Update, May 1, 2:40 p.m. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín wrote that “this lawsuit is not about the Upper Hearst Project, but about holding the University accountable.” He said council members are very much in favor of university efforts to add housing, but that “The Upper Hearst Development is a worthy project and should not be saddled by a flawed EIR or cramming the issue of greater student enrollment into the report.” See the full statement on the mayor’s website.
Update, May 1, 1 p.m. The Berkeley mayor’s brief announcement Tuesday night about a council decision to give the city attorney authority to file a lawsuit against UC Berkeley provoked statements Wednesday from the university and city staff to clarify what each side sees as the key issues at play. The original story, filed Tuesday night, appears below. This is the third update.
Berkeley city spokesman Matthai Chakko said Wednesday afternoon that the lawsuit under consideration is primarily focused on what the city describes as the “dramatic impact of exponential population growth” at UC Berkeley and the university’s failure to plan for it. Chakko cited a third-party analysis, requested by the city, that put the university’s “net fiscal impact” on the city, in 2018 alone, at more than $21 million. That relates to everything from city police, fire and public health services to wear and tear on city streets to exacerbating the housing crunch, Chakko said.
A spokesman for UC Berkeley told Berkeleyside earlier in the day (scroll down) that campus impacts have been lower than projected. He said UC Berkeley paid the city close to $1.8 million during the current fiscal year and would continue to make similar payments into the foreseeable future.
But Chakko took issue with the idea of lower-than-projected impacts. He said the university previously projected a 5% population growth rate that is now estimated to hit 29%. He said the Upper Hearst Development itself — referenced Tuesday night by the mayor in his remarks — is not the city’s main worry, but rather what appears to be an attempt by the university to hide its “massive population growth” in that project’s environmental analysis. That’s why the city believes the Upper Hearst EIR is flawed and why it’s considering filing suit, he said.
Update, May 1, 10:48 a.m. Dan Mogulof, UC Berkeley’s assistant vice chancellor of executive communications, told Berkeleyside on Wednesday morning that “the campus is prepared to successfully defend its position in court,” but hopes it will not come to that.
Berkeley’s mayor announced Tuesday night that the city is prepared to sue the regents over a proposed development on Hearst Avenue and a recent environmental report. (Scroll down for the original story.)
Mogulof said in a prepared statement Wednesday that the university “is ready to continue payments for the mitigation of its impacts at current levels pending completion of a new Long Range Development plan” (LRDP) — and has informed the city of this — even though a recent supplemental environmental impact report found that campus impacts have been lower than projected.
Mogulof told Berkeleyside in February that the university paid the city of Berkeley $1,770,698 in 2018-19, which included payments from the Chancellor’s Partnership Fund for projects deemed to improve the quality of life in Berkeley. Those payments are set to continue for at least two more years while the new LRDP is underway.
“We hope that continued dialogue will lead the City to decide that litigation is unnecessary, and not worth the extraordinary expense,” Mogulof said in Wednesday statement. He described the university’s work with the city to date as “continued, constructive collaboration.”
“Rather than relying on the zero-sum outcomes of litigation,” he said, “we see great value for our institutions and communities in continued dialogue and negotiation.”
Original story, Tuesday, April 30: The Berkeley City Council says it is prepared to sue the University of California regents over a campus housing project proposed north of UC Berkeley and a supplement to UC’s 2020 development plan, the mayor announced Tuesday evening.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín told the public that the closed session council vote, which took place Monday, was unanimous.
Arreguín told the public, at the beginning of Tuesday evening’s regular council meeting, just before 6:50 p.m., that officials voted to authorize the city attorney to initiate litigation against the regents, who make up the 26-member governing board of the University of California.
The lawsuit would focus on the 150-unit Upper Hearst Development that the Goldman School of Public Policy is working on at Hearst and La Loma avenues, and the university’s amendment to its Supplemental Environmental Impact Report (SEIR) for its 2020 Long Range Development Plan, which is related to the Upper Hearst project.
