The revised proposal, submitted by Councilmember Darryl Moore after public backlash against his original recommendation, dropped the motion to close the registry and instead suggested celebrating the registry’s 22-year anniversary by declaring Oct. 11 Marriage Equality Day.

The City Council established the Berkeley Domestic Partnership Registry in 1991 as a means of helping same-sex couples and opposite-sex unmarried couples obtain the same benefits as married couples.

Councilmember Kriss Worthington praised the adoption of the revised proposal, calling the original “one of the most grotesque, offensive and discriminating policies I have seen.”

The initial recommendation aimed to close the registry as a celebration of same-sex marriage becoming legal earlier this year. Moore, who drafted the proposal, wrote that the registry “only functions as a matter of ceremony” because same-sex marriages are recognized by the state.

But Worthington argued that the registry remains a necessity because both homosexual and heterosexual couples still use it if they choose not to marry. According to Worthington, California law allows homosexual couples to enter a domestic partnership at any legal age but forbids it for opposite-sex couples unless one partner is older than 62.

“If you’re gay, you can be a domestic partner at any age, but if you’re straight, you have to be over 62?” Worthington said. “This is not marriage equality.”

Worthington said the proposal to close the registry, which allows both heterosexual and homosexual couples to obtain a domestic partnership regardless of age, “offended me deeply.”

“In our celebration of a victory for the rights of the gay community, we can’t take away the rights of the straight community,” Worthington said

Other citizens and council members pointed to the popular use of the registry as a reason it should stay open. More than 1,000 couples have used the registry since its creation, including 15 after the legalization of same-sex marriage, according to Councilmember Jesse Arreguin.

“The registry is not just symbolic,” Arreguin said. “It’s important because it provides couples a variety of legal rights and protections, including medical insurance coverage and protection from eviction.”

Berkeley resident Steve Freedkin and his domestic partner are not a same-sex couple but rely on the legal benefits of the registry. Unwilling to get married while “friends in other states can’t,” Freedkin said the registry prevented his landlord from evicting his partner, a protection that would disappear if the registry were closed.

While Freedkin said he believed the proposal was motivated by good intentions, he said Moore didn’t seem “to have all the information” when proposing it.

To commemorate Marriage Equality Day, Moore and Worthington plan to officiate marriages at Old City Hall between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

“We’re going to have the party,” Worthington said. “We’re going to have the party without taking away anyone’s rights.”

Contact Savannah Luschei at sluschei@dailycal.org.

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The bill, AB 10, will raise the state’s minimum wage from the current level of $8 an hour to $9 an hour by July 1, 2014. The next increase will be implemented Jan. 1, 2016, bumping up the minimum wage to $10.

Brown signed the bill at a ceremony in Los Angeles, where he was accompanied by members of the California State Assembly and dozens of workers.

“It’s my goal and it’s my moral responsibility to do what I can to make our society more harmonious, to make our social fabric tighter and closer and to work toward a solidarity that every day appears to become more distant,” Brown said in a press release.

The Public Policy Institute of California reports that more than 6 million California residents were living under the federal poverty line in 2011. At the same time, the cost of living in many cities in California is well above the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Because of the state’s high cost of living, Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin strongly supported the bill.

“This bill provides a long overdue increase to help working families and working people in the state,” he said. “I think it’s a huge step forward.”

The city of Berkeley does not have a minimum wage. Since May, however, Berkeley City Council has been considering a proposal to implement a citywide minimum wage of $10.55 an hour.

After the state bill’s approval, Arreguin met with a representative of Berkeley’s Commission on Labor to discuss the relationship between AB 10 and the city proposal.

A 2013 report by the city’s economic development manager, Michael Caplan, suggests that many people may not be able to afford living in Berkeley. According to the study, only 17.1 percent of those who work in Berkeley are city residents.

“Whatever minimum wage we adopt should exceed the state minimum wage,” he said. “It is much more expensive to live in Berkeley than in other areas of the state.”

Contact Tahmina Achekzai at tachekzai@dailycal.org.

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Pol Rebaque/File

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage in California, Berkeley City Council will consider closing the city’s Domestic Partnership Registry at its Oct. 1 meeting.

Darryl Moore, the council member proposing the closure, said the city’s registry is no longer needed because the services it offers can be provided through other avenues, such as going to the Office of the County Clerk in Oakland or mailing the registration to the secretary of state’s office in Sacramento.

