El Camino bus-only lanes get boost from new study...by Red Hot Chili Peppers. Because if you listen...

By Mark Noack

With a final decision just a few months away, a controversial proposal

to bring dedicated bus lanes to El Camino Real inched forward on Tuesday, following the release of an independent study on the plan’s impacts. The new third-party review largely upholds findings by the Santa Clara Valley Transporta-tion Authority that the program known as bus-rapid transit (BRT) would cause only minor traffic dis-ruptions. With the favor-able report in hand, an enthusi-astic group of VTA officials dropped a heavy hint that they would rec-ommend that the board of directors approve the full BRT plan stretching from Palo Alto to San Jose later this year. “It really does look like the best project could be dedicated lanes,” said John Ristow, VTA program and planning director, on Tuesday, Sept. 22. “Really, this is the project that stands out, and we want to do the best project for this corridor.” VTA officials have champi-oned dedicated bus lanes on El Camino as a way to streamline mass transit, despite fears that it comes at the expense of other motorists. The plan calls for taking away two of El Camino’s six lanes, one in each direction, and restricting them to bus use. The $223-million plan would essentially redraw the layout for El Camino and create 26 new bus stops along the road’s median.

Since it was first pitched five years ago, the plan has been a lightning rod, generating more comments and attention than any other current VTA project. Among the hundreds of com-ments spread across six affected cities, many supporters endorsed the plan as a good step to make public transportation a viable option for more commuters. However, a large and vocal cadre of opponents have complained that VTA was downplaying the

plan’s side effects. Restricting traffic would worsen an already congested route and send driv-ers spilling onto side streets, they said. VTA plan-ners signaled that this traffic night-mare wouldn’t hap-pen although there would be significant

impacts. A draft environmental impact report published by VTA staff last year noted that there would be unavoidable disruption to traffic at multiple locations. But from reviewing 240 intersec-tions in the vicinity, transit engi-neers projected that thousands of commuters would no longer drive on El Camino if bus-rapid transit were implemented. In Mountain View, for exam-ple, VTA planners estimated that by 2018 more than 1,160 drivers would “divert” from solo driving on El Camino dur-ing peak traffic times. In other words, those drivers would find an alternative routes or means of transportation. Just under a quarter of these drivers would shift to mass-transit, the VTA report said. Meanwhile, other

By Kevin Forestieri

There are no two ways about it. School administrators and board members at

the Mountain View Whisman School District agreed last week that the achievement gap is a seri-ous problem facing the district, after the first Common Core test results showed performance

issues among the district’s low-income and minority students At the Sept. 17 school board meeting, district staff went graph-to-graph showing how economically disadvantaged students, English learners and students with disabilities lagged significantly behind their peers, with a whopping two-thirds of Latino students failing to meet

the state standards for English language arts and 71 percent fall-ing below the standards for math. District administrators acknowledged it as a serious problem, but the presentation didn’t go without some heavy contextualizing. Superinten-dent Ayindé Rudolph said the

By Kevin Forestieri

Two teachers in Mountain View who have taken their teaching tech-

niques off the beaten path, inspiring students and peers alike, have been named Teacher of the Year by Santa Clara County.

Charlotte Christensen, a third-grade teacher at Huff Elementary, and Leo Florendo, a teacher and program coor-dinator for Freestyle Academy at the Mountain View High School campus, will both be recognized on Oct. 1 at the Campbell Heritage Theatre in Campbell.

Christensen has spent the last year working single-handedly to help Huff Elementary adopt a new curriculum teaching students how their brain works and how to adopt a “growth mindset,” while Florendo has been working at the Mountain

MICHELLE LE

Charlotte Christensen, a third-grade teacher at Huff Elementary, has been teaching students how their brains learn new things in her growth mindset curriculum.

ARTS & EVENTS 18 | VIEWPOINT 19 | GOINGS ON 25 | MARKETPLACE 26 | REAL ESTATE 28INSIDE

Students’ poor test scores prompt call for actionDISTRICT OFFICIALS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS SAY ACHIEVEMENT GAP IS A HUGE CONCERN

Alternative styles praised in local Teacher of the Year winners

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015 VOLUME 23, NO. 35 MOVIES | 24650.964.6300www.MountainViewOnline.com

Say cheeseWEEKEND | 21

El Camino bus-only lanes get boost from new study

INDEPENDENT GROUP SUPPORTS FINDINGS OF VTA’S TRAFFIC ANALYSIS

‘We’re happy

with these

results.’JOHN RISTOW, VTA

PROGRAM AND PLANNING DIRECTOR

See TEACHERS, page 17

See BUS LANES, page 12 See TEST SCORES, page 7

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September 25, 2015 Mountain View Voice MountainViewOnline.com 3Have a question for Voices Around Town? E-mail it to [email protected]

Voices

A R O U N D T O W NAsked in downtown Mountain View. Photos and interviews by Carl Sibley.

“‘Como La Flor’ by Selena.

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Richard White, Burlingame

“Queen’s song, ‘I Want to Ride

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“I would say ‘Under the Bridge’

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“‘Buy U A Drank’ by T-Pain. I’ve

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Have a question for Voices Around Town? Email it to [email protected]

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LocalNews

POLICE PREPARE FOR SHORELINE EVENT The Mountain View Police Department released an advisory warning people of the potential use of drugs and health concerns expected to crop up at the Beyond Wonderland event at Shoreline Amphitheatre this weekend. The advisory, a joint press release between the department and the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, explains that stimulant drugs like MDMA or methamphetamine, as well as sedatives and hallucinogenic drugs like LSD may be present at the concert, and are associated with a host of health-related issues. One of the main concerns is when drugs at the concert are mixed with other chemicals, which can have some unpredictable effects. “This (mixing) can be extremely dangerous, and even fatal,” said Dr. Sara Cody, health officer for the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, in the press release. Tips mostly include concert-goers carefully watching their drinks to make sure nothing is added to them without their knowledge. Anyone who is drugged or observes someone who is drugged is encouraged to seek medical help immediately. Last year more than 100 people were arrested at the two-day concert.

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3-D PRINTING AT FOOTHILL COLLEGE 3-D printing has made an impression on schools and libraries across the country, and Foothill College is no exception. The col-lege now offers 3-D printing services to students and community members. “Foothill’s 3-D printing service connects engineering with art,” said Foothill College engineering instructor Oxana Pantchenko in a statement. “The types of projects customers may submit are limitless, from cell phone covers and action figures to engineering prototypes and architectural models.” The cost of each 3-D printed item depends on size and other specifications. Each request includes an $11 printing fee, as well as additional fees for inks and filaments, which range from $1 for 10 grams to $6 for 20 grams. Using the 3-D printing service requires filling out a request form and submitting project files in .stl format for a price quote. Completed projects can be picked up at Foothill’s 3-D Printing Lab in Room 4704. “By offering 3-D printing services, our goal is to get current and potential students interested in concept-to-creation engineering, and introduce them to the comprehensive selection of engineer-ing courses that Foothill offers,” Pantchenko said. “It’s an innova-tive way to bring our community closer to Foothill College.”

