Ed Church / SBNDC task force notes & nominee list
Robert Lauriston
Council authorized them to organize a task force, in fact the Council
did no such thing. Neither the resolution passed that night nor the
Caltrans grant application it endorsed says anything about a task
force. The cover memo from Planning Dept. director Dan Marks to the
Council said that the SBNDC suggested that mayor Tom Bates and council
member Max Anderson appoint a task force, but in its discussions the
Council rejected that proposal, and took no action to endorse any of
several proposed alternatives.
The SBNDC may not in recent years have been conducting itself as it
should. In theory, as I understand it, the SBNDC is a membership
organization with an elected board of directors whose meetings are open
to the public. In reality, the board has for some time been a
self-selecting group and its meetings are private and unannounced. The
SBNDC has sublet its Adeline St. office and has no staff. It does have
a phone number with an answering machine, and an email account, but no
one has returned my messages asking how to join, where I can see the
minutes, time and place of the next board meeting, and so on.
In the event Caltrans awards the city and SBNDC the $120,000 grant, Ed
Church will be in charge of spending that money. In theory, the SBNDC
would oversee his work, but since he himself recruited two new SBNDC
board members and seems to be in charge of its email and new Web site,
it seems likely that he would have a completely free hand.
He certainly seems to have a free hand with the task force nominations.
Two of my nominations do not appear on the list; did they decline to
serve, were they disqualified, and if so for what reason? When is the
SBNDC board going to meet to appoint the task force? What criteria are
they going to use? Will that meeting be public? Has it already
occurred? If this were the open, transparent process we have repeatedly
been promised, I would not have to ask these questions.
Nevertheless, despite the profound flaws in this arguably illegitimate
process, I disagree with those who say we should boycott this task
force. Given the list of nominees (attached), the SBNDC could appoint a
group that includes all stakeholders and points of view. If they do,
and if the task force is free to set its own direction, and its
meetings are public, and Mayor Bates and Max Anderson stick to their
promise that "everything is on the table," the task force's report to
the City Council should honestly reflect the community's vision.
So long as that remains a possibility, I will support the task force,
and encourage everyone else to do so--while remaining alert to any
attempt to manipulate it into rubber-stamping plans for the kind of
massive for-profit condo project described in the 2004 feasibility
study.
***
This is the list of nominations for the task force Ed Church and the
South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corp. are organizing,
alphabetized and annotated with some basic information I have about the
nominees. If you have additional information, please let me know.
Beatrice (DeBerry) Barrigher
Dimitri Belser (president of Ed Roberts Campus board,
http://www.cforat.org/home/CforATStaff/dmitri.html)
Ashley Berkowitz (Epic Arts, Ashby Arts District,
http://www.epicarts.org/aboutus.html#People)
Dan Bristol (neighbor, NABART steering committee)
Jane Bruner (Oakland city council)
Ricardo Charles
Julie Chervin (Coalition to Pay Schools Now and Fix School Funding)
Dan Cloak (environmental consultant, http://www.imaginature.org)
Jackie DeBose (executive director, New Light senior lunch program,
SBNDC board member, NABART steering committee)
Andy DeGiovanni (neighbor, density skeptic per letter to Planet)
Jiane Du (architect, http://www.kappedu.com)
David Duncan (neighbor, Harmon St.)
Mike Friedrich (Livable Berkeley, No on P)
Jaine Gilbert
Marcy Greenhut (Transportation Commission, BEST)
Toya Groves
Karen Hester (cohousing consultant, http://www.hesternet.net)
Tony Hill (neighbor, density skeptic)
Walter Hood (architect, UC Berkeley professor,
http://www.wjhooddesign.com,
http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/ced_people/faculty/details.cfm?EmpID=568589472)
Mansour Id-Deen (Executive Director, Inner-City Services, SBNDC tenant)
Jeffrey Jensen
Robert Lauriston (nabart.com moderator, NABART steering committee,
http://lauriston.com/)
Wells Lawson (author of 2004 "Ashby Bart Site Development Feasibility
Analysis," board member of San Francisco Community Land Trust,
http://www.strategiceconomics.com/wells.html)
George Luna
Erick Mikiten (architect of Adeline St. Apts,
http://www.mikitenarch.com/mikitenpersonnel.html)
Allen Myers
Regina Myers
Osha Neumann (attorney, Berkeley Flea Market, NABART steering
committee)
Kenoli Oleari (Neighborhood Assemblies Network, board member of
Northern California Land Trust, NABART steering committee,
http://communityassemblies.org/nan_pages/who_we_are.html)
Don Oppenheim (neighbor, active in Grove Liquors fight)
Samuel Pedicone
Tracey Powers
Larry Rosenthal (Executive Director, Berkeley Program on Housing and
Urban Policy, http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/rosenthalbio.htm)
Dawn Rubin (active in Halcyon neighborhood association)
Maryann Sargent
Mark Sawicki (real estate / financial consultant, Green Party write-in
candidate against Betty Olds, www.seifel.com/team/#mark)
John Selawsky (Berkeley school board, NABART steering committee)
Les Shipnuck (neighbor, builder, former planner, NABART steering
committee)
Nancy I. Threatt
Preston Tucker (IT guy for College Preparatory School in Oakland?)
