Position Paper

December 2004

This is a position paper prepared by Berkeleyans for a Livable University Environment (BLUE) at the request of the City Manager of Berkeley. BLUE is an umbrella organization that includes members from the following neighborhoods (in alphabetical order):

Addison/Allston/Roosevelt/California Neighborhood Association

Benvenue Neighbors Association

Claremont/Elmwood Neighborhood Association

Grizzly Peak area

Le Conte Neighborhood Association

McKinley/Addison/Allston/Grant Neighborhood Association

Northside Neighborhood Association

Panoramic Hill Association

Willard Neighborhood Association

BLUE starts from the premise that the University and the City (including its citizens) are interdependent, and should aim for a relationship of mutual consideration and respect. BLUE does not accept the status quo, in which the University internalizes all the benefits of its activities and externalizes all the damage out into the surrounding community. We acknowledge that a healthy relationship is difficult to build when the University has almost all the power and is rarely challenged by the City. However, the City has much more power—both officially and unofficially—than it has been using in the past decades, and the City has the responsibility to use its powers to protect its citizens from harm caused by the University. BLUE acknowledges the many positive assets that the University brings to the community, and many BLUE members have close ties to the University, but BLUE insists that this institution operate in cooperation with the community in which it resides, and make a contribution to the community consistent with the burdens it imposes. Achieving this balance is vital to the future of the City.

In addition, the residents and neighborhoods surrounding UCB, and other citizens impacted by UCB, are not adequately considered in the decisions that impact Berkeley citizens that are made by UCB and by the City regarding UCB—in fact, this is a major reason for the existence of BLUE. In this regard, BLUE has three requests. First, residents of impacted neighborhoods should be directly represented or included in important negotiations with UCB. Second, for “off-campus” UCB projects, the City should insist that UCB work together proactively with affected neighborhoods to create developments that are minimally detrimental, or even beneficial, to Berkeley citizens. And third, a long-term method should be established whereby Berkeley residents who live near UCB can regularly meet with high-level, decision-making UCB officials to resolve problems.

In this position paper, BLUE focuses on the following topics: the Transfer of the Commons; the 2020 Long Range Development Plan and Environmental Impact Report and Legal Action; Financial Mitigations; Residential Parking; Special Event Parking; Pedestrian Safety and Walkability; Traffic; Construction Impacts, Mitigations and Standards; the UCB Memorial Stadium; and the Strawberry Creek Watershed Cleanup.

Transfer of the Commons

Over the decades, more and more of Berkeley’s “commons” have been transferred to UCB. Berkeley’s commons include but are not limited to:

1. Roadways, where over-intensity of UCB use increases costs to the City, creates emergency access hazards, and inconveniences Berkeley residents.
2. On-street parking spaces, which should be maintained for the common good, both commercial and residential, and not yielded to primarily UCB use.
3. Sidewalks, which should be maintained for public use during and after construction projects.
4. Historic resources, which should not be destroyed, damaged, or negatively impacted by UCB projects.
5. Open space, a limited resource which insofar as possible should be maintained for the pleasure and recreation of all Berkeleyans.
6. Views and other aesthetic resources, which should be respected or even enhanced by UCB projects.
7. Mature trees, which should not be eliminated for the convenience of UCB; and (8) natural resources such as groundwater and creeks, which UCB activities have diminished and contaminated.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Diminish and eliminate to every legal extent possible the transfer of Berkeley’s commons to UCB, both temporarily as accommodations to UCB construction, and permanently as part of UCB project development.
2. Insist that UCB (and associated research facilities) mitigate damage done to the commons and maintain a clean natural environment.
3. Make no concessions or accommodations to UCB, nor loosen development standards, nor permit encroachments, that tend to reduce long-term residents in Berkeley (i.e., damage demographic diversity), or that diminish neighborhood-serving businesses where they are needed, or that decrease desirable business diversity.
4. Do not apply lower behavioral or legal standards to UCB users than to other city residents and visitors—for example, by designating “student neighborhoods” as places where bad behavior is okay, or not enforcing traffic and parking laws against UCB construction contractors and workers, or allowing illegal parking by athletic event visitors.
5. When the commons are “sold” to UCB, either temporarily or permanently, set a high price and use a substantial part of the proceeds to mitigate UCB damage in the impacted neighborhood.
6. Use municipal resources to find legal means of protecting Berkeley’s commons, and to advocate at the state level for strategies to restrain UCB’s sovereignty.
7. Assign one or more lawyers in the City Attorney’s Office to specialize in legal matters relating to UCB, who will work closely with Berkeley residents and their representatives to find and pursue legal solutions to problems caused by UCB.

