Joe Wright/File

Students, like others who pass by the tents pitched on the steps of Berkeley’s century-old Downtown post office, may well wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, we’re all using the Internet now instead of popping letters to Mom in those disappearing street mailboxes, and the lines at that post office and many others grow irritatingly long as the clerks who used to staff them vanish as well.

A recent article in The Daily Californian attributes U.S. Postal Service spokesman Augustine Ruiz as explaining that as a result of a decline in mail volume, the Postal Service only needs to retain 4,000 of its 57,000 square feet of space and that keeping ownership of the entire building would not be economical. Disposing of a tax-exempt property one holds to lease space elsewhere doesn’t make long-range economic sense, but doing so doesn’t enter into the accounting of current Postal Service management. That the public paid for Berkeley’s post office also goes unmentioned in the service’s press releases. Indeed, the very notion of the public good represented by the ennobling architecture of the Downtown post office as well as the buildings at the center of the UC Berkeley campus has faded in tandem with the right of every American to have quality and tuition-free education along with a cheap and efficient postal service mandated by the Constitution.

Take a look at the materials, craftsmanship and design of buildings such as Doe Library, Wheeler Hall, the Campanile and Hearst Gym. Equivalent to those of expensive Ivy League colleges, those buildings and others at the heart of what was once simply the state university represent that taxpayers and wealthy individuals previously believed students from even the remotest parts of the state deserved to to become fully-rounded citizens. They were elements of two Hearst-sponsored plans that sought to create an ideal City of Learning on the hills facing the Golden Gate Bridge. By 1914, the treasury allotted a generous bonus to erect a post office in Berkeley worthy of the nearby university. It was modeled after Brunelleschi’s famous Foundling Hospital in Florence, Italy. During the Great Depression, the Treasury Relief Art Project further embellished the post office with both a mural and a sculpture at the same time that the Works Progress Administration set female artists to work laying mosaics on the university’s brick powerhouse east of Sather Gate. Those mosaics celebrate the expansive power of the humanities.

The language of the public good is neither spoken nor understood by those who now run both our postal service and once-public universities. Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe let Mayor Tom Bates know that he feels Berkeley’s pain, informing the mayor that “the Postal Service is the first to acknowledge how important it is to preserve our historic buildings, which is why we are going through a lengthy and transparent process to assure their protection before they are sold.” Three months later, Tom Samra, vice president of facilities, wrote that though he was “sympathetic to the concerns raised by (the city, elected officials and numerous other parties),” he was denying their appeals so that there “is no right to further administrative or judicial review of this decision.” Though listed on the National Register and paid for by the public it serves, Berkeley’s post office and others don’t represent a trust to those such as Donohoe and Samra but simply real are estate assets to be flogged by their exclusively contracted agent CBRE, the broker chaired by UC Regent Richard Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Although not for sale yet, the decay of the classically inspired buildings at the core of the UC Berkeley campus suggests that those who run the university ever more like a business, rather than a public trust, regard them as plum sites of opportunity for more profitable ventures. While they have recently poured hundreds of millions of dollars into new sports and biotech facilities, buildings such as the magnificent women’s gymnasium designed by Julia Morgan and Bernard Maybeck as a memorial to UC benefactor Phoebe Hearst slouch toward ruin.

The physical decay and outright sale of what their builders intended as monuments of unaging intellect represents not just a betrayal of the public trust but also the loss of an ethical language that created a world-class university and universal postal service. We must recover that language to understand what is being taken from us and to whose advantage it is taken at our collective loss.

Gray Brechin is the project scientist of the Living New Deal based in the UC Berkeley Department of Geography.

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

The post Lost buildings mean lost history appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Karen Kwaning /Staff

What sucks the most about not having a car in the Berkeley area? Not being able to easily get to In-N-Out. Relying on public transportation to take you out to Oakland or Richmond merely increases the craving for that burger that’s too delicious for words. The experience is miserable. But until you finally obtain a Zipcar membership to satisfy you and your famished buddies, a nice Downtown surprise awaits you along Shattuck Avenue.

