Voters had the opportunity to hear their local candidates answer their questions, as well as questions posed by the League Of Women Voters of Berkeley, Albany and Emeryville.
Produced by Berkeley Community Media
Hosted by Berkeley City College
Berkeley is a beacon of hope for many people. I grew up enamored by Berkeley and its reputation for inclusivity, progressive politics, and tolerance. When I moved to Berkeley over 20 years ago, I knew I would raise my family here. Berkeley’s uniqueness, neighborhoods, and spirit amaze me. I want to continue Berkeley’s legacy and make sure that our community can retain its quirkiness, diversity, and incredible residents while welcoming those seeking refuge and sanctuary. These ideas drive my work on the Council every day. Over time, I’ve seen my friends and colleagues priced out of Berkeley. These are Berkeley’s teachers, first responders, artists, and children. We have a moral obligation to address housing costs which are directly related to homelessness, income inequality, and displacement.
As a policy maker and professor in public policy, I rely on data-driven, evidence-based strategies to guide my vision for a more affordable and equitable Berkeley. My work advocating for housing affordability has earned national attention. That’s why many of the region’s leading experts in housing affordability and displacement support my campaign. Cal Professor and gentrification and displacement expert Karen Chapple, Barack Obama’s assistant secretary for Housing and Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy, Carol Galante, Cal Professor and Deputy Director for Cities and Schools Jeff Vincent, and affordable housing scholar and professor Michael Lens endorse my vision and record in combatting displacement and working toward affordability. I want to continue my work on these issues by removing barriers and improving the planning process for affordable housing, workforce housing, and backyard cottages.
As your councilmember, I’ve proposed and passed several pieces of legislation to improve housing affordability and ensure that people can remain in Berkeley, including workforce and affordable housing streamlining. People who work in Berkeley should be able to afford Berkeley. We also need affordable housing today not five years from now. I passed legislation to both help house teachers and others who may not qualify for subsidized affordable units in new buildings and speed up the process to create affordable housing in Berkeley. I’m currently working with the Mayor and experts in the field to further streamline housing for our city workers, teachers, and first responders.
I have been a leader in making Accessory Dwelling Units easier to construct and will continue to streamline the process. I have held workshops within our neighborhood to educate home owners about ADU construction to help address our housing shortage. Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU’s) are a way to increase Berkeley’s housing stock and encourage aging in place. Also known as backyard cottages, ADUs provide residents an opportunity to house family members, caretakers, or downsize while remaining in our neighborhoods. I’ve championed policies to streamline regulations around ADUs so they can built quickly and efficiently. I’ve also held community workshops to educate neighbors about how an ADU could benefit them. I will continue to work with the ADU Taskforce and state officials to help introduce legislation to make it even easier to build ADUs.
This year my Vision Zero legislation to eliminate all pedestrian fatalities and injuries was rated by my Council colleagues as the City's #1 priority. I have also secured over $300,000 for traffic calming measures for our neighborhood. In the next year, I will ensure that the City installs the crosswalk and flashing pedestrian lights on Claremont Avenue in front of John Muir Elementary School. In addition, traffic improvements and crosswalks along Ashby Avenue/Tunnel Road are nearing completion.
Making sure our community feels safe--both in terms of public safety and as a pedestrian or bicyclist on our streets--is a priority of mine. As the Councilmember who is a parent of young children, I understand how critical pedestrian safety is. I walk and bike my children to school often, and I know there are ways to improve our streets to ensure their safety.
I also know how important crime prevention is to our community. A key aspect of addressing crime is to ensure that we have a responsibly-staffed police force that is well connected to our communities. I have been a leader in advocating for robust recruitment and retention efforts and will continue to do so in my next term. We need to embrace a community policing model--foot patrols, bike cops, and traffic enforcement units. Because of my support for effective safety policy, Berkeley’s first responders solely endorse me for reelection to City Council. We also need to embrace fair and impartial policing and ensure that our police continue to undergo rigorous implicit bias training.
We also need to work to save community hospitals. Senator Nancy Skinner and I are working together to craft legislation to address the potential loss of community hospitals like Alta Bates. Two years ago, her legislation made it all the way to the Governor’s desk before he vetoed it. We have a real opportunity to make changes with our new governor. Senator Skinner has promised me a seat at the table.
I am proud to be the only candidate supported by our firefighters because of my extensive work and advocacy for fire safety, evacuation routes, and undergrounding utility wires. I have held regular fire prevention meetings to educate our community about the inherent risks and passed legislation to focus on fire safety and prevention.