C R I M E B R I E F S

P O L I C E L O G

C O M M U N I T Y B R I E F S

The Mountain View Voice (USPS 2560) is published every Friday by Embarcadero Media, 450 Cambridge Ave, Palo Alto CA 94306 (650) 964-6300. Periodicals Postage Paid at Palo Alto CA and additional mailing offices. The Mountain View Voice is mailed free upon request to homes and apartments in Mountain View. Subscription rate of $60 per year. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mountain View Voice, 450 Cambridge Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94306.

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September 25, 2015 Mountain View Voice MountainViewOnline.com 5

CITY COUNCIL UPDATES

COMMUNITY

FEATURESLocalNews

MOUNTAIN VIEWVOICE

By Mark Noack

LinkedIn’s transformative plans for a new North Bayshore campus received

a round of accolades from Moun-tain View officials during a pre-liminary review last week. In a Sept. 16 study session, the city’s Environmental Planning Com-mission signaled early support for the project, with members praising it as a vast improvement over the standard office park. In partnership with the develop-ment firm Sywest, LinkenIn has proposed a new 10-building cam-pus that would mix corporate offices with a promenade of new shops and restaurants. The project, along Shoreline Boule-vard immediately east of High-way 101, would replace almost an entire block of established busi-nesses, including Laser Quest, the Sports Page bar and, in time, the Cinemark movie theaters. As proposed, LinkedIn’s plans would increase density on the land in the extremely competi-

tive North Bayshore area. The company plans showed a diligent effort to make its new campus harmonize with the neighbor-hood, said planning commis-sioner Margaret Capriles. She pointed out that many businesses being forced out by the new proj-ect were invited to come back as future tenants. “There was enough detail here for us to see that this is going

in the right direc-tion,” Capriles said. “They’re trying very hard to make this an inviting place.” The Linke-dIn project might be described as the largest of a series of colossal new tech campuses coming to North Bayshore. Earlier this year, the professiona l-net-working company

managed to cobble together a partnership between five land-owners for a larger develop-ment. The company’s proposal ultimately won the lion’s share of a limited pool of office space the city is allocating for the area, besting a pack of competitors

By Kevin Forestieri

Santa Clara County officials plan to greatly increase the number of emergency shel-

ter space for homeless people throughout the county, and they’re doing it with a sense of urgency. The looming spectre of El Niño, a weather pattern that is expected to bring heavy rainfall to the Bay Area this winter, has members of the county’s Office of Housing and Homeless Sup-port Services working quickly to find and build homeless shelters, including in the under-served North County. The plans, which were pre-sented to the county Board of

Supervisors on Tuesday, Sept. 15, will cost the county roughly $13 million in one-time costs and another $13 million in ongoing costs. If approved, it would raise the number of year-round shelter beds in the county from a meager 130 to 715. At the Sept. 15 meeting, Gary Graves, the county’s chief oper-ating officer, called most of the plans “short-term solutions” and said the money would help to create an acquisition fund, enabling the county to buy any potential shelter space that pops up. In the past, the county has been slow to compete for avail-able space in the red-hot Bay Area real estate market.

“(The fund) would allow us to take advantage of opportunities that come about to increase the number of units that are avail-

able,” Graves said. The big investment in emer-gency shelter marks a diver-gence from the county’s normal focus on long-term solutions for its homeless population, and will instead go towards imme-

diate help for the roughly 4,627 homeless people in the county who are “unsheltered” and living on the street, in encamp-ments or in their cars. Supervisor Cindy Chavez, who helped develop the plans with the county’s Housing Task Force over six meetings, noted a sense of urgency in getting the emergency housing ready as fast as possible. In a press release prior to the meeting, she said the county is in a “race” against El Niño. “We need to take immediate action to reduce human misery from the heavy rains that we expect,” she said. A significant part of the plans include finding a replacement

for the Sunnyvale Armory, a facility that used to provide 125 emergency shelter beds for homeless North County residents during the cold winter months. Last year, the facil-ity closed its doors, leaving minimal shelter options in the county north of San Jose. After months of fruitless searching, the county has found a promising opportunity to open up a temporary shelter on Moffett Field for one year. In a still-pending agreement with the city of Sunnyvale, the county has plans to build a facility on the northernmost end of the former Onizuka Air

By Mark Noack

A city committee gave initial support Tuesday for contributing $5.8

million toward building 60 units of affordable housing off El Camino Real, although the project’s price tag drew some winces. At an estimated building cost of $536,000 per studio apartment, the new development could be viewed as the most expensive subsidized housing to date in Mountain View.

The new project was pre-sented Tuesday by the Palo Alto Housing Corporation to the city’s NOFA (Notice of Funding Availability Review) Committee, consisting of three City Council members tasked with deciding which affordable-housing proposals should be funded. In April, the Palo Alto nonprofit pur-chased a half-acre site at 1701 W. El Camino Real for $5.2 million with plans to build an affordable-housing campus serving mainly veterans.

Constructing the five-story building is expected to cost upward of $32 million, which City Council members and staff both acknowledged as a steep price. The tight housing market and rising land values are making affordable-hous-ing projects more expensive and taking up all the best plots of land, said explained Vera Gil, Mountain View’s afford-able housing project manager. In addition, material costs

COURTESY OF CITY OF MOUNTAIN VIEW

A 60-unit studio apartment complex got the go-ahead from Mountain View officials.

County racing to add homeless shelters before El Niño’s rains

New affordable housing for veterans comes with big price tag

LinkedIn campus plans win praiseSHOPS, MOVIE THEATER AND RESTAURANTS

INCORPORATED INTO NORTH BAYSHORE PROJECT

‘They’re trying

very hard to

make this an

inviting place.’MARGARET CAPRILES,

ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING COMMISSION

See HOUSING, page 6 See LINKEDIN, page 16

See HOMELESS, page 8

In Mountain

View, the homeless

population has

recently doubled.