The mayor warned the university earlier this month, in a letter, that UC Berkeley should not include a jump in student enrollment in the update to the environmental impact report for the new academic and housing complex on Hearst Avenue. The 1-acre residential and academic complex involves the demolition of the entire parking garage that’s currently at the site. The university has said it hopes to start work as soon as September.
The jump to 44,735 students on campus by 2022-23 differs significantly from the 2020 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) the university signed off on in 2005, and to which the city of Berkeley agreed, Arreguín wrote in the letter. His position was that UC Berkeley should prepare a separate report on the enrollment increase rather than use the environmental analysis for the Upper Hearst project as a way to update the 2020 plan.
“Increase in campus headcount by 11,285 students and its impacts were not studied in the 2020 LRDP and are, therefore, not ‘consistent’ with the project,” Arreguín wrote. The 2005 report said “the student population would grow by only 1,650 students between the 2001/02 academic year and then stabilize at that number by 2010. Instead, the student population has increased by almost seven times over that studied in the 2020 (report).”
UC officials have argued that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires the university to include updated enrollment figures in its examination of Upper Hearst. They also contend that the impact of increased enrollment has been less than what was expected in the 2005 LRDP and that the university has actually reduced its impact on the city in many ways, including a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste and water use.
Dan Mogulof, a campus spokesman, told Berkeleyside by email earlier this month, that “CEQA requires that the campus compare the potential impacts of a housing project such as the Upper Hearst Project with existing environmental conditions at the time the CEQA review occurs. Those environmental conditions most certainly include the current campus headcount. It is only by comparing the project with these baseline physical conditions that the campus can determine whether an impact is significant.”
Read the stories below for more detailed information. Berkeleyside will continue to follow the story.
Note: UC Berkeley says the housing element of the Upper Hearst project is focused on faculty. It will be made available to visiting scholars and postdoctoral students only if there is room. Berkeleyside updated this story May 14 to correct the record.
The housing should be built, but the city should get state funding for the previous increase in enrollment.
I think this is the most sensible solution for all parties involved. UC Berkeley should be allowed to build more housing but they should also be made to finally pay their fair share for the services that they use. They should also be forced to disband the UCPD and let BPD be expanded to take over the job of policing the campus. There are too many stories about UCPD trying to sweep crime under the rug and deliberately underreporting campus crime to “game the stats” so to speak.
I don’t have any view about UCPD.
I think “fair share” is a really tricky point. UC also brings a lot of economic activity to the city which generates tax revenue. So it’s really hard to think what UC should be paying. So I guess the city’s position is “as much as we can get through any levers we can”.
The city is really good at obstructing housing development.
More student housing and fewer cars. Sounds okay to me. I suspect UC’s main blunder was to omit the brown-shingle siding.
Totally off-topic, but those brown-shingle houses are going to go up like torches during the post-earthquake fires or if a wild-land fire hits the edge of the city. We should have mandates to eventually convert to fire-resistant siding and roofs. We’re required to address our foundations but nothing to address fire risk. Think Tubbs fire and the 2,800 homes burnt in Santa Rosa.
>”those brown-shingle houses are going to go up like torches…”
Doesn’t have to be real brown-shingle, any surface with about the same color and texture will work.
The first statement is what COE complains about. We lose 350 parking space. How will they solve this issue? They do not think about the staffs that help support the campus.
Wont someone think of the poor cars that wont have a home to spew exhaust and waste valuable land.
I’m very pleased that the Council showed some courage here. I hope to see more of that with respect to UC’s impact on the community.
Congrats to the Mayor & the Council for demanding at least some level of accountability, legality, and honesty from the almighty “University”.
UC has a long established habit of doing whatever it wants regardless of its impact on our city.
How about at least pretending to cooperate with the City of Berkeley?
Arreguin prefers homeless people full of drama and existencial problems over educated students to populate Berkeley.