If you decide to have a burger date at Oscar’s, make sure you’re not starving. Trust us. The closer you come to reaching your destination, the stronger the smell of delicious grilled patties wafts down the street, and you’ll likely be miserable. Although originally named Oscar’s Hot Dogs, Oscar’s cheeseburgers are to die for — and the staff knows it. As soon as you enter, they’re ready to get things cooking; just step up to the grill and place your order — Oscar’s grill is the center stage of the restaurant. Feast your eyes, and try to tame the fiercely starving bear as you watch your meal being made right before you.

If you’re a little adventurous, you’ll have plenty of options. Oscar’s menu is not as limited as In-N-Out’s. Besides having awesome burgers, fries and shakes, Oscar’s can serve up a chicken grilled sandwich, turkey burger, hot dogs, steak sandwiches, cookies and soft cones! So many calories, so little time. Veggie lovers can also join in on burger date-night: There’s always the option of having a classic veggie burger.

And on top of the definite weight-increasing deliciousness, Oscar’s is adorably decked out with Cal gear. It definitely makes sure to show its support for the Golden Bears, with a signed Cal jersey and numerous Cal flags and posters on the wall. It’s a burger place not really made by the students but definitely for the students.

Know of any local restaurants that serve delicious grilled burgers? Let us know in the comments!

Oscar’s is located at 1890 Shattuck Ave.

Contact Karen Kwaning at kkwaning@dailycal.org.

The post Craving In-N-Out? Try Oscar’s appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The chapter in my physics textbook on gravity is called “Newton’s Universe.”

Forget worldviews: Imagine having a perspective on the entire universe named in your honor hundreds of years after you’re dead, like you’ve singlehandedly redefined the right way to look at literally everything. That’s godlike.

But it’s apparently not the way Newton saw things.

“If I have seen further,” he is said to have written, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Those giants must have been exactly one Isaac Newton short of the plateau overlooking the panorama of the universe, a height I’m not yet far enough into physics to know how to measure.

Even though I can’t do the math, I like to imagine the way Newton might have felt as he made his way up to those shoulders, clamoring up over giant after giant through a seemingly endless procession of human ingenuity, making his way through the carefully accrued log of what our species knows about our universe.

And even more than that, I like to imagine the way Newton’s face might have looked when he finally reached that last set of shoulders, when he knew his own sturdy set would be the next rung in that human ladder, when he knew he knew something true that no one else had ever known before. I like to imagine the way the sight of that new universe splayed out in front of him, overwhelming in its brilliance, might have been reflected in his own face — whether his features registered a slow shock and then an unadulterated joy.

I feel very thankful for the giants who have broadened society’s collective perspective, and I especially like the way their work stacks up. I like the way that our campus is literally built on top of those stacks, that when we walk on Memorial Glade, we are standing on paper giants. I like the way books stack up against one another on their shelves, their ideas quietly pushing against each other through their leather bindings. I like that the paper on which this column will be printed will be one leaf in a very tiny part of that overwhelming chronicle.

I think this chronicle exists in more practical places as well. On Tuesday, I saw a photo of a Downtown Berkeley apartment building that was taken more than five years ago. I have a friend who currently lives in the apartment in the image, but it’s not the same person who took the photo. My friend is not the person who wanted to frame the apartment’s exterior with her camera to show that it was her space, to show that it had been her home while she went to school here.

But I’m sure my friend feels like that, too. I’m sure she also feels a connection to the apartment, a sense of ownership, that it feels very much hers.

I feel a connection to it as well. The photographer has moved away, but the building in the photo looks exactly the same, and even the lighting in the photo is something I recognize.

The two apartment-dwellers will probably never meet, will probably never even think of each other. The apartment’s landlord might have met them both, though. Or even if it’s a different landlord now, the new landlord might have met the old landlord or one landlord in the shoulder sequence who met that photographer a few years ago.

We are our own giants, too. We are the most recent iteration of a person constantly climbing the shoulders of past selves toward a plateau we dream will be as brilliant as Newton’s.

Sometimes, when I’m in the middle of working really hard for something, I am struck by a sense of clarity that feels a bit like how I imagine Newton’s new universe might have. Like maybe every edit I make to this piece means getting closer to enumerating something true about the world. Like finally, something is illuminated.

It would be naive to say that it is ever a straight climb, and it would be problematic to say that humans are on a clean trajectory toward progress.

But it’s true that we’re made of the stuff of the stars and that we stand on a library full of ancient thoughts that have yet to exhaust their potency, that my textbook speaks of “unifying natural motion on Earth and in the heavens” and that the sky we see is one passed down to us from times of varying degrees passed, old light and new light that’s come from light-åyears away before we can look up to it.

