The charter amendment Measure R doesn’t redistrict Berkeley at all. It undistricts it.
A little history: District Elections were instituted in 1986 to end citywide elections for all council seats. It was a measure put forth by the conservative hills residents against the monopoly the much more progressive flatlands of the city exercised. For several elections in a row, a progressive coalition had been given every seat on Berkeley City Council, and the proposal was put forth under the banner of fairness and neighborhood common interest.
The mayor at the time was Loni Hancock, who is now our Californiastate senator.
Cut to 25 years later. Hancock and her husband and current city of Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates have almost completely gamed the district elections system and now run a political machine that controls virtually every aspect of political life in Berkeley and throughout much of the East Bay in the Bay Area.
This is a consolidation election for the Bates machine, and it has lots of irons in the fire. Bates’ greatest irritants have been the council members from the two districts with almost all of UC Berkeley’s students, District 7 — which is represented by Councilmember Kriss Worthington, southside of campus — and District 4 — which is represented by Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, Downtown and west. These are the most progressive council members. Try as Bates might, progressives have resisted firmly, and the liberal student-heavy districts keep electing them.
So here comes Measure R. In the deceptive arguments they repeat as often as they can, the machine politicians touting R insist that it will enable the council to divide the city into districts that respect geographical boundaries, neighborhoods and other communities of interest — code for making a so-called student-majority district — as defined by state law. First, let’s get rid of the complete bullshit. State law doesn’t have anything to do with any of those words. But the most important deception is that any of these democratic-sounding priorities will be enforced by the law, which actually says that the council “shall consider topography, cohesiveness,” etc. Wonderful-sounding things.
Beside that sentence, the rest of the measure simply deletes the boundary lines for council districts that had been carefully written, street by street, into the law in order to prevent future councils, just like this one, from manipulating the boundaries for political purposes. Measure R doesn’t change district lines. It just changes who gets to draw district lines. You can rest assured that, if the charter is changed, this council shall consider all the things it’s supposed to consider. Then it will draw the district lines however it feels like.
Bottom line: If the council really wanted to draw a student district, or any new set of boundary lines untethered to the lines now in the charter in order to update a system they like to characterize as “outdated and unfair,” all they had to do was to give us a charter amendment that replaces the existing lines with the new lines they propose.
Instead, this amendment takes the right to vote on how to cut the city up away from the voters. It puts it solely into the City Council’s hands, without any guarantee of even actually making a student district, much less what kind of student district they’d make.
That’s the way political machines like it. All power, no responsibility.
In the best of worlds, the so-called redistricting measure should have gotten the ballot letter it really deserves: “G” for Gerrymander. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, a wise religious writer and historian named Lord John Dalberg-Acton warned a century and a half ago. The progress of democracy lies in preventing the consolidation of authority exemplified by exercises in manipulation like Measure R.
Dave Blake is the vice-chair of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board and a former chair of the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board.
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Dave, you are telling me that voting for this measure might make Berkeley more conservative. You are telling me that it might get rid of the most liberal of the council members. Good to know.
No, I think Dave is indicating it will be less progressive and closer to ultra liberal; less progressive being to the left of ultra liberal and neither anywhere near conservative.
“A little history: District Elections were instituted in 1986 to end
citywide elections for all council seats. It was a measure put forth by
the conservative hills residents against the monopoly the much more
progressive flatlands of the city exercised. For several elections in a
row, a progressive coalition had been given every seat on Berkeley City
Council, and the proposal was put forth under the banner of fairness and
neighborhood common interest.”
“A little history” edit: the driving force for district elections was the rent board, whose members were at the time appointed by each City Councilperson. Each City Council Person appointed one Rent Board Member. This was prior to Searle Increase or Costa Hawkins. Rents were essentially frozen at 1979 levels and could not be raised when tenants vacated an apartment. The only adjustments allowed were the AGA increases allowed by the Rent Board. Residential rental property landlord interests were heavily involved in the City Council elections in an attempt to control the rent board. This measure passed in June when students were out of town.
So what has been happening to rents in the city since the redistricting? I don’t happen to rent from the rooming houses or apartments, so I am not aware of how rent control is functioning now.
