Berkeley Mayor Hopefuls Argue Arts Issues,
Trade Barbs at Security Forum

BERKELEY -- Trading occasional barbs, Mayor Shirley Dean and former Assemblyman Tom Bates squared off Saturday in a debate about the arts at Aurora Theater downtown where the two Berkeley mayoral candidates also shared their plans for improving access to the arts for artists and ordinary residents.

Dean and Bates agreed on many ideas, including their desire to infuse art into the daily lives of all city residents, turn the first floor of the former City Hall into a gallery, create stronger alliances between schools and community groups, and get artists into subsidized housing and workspace?but differed on how to raise funds and provide parking downtown.

"No city in history has been called great that hasn't been a center for the arts," said Dean in a largely scripted opening statement. The mayor, who won her first bid for office in 1994 on a platform of revitalizing downtown Berkeley, said she has done so, in part, by creating a theater arts district where trash-lined streets and auto repair shops once stood. Key elements in the 19-point plan she presented Saturday include continued revival of the arts district, increasing funding for arts in new construction from one percent to two percent, doubling the $267,000 in the city's arts grants fund, restoring the UC Theater and strengthening educational programs for children.

"When you do it early it grows," said Dean, who first heard a symphony on a school field trip. "There's a passion then for the arts that never leaves you."

Bates opted for a more spontaneous, less specific approach to the debate, relying on few notes and repeatedly speaking of a vague "cultural plan" around which his campaign is built and the importance of listening to Berkeley residents. Speaking with an urgent enthusiasm Bates proposed the creation of at least one multi-use facility for artists of various genre, relocating the financially troubled Berkeley Symphony from its current home in Zellerbach Hall to a major venue, and dramatically increasing the number of smaller sites for artists to share their work.

He also championed the cause of experimental artists.

"I'd love to be the leader in that field so we can say "Berkeley is the experimental center for art," he said, adding that he can picture the day when foreign tourists alight on Berkeley soil for that reason alone.

The candidates' ambitious plans must be matched by equally ambitious fundraising as the city currently has a fiscal deficit of $3 million. Bates' proposals to increase arts funding include bumping the current hotel tax from 12 percent to 14 percent, an idea Dean says she will not advocate since Berkeley hotels are suffering a 30 percent decline is business given the downturn of the economy. Instead, Dean suggested Berkeley residents might agree to a straight arts tax. She also suggested a way the federal government could help out Berkeley's arts community.

"How about giving us a bomber or two instead of sending them over to Iraq?" she asked, causing waves of laughter to spread among the largely white, middle-aged crowd of 100.

In response to a question from a resident about the lack of parking downtown, Dean said she plans to strengthen Berkeley's public transportation program and rebuild the seismically unsound Center Street garage as a robotic parking structure that will stack and thus hold more cars. Bates, on the other hand, wants to initiate a comprehensive study of parking downtown, expand on Dean's Center Street garage plan by adding two floors, and build a garage where the Berkeley High School tennis courts are currently located. The courts, he said, can be reshuffled to the top level.

In closing, Dean described herself as a "hands on, roll the sleeves up, tackle the issues 24-7 mayor," whose accomplishments speak for themselves.

Bates shot back that she held the seat during an unprecedented economical boom?a high time for anyone to be mayor.