The ordinance aims to clarify the legal definition of both medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives to improve the city’s ability to regulate cannabis suppliers. At the meeting, council members delayed discussion until October.

The proposal, entitled “Medical Cannabis Ordinance Revisions and Dispensary Selection Process,” includes amendments to the Berkeley Municipal Code and contains a new selection process that would govern how the city would choose additional medical marijuana dispensaries. The proposal also recommends that the city increase the number of dispensaries allowed from four to six to improve medical patients’ access to medical marijuana.

Rick Pfrommer, chairperson of the Medical Cannabis Commission, has spent the last two years modeling Berkeley’s medical marijuana policy after those of Oakland and San Francisco. Now that the proposal has been postponed, he says he is worried about the city’s inability to add a new dispensary and even regulate pre-existing collectives and dispensaries.

“You have a situation in Berkeley where all the dispensaries came around before rules were established,” Pfrommer said. “It’s become important (to distinguish them) in Berkeley, because collectives were operating as de facto dispensaries and not just incidental to residential use as specified in the law.”

According to Medical Cannabis Commission member Charles Pappas, the current definitions of dispensaries and collectives are vague. He said that currently, dispensaries are defined as being located in nonresidential areas only, while collectives are in residential areas and can only utilize a certain quota of a home’s living space.

By clarifying the laws regarding dispensaries and collectives, legality issues with institutions such as those with Greenleaf Wellness Group could be eliminated, according to Councilmember Jesse Arreguin. Greenleaf Wellness Group was declared a public nuisance on June 4.

“How many more Greenleafs will be allowed before we take action?” Arreguin said. “(The decision to postpone discussion on the proposal) prevents us from being able to prevent that, because the proposal tightens up the law.”

At the meeting last week, the council also agreed to file a lawsuit against the federal government in support of Berkeley Patients Group, the city’s oldest and largest medical marijuana dispensary. BPG is currently facing a lawsuit from the U.S. attorney’s office, which is ordering a forfeiture of BPG’s property for allegedly violating federal law.

“The difference between Greenleaf and Berkeley Patients Group is that Berkeley Patients Group is a legally functioning dispensary,”  Arreguin said. “We have had very few, if any, problems with them. Greenleaf is the opposite.”

Contact Elise Aliotti at ealiotti@dailycal.org.

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The approval comes after an appeal was filed in March by Berkeley Residents for Sustainable Development against the Acheson Commons, citing concerns about building height and a demolition permit. Acheson Commons is part of the new zoning ordinance under the Downtown Area Plan, which aims to revitalize the Downtown area of the city.

The commons will be built on the 2100 block of University Avenue, forcing several businesses that currently reside on the block to relocate.

Ace Hardware, which has resided at 2145 University Ave. since 1895, will be forced to move under the ordinance.

The store has been in talks with the Chicago-based firm Equity Residential after Equity purchased the block Ace currently resides on.

“The Ace Hardware will relocate during the construction process,” said Marty McKenna, media relations spokesperson for Equity Residential. “We would very much like the Ace Hardware to return to the property after construction is completed, and are working with them towards this goal.”

According to Ace co-owner Virginia Carpenter, the plans for the upcoming move have not been solidified.

“We have no idea where or when we are moving,” Carpenter said. “We just know that we have about a year left.”

Despite the firm’s offer to return Ace to its original location after construction, Councilmember Jesse Arreguin said that it may not be economically feasible due to the rent increase Ace would likely experience if it moved back as a tenant under Acheson.

Since being approved by the city in 2009, the plan has been met with opposition, including a lawsuit in 2012 to halt action on the plan.

Neighborhood groups filed a lawsuit in May 2012 against the city of Berkeley alleging that the city “improperly” approved the plan without analyzing the full extent of the plan’s environmental impacts in the city’s environmental impact report as required by the California Environmental Quality Act.

According to Arreguin, unless a judge decides more environmental regulations are necessary, the various housing developments can proceed as planned.

Contact Nico Correia at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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One of those people is Tony McNair. With a walking stick in one hand and copies of The Street Spirit in the other, McNair rests against the parking meter outside of Berkeley Bowl on Oregon Street for seven hours a day, asking for donations and offering a copy of the paper in return.

While technically free, there is an expected donation of $1, which goes to the street vendor distributing it. For many, such as McNair, the money is essential to covering month-to-month costs. McNair has disability insurance from the federal government, but it barely covers the cost of his basic necessities.

“At the first of the month, with rent and bills and food and the bus ticket, all my money is gone,” McNair said. “The paper helps me keep some money in my pocket.”

Completely funded by a San Francisco Quaker nonprofit, American Friends Service Committee, the paper is provided to poor or homeless individuals looking for a better alternative to panhandling.