Homes in District 8 sell in the upper ranges. Do you support the higher transfer tax on the November ballot and what how will you explain your position to voters?
I support building housing in all districts of the City, including District 8. The difficulty of building in District 8 is finding space large enough to support development, with necessary set-backs and without demolishing existing buildings. District 8 has large homes, however, that could be converted to multi-unit dwellings, and we must find ways to make it easier to allow these conversions. We must also work to simplify the process whereby an owner of a single-family home that was once a multi-unit home wants to convert the residence back to multi-units.
I also support the idea of limited equity cooperative housing and I applaud Councilmember Kate Harrison’s work, based on the success of this approach in other cities, to allocate seed money to get such a project off the ground in Berkeley. I am also aware that the City has identified hundreds of vacant rent-controlled apartment units, as well as entire apartment buildings in Berkeley. I support using city funds (hopefully from Measure O) to purchase underutilized properties and make them exclusively available for affordable housing in District 8 and elsewhere.
I support building more ADU’s throughout Berkeley, and I support incentives to make them ADA compliant as a way to increase the housing stock for seniors and disabled individuals. The way to encourage the building of ADU’s is to make the permitting process easier. We need to also think about creative ways to make financing of ADU’s available to residents who have the desire to build an ADU on their property, but do not have the ability to finance the construction — which can be expensive. This is another area where cooperative housing, as well as alternative financing and forms of ownership, should be explored.
I support the work that has been done to make Berkeley increasingly bike friendly.
I realize that not everyone is able to bike, but I support making this a priority for those who can. I know that Berkeley recently passed a new Bike Plan, after a long community process, and now it must get funded and implemented.
With regard to bike and pedestrian safety, they must be equally prioritized. I am aware that the City Council recently passed a “Vision Zero” Ordinance for the City of Berkeley. I support this, but being a Vision Zero city is not enough. We must act to put policies in place that achieve the goal of Vision Zero —to eliminate all traffic related pedestrian and bike fatalities. We need to study what other cities, such as San Francisco, have done successfully, and then make implementation of those measures a priority. To my knowledge, this has not yet happened in Berkeley, and I would make it a priority.
The reason pedestrian safety is such a major issue facing District 8 is because our district is more impacted by traffic than any other district. We have the main arteries for travelling into and out of Berkeley, and our residential streets are used as thoroughfares during commute hours. We need to slow traffic on these streets by installing more stop signs, and where appropriate, speed bumps or pavers. We also need to work with traffic engineers, in conjunction with UC Berkeley, to improve our ability to move people into and out of Berkeley, including to and from UC Berkeley.
With regard to safety in our neighborhoods, I am a Personnel Board Commissioner and I am aware of the staffing issues the Police Department faces. We have had many discussions addressing what can be done to increase recruitment, as well as to improve retention. From these discussions, I know that our staffing issues are not unique to Berkeley, but instead are part of a national trend where fewer people are choosing to become police officers.
To achieve full staffing, we need to ensure that our benefit packages are at the top level for officer pay, and I support reinstatement of programs that provide new and attractive opportunities for officers, as well as promotion opportunities, so that our officers have internal opportunities to develop themselves and advance in responsibility and pay.
Our communities (not only in District 8 but citywide) would also benefit by being offered more opportunities to meet officers personally, and I would hold meetings in District 8 to help the police and community reinforce positive relationships. I know the Department initiated citywide meet and greet sessions that have been very well received, and I wholeheartedly support these types of initiatives.
With climate change, we face an increasing likelihood of a major fire, and the danger to houses in the hills and close to our regional parks is most acute. I understand that the City Council passed major legislation in the wake of last year’s North Bay fires and the Fire Department is prioritizing and moving forward with the referrals. And this includes vegetation management on both public and private land within Berkeley.
Vegetation management in regional parks that line the Eastern face of the Berkeley, Richmond and Oakland hills must be the top priority. A firestorm that gains speed and heat on the back side of the hill that crests into Berkeley could be unstoppable. I will work to ensure that Berkeley is coordinating with East Bay Regional Parks to keep Berkeley and all East Bay communities safe.
Yes, I support measure P. It is a non-regressive tax, and I believe that it makes sense to add an additional tax on residential and commercial properties that sell at the upper ranges, from those who have benefited so greatly from property appreciation, as a way to help fund homeless services for those who have so little.
