Originally slated for discussion on Tuesday, the item was postponed due to the lengthy meeting and substantial agenda that day. Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmembers Jesse Arreguin and Kriss Worthington drafted a statement Tuesday urging the city’s Commission on Labor to consider implementing a local minimum wage of $10.55 per hour. Berkeley currently does not have a city minimum wage requirement and has been using the state standard, which is $8 per hour.

They also hope to add a provision that would automatically increase the wage along with inflation.

This push follows San Francisco’s increase in minimum wage this year from $10.24 to $10.55 per hour — the highest minimum wage in the country. San Jose also passed a minimum wage ordinance in November of $10 per hour.

The city of Berkeley also has another regulation — the Living Wage Ordinance — requiring city contractors to pay a minimum of $13.03 per hour along with a medical benefit of at least $2.17 per hour. Other businesses located in Berkeley but not contracted with the city are not held to these standards.

Though the impact of an increased minimum wage on Berkeley is still unknown, UC Berkeley economics professor Michael Reich said that his studies have found that San Francisco’s citywide minimum wage of $10.55 per hour has not created negative employment effects.

In another study titled “Increasing the Minimum Wage in San Jose: Benefits and Costs,” Reich also concluded that “minimum wage increases attract more workers to a local area and make it easier for employers to recruit and retain their workers.”

Arreguin explained that he and other council members were inspired to discuss the issue by the high cost of living in Berkeley.

“We need to establish our own minimum wage so that people who work minimum- and low-wage jobs have livable income to be able to support their families, to be able to support themselves,” Arreguin said. “It’s very expensive to live in Berkeley and very expensive to live in the Bay Area.”

However, the Berkeley Restaurant Alliance, a coalition of more than 150 Berkeley restaurants, argues that this proposal is unreasonable and that the city’s communication with local businesses has been lacking.

“No one knew about this,” said Natalie Kniess, a co-founder of the Berkeley Restaurant Alliance. “The majority of businesses heard about it from the San Francisco Chronicle report. It was disrespectful to the business community. We want to help out the community … (but a) 32 percent wage increase will break the backs of the small mom-and-pop stores Berkeley is out to support.”

Arreguin said he has received a few emails from business owners expressing that this ordinance would negatively impact them but is confident that compromises can be made.

“Some businesses have voiced concerns, but there are ways we can work with the business community to move this forward,” Arreguin said. “I don’t think in the end it will force businesses to shut down.”

The minimum wage item was moved to the action agenda.

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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Serving the Berkeley community since 1914, Downtown Berkeley’s main post office is one of the city’s historical landmarks listed in the National Register of Historic Places and contains two pieces of Works Progress Administration artwork. Monday’s announcement means that the Postal Service will be selling the property and moving operations from the historic building to another location nearby, which has yet to be determined.

The decision comes after the Postal Service announced in June of last year that it intended to relocate the Downtown branch as part of a nationwide strategy to consolidate up to 140 locations by 2013 and another 89 by 2014. The Postal Service has been facing a nationwide $25 billion deficit over the past four years, according to Postal Service spokesperson Augustine Ruiz.

“It doesn’t mean we’re going to go out of business,” Ruiz said. “All we’re saying is that we don’t need a 57,000-square-foot building anymore when we only need 4,000. It makes good business sense.”

Since the plan to relocate the post office was revealed, residents and city officials have opposed it.

Local groups, such as Save the Berkeley Post Office, have held several protests outside the building, and the mayor and several Berkeley City Council members created the Post Office Subcommittee last July to lobby the USPS.

“I’m really disappointed,” said Mayor Tom Bates. “It’s a beautiful building. We talked to the Postal Service about the need to keep the building public, but they just seem to have it in their minds that they want to sell it no matter what.”

According to the statement, there is a 15-day appeal period during which anyone can send a letter to the Postal Service, which will review the complaints prior to making a final decision.

Bates and Arreguin both voiced plans to take part in appealing the decision. A special City Council session may be held to organize a collective letter of appeal from the city on April 30, Arreguin mentioned.

“We’re going to appeal, but I think the chances of the appeal going through are about one out of 20,” Bates said.