J.C. Orton coordinates the vendors for the nonprofit. Once a month, he distributes more than 19,000 papers to around 100 vendors and helps mitigate disputes between vendors over the more profitable locations. Orton said he gives each vendor about 200 papers on average but that vendors may ask for as few as 10 or as many as 1,000 a month.

Each month also has a particular theme. This month’s theme is “organized, non-violent protest.”

According to Orton, 80 to 90 percent of the Street Spirit vendors are homeless, and the rest are nearly homeless. He said the paper offers the vendors a sense of purpose. Vendors have also been known to contribute to articles.

“The paper gives the vendors a sense of stability that they don’t otherwise have,” Orton said. “It gives them some sort of structure to their life, somewhere where they have to be. Without it, their main structure becomes ‘Where am I gonna get my next meal?’”

Oran Brown, a Street Spirit vendor usually outside of Peet’s Coffee & Tea on Shattuck Avenue, said that people who give donations do not always take a copy of the paper.

People also tend to donate more now that he offers the paper compared to when he relied on panhandling alone, he said.

“People do treat me differently because I have the paper,” Brown said. “I have something to offer with the paper. Some people will take the paper. Some will just leave a donation. I am very appreciative of the people out here.”

Robert Barrer, deputy director of Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, a Berkeley-based nonprofit that provides services to the homeless, said that the paper’s importance is that it allows people to connect who otherwise wouldn’t.

“I think this is a tremendous opportunity for those who are economically challenged to talk to people in the community,” Barrer said. “It becomes an equal exchange.”

One of those community members is Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, a frequent reader of The Street Spirit.

“I think that it is fascinating,” Arreguin said. “There are articles written by people who are homeless or by people that deal with issues of economic justice, and it is useful for me as a policymaker.”

McNair hopes everyone will read The Street Spirit to learn about homelessness issues not covered in the mainstream press.

“The only thing I can tell you is that next time the paper is out, grab a few and come and join us,” he said.

Contact Jose Hernandez at jhernandez@dailycal.org.

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Tiger parenting involves a rigid approach to raising children with strict rules and harsh punishments, a style Amy Chua associated with Asian-American immigrant parents in her 2011 bestselling book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” According to research conducted by Qing Zhou, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, and Stephen Chen, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF, authoritarian parenting has been shown to result in negative outcomes later in a child’s life, resulting in symptoms such as depression, anxiety and poor social skills.

Keltner speaks out against tiger parenting in her memoir, citing the adverse social and cognitive effects as reasons to rise up against overly involved parenting and reclaim one’s life.

“My book is about being raised by strict parents — specifically, Asian parents — although this phenomenon is not restricted to Asian parents,” Keltner said. “I wanted to write a book for the rest of us who aren’t No. 1 in our class. I wanted to say there’s a different kind of success that can’t be measured by test scores and awards.”

Ongoing research by Chen, a former UC Berkeley clinical psychology graduate student, indicates that an aspect of tiger parenting that involves imposing unreasonably high demands upon children has negative consequences, regardless of whether families were Chinese-American or European-American.

“Across both (racial) groups, parents had high expectations but in different domains and different areas. What was similar, however was those high expectations can be internalized and affect our identities and our mental health adjustments,” Chen said.

Stephen Hinshaw, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has conducted additional research showing that tiger parenting may not be the best method of child rearing.

“If tiger parenting is relentlessly authoritarian with little warmth, there is likely to be more harm than good emerging,” Hinshaw said, citing parenting with “high warmth with high control” as the ideal. “Our own research on youth with ADHD reveals that (this style) of parenting is associated with social competence.”

Keltner recommends that parents moving away from the tiger-parenting style by being more honest with their children.

“I would say parents should be able to admit that they’re wrong sometimes or that they don’t know the answer,” Keltner said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Asian parent say ‘I don’t know’ … I think parents need to relinquish or at least accept they’re not in control of the situation at all times.”

Like Keltner, Emily Yu, a fourth-year UC Berkeley student, believes that it is possible for “tiger babies” to rid themselves of the pressures of parental control.

“I don’t think it’s true that kids who have extremely strict ‘tiger parents’ would generally have social skill problems,” Yu said. “If the kid can somehow be outgoing and still manage to get good grades, then they can be really sociable and fun-loving while their parents aren’t around — i.e. during school … or extracurricular activities. Many of my friends who have tiger parents are actually very outgoing and popular.”

Keltner will be discussing Tiger Mom topics at her book reading Saturday at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books on Shattuck and University avenues.

Contact Angelica Villegas at avillegas@dailycal.org.

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The hackathon was a part of Bloomberg’s Next Big Things Summit, an annual event that showcases investors and entrepreneurs discussing trends in technological innovation. Around 11 UC Berkeley students and alumni made up three teams that worked nonstop from 3 a.m. on Monday until 3 p.m. on Tuesday in the executive board room at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay during the 36-hour hackfest. The three teams — Flowbit, Free Ventures and M3D — were all previously selected top-three Big Ideas at Berkeley finalists, a prestigious annual innovation contest for UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students.

“We were looking for a group of young engineers and coders with computer science backgrounds who could demonstrate to us the ability to problem-solve on a quick timeline,” said Bloomberg West anchor Jon Erlichman, who helped organize the event. “When we reached out to UC Berkeley and learned more about the Big Ideas program, it was the perfect fit.”

One of the business ventures participating in the hackfest, Flowbit, is looking to provide remote monitoring sensors in wells and water kiosks in developing countries to analyze flow rates and water quality levels. This way, Flowbit founders said that individuals in developing countries will be able to tell which wells are safe to draw from. “(During the hackfest), we decided to build a feature for people who use our product to collect a lot of data for water systems,” said Nick Lee, founder and CEO of Flowbit. Lee and his team built a map application to plot water systems so that users can see benefactors who have donated to a fund and how many gallons of water the well has.

Lee originally formed Flowbit out of a class taught by UC Berkeley lecturer Ken Singer on entrepreneurship. After hearing from a friend about the insufficient amount of drinkable water in India, he thought of a device that monitored the amount and quality of water available in developing countries, and after pitching the idea to his classmates, the formation of Flowbit soon followed.

Another participating team, Free Ventures, co-founded by UC Berkeley seniors Sam Kirschner and Jeremy Fiance, aims to provide a network of mentors and support to students who wish to develop their ideas to minimize the risk involved with entrepreneurship.

The third UC Berkeley-affiliated team, M3D, founded by recent graduate George Ramonov and senior Sabrina Atienza, is building a search engine for hospitals to extract data about patients. The team used its time at the hackfest to complete an unfinished prototype of its search engine.

Participants in the hackfest said their experiences were successful, as all three teams were able to achieve their objectives on time.

“So often today, where technology goes is dependent in part on how it’s being adopted by younger people,” Erlichman said. “We wanted to have smart young innovators to showcase their abilities — as well as what is possible.”

Contact Sophie Mattson smattson@dailycal.org.

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Around 12:57 p.m., a Berkeley police officer on patrol noticed a 20-year-old man who appeared to be having a medical problem, according to Officer Jennifer Coats, spokesperson for Berkeley Police Department. As the officer went to conduct a welfare check, the subject started exhibiting bizarre behavior, such as darting into traffic and putting himself into danger.

The subject became “violent and combative” after the officer attempted to physically detain him, prompting the officer to call other officers, according to Coats. The subject was restrained by several officers after a minor scuffle and taken to a local hospital for evaluation.

No charges have been filed, and no arrests have been made.

It could not be confirmed whether the subject was a UC Berkeley student.

Contact Chris Yoder at cyoder@dailycal.org

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The robbery is the third incident of violence to take place on Grizzly Peak Boulevard in the past five weeks, following a deadly shooting in May and an assault on a UC Berkeley student earlier this month.

According to the crime alert, the male and female victims, neither of whom are affiliated with UC Berkeley, were sitting in their vehicle enjoying the view at approximately 2:50 a.m. at the signpost turnout when two male suspects approached the car. The first suspect beat the male victim — who was in the driver’s seat with his window down — about the head with a handgun while yelling at the victim to give him his money. The second suspect proceeded to open the male victim’s door and search his pockets.

The victims drove away from the scene after their property had been taken. They were later stopped by Kensington police for a traffic violation. An ambulance was called to the scene, and the victims, who both sustained lacerations to their faces, were taken to a local hospital.

According to UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada, UCPD has increased its patrol around Grizzly Peak due to the recent assaults that have taken place in this area.

According to the UCPD crime alert, the suspects are described as:

Suspect #1 — a Hispanic male in his mid-20s, approximately 5-foot-10 and 130 lbs., with a slim build, black hair and brown eyes, wearing a black collared button-up shirt and light colored jeans.  The suspect was holding a black or grey 10-inch handgun.

Suspect #2 — a white male, approximately 20 years of age, 6-foot-2, 130 lbs., with a very skinny build.

Suspect #3 — A Hispanic female in her mid-20s, approximately 5-foot-6 and 140 lbs., with long and straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail.

Suspect vehicle — A baby blue four-door sedan, 2009 or newer, was driven by Suspect #3.

Contact Angelica Villegas at avillegas@dailycal.org.

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Despite opposition from some community college administrators, AB 955 passed 5-2, with two senators abstaining, and will now be sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Authored by Assemblymember Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, the bill would allow community college districts to cover the cost of offering more extension courses by raising tuition for in-state residents from an average of $46 per unit to around $200 per unit. Last Monday, the bill was passed in the California Assembly.

