Tag Archives: Berkeley City Council
City looks to tackle noise issue from news helicopters
The city government will consider taking action on the issue of the noise pollution caused by news helicopters with councilmember Jesse Arreguín (district 4) bringing an item to the consent calendar at Tuesday’s City Council meeting this week.
“This is a quality of life issue and, as community leaders, we should engage in a dialogue with media organizations to try to find some solutions,” Arreguin said.
Choppers are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration and there is therefore a limit to how much Berkeley’s leaders can do to restrict their time in the air.
Because it’s been a news-heavy few months in Berkeley recently — with the Occupy Cal protests, a shooting on campus as well as a series of earthquakes — media helicopters have been taking to the skies at a particularly high rate, causing angst among local residents. … Continue reading »
Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz: The exit interview
Phil Kamlarz, city manager for eight years and a city employee for 36, retired this month. He first became a Berkeley city employee as a temporary associate accountant in the Berkeley Public Library in 1975, and a year later transferred to the city manager’s office. He became assistant city manager in 1987, and then acting city manager in 2003, before getting his full appointment the following year.
Two weeks ago, when the City Council marked Kamlarz’s retirement, the encomia from councilmembers were effusive. Mayor Tom Bates noted that Kamlarz “has provided Berkeley a platform of fiscal stability which is enviable”. He cited Kamlarz as a “calm, collected leader” with “compassion, foresight and a good nature”. … Continue reading »
Are Blackberries best bet for Berkeley in emergencies?
On Tuesday, October 11th, at about 4:00 pm, a power outage in Berkeley shut down the downtown BART station and disabled the city’s computer system, which meant services and documents for elected officials, city agency staff, and city residents were inaccessible for several hours.
On the same day, owners of BlackBerries across the country — which includes all senior City of Berkeley personnel — were experiencing outages on their handheld devices after a system hardware glitch caused a backlog of data to build up in the European servers of Research In Motion, the makers of the BlackBerry.
Both incidents highlight Berkeley’s dependence on potentially unreliable technologies. They also underscore how vulnerable our city’s government might be in a state of emergency. … Continue reading »
Call for alerts (and fewer tickets) on street sweeping
If you own a car in Berkeley there’s a high chance you will have experienced the frustration of being ticketed, or even towed, for being parked in the wrong place at the wrong time on a street-sweeping day. Would a reminder, sent to you on your mobile phone, have prevented the mishap and saved you some money?
Councilmembers Jesse Arreguín and Gordon Wozniak think so. And they believe the city could take a pro-active role in sending such alerts to its citizens — or at the very least providing better information on street-sweeping and tow-away zones, as well as residential parking permit-only zones. They are taking their suggestions to City Council tonight.
“I get calls on a regular basis about this,” said councilmember Arreguín. “Signage is often not visible enough, or confusing, and the city could be providing more readily available information which would avoid unnecessary ticketing. It would save residents some money and save city resources.” Arreguín cites the “guerrilla” signs put up by helpful neighbors to warn of upcoming street sweeping as evidence of the need for better communication. … Continue reading »
Students submit first 2011 city redistricting proposal
Nine students met on the steps of Old City Hall Tuesday to submit their redistricting proposal to Berkeley City Council. Their pitch came early in the game – with the deadline for initial submissions agreed at last night’s council meeting as September 30.
The students are summer interns at City Council and will return to different schools in the fall. Audrey Gutierrez and César Perez attend Berkeley Community College. Ché Sanders and Jacquell Simpson hail from Berkeley High School. John Nguyen and Gianna Albaum attend UC Berkeley. Beatriz Andrade comes form Sequoia High School in Redwood City, and Saori Matsuoka and Stephanie Phonvongsa attend UC San Diego.
City managers announced a call for redistricting on July 11, and the group arrived with their plan eight days later. They are the first to submit a proposal this year. … Continue reading »
Two Berkeley councilmembers visit the White House
“I am going to wear my charcoal gray suit with a bright color shirt. We are really excited.” So says Darryl Moore who is celebrating Pride Month with a visit to the White House. Moore, a gay African American councilmember in Berkeley, as well as the chair of the National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), will be attending a special reception to celebrate Pride Month on June 29 with his partner of 16 years, Bradley Johnson.
President Bill Clinton first declared June as … Continue reading »
City workers make sacrifices, help alleviate budget crisis
The city could achieve annual savings in excess of $4 million, if an agreement reached this week with more than 500 city employees on salary cuts and pensions is also adopted by other union members, according to City Manager Phil Kamlarz.
The agreement, announced at Tuesday’s City Council meeting, was made with members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 1021, the city’s maintenance and clerical workers, and it will go some way to alleviate Berkeley’s $12.2 million budget deficit.
In agreeing to cuts in salary increases that had already been agreed upon, and to a two-tier pension system, SEIU members also prevented layoffs among its members. The city has said it would have to make about 79 job cuts in order to reduce costs. The new agreement, which has also been signed by a number of non-represented workers, includes provisions for early retirement, said Kamlarz. … Continue reading »
Have your say on City decisions and bullying at school
Two online resources are currently open to Berkeleyans to enable them to make their views known on, respectively, decisions on the City Council’s next agenda, and the issue of bullying and how it is dealt with in Berkeley schools.
Berkeley councilmembers Susan Wengraf and Gordon Wozniak are hosting an online forum through Open Town Hall which invites people to comment on the issues to be voted on by the Council on Tuesday June 14.
Subjects under consideration include: Should the … Continue reading »
City votes to raise parking fees in downtown zone
Berkeley City Council Tuesday voted to raise hourly parking rates by 25 cents to $1.75 an hour within a pre-determined “premium” zone in Downtown in order to raise an estimated $125,000.
The area where the new rates will apply has the highest intensity of use, as calculated by the city, and includes around 750 parking spaces within the bounds of University Avenue to Bancroft Way, and Oxford Avenue to Martin Luther King, Jr. Way.
The new rates could be effective as early as July 11 as they are being raised ahead of the Council’s expected approval of the designation of Downtown as a Property-based Business Improvement District. In a property-based BID, all property owners within the affected district are assessed, including public property, and the City’s total assessment will be $104,072 — hence the decision to cover that bill through increases to parking rates.
The recommendation was passed somewhat reluctantly by five votes. Councilmembers Gordon Wozniak, Susan Wengraf and Laurie Capitelli voted against it, arguing that the public would not take kindly to rate hikes and that downtown businesses would suffer as a consequence. … Continue reading »