Quirky, romantic, progressive – and pragmatic. I'm an artist, designer and community leader. I've designed homes, businesses, and public infrastructure for the last dozen years.
See https://www.alfred2018.com/housing for illustrations of what this might look like. Preserving character doesn't mean rejecting apartments entirely. At heart, my background and work experience is as an artist and designer. Design guidelines can ensure that new buildings match the style of their neighbors, and most importantly, match how they meet the street, with front porches, gardens, quirky artwork, and front doors for first floor apartments. Existing houses can be repurposed as the community room.
Incentives can be given to encourage the creation of Accessory Dwelling Units when basements and foundations are retrofitted for earthquake safety.
Speed is the biggest threat to safety, with risks rising exponentially as speeds rise above 15 mph.
- Lower speed limits
- Traffic calming
- Dedicated bike lanes on busy roads
We also need to reduce the size and number of motor vehicles, through better transit, allowing corner stores to open and provide basic goods and services within a short walk of most homes, better bike infrastructure, and dedicated parking for motorcycles, golf carts, tuk-tuks, and other smaller-than-car vehicles.
Wildfires are one of the biggest risks that Berkeley faces. In the wildland urban interface, it's hard to stop flames from jumping from forest to homes.
To protect our city, I propose we create an agricultural buffer to provide a defensible, attractive, and productive space between neighborhoods and forests. Farmland has a lower fuel load and flammability than homes or forest, and during recent wildfires, farms were a critical buffer that saved many homes. Cal Fire notes that intensive agriculture minimizes the risk of fire.
These farms would also provide food for our many farm-to-table restaurants as well as to food donation programs. With some areas reserved for community garden plots, they would also give unique education and recreation opportunities for everyone.
To maximize food productivity and minimize neighborhood impacts, all such farms would be plants only.
See https://www.alfred2018.com/food-fire for an illustration of what this could look like.
Yes. The transfer tax increase is only 1% (from current rate of 1.5% to new rate of 2.5%) and only applies to properties selling for over $1.5 million. In contrast, home values in Berkeley are increasing by 5-8% a year. Homeowners "earn back" the tax after just a couple months of property value increase. Measure P funds will go towards housing and other services for the homeless, improving the quality of life for everyone.
Through design we can be a city where children are safe from cars, where young adults can afford a home, where families know their neighbors, and where our elders can age in place.
Beautiful and Affordable Homes
- I will use my design experience to revise our zoning to allow more apartments near transit, corner stores, and backyard duplexes. - while ensuring that new buildings complement existing architectural styles - no glass boxes.
- I support the state and local housing bonds and Proposition 10, which would allow Berkeley rent control to keep rents permanently affordable.
Eco-Friendly Transportation and Food
- Transportation and food are the largest contributors to climate change. I'll lead the effort to reduce driving - especially cut-through traffic - and introduce legislation and incentives to make Berkeley the leader in plant-based and vegan food business.
- The shift away from fossil fuels can't rely on regressive policies such as parking tickets that put a disproportionate burden on those who can't afford it. Instead, we need to address the overconsumption and concentrated wealth. By pooling, sharing, and reusing our resources can we have a society that is affordable, green, friendly and fair.
Well Funded Public Services
- I'll welcome and seek out new homes and businesses - especially cooperatives - to grow our tax base.
- To fund the retrofit of Alta Bates Hospital, I'll lead the creation of a new housing bonus program with fees dedicated to saving Alta Bates.
How Berkeley can address all its environmental impacts, both direct and indirect.
As an artist, I look at the big picture. As a environmentalist with a background in zero waste and transportation, I look beyond the horizon and backwards and forwards in time.
To be a true leader and example of a community, Berkeley needs a holistic systems approach to addressing climate change.
This means reducing our impacts both within Berkeley and also accounting for goods and services provided by people living outside the city limits.
Reducing Environmental Impact from the Big Four Sources: Transportation, Industry, Agriculture, and Buildings are the direct or indirect source of nearly all carbon emissions. We can learn from our more frugal past to create a more sustainable future.
Shorten Commutes and Shopping Trips
- Zone to allow groceries, basic retail, and services within walking distance of all Berkeley residents.
- Build more homes, especially affordable homes, to reduce the need for our service workers to commute from far away.
Culture and Economy of Sharing, Reuse and Repair
- Economic incentives for reuse and repair businesses.
- More shared vehicles, tool lending libraries, etc.
Plant Based Food System
- Events and incentives to promote plant-based foods.
- Agricultural buffer zone to create fire barrier in the hills between homes and forests.