2020 Long Range Development Plan, Environmental Impact Report, and Legal Action

In 1960, California created its Master Plan for Higher Education (MPHE), the result of a multilateral process with the host cities of California’s colleges and universities, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, legislators, faculty, students, and many other California education experts and stakeholders. The MPHE recommended an enrollment maximum of 27,500 at the largest UC campuses [see appendix]. UCB exceeded this enrollment maximum, reaching an enrollment of over 31,000 before 1990. In conjunction with the 1990 UCB LRDP, UCB and the City of Berkeley agreed on a new enrollment cap of 29,450. This contract provided a promise upon which the City has reasonably relied in crafting its planning, economic, and other policies (a UCB enrollment figure of 30,000 is found in the City’s 2000 General Plan). Nonetheless, UCB violated the contract, with a current enrollment of about 32,000, and intends an enrollment of 33,450 under the 2020 LRDP. BLUE’s position is that since this contract expires in 2006, and that the historical mandate of the contract was to reduce enrollment, there is no presumption that enrollment should now increase. Instead, the City should demand an enrollment reduction either back to the 1990 agreement level (29,450), or better yet, to the MPHE (27,500) level, because an enrollment of 27,500 is more consistent with academic excellence, municipal health, and statewide university efficiency. The MPHE also has moral authority because it is the only plan that is the result of an “enthusiastically endorsed” statewide multiparty process.

The 2020 LRDP/EIR violates not only the MPHE and continues UCB’s violation of its 1990 signed agreement with the City, but it also violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Since the LRDP cites a university-wide goal, but violates the local campus limit, one might conclude that the LRDP is a UC system-wide project under CEQA. UC’s research mission is also system-wide. Therefore, this EIR might be challenged on improper project definition and goal, because the project goal is vague and poorly tied to UC’s legislated system-wide mission, and because the Regents have the alternative of distributing their system-wide goals differently among campuses.

But even without this problem, CEQA would be meaningless if the current 2020 LRDP EIR were legally viable. In its comments on the Draft EIR, the City decries the EIR’s lack of public process, and cites inadequate project alternatives, failure to address cumulative impact, faulty definitions of the baselines and of significance, inadequacy of proposed mitigations, lack of detail and specificity, and insufficient background information. A Final EIR that conforms to the intent and the letter of CEQA will be a useful document that could guide the University to less damaging alternatives, including expansion alternatives away from the crowded Berkeley core campus environs, and to acceptable mitigation of damages in Berkeley.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Demand a meaningful and informative EIR, in conformance with both the letter and intent of the California Environmental Quality Act, that includes proper examination of a wide range of alternatives.
2. Insist that the revised Final EIR adequately address all the deficiencies of the current version, and be re-circulated to allow for public and City response.
3. If this does not occur, sue the University to prevent the adoption of the 2020 LRDP on the grounds that the EIR is grossly inadequate in assessing the LRDP’s environmental impacts.

Financial Mitigations

The City of Berkeley has a large number of tax-exempt properties, many of these owned or leased by the University of California. These tax-exempt institutions create a large hidden fiscal impact on the city and residents as the burden for paying for services is shifted to property taxpayers, who cannot continue to support so many “freeloading” institutions—especially a large and wealthy institution like UCB. Many of us also feel that Berkeley, with its diverse population and limited resources, should not be forced to subsidize the private corporations who benefit from much of the campus research. In terms of public benefit, if the entire world benefits from UCB’s research, why should one small city bear the entire subsidy burden? Finally, one might imagine the more beautiful and livable city Berkeley might be today if we had collected approximately $11 million per year for the past 30 years, and used it to improve downtown, Southside, and other problematic areas near UCB.

Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT fees) are negotiated fees paid by tax-exempt entities to compensate for the loss of property tax revenue and to cover the cost of municipal services provided to the exempt entity. PILOT fees are not mitigations or compensations for the deterioration of neighborhoods, but rather should be directly related to the services the City provides UCB. In June of 2004 the City of Berkeley released a Fiscal Impact Analysis of UCB on the City, which should be used as the basis for immediate action to obtain commensurate PILOT fees from the University.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Insist on accurate and adequate PILOT fees from the University and LBNL, for both existing and planned construction. Of particular concern is the increasing strain on the City’s sewer and storm water infrastructure. Use all means necessary to ensure that UCB pays for the services it uses.
2. Deny encroachments unless an adequate PILOT fee is agreed to and becomes a condition of the encroachment permit.
3. Make public all fees and amounts paid by the University to the City of Berkeley. Provide details of what city services were given for each fee.
4. Discourage further real estate purchases which will take properties off the tax-rolls, or negotiate PILOT fees based on lost tax and assessment revenue for proposed exempt projects as part of the Planning and Zoning approval process.
5. Request a percentage of all grant monies to UCB or LBNL for “overhead” to the City.
6. Ensure that all non-education-related properties, such as commercial or research joint-ventures, of UCB are assessed their “fair share” of taxes, fees, and assessments.

Residential Parking

The parking problems in neighborhoods around UCB would not exist without the activities of the University. Increasingly, neighborhood streets near the campus function as parking lots for UCB, taking a scarce resource from residents who are then frequently unable to park within reasonable walking distance of their homes. UCB benefits by monopolizing this part of the commons for their own use, and the residents near UCB pay the cost in increased traffic, pollution, and hardship, as well as lost time and money. UCB should take responsibility for the parking problems it causes, both days and evenings, in all neighborhoods near the University.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Insist that the University contribute sufficient funds and/or personnel to adequatel enforce all parking regulations in the neighborhoods near the University core campus and "“off-campus” sites.
2. Immediately review and improve the RPP parking program in the neighborhoods near the campus.
3. Examine and implement all possible incentive programs to encourage students, faculty, and staff to avoid driving cars to campus. Such programs include public transit passes, city “car share” programs, shuttle bus services, and outreach programs with rewards for specific goal attainment.
4. Work with UCB to implement rules prohibiting all first-year undergraduates from bringing cars to campus, and develop procedures that discourage other undergraduate students from doing so.
5. Establish rules restricting the number of RPP-zone parking permits issued to group housing facilities such as rooming houses, fraternities, sororities, and co-ops.
6. Encourage UCB to maximize the use of all its parking lots throughout the day. The lots should be convenient and affordable to the public whenever they are not required for University use.

Special Event Parking

Recently, there has been a marked increase in attendance at UCB-sponsored special events. At least once a week—and often several times each week—residents struggle with the influx of thousands of visitors to events at Memorial Stadium, the Greek Theater, Zellerbach Hall, Haas Pavilion, and other locations. Current parking venues are not sufficient for these vehicles. So visitors regularly fill up the parking spaces throughout residential neighborhoods.

Basketball games at Haas Pavilion need special attention, because basketball games are numerous and the games take place in the evening alongside many other campus activities and when RPP zone parking restrictions are no longer in effect. The mitigation agreement reached years ago has not succeeded in minimizing residential parking problems during basketball games.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Post officers or barricades at neighborhood entrances around UCB during major special events, such as football games, to direct visitors away from residential neighborhoods.
2. Insist that UCB establish satellite parking lots to be used for special event parking, and use shuttle buses to transport people to the campus area.
3. Require that UCB consult with neighborhood representatives regarding parking space use and bus staging areas for major events, to minimize neighborhood inconvenience.
4. Encourage UCB to adjust scheduling of events so that there are never two major events occurring at the same time.
5. Renegotiate mitigations for events at the Haas Pavilion so that they reduce neighborhood parking problems. Establish regular review procedures to insure that the mitigations are effective.
6. Institute double or triple fines for illegal parking on “game days” and perhaps other major events at UCB.

Pedestrian Safety and Walkability

To maintain the viability of UCB in its dense urban setting (in which a significant percentage of its students and many of its staff and professors live near and walk to campus), pedestrian access to campus must be maintained and enhanced. Most important is the safety of street crossings and sidewalks, and accompanying injury reduction, both from traffic accidents and crime. Secondarily, in dense urban neighborhoods, high walkability combined with a growing diversity of destinations and an easily accessible public transportation system can reduce auto reliance and therefore auto ownership.

