The banks are trying to move in... Third world communities are the last undeveloped or underdeveloped land available. On April 16, 1979, a radical slate sponsored by Berkeley Citizen Action won the mayorship plus three city council seats, two school board members, and the auditor position. R e c e n t ly , f o r m e r P o r t la n d e r Micheale Williams, who successfully managed Gus Newport’s campaign fo r mayor, had an opportunity to sit down and reflect with him in his first six months in office. Quarterly: Well, Gus, you’ve always said that you weren’t a politician. You had never run for office before and it was something of a surprise that you won last spring. You’ve been the mayor of Berkeley since May first. How do you like your job? Newport: (Laughs.) It has its ups and downs. With less than two weeks between being elected and inaugurated, we were thrust into the middle of the city’s business very quickly. I’m so busy with the day-to-day work that I don’t really have time to reflect on it. I don’t feel any different. 1 don’t consider myself a great leader. Quarterly: It’s a full-time job and pays $600 a month? Newport: Right. $7200 a year and that’s gross! They deduct you know! (Laughs.) I go into the office about three days a week now, and there are night and weekend things as well. One doesn’t have much of a personal life. Quarterly: What are the major problems facing your new administration? Newport: Housing and economic development. We’re in the midst of a housing crisis. The vacancy rate is less than 1 percent. We have a moratorium on condominium conversion. The rent rebate initiative (Proposition I) expires Dec. 31. Many of our Section 8 subsidized people have not had success in finding housing; and there’s still a great shortage of student housing. In general, Berkeley hasn’t built any new housing in the last eight or ten years. We’ve got to make some big changes in our housing policy. The majority of our money in housing now goes to inspections for code violations. That’s all well and good if you’re dealing with disadvantaged people who own houses that are falling apart, because you have to maintain existing stock. But we have built no new housing with our community development block grant money and I would almost think that was a violation, taking into consideration the need for new housing in Berkeley. We’ve got a survey that shows that there are some 15,000 low-income people in Berkeley who are in need of housing. We had a workshop with the city council, the housing authority and appeals board, and the housing authority. We wanted to explore new policies for the housing department and to get an understanding of the types of housing programs we have. We needed to know whether or not our existing programs meet our needs. They don’t, of course. As far as Measure I goes, we have been working with a housing coalition that is preparing some draft legislation for an ordinance we hope to put forth in early December. That will consist of a rent freeze, antieviction legislation, and a limitation on condo conversion until the vacancy rate reaches 5 percent. We have many apartment owners who are trying to convert to condos and that just pushes poor people out of the area. We’ve also got a lot of abandoned buildings that could be made into cooperative housing. We’re looking into finding some way that the city can condemn them and take them over to begin rehabilitation. And we’ve just received 600 more certificates for Section 8 units, but the problem is that it’s hard to find landlords who will take these certificates. We’re going to try and develop some inducements. We’re considering deferred loans to make various types of repairs and to improve their properties. We’re willing to give them a break in one area if they’ll give a percentage of their units to low-income people. We’d also like to float some bonds to build new housing. Quarterly: You said that Berkeley’s Second major problem is economic development. What consideration have you given to housing as a means of revitalizing Berkeley? Newport: We would like to develop some non-profit housing revitalization corporations that would be involved in dealing with both our housing and economic development. But the problem is that Berkeley still has the highest unemployment rate of any city of over 100,000 in California. We need labor-intensive development. There’s never been any meaningful economic development program in Berkeley. As a matter of fact, Berkeley never went after economic development money and I’ve been asked about that. We’ve had three or four people working on various aspects of economic development, but none of it is coordinated. As I ask for a specific report, there’s always a lot of excuses. A few weeks ago I called them all together and after we’d talked for a while, they felt that I was critical. I told them, “ I’m not critical because I know that you were carrying out the policies of the previous administration. However, I consider myself a pretty positive person and I just don’t care to hear this bullshit about what we can’t do and what we won’t do. There are certain things that' we are going to do now.” I’ve talked with the National Development Council and they’re going to provide us with technical assistance. We’re going after a Title 9 grant which will give us a revolving loan from the Community Development Corporation. And we’ve got a UDAG grant in for a possible electric auto factory in Berkeley. I’ll also be meeting soon with a couple of local development corporations to find out why they haven’t done more; why they haven’t leveraged more money; why they haven’t developed packages. If I can’t get them to work with each other or at least do some things in the very neighborhoods they are involved in, then I’ll just surround them with new local development corporations that will be responsive to Berkeley’s needs. Quarterly: What are some other economic development plans? Newport: Well, we want to expand the berthing area at the marina as soon as we settle the Santa Fe- Murphey suit. Years ago, the owners of a large piece of land down by the marina wanted to put in a shopping center, but the people of Berkeley rose up against the plan and filed a suit of inverse condemnation. The suit has been in the courts for four or five years now and we’re encouraged that a decision will soon be made in our favor. We will either negotiate with the owners to develop the marina area, or we’ll make an effort to purchase the land and develop it ourselves. We’d like to see marina- related retail business, restaurants, and recreation. It’s a big parcel— about a hundred acres—a great big piece of land all covered with weeds. Barren. Quarterly: In the spring election, the voters also passed the Responsible Investment Initiative, calling for a study of the city’s investment policies. Have there been any effects from this initiative? Newport: None yet. The commission has only been active for a couple of months, and the initiative states that a plan must be put forth in 1980. We’re now looking into the possibility of linked accounts. That would mean forcing banks that we invest with to make mortgage loans and other kinds of housing and development loans in the areas that we want to develop economically. As you know, it’s been found that many times only about one nickle out of every $10 invested in a local bank is reinvested in the area. That’s intolerable. Quarterly: How can you force banks to invest locally? Newport: By telling them that we won’t put public monies that we have to invest in their banks unless we are assured that we can leverage money to develop in the areas that need assistance. Quarterly: Your forces do not have a clear majority on the city council. How do you manage to get these controversial programs through the council? Newport: We have what you’d call a “ qualified majority” in that we have an individual who votes with us a good majority of the time. Quarterly: Will this person go with you on the housing ordinance? Newport: We’re not sure. But she is a renter, and has gone on record before stating that she would support some form of rent control. Quarterly: So you’ve been able to accomplish a lot of the changes and reforms you wanted even without a flat-out majority? Newport: Well, we’ve been able to accomplish some. When I got elected, I never would have believed that we could have any input into the budget, for instance. But with the help of the budget commission and the results of several public hearings—and postponing the adoption of the budget from July to September—we were in fact able to turn the budget around quite a bit. We were able to go from no monies in social service programs to putting around $700,000 into the budget to meet social needs. Quarterly: How did you manage that? Newport: We created some new revenues, some of which had never been considered by the city before. For instance, the Berkeley marina had the lowest berthing rates in the Bay Area. We raised those rates. We cut all the unfilled slots in the police department, which cut their budget by about $600,000. We made a few cuts in the fire department; and changed some positions in the housing department and various other places. Quarterly: As I recall, Berkeley’s contract with the police department expired this summer, and your budget proposals were quite controversial. Would you talk a little about that? Newport: Well, the media played up the budget and police cu t plan to the extreme. Police budgets are sacrosanct, you know. But they finally had to recognize that the budget projec16
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