Compact and Efficient Buildings
- Legalize subdivision of large houses into multiple homes.
- Promote cooperative living through working with Community Land Trusts.
How we can increase our tax base to fund more programs and services, without putting a large burden on existing businesses or residents.
Funding affordable housing and other social programs will require more tax dollars. But that does not mean that your taxes have to go up.
New construction grows the tax base, and improves efficiency. It's like buying in bulk!
For example, serving on the Zero Waste Commission, one of the things I did was review costs and rates for the City's garbage collection services, and compare it to other cities. One of the findings was that the cost to service a duplex is basically the same as that to service a single unit house, since the labor is the main cost, and the amount of labor needed is based on the number of times staff needs to stop and wheel a cart up to the truck.
True, some things such as streets and parks will require more maintenance with more people using them. Others, however, such as public art or storm sewers, cost the same regardless of how many people live on each block.
Finally, a lot of Berkeley's biggest costs - for example, earthquake retrofitting historic public buildings such as Old City Hall - are fixed costs. Having more homes and businesses to spread the cost over will reduce each individual's burden.
Reimagining the physical layout and economy of our neighborhoods for a more human and ecologically friendly way of life.
Mending the Economy
Berkeley has few natural resources relative to its population. Every day, people of Berkeley spend money to buy stuff from other places, and also throw out thousands of tons of materials and resources. Low quality furniture and clothing is often dumped on the street. With so much money thrown out of the economy, we're forced to earn and spend vast amounts of wealth just to stay in place.
But what if we had a Reuse Economy? One built on the making, sharing, and stewardship of high quality things? Already, Berkeley has a wonderful reuse industry that preserves Berkeley's hard-earned wealth and creates jobs and culture. Businesses collect and sell vintage clothing, used electronics, old doors and building materials, original vinyl, and more. We need more of this to become a true Zero Waste City and ensure our economy lasts beyond the age of disposables. And we also need to expand this approach to the buildings and streets of our city itself...
Mending the Neighborhood
Our city has been zoned and built around exclusion, cars, and stockpiling wealth. The challenges of affordability, traffic, and safety cannot be solved without mending the physical and social fabric of the city with new homes and public places.
1. Corner Stores and Plazas
The necessities of life should be nearby - a full range of small businesses, cooperatives, and nonprofits, where you can borrow a tool, pick up deliveries, keep the kids busy, or hang out with friends after school. Streets and intersections are calmed with art and narrowed entrances, providing room for public outdoor space.
2. Car Sharing
Experience has shown that each car share vehicle can replace 10 privately owned cars. This frees up land previously used for driveways and parking. Promoting the use of electric bikes and scooters for in-town trips can also reduce traffic while preserving mobility to places not served well by mass transit.
3. Rowhouses
Big enough to have three bedrooms, but small enough to fit between existing buildings, rowhouses are a low cost way to add new family-sized homes.
4. Soft Story Retrofitting
With parking demand reduced by a switch to car sharing, soft-story garages can be retrofitted and converted into new apartments.
5. Preserving and Adapting Buildings
It is cheaper and more ecologically friendly to expand existing buildings than to build high rises. Zoning should encourage homes to grow and expand into duplexes, boarding houses, and small apartment buildings, conserving built resources while providing new housing.
See https://www.alfred2018.com/mending for an illustration of what this would look like
When a single family home goes up for sale, the City of Berkeley can provide money to the new buyer in return for the right to lift up the structure and build another housing unit underneath it.
The City can then construct the new unit and sell it to another buyer at cost, and required the buyer to carry a note for the difference between cost and fair market value.
When the property is someday resold, the CIty will be paid back that difference.
This approach is self-funding, because the buyers of the new units will get their own loans to pay the City for the construction. And in the long term, it can provide needed development funds to the City as units are eventually resold.
It can greatly incrase the housing stock without disrupting neighborhoods, and it is also cost effective and extremely green because it does not involve the destruction of a perfectly good existing dwelling unit.
I did a similar project on my own home at 2670 Parker Street, although I just added a garage and additional living space rather than creating a separate unit. So I know that this approach works very well.
As I mentioned about lifting existing houses and building new units underneath them, a similar approach can be used with ADUs.
A review should be done of every intersection in Berkeley to look for hazards to pedestrians.
After the pedestrian fatality at Warring and Derby, I looked at the intersection and found that the stop sign for the truck that killed the pedestrian was placed about 25 feet before the crosswalk. So it wasn't visible to drivers. I convinced the City of Berkeley Transportation Division to move the stop sign to where it could be seen by drivers.