And there’s still something that rings true for me in a photo of an apartment I have almost no stake in other than the humanness of it — the humanness of this enormous sequence of which I am so, so thankful to be a part.

Contact Sarah Burns at sburns@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @_SBurns.

The post The shoulders of giants appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Henry Ascencio/File

In an effort to boost school attendance, Berkeley High School is reaching out to local merchants and community members to ask that they help build a rewards program for students.

Over the past year and a half, Berkeley High has already been pushing for increased student attendance. But this year, the school aims to boost attendance even more by using free coupons, sandwiches and movie tickets as incentives to reward those who come to class. Attendance statistics for this academic year show attendance rates similar to the previous academic year, with approximately 94 percent attendance from September to December.

Dean of Attendance Daniel Roose said the new idea is to recognize more students who are already following the rules as well as focusing on truancy in the school.

“We are doing a sort of attack from two prongs,” Roose said. “We are going to talk to kids that are absent and those who are attending schools.”

Shifra de Benedictis-Kessner, marketing manager for the Downtown Berkeley Association, expressed strong support for the idea and said that she and Roose had been discussing it since last fall.

“We have sent it out in our e-news,” de Benedictis-Kessner said. “We encourage businesses to give gift certificates. I know all of our businesses really enjoy the students.”

Roose said the school plans to make two funds. It will make one fund for the small rewards that local businesses donate, such as free or discounted items. Another fund will be created for larger donations, such as iPads that will be placed in a raffle.

Laura Babbit, who is both a parent of a senior attending the school and a parent liaison for the high school’s department of African American studies, said she also likes the incentive idea. She thinks the incentives could help give students more motivation to do their schoolwork.

“Anything to help (students) make the best choices for the future is needed,” Babbit said. “There is no way we can increase testing rates or performance if they are not in the classroom.”

Babbit also thinks the incentives serve as a good way to get the community involved in supporting the future of education and Berkeley’s youth. She said the rewards not only increase student participation but that they can also increase state funding that is based on student attendance and can help keep the school operating.

Roose hopes to approach local businesses in Downtown Berkeley by the end of the week, proposing they be the first to help out because many students frequent the area during lunchtime.

Roose said that the school will have no concrete plans in terms of how the rewards will be distributed until April. The rewards will, however, be given out during the end of the school semester in late May or early June, he stated.

Alyssa Neumann covers city government. Contact her at aneumann@dailycal.org.

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Gracie Malley/File

Berkeley residents gathered in front of the Downtown Berkeley Post Office in protest of proposed plans to sell the historic building and relocate the post office.

The rally and information session was held Wednesday to raise awareness about the health of the post office system. The 98-year-old branch on Allston Way is one of a number of locations that are either being closed down or relocated in order to offset declining revenues and increased costs.

Selling the building would be an inconvenience for residents, said Susan Hammer, chief steward of the American Postal Workers Union.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Hammer said. “There are a lot of companies, like UPS and FedEx, that would like a piece of the pie and would benefit from the post office closing down or moving.”

The building is in the process of being examined by the state historical preservation office, and no action will be taken to put the building on the market until after the results are presented in an open meeting with residents in January, said Augustine Ruiz, spokesperson for the Bay-Valley District of the Postal Service.

The plan to relocate the Downtown branch was proposed in June, since the current 57,000 square-foot location is too big for the Postal Service’s needs, and the first-class mail volume has decreased from its 2006 peak by 26 percent, according to Ruiz.

Under the plan, retail services would be moved to  another location, which has yet to be determined, and postal carriers would be moved to an existing detach delivery unit on 8th Street. This would ensure that there are no service interruptions to postal customers, Ruiz said.

“We want people to know that we are not going to vacate and leave them,” Ruiz said. “We are doing everything we can so we can continue to serve them.”

About 50 residents gathered with signs stating “Our Post Offices are Not For Sale” in front of the post office, along with members of City Council. Those in attendance agreed that selling the building is not the best use of resources.

“I don’t think it makes sense to sell a building we own in order to lease another space,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin after the protest. “It’s an important community resource, and selling it is going to have a negative impact.”