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have escalated and contractors with no shortage of work in the area are demanding higher pay, she said. “It’s expensive when you compare it to projects that occurred five or 10 years ago,” she said. “It’s safe to say this is the one of our most expensive cost per-square foot affordable developments.” The rising costs of afford-able-housing projects could be viewed as one yardstick for how the local market has spiked. On a per-housing-unit basis, the newly proposed subsidized housing would be over 50 per-cent more costly than a similar housing project at 819 N. Reng-storff that opened earlier this year. By the same comparison,

the new project would be nearly 40 percent more expensive than another just-finished subsi-dized studio project located just one block away at 1585 W. El Camino Real. City officials are expected to cut the ribbon on those homes sometime next month. For the new project, some portion of that $32 million cost should be defrayed through a variety of federal and state sub-sidies, Gil said. But by exactly how much was unclear. Palo Alto Housing would apply for $4.4 million from a new state fund for veteran-focused affordable housing that was created last year through a successful ballot initiative. In addition, the project would seek $16.6 million in federal low-income housing tax credits. But getting the most lucrative tax credits would be a chal-

lenge because many qualified projects would likely compete for the limited funding. If the new project isn’t select-ed for those tax credits, it would face a funding gap of about $7 million, which the city of Mountain View would likely be asked to cover, Gil said. In a unanimous vote, coun-cilmen Chris Clark, Mike Kasperzak and Lenny Siegel made a recommendation to the full council to approve $5.8 million for the proposed affordable housing. That con-tribution would be drawn from a variety of development fees levied by the city. As part of the motion, the committee encouraged city staff and the Palo Alto Housing Corpora-tion to seek the competitive tax credits. V

Email Mark Noack at [email protected]

HOUSING Continued from page 5

OFFICER PUNCHED IN ALTERCATION A 45-year-old Daly City man was arrested over the weekend after he allegedly walked into traffic, fled police and punched an officer following a Def Lep-pard, Styx and Tesla concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre. Police say the man, identified as Peter Carrillo, had stumbled into traffic around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19, and when an officer told Carrillo to stop, he fled down the street and into

traffic. The man made it a short distance before officers were able to detain him, according to police spokeswoman Shino Tanaka. While detained, Carrillo was allegedly combative and struck an officer in the jaw and in the face, Tanaka said. Carrillo was arrested and booked into Santa Clara County Main Jail on charges of battery, being drunk in public and resist-ing arrest.

PAINTBALL DRIVE-BY

Police are searching for sus-pects who had allegedly shot a paintball gun at people on El

Camino Real on Sunday. At around 9 p.m., police received a report that occupants of a vehicle on the 2000 block of West El Camino Real had been shooting a paintball gun at people, and had struck a 4-year-old girl from San Mateo and a 55-year-old man from Sunnyvale with the pellets. The girl had been struck in the torso and the man had been shot in the back, and neither requested medical attention, according to police spokeswoman Shino Tanaka. While officers were on the scene, police received another report that a storefront at 1595 California Street had been shot with paintballs. The vehicle is described as a green, early 1990s model four-door Honda Accord, occupied by an unknown num-ber of people. Anyone with information regarding the case is asked to call 650-903-6395 and refer to case number 15-5763.

—Kevin Forestieri

CALTRAIN INJURY

A man was standing too close to Caltrain tracks when he was struck by a train on the platform of the agency’s San Antonio sta-tion in Mountain View Wednes-day morning, a Caltrain spokes-woman said. The man was struck at 7:42 a.m. Sept. 23 by southbound train No. 210 at the station at 190 Showers Drive. He was alive and was transported to a hospi-tal for treatment of his injuries, Caltrain spokeswoman Tasha Bartholomew said. Because of the incident, trains were delayed by up to an hour on the Caltrain system, Bar-tholomew said.

—Bay City News Service

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numbers should be seen as a “baseline” from which the district can improve in future years, and noted that school districts with similar demo-graphics, like the Berryessa Union School District in San Jose, scored slightly below the Mountain View Whisman School District.

“It’s not comforting, but it is to say when you take into account the factors, we are outperform-ing our peers,” Rudolph.

Context did little to assuage worries over what kind of job the district has been doing to teach underrepresented students through-out Mountain View. Lisa Garcia, who spent years working with the district’s Spanish-speaking commu-nity, said the test scores are terrible and demographics are no excuse. She urged the district take action imme-diately.

“I know it’s important to look at the demographics, but those numbers are so appalling. We’re comparing ourselves to (districts) that we don’t want to be compared to,” Garcia said.

Garcia said it’s not helpful for the district to compare itself with others just because they share a similar number of low-income and minority students. She called Mountain View a unique area f lush with resources and high property values.

“We have a $3 million house on sale up the street next to apartments that rent for $2,500,” she said. “We’re not in the ghetto, so when we’re look-ing at demographics I really want to see demographics that match our students and what they are being exposed to, and what resources we have avail-able to us.”

Vicki Hobel Schultz, a for-mer district parent, urged the school board and the super-intendent not to chalk up the problem to demographics, and said there are plenty of schools in poorer areas of the state, such as Inglewood, where students have overcome the achievement gap and perform in the top percentile on stan-dardized tests.

The problem, Schultz said, is that Mountain View has a spotty history of taking action when poor test results come in,

including inaction by former superintendents. She recalled that administrators at the for-mer Mountain View School District, before it merged with the Whisman District, tried to defend lackluster test results by blaming the student demo-graphics. “The mantra from the dis-trict was, ‘Our the instruction is fine, it’s the socio-economics and demographics and eth-nicity of the students that (is) why they’re not performing,’” Schultz said. “There was no interest in looking at or chang-ing instruction at the time.”

The influx of new data could be useful for fig-uring out what works to narrow the achievement gap, according to Associate Super-intendent Cathy Baur. Because standards are now shared across all school districts, she said they can seek out dis-tricts with simi-lar demographics that outperform

the Mountain View Whisman School District to see what kind of instructional strategies are working. Board President Ellen Wheel-er was a little skeptical of the idea. She said that district offi-cials are well aware of proven methods for improving test scores, like extending the school day and offering more training for teachers, and that she didn’t think the Mountain View Whis-man district would get much out of observing other schools. “We need to see better results, but it would surprise me if we looked at similar districts and we found something wildly different than what we already know works,” Wheeler said. What will it take to boost test scores? Rudolph said it’s hard to tell right now what’s causing the persistent achievement gap in the district, and likened it to a symptom — in this case a fever — that could be an indication of a whole host of things that could be going wrong. He suggested the district wait for the results of the $275,000 school audit, which the board approved last month, to get a better idea. “We don’t know what the precise cause of our achieve-ment gap is, and there is a whole litany of things we can point our fingers to, but we may not be prescribing the right medicine at the right time,” Rudolph said. V

Email Kevin Forestieri at [email protected]

‘I know it’s

important to

look at the

demographics,

but those

numbers are so

appalling.’LISA GARCIA

TEST SCORES Continued from page 1


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Force Station. The goal is to get that shelter open by Nov. 30 this year, according to Ky Le, director of the county’s Office of Supportive Housing. The previous location being considered in Sunnyvale fell through. County staff con-sidered using a small, county-owned wedge of land next to North Fair Oaks Avenue

and Central Expressway for a shelter facility, but residents in the nearby single-family homes sharply criticized the plans. Le described the shelter on Moffett Field as a short-term facility only expected to be around for a year, to avoid locking the city of Sunnyvale into any long-term agreements. After that, he said, it’s up to the county to look at other loca-tions on the former Air Force

station or try again to use the county-owned plot along Cen-tral Expressway. Until the North County shelters are established, home-less people in need of a drop-in shelter will continue to be referred to facilities in San Jose by organizations like the Community Services Agency of Mountain View and Los Altos. Le said the new facility at Moffett is a first step toward

filling that gap in homeless services in the northernmost communities in the county. “The county board’s intent is to have one or more facilities in the North County area, and I

think we really want more than one in Mountain View, Palo Alto and Sunnyvale,” Le said. Shelter space is needed now more than ever in Mountain View, where the homeless pop-ulation has recently doubled. A head count of the homeless population earlier this year found 276 homeless people reside in Mountain View, up from 139 in 2013. All but five of those people were consid-ered unsheltered.