City of Berkeley staff sometimes make mistakes or bad decisions, and it is essential that a Council member listen to the people who live in their district and be willing to push for changes like these.
Standing up for residents might not earn a Council member the endorsement of City of Berkeley employees during the campaign season, but it is the job of every Council member to represent the people who live here, not the people who work for the City. City employees have their own representation through their unions and the Personel Board.
District 8 was badly affected by the 1991 Tunnel Fire, otherwise known as the Oakland Hills Firestorm. I was in San Francisco that day and I could see the huge flames from the waterfront.
Vegetation needs to be managed to limit fuel for any fire that might start.
Safe exit routes must be maintained, so people and their most precious possessions can be saved.
We need to be sure we have sufficient firefighting resources.
Yes I do.
Paying a little more transfer tax is a good way to help out people who are less fortunate.
We don’t have to accept unresponsive government in Berkeley, we can create the kind of future we want.
I’m not a machine politician and I’m not taking campaign money from special interest groups.
I got my engineering degree from Cal and used it to make the world a better place.
For ten years I’ve fought for our district, our city and our global environment, improving pedestrian and bicycle safety and exposing greenwashing, conflicts of interest and environmental fraud.
If elected to the City Council, I will work to
- house Berkeley's homeless,
- assure full health coverage for every Berkeley resident,
- add new stories to existing houses as I did to my home at 2670 Parker Street to address Berkeley's affordability crisis,
- provide Neighborhood Electric Vehicles at BART stations for cost-effective, convenient and renewable door-to-door public transit,
- prevent People's Park crime from moving to Willard Park, and
- improve Berkeley’s police department,
while ensuring basic city services like street and sidewalk maintenance are done without raising taxes or fees.
If you want these things and responsive government, elect me to work on your behalf.
We'll make Berkeley a shining beacon of hope for a better future everywhere!
SB 827 would have encouraged massive building at the fence line of single family homes in Berkeley.
Published in the Berkeley Dialy Planet on January 29, 2018.
Online dictionary Merriam-Webster.com defines corruption as: "DISHONEST OR ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR ESPECIALLY BY POWERFUL PEOPLE (SUCH AS GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS OR POLICE OFFICERS): DEPRAVITY."
I apologize for using all capital letters, otherwise known as online shouting, rather than the more traditional and visually-appealing mixture of upper and lower case. But SB 827 will do something very similar to many Berkeley neighborhoods.
Four- to eight-story concrete boxes will replace beautiful century-old single family homes and rent-controlled smaller apartment buildings. And if SB 827 becomes law, there won't be anything anyone in Berkeley can do about it.
WHY NO ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW?
The State of California says the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) "requires state and local agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those impacts, if feasible."
"At a minimum, an initial review of the project and its environmental effects must be conducted. Depending on the potential effects, a further, and more substantial, review may be conducted in the form of an environmental impact report (EIR)."
"A project may not be approved as submitted if feasible alternatives or mitigation measures are able to substantially lessen the significant environmental effects of the project."
THE LEGISLATURE CAN EXEMPT ITSELF FROM ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW
Like gangsters invoking their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by refusing to testify in a racketeering trial, the California State Legislature and SB 827's authors Scott Wiener and Nancy Skinner can exempt themselves from environmental review if they choose. And they appear to be doing so.
Searching online, I could find no record of any scientific analysis of any kind being done on the impacts of SB 827. And that seems strange for a bill that is supposed to fight climate change.
SB 827 will also throw away centuries of rights of cities to control their own zoning and result in billions of dollars of profit for California developers.
SCIENCE AND MONEY
The primary author of the bill, State Senator Scott Wiener, is an attorney with no apparent scientific education who got 41 percent of his campaign money from developers.
He might be excused for not understanding anything about carbon emissions or global warming, but his co-author Nancy Skinner, Berkeley's State Senator, should know better. According to her online biography, she has a science degree from UC Berkeley.
AN INITIAL REVIEW AS REQUIRED BY CEQA
Since I couldn't find even an initial review done by the State of California, I did a basic review myself.
I compared the carbon emissions of building a new apartment in Tracy, and the resident driving their car to Berkeley every work day, with tearing down an existing apartment in Berkeley and building two new ones in its place. With that same person living in the added Berkeley apartment.