Save the Berkeley Post Office also intends to hold a protest against the decision and has been talking with lawyers about the possibility of challenging it legally, according to Harvey Smith, spokesperson for Save the Berkeley Post Office.

“In the end, even if the outcome of the appeal is not favorable, what we can certainly do as a city government is to work with the USPS to make sure who buys the building uses it for a positive use,” Arreguin said.

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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Originally, the Compassionate Sidewalks Plan involved establishing both a subcommittee with four council members and a community group to analyze causes of homelessness, existing homeless programs and funding sources. At the council meeting Tuesday, Arreguin decided to move forward with only the community working group instead.

“Based on the concerns that have been raised regarding costs and staffing, I think it may be best to allow the community process to proceed, and then we can … form our own subcommittee to look at the ideas that have been put forward,” Arreguin said.

The community group will develop recommendations for the council for a number of issues in the city regarding homelessness, such as ways to improve services and create more housing opportunities.

Although the city currently spends about $8 million on homeless services, Berkeley has a homeless population of 824, according to a city report.

At the council’s special work session Tuesday, city staff members and Elaine de Coligny, executive director of EveryOne Home, an organization that conducts homeless counts, emphasized challenges that the community group should target, such as limited resources with staffing.

For instance, the city’s Housing and Community Services Department staff has decreased by 40 percent over the last five years, and its homeless outreach team has dwindled to one staff person, said Jane Micallef, director of Housing and Community Services, at the meeting.

Moreover, staff members highlighted the need for permanent housing and a more centralized system so the homeless do not have to go randomly from one agency to another without actually addressing their problems.

“The current system here in Berkeley and throughout the county is not a coordinated intake,” de Coligny said. “There’s a lot of randomness. There’s a lot of luck and a lot of bad luck.”

Council members raised concerns regarding how to help those who voluntarily live on the streets and how to provide more concrete data about the demographics of homelessness.

“Doing (a homeless count) once every four years is not enough, and we need to know more about the population we’re trying to serve,” said Councilmember Gordon Wozniak. “This problem is always talked about in vague sort of terms … it needs continuous attention.”

While supportive of this effort to address homelessness, Roland Peterson, executive director of the Telegraph Business Improvement District, believes the council should also consider how to address inappropriate street behavior as a separate issue.

According to Anthony Sanchez, legislative aide to Arreguin, council members will start identifying stakeholders interested in addressing homelessness over the next several weeks.

“We do have to become more efficient with what little we have,” said Councilmember Linda Maio

Daphne Chen is the lead city government reporter. Contact her at daphnechen@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @dchen_dc.

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“Soft stories disproportionately affect students,” said Tregub, a commissioner on the city’s Housing Advisory Commission and Zoning Adjustments Board.

More than seven years ago, Berkeley enacted the Soft Story Ordinance to mitigate the dangers of buildings with structurally unsupportive ground levels. Currently, Tregub is planning his third seismic compliance day of action on March 20 to inform tenants about these dangers.

Hundreds of Berkeley properties meet the city’s soft-story definition — a wood-frame structure with five or more units and a ground level containing large openings like storefronts, garages or tuck-under parking.

Jennifer Strauss, external relations officer at the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, compared soft-story buildings to houses on stilts.

“The large open spaces on the ground floor that are unreinforced cannot withstand lateral forces,” Strauss said. “When the ground shakes back and forth, they end up collapsing.”

The Bay Area has a 63 percent probability of a magnitude 6.7 or greater quake striking the Bay Area between 2007 and 2036, according to 2008 forecast from the United States Geological Survey. The Hayward Fault, which runs directly through Memorial Stadium’s end zones, is most likely to produce the damaging quake.

Although 104 buildings have been voluntarily retrofitted to better withstand earthquakes, 168 remain on the city’s inventory of soft-story buildings, according to Christina Franco, an office specialist at the city’s Planning and Development Department.

Phase one of the ordinance required building owners to notify residents of seismic hazards with warning signs and letters and to submit an engineer’s analysis of potential structural improvements. It does not, however, mandate retrofits — this was to be phase two.

“There have been delays because of bureaucracy,” said Rent Stabilization Board Commissioner Jesse Townley. “There’s always something shinier and more current to deal with.”