The proposal comes in response to the Supreme Court’s June decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, in which the court ruled 5-4 to effectively nullify Proposition 8, a 2008 California ballot initiative that added language to the state constitution defining marriage as valid only between a man and a woman.

In 1984, Berkeley City Council was the first city council to grant domestic partnership benefits to its employees. The city in 1991 established the Domestic Partnership Registry, which allowed the city to recognize domestic partnerships.

More than 1,000 domestic partners are registered in Berkeley, according to Councilmember Kriss Worthington. The last time a couple registered for a domestic partnership was Monday, according to the city clerk.

Before submitting the proposal, Moore said he sent it to local leaders, including the Pacific Center for Human Growth, an LGBT community organization, for review.

Worthington and Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, however, believe the community and affected couples should be further consulted before a decision is made.

“Whether they are heterosexual couples or same-sex couples, they may choose domestic partnerships over marriage,” Arreguin said. “We should continue to give them that option.”

According to the city clerk’s office, about 40 to 50 couples have registered for domestic partnerships for each of the past three years. Additionally, about 10 domestic partners per year chose to terminate their licenses.

“If people are using it and people want it, I don’t see why we would go out of our way to close it,” said Caitlin Quinn, an ASUC senator endorsed by groups in the campus queer community.

Other community members see a potential need to terminate Berkeley’s domestic registry. City policy on domestic partnerships does not require other employers, businesses or government agencies to recognize Berkeley’s domestic partnerships, according to the city’s website.

“(Closing the registry) could eliminate potential conflict between the city’s registry and the state of California’s marriage laws for same-sex couples,” said Ed Ness, co-chair of the Oakland/East Bay chapter of Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

The council will also consider establishing Oct. 11, the registry’s 22nd anniversary, as Marriage Equality Day in Berkeley as part of the proposal.

Contact Gladys Rosario and Michelaina Johnson at newsdesk@dailycal.org

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Katherine Chen/Staff

Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill Monday requiring motorists to give at least three feet of road space to passing bicyclists.

Assembly Bill 1371, authored by Assemblymember Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, will enact the Three Feet for Safety Act on Sept. 16, 2014, updating the law that requires drivers to keep a safe distance from bicyclists but does not specify that distance.

“It’s pretty important to have legislation that has a clear requirement so you aren’t just relying on people’s good will,” said Danita McGinnis of the Missing Link Bicycle Cooperative, a cooperatively owned bicycle shop and repair service in Berkeley.

Bradford introduced the bill in February. Brown has vetoed similar legislation twice, including last year’s SB 1464, which would have allowed drivers to cross a double yellow line to pass bicyclists. According to Bradford, Brown was concerned  these provisions would increase the risk of accidents and create lawsuits for the state.

“I believe Governor Brown felt the amendments to AB 1371 created a safe environment for bicyclists, while ensuring that the bill did not create further safety concerns and legal dilemmas for the state,” Bradford said in a statement.

The bill makes violations of the new provision punishable by a $35 fine and imposes a $220 fine on drivers if they injure a bicyclist in a collision and are found to have violated the rule.

Berkeley City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin said he expects that violations of the law will be enforced like any other traffic law violations.

“I do think there will be challenges with enforcing a law like this, in the same way that cellphone and texting laws seem to be thinly enforced,” said Joe DiStefano, a board member of Livable Berkeley, a coalition of Berkeley citizens and activists.

DiStefano, who takes his two kids to school by bicycle every day, said he appreciates having the law on the cyclist’s side.

“It’s also the cyclist’s responsibility to not put him or herself into positions where cars don’t have a choice … putting everyone in violation of that three-foot rule,” DiStefano said. “It goes both ways.”

According to Bradford, California had the second-highest number of cyclist fatalities in the country in 2009.

“I think it’s important in cities where there’s a lot of bike riders,” said Councilmember Kriss Worthington. “One of the things that discourages people from riding their bikes is fear of collisions.”

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak of District 8, which includes parts of College Avenue that are only one lane each way and do not have bike lanes, said both bikes and vehicles have to share the lane.

“It may cause some slight delays — the motorists might have to wait a second,” Wozniak said. “Sometimes you have to do that for public safety.”

Tara Hurley covers city news. Contact her at thurley@dailycal.org.

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The proposals, which seek to curb possible negative health effects of dental amalgam containing mercury, will be presented by the Community Health Commission, the Community Environmental Advisory Commission, the city manager’s office and City Council members. All recommend further educating the public on the possible risks of the dental fillings, and some encourage limiting or altogether avoiding the use of amalgam.

