Keeping Cool Heads on Hot Issues

Lou Becker, LANN Advisor April, 2004

Los Altos is very fortunate to have such qualified and dedicated personnel serving in its city government. Both the Staff and the Council have the highest standards of integrity and openness in conducting city business. They are committed to doing what they believe is best for Los Altos.

However, in spite of their remarkable efforts, there are numerous contentious issues on their agenda. Some of these are, of course, carry-overs from years past. Examples of such issues are:

Thankfully, during the past few years, the Council has been proactive. That characteristic is also present in the personality of the current Council. The City has consistently elected leadership that is committed to getting things done to make Los Altos a better place to live. But any new idea or proposal, no matter how well intended, will always encounter measurable opposition. And though most of the opposition encountered in Los Altos is valid, it may be heavily out weighed by what is of greater benefit to the City. The issue that we need to address is how to do a better job in dealing with opposition.

My suggestions are straight forward. First, no city council can do a good job without early and extensive public input. In Los Altos, residents typically do not raise their voices until a project is well on its way. Therefore, the City must find and implement better ways of notifying the public regarding projects. This will be a challenge, as most citizens live very busy lives and hesitate to take time to find out what is happening until late in the process. The public must also take on the responsibility of speaking up on issues in their very early stages. Members of the public cannot wait until the City is in the final stage of making a decision and then say they do not like it and want it changed. Both the city government and the members of the public must be willing to compromise. Both the greater good to the City and the desirability to a neighborhood are important. Most of the time, a good solution can only be reached through reasonableness on both sides.

Contention can also be minimized if the City will deal promptly with the issues. Letting an issue drag on for years only causes frustration to "snowball". Getting early detailed public input, evaluating staff recommendations, and promptly finalizing decisions will go a long way toward reducing public frustration on major issues.

 

Downtown Revitalization: Sparkle vs. Commerce

Leslie Lodestro, LANN Membership Chair

When The Downtown Revitalization Task Force was put in place in December 2003 it was with the goal of jump starting downtown so that more people would visit and more importantly, shop the local merchants. The Committee has the daunting task of re-shaping our downtown so that it becomes retail competitive without losing our Village ambiance. The Committee has struggled to get its arms around what the magic formula might be for luring a bigger cross section of shoppers downtown and then loosening the bills that are fish hooked into our wallets. Many ideas are being considered but the Committee seems to be off to a less than roaring start.

In the meantime the City has decided rework our downtown lamp posts. Los Altos’ lampposts are very old and custom made. They are pretty, but would be very expensive to exactly replace. There are 19 missing on Main Street, State Street and First Street…. and I say "missing" because technically they are, but I, personally, haven’t "missed" them. (Maybe because nothing is open downtown at night that would make them useful enough for me to miss.) Anyway, posts from side streets will replace the 19 missing posts and then the ones that are being moved from the side streets will be replaced by new, similar, factory-made lampposts which are black with white glass. The old posts will all be painted from their current gray to black and will have their yellow glass replaced with white. Once the lights are on downtown, the Committee has decided to keep downtown open at night the first Friday of each month beginning May 7th. That’s the big ta-da.

I might take a nap now because this entire revitalizing minutia is making me yawn.

There seems to be some confusion between "sparkle" and "commerce". I hope The Downtown Revitalization Task Force is not following the City’s lead and chanting the mantra: "make it sparkle and they will come."

Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is important that our downtown is all buttoned up so that it presents well. I could not sit down and write this article until I cleaned up the clutter from my desk, wiped down the surfaces and opened a window for fresh air. I could not have reached my goal without creating a little sparkle in my workspace first. It was tempting to move to the next room with my Clorox wipes and I am still itching to get the vacuum out to take care of the carpet beneath my chair, but I, like the Downtown Revitalization Task Force, must resist to temptation to focus on sparkle at the expense of the more important work to be done.

The Downtown Revitalization Committee has to start somewhere and they need to think bigger before I come galloping downtown with a full pocketbook and desire in my eyes.

I’m going to teeter out on a limb here and suggest that maybe what we need in downtown is an anchor store or two and I don’t mean a Walgreens. When I think about why I go to downtown Palo Alto, I think of Z Gallery, Restoration Hardware or Anthropologie. The old "Z" restaurant building on First Street is a good spot to start. The old Bank of the West on Third Street is another spot aching for an anchor. I’m going to swing from my limb now and reminisce about a conceptual drawing I saw a few years ago that depicted a really hip downtown gathering plaza. I think it had a fountain, stores around it, and was proposed to be plunked right downtown. The Committee would be well served to dust that idea off and take a look at it with fresh eyes and new urgency.