Currently, the Rent Stabilization Board has drafted the second phase, but the city needs to conduct more outreach to building owners before it can be put to a vote, said Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin.

“It’s frustrating because this is a very important issue to people in our community,” Arreguin said. “Tenants’ lives are at risk.”

Although Afsaneh Mortazavi, a junior at UC Berkeley, is aware that her building is a soft story, it has not discouraged her from living there.

“It probably should bother me more than it does,” Mortazavi said.

She jokingly doubted the usefulness of an earthquake-preparedness kit in her situation.

“We live in a soft-story building, so it won’t matter because we’ll be crushed anyway,” Mortazavi said.  “Maybe if we’re standing next to the water, we can drink it when we’re under the rubble.”

Other tenants, however, remain uninformed of their building’s dangers. Last year, Tregub and a team conducted a walking tour of select soft-story properties and found seven of the 15 buildings inspected did not appear to have posted warning signs.

Nevertheless, Tregub hopes Berkeley will take more concrete action toward phase two — and soon.

“When we started this, it was an urgent issue, and since then, it has become an even more urgent issue,” Tregub said. “It would be terrible for the city to have blood on its hands if the unthinkable were to happen and we had not done our due diligence to prepare.”

Contact Mitchell Handler at mhandler@dailycal.org.

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According to the city’s quarterly economic development report released Tuesday, Berkeley’s 7.8 percent unemployment rate remains lower than Alameda County’s 8.2 percent and the state’s 9.7 percent as of December 2012. In the previous year, the unemployment rate in Berkeley was 8.9 percent. In Berkeley, about 69 percent of the population above 25 years old has a bachelor’s degree or higher.

“More employers are looking for educated workers,” said economic development manager Michael Caplan. “Industries that are growing in the region tend to be knowledge-based … people who have less education have a harder time finding a job.”

Growth in certain sectors, such as research and technology, has increased demand for a more highly educated and trained workforce, Councilmember Jesse Arreguin added.

Between 2007 and 2011, unemployment rates in Berkeley were 3.9 percent for those with college degrees ages 25 to 64, 14.6 percent for those with a high school education and 19.5 for those without high school or college diplomas, the report states.

In comparison, in the neighboring city of Oakland, about 37.2 percent of people older than 25 have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Berkeley’s 7.8 percent unemployment rate is the lowest since the peak of 11.3 percent in March 2010 in the tailwind of the global economic crisis. Yet, even at its peak levels, Berkeley’s unemployment rate has historically remained lower than both that of Alameda County and of California.

According to Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, one of the reasons is that the university is a major employer, and the jobs provided are less dependent on fluctuating economic cycles.

Despite the steady decline, council members agreed at the City Council meeting that the number is still high and that more work needs to be done.

“It’s falling, but it’s still pretty high,” Wozniak said. “How do we get back the employment to 10 years ago when it was 10 percent higher?”

Between 2001 and 2012, the number of jobs decreased from 66,616 to 60,165, the report states. However, over the years, the number of self-employed people in the city has increased from 6,733 in 1990 to 8,618 in 2010, Arreguin said.

Berkeley City Council will be looking into various solutions, such as improving early education for children to make sure they continue pursuing higher education, according to Councilmember Kriss Worthington. These issues will be further discussed in May when the next quarterly report is compiled, Caplan added.

Daphne Chen is the lead city government reporter. Contact her at daphnechen@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @dchen_dc.

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The proposed development initially drew opposition from local residents due to the building’s height. Developer William Schrader Jr. of the Austin Group LLC, however, has since agreed to modify his plan due to changes in a city fee policy, shortening the building size from eight stories to six. He will present the new plan to the Zoning Board next week, according to Councilmember Jesse Arreguin.

This decision to modify the original plan appears to be a direct result of the City Council’s recent 6-1 vote to lower the amount of the previous Affordable Housing Mitigation Fee, originally approved last October. Developers must pay the fee for the Housing Trust Fund unless they offer a certain number of affordable housing units.

The council’s decision lowers the per unit price that developers pay from $28,000 to $20,000 in hopes of encouraging further development in Berkeley and increasing the city’s fund for low-income housing, according to Arreguin.