I started with some basic assumptions:
- Building two Berkeley apartments costs $300,000 more than building one Tracy apartment. - Carbon offset credits cost $20 per ton of CO2 - Each gallon of gasoline emits 20 pounds of CO2 when burned - A Toyota Prius gets 50 miles per gallon of gasoline - Tracy to Berkeley round trip is 112 miles - 250 work days per year
Dividing $300,000 by $20, equals:
- 15,000 tons of CO2 that would be offset if the same money was spent on carbon credits
Multiplying by 2,000 pounds per ton, equals:
- 30,000,000 pounds of CO2
Dividing 30,000,000 pounds by 20 pounds equals:
- 1,500,000 gallons of gasoline that would produce the same carbon
So tearing down one Berkeley apartment and building two new ones emits as much carbon as building one new Tracy apartment and burning 1,500,000 gallons of gasoline.
Multiplying 1,500,000 gallons times 50 miles per gallon equals:
- 75,000,000 miles of Prius driving
Dividing 75,000,000 miles by 112 miles equals:
- 669643 days of commuting from Tracy to Berkeley and back
Dividing 669643 days by 250 days equals:
- 2679 years
So for the first 2679 years, less carbon would be emitted by building a new apartment in Tracy and having the resident drive a Prius back and forth to Berkeley 5 days a week (without SB 827), than by building that apartment in Berkeley (with SB 827).
2,000 YEARS OF DARKNESS
In other words, SB 827 would make global warming worse for the next 2,000 years.
This is obviously a rough estimate, but it should be in the same ballpark as a CEQA "initial review of the project and its environmental effects."
The environmental effects are horrifying.
I challenge Scott Wiener, Nancy Skinner and anyone else who is backing SB 827 to find anything wrong with my calculations.
SACRAMENTO COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO SPEND 10 MINUTES DOING THE MATH?
Maybe this is why no official environmental review was published. Any qualified scientist looking at these numbers would know that SB 827 is a scam that will cause massive damage to the global environment for thousands of years. Possibly enough to tip the balance to the extinction of the entire human race.
To me, this is corruption of the worst sort and raises some important questions.
HOW FAR DOES THIS CORRUPTION GO?
Is the entire State Legislature involved? How about Governor Jerry Brown? If SB 827 passes, I think we will have our answer.
The governor's personal financial ties to the Oakland coal terminal, and the profit he might have made off burning huge amounts of the dirtiest fossil fuel, already raised real questions about his commitment to the environment.
The coal terminal plans to move 5 million tons of carbon through West Berkeley every year on its way from coal mines in Utah to furnaces in China. And ultimately to our atmosphere and into our lungs.
SB 827 MAY BECOME LAW
If it does, it will be a wakeup call for everyone in California that our government has stopped working for us and is fully controlled by Big Money.
When people lie about a project and claim that it is good for the environment when it is not, someone has to stand up and tell the truth.
Published in the Berkeley Daily Planet on February 12, 2015.
GLOBAL WARMING ON PARKER STREET
From my experience working on environmental issues, there are two different approaches to combating global warming. One is to support projects that science shows will help the environment. The other is to support any project that anyone claims is green, even when the science shows it won't help.
I am a strong supporter of projects backed up by science, but I am an equally strong opponent of greenwashed projects that won't help the environment. This has frequently brought me into conflict with people who, for some reason, support such worthless projects.
I suspect they support these projects because they have a financial incentive to do so, or because they don't have the technical knowledge to know a bad project from a good one.
This is a major issue in the fight against global warming, not just in Berkeley but across the country and around the world. If we as a species are going to do anything about greenhouse gases, we are going to have to learn to recognize and support effective projects.
BUS RAPID TRANSIT
From 2008 through 2010, I opposed the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) proposal for Telegraph Avenue. This 250 million dollar project was presented by AC Transit as being green. But their own numbers indicated that BRT would require 5000 years of operation, longer than the time since the Fall of Troy, to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as could quickly be removed by spending the same money on solar panels or wind power.
Fortunately Berkeley saw through AC Transit's greenwashing of BRT and did not allow it to be built here. I was very proud of my contribution to that decision, because $250,000,000 is a lot of money to just throw away. Money that could be used to actually fight global warming.
THE ATTACKS
After the BRT project was defeated in Berkeley, The New York Times ran an article bashing my neighbors and me as being anti-environmentalists even though this was not true. I contacted the author of that article, explained that the BRT project in Berkeley was not green, and asked for an opportunity to present our side of the story to their readers. But The Times never even responded to me.
