Northbay Uprising - Information for the liberated zones of the San Pablo Bay

2011-05-21 "College of San Mateo parking lot draws protests" by Nanette Asimov from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/20/BA431JJ13U.DTL]
The trees on campus may not be put into a tree museum, but trustees for the College of San Mateo did vote this week to pave at least 20,000 square feet of paradise to put up a parking lot.
They expect the job to be done in the next few months, but angry students and faculty have hired an attorney who says state law requires a full environmental review to determine if it's legal to pave over the 50-year-old garden.
"It's a really peaceful place now. A beautiful place," said student Nick Carlozzi, who often writes music in the doomed habitat where hundreds of plants - from the ancient Bunya-Bunya, to the rare Fragrant Pitcher Sage - attract wildlife, bees, hawks and herons.
"Animals are not going to want to live there if there are cars coming in," he said.
As part of a campus improvement plan paid for with construction funds, San Mateo County Community College District trustees voted Monday to transform about 100,000 square feet of aged buildings and habitat. The new space will include the parking lot and up to 18,825 square feet of garden space, down from 39,500 square feet, district records show.
The trustees say the plan is fiscally sound because it calls for demolishing a hazardous building that houses sparsely attended floristry classes and a defunct horticulture program, while getting rid of a decrepit greenhouse.
A place to rent
In their place will be 200 parking spaces for staff, faculty, students and an army of visitors who, the trustees hope, will flock to rent a newly opened facility intended for everything from job fairs to weddings and bar mitzvah parties.
"We're trying to generate revenue any way we can," said board vice president Dave Mandelkern, noting that the three-campus college district has lost about $20 million in state funding over two years.
"We need the parking spaces," he said. "I don't see this as paving paradise and putting up a parking lot."
Student Shawn Kann disagrees. Like Carlozzi and others, the physics major has come to love the peaceful campus sanctuary, and has a different vision for it.
"They can turn this into a showpiece for the community, with urban farming," he said. "They can get the community involved, and show people how to grow their own vegetables. I see potential."

Garden variety -
Science instructor Lin Bowie wrote a four-page letter to the board, urging preservation.
"The garden contains over 300 plant specimens, including a wide variety of plants that produce fruits, nuts and seeds of all types," Bowie wrote, noting the campus removed numerous mature trees last year that contributed to the loss of food sources for wildlife.
Bowie is faculty adviser for the students' Save the Garden Club, which has hired environmental attorney Susan Brandt-Hawley to represent it.
"Under state law, you have to do an environmental study because it's a new project, and they didn't do it," Brandt-Hawley said, referring to the building demolition and parking lot construction.
The group says it is considering whether to sue the college district.
But the trustees, who hired the consulting firm ICF International to study the issue, say the work is not a new project, but the natural progression of an existing project.
"We believe on legal advice that (a new study) is not triggered," said Richard Holober, the board president.
"So the question is, how do we best serve our students?" he asked. "We have on our campus 83 acres of open space. So the reduction (of the garden) is one-third of 1 percent of that space.
"It's baffling to me that with the remarkable improvements we've been making - providing 21st century, state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories for student success - that this seems to be the only thing a few people care about.
"I don't get it."