PROSTITUTION OPPOSED, MARIJUANA AND TREES IGNORED

Last summer members of the City Council seemed ready to fight three
citizen-initiated measures on the November ballot that would promote
decriminalizing prostitution, liberalize medical pot laws and set up a
board to protect trees.

But as election time has rolled around the only initiative that city
leaders have opted to contest is one whose author insists is purely
symbolic.

"This won't change anything," said Robyn Few, author of The Angel
Initiative (Measure Q), which would make prostitution the city's
lowest police priority, require police to make semi-annual reports of
its programs to curb prostitution and require the City Council to
lobby the state to decriminalize the world's oldest profession.

When the measure was placed on the ballot three months ago, police
agreed with Few. Police spokesman Joe Okies said the force would
continue to perform sting operations on San Pablo Avenue, the city's
main drag for street walkers. So far this year sting operations have
resulted in about 70 arrests, he said.

But City Manager Phil Kamlarz said Thursday the city hasn't determined
if police would be able to conduct the stings if prostitution is the
force's lowest priority. Even if the measure passes, Kamlarz said the
city will be required under state law to enforce prostitution laws.

While the city now says it is unclear on the ramifications of the
measure, Councilmember Linda Maio has been rounding up dollars and
support from San Pablo Avenue merchants to defeat it. As of Oct. 16,
the Campaign Against Measure Q had raised $7,864.

"If they don't enforce the laws, we'll be inundated with prostitutes,"
said Jack Fox, the owner of a San Pablo Avenue transmission shop, who
contributed $100 to Maio's effort.

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who has remained neutral on the
measure, said he didn't think Fox's contribution was money well spent.

"It's all political rah-rah," he said. "All the measure says is that
it would be a low priority, which it already is."

But Brad Smith, the treasurer of the No on Q campaign and Maio's
legislative aide," insisted that the measure wasn't symbolic and that
law enforcement could help prostitutes seek help.

"Without the hammer of the criminal justice system there is no
opportunity to get people into recovery programs," he said.

Although Measure Q doesn't initiate programs to assist prostitutes,
Few said the measure's passage would symbolize to prostitutes what
they can accomplish politically.

If voters pass Measure R, medical cannabis users and collectives could
also claim a mighty political achievement.

The measure would give the city's three cannabis dispensaries by-right
zoning privileges to move their operations to any avenue zoned for
commercial uses, allow licensed patients to grow as much marijuana as
they deem is medically necessary, transfer oversight of the clubs to a
panel of club officers and authorize the city to provide medical
cannabis if federal authorities raid the dispensaries.

The measure is the culmination of a contentious year between medical
cannabis advocates and the city. In February South Berkeley neighbors
pressured the city to prevent a club from moving to the intersection
of Sacramento and Russell streets and then in April the City Council
voted against a compromise measure to increase the city's marijuana
plant limit for individual patients from 10 to 72.

"This is all a reaction to what the city has done to us this year,"
said Charlie Pappas, a medical cannabis user who was featured on the
Measure Q campaign's mailing sent to Berkeley residents.

The promotion was funded in part from large contributions from the
cannabis dispensaries, but city leaders have opted not to raise money
to fight the measure.

"There's just so much we can do," said Councilmember Betty Olds. "We
have our own campaigns to run."

Mayor Tom Bates said a lot of the sting was taken out of the cannabis
measure earlier this month when the council passed a quota limiting
the number of cannabis clubs in Berkeley to three.

Asked about Berkeley's proclivity to support medical marijuana--the
city voted 86 percent in favor of the Compassionate Use Act which
decriminalized it--Bates said he thought Berkeley voters "will see
through this as an effort to get past local zoning rules."

When it comes to caring for the city's 40,200 public trees, Bates
thinks the city's forestry department can do a better job than a
proposed Berkeley Tree Board.

"It spends up to $350,000 on stuff the city is doing just fine," he
said.

But local environmentalist Elliot Cohen said the city's failure to
save trees near the public library and its acquiescence to removing
more trees in the Berkeley Marina necessitates the ordinance.

Cohen's proposal creates a new board to encourage the planting of
healthy trees and regulate changes to trees on public land. Anyone
seeking to work on a public tree would have to get a license from the
tree board, and any development that might affect a public tree would
require a "tree impact report."

City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque wrote that the ordinance would
interfere with the council's authority over city property, forcing it
to get tree board permission to remove public trees. She said the
ordinance would interfere with the city manager's charter authority to
administer city departments and personnel by specifying that the Tree
Board would use two staff members and would mandate a specified number
of trees to be planted annually.

City staff estimated the cost of the proposed new Tree Board would run
to $250,000 once it was operational and that to provide staffing the
city would have to transfer two Parks and Recreation Department employees.

Cohen countered that city staff had misread his initiative and were
inflating the cost as part of a campaign of scare tactics.

He said his proposal capped staffing at two full-time employees
($200,000), but under normal circumstances the Tree Board would
require only about one quarter to one-half of the time of only one
staff member.