Yeah, I guess it’s a MUST to have the students live in Berkeley. It’s not like there’s a bunch of other major cities nearby, tons of public transportation and parking garages so they can commute instead. Why add more long-term residents when we can add people that will stay in the area for 18-48 months?
A unanimous vote, and yet our council members wonder at the housing crisis. It has not occurred to them that ever increasing the cost and time it takes to build new housing is at the root of it.
Nice project, lots of construction jobs created, semi- affordable housing for students – students living in this housing project don’t need to commute, I don’t know how anybody can complain about this project.
Because said project is NOT what was initially approved. Therefore, UC Berkeley is attempting to pull a fast one.
And, I dunno, in the midst of a severe housing crisis, should we really be just adding endless new temporary dwellings for students who will mostly flee here the second they get their diploma?
Yes! Why not build more in the midst of a housing crisis?
And you don’t want the students to stay after they graduate so what if they do leave- you’re happy then right?
The students won’t stay in STUDENT HOUSING after they graduate. The UC kicks you out…
It seems to me you are in conflict with your own argument and you have asserted an untrue item. 1 nobody is creating “endless” temporary housing. 2. That is not the only housing that is being created- 1000’s of units in Oakland, hundreds in Berkeley.
And what is your position on “ fleeing students”? Is it a good/bad thing?
And you wonder why they flee after they get their diploma? Its solely the cost and lack of housing.
College exodus from your local community happens pretty much everywhere across this country. Agreed though that the Bay Area’s high prices would make students from around here more likely to bolt.
“should we really be just adding endless new temporary dwellings for students who will mostly flee here the second they get their diploma?”
The idea that new students will replace them in that same housing hasn’t crossed your mind, has it?
Still means it would be housing for people who aren’t long-term residents.
The problem is that we will lose 350 parking spots that staffs and faculties use heavily, especially the COE. There is no mention how they will solve this issue and COE put a halt on the project by questioning their method. We found out that the plan deviate from the original plan drastically, which made staff and faculty question the plan.
Its called a bus. Parking is a luxury in a city.
If a staff lives in concord, you expect that person to bus all the time? If a staff has a children to pick up, try to tell that to them and see what reaction you will get. You dont think of the staffs that help support the campus. It is one of the reasons that the faculty oppose the decision with majority agreement.
I suspect that the mayor is just trying to shake UC down for a couple more bucks, rather than on quality of life grounds
No adjustment has been made to the UCB to CoB yearly payment in more than a decade. Yet student population has well exceeded, by at least a third, UCOP’s own student population estimates for this same period. Hold them accountable!
Maybe the City should sue itself for providing housing for meth addicts and other wastrels we’ve encouraged to come here to “self-medicate.”
Student housing, paid for by statewide taxpayers, sounds a heck of a lot better than housing, paid for by Berkeley taxpayers, for addicts that have migrated here from around the country. Students might get a bit rowdy on weekends, but they don’t randomly assault people and steal their things. Wait till you have a run-in with one of these folks. Paying for their housing–our current plan–doesn’t make them any less dangerous.
UPDATE: The city of Berkeley weighs in on why it’s thinking of filing a lawsuit against UC Berkeley. It says, for one, a third-party analysis put Cal’s “net fiscal impact” on the city at more than $21 million in 2018 alone. That’s far above what UC pays. That’s just part of the issue, the city says. Read the full update at the top of the story.
EGGS-actly.
Jesse Arreguin is a drain on the Berkeley budget. Vote him out.
The City itself is currently championing building skyward all over the place – just look at the cranes. Certainly there is plenty of room to stuff an additional 40,000 students into Berkeley.
Shame on the Berkeley City council for trying to stand in the way of Progress. What we really need to do is return to filling the Bay. Lots of room out there for more students … and RVs.
Fill the Bay ok that is funny!
Also if you check out Google Earth there is plenty of green acreage from Tilden Park to Walnut Creek to develop..
.
Yes, Briones Park – oops, I mean “Briones Condos” – can EASILY accomodate 40,000 people. Just need to cut down a few Oak trees and get rid of some unsightly Open Space.