Councilmember Jesse Arreguin said he hopes to forgo the tedious processes an “unprecedented” number of proposals on the same issue would require. Instead, he said, he would prefer to conduct a workshop to fully evaluate which proposals would most benefit the city.

Although amalgam has been used in dentistry for more than 150 years, a long-standing debate has existed as to whether mercury in fillings poses health risks.

Many European countries have banned amalgam or advise against its use. Multiple U.S. cities discourage using dental amalgam as well.

Arreguin said he hopes to give the City Council enough time to make an informed decision about  amalgam in the face of influence from the California Dental Association, a Sacramento-based organization that represents dentists in California.

“(The California Dental Association) is lobbying council members,” Arreguin said. “Sacramento politics coming into Berkeley is alarming, and I think we need to take the time to understand the facts and not come up with a watered-down proposal.”

The California Dental Association has long advocated amalgam as a “safe, affordable and durable material for dental patients.”

Despite the potential legislative action, Michael Bates, a campus adjunct professor of epidemiology, said the health effects of dental amalgam are not well studied.

He concurs with the many studies that do not show a clear connection between amalgam and negative health effects.

Research conducted in 2012 by professor emeritus James S. Woods of the department of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, however, found mercury was associated with adverse neurological effects in certain children.

“Studies don’t often look at more sensitive types like children,” said Laurel Plummer, a member of the Community Environmental Advisory Commission.

Ariane Terlet, a UC Berkeley graduate and a member of the California Dental Association, noted that an alternative to amalgam is available: a composite resin filling, or a “white filling,” that doesn’t contain mercury. But the white filling is more costly and does not last as long as amalgam, and therefore, she said, prohibiting amalgam would limit patients’ options.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people I see that complain about amalgam aren’t complaining that it is harmful but that it doesn’t look aesthetically pleasing,” she said.

Contact Nico Correia at ncorreia@dailycal.org

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Nathaniel Solley/Staff

Berkeley City Council will discuss increasing the number of medical cannabis dispensaries in the city from four to six at Tuesday’s meeting.

The council members will decide on referring the ordinance to the Berkeley Planning Commission, which will make the final decision of whether to approve adding two new dispensaries. The commission will likely not review the ordinance until early next year.

“The reason for the increase might be because the current number is inadequately meeting the needs of demand,” said Kris Hermes, spokesperson for Americans for Safe Access, a group that promotes safe and legal access to cannabis.

Councilmember Jesse Arreguin said that the City Council will also have a chance to clarify the difference between collectives, which are allowed in residential neighborhoods, and dispensaries, which are not.

“Patients won’t have to go to Oakland. They won’t have to go to Richmond,” said Charles Pappas, a member of the Medical Cannabis Commission. “It’s good to have more choices. It’s going to be better for patients.”

If the council decides to move forward with the initiative, Hermes said that the price of medical marijuana in Berkeley could decrease as the number of dispensaries increases.

The MCC has made recommendations to the City Council concerning the criteria for choosing future dispensary owners and locations.

If the limit on dispensaries is increased, a ranking process based on a point system would be placed to moderate applications for the new dispensaries. Application requirements for opening a dispensary would include being subject to a criminal background check and having a clear business and security plan.

The applications would go to the MCC for review, but the City Council would ultimately make the decision of who gets to run the new dispensaries.

“I think there will be at least one added,” Pappas said. “They can’t stop that.”

Medical cannabis dispensaries have long been a contentious issue in the city of Berkeley. In 2010, the passage of Measure T enabled Berkeley to raise the number of medical cannabis dispensaries from three to four.

“What the Medical Cannabis Commission has been working on since (Measure T) is a set of regulations to not only improve our law around allowing safe access to (medical) marijuana, but (also) who will (run) that dispensary,” Arreguin said.

This past August, the Obama administration announced in a memo that the federal government would not interfere with state laws legalizing recreational marijuana use and would refrain from targeting dispensaries based on “size or commercial nature.”

Arreguin said that he hopes this change in policy may turn U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag away from her attempts to shut down dispensaries in Oakland and Berkeley. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice announced efforts to enforce regulations on the marijuana industry throughout California.

“The news that they are changing their stance about enforcing marijuana laws is very encouraging,” Arreguin said. “I hope it will allow us to move ahead.”

Tara Hurley covers city news. Contact her at thurley@dailycal.org.

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Benny Grush/Staff

Berkeley City Council agreed on Tuesday night to further assess a proposal for a new homeless housing project that has been both hailed as visionary and denounced as dangerous.