Downtown, Con’t.

The Los Altos Village Association is gifted when it comes to generating foot traffic downtown. The Egg Hunt, the Farmer’s Market, the Christmas Carriage rides…..all brilliant and artfully executed ideas that not only make our downtown sparkle but also make me proud to call Los Altos home. But (and this is a huge but) most of us who are scurrying around looking for free candy in the bushes are not spending the quality time and money that our merchants need to survive.

The work of The Downtown Revitalization Committee is a matter of downtown survival. Band-aids in the form of spiffy streetlights won’t stop the bleeding. I beg the Committee to be brave, be bold and work on the big ideas that will save and preserve our small town.

The LASD Makes the Right Decision:

Offers use of Egan Camp Site to Charter School

David Luskin, Schools Chair

On March 15th the Los Altos School District Board voted 4-1 to offer use of the Egan Camp School site for the 2004-2005 school year to the Bullis Charter School (BCS). The Board’s vote was in response to a legal requirement, instituted by the passage of proposition 39, to offer facilities, rent-free, to the Charter school upon their request. LASD has until April 1 to officially make the offer to BCS, and then BCS has until May 1st to notify the District if they accept the offer.

The facilities offered are required to be equivalent to those provided to other district students in terms of capacity and condition. The capacity to be provided is based on the Charter’s projected enrollment of in-district students. LASD is not responsible for providing space for students that live outside of the district boundaries. BCS’s projected enrollment is 141 in-district students. The LASD staff and Board went through a rigorous study of what would be equivalent in capacity as well as condition.

The result of the study was the obvious conclusion that the Bullis campus is not equivalent to what the rest of the LASD students will have in 2004/2005. In the fall, all LASD students will either be on renovated campuses or, in the case of Oak school, at Blach Camp School, while their campus is being renovated. So the remaining options available where to offer space at Egan Camp School or to share the Covington site with LASD’s Covington Elementary. The District could have also offered

facilities spread out over several sites if it did not have the room on a single site for the Charter.

Of the two viable options, the Egan Camp site was selected as it offers both the Charter and Covington Elementary their own campus. In looking at having the Charter share the Covington site with Covington Elementary, the Board realized that there could be an educational impact on the elementary school. To mitigate the

educational impact and to prevent the principal of the elementary from being consumed with a myriad of site sharing issues, they would need to bring hire an administrator. These problems would not occur when the Egan Camp site is used.

If the Charter accepts the District’s offer, the District will need to retain approximately 10 portable classrooms at the Egan Camp site and will incur about $70k in rent for the year. As the Egan Camp school was set up to hold over 500 children (it first housed Egan Middle school, then Almond Elementary, and this year is housing Santa Rita Elementary) over 2/3 of the portable classrooms can be removed and the fields can begin to be restored.

This all seems fairly cut and dried, so why has there been so much controversy surrounding the decision? The answer is that, in conflict with the intent of Charter school law, the Bullis Charter School has always been about a site, versus an alternative to poorly performing schools (LASD is the best performing District in California for the fourth year in a row.) In fact, the site focus is obvious from the name. It is not the "Academic Best" Charter School or "Environmental Focus" Charter School, but rather the "Bullis" Charter School. So, the Bullis Charter School has pulled out all of the stops in an attempt to get what has been their focus all along: the site. They placed a series of misleading ads in our local papers in an attempt to gather community support. Charter supporters canvassed the Egan school neighborhood to stir up as much opposition as

possible to the Charter’s use of the Egan Camp School. An original core leader of the Charter has been funding others to issue threats of

lawsuits. They tried pressuring our Board directly through uncivil behavior at Board meetings and promises of lawsuits (though this behavior has recently ceased.)

Are we now done with this issue? Sadly, we are not. The LASD Board has left the door open to providing the Bullis site to the Charter outside of the proposition 39 process. And the negative financial effects on the District from having a Charter school located in our District (though they are not a District school, they are Chartered by Santa Clara County) are very significant. We will examine these issues in detail next month.

New Applications for Housing

Kathy Putman, LANN Housing Chair

Here’s what’s new for April...

The first four listings are the usual two-story applications that routinely go before A& S. The last two are appeals of staff’s denial of design review applications for single story homes.
Now that’s unusual!

