The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) has arranged a series of open houses to discuss the plan, which is the primary driver of “smart growth”, or dense residential development along mass-transit corridors. Details can be found here. Berkeley and its surrounding cities are conspicuously absent.
Category Archives: Author
The Selling of the City in 2005
This is an article from our October-November 2005 newsletter which discusses how our present mayor and the Council sold the City to UC. If you’ve ever wondered why Berkeleyans pay such high City taxes, a good part of the reason is because UC doesn’t.
The article refers to the Settlement with UC. This is the 2005 Settlement of the lawsuit by the City against the Environmental Impact Report for UC’s Long Range Development Plan (2020 LRDP):
A Little Bit of Berkeley History
Unfortunately, CNA ceased operations in 2015. No further comments are being accepted, but we will maintain the website, and we’re converting all the old editions of our newsletter to text-searchable pdf files. The first 10 issues, from 1975 and 1976, are available at this link:
We plan to add all our old issues, to allow viewers to follow 40 years of Berkeley’s history. Thank you for your support.
Significant Community Benefits for Tall Buildings
Berkeley’s mayor sets special meeting for May 5th, 7pm to discuss the community benefits developers should deliver for the right to build their tall buildings and profit from them. Show up and share your ideas! This is really important. One of the community benefits is Affordable Housing, in which Berkeley is becoming woefully deficient.
Requirements For Tall Buildings
Item #37 on the Berkeley Council meeting tomorrow, April 7th, is about “Significant Community Benefits” for proposed buildings over 75 ft. high:
City Council Agenda
This sounds arcane, but it’s not. If you love your downtown, come to the meeting and speak up! Continue reading
Police Accountability
Thanks to Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, the City Council passed several measures that improve police accountability. However, three important areas need further improvement:
1) The Police Review Commission has been rendered almost impotent. Continue reading
Who pays?
We’re sure we come across very negatively in our attitude to developers and UC. However, there is no question that the Council majority gives extremely favorable treatment to both these interests. Developers aren’t required to pay the full cost to the City of the services they use – inquiries to the Planning Department have revealed that the Department doesn’t even know the impact of large new projects on the Sewage Treatment plant, or on Emergency Services. As for UC, if it buys a property, it takes it off the Property Tax Roll, so UC pays nothing to the City. Continue reading
UC’s Helios Project
Eight years ago, UC Berkeley made a controversial deal with the British oil company, BP: UC would receive $350 million to create the Energy Biosciences Institute, which was eventually built between Hearst and Berkeley Way.
Now, BP is exercising its contract option to cut back sharply on funding. That means the elimination of up to 20 current post-doctorate positions, and the layoff of more than half the support staff. Continue reading
Mini-dorm Extravaganza Threatens LeConte Neighborhood
On June 10, 2014, ZAB heard and denied the huge extensions to 2201-05 Blake St. and 2204 Dwight Way because they found that they would be detrimental. The developer appealed the denials to the City Council, who will meet to hear the matters at 7:00 pm on January 13 in Old City Hall, 2134 MLK Jr. Way. If the Council would read the materials that neighbors have submitted, they would be very unlikely to overturn the ZAB’s denials. But we hear that very few of them read their packets before Council meetings. Continue reading
City Council Agendas
This could have been a blank post. The City Clerk has stated that no detailed agendas will be available until tomorrow, despite the fact that there are 5 Council Meetings scheduled for this month, starting on January 13th. So much for keeping residents informed in a timely manner!
Nigel Guest