Here in Berkeley, Charles Siegel responded to the New York Times smear with an article of his own in the March 22, 2011 issue of The Berkeley Daily Planet: "BRT, NIMBYs, and the New York Times".
He correctly pointed out that "The overwhelming majority of BRT opponents were people who had never been active in the past on environmental issues or on transportation issues".
This was because BRT was such an obviously bad project that people who had never been active before got involved to defend our neighborhood.
He then went on to write "What do we usually call people like the majority of BRT opponents?"
I'd call them concerned citizens. But Siegel just called us "NIMBYs".
I viewed being bashed in The New York Times and attacked by Charles Siegel as the price of defeating BRT. And I wasn't too surprised about Siegel's attack, because Charles Siegel was perhaps the most extreme supporter of BRT.
He and his "Friends of BRT" co-bloggers Hank Resnik and Len Conly had argued extensively with me about BRT in the Reader Commentary section of The Planet for years.
Of the 84 posts I counted on their blog, from August 2006 to February 2010, 53 were by Charles Siegel. They seemed to not understand, or not care, that BRT really wasn't green. Resnik even wrote in a letter to the Editor of The Planet that I should move out of Berkeley.
AND NOW IN 2015...
Now I find myself involved in a smaller version of the same conflict. AC Transit has greenwashed another project, this time the relocation of a very loud bus stop closer to my home.
AC Transit initially claimed that this relocation would speed up the operation of the 51B bus, and thereby increase ridership, reduce car use, and help the environment.
But now AC Transit has admitted that they lied to the City Council and the citizens of Berkeley on their application. They admit that moving the bus stop will not result in any speedup in the 51B, or help the environment in any way.
But they are planning to move the bus stop anyway, for no good reason and over the objections of the people in the neighborhood.
LORI DROSTE
I talked to the new City Council member for District 8, Lori Droste about this. It seemed to me that since Berkeley wants to be green, and this relocation isn't green, that she might be interested in helping me stop this. But so far she has done nothing to really help. She hasn't even agreed to meet with me to talk about it in person.
I read her Candidate Information statement on the City of Berkeley website and I noticed that one of the 20 Berkeley Residents she refers to as supporting her is:
Charles Siegel, author & environmental advocate
I don't know if that has anything to do with her refusal to even meet with me. I assume it does but there is no way to know for sure. Maybe needlessly moving a bus stop close to my house, so I have to listen to the loudspeakers on 96 buses a day, is retaliation for the defeat of BRT.
A SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS FOR BERKELEY
AC Transit admits to lying on their application, and admits that moving the bus stop will not speed up public transit, increase ridership, or help with global warming. And the City of Berkeley has agreed to give AC Transit the permit to move the bus stop, even though the City agrees that AC Transit lied and that the move won't help the environment.
It is really sad that this is the best Berkeley can do, to pretend to do things that help the environment while making life harder for a disabled person like me. My health problems are very sensitive to me not sleeping well. 96 buses a day from 5am to midnight isn't going to help with that. I explained all that to Lori but she doesn't seem to care.
If having my health damaged is another price I have to pay for helping to defeat BRT, I guess it is worth it to me. But I am no longer going to consider Berkeley to be disability-friendly. Or believe Lori Droste when she says "I am running for City Council to bring a fresh perspective and to ensure we provide needed services to all, from youth to seniors"
Maybe I should have donated some money to her campaign.
The UC Berkeley report on SB 827-type development commissioned by wealthy investors is biased to the point of being near-fraudulent.
Published in the Berkeley Daily Planet on February 3, 2018.
One of the difficult things for me about greenwashing has been getting into arguments over the years with people whose goals I share. These people are often strong advocates for the environment and so am I.
The issue is that I see problems with their reasoning that they do not. And the stakes are often very high, quality of life and the future of humanity. Neither of us wants to back down and admit they were wrong.
SUCH IS THE CASE NOW.
In my previous article "No Science but Plenty of Money Behind Greenwashed SB 827", I wrote that I couldn't find any scientific studies of SB 827. Since then I found a report titled "Right-Type-Right-Place" that analyses the kind of housing construction specified by SB 827.
This report was commissioned by the pro-SB 827 Next 10 organization set up by wealthy venture capitalists. And it doesn't seem to have been peer-reviewed by neutral scientists like a legitimate research paper would have been.
As a result, the report is very biased toward SB 827, possibly even fraudulent.