1. 04-SC-10 -- H. Adlparvar/ PCI Development Company, LLC--881 Parma Way: Consideration of design review for a new two-story home.  Project Planer: Rondash

2.  04-SC-11 -- R. and E. Miller -- 460 Paco Drive:  Consideration  of design review for a new two-story  home. Project Planner: Rondash

3. 04-SC-13 -- CRW Industries Inc./ F. Vertel--1475 Redwood Drive:  Consideration of design review for a new two-story  home.

4. 0-SC-14 -- R. and J. Loretz--1185 Eureka Avenue:  Consideration of of design review for a new two-story home.

5.  04-SC-07 --  H. Jeong-- 364 San Luis Avenue:  Appeal of  the Architectural and Site Control Committee’s decision to uphold staff’s denial of a design review application to demolish an existing 1,700 square-foot residence and to construct a new 3818 square-foot one story residence.  Project Planner: Rondash

6. 04-SC-15 -- G. and S. Urquhart -- 771 University Avenue: Appeal of staff’s denial of a one-story design review application for a new home.  Project Planner: Connolly

Letter to the Editor:

This editorial is in response to a letter recently published in the Los Altos Town Crier from Mr. Rasmussan.

It is very interesting that people forget so soon the trail of events that brought our School District and Superintendent to where we are. Mr. Rasmussan either forgot or didn't pay attention to that trail of events.

I was a member of the long range planning committee that developed the planning for the upgrade of our school facilities. Every school as well as community members were represented with a total of about thirty people. If you have ever worked on a committee of five or six you know how difficult it can be. Your District Superintendent, Marge Gratoit, did a superb job, allowing everyone to openly display their concerns and their recommendations. After some time, final agreement was reached on the plan and the funding. As I recall, the public was briefed at each school on the plan as part of the final decision.

Then along came a building boom in the local area. You had to reserve time with your builder who might do the job for time and a half. Building costs went through the roof and the upgrade plan had to be cut back. Decisions had to be made about how the suffering was to be allocated. Bullis came out on the short end.

There was also some initial concern about the "camp" schools, but that went away because the kids liked them. And then, we needed to pass a parcel tax to fill in for money the State wouldn't provide. Some people were concerned with the budgeting and spending by the School Board, so an oversight committee was formed to provide the Board with fiscal guidance. With the parcel tax passed and very generous donations from parents and concerned citizens, the school budget seemed to be in place.

Then the fallout from the actions of our profligate Governor and Legislature devastated the budget again and the pain again had to be allocated so that our children suffered the least. Digging out of that hole really caused the "mess" that now occupies so much of the Board's and citizen's time. In my opinion, our Superintendent and the Board, under the circumstances, have done their job about as well as possible, but still may be forced to cut the baby in half. We need to remember as well, that in spite of all these distractions the schools in this district have continued without fail, to provide our children with a top education.

Maligning Ms Gratoit and the Board as Mr. Rassmussen has done is certainly counterproductive toward finding a solution and only serves to inflame an already difficult situation. I believe an apology is in order.

Tom Anderson, Los Altos

Los Altos Traffic Commission

Congratulations to the following for being appointed to the newly formed

Traffic Commission:

Appointed to a 2-year term: Kurt Ayers, Bill Crook, Curt Ripple.

Appointed to a 4-year term: LaNae Avra, Jim Davidson, Jerry Lopatin, Zack Schmidt.

The first meeting of the commission was held on March 24.

 

Lann Board Members

Co-President Mike Abrams

Co-President Dianne Edmonds

Vice President Ken Lorell

Treasurer David Jaques

Secretary Kathy Wright

Editor Vickie Clements

Housing Chair Kathy Putman

Membership Chair Leslie Lodestro

Traffic Chair Bill Crook

Schools Chair David Luskin

Contributor Karen Greguras

Webmaster Jerry Wright

 

Advisors Tom Anderson

Lou Becker

David Casas

Kate Disney

 

 

Education Today Update

Two of the upcoming programs on Education Today, KMVT-15, Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays at 8:00 pm in April:

Alta Vista High School

Bill Pierce, Principal, and Hinda Weber, Director of Case Management 

Mountain View Quiz Kids and

Community Dialogues On Education Series

Nancy Lippe and Erica Vener,

Roy Lave, President, Los Altos Community Foundation, Jane Turnbull, President, Los Altos- Mountain View Area League of Women Voters