Leveraging resources on all fronts

The Housing Task Force rec-ommendations included some pretty unconventional ways of getting homeless people off the street, including millions of dollars to house people in city-sanctioned encampments, so called “safe parking” sites and faith-based facilities. Le said the safe parking pro-gram, which has been success-fully adopted in Santa Barbara County, would give a safe hav-en to people who live and sleep in their vehicles. He said there are roughly 1,000 people sleep-ing in their cars on any given night, and the program aims to provide a place for them to park

and get basic services such as restrooms and showers. He said there will be security available to monitor the area. Once a city in the county identifies a parking lot that could be used for the program, the county would provide fund-ing to use it as a homeless park-ing lot. Le said it should have a minimal impact on nearby businesses and residents. “The idea is to provide a space for them to park their vehicles so they can rest and feel more secure,” Le said. Between the high number of unsheltered homeless people in the county and the prohibi-tively high cost of building shelters for all of the people out on the street, Le said the coun-ty is also looking at ways to set up temporary camps on gov-ernment or even private prop-erty where people can stay. The sanctioned encampments, referred to by Le and other county staff as “unconven-tional” structures and facili-ties, could be set up by home-less housing organizations using grant money from the county. V


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North County cities would see even higher diversion rates. Facing criticism that its traf-fic projections seemed suspi-ciously optimistic, VTA officials in March assembled a volunteer steering committee of inde-pendent experts to review its data. That committee report, a 100-page document published on Tuesday, deliberately avoided making a yes-or-no recommen-dation on bus-rapid transit as a policy decision. Instead, the report focused on the quality of data provided by VTA. For the most part, the report cor-roborated the information from VTA, explaining it was in line with similar projects. Stakeholders and political leaders should have enough information and a range of alternatives to make an informed decision, the report noted.

“We feel the document succeeds at these tasks,” said David Ory, a principal planner with the Met-ropolitan Transportation Com-mission and one of the committee members. “There’s a reasonable amount of information here for people to make decisions.” In a conference call on Tuesday, a panel of VTA officials celebrated the favorable report as a huge boost. Ristow emphasized that the steering committee had complete independence and its members were unpaid for their service. To help the committee in drafting the report, VTA contracted a traffic-engineering firm Iteris for a cost not to exceed $55,000. “We’re happy with these results. It validates our work in terms of its completeness, its accuracy and the results,” Ristow said. “We didn’t guide them. They did what they wanted to do in terms of the analy-sis. We did not get in their way.” The independent committee did point out some areas that VTA could improve on. The group noted that the diversion rates reported by VTA seemed high and not in line with similar projects, but the committee did not question their accuracy. VTA staff considered traffic diver-sion in a “conservative” fashion, which isn’t out of the ordinary for an EIR, the report noted. The independent panel noted that its members struggled at times to understand the VTA traffic model and how it pro-jected ridership and traffic pat-terns. The report urged transit officials to clarify its system. For their part, VTA staff members pledged they would work harder in the coming months to better explain the complex data. Even with the favorable report, it remains to be seen whether the BRT plan wins any new friends. Earlier this year, a split Mountain View City Council endorsed the full plan for dedicated bus lanes — and in the process, spurring a fierce backlash and threats to recall council members who voted in support. Most other cities have avoided making a firm decision. At a recent BRT advisory meeting, many local representatives urged VTA to consider alternatives, such as a mixed-flow configuration that would modify El Camino’s curbs to expedite bus loading and offloading. VTA officials emphasize that local input from regional leaders is vital, but they also point out that the final decision will be made solely by the agency’s board of directors. VTA staff is expected to bring the plan to the full board for a decision in December. V


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Customers can have their design printed an Objet 30 Stratasys Printer or a Mini-Makerbot printer, and may come and see their creation being printed. To fill out a project request form or review printing service speci-fications, go to foothill.edu/sli/3D_printing.html.

FINANCE PROGRAM FOR EFFICIENCY UPGRADES Last week the City Council voted to make the HERO Property Assessed Clean Ener-gy (PACE) program available to local residents. Mountain View joins San Jose, Morgan Hill and Gilroy in participat-ing.

HERO PACE financing enables homeowners to make energy- and water-efficien-cy improvements and pay for them over time through their property tax bill. Given California’s recently adopted regulations aimed at reducing urban water consumption by 25 percent, it could be a timely option for homeowners. “We’re happy to provide an avenue for financing that requires no money down and does not depend on person-al credit, bringing efficiency improvements within reach for a broad range of homeowners,” said Blair McNeill, vice presi-dent of community develop-ment for Renovate America, the company that administers the HERO Program.

The company has a wide variety of products to help homeowners save water, including high-efficiency toi-lets, faucets and showerheads, drip irrigation systems, rain-water catchment systems, gray water systems, and artificial turf and drought-tolerant landscaping. Some of HERO’s most popu-lar energy-saving products include solar power panel installations, whole-home heating and cooling (HVAC) systems, energy-saving win-dows and doors, and roofing and insulation, according to McNeill. Residents may begin submit-ting applications for HERO later this year.

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Continued from page 4

BUS LANES Continued from page 1

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By Kevin Forestieri

Preschool has been lauded by education advocates as an essential part of early

childhood development, and important tool to make sure kids aren’t behind when they start kindergarten.

Now, Gov. Jerry Brown is con-sidering a bill that could guaran-tee all low-income families will have access to the state preschool program, which could more than double the number of available classroom spots in the Mountain View Whisman School District.

The district’s school board voted last week to send a letter to the governor supporting the Preschool for All Act of 2015. The bill would expand state pre-school programs, many of them run by school districts, so that any children with families that meet the eligibility requirements can attend preschool.

Families have to meet several requirements, including income thresholds. A family of four making slightly less than $49,000 a year would qualify.

In the Mountain View Whis-man School District there are 96 state preschool slots, which is far below the demand. In a district where 37 percent of the student body comes from low-income families and more than 700 new kindergarten students pour into the district each year, the waiting list has gone up to as many as 200 students in past years, according to a district staff report. That number has since gone down, in part because families are dis-couraged by the long wait.

Many of the families who qualify for state preschool can’t afford the alternatives — namely

the local, private preschools in the area. Monthly tuition ranges from $770 to $1,300 for a half-day of preschool, based on the fees of Hobbledehoy, Montecito School, The Wonder Years and Primary Plus, according to the report.

