City Council says “We shall go down with the ship”
(Written by kencraw)
Well after hearing two hours of comments from every side involved, the Berkeley City Council decided last night that they were going to continue forward with the lawsuit. If they want to go down with that ship, fine, let them go down. While I’d much prefer to see the issue settled out of court, even though it would mean concessions, it seems to me pretty obvious that the University is going to win this lawsuit. The lone issue that the judge posted the injunction on was proven beyond a reasonable doubt not to the valid and the other issues fall well within the law.
So I guess the University is going to get its 900 space parking lot and only have to plant saplings instead of mature trees.
Nice going City of Berkeley… you just lost all your bargaining power.
September 5th, 2007 at 10:54 am
It’s even better than that. Whether described as burning bridges or a wasteful spending of political capital, the City will also lose much/most/all of its influence over the next phase, the stadium retrofit. That’s what has long bewildered me about this issue. Why go so strong against the training center, whose design appears to be so benign, when the elephant in the room is the subsequent stadium project. I, for one, would have once been at least somewhat sympathetic to neighbor concerns about new stadium lighting and potential view obstruction. But not anymore. Indeed, there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind seeing a new training facility built on top of People’s Park, just out of spite. The battle lines are drawn, and the university should now do whatever it sees fit–which it is virtually entitled to do under state law. When will the voters of Berkeley wake up and realize their government has been hijacked by the irrational, the ignorant, and perhaps even the insane. Hey Country Joe, “One, two, three, four, what are YOU fightin’ for?” Really, I want to know, because you make no frickin’ sense, not even to a proud, old Lefty such as myself.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
I wish I shared your optimisim about the outcome of this case, but I have to agree that the city of Berkeley’s conduct on this issue has been nothing short of insane. Here we have a dying city–a city with a downtown and main commercial vancany rate growing higher and higher every year. And these idiots are trying to stop something that would bring 80,000 money-spending people to said downtown and commerical districts every other fall Saturday. I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense, and can only be chalked up to irrational hatred of the UC and of sports in general. This true-blue liberal finds their actions deplorable and tantamount to prejudice.
September 5th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I’m not really sure what my level of optimism is Joshiemac. While part of me thinks that the facts in this case are so clear cut we have nothing to fear, a big part of me knows that anything can happen in court (as a short aside, how bad is it that “anything can happen in court” is just accepted common knowledge? I thought the idea was that they were unbiased and could be counted on to rule consistently and fairly?).
What I will say is this, both sides have something to fear in going to court. The University seems to be willing to recognize this and has put a number of proposals on the table to settle out of court. The only thing they haven’t been willing to negotiate is the location. The City of Berkeley, on the other hand, has not put one single proposal out there. They seem completely unwilling to recognize that if they lose in court, they lose everything.