Before the council approved the fee decrease, most developers chose not to pay the fee and instead chose to add more units for low-income housing so they could evade it.

“Since the decision to set the price at $28,000, no developer has decided to pay the fee,” said Arreguin. “Some people don’t believe we should’ve reduced the fees … But we were not getting any money. We have no revenue to build affordable housing, and the Housing Trust Fund desperately needs revenue.”

Igor Tregub, a commissioner on the Housing Advisory Commission, previously expressed concern about lowering the fees but appeared content with the recent development.

“I’m happy to see money coming into the fund,” Tregub said. “I’m just as concerned about the Housing Trust Fund as the City Council. The question will remain if future developers follow suit.”

Stephen Stine, however, whose mother stays in the Stuart Pratt Manor community for seniors located next door to the proposed development, is not as optimistic about the revised and shorter building plan.

“This is not a victory for anybody but the developer,” Stine said. “The six-story building will still eliminate many residents’ view. We’ve been fighting the six-story plan from day one.”

Though acknowledging room for improvement, Arreguin saw this as a positive step forward for the city of Berkeley and the Housing Trust Fund.

“I’m encouraged by the direction of the project is going, and I believe lowering the fee led to that,” Arreguin said. “I will continue to try to compromise with developers and residents to ensure that the character of the area is preserved.”

Schrader is scheduled to present the modified plan to the Zoning Adjustments Board on March 14, according to Arreguin.

Contact Matt Trejo at mtrejo@dailycal.org.

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While the falling prices show moderate improvement in rental costs in the short run, housing rates in Berkeley are still about six percent higher than they were at the same time last year.

The period spanning the last three months in 2012 was the first time in two years that rent has not increased in nine of the city’s largest apartment buildings, according to the report. Rental rates in the Bay Area stagnated or even fell slightly in the last few months, according to the report by RealFacts, a consulting firm that tracks rent in apartment complexes of 50 units or more in the Bay Area.

“People feel the economy is coming back, so the for-sale housing market is coming back, and that’s taking away some of the potential demand of renters,” said RealFacts spokesperson Nick Grotjahn.

Berkeley apartment rents have been slowly increasing, according to a report compiled by the city of Berkeley. At the end of 2002, a two-bedroom unit cost an average of $1,650 a month. The going rate for a same-sized unit averaged $1,995 per month at the end of last year.

“Rents have escalated over the past decade, and so now, when all these newer buildings are coming on the market, the rents are so high,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin. “Even though rents may have decreased slightly, it is still incredibly expensive and cost-prohibitive.”

Still, the report may underestimate the city’s rental prices, as it excludes Berkeley’s newest housing development, the Arpeggio Building at 2055 Center St., which opened only last fall.

The building’s market-rate units, most of which are priced between $2,000 and $3,500, would have instead showed an increase between the third and fourth quarters had they been included in the data.

The opening of new apartment buildings offers students more alternatives to residence hall living and has the potential to stagnate market rates.

“There are newer and more products coming online that are absorbing some of the rental demand,” Grotjahn said.

In 2010, a period of steady decline in Berkeley rental rates followed the opening of two new Berkeley apartment complexes — Fourth & U and the New Californian.

“There is an increase in demand, even in this current economic climate, and apartment prices are at some of their all-time highs “ Arreguin said. “When we factor that into tuition increases, student fees, books — it’s expensive for students to go to school at UC Berkeley.”

Megan Messerly covers city government. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org.

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SOSIP, first prepared in 2010, involves creating a more environmentally and pedestrian-friendly Downtown Berkeley by adding public parks and plazas. SOSIP is part of the larger Downtown Area Plan passed last March, which allows for the creation of seven tall buildings as well as additional green buildings and establishes open-space requirements. SOSIP would cost the city about $17 million.

The city is facing a projected deficit of $3 million in the general fund and $3.9 million in special funds for fiscal year 2014. However, the Downtown Area Plan does not include funding from the general fund.

SOSIP includes projects such as allowing two-way traffic on the west side of Shattuck Square; possibly creating a “slow street” for traffic on the east side and a transit plaza for buses, pedestrians and bicycles; closing Center Street to automobile traffic between Shattuck and Oxford; and widening sidewalks and adding more bicycle lanes. The city is also considering adding more green infrastructure, such as park blocks in the middle of Shattuck Avenue.