According to the bill, none of the recent reforms in California public education system address the achievement gap that is already present the day children start kindergarten. The bill cites research that found by the age of 2, low-income children are “six months behind in language development” when compared to their higher-income peers. By age 5, those low-income stu-dents are two years behind. The effect cascades in later years, and students who are unable to read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely not to graduate high school on time, according to the bill’s authors. The bill also cites an indepen-dent research analysis showing a quality preschool education provides a return on investment of $15,000 for every child served, and is estimated to save $1.1 bil-lion annually on reductions in the prison population.

School board supports preschool expansion

STATE BILL WOULD WOULD PROVIDE FREE PRESCHOOL TO ALL ELIGIBLE FAMILIES

See PRESCHOOL, page 14

Support Mountain View Voice’s

print and online coverage of our community.

Join today: SupportLocalJournalism.org/MountainView

p

Join today: SupportLocalJournalism

A quality preschool

education provides

an estimated return

on investment of

$15,000 for every

child.


Board member Jose Gutierrez, the most vocal supporter of the bill, said state preschool could be a useful tool to curb the achieve-ment gap, and noted the new-est Common Core test results show that the gap is not getting smaller. “It is very annoying and disap-pointing to always be looking at the same group of students in the same situation, regardless of the year,” Gutierrez said. The board voted 4-0, with board member Greg Coladonato abstaining, to send a letter to Gov. Brown supporting the Pre-school for All bill. Coladonato said he wanted to see a clear improvement in the perfor-mance of students who attended the state preschool program in the district before supporting higher spending. Funding the preschool bill may be a challenge for the state. Terri Wallace-Bielecki, the district’s preschool director, said in an email to the Voice that the state hasn’t provided sufficient fund-ing for preschool since budget

cuts triggered by the 2008 reces-sion, and that Mountain View Whisman’s preschool program is still being funded at a contract level below what it was receiving in 2010. “If it were to pass, there is still the question as to whether it would actually be funded,” she said.

The preschool bill states that all eligible children will have access to preschool “contingent upon the appropriation of sufficient funding in the annual Budget Act for this purpose.” Cost esti-mates for the bill, according to the Senate Appropriations Com-

mittee, estimate that it would cost the state $240 million, assuming roughly half of the eli-gible four-year-olds are not being served by the state preschool program. That number goes up fast if the ambiguous provisions in the bill include 3-year-olds, which could launch costs above $1 billion. Preschool seats are expected to dwindle after next year’s expira-tion of the state’s Child Signature Program, which started in 2010 and injects about $45 million into adding preschool seats each year. The funding added 35 more spots for the Mountain View Whisman School District. At a meeting in April, school board members generally agreed it would be a good idea for the district to start putting its own money into the preschool pro-gram, rather than rely solely on the state. In addition to filling the gap left by the end of Child Signa-ture Program funding, then-board president Chris Chiang said it might be worth spending more money on top of that, roughly $700,000, to serve every child on the preschool waiting list. V


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Breakfast includes pancakes, fruit, sausage, juice & coffee

Parking with shuttle service to the event will be available at 369 N. Whisman Road.

LocalNews

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PRESCHOOL Continued from page 13

By Kevin Forestieri

The normally mundane and uncontroversial pro-cess of setting items for

future agendas in the Mountain View Whisman School District sparked some drama between board members last week, with one trustee threatening to vote no on all future agenda items if he doesn’t get his way. Board member Steve Nelson insisted at the Sept. 17 meet-ing that there is a problem with transparency on the school board, arguing that board Presi-dent Ellen Wheeler — and before that former board President Chris Chiang — refused to honor his request to put items on the

agenda, even after garnering sup-port from other board members. The complaint came after he proposed placing an item on a future agenda to prioritize “guiding principles” for the dis-trict’s facilities. The district has 17 guiding principles, listed in no particular order, including student safety and classroom design, which Nelson said would help to better guide the district as it spends the remaining Measure G bond money on new school buildings. The majority of the board disagreed, and the discus-sion fell flat when Nelson real-ized there wasn’t enough support for his proposal.

Trustee upset over school board agendas

‘It is very annoying

and disappointing

to always be looking

at the same group of

students in the same

situation.’SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER JOSE

GUTIERREZ

See TRUSTEE, page 16


By Kevin Forestieri

Five Mountain View fire-fighters will be headed to San Francisco this weekend

for a mile-and-a-half swim from the Golden Gate Bridge to Yacht Harbor Beach to raise money for childhood cancer research. The firefighters will be partici-pating in Swim Across America’s San Francisco Bay Swim, an an annual event used to raise money at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital Oakland. Brian Hagerty, one of the firefighters, has been leading the Mountain View team and said he had no trouble recruiting people in the Mountain View Fire Department to help out. “It’s something that people can really rally behind,” Hagerty said. The team had raised about $5,680 as of Wednesday, Sept. 23,

and is looking to raise a grand total of $15,000. The money will also towards the UCSF’s Survivors of Childhood Cancer program, which helps kids who have gone into remission stay healthy and cope with the sec-ondary complications that come from pediatric cancer. For Hagerty, the cause is a per-sonal one. Soon after his daugh-ter Lilly was born, she spent three years in and out of hospitals dealing with a rare combination of leukemia and an autoimmune disease. At one point she spent nearly a year in inpatient care between two hospitals and only had a 25 percent chance of sur-vival. During that critical time, Hagerty said he and his wife had spent most of their time in the hospital, and got to know just about everyone there while sup-porting their daughter.

“We just kind of dropped everything,” he said. “We basi-cally just lived there at the hospi-tal.” Despite the odds, Lilly has made a full recovery, Hagerty said, and she has gone into com-

plete remission. The swim event over the weekend is just one of the ways he said he wanted to give back. “We want to give back because we were so fortunate,” Hagerty said.

Anyone interested in donating to the cause can go to swimacros-samerica.org and search for the Mountain View Professional Firefighters team page. V


LocalNews

MV firefighters swim to fight childhood cancer

FIVE FIREFIGHTERS TO PARTICIPATE IN SWIM ACROSS AMERICA FUNDRAISER

COURTESY OF BRIAN HAGERTY

Mountain View firefighters pose after a practice swim in preparation for the Swim Across America fundraising event to fight childhood cancer.


NOTICE TO PROSPECTIVE CONTRACTORS

Notice is hereby given that for the purpose of pre-qualification, sealed Responsibility Questionnaires will be received by the Board of trustees of the Mountain View – Los Altos High School District up until the close of business on the date indicated below for:

Project Description: Mountain View Los Altos District Warehouse Data Center Expansion.