Anyway, “Open Space”? What’s with that???? If it’s “Open” it should be “Open” to development, right?
Jeez.
.
Open space is wasteland for junkies to encamp.
But if you take the YIMBY crowd at their word, why we should we protect the Bay when it could be filled and paved over with thousands more housing units? NOTHING MUST STAND IN THE WAY OF MORE HOUSING EVERYWHERE AT ANY DENSITY THAT ANY DEVELOPER PROPOSES, PERIOD. That seems to be the basic YIMBY message!
>”What we really need to do is return to filling the Bay.”
This is not a new idea. See the 1953 “Fried Egg Plan.” Note that it also includes an airport at Brooks Island. There’s a reason we have a BCDC.
https://people.well.com/user/pk/waterfront/photo-of-the-week/Photo050620.html“
I wouldn’t want the Bay to be filled any further, but a general aviation airport on Brooks Island is something I could support!
Cal keeps building and building. They have zero concerns about traffic and the impact on the city. Cal should freeze all Berkeley building and use that money on other UC campuses.
The population keeps growing and growing, and California keeps providing world class education. The problem is that cities, like Berkeley, have not increased housing density to accommodate the very predictable increases in population. This, of course, has not stopped the City of Berkeley to continue providing world class compensation, benefits, including lavish retirement benefits, to its employees.
Packing students into already tight Berkeley is stupid. There is plenty of space out in the central vally. Or even just over the hills near Livermore or out to Tracy. Cal needs to stop building in Berkeley and build another campus. Blaming Berkeley for keeping the place reasonably nice is just stupid. And putting more students in one of the highest cost of living locations the same. Yup, just keep packing people in. The road will take it! Nope!
Berkeley isn’t tight, and most students don’t have cars.
Problem is, the students don’t want to be in Livermore or Tracy. I know several who turned down UC Davis simply because they didn’t want to live in Davis.
Yeah why would students want/need to be near campus??? Its the geezer hippies that can live anywhere, they dont need to live in Berkeley other than to pat themselves on the back that they live where the 60s happened which earns them cred in their philosophy book clubs drinking chai. Its about time Berkeley, a city that gets on its high horse about changing society, stop being hypocrits about not wanting to change anything in and about Berkeley. Build some dam housing for once instead of freezing everything in amber from 1966 and most of all get rid of that garbage heap Peoples Park, 1000 people could have lived there every single year the last 50 years.
“Packing students into already tight Berkeley is stupid. ”
Maybe, but turning down an influx of potential customers for goods and services while at the same time pandering to a bunch of homeless derelicts is even MORE stupid. If all of you are worried about overcrowding and the burden on Berkeley’s infrastructure, where’s your indignation over policies that attract more and more indigents while refusing to build housing for people who actually have money?
The people who live in Berkeley and don’t like the changes are free to move to those places you suggest. If they are such a great alternative, perhaps you’ll consider moving there too.
They afraid to lose their precious view.
The college student age population has only grown modestly in California. The UC Regents themselves estimate that they need room for 10,000 more students system-wide (e.g., ten campuses). Now hear comes UCB saying that they need 11,285 more students. This is not about meeting an education mandate or educating California residents. It’s about stuffing more non-resident students and mid-career professional into the campus to generate revenue to pay for UCB’s bloated bureaucracy and money-losing Football stadium.
Glad to hear it! The university’s net fiscal impact is 21m yet they only pay 1.8m. PAY UP! The university’s projected growth rate was 5% yet it will soon be at 29%. NO MORE STUDENTS! This lawsuit is long overdue.
UC Berkeley brings a lot more to the city of Berkeley than the City of Berkeley brings to UC Berkeley.
This is just a shakedown, and represents that attitude of our city leaders focusing on anywhere it can to squeeze revenue, whether it’s UCB or tax payers (with consultants helping how to frame issues to get Berkeley voters to agree to yet another bond without the requirement to spend it on what was cleverly implied in the ballot initiative, but not quite legally required; notice how our streets and other infrastructure are languishing).