In order to accommodate any of the 2020 LRDP growth projections, an investment in improved walkability is required, including enhanced intersection crossings and wider sidewalks, particularly on the arteries feeding the University. Where, as near the campus, walking is the predominant transportation mode, more of the public right of way must be configured to accommodate safe, convenient, attractive trips on foot. Doing so will not only benefit the transportation system and reduce traffic congestion, but it will also improve quality of life and the neighborhood character of residential streets (through trees, pedestrian lighting, “eyes on the street,” and crime reduction) and the economic vitality of commercial areas (through more local shopping, street seating, etc.). The latter will help produce the increased property and sales taxes the City needs.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Assure intersection safety and accessibility, crossing improvements, and wider sidewalks at intersections where needed within two blocks of campus, starting with the most dangerous arterials.
2. Work with UCB to improve walkability at campus borders, beginning with the most dangerous areas.
3. Require meaningful mitigations from UCB, to include pedestrian access improvements in areas impacted by UCB-development-generated-traffic, and to mitigate the transportation impacts of past, present, and future UCB developments and activities.
4. Require full compliance by UCB with the City’s own Pedestrian Standards During Construction Projects (honored by contractors with the City) as a condition of any Public Right-of-Way Construction Transportation Plan and Permit.

Traffic

The continued increase in the size of the student body and staff at both UCB and LBNL has greatly increased the volume of traffic and exacerbated congestion in Berkeley. Due to the location of UCB and LBNL, access requires crossing the city, frequently through residential neighborhoods. A 2002 study survey by the UCB Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning revealed that 71% of residents in neighborhoods adjacent to the University cited traffic, noise, pollution, parking and speeding cars as problematic. Special event traffic, in particular for football games at Memorial Stadium and events at the Greek Theater, can bring public roadways to a standstill. Significant structural changes are needed in UCB and LBNL’s transportation and traffic policies to restore habitability to neighborhoods throughout Berkeley. Neighborhood livability continues to deteriorate in part because UCB has failed to follow through meaningfully on its previous transit mitigation agreements.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Demand that UCB not proceed with the construction of 2300 additional parking spaces, and planned in the 2020 LRDP. This must be accompanied by protection of adequate parking in all residential areas (low, medium, and high density), except for a few specified “car-free” zones.
2. Demand that UCB make a commitment that its planned LRDP expansion will be achieved with no net increase in automobile trips to campus.
3. Insist that UCB distribute a free or low-cost AC Transit Eco-Pass to all employees, including professors, of both UCB and LBNL.
4. Urge UCB to work with BART to develop an Eco-Pass program.
5. Urge UCB and LBNL to make their shuttles free to the community.
6. Insist that UCB establish remote parking lots at arterial feeders to campus, such as on Highways 24 and 13, and at the foot of Gilman and University Avenues, with shuttle buses to campus.

Construction Impacts, Mitigations, and Standards

Currently UCB construction contractors have little regard for, and seldom mitigate their major impacts on, the environs surrounding UCB projects. Those impacts are substantial in the dense urban environs of UCB, and result not only in short-term damage, but also in long-term damage as neighborhood quality of life is damaged to the point that long-term residents move out. With more forethought and planning, construction disruptions to the neighborhood, transportation and parking system, and campus can be minimized. In the past UCB and the City have only thought about how to make it easiest for the construction project, how to make some money for the City, and perhaps how to keep cars moving.

BLUE therefore requests the City of Berkeley:

1. Require UCB to follow the City’s Construction Standards and Practices as a condition of any temporary Public Right of Way encroachment permit, development transportation plan, or other regulatory permission granted to UCB. The Construction Standards and Practices are currently being developed by the Ad Hoc Public Works & Transportation Committee, to be adopted by the City. Also require UCB to follow the standard City use permit construction day/hour restrictions, or an amended noise ordinance, as opposed to the current more liberal noise ordinance.
2. Encourage UCB to follow Caltrans’ lead by adopting and implementing the Context Sensitive Solutions process for development projects and construction mitigations.
3. To protect Berkeley’s pedestrians, more stringently enforce the rules against UCB blocking crosswalks and sidewalks, and the rules requiring maintenance of a continuously accessible clear path of travel, especially where, as near UCB, there are many pedestrians.
4. To protect Berkeley’s residents and businesses, more stringently enforce the City’s parking regulations against construction vehicles, both for metered and non-metered parking spaces.
5. Require UCB to reimburse the City for the full costs of the additional enforcement needed to ensure effective compliance with construction standards.
6. 6. When temporary encroachments are “sold” to UCB to enable construction, use a part of the proceeds to mitigate UCB damage to the impacted neighborhood.