Pre-Qualification Packages Due Date and Time: September 23, 2015 at 2pm at Kramer Project Development Company, Inc., attention Laurie Abate, 4020 Moorpark Avenue, #220, San Jose, CA 95117. Pre-Qualification of Trade ContractorsIn order to receive plans and bid, Trade Contractors must possess a current and active license to perform the work listed, submit and certify the required Responsibility Questionnaire information and be pre-qualified by the District. All contractors must have substantiated K-12 public school project experience to be prequalified.

A. General Trades B license requiredB. Electrical and Low Voltage Trades C-7 and C-10 licenses required

Only Pre-Qualified Contractors will be permitted to bid. Pre-Qualified Contractors will be required to attend a mandatory Pre-Bid Conference scheduled for Tuesday, September 29, 2015 at 2pm in the Board Room at Mountain View Los Altos High School District Office, 1299 Bryant Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94040. Opening of the sealed bids submitted by pre-qualified bidders is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, October 20, 2015 at 2pm. Bidding documents will be available to pre-qualified contractors on September 29, 2015. Pre-qualified contractors are advised to verify dates and times of the mandatory pre-bid conference and bid opening prior to the above listed dates. Responsibility Questionnaires and instructions for submission can be obtained by calling Orlando Delgadillo at (408) 246-6237 or by email [email protected]. Contracts will require a 100% performance bond, a 100% Labor and Materials Bond and a Bid Security in the amount of 10% of the submitted bid. The project is subject to the State Labor Code. Labor Code 1720-1861 regarding DIR registration, the payment of prevailing wages and submission of certified payroll statements will be enforced. No contractor or subcontractor may be listed on a bid proposal for a public works project (submitted on or after March 1, 2015) unless registered with the Department of Industrial Relations pursuant to Labor Code section 1725.5 [with limited exceptions from this requirement for bid purposes only under Labor Code section 1771.1(a)]. No contractor or subcontractor may be awarded a contract for public work on a public works project (awarded on or after April 1, 2015) unless registered with the Department of Industrial Relations pursuant to Labor Code section 1725.5. This project is subject to compliance monitoring and enforcement by the Department of Industrial Relations. Contractors are allowed according to PCC sec. 22300 to submit securities in lieu of retention.

LocalNews

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that included Google. The company’s proposal calls for seven office buildings that would reportedly house about 7,500 employees. Each office building would include shops and restaurants on the ground floor. The development would include a new athletic club, a 200-room hotel and at least three levels of parking. The buildings would include a large amount of open space as well as rooftop gardens. The new development would eventually replace the 16-screen Cinemark theaters. In an email, LinkedIn officials explained their plan was to wait as long as possible before shutting down the theater, but they could not specify an exact date. As soon as possible, a new movie cinema with lux-ury accommodations would open as part of the campus, they noted. Commissioners last week urged the company’s represen-tatives to find ways to make the building more visually appeal-ing, such as adding artwork to the side of buildings facing the highway. Given its off-highway loca-tion, the LinkedIn development would have big ramifications for the North Bayshore traffic flow. Traffic congestion in the area is considered among the worst in Mountain View, coming mostly from commuting workers. City officials require any new devel-opment in the area to carefully

address its impact on traffic. As part of its project, the LinkedIn is pledging a f leet of initiatives to lessen the num-ber of cars on the road. The project would help build new bike lanes along Shoreline Bou-levard as well as “reversable” lanes for buses to quickly move in the direction of commuter traffic. The company would also help build a new bike and pedestrian bridge over High-way 101. LinkedIn is pledging that fewer than half its employ-ees at the new campus would drive themselves to work. Assistant City Development Director Terry Blount said the LinkedIn project is still barely out of the starting gate. The campus plans would be slow-ly refined over several future city meetings, including a City Council study session sched-uled for Oct. 20. Overall, he expressed enthusiasm for the project as part of a larger trans-formation of North Bayshore into a vibrant community. “We feel fortunate to have such great plans in place,” he said. “This’ll be a place that’s much more sustainable, much more bike- and pedestrian-friendly and much more of a community than the suburban office park that we’re starting with.” The first phase for the new campus will include a new the-ater, gym and one million square feet of office space. Company officials indicated they hope to complete the first phase by 2019. V


LINKEDIN Continued from page 5

Up until that meeting, Nelson said the board president and the district administration had “deep-sixed” his agenda item from Feb. 5 all the way until the Sept. 17 meeting, and that it had a “snowball’s chance in hell” of ever showing up on the agenda. He said the board ought to find a way to avoid a repeat of this in the future by allowing for more specific demands for future agenda items, including specific dates. If Wheeler did not follow through with it, Nelson said there would be repercussions. “Believe me, I will vote no on every single agenda item if you deep-six this as you did with (the guiding principles),” Nelson said. At Nelson’s request, the board will be looking at new proto-cols and formalities for board

members to bring up potential agenda items, including written proposals that would need to be submitted prior to the meeting for consideration. Board mem-ber Greg Coladonato raised concerns about the proposal, saying he often thinks of future agenda items during meetings rather than beforehand. Board members were also on the fence about whether the extra specificity — adding a specific date onto a request for a future agenda item — would require changing the board bylaws. Board members Bill Lambert and Wheeler, as wel l as Superintendent Rudolph, insisted the bylaws on future agenda items do not allow for board members to demand a specific date for an item to be heard, while Cola-donato argued that doing so is certainly within the board’s power. V


TRUSTEE Continued from page 14


LocalNews

View-Los Altos High School District’s alternative Freestyle Academy since the very begin-ning, creating the philosophy of the multimedia-driven program.

Charlotte Christensen

Every other year, tenured teach-ers in the Mountain View Whis-man School District go through a teacher evaluation, with plenty of boxes to check off to make sure teachers are doing a good job in the classroom. And Christensen was having none of that. Christensen, a high-energy teacher at Huff Elementary, took on the challenge of adopting a new “growth mindset” curricu-lum in the classroom last year, as part of an alternative to the typi-cal teacher evaluation. The cur-riculum was later developed into a school-wide adoption of a nine-month set of lessons designed to help kids learn how their brains work. The growth mindset teaches that people are not born with a fixed level of intelligence, and that struggling to understand

difficult or unfamiliar concepts can actually improve the brain’s ability to learn new things. The concept, based largely off research by Stanford University psychol-ogy professor Carol Dweck, is slowly making headway in public schools. Huff’s new growth mindset curriculum came about when Christensen noticed the new report cards include an evalua-tion of a student’s “perseverance,” which is a big component of the growth mindset. If a student is willing to challenge themselves and not get discouraged by fail-ure, they are more likely to have the grit needed to learn new things. It’s tough to measure something like that for a report card, Chris-tensen said, but she was excited by the prospect of being able to bring that idea into the classroom. “I thought, ‘If that’s something I can teach, that would be amaz-ing,’” Christensen said. In looking around on the school’s website, Christensen said she found there’s an alternative to teacher evaluations — a “self directed” evaluation with which neither she nor Huff principal

