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):
You’ll see that UC agreed to pay $1.2 million a year for the City services it used, with an escalation factor. Of this, $200,000 was for community projects, to be decided by UC! We’re not sure how much of this money has been spent, but do know that UC has selected some projects that benefit it, such as improving the recycling services it uses.
A little earlier, the City had commissioned an independent study that showed that UC used $13.5 million in services (see Table 2b).
This amount must have grown at more than the rate of inflation, because a) At the time, UC had nearly 32,000 students. It now has nearly 38,000, together with increased faculty and staff, and b) UC has been heavily investing in Berkeley property, and removing it from the tax rolls. All this has been described in more detail in our recent newsletters.
In short, the Settlement was very one-sided.
It should be noted that two years ago ABAG.MTC held their required public meetings in the east
parts of Alameda and Contra costa county. This past week they repeated this meeting pattern.
There are almost a million people from Fremont to Richmond that are affected by Plan Bay Area
One-yet there are no plans to hold meetings in the western pat of Alameda or Contra Costa county.
Holding meetings 30 miles away are not within the spirit of the law of public meetings.. Call ABAG
and demand meetings in western Alameda and Contra Costa counties.