At city hall, Oakland can follow Berkeley's lead

One of the reasons I chose to live in Oakland instead of Berkeley was the long history of political shenanigans and guerrilla theater at Berkeley City Hall.

It was the late-1990s and my thinking was, "Hey, Jerry Brown is Oakland's mayor, the city is booming and Berkeley is still up to its same old bag of tricks."

Now, I feel like I've been standing in front of a pitching machine - for a while.

Battered up.

Oakland City Hall these days feels a lot like Berkeley used to - with crowds of rowdies, crusaders and chanting, often-nutty, crowds cramming into the council meetings and taking over the agenda. Berkeley, meanwhile, seems more - well ... sensible.

This week, an activist in the Oakland council chambers preached against doing business with companies linked to nuclear weapons development, and opponents railed against a police operations center they believe is really a government spying operation. Some addressed the council using pseudonyms with bandannas covering their faces.

In Berkeley, meanwhile, officials are planning to capture and gas a problem population of ground squirrels, they've put restrictions on wacky City Council agenda items as a way to keep focused on the business at hand, and the only demonstrations that seem to erupt anymore are by Code Pink, a women's antiwar group.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates is leading the charge to make over Telegraph Avenue near the UC Berkeley campus - the site of violent clashes in the 1960s - into a more relevant, familiar place for today's students.

"This means we have to start looking at some sacred cows," he told The Chronicle in 2013.

Oakland has elbowed Berkeley out as the contemporary epicenter for social issues in the East Bay, if not the Bay Area.

Since a BART police officer fatally shot Oscar Grant in January 2009, the streets of downtown Oakland have been alive with street protest, vandalism, occupation and a series of disruptions that hurt existing businesses and jeopardized future prospects.

The Port of Oakland was shut down twice in 2011 by Occupy Oakland marches. The ongoing battle over police shootings, administration, conduct, deployment, hiring, independent monitors, electronic surveillance, council ethics and enforcement have filled in the quiet time - and apologies if I omitted your favorite gripe.

Bates' actions have won him four consecutive terms in office and have provided Berkeley with the kind of stable leadership Oakland enjoyed under Brown. Bates leads the city. Period.

Oakland, meanwhile, has struggled. The past two mayor's races revealed deep divisions in how Oakland residents believe the city should move forward. Brown's successor, Ron Dellums, never caught on to the rhythms of mayoral work - and Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has struggled to gain council cooperation and the public trust.

In Oakland, city leaders are still mired in a decade-old debate about the city's public ethics policies - which lack any authority to penalize violators - and the rules governing conduct and behavior mandated in the City Charter. It's gone on for years and seems to resurface in election years.

In Berkeley, Bates has successfully removed most of the squirrely politics from council meetings, and replaced it with pragmatic, albeit tough, plans to address issues of importance, even when the subject is squirrels.

I don't believe Oakland City Hall currently possesses the organization to act in such a swift, decisive way on any issue.