A city run by people with brains, or even just by greedy capitalists, would realize that these students provide a ready market for food, clothing, and HOUSING, hence a net influx of revenue to Berkeley. Yet the city as a whole looks for every excuse to sandbag new housing development while at the same time rolling out the welcome mat for indigent homeless with all their accompanying health/safety issues that make them a net drain on local resources. These clowns are no better than the fruitcakes running Zimbabwe or Venezuela for all their understanding of basic economic principles.
If you paid property taxes in this city, you might have a different viewpoint as you see the city streets torn up with thousands upon thousands of campus commuters, staff and students, ruin them. Also, just because students eat downtown does not mean the city and its residents benefit from such business.
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Why aren’t people in an uproar over that! You pay the taxes you get nothing. The roads suck here . Where does that money go?
This is a very silly discussion and a silly move by the city.
1) UCB’s growth is a mandate by the state.
2) Without UCB and its growth Berkeley by itself would be just as bad as Richmond or any other town in the east bay. It is UCB that attracts people and drives the economy not the food not the “culture” or what else people may think.
3) The city is changing and we cant be stuck in the 70’s and this is a good thing.
On the nose
Not a damn thing wrong with Richmond thankyouverymuch!
None of UC’s student population growth or proposed new growth has benefited California residents. The state mandate would call for maybe around 1,300 more students (based on the growth in college-aged Californians, not 11,285. UC’s growth is a money grab to increase out-of-state and international students who pay full fees and increase high-priced certificate programs for mid-career professional –all to cover the huge deficit caused by the ill-considered Memorial Stadium rehab project.
Oh and more. UC is not proposing a single additional unit of housing to accommodate its proposed growth. Meanwhile, Berkeley is saddled with providing services to the tune of $21M annually while being paid $1.7M by UC. That does not sound like a good thing to me!
UC students are California residents. Them getting a UC education is a benefit. Also the service estimates seem to have methodological problems such as assuming without enrollment no one would move in instead.
Why pay HBO for watching a fight when we have a doozy shaping up here? ..
How about sending all those high paying international students to Merced campus, where there is lots of room? And CHEAP housing! Don’t think UC students’ lunch traffic downtown makes up for the grief. Too much. We don’t owe the world an education while our infrastructure collapses from the burden. Rent out the chancellor’s digs.
It would probably be much cheaper to just send all those Berkeley residents who complain to Merced instead.
Clearly in Berkeley “inclusiveness” sounds a lot better as a bumpersticker on a rusting VW bus because all that matters is people think you are so progressive and tolerant, when really Berkeley has the drawbridge mentality of a gated community full of country club conservatives.
Berkeley residents don’t like giving other people “free rides” any more than angry young YIMBYs do.
Your comments indicate that you live in Seattle. Why are you posting here?
Because I’m trying to move back to Oakland/Berkeley where I grew up.
Thank you!!
This makes me so sad. UC Berkeley makes a valliant effort to make the city liveable and provide a great education system, City of Berkeley makes it difficult. Please stop!
UC Berkeley does not pay property taxes to cover the costs of the city services that they use. If they did the city might not have such an adversarial relationship with them.
Utter nonsense.
Don’t be sad, be mad! UC is not contributing its fair share to its host city and that negatively impacts your quality of life.
The 2020 LRDP maximum enrollment levels have already been exceeded by c. 5,000 students, and that doesn’t include the numerous overseas and out-of-state students doing special courses. Nor will the proposed 44,000 number. Some estimates put these short-term students at as many as 10,000. The article admits that Cal is paying the City only a few % of the costs it incurs. To add insult to injury, Cal is buying or leasing City property, and taking it off the tax rolls. Berkeley wouldn’t be the same without Cal, but we’re bending over backwards for the privilege of having them here.
The regents are scheduled to vote on Upper Hearst tomorrow. Here’s our story: https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/05/14/uc-regents-to-vote-wednesday-on-upper-hearst-project-in-berkeley