Williams said he authored the bill in response to budget cuts that forced community colleges to cut offerings of important courses. Proponents of the bill hope it will permit community colleges to offer courses that would help students to transfer or earn a degree during shorter intercessions. These programs would only be eligible for colleges that have been at enrollment capacity for the preceding two years.

“What is very key about my bill is that community colleges can only add new sections that students often take years getting through the waiting lists for,” Williams said. “We have to urgently look for ways to give students access to the courses they need.”

Brice Harris, chancellor of the California Community Colleges system, was one of the many AB 955 opponents who spoke at Wednesday’s California Senate Education Committee hearing. Harris and others said they worried the bill could create a two-tier system of those who can and cannot afford the increased tuition.

“I think this bill is bad public policy, creating a two-tiered fee system depending on demand or ability to pay,” Harris said. “There are far better ways of dealing with the issue than charging students more and more money.”

Williams said in response to the concerns, the bill was amended to downscale the number of colleges participating to 15 campuses and would have a sunset of six years.

Several other groups, such as the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, a professional membership association with nearly 10,000 members across the states, have also voiced their opposition.

“We are philosophically opposed to this bill, because we don’t believe that community colleges function to support the haves over the have-nots,” said Jonathan Lightman, executive director of the FACCC.

According to Lightman, members of the FACCC participated in a joint coalition with community college students and faculty members, the California Community College Chancellor’s Office and representative districts to lobby against the bill at the state Capitol on Tuesday.

Community colleges remain divided on this bill. College of the Canyons, along with a handful of other community colleges, are in support of AB 955. Fernando Vasquez, the associated student government president at College of the Canyons, testified in support of the bill on Wednesday at the hearing.

“We can’t afford to wait anymore,” Vasquez said. “We need classes so we can transfer and get jobs.”

Jose Ortiz, the chancellor of the Peralta Community College district, was also among those who spoke at the state Capitol on Wednesday. The Peralta Community College district, which includes Berkeley City College as well as other community colleges in the area, has expressed strong opposition to the bill.

“This bill will push our students to further financial aid and would require them, in my opinion, to move into further debt,” Ortiz said.

Contact Jane Nho at jnho@dailycal.org.

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Brown proposed about $250 million in funding increases for both the UC and CSU systems in his January and May budget proposals. Until this week, however, the funds were contingent upon reaching certain performance requirements, such as making education more affordable, decreasing the time to earn a degree, improving completion rates and increasing transfer rates, among others.

Legislators say they rejected funding conditions in the original budget proposal because the financial cuts to the UC and CSU systems would be too high if they failed to achieve their targets. Lower funding would penalize students rather than hold institutions responsible for poor outcomes.

“We, in effect, agreed it’s OK to have some accountability,” said Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. “But we lessened the accountability that was more harmful for students and directed that accountability more towards the institutions.”

This year’s budget still requires the UC and CSU systems to track and report the performance measurements to Sacramento as outlined in the original budget proposed by Brown. However, funding will not depend on meeting any specific goal.

But some of the performance measures were changed to reflect a more realistic target that better measures academic success.

“The governor had issues around the number of years people were in school,” Skinner said. “We modified that to be more focused around graduation rate versus trying to restrict the number of years people are pursuing their education, because there are so many factors that can affect that.”

It is also likely that Brown’s performance requirements will be included in future budgets, according to H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs for the California Department of Finance.

“It is going to take time to develop the metrics,” Palmer said. “In the first year, we will begin work with legislators and the UC and CSU systems to develop how we’ll measure and gather data going forward.”

Nevertheless, according to UC spokesperson Brooke Converse, the tie between funding and performance requirements as designed in Brown’s proposed budget was not feasible for the UC system.

“It would have been difficult to reach some of the numbers in the proposed requirements,” Converse said. “We are not against performance outcome requirements, but we need to work with the governor to find numbers that are more doable.”

The 2013-14 budget, though approved by the state Assembly and Senate, will need to be signed by Brown before the end of the month for it to become law.

“We are very hopeful that the budget will go through, but the governor has the right to use his blue pen,” Skinner said.

Contact Stephanie Petrillo at spetrillo@dailycal.org

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The male victim, whose affiliation with UC Berkeley is unknown, was walking on Channing Way at approximately 10:50 p.m. when he was approached by three males, according to the UCPD crime alert released Wednesday. The suspects pointed handguns at the victim and took his cellphone.

The suspects fled the scene, heading eastbound on Channing Way and then in an unknown direction on Piedmont Avenue.

The victim was not injured during the encounter. BPD and UCPD searched the area but were unable to locate the suspects.

Andrea Guzman is a news editor. Contact her at aguzman@dailycal.org and on Twitter @guzmanandrea5.

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