Ozzie Vincent (neighbor, active in adjacent Oakland neighborhood
groups, NABART steering committee)
Gabrielle Wilson (lifetime resident, KPFA producer-programmer)
Robin Wright (active in Lorin District neighborhood association, NABART
steering committee)
original list: http://southberkeley.org/TaskForce.html
***
Robert Lauriston
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=04-14-06&storyID=23889
It contains some unfortunate errors. I sent the following email in
response:
In today's "Controversy Surrounds Ashby BART Task Force," you seem to
have either misattributed someone else's statements to me, or misread
something I've published:
"Lauriston has also criticized Church for going beyond simply setting
up a process in which volunteers would apply for positions and actively
soliciting specific people ...": I never said that. I have no problem
whatsoever with Ed Church or anyone else soliciting nominees. What
matters is who actually ends up on the task force, and to that end, the
more nominees, the better.
"Lauriston also charged that task force applicants were required to
endorse the project": I never said that either. So far as I know it's
false: none of the half-dozen nominees I've spoken with reported
anything of the sort. Putting those words in my mouth makes me look
uninformed and irresponsible.
Also, as Ed Church can confirm, it's misleading to refer to all the
nominees as "applicants," since some did not nominate themselves.
Robert Lauriston
force, and my response to him.
***
From: South Berkeley Neighborhood DevCorp
To: so...@southberkeley.org
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 11:38 AM
Subject: Your nomination to the Ashby BART Task Force
Friends -
I apologize for the impersonal nature of this email, but I am sending
it to a string of you, and you might not want your email addresses made
public. Robert Lauriston has nominated you to serve on the Ashby BART
Task Force to frame and guide potential development at the site (more
information is attached and available at www.southberkeley.org).
Mr. Lauriston made the nominations under the statement that, "These
nominations do not constitute an endorsement of this process."
I wanted to find out two things from you, if I could: (1) having read
the attached information, do you wish to be nominated, and (2) do you
endorse the process?
It was not clear from his email whether Mr. Lauriston was simply saying
that HE did not endorse the process, or whether he was attributing that
to his nominees. I thought it best to ask you directly.
Non-endorsement of the process might not disqualify your candidacy, but
I believe it is an salient factor for the Board of SBNDC to consider.
I would appreciate a response by the end of the day this Monday, April
10, since the Board will soon be selecting the Task Force members.
If you have any questions, I can be reached at 644-3264.
Many thanks.
- Ed Church
***
Subject: Re: Fw: Your nomination to the Ashby BART Task Force
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 10:29am
From: Robert Lauriston <rob...@lauriston.com>
To: so...@southberkeley.org
> It was not clear from his email whether Mr. Lauriston was simply saying
> that HE did not endorse the process, or whether he was attributing that
> to his nominees. I thought it best to ask you directly.
You could have just asked me.
Despite your calls for an open, transparent process, in organizing this
task force you have continued with the closed, secretive approach that
characterized the Caltrans grant application. Thus I have no idea what
you and the SBNDC are doing.
Consequently, not until the task force's membership is announced and
most likely not until after it has met several times will it be clear
whether we have an open, transparent, community-led, collaborative
planning process involving all stakeholders with, as the mayor
promised, "everything on the table."
If we do, then I'll endorse it.
In the meantime, I will explicitly qualify anything I write or say
about the process to make sure it cannot be misrepresented as an
endorsement of this pig in a poke.