More on this as of today.

Written by Jim Mason.

the more i think about this, i more i think we just got robbed, and we
might want to do something about it. both for ourselves, as well as
for others who might follow us in berkeley, as well as the general art
infrastructure in the area.

remember, under all this is a quiet zoning change movement and david
ornth wanting his new fire warehouse house in the abandoned rr tracks
next door to the shipayrd. the city has motivations well beyond the
particulars of our site.

unfortunately for them, they have used shoddy evidence to establish
their case. and they attacked a group of capable people with many
resources, talents, and friends everywhere. this all could turn very
bad for berkeley if we so chose to have some fun, as well as make some
good of all this.

here's what babalou wrote. and then my response.


On 5/12/07, babalou <bbl@babalou.com> wrote:
>
> I do want to point out that SF Gate and the fire marshal kept insisting
> that people were living at the space. Liam was living in the one legal area
> and occasionally others might have a space, but by and large no one was
> totally living at the Shipyard. Work space for artists is the point here.
> Believe it or not if they found a coffee cup or water kettle in a container
> slapped a violation on Jim for people inhabiting the place. An illegal
> kitchen without permit was the sink (not connected to anything) and stove
> (not connected either) as a illegal kitchen.



yes, the living claim is a red herring. what they found was a folded
up futon couch with a sleeping bag and a coffee pot. this individual
likely sometimes crashed there after a late night of work one a month.
but he was certainly not living there. there were no clothes or any
regular domestic items to show proper living. the pictures berkeley
took that day will prove this point.

then then also found the victorian costumes for neverwas hanging in a
closet, as well as a hot plate or something. not sure if they think
we run around in victorian wear 24/7, but this was claimed clear
living in the containers.

of course, this is all silly and absurd. it is also demonstratively
untrue. in short, it is a case of a public official caught lying, and
using those lies to remove a facility some of us find rather
important.


the motivation for these lies are of course politics. the politics
are both west berkeley local, as well as individual. so here's the
broader context. and it is so distasteful and lacking in integrity
i'm now seeing it as likely actionable in some manner.


as some of you might know, berkeley is quietly trying to rezone the
area we are in to full retail. they want relatively large retailers
to come in so as to increase the tax base for the city so as to cover
all the money needed for berkeley's giant public "service"
infrastructure. we are right in the middle of where they want to do
this. this effort is now picking up speed with the approval of the
mega berkeley bowl a couple blocks away from us. construction will
soon be starting on this.


however, likely the more important factor is that the berkeley fire
marshall wants to build a new warehouse for his emergency vehicles on
the now abandoned railroad tracks next to the shipyard. this has been
long discussed, and he has previously expressed concern about us being
there, but he was willing to wait and see how things turned out.

in a meeting last oct with the heads of various depts to discuss and
review the progress on our legalization, with our architect and
structural engineer, this fire marshall was at the meeting. his name
is david ornth. when i asked him about the status of the new
warehouse, he responded, and i quote, and have witnesses, "that is
none of your business, you have no need to know anything about the
status of our warehouse plan". he said this aggressively and
publically in front of his other colleages in the city. there was an
odd silence. no one was really sure what to do with this outburst.
so after an awkward pause, we just continued the meeting.

this is the fire marshall who is now making innacurate interpretations
about living in shipping containers at the shipyard. his photographs
of the conditions on site will disprove his claims. he is also the
one who has for years seen our electrical system and found it
tolerable even when it was a shadow of its current perfection. but
somehow and suddenly, it is now an egregious public safety issue.

anyone who knows anything about professional electrical distribution
would recognize our system as a very high level industrial
installation. it is not a crap flex conduit and open wires everywhere
deal. it is all perimeter wall guttering, rigid conduit, dedicated
ground conductor distribution (no fixture only grounding), all the
best parts, assemblies, configurations and implementation. it looks
nothing like the electrical systems in most shops. but yes, we did
have an extension cord hanging from the celing, plugged into a
properly installed ceiling plug. and there was an extension cord
attached to wall and running to a power strip. and i had the covers
off 10' of one section of our gutter, with the cover sitting right
tere. we had been installing a mill. the cover was sitting right next
to it. these are very very minor issues.

the truth is our electrical system is really a model for how to do
this well, as i am somewhat of an electrical geek at this point, and
spent a giant amount of money on it. but yes, none of it is
permitted, and therefore by definition, it is "unsafe". but of course
a fire marshall sees unpermitted electrical all the time and makes
common sense assessments of its danger. we did not get a permit
because we could not get an electrical permit until the more general
construction permit was issued, which required getting to agreement on
a strctural solution so we could submit, which was prevented as
explained about.


it has been suggested that given david ornth's personal plans for the
land next to us, that he might not be a completely unbiased observer,
interpretor and/or decision maker about conditions at our site. and
that his manner of entrapping us with an impossible to meet three day
"vacate and abate" is little short of, well, entrapment, as way more
than what was justified by conditions on the site.

there are two officials in berkeley who have broad latitiude to make
shut down decisions. they are both making these decisions on "life
safety" issues- a famously ambiguous area of determination. these two
officials are: the fire marshall, and the head of bldg and safety.

it was the fire marshall, david ornth, who led this lyching and
entrapement. and it was the head of bldg and safety, joan macquarrie,
who last week finally set the level of "proving" needed to legalize
shipping containers so high, that our structural engineer said it
would be impossible to meet without essentially going through the
entire certification process to make them a standard rated assembly
for the building industry. in the end, she refused to accept or even
consider all the prexisting ratings from their transport us, for which
there is extensive documentation and load test ratings available. we
had to prove them as an immaculate assembly of metal. the common
sense truth that a shipping container is one of the safest premade
structures on the planet, did not matter in the end.

this is how berkeley city officials can use their discretion under the
law to disallow things they do not want to see happen, for reasons
completely other than the physicals on the ground, or particular
issues involved in a proposed project.

should there be a war?

jim