“If we can do even a fraction of these projects, it would really make a big difference in making Downtown a much more pedestrian-friendly and vibrant area,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, whose district includes the Downtown area. “I’m very excited by the fact that we adopted the SOSIP, so now we can move forward with the project.”

Local environmental groups also expressed their support for the plan and the changes that it would bring to the city.

“We were on the whole very pleased with the green features and the capabilities to make this a sustainable element of the Downtown Area Plan,” said Igor Tregub, a Zoning Adjustments Board commissioner and a former rent board member who spoke on behalf of the Sierra Club, during the public comment section of the meeting.

To raise $5.4 million for the plan, SOSIP includes an impact fee, which is a fee that developers pay to offset the costs of additional development on the city’s infrastructure and services. The impact fee for the project is set at $2.23 per square foot of new residential use, $1.68 per square foot of commercial use and $1.12 per square foot of new institutional use.

A variety of other revenue sources, such as in-lieu fees and grants, is expected to cover the remaining $11.68 million.

Despite the amount of money needed, council members remained optimistic about the chances of receiving grants to cover the costs.

“These projects are exactly what some of these grants are for … open space, grants that encourage smart growth,” Arreguin said. “There’s a lot of money available for cities that have plans to encourage higher density and smart growth. There’s a lot of planning that’s happening.”

According to the SOSIP Nexus Study, the new developments of residential, commercial and institutional uses are estimated to add about 2.9 million square feet in floor area by 2030.

“We have an opportunity here to make the Downtown a much more inviting green place,” said Councilmember Gordon Wozniak.

Daphne Chen is the lead city government reporter. Contact her at daphnechen@dailycal.org.

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Councilmember Jesse Arreguin will propose the Compassionate Sidewalks Plan at Tuesday’s council meeting, which recommends that a committee be formed to focus on the causes of homelessness, evaluate existing homeless services the city offers and then pinpoint areas of improvement.

The issue, however, has been identifying just exactly what the “problem” is and who is causing it. While it may seem like semantics, the struggle to define the term “homelessness” and come up with concrete solutions has been a drawn-out process.

Most agree something needs to be done, but coming up with concrete solutions to this problem has proven to be difficult. The failure of Measure S, a Berkeley city measure that would have banned sitting on sidewalks late at night, means that the city must now find a different solution to this problem.

“My proposal is to do the job that we should have done before we put Measure S on the ballot,” Arreguin said.
The committee will seek to incorporate community voices in tackling this problem and will consist of city officials, business owners and other community members, including the homeless.

While he agrees that Arreguin’s plan is a step in the right direction, Councilmember Kriss Worthington worries that the plan might be delayed in its implementation. According to Nils Moe, senior aide to Mayor Tom Bates, a committee would not be able to meet to discuss the homelessness problem until April, as the council will be tied up approving the city budget in the coming months.

Other concerns include fears that Compassionate Sidewalks does not adequately address issues raised by Measure S.

“In the behavior that Measure S was trying to address, the majority of people were not homeless,” said Roland Peterson, executive director of the Telegraph Business Improvement District, which endorsed the Yes on Measure S campaign. “Jesse’s thing is not really properly a post-S response, because it doesn’t address the issues that S attempted to address.”

Apparent in the discussions of homelessness is still the argument over whether there is a homeless “culture” and if a significant portion of the homeless are homeless by choice.

“It’s hard for people who have pets and shit,” said Nicole Shaak, who has been living on the streets of Berkeley by choice for about a year. “I don’t like shelters unless it’s hella raining.”

For Shaak and others like her, living on the street is preferable to the confines of a shelter, which have many rules and do not give them the freedom to travel as they desire. Improvements in quality and space in shelters would not appeal to them.

Others, like longtime Berkeley resident and recently homeless Mark Anthony, believe that living in shelters carries a stigma that makes it hard for people to get back on their feet. He also believes the city already offers enough services to the homeless.

“As far as I’m concerned, the city is doing all that they can,” Anthony said. “They can’t baby people that are supposedly grown individuals.”

Megan Messerly covers city government. Contact her at mmesserly@dailycal.org.

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