THE REPORT HAS TWO GLARING OMISSIONS
- The report does not consider the huge amount of carbon emitted by tearing down and rebuilding the housing units that are currently on property being developed. Many of the densely populated areas that have BART stations and high-frequency bus routes don't have vacant lots. Certainly Berkeley has almost none after a century of urban development. So something has to be torn down.
THIS IS A MAJOR SOURCE OF CARBON EMISSIONS THEY HAVE EXCLUDED FROM THEIR CALCULATIONS.
- The report does not consider the increased carbon emitted by the additional buses required to carry the new riders. AC Transit gets about 30 passenger-miles-per-gallon, around half that of a driver-only Toyota Prius. A large increase in the number of bus riders would likely require an increase in the number of buses. This would effectively turn 50-passenger-miles-per-gallon Prius-driving commuters into 30-passenger-miles-per-gallon AC Transit riders and thereby POTENTIALLY INCREASE RATHER THAN DECREASE THE CARBON EMITTED BY TRANSPORTATION.
With these two major biases, the report claims that SB 827 slash-and-burn type housing construction near transit can save 201 million gallons of gasoline every year in California.
THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT
In reality it is ONE PERCENT of the gasoline used in the state.
So the damage to neighborhoods, the evictions of elderly and disabled tenants from the their rent-controlled homes, the apparent outlawing of affordable units in the new buildings, is all to remove A CLAIMED ONE PERCENT of California's gasoline use.
And gasoline use is only responsible for around ONE QUARTER of carbon emissions. So even with these biased projections, SB 827 is expected to reduce California's carbon footprint by less than ONE-THIRD OF ONE PERCENT.
I HAVE SOME NEWS FOR THE AUTHORS OF THIS REPORT
A third of a percent reduction in carbon emissions, which the authors claim "provides the best outcomes for meeting the state’s climate goals", is a drop in the bucket. And that is if the reduction actually occurs, which is highly doubtful.
When the torn-down-unit-rebuilding carbon increases and the additional-trains-and-buses carbon increases are factored in, as they would have been in an unbiased report, that one-third percent number will decrease and quite possibly will go negative. Meaning SB 827 would end up emitting more carbon than would have been emitted without it.
We need more than just empty gestures and pretend solutions, we need real solutions that make a significant dent in our carbon emissions.
THERE IS A REASON THEY CHOSE TO BIAS THE REPORT
The authors of the report could have chosen to include these very significant sources of increased carbon emissions in the report. But they made the decision to exclude them. And they made that decision for a reason.
The only reason I can think of is to cover up the fact that SB 827 DOESN'T HELP PREVENT GLOBAL WARMING. According to my calculations, SB 827 MAKES GLOBAL WARMING WORSE.
So Scott Wiener and Nancy Skinner have protected their developer donors' projects from a legitimate environmental review. And SB 827 supporters have concocted a deceptive report. Even that report admits that any possible carbon reductions would be insignificant.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE
We as a society need a way to measure how good or bad a proposed project like SB 827 is. Something that is accurate and easy to understand.
I suggest that for each project like this, scientists calculate:
- An unbiased estimate of any reduction in carbon emissions.
- An unbiased estimate of the number of years until carbon breakeven.
By "carbon breakeven" I mean the number of years it would take for the expected annual carbon reductions to overcome the initial carbon emitted by constructing the project.
If a project has a short breakeven time, maybe 10 or 20 years, it might produce real improvements in the environment.
If a project has an intermediate breakeven time, maybe 100 years, there is still some chance it might be worth doing.
If a project has a long breakeven time, maybe 1000 years, it will just make the current situation worse.
Armed with these numbers, policy makers and voters can easily separate good projects from bad ones. And we can start making real progress on global warming.
WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW
There is a tendency for any project that would actually reduce carbon emissions to be lobbied against by big corporations and super-wealthy individuals because it reduces the profits they make off their carbon-emitting activities.
Any project that increases carbon, and increases their profits, isn't lobbied against.
The result is that good projects don't make it to fruition and bad projects do. This needs to change if we want to really do something about carbon emissions and global warming.
WHILE MONEY CONTROLS OUR GOVERNMENT, CARBON CONTROLS OUR GOVERNMENT
One of the reasons to get money out of politics is that money and carbon are closely related and effectively the same thing for political purposes. Projects need to be judged on their effects on the environment and the American People, not their effects on profits made by extremely rich people.
As voters, we will likely have to solve this problem for ourselves. Enact strong campaign finance laws. Recall corrupt politicians. Demand real solutions.
If we do these things, I think we can make some improvements and have the bright future we deserve
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