Arreguin said he would put forth the suggestion that the building space, which is sitting empty, should be rented out and utilized as an alternative source of revenue for the post office.

“It is troubling that our post offices are under attack, and it is happening in Berkeley,” Arreguin said. “We have to fight it … this is really a sort of battleground that is happening all over the country, and if we stop it here, that will send a strong message.”

Contact Aliyah Mohammed at amohammed@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article left out the word “not” from the following sentence: “Those in attendance agreed that selling the building is the best use of resources.”

The post Berkeley residents protest relocation of historic downtown post office appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Spirit Halloween opened in September at 2295 Shattuck Ave. and offers an assortment of costumes and props for children and adults.

Store employee Theo Rogers said business has been great, as the location in Downtown Berkeley has brought in a lot of foot traffic.

“Since we’re located on Shattuck, we get a lot of walk-ins,” he said. “Since this is so close to the school, this place is a pretty good location for business.”

Assistant store manager Delores Evans said the Spirit store is unrelated to the costume store Halloween City that was at 2190 Shattuck Ave. last year — the location now occupied by Walgreens.

Rogers said Spirit Halloween is owned by Spencer Gifts while the other store is owned by Party City. It is common for Halloween stores to change locations from year to year depending on where and when companies are able to get leases for abandoned buildings, he said.

“The location that this store is in right now is probably going to be different next year,” Rogers said. “I already saw a few people coming in and scoping out the place to have their own business put in here.”

Berkeley City College student Sher Her said the location of the store does not matter and that he will still patronize stores like Spirit Halloween as long they are in easy places to access.

“It’s the only costume store around here, so it’s pretty convenient,” he said. “As long as it’s still around here … it doesn’t really bother me.”

Contact Andy Nguyen at anguyen@dailycal.org.

The post Costume store opens up in Downtown Berkeley appeared first on The Daily Californian.

A small, quiet crowd gathered near Center Street and Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley on Sunday, Oct. 7, watching a group of artists sketch and fill in a large chalk representation of “The Last Supper,” a painting by Leonardo da Vinci of Jesus eating at a table with his disciples. Across the top was the statement, “Let Us Sit Together and Break Bread.”

It was a colorful, visual protest against the proposed anti-sitting law, Measure S, which is on Berkeley’s ballot in the coming election. But nobody had to know much about politics to appreciate the work of the patient, talented artists slowly bringing a work of art to life. The fact that this detailed work of chalk would be washed away in a matter of days either by maintenance workers or the elements added to its beauty.

A young woman stood nearby watching in quiet awe. The artists were swift and sure in their movements. They had marked the brick plaza into segments to help keep the perspective true as they turned a small photograph of the painting into the large, color-filled, 35-by- 25-foot mural.

The young woman angled herself discretely behind the working artists, who moved constantly from a standing position to their knees, working sometimes with their fingers to blend the colors to create flesh tones and folds of fabric. She wasn’t drinking. She wasn’t smoking. She wasn’t speaking. She was standing, watching, smiling in admiration like the rest of us.
A Berkeley Police Department officer singled her out of the crowd and instructed her to relocate closer to him. She did. He began scribbling detail on a form, and she stood quietly near him, distressed but compliant. A couple of us moved closer to make sure she was okay.

The officer instructed her to take off her jacket, although the day was cold and her blouse was sleeveless. She did. He told her to move her belongings two more feet closer to him. She did. He raised his voice as he ordered her around and inspected her things. Her thin arms were shaking, but she complied with all of his brusque, officious, overly loud, somewhat angry instructions.

He then told the whole crowd, loudly, that she was on probation, and continued to describe her legal situation in a gratuitously loud fashion. I finally spoke up, asking why he was making an announcement to the whole crowd about her private business.  He just kept talking loudly, telling me he wasn’t talking to me but making sure everyone there could hear what he said to her.

The website of Berkeley Police Department states that “BPD cannot release probation or parole status.” But this officer did exactly that in a loud voice in arguably the most public, well-traveled plaza in Berkeley. There appeared to be no reason on Earth to interrupt this beautiful, peaceful moment of shared pleasure in the artwork unfolding before us.
When the officer finally left, we hugged each other. The young woman cried a little, but she was okay. I told her how strong and clear-headed she seemed, even in the middle of such a trying moment, which seemed to me to be a pointless effort to publicly humiliate her.