Heidi Smith were familiar. She decided that evaluation would be to research, create and pilot an entire set of class lessons that would guide students through growth mindset ideas and give students some elementary ideas about how the brain functions. In one lesson, students manipu-late strings that represent neurons in their brains. Something new that they learn is held up by students as a thin, frail strand, that could either be reinforced by repetition, or weaken and break if neglected. Things students do all the time, like recall their own name, are represented with thick pieces of rope that show stu-dents how something can become second-nature if they reinforce it enough. Over the summer, Christensen took what worked throughout the year to create a set of growth mindset lessons and activities that could be used by the whole school from kindergarten through fifth grade. The school has since embraced the curriculum, with a lesson each month in all of the classes and quotes on the white board each week inspiring stu-dents to challenge themselves. Christensen took on the growth mindset project at the same time she has had to keep up with the new Common Core curriculum, working through thick books to prepare for teaching math to third-grade students. She said it can get a little overwhelming, and she frequently works 10-hour days throughout the early months of the school year. Smith said the alternative teacher evaluation didn’t even need to be that ambitious, but Christensen is always challenging

herself and turned her classroom into a “lab” for the new lessons last year. Above all, she said, Christensen truly believes in the message of the growth mindset, which has helped fuel the work she has put into creating the new curriculum. “She really believes that every kid can learn. Period,” Smith said.

Leo Florendo

It’s hard to spot on the Moun-tain View High School Campus at first, but nestled behind the school, next to the district office, is a thriving multimedia work-shop, with juniors and seniors flexing their creative muscles on video projects, books, music vid-eos and documentaries every day. One of the masterminds behind the program is Leo Flo-rendo, the last of the original staff members when Freestyle Academy first opened its doors as an alternative program at the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District in 2006. At Free-style, students spend half of their schoolday doing English and two elective classes, with a focus on multimedia projects and creative expression. Florendo used to teach physics and some math and engineering classes at Los Altos High School, and said the gig felt a little redun-dant. His new job as a web design and audio engineering teacher, by contrast, has been active each year, with new software, new techniques and some crazy ideas students come up with that he always strives to make a reality. “It’s not stagnant,” Florendo said. “Physics can be stagnant — it’s basically the same thing over and over again.”

Long-term projects, inspired by the students themselves, has been a long-standing tenet at Freestyle that Florendo has focused on for nearly a decade in the program. The classes push students to synthesize lots of information across multiple mediums. In one project, students do a profile of a person in the local community,

creating a magazine article with images and graphics. Later in the year students have to take that same information and turn it into a short commercial about the person, and eventually a five- or six-minute video in the film class. “We didn’t want this to just be three classes you take at Freestyle, it’s always been, ‘Let’s work on long-term projects,’” he said. Alta Vista Principal Bill Pierce, who oversees Freestyle Academy, said Florendo has been a lead teacher at the alternative program and is one of the smartest people he knows. “Anytime I’m in a conversation with him about what he does, or I hear him talking to a student, I am just struck by how fortunate the kids are to have a teacher like that, and to have a person who is willing to take on that teacher role,” Pierce said.

Florendo has also helped to make sure the program remains on the cutting edge of technology, Pierce said, scoring several grants to make sure students aren’t using old computers and equip-ment for their projects. He said Freestyle Academy is designed so that students can go directly into graduate programs or internships in their field of choice, and in order to do that they need to be trained with the most up-to-date technology. With students coming into Freestyle Academy at ages 17 and 18, Florendo said he believes it’s important to get them to learn about what they like — and what they don’t like — through first-hand experience. To learn what they are actually passion-ate about, rather than what they think they want to do. He said some students go into audio engineering and are taken aback by just how technical it is, while others thrive on it. “At the end of two years they should be able to say with cer-tainty, ‘Oh, I really enjoyed web design, so that’s what I’m gonna do. But I didn’t enjoy animation, so I’m not going to do that,’” Flo-rendo said. Once students do find their niche at Freestyle and work hard to bring a months-long project together, Pierce said it’s obvious the kind of influence Florendo and the rest of the staff have on the the teens. “It’s striking, the diversity of the things they are doing and the pas-sion with which they are doing it,” Pierce said. “And a lot of it comes from the teacher.” V


TEACHERS Continued from page 1

MICHELLE LE

Leo Florendo, teacher and program coordinator for Freestyle Academy, helps Kenneth Hamel with the Adobe After Effects program.

‘She really believes

that every kid can

learn. Period.’HUFF PRINCIPAL HEIDI SMITH

‘I am just struck by

how fortunate the

kids are to have a

teacher like that.’VICE PRINCIPAL BILL PIERCE


Arts&Events

MOUNTAIN VIEWVOICE

By Elizabeth Schwyzer

It began in 1933 with a short story published in Cosmo-politan magazine about an

upper-class young lady who runs away from home and falls in love with a traveling writer. The fol-lowing year, film director Frank Capra adapted the story into a romantic comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Now, Mountain View’s Pear Theatre unveils “The Walls of Jericho,” a staged version of Samuel Hopkins Adams’ “Night Bus” adapted by Diane Tasca and directed by Caroline Clark. More than 80 years after it was first written, the story retains its Great Depression-era gender norms and rules regarding social propriety. Yet rather than reduc-ing the play to a quaint anachro-nism, the time period provides the necessarily narrative tension to a plot that amounts to little more than a young woman and man making their way across the country on a limited budget. While Elspeth Andrews (Sar-ah Cook) and Peter Warne (Drew Reitz) ride a Greyhound bus through the flooded coun-try roads of the Midwest, the play rides on the couple’s mag-netic case of attraction and repulsion which begins the moment they meet and grows stronger with each exchange. The more impetuous and enti-tled Elspeth proves herself to be, the more Peter finds himself drawn to her; the more stubborn and ruthlessly pragmatic he is, the more she seems to enjoy his company. There are many models for the young couple falling in love against their will, from Shake-speare’s Beatrice and Benedick to Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy to Piper Chap-man and Alex Vause of “Orange is the New Black.” In the case of Elspeth and Peter, the stakes are upped not only by their own pride but also by the context they find themselves in: unmar-ried and traveling together like

man and wife, divided by social classes and fleeing the perceived wrath of her father, who has put out an award for information regarding his daughter’s where-abouts. One of the greatest charms of this production is the stylized delivery of the narration: third person, past-tense, and shared equally between members of the cast. Aboard the night bus, Peter observes Elspeth for a moment before turning to the audience to declare, “She had a chin that expected to have its own way.” “You shouldn’t try to be poetic; it doesn’t somehow go with your face,” Elspeth informs Peter directly, but confides with the audience, “Peter seemed to be a useful sort of person.” Both Cook and Reitz inhabit their roles comfortably, con-veying the confidence of well-rehearsed actors enjoying their characters. Their romance is most believable when at least one of them has a sense of humor intact; a dramatic scene involv-ing a leaking boat and a close

call with a dangling branch is less convincing. Actors Keith Larson, Leslie Newport, Stephanie Whigham and Todd Wright round out the cast by playing multiple sup-porting roles, from a lecherous fellow traveler to a bus company employee. Newport and Wright offer particularly comical turns as a gum-smacking waitress and a shifty driver, respectively, while Dave Sikula puts on an impres-sive Scottish brogue as Elspeth’s blue-blood father, Andrew Bruce MacGregor Andrews.