To be more specific, the original rent ordinance passed in June 1980. At the time, Berkeley was still on the quarter system, so the student vote was instrumental in passing the initiative that was known as Measure D. Berkeley went to the semester system in the Fall of 1982. In 1982, the Rent Ordinance was strengthened and called for an elected rent board with the first election being held in 1984. Between 1980 and 1984, many students in Berkeley voted in favor of their pocketbooks and elected BCA(Berkeley Citizens Action) Council members not really due to favoring BCA policies but due to BCA appointed rent board commissioners limiting rent increases. What led to the Rent Board being elected was the election in the Spring of 1981 heavily financed by rental property interests, where a new “right wing” coalition( Old BDC = Berkeley Democratic Club) known as ABC( All Berkeley Coalition) won a majority of Council seats that were up for election. This election took place in April and was known as the April Massacre. There may have been low student turnout due to Spring Break or it may have been the week between Winter and Spring quarters. The Rent Board commissioners that the ABC Council members installed were pro landlord and approved significant rent increases. Of course the reaction was an initiative for an elected Rent Board in 1982 and also a BCA sweep of Council seats in the next election. It was the BCA sweep of council seats giving BCA an 8-1 majority that segued to the initiative for district elections, so this might never happen again. With the Rent Board elected, there was not as strong of a concern on the part of students with the make up of the City Council and then, the initiative was placed for a June vote, when students would be out of town due to Berkeley now being on the semester system. In 1994, the state passed Costa Hawkins which overrode local rent ordinances and instituted a phased in vacancy decontrol from 1995 – 1999. Once units are rented, they are once again under rent control and subject to the AGA mandated increases. The way rent control seems to function at the current time is many landlords will let a unit stay vacant unless they get what they believe is the market rent, which obviously is not since the unit will not rent at the asked rent for months or even a year or more. The logic behind this seemingly odd non profit maximizing behavior is that if a similar unit is dropped in price, then that tenant is set at that price by rent board stipulated AGA increases and also other tenants of similar units will demand decreases in rent and if they are not received will move, so it is better to not drop the rent on a vacant unit even if it means letting a certain number of units sit vacant for months or even a year or more.
It was irresponsible of the Daily Cal to publish this ill-informed diatribe without at least questioning the writer’s assertions. As previous comments make clear, he has gotten just about every one of the facts wrong. And to assert that Senator Hancock and Mayor Bates head a “political machine” demonstrates complete ignorance of political history, too. A political machine would have the capacity to direct City contracts to its friends and award jobs to election workers. If Dave Blake thinks that’s been happening in Berkeley, he’s smoking controlled substances even more than I already think he is.
The rhetoric of the writer demonstrates his ideological biases. He calls Berkeley hill residents conservatives. They are overwhelming liberal and vote Democratic. He compares Measure R redistricting to Texas. Do I have to tell you how absurd that inane comparison Is?
This is typical of the so-called progressive (they are anything but progressive. they are ideological fools) crowd is. Measure R is meant to create fairer districting representation. People like Blake, of the KPFA extremist marginal crowd, would like to return Berkeley to the days when these fools nearly destroyed the city.
Don’t be fooled by Blake’s insipid rhetoric. Unless, of course, if you wish to continue to let the likes of Kris Worthington, with his “let Peoples Park continue to exist as it has”–that is to say a spawning ground for those who make the S. campus area and Telegraph Ave. so unpleasant–then you will buy into Blake’s nonsense. It’s time for a move toward greater and more fair-minded representation. Not the sort of districting from which Kris Worthington and Jesse Arreguin emerge to permit Berkeley to further deteriorate.
You’re so paranoid, it’s almost funny. But it’s not funny; it’s just really, really annoying.
It’s annoying because you’re completely wrong. You say state law doesn’t have anything to do with communities of interest, but you haven’t read state law in a while, have you? It’s right there in the Constitution, in Article 21, named “Redistricting” (http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/.const/.article_21).
Not only do Hancock and Bates support Measure R, so do Arreguin and Worthington! Jesse Arreguin even wrote Measure R and helped put it on the ballot – he’s been one of Measure R’s most vocal and important supporters. Painting this as a conspiracy against them is – surprise! – completely wrong.
You say its not in state law – you’re wrong. You say it’s like Texas – wrong again. You draw a misleading picture of where the support and opposition are on this issues – wrong threefold!