Albany Bulb

When I was a kid, I lived across the street from a wooded area that had a stream with a dam built by beavers. With direction from my father who knew about such things, my brother and I erected a fort in those woods but the law came and put its foot down.

When we moved to a new town, our property abutted a huge open space where a local nursery grew plants but the bulk of the space remained fallow most of the time. We built another fort. This one being underground was less likely to be detected. It was a low budget project with a hole straight down and a subterranean chamber burrowed off to the side. When my parents learned about it months later, they found it structurally deficient and red-tagged it. It was in that hole in the ground that I got the lassie across the street to give me my first passionate kiss.

Once upon a time we set the land on fire but prompt action and a garbage can full of water effectively doused the flames. No fire department needed to appear. We took care of things ourselves.

Now that open space has been gobbled up by jumbo million dollar homes each vying to out-grotesque the rest. I suspect 2.3 people live in each one even those with the four car garages.

Nowadays, a favorite pastime of mine reminscent of these childhood fantasy landscapes is to take my dog swimming at Albany beach and then go to the adjacent Albany Bulb, a spit of land that juts out into San Francisco Bay. It's a mid twentieth century landfill. Overgrown with weeds, native plants, irregular concrete slabs and twisted rebar, it's not just untamed but has a post-apocalyptic feel made more convincing by the --artful or not-- paintings brushed and sprayed onto the concrete.

It's fun to trapse through the Bulb on its irregular trails and even blaze my own trail through the high grass and uneven terrain. Many places are impenetrable to me but my dog gets to them just fine. He loves the place.

On the southwest corner stands an un-permitted user-built castle overlooking the Bay with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. The castle used to have a circular staircase but sadly it's been destroyed. No use brooding. Impermanence is the nature of things here. On the north side of the Bulb, sculptors busily construct and deconstruct pieces of work that the art police could never envision or accept. Imagine, for example, the one pictured here garnering approval from the same people who stifle the spirit of more typical parks with all of their do's and don'ts.

Detractors of the status quo complain that the Bulb is dangerous. But it's perfectly safe for people who don't stray from the trails. People who cherish safety as the paramount value have plenty of other places to go. If you're looking for a ten on the safety scale and want to go off-trail, don't come to the Bulb.

The City of Albany, clearly lacking pride of ownership, tried to give away the eight-acre Bulb to the East Bay Regional Park District but the District wanted the City to mitigate the property first. Translated from bureaucratic lingo, this means the ingrates wanted the City to haul out the concrete and rebar as a condition of accepting the gift.

The gift having failed, the City then paid a hideous sum of money (hundreds of thousands) to a corporation to come up with a "vision" for the Bulb. When I hear city officials and corporate profit-makers talk about vision, I get scared. I start to think about where the tennis courts will go and whether I'll get busted for letting my dog run free.

Keep Albany Bulb just the way it is.

Judging Judicial Perks

The San Francisco Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, published an article on April 8, 2009 that caught my eye. It's titled, "San Bernardino Supervisors Decide Not to Ax Judges' Perks." The article discusses politicians debating whether the county should eliminate judicial perks in this time of severe budgetary constraints.

Background: Superior court judges in California are paid by the state. They make $179,000 per year plus they get a good health plan and fantastic retirement benefits. If you are lucky enough to be a judge in one of 31 counties (of the 58 counties in California), the county bestows perks on top of state salaries and benefits. For example, in Los Angeles County, judges receive an additional $46,000 per annum. And judges in Tulare County get free gym memberships paid for by taxpayers. I'm in favor of judges staying healthy, but is this really necessary and is it good public policy?

Last October, an appellate court ruled that these county supplements to judicial salaries are unconstitutional because the state legislature hadn't approved them. In response, the legistature quickly ratified them and declared that counties could stop them whenever they want.

Those who defend the practice say county perks are necessary to attract competent candidates for judgeships who otherwise would stay in private practice to make even more money. I say let them stay where they are. Who are these people that we need so much, and whose competence is so great, that we should worry that they will refuse the job because they just can't make it on $179,000 a year? I prefer my judges to be people who can relate to ordinary folks who make it on far less.

Detractors, according to the article, say that judges who take county money are "double-dipping." But that accusation is both unfair and misses the mark. Judges are not fudging numbers to get more than they deserve. There's no accounting fraud going on here.

What the article misses is the more interesting question whether these judges have a conflict of interest in every case they hear in which the county is a party. If I were a litigant before a judge who accepts a $46,000 annual gratuity from my opponent, I would worry about how fair that judge could be. A judge who accepts money from a party normally recuses himself under settled standards of judicial ethics. Why is it any different if that party is the county?

One way out of this is for the judges to refuse these county perks just like they should refuse an ordinary bribe. Any judges out there willing to do this?