Others in the crowd said the officer was just that way. There is no operative complaint system anymore in Berkeley, so there is little anyone can do but stand by and watch in amazed outrage.

The young woman was just glad it was over. When I complimented her on being so strong, all she said was, “Yes. You have to be.”

— Carol Denney,
Berkeley resident

Nextbus website should be more accurate with AC Transit schedule

Ever have the experience of seeing on “next bus” — which is supposed to predict the arrival of the next bus — stating “45 minutes” (for lines that run frequently such as the 51B) or something ridiculous like that? While the next bus predictor is by no means perfect, it points to another serious issue: the lack of punctuality in the AC Transit bus system. Sure, it’s very convenient to have a Class Pass the allows you to travel wherever AC Transit goes, but AC Transit has consistently disappointed me with its on time performance.

Similar to a call number system in libraries, the bus schedule is in place for a reason. If you don’t follow it, you might as well not have it in the first place. With AC Transit, being late is the rule rather than the exception. I can’t tell you how many times I waited for the bus and the bus came either too early or too late or not at all. Furthermore, it’s probably not a novel sight for you to see three or even four 1, 1R or 51B buses one after another. Just as I think I have the perfect itinerary — arriving at BART with five minutes to spare — AC Transit ruins my plans. This has created considerable stress, especially when I plan to travel to the airport with AC Transit as one of the intermediaries. If AC Transit can’t keep to a schedule, what’s the point of having it?

Of course, it is understandable that sometimes there is unpredictable traffic or that handicapped passengers may need more time. However, it seems to me the majority of the bus drivers do not take on time performance seriously. Even when a bus is running 10 to 15 minutes late, the driver is, more often than not, still nonchalantly chatting with a passenger or a fellow bus driver at a stop — this seems unacceptable to me. Most airlines now have on time performance record so you can check how likely you will land on time — not likely. There are even rankings for the best on-time performance records. If such a system were in place, how would AC Transit fare?

To end with an anecdote, in Germany — where punctuality is a virtue — I have seen on multiple occasions where passengers complain to the bus driver for being a few minutes late. They argue that people rely on the schedule to plan their journey, and a late bus puts passengers in a stressful situation since they may miss the train, be late to a meeting, etc. Can you imagine confronting an AC Transit bus driver about why it’s late?

Neither can I.

— Tony H. Lin,
Doctoral candidate, UC Berkeley department of Slavic languages and
literatures

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org

The post Letters to the editor: Oct. 12 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Derek Remsburg/Senior Staff

Saturday afternoons in Berkeley are anything but slow on gamedays, especially for local businesses.

Since the opening of the newly renovated Memorial Stadium earlier this fall, the masses of fans occupying the stands during the game and subsequently flooding the surrounding streets have been a boon to local eateries and shops.

Several businesses around the city have benefited from the influx of people, said Dave Fogarty, the city’s economic development project coordinator.

Executive Director of the Telegraph Business Improvement District Roland Peterson said Southside’s Hotel Durant is completely booked on gamedays, and surrounding hotels have had to make adjustments to accommodate all the people that come in.

Berkeley restaurants have also been positively affected by the increased number of people who come into the city on gamedays, especially compared to last year, when many establishments lost the fan base due to the move of home games to AT&T Park in San Francisco.

“Every year, we have followers who come here to watch the games, and they come from all over the country,” said Izat Eliyan, the manager of La Val’s Pizza and La Burrita, both located on Hearst and Euclid avenues. “We know them by face, and they are always very excited to come back. Last year, we missed them, so seeing them again this year, we did see a rise in sales.”
Alex Popov, the owner of Pappy’s Grill & Sports Bar, located on Telegraph Avenue, said the new restaurant has always attracted a lot of people but is busiest on gamedays.

“We’re busy all throughout the day, because even though the games don’t start until the afternoon, we have people coming in the morning to watch games that are happening on the East Coast, and we also have people staying in the evening after the games finish,” said Popov.

While many businesses are thriving due to the increased foot traffic in Berkeley on gamedays, some businesses have not seen much of an improvement, and others have even been negatively impacted due to parking congestion in the city.

Eliyan said that though La Val’s Pizza and La Burrita are both very busy on gamedays, business has not improved as much as was expected.

“We thought that with the new stadium, business would be better,” Eliyan said. “But it’s just like any normal gameday before the stadium was built.”

