by Elise Craig/WEST BERKELEY

Former mayor Shirley Dean delivered the zinger of the night at Monday’s mayoral debate, eliciting laughter and applause from the crowd at the West Berkeley Senior Center.

When a question from the audience led the forum into yet another discussion of the power struggle between the city and the university, Mayor Tom Bates asked Dean why she had settled for receiving only $50,000 in compensation from the University when the city received $1.7 million under his administration.

“Mayor Dean was on the City Council for 23 years, served as mayor for eight years. During that time, they got $50,000 a year, folks, 50,000. We get 1.7. Why didn’t you reopen it then? Why didn’t you bust the agreement then?”

“Now that’s a very interesting question, Mr. Bates,” she said. “But I have never negotiated a long-range development plan agreement. You may ask your wife why she only got $50,000.”

Bates’s wife, three-term Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, served two terms as mayor of Berkeley.

The debate, hosted by The Berkeley Daily Planet, featured both the two candidates on the ballot and the two write-in candidates, Zachary Running Wolf and Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi.

The paper’s editor, Becky O’Malley, took to the stage before the debate to explain “a couple of people insisted on being added to the program at the last minute.” Both Dean and Bates consented to the participation of the write-in candidates.

Moderator Robert Cheasty, the former mayor of Albany, drew on questions from both the audience and online submissions.

Issues with the University, crime rates, redevelopment and ballot measure KK created the biggest buzz, both on the stage and in the audience.

West and South Berkeley got a lot of attention at the debate, in sparring over both redevelopment and crime.

A question about artists in West Berkeley led to a drawn-out discussion over redevelopment and rising rents in the area. Bates put forth a plan to implement a 20 percent set-aside to keep rent costs down. Dean cited a careful balance between keeping people in their homes and allowing businesses to expand.

“It’s redevelopment without the capital R. That’s what we have to be careful does not happen,” Dean said.

“I have seen what’s happened on my block on Derby, and the demographics have changed. A lot of the black families, a lot of the Latino families that you see on my block could no longer afford to live there,” Fantauzzi said.

The debate also focused on development around the UC campus. The crowd responded with boos and yelling when Bates tried to explain that the city has little legal control over the University.

“I’m sure almost everyone in this room is aware that the University of California is not subject to any of our zoning, any of our regulations, any of our laws, period. That is the law, folks. I’m sorry, I didn’t make the law, I’m just telling you what it is.”

Bates faced a rough crowd, even though he is endorsed by six of seven council members is generally considered the front-runner in the election.

After asking a question about Measure KK, which would require voter approval for designated Bus Rapid Transit-only lanes, one man interrupted Bates, yelling that he had not answered the question.

“It’s nice that we have such an unbiased crowd here tonight,” Bates said.

The man continued with a follow-up question.

“Do you support slowing traffic and removing parking purposely in order to force people out of their cars? Is that part of being green?”

“Forcing people out of their cars? I’m really into that,” Running Wolf said. He also referred to proposed BRT lanes as a “boondoggle” that is coupled with high-density housing.

Bates argued against KK, saying that if it passes, Berkeley will lose federal funds for BRT to San Francisco.

“I’m totally opposed to it because of what it does. It comes in and says we’re not even going to examine the closing of a lane without the vote of the people. If it passes it means the death of the whole idea of BRT.”

Dean used Bates’s comments to push her platform of accessibility.

“Measure KK does not stop the BRT project. What it says, it submits it to the vote of the people. Direct democracy is not a problem for anybody, I would hope.”

April Green, a 15-year resident of West Berkeley’s Fifth St,, felt that none of the candidates adequately addressed her neighborhood’s two biggest issues—crime and development. She is frustrated both over being priced out of her neighborhood, and how dangerous it has become.

“I have an Afro-American son who is 15. Now we have killings up the street. That has never happened here before. This, and this new Berkeley, it’s not for us. When Shirley was here, it wasn’t like this,” she said.

North Berkeley’s Tom Foley planned to vote for Dean before the debate even began. He cited Bates’s theft of 1000 copies of the Daily Cal in the 2002 election as one of the reasons he wouldn’t vote for him.

But not everyone at the debate had decided how to cast her or her ballot.

“I’m sort of leaning—I have a lawn sign for Bates—but I want to be really sure I’m making the right decision,” said social worker Shawn Roland of North Berkeley. “I think in Berkeley you have two schools: people who are trying to make real, genuine changes and people who are taking extreme views to get nationally known.”

“I’m not picking up enough differences between [Dean and Bates],” said Lynn Edwards, who has lived in Berkeley for 36 years. “I have no idea who I’m going to vote for. My ballot is ready except for this.”

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