Palo Alto’s enoteca WEEKEND | P.13
AUGUST 13, 2010 VOLUME 18, NO. 32
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INSIDE: MOVIES | PAGE 16
MountainViewOnline.com
Rail Authority drops tunnel, viaduct options HIGH-SPEED TRAIN WILL RUN IN OPEN TRENCH OR AT GRADE LEVEL By Daniel DeBolt and Gennady Sheyner
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MICHELLE LE
Dara Gray Tynefield with her son, August, in the “circle time” area of the Los Altos Parent Preschool.
Co-op preschool will close without a new home By Nick Veronin
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56-year-old local co-op preschool may shut its doors forever if it cannot find a new home by next summer, as its lease with the local high school district is being cut short. “We are asking the board
for clemency, more time, help or all of the above,” said Dara Gray Tynefield, board president emeritus for the Los Altos Parent Preschool, at the high school district’s board meeting on Aug. 9. “If the move date remains June of 2011, it could be the end of LAPP.”
Tynefield, along with three other women, pressed the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District board at its Monday meeting, voicing their support for the preschool and its low-cost, preSee PRESCHOOL, page 6
Six to vie for three council slots
SIEGEL, ABE-KOGA, BRYANT FACE THREE CHALLENGERS, TWO FROM GOOGLE By Daniel DeBolt
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ith a last minute entrant and a withdrawal, there are now six confirmed candidates in this year’s City Council election, two of whom work for Google. Acting City Clerk Wanda Wong said three challengers had filed papers to run for the three open City Council seats before last week’s deadline: longtime
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resident Greg David and Google employees Aaron Jabbari and Dan Waylonis. They will vie for three seats held by incumbents Jac Siegel, Margaret Abe-Koga and Mayor Ronit Bryant, who all are seeking a second term. Jabbari, who is the youngest council candidate in memory at 20 years old, is an online sales account manager at Google from
Laguna Beach. See page 9 for the Voice’s story on Jabbari. The other Google employee, 44-year-old libertarian and software engineer Dan Waylonis, was profiled by the Voice last month. As for Greg David, he has yet to comment to the VoiceVoice about his candidacy. In an e-mail, he told another local newspaper that he wanted to
GOINGS ON 17 | MARKETPLACE 18 | REAL ESTATE 21 | VIEWPOINT 12
orget about aerial tracks or tunnels. If high-speed trains are to run through Mountain View, the tracks will be either at-grade or in a trench, the California High Speed Rail Authority reported last week. At a rail authority board meeting in San Francisco Aug. 6, the agency dropped the tunnel and cut-and-cover alternatives along much of the Midpeninsula, despite heavy lobbying by Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton and other Midpeninsula cities. While a full-blown tunnel was never really on the table for Mountain View, the city had been considering a partially covered trench to provide a walking path between the downtown area and Rengstroff Park. It appears that the city would be on the hook for paying for that
make “common sense” decisions for residents and small businesses and that his priorities included private property and personal rights for residents. David is a longtime resident whose family ran Eddy’s sport shop on Castro Street for many years. Planning commission chair John McAlister said he was considering being a candidate last week, but decided against it. Likewise, wealthy pot club operator Matt Lucero announced Friday that he would not be running for Mountain View
partial trench covering. Mountain View was the only Peninsula city to have the aerial viaduct dropped from the option list. The aerial viaduct option was widely unpopular in recent public hearings on high-speed rail here. “I could not imagine how an aerial structure could possibly be fit into Mountain View without having a huge impact on us,” said Mayor Ronit Bryant, who attended the board meeting. In Mountain View, a deep tunnel option has not been a studied alternative, although a partially covered trench has been supported by the City Council. The city had recently asked the rail authority to study a deep tunnel in Mountain View was well, which is now unlikely. A new staff report lists just two design options for the PenSee HSR, page 9
City Council this year, despite announcing his intention to run in several newspapers. “My top priority continues to be helping the thousands of seriously ill residents of this community and, as such, I am putting my political aspirations aside and will not be running for political office this year,” Lucero wrote in a press release about the new location of the Buddy’s Cannabis Patient Collective, which originally opened in Mountain View. E-mail Daniel DeBolt at ddebolt@mv-voice.com