Wilson Wong, manager of Kip’s Bar on Durant Avenue, agreed with Eliyan’s sentiments.

“(The fans) aren’t coming out as much as they used to, compared to old gamedays,” Wong said. “I’m not sure — maybe football culture is not as big, or maybe not as many people are into football anymore.”

Moreover, some establishments have suffered as a result of the influx of people. Parking in the area becomes congested as a consequence, which forces event-goers to drive all over the city to find parking.

“Parking fines go up in the area on gamedays, and we aggressively enforce parking laws,” said city spokesperson Mary Kay Clunies-Ross. “It’s critically important that we keep the streets open for residents and for emergency access during and after games.”

Eliyan said that the traffic problems affect the delivery business of La Val’s, and they have to tell customers to wait at least an hour to get their orders.

Doris Moskowitz, manager of Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue, also said traffic problems negatively impact the store on gamedays.

“It’s like ‘Catch-22,’” Moskowitz said. “It’s really sad that the football players weren’t here last year, and we are so glad to have them back and to see so many people come to Berkeley to watch the games. But because of parking issues, it’s harder for our customers to get here, and no one is going to carry books through campus. So our business suffers.”

Contact Pooja Mahtre at pmahtre@dailycal.org.

The post Memorial Stadium reopening benefits Berkeley businesses appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Power went out for 12,425 customers at 9:38 p.m., according to PG&E spokesperson Jana Morris. By 10:22 p.m., power had been restored to all but 637 customers in the areas affected.

The majority of the reports appeared to be coming from residents in Downtown and North Berkeley.

Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong said Berkeley Fire Department had received numerous calls about the outage and that several fire stations were forced to rely on emergency backup power due to the outage.

According to BART Police Lt. Andy Alkire, no BART routes were affected by the power outage as of 10:30 p.m.

West Berkeley residents also began reporting outages around 11:45 p.m.

According to PG&E spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian, 60 customers remained without power as of about 11 a.m., with full power expecting to be restored by 4 p.m. on Tuesday.

Staff writer Chloe Hunt contributed to this report.

Adelyn Baxter is the city news editor. Contact her at abaxter@dailycal.org.

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Gracie Malley/File

Residents filled the Berkeley City Council Chambers to voice their concerns about the relocation of the Downtown Berkeley post office during a public meeting Thursday.

The U.S. Postal Service expressed interest in relocating its 97-year-old Downtown Berkeley branch to help offset declining revenues from a decrease in first-class mail and the increased costs of a 2006 congressional mandate to prefund retiree health benefits.

First-class mail volume is down 25 percent from its 2006 peak, according to the Postal Service’s “Plan to Profitability” presentation.

“When you lose that much volume, a lot of revenue goes with it,” said Augustine Ruiz, Postal Service spokesperson.

The plan to relocate the branch at Allston Way was proposed in June, as the current 57,000-square-foot location is too big for the Postal Service’s needs. Under the plan, retail services would be moved to a yet-to-be-determined location of about 4,000 square feet, and postal carriers would be moved to a nearby annex. There would be no service interruptions to postal customers, Ruiz said.

“It would be unfortunate if it closed, and we don’t know what it would be used for if it were sold,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin.

Arreguin said that he plans to propose other options for the use of the building to the Postal Service, including partly leasing the building, allocating the front of the building for post office retail space and having another tenant use the rest of the building.

“Is it really cost savings to sell a building you own and lease a building you don’t own?” Arreguin said.

“This is an amazing legacy that was paid for by our parents and grandparents,” said Harvey Smith, part of the Committee to Save the Berkeley Main Post Office. “It’s stripping part of our national heritage.”

Ruiz noted that whatever happens to the building — which is on the National Register of Historic Places — it must adhere to the proper historical requirements.

The date of the next public meeting has yet to be determined and will be preceded by a 15-day advance notice. After the meeting, the public will have an additional 15-day comment period before recommendations are sent to Postal Service offices in Washington, D.C. After the comment period, Postal Service representatives in Washington will make the final decision about the relocation. There will be a 15-day appeal period following the decision.

Still, Ruiz said that this will not be a hasty decision.

“We need to make sure we do our due diligence,” he said.

Contact Mitchell Handler at mhandler@dailycal.org.

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