The environmentally sustainable project would provide permanent housing, along an with emergency shelter and supportive services, to the city’s homeless residents, according to a staff report. But the project would take the place of a 112-spot parking lot at Berkeley Way and Henry Street and has brought up numerous questions surrounding its financing and parking in the Downtown area.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said the city potentially faced an “acute problem” of access to the Downtown area because of the scarcity of parking and wondered how the project, which he estimated would cost $50 million, would be bankrolled.

“We don’t have that kind of money,” Bates said at the meeting. “Why would you start doing something that you could never afford to do?”

City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin says the city would not have to bear the brunt of the cost, and the Berkeley Housing Trust Fund, which pools funds for affordable-housing construction, could provide other sources of funding for the project.

The site of the proposed development was chosen for its proximity to Shattuck Avenue, public transit and a variety of social services for the homeless, but the plan deeply worries local business owners.

“The loss of parking in the Berkeley Way lot, even temporarily, will be catastrophic to businesses in the immediate area,” said Craig Larsen, owner of the building at 2054 University Ave., in a statement to the City Council. “I consider (it) a direct threat to my continued presence as an investor in Berkeley.”

Both John Caner, CEO of the Downtown Berkeley Association, and John Paluska, owner of Comal Restaurant, urged the council to double the existing parking supply if plans for the housing project move forward. Parking space has already been lost because of the construction of the new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and the proposed demolition of a parking garage on Center Street.

Arreguin says ameliorating the parking situation in the Downtown area and expanding services for the homeless are not mutually exclusive, and he hopes to at least replace the parking spaces that would be lost.

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, however, is not in favor of financing more parking spots.

“I agree that there shouldn’t be a negative impact on parking, but to make the affordable-housing project pay for more parking is totally unprogressive and inhumane and against Berkeley’s values,” he said.

According to the staff report, a 2009 count found more than 800 homeless people in Berkeley, including 680 that were chronically homeless, and the majority of them were men. The men’s shelter in Berkeley has been deemed seismically unsafe since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The City Council will continue to flesh out the details of the plan in the coming months.

Contact Nico Correia at ncorreia@dailycal.org

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Carli Baker/File

Berkeley City Council has entered the debate over whether to label genetically modified produce, voting Tuesday night to investigate the possibility of instituting such a policy at the city level.

The approved motion directs the city manager and several city commissions to research the possibility of having grocery stores label all of their genetically modified produce — one form of genetically modified organism. Specifically, the city will examine which stores the policy would apply to, how the requirement would be enforced and how produce would be labeled.

“The public deserves to know where their produce comes from,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, who sponsored the agenda item. “The labeling requirement would give customers necessary information about produce.”

Yet, according to Michael Eisen, an associate professor in the campus department of molecular and cell biology, there is not much evidence that GMO products are dangerous.

“There is very broad consensus among scientists that (GMO) products are safe (to consume),” Eisen said. “The technology itself is neither safe nor dangerous. It’s just a way to modify crops.”

Though they supported the motion, several council members also voiced concerns about a GMO-labeling policy. According to Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, creating new GMO-labeling requirements could cause an increase in the prices of non-GMO produce and add to the burden of low-income communities that cannot afford these higher prices.

Councilmember Susan Wengraf also expressed concerns about the impact of GMO labeling, specifically on the local mom-and-pop grocery stores in Berkeley.

“I agree that we should all know what we are eating,” Wengraf said. “But the burden should be on the corporations who are doing this in the first place. We shouldn’t be burdening the local grocers.”

Wengraf also believes that action should be taken on the state or federal level, not in Berkeley, where the population is only about 100,000.

Last November, Proposition 37, which would have required California grocery stores and retailers to label genetically engineered foods in their stores, was rejected by a majority of California voters. In Berkeley, however, an overwhelming 74.6 percent of residents voted in favor of the proposition, Arreguin said.

There are 64 countries, as of April, that require GMO labeling, according to the nonprofit organization Center for Food Safety.

Alison Fu covers city news. Contact her at afu@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @alisonfu_.

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Brian Ly/Staff

The shortage of affordable housing in Berkeley is a long-standing problem — and one that the City Council will take up again Tuesday night.

Currently, a city ordinance addresses the low-income housing shortage by giving apartment developers the choice of incorporating affordable units into their building plans or paying a fee to the city to help finance separate affordable housing projects. The city is looking to encourage the latter, which would allow local government to have a greater hand in regulating the supply of low-income housing.