UCB Memorial Stadium

BLUE supports relocating Memorial Stadium, whose present location was controversial and foolish 80 years ago and is even more foolish now. Carrying the athletic program through the 21st century, while generating revenue for both Cal Athletics and the developer/s, will entail a greatly intensified use of the UCB stadium, in which case another location, where a stadium can be used to its full capacity, is the intelligent alternative. A relocated stadium would enable expanded commercial use without damaging surrounding neighborhoods, and will be more convenient for most attendees at major events, who come by vehicle, not on foot.

Memorial Stadium currently has substantial adverse impacts on the City. These include citywide traffic problems; parking problems that extend well over a mile from the stadium; event noise; and patron behavioral problems that include noise, litter, public drunkenness, and petty delinquency) that extend far beyond the stadium’s immediate surrounding neighborhoods. Because the Hayward Fault lies directly underneath the stadium, it poses a threat of harm to spectators and neighbors alike in the event of a major earthquake or evacuation scenario. Intensified use at the current location will create greater environmental impacts at odds with the City’s General Plan, will be detrimental to the many residential neighborhoods near the stadium, and will shift the land use from primarily residential to primarily high-impact athletic and/or commercial use. Super-bright, permanently installed stadium lighting is but one example of intensified use of Memorial Stadium, and a highly objectionable one. It is also alarming in the context of UCB’s four previous broken promises (1974, 1981, 1990, and 1999) not to intensify use of the stadium.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. 1. Challenge UCB’s LRDP EIR, which ignores the changes at the stadium. Ignoring this one major project in the LRDP and the EIR would be enough to challenge the legality of the EIR.
2. 2. Sue the University if UCB undertakes stadium improvements piecemeal, “segments” the project, and does not prepare an EIR that thoroughly examines reasonable alternatives. This is a new project: a rebuild, not a retrofit.
3. 3. Lobby for a change of location and encourage UCB to hold public discussions about alternative locations.
4. 4. Take a strong position against commercial use of the stadium and be prepared to lobby for an enforceable covenant between UCB and the City that would prohibit commercial use.
5. 5. Request a risk assessment for various hazard scenarios, on a stadium that holds up to 70,000 people, for an indeterminate number of events, in the context of the local population, within a confined geographic space, and with numerous uncertainties, such as delays in response time.
6. 6. In the short term, prepare a plan to reduce the impacts to residents, e.g. increased fines for parking violations, increased enforcement on game days.

Strawberry Creek Watershed Cleanup

In addition to aesthetic concerns about creeks and clean water, preservation of the groundwater in California must be of the highest priority, because in an emergency Berkeley groundwater will be used for domestic, municipal, irrigation, and industrial purposes. If the soil and groundwater contamination is not cleaned up, it will continue to move down the hill and pollute more of the City of Berkeley. Of particular concern is the pollution of Strawberry Creek, which already is daylighted in sections of the city.

BLUE therefore requests that the City of Berkeley:

1. Participate in the public comment on the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (LBNL) Corrective Measures Study Report (CMS), which outlines proposed cleanup methods and remedies for the LBNL site in the Strawberry Creek Watershed (expected in January of 2005, sponsored by the Department of Toxic Substance Control [DTSC]).
2. In the City’s public comments and thereafter, demand a complete cleanup of the soils and groundwater of this UCB property.
3. Demand that LBNL evaluate cleanup scenarios within the context of residential zoning.

Conclusion

While the University offers much to the residents of Berkeley, the relationship between UCB and the City is currently grossly out of balance. Immediate neighbors of UCB bear the brunt of traffic, parking problems, congestion, and construction noise and pollution, and have experienced a significant deterioration of neighborhood quality of life. The proposed expansion of UCB and LBNL as presented in their respective 2020 LRDPs will exacerbate these problems and move the impacts even farther out into the City of Berkeley.

BLUE urges the City of Berkeley and our elected officials (Mayor and Council members) to take the strongest possible stand to protect the residents of Berkeley from the increasing physical and financial burdens that these two institutions impose upon our city and its residents.

Appendix.

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