Linda Atkins’ period-appropri-ate costumes and Charles McK-eithan’s spare set adequately con-vey the context, while Caroline Clark’s evocative sound design makes the world around the trav-elers come to life with everything from birdsong to bus exhaust. Tunes of the era (“Speaking of the Weather,” “I’m Looking Over A Four-Leaf Clover”) help break up scenes; at a Sunday matinee, cheerful audience members of a certain age were humming along. Longtime fans of the Pear will admire the theater’s brand new

digs, located just a few blocks away from the old location in Mountain View’s North Bay-shore. An expanded seating area, a bright lobby and two bath-rooms at intermission are among the perks of the newly renovated space. Meanwhile on stage, those tit-ular “walls of Jericho,” so named by Peter after the story recount-ed in the Book of Joshua, consist of nothing more than blanket hung along a length of rope stretched between a wall and a coat hanger. This flimsy con-struction serves a physical and symbolic barrier between Peter and Elspeth, meant to ensure both privacy and propriety. The thing about walls, of course, is that they eventually tend to come down. V

Email Elizabeth Schwyzer at [email protected].

A merry war

THE PEAR THEATRE STAGES AN OLD

ROMANTIC COMEDY

RAY RENATI

Elspeth Andrews (Sarah Cook) and Peter Warne (Drew Reitz) are unlikely travel companions, but not quite bedfellows, in the Pear Theatre’s production of “The Walls of Jericho.”

What: “The Walls of Jericho”

Where: The Pear Theatre, 1110 La Avenida St., Mountain View

When: Through Oct. 4. Thurs-day-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.

Cost: $25-$30

Info: Go to thepear.org or call 650-254-1148.

I N F O R M AT I O N


Founding Editor, Kate Wakerly

S TA F F

WHAT’S YOUR VIEW?

All views must include a home address

and contact phone number. Published

letters will also appear on the web site,

www.MountainViewOnline.com, and

occasionally on the Town Square forum.

Town Square forum Post your views on Town Square at

MountainViewOnline.com

Email your views to [email protected]. Indicate if letter is to be published.

Mail to: Editor Mountain View Voice, P.O. Box 405 Mountain View, CA 94042-0405

Call the Viewpoint desk at 223-6528

EDITOR

Andrea Gemmet (223-6537)

EDITORIAL

Associate Editor Renee Batti (223-6528)

Arts & Entertainment Editor Elizabeth Schwyzer (223-6517)

Special Sections Editor Brenna Malmberg (223-6511)

Staff Writers Kevin Forestieri (223-6535) Mark Noack (223-6536)

Intern Carl Sibley

Photographer Michelle Le (223-6530)

Contributors Dale Bentson, Ruth Schecter

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Marketing and Creative Director Shannon Corey (223-6560)

Design and Production Manager Kristin Brown (223-6562)

Designers Linda Atilano, Diane Haas, Rosanna Leung, Paul Llewellyn, Nick Schweich, Doug Young

ADVERTISING

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Member, Mountain View Chamber of Commerce

EDITORIAL

YOUR LETTERS

GUEST OPINIONS

E D I T O R I A LT H E O P I N I O N O F T H E V O I C E

L E T T E R SV O I C E S F R O M T H E C O M M U N I T Y

View

point

HOUSING ECONOMICS

Freshman economics introduces the laws of supply and demand. If demand exceeds supply, prices rise. Conversely, if supply exceeds demand, prices fall. Unfortunately, this les-son seems lost on some Mountain View City Council members who oppose loosening the restrictions on “granny units” (in the Sept. 18 issue), yet believe that rent control (or euphe-mistica l ly “stabi l iza-

tion”) is the right way to address rising costs for rental units. The best course of action for Mountain View is to promote resi-dential inf i l l, create housing development along El Camino and Highway 101, and let the market (developers and renters) reach the proper equilibrium. Any well-intentioned regulatory interference will create unintended consequenc-es that benefit no one.Dan WaylonisStierlin Road

University irresponsible in withholding data

It’s not unusual for journalists and others seeking

information from government bureaucracies to slam

into a wall of excuses for why public officials won’t

provide it. Although in some instances those excuses

make sense from a legal standpoint, there are other occa-

sions when the public is denied access to information

based on convoluted reasoning. Or even bad faith.

The Voice ran into that wall recently with its California

Public Records Act request for information from San Jose

State University, a public institution; the data we sought

was compiled in a publicly funded study that relates to a

matter of public health and safety. The university’s rea-

soning for refusing to turn over the data has made our

collective head spin.

It’s not just the Voice that has been denied the informa-

tion. The city of Mountain View is preparing to embark

on a study that will identify the city’s “soft-story” struc-

tures — buildings that are likely to have a structurally

weak ground floor because they’re typically open on one

long side, such as apartments with an area of carport-

style parking spaces below. The buildings are potentially

hazardous during a powerful earthquake, and city offi-

cials want to come up with a plan to address this public

safety issue.

The university, through its Collaborative for Disas-

ter Management, had overseen a study — with funding

from public sources including FEMA, the state’s Office

of Emergency Services and the county’s Emergency Pre-

paredness Council — designed to survey soft-story build-

ings throughout the county. In 2004, Palo Alto obtained

the study’s comprehensive list identifying soft-story

buildings within its borders, and has put it to use in its

effort to ensure the buildings are safe for its occupants.

So why have Mountain View and the Voice been denied

the information? “The public interest in promoting

research on important social issues outweighs any ben-

efit the public might receive from gaining access to the

records,” according to the university’s vice president of

administration and finance. Providing the data, she said,

would “discourage faculty from researching issues of

public concern.”

According to Nikki Moore, an attorney for the Califor-

nia Newspaper Publishers Association, there’s no provi-

sion in the Public Records Act that validates this excuse

for withholding information from the public.

But aside from that, the university’s tortured argument

is simply nonsensical. What might be the “public interest”

in research on health and safety matters when the results

of that research are inaccessible even to a public agency

that wants to use the data to protect its residents?

Adding to the frustration is that, according to the uni-

versity, the list of soft-story buildings in Mountain View

has been destroyed; the city has no chance to use data

from a publicly funded survey in its effort to address an

important public safety matter, and will have to use city

funds to do another survey. It’s a project worth undertak-

ing, but a significant amount of time and money could

have been saved if the university had viewed its decade-

old project as one truly deserving of taxpayer funding

because of its important public safety benefits. V

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