Although affordable housing units are technically being created through either option, Councilmember Jesse Arreguin is concerned about the extent to which the city is able to oversee developers building and allocating the units themselves.

“We need to make sure developers are meeting (their) obligations and are actually renting to low-income tenants,” Arreguin said.”

After the City Council approved the Affordable Housing Mitigation Fee in October, it found that all developers chose the first option — making 10 percent of their units accessible to low-income tenants — over the second option of paying the fee of $28,000 per apartment unit. The fees would have been pooled into the city’s Housing Trust Fund, which also gathers money from government grants to help finance local affordable housing projects.

As of now, there are at least eight housing projects in Berkeley completely for low-income tenants, all of which were at least partially financed by the fund — which typically holds $1 million to $3 million at a given time, Arreguin said.

In February, the council lowered the fee’s amount by $8,000 per unit for developers who submit plans to build by early next fall, in hopes that the lower fee would encourage developers to pay into the fund.

Still, only one project has agreed to pay the fee.

“$28,000 is high,” said developer William Schrader Jr., who agreed to pay the fee for his project, The Durant. “It certainly made it easier for me to make a decision when the city lowered (the fee).”

Housing Advisory Commissioner Igor Tregub, however, said that $28,000 should be the minimum if the city wants to maximize the creation of affordable housing, although he appreciates efforts to get developers to pay into the fund.

“What we have is a step in the right direction,” Tregub said. “But I certainly would like to see more.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, council members will discuss changes to the fee, including allowing developers to pay over the course of several years rather than all at once and adjusting the fee over time to account for inflation.

Also to be discussed is a loophole that enables developers to avoid paying the fee by citing a “hardship.” There is no concrete definition of what a hardship entails, allowing developers who should not be exempt from the fee to dodge it entirely, Arreguin said.

Berkeley’s median rent, about $1,250 per month, is above both the Alameda County and national medians, according to a 2013 report by the city’s Rent Stabilization Board. In 2010, the annual income remaining to low-income tenants in the Bay Area after paying median rent was only approximately $10,500, the report said.

Alison Fu covers city news. Contact her at afu@dailycal.org.

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Mary Zheng/Staff

City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin led a Berkeley Task Force on Homelessness meeting Thursday evening to bring the community together to address homelessness in Berkeley.

About 50 people gathered at the YMCA Teen Center to attend the task force’s first meeting, a community conversational process that anyone can join and participate in at any time.

Arreguin initiated the task force after Measure S, which would have banned sitting on commercial sidewalks, nearly passed in Alameda County last fall.

“My thinking in starting the task force was we should try to establish a community discussion rather than putting forward divisive proposals like Measure S,” Arreguin said. “We currently spend $2.8 million in services for the homeless, but we still don’t have enough services.”

Elaine de Coligny, executive director of EveryOne Home, a countywide organization aiming to address homelessness, said the current rate of housing Berkeley’s homeless is in need of improvement.

“Right now, in Alameda County, we house about 44 chronically homeless people per month,” de Coligny said. “We want to just about double and house 80 people per month by October this year.”

Formerly homeless Berkeley residents shared their own experiences and concerns, including the absence of services for disabled homeless, the bureaucratic process of finding housing and the lack of government accountability, at the meeting.

De Coligny presented a coordinated assessment plan that is being implemented by EveryOne Home to unite the numerous homelessness services in the county to improve coordination among organizations.

“What we have right now is when you become homeless, you drop into the system and you just ricochet around, not really getting what you need,” de Coligny said. “We are trying to change that so we have a system where there is an assessment process that matches the consumer with the appropriate services.”

Pattie Wall, executive director of the Berkeley Homeless Action Center, presented the results of a recent survey given to the homeless in Berkeley. The results showed that of the 143 homeless people surveyed, 92 percent ranked housing as most desired, followed by shower and food availability.

Katrina Tomahawk — who was once homeless and is now a member of Youth Spirit Artworks, a job training program for homeless youth in the Bay Area — offered the perspective of the city’s homeless youth.

“What youth need in the city of Berkeley is a place to feel safe,”  Tomahawk said. “Safe isn’t just feeling like you’re not going to get stabbed tonight but also feeling safe in your own skin.”

Arreguin said the task force will work in committees to create a proposal including new ways to prevent and address homelessness. The proposal will be presented to the City Council next spring.

Contact Stephanie Petrillo at spetrillo@dailycal.org.

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