up at the City Council meeting. Few hawks and gulls can argue with the lucrative nature of nipping away at natural landscapes. 

We're in danger globally. The wrong-headed thinking is right here in our community when representatives such as Buffy Wicks and Nancy Skinner think nothing of partnering with developers who can be much more help with re-election than the rest of us. And most of us scramble to break even, putting off that letter to the California Senate Appropriations Committee about to commit an atrocity. 

Remember, when you see the burnt banyan in Lahaina, Hawaii, that the resonant lament for its historic significance has had its sound and power dampened here by those hungry for money and power. California's environmental protections are being systematically eroded with the full favor and support of our elected representatives. 

Our parks need and deserve our full focus so that our leadership does not consider them an easy item to trade in favor of re-election.