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):
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.
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.
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
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
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
Does anyone really believe that the Plan (DAP) will benefit Berkeley? It adds a huge number of high-priced apartments, plus a large hotel, to the downtown, with minimal parking. The assumption is that the new residents and hotel guests won’t have cars. All you have to do is look at other cities in this country and Europe to see that this won’t happen. So there are two possibilities. Either the projects will be successful, and traffic in downtown Berkeley will grind to a standstill, like San Francisco, New York or London, or apartment seekers will go to Oakland, where parking is more available. Continue reading
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
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
The City wants to hear from you about your experiences and what you think should happen next.
goBerkeley, which will run from July 2013 to March 2015, adjusted parking prices, time limits, and parking signs to better match visitor needs, while providing free transit passes and subsidized carshare memberships to employees and residents in three Pilot Areas: Downtown, Southside/Telegraph, and the Elmwood. Continue reading