MANUELA ALBUQUERQUE, City Attorney, State Bar No. 67464
ZACH COWAN, Assistant City Attorney, State Bar No. 96372
2180 Milvia Street, Fourth Floor
Berkeley, California 94704
(510) 644-6380
Fax: (510) 644-8641
Attorneys for Plaintiff
CITY OF BERKELEY
CITY OF BERKELEY, ) No.
)
Plaintiff, ) DECLARATION OF
) LANCE MONTAUK IN
vs. ) SUPPORT OF APPLICATION
) FOR TEMPORARY
ALTA BATES MEDICAL CENTER, ) RESTRAINING ORDER
a nonprofit corporation, and DOES 1-50. ) AND PRELIMINARY
) INJUNCTION
Defendants. )
____________________________________ ) Date: February 24, 1997
Time: 1:45 p.m.
Department 81
I Lance Montauk, declare:
1. I bought my home at 3033 Bateman Street in Berkeley, one block from Alta Bates Hospital, in 1971, and that has been my residence address ever since. I lived there continuously until 1978. From 1978 until 1986 I was studying in Europe. In 1987 I returned to Bateman Street along with my wife and children, and we have lived there ever since.
2. I make this declaration in support of the City of Berkeley’s application for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the further expansion of the Alta Bates Medical Center.
3. Because I worked and work unusual hours, with a very irregular schedule, it is common for me to be around the neighborhood at all times of the day, including the late hours of the night and the wee hours of the morning. In addition, for many years we have taken our dog on walks around the neighborhood, and thus though we do not live right next to the medical center, we see it from all around.
4. Since our return in 1987, we have noticed many changes in the neighborhood which were not present in 1978. There are many more hospital workers in and around our streets. Previously, before Area "A" parking stickers were available, it was difficult to park in this neighborhood. When permit parking was first established, parking became available and it was easier to park for awhile. However that has changed. More and more, hospital workers park in Area A, but emerge from the hospital every 2 hours to go to their vehicles, start them up, and move from one place on the street to another, in order to not get a ticket. They often congregate and talk on the streets, or sit in their cars with the radio on and engine running, taking a break before moving their cars.
5. Likewise, patients trying to get to the hospital speed rapidly up and down the streets, getting more and more frustrated with the closures and various restrictions. Bateman is a tiny street, and it is always scary to see someone angrily driving up it rapidly, and then returning quickly at even higher speed.
6. There is much more garbage on the streets and graffiti than there used to be. The garbage is especially prominent in all the streets radiating out from the Emergency Room. People sit in their cars having meals and toss the food and packaging out the windows into the gutter, where it lays for days. Hospital garbage also shows up in the streets, along with discarded linen which I find left behind on park benches or in other open areas. These things never happened before we moved back, and they are more common now than they were 5 years ago. Graffiti, which I mentioned above, never existed in our neighborhood until 3-5 years ago, and it is spreading rapidly.
7. It is impossible to say who is responsible, as people are in the area all the time coming and going from the hospital, during all hours of the day and night (which is not surprising, given that the emergency service functions around the clock) but it is no longer possible for the neighbors to keep an eye out on things and call the police for suspicious persons, like it used to be before. Various waves of crimes involving personal violence periodically shake our tranquillity, and the increased traffic into and out of the hospital merely provides a higher level of background noise for the lawbreaking element to blend into.
8. We used to walk our dog on Regent Street, directly behind the hospital. This has become a tenuous affair, with so many big trucks moving into and out of that area in the last few months, that it is no longer a pleasant venue. A few months ago I noticed that every single day the entire South Hospital Drive, which is entirely red-curbed for parking (since it must be kept clear for fire safety reasons) was filled dawn to dusk, bumper to bumper, with parked construction worker pickup trucks. This went on for weeks.
9. Tractor-trailer trucks now back up Regent Street in the middle of the night to make deliveries at the loading dock, which apparently was recently expanded and roofed. They sometimes park in the middle of the night on the street to do their unloading. This did not happen years ago. I am not sure why this is happening now, but I suspect that it has been due to the new construction, which was filling up the places on the loading dock with huge amounts of sheet metal parts for ventilation systems, plumbing material. On the other hand, it may have been because some kind of portable medical devices were parking semi-permanently in that area for imaging or treatment purposes. This must be a nuisance especially for the people directly on Regent Street.
10. Every Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. until 8:00 a.m., Alta Bates hospital tests its generator, which is a huge diesel that can be heard for blocks away. When I am awakened from my sleep by the diesel, I know without opening my eyes that it must be 7:oo a.m. Friday. But a few months ago the diesel was running all day, or there was some kind of a huge steam release, which went on for 12 hours, with a noise so loud it could be heard 3 blocks away. I don't know if this was due to construction work or something else.
11. In conclusion, I can state positively from personal experience that since 1987 the impact of Alta Bates hospital on the neighborhood seems to be increasing steadily. My guess is that, with everyone stating that hospital stays are shortening, they must simply be seeing more and more people there, each for a shorter length of time.
I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct. Executed on February ___, 1997, at Berkeley, California.
_____________________________________
Lance Montauk
Last update: May 12, 1997.