Toxics Group Fears Red Tape
Tiller Russell, Berkeley Voice, February 20, 1997

Public outcry over a seemingly innocuous shift in city management structure has prompted Mayor Shirley Dean to call a March 6 meeting between city staff and environmentalists, who fear the Toxics Management Division is in danger of being relocated to oblivion.

City Manager Jim Keene recently dissolved the Office of Special Community services in a wave of reorganization. Among the many programs affected, toxics is arguably the most controversial.

Assistant City Manager Peggy Kirihara said the departmental changes are designed to increase the efficiency of the effected programs. Critics fear the precise opposite to be the case.

Dean's assistant Tamlyn Bright said that member of the Citizens Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC) and local activists will meet with Dean, Keene, and other city staff members to discuss the issue.

Toxics is being moved from the disbanded Office of Special Services to the Department of Health and Human Services, where it will be placed under the Environmental Health subdivision.

Critics fear that reassignment will entangle the issue of toxics in a web of health and human services red tape. As CEAC Chair Jami Caseber put it, "We're concerned that it won't be able to protect the health and safety of people and the environment if it has to go through five layers of bureaucracy to do its job."

CEAC recommended that toxics be placed in the planning department instead. Caseber said the commission's recommendation was "taken and ignored."

"We are being shut out of the decision-making process," Caseber said. "As members of the commission, we are representatives of the community, and I don't feel that the community's interests and desires are being served by the city manager's decision."

Environmental activist and video maker L A Wood echoes Caseber's criticism. "The extent of the concern about the environment is unique to Berkeley. This issue is simply too important to the community to be made by the city manager alone," he said.

Wood's demand for a public hearing prompted Dean to include him in the March 6 meeting.

Assistant City Manager Phil Kamlarz maintains that Keene did take CEAC's recommendations into consideration. He also said Keene discussed the matter with toxics staff.

Kamlarz insisted on the city manager's right to make the decision without a public hearing. "I've been with the city for 22 years," he said. "Interdepartmental changes like this are always done by our office. That's our job."

A recent memo from the city manager's office stated that the reorganization aims to "enhance coordination and consolidate services." Kirihara expanded on that. "[Community Services] was composed of many disparate programs," Kirihara said. "It functioned as a kind of holding tank until the different programs could be re-assigned to more appropriate departments. Now those assignments are being made."

Other programs affected by the dissolution of the Office of Special Services include animal services, emergency services, garages, and a number of others.

CEAC's unsuccessful recommendation to the city cited the Advance Planning department as the most logical choice for toxics because the two offices are often in contact with one another. Furthermore, CEAC said, the toxics office "does not interact in any significant manner with Environmental Health."

Both the Planning Director and toxics supervisor agreed CEAC, Caseber told the Voice. Toxics Director Nabil Al-Hadithy withheld comment. Director of Planning and Development Gil Kelly could not be reached for this story.

When asked why Keene vetoed assigning toxics to planning, Kamlarz responded with questions of his own. "Why is planning better? And more importantly, why should the city want to fail at this?"

To curb the program's independence and proactive stance, answer critics like Laurie Bright, Steering Committee Chair of the Citizens Opposed to a Polluted Environment (COPE). Touching on the recent tritium controversy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Bright, who will also attend the meeting with Mayor, said, "The city manager's office doesn't want to make waves with the university and LBL."

City staff urge calm. Placing toxics under health and human services is an interim step, they say. "You can think of it as a trial basis. A transition. It's by no means irreversible," said Kamlarz.