Pubdate: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 Source: Berkeley Daily Planet (US CA) Copyright: 2004 The Berkeley Daily Planet Contact: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1238 Author: Matthew Artz, Berkeley Daily Planet Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) CONTROVERSY LOOMS OVER COUNCIL BALLOT VOTE The City Council Tuesday placed three controversial measures on the November ballot, but not before tweaking their wording and going on record opposing their passage-all in a manner one councilmember thought might violate state law. In other news from Tuesday's meeting-the last before a nine-week summer recess-the council agreed to provide emergency funding to a debt-ridden local jobs program and threw out a neighborhood vote on undergrounding utility wires because of a legal issue and confusion over the project's cost to residents. This was the council's last meeting before the summer break. The council will next meet on Sept. 21. The ballot measures would make prostitution the city's lowest police priority, grant new rights to medical cannabis users and distributors-including by-right zoning for new cannabis clubs in commercial districts-and establish a board to regulate the city's public trees. The City Council wants none of the above, so last week-instead of simply placing them on the ballot, which they are required to do-they created a four-member subcommittee to revise the ballot summaries that voters will read on their touch-screen voting machines and sample ballots. After Mayor Tom Bates and Councilmember Dona Spring wrangled over ballot language, the subcommittee unanimously approved slight revisions to the prostitution and marijuana measures and reached general agreement on more substantive changes to the ballot summary for the tree initiative. But there was one problem, said Councilmember Kriss Worthington after the council meeting. The subcommittee reached "unanimous" agreement without ever meeting face-to-face. The subcommittee reported they met "informally and via e-mail" to reach a consensus, which Worthington believed violated the state's Brown Act prohibiting the majority of members of an official public body from discussing an issue outside of a noticed-public meeting. "Every subcommittee that I've been on has been governed by the Brown Act," he said. But City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said the subcommittee was an ad hoc body, not subject to the Brown Act. The law would only have applied, she said, if the subcommittee had a fixed meeting schedule, comprised a majority of the council or a continuing matter of jurisdiction, like the council's Agenda Committee. Attorneys for the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) and California Aware sided with Albuquerque. "I hate to say it but she's right," said Lisa Sitkin, a San Francisco attorney who mans the CFAC hotline. "It's all carved out there and she followed it to the letter." "I'm not positive that it's illegal, but I think it's immoral," Worthington said. "When we appoint subcommittees I think the public should know what they're doing." He said Albuquerque gave him the impression that the subcommittee never met in person because the meeting would have to be noticed. Worthington also griped about the council's vote to oppose the measures they placed on the ballot when the meeting agenda didn't specify that such a vote would take place. Albuquerque replied the vote was legal since the all three measures were listed on the meeting agenda for discussion. The council's vote to oppose them Tuesday can now be incorporated into the official opposing arguments mailed to voters. Also reaching voters before the election will be the city attorney's analysis of the measures, much to the chagrin of tree ordinance sponsor Elliot Cohen, who last week argued the city attorney's analysis and the city's impact report on his measure were full of inaccuracies and overestimated the price of his proposed tree board at $250,000 annually plus $100,000 in start-up costs. After Cohen met with city officials last week to address his concerns, the city attorney's analysis now simply lists initial costs at $350,000. Albuquerque said she had to compress the two cost figures previously written in two separate sentences to include other language that Cohen requested and keep the analysis within the mandated 500 words. Cohen, though, smelled a rat. "Sine I complained about inaccuracies they raised it to $350,000," he said. "When the city collapses two sentences into one and it costs them $100,000, they need to learn how to edit." He still insists that the tree board, empowered to license tree workers and regulate the planting and removal of trees, would cost far less than $250,000 and require a quarter-time staff member to administer, not two full-time staffers as the city estimates. But Deputy City Manager Lisa Caronna said the tree ordinance would be "incredibly cumbersome" and require a huge amount of staff work to serve the board, hear appeals, conduct investigations and administer the ordinance. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake