Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Berkeley: Never Mind on that Global Warming Thing
Environment / People / Politics Robert Gammon — Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:40 AM
So did the San Francisco Chronicle get its story wrong when it reported that the City of Berkeley was planning to force homeowners to spend more than $30,000 each making their houses more energy efficient? Or did city officials simply do an about-face when they realized how ridiculous their idea really was after the Chron story created a firestorm? At this point, it's unclear. But no matter. City officials now say that they aren't going through with it. Or are they? City Planning Director tells the Chron that the city is only "talking more in the $10,000 range" about what it will cost homeowners to meet the city's new proposed rules. But Councilwoman Linda Maio says she wants staff to change the word "require" in the city's plan to "set a goal." Okay, which is it?
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While the City of Albany is holding a fair to educate and inform home owners the City Council in Berkeley is proposing to spend $3 million for 2009 and $6.6 million for 2010 on a climate plan. That's a nearly $10 million dollar spend to lay the foundation for mandatory regulation. The plan actually says on page 44 that its scheme should "...continuously be ratcheted up and become more aggressive." It's not consultive or deliberative. Compliance would increases costs to home owners, renters, and business owners. Values such as retention of home ownership, retention of historic housing stock, lighting and natural air circulation for health and safety, and more effective means of reducing emission at the same costs are either not considered or not respected as individual choice. And of course all of this is proposed as cost burdens and budget spend during a major recession.
The plan strongly advocates changing the RECO ordinance from upgrades at the time of sale of a home, when there is an escrow, to a tightening ratchet of new regulation throughout home ownership.
An informed public might consider demanding that the proposed $10 million spend be halted or directed to other higher uses.
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Non-activists rarely attend council meetings. The members cracked because of the huge constituencies that don't attend meetings, but that their strategists are aware of.
Berkeley political history is not without instances where nearly the entire council was ejected at election time for taking Progressive thinking a little to literally.
Robert--What's your deal? Do you live in Berkeley and own a home here? Berkeley forcing home-owners to pay for green upgrades is not going to make even a blip on the global warming issue. If you want to attack environmental problems in Berkeley, how about getting Pacific Steel shut down? Our kids are breathing some of the most polluted air in the country thanks to Pacific Steel. Now that would have a major environmental impact if Berkeley could deal with just that one problem: http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/school/103441
We need to remember that Berkeley's Climate Action Plan is just that -- a plan document, not a binding ordinance. Whatever might be "required" down the road will take an actual new ordinance or ordinance change, and that will take a lot more public process.
We should not doubt the Council's -- or the city's resolve here. Almost all the public comment at Tuesday night's meeting was of the "do more and do it faster" variety, and even the few arch-NIMBYs who spoke only asked for more time to study the proposal.
Berkeley has a decent track record for getting things done by goal-setting, incentives and subsidies rather than by mandates. Sesimic retrofitting is a parallel process that's gone pretty well, except for our vulnerable soft-story apartment buildings.
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