The city of Berkeley will hold a special election on Tuesday, April 16, to fill the District 7 City Council seat left vacant after former councilmember Rigel Robinson’s resignation in January.
Cecilia Lunaparra and James Chang are the only registered candidates for Robinson’s vacated seat, and are both UC Berkeley students. Lunaparra will graduate with her undergraduate degree in May, while Chang will remain enrolled as a graduate student in the Haas School of Business.
District 7 sits on the five blocks south of the UC Berkeley campus, and the majority of the district’s voters are students. Qualified voters needed to register by April 1 to vote in the special election.
Lunaparra has been a District 7 resident since 2022, while Chang moved to the area from District 3 following the announcement of Robinson’s resignation. He serves as District 3 Councilmember Ben Bartlett’s chief of staff, and has previously lived in several other districts throughout the city.
Both candidates spoke with Bay City News about their positions on issues dear to the district’s residents.
Robinson’s resignation
Robinson resigned following a community-led recall campaign and alleged threats. He was unavailable to comment on his resignation or the upcoming election.
Community members leading Robinson’s recall campaign cited unfaithfulness to his campaign positions as motivation for their recall efforts. Both Chang and Lunaparra discussed why they think voters should trust them to remain faithful to their own campaign promises.
Chang pointed out that Robinson had unanimous support from the City Council in his first election and ran unopposed for his second term, meaning he didn’t have much competition in his elections.
Lunaparra said that Robinson’s perceived absence from the 0.5-square-mile district meant that residents, most of whom are UC Berkeley students, felt disconnected from their councilmember and his decisions.
“This district isn’t very large and unfortunately most students didn’t know councilmember Robinson and didn’t feel he was accessible,” Lunaparra said.
Police accountability
The very first calls for Robinson’s resignation came last year after he voted to confirm Jen Louis as Berkeley’s police chief, against the Berkeley Police Accountability Board recommendation to delay Lewis’ confirmation until after an investigation was completed into allegations of misconduct by Lewis.
“I think the biggest issue in that whole decision making process was the way that the council specifically disregarded the Police Accountability Board’s position,” Lunaparra said. “I think working with the police accountability board, and giving subpoena power to the Police Accountability Board, is incredibly important. And that is what I’m committed to do, is working with them specifically, and taking their guidance into consideration.”
Chang also supports following the Police Accountability Board’s recommendations as a councilmember.
“It is important to implement what the voters voted for,” Chang said. “It’s my same opinion with the rent board, and how the rent board should carry out its initial mission.”
Telegraph Avenue Chess Club and Third Spaces
The unofficial chess club at the corner of Haste Street and Telegraph Avenue is one of the only places left in Berkeley’s District 7 where residents can spend extended periods of time for free without spending money.
Both Chang and Lunaparra voiced their support for Telegraph Avenue’s unofficial chess club and measures to ensure it can remain in its current location.
One of the compounding issues regarding the chess club is that the city ordered the Berkeley Police Department to not enforce trespassing laws at the location, leading the business owner to face more than $148,000 in fines for illegally having tables and chairs on his property, despite asking police to remove the trespassers and their furniture multiple times over a series of several months.
Although the city was not available for comment on this decision, city law says that only the city manager — and potentially the assistant city manager — would have the authority to issue orders to the Police Department.
Records requested regarding this order were denied, despite Berkeley’s Sunshine Ordinance mandating that all communications from the city manager to department heads — like the police chief — be made available to the public online, without needing to be requested, as soon as the City Council is informed about the communication.
People’s Park
People’s Park sat on the edge of District 7, the only park in the district. On Jan. 3, police cleared the park and work crews erected double-stacked barriers made from shipping containers topped with barbed wire surrounding the area, now intended for student housing construction.
Both Lunaparra and Chang support the construction of new housing in their district, but disagree on the decision to build on the People’s Park site.
At a March 19 debate between the two candidates, Lunaparra questioned why People’s Park, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was chosen for student housing construction over the eight other options presented to the university.
“The university has very specifically chosen their most politically controversial sites to build housing on in order to pit students — who are in desperate need of housing — against unhoused people in the city and the long-term legacy of the city,” Lunaparra said. “I don’t think it needs to be like that at all … the university should have prioritized building other sites … that wouldn’t create the kind of rift in our community that this project is creating.”
Chang pointed to the end of regular drug sales in the former park – in addition to plans to build a homeless center alongside the student housing – as evidence as to why he believes the construction will have a net positive impact on the district at large.
“The reality is, it’s either that option, or the continuation of People’s Park being an open-air drug market,” Chang said. “There’ll be more eyes on the park. Two-thirds of the park is still meant for open space for people to use recreationally, in which the police — whether we like it or not — [will] enforce.”
It is unclear why drug laws might be enforced after the new construction, if they were not enforced beforehand.
UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof declined to comment, citing a policy that required the university to refrain from getting involved in or commenting on political races and debates.