Edgewood Eats WEEKEND | P.19
OCTOBER 14, 2011 VOLUME 19, NO. 39
INSIDE: MOVIES | PAGE 22
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MountainViewOnline.com
Shoreline ball fields win council approval By Daniel DeBolt
W COURTESY STEVEN HATT
Steve Jobs is pictured in the bottom row, second from the right, in this 1965 class photo from San Ramon School in Mountain View.
Steve Jobs called Mountain View home as a child By Daniel DeBolt
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childhood friend of Steve Jobs recalls that Silicon Valley’s quintessential entrepreneur was partly a product of Mountain View, where he attended school and lived until his early teens. On Friday, Mountain View resident Steve Hatt reminisced about a 1965 class photo of Jobs and himself at the now-closed San
Ramon School on San Ramon Avenue, just east of Rengstorff Avenue. Jobs was “motivated and not afraid to try something different,” and was a little mischievous and awkward as well, Hatt recalled. He said he counted Jobs as one of a half-dozen close buddies in the Monta Loma neighborhood. Hatt remembers Jobs attending Monta Loma elementary school,
and according to county property records, the Jobs family owned a house at 286 Diablo Avenue from 1959 to 1967. The Monta Loma neighborhood was a vibrant young neighborhood in the early 1960s, popular with Stanford professors and early Silicon Valley engineers. Hatt said that “everything was See JOBS, page 15
Dream Act hailed by local officials By Nick Veronin
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fficials in the local community college district and immigrant rights activists are applauding the recent passage of a new California law that will make it possible for illegal immigrant students to apply for and receive financial aid from the state. State Assembly Bill 131, also referred to as the Dream Act, will allow anyone to apply for state financial aid — regardless of their immigration status — as long as
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they meet certain requirements. “The Dream Act has been a legislative priority of the Foothill-De Anza board of trustees for a number of years now,” Becky Bartindale, a spokeswoman for the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, wrote in an email to the Voice. The new law requires those who wish to receive money from the state to have attended a California high school for three years or more, to have graduated from a California high school or attained an equivalent degree, and, if living in the
country without documentation, have applied to become a citizen or plan to apply as soon as they are eligible. “We are happy,” said Shaila Ramos, executive vice president of the De Anza Community College student senate. Ramos, who was snuck into the country along with her parents when she was 2 years old, has been working as an active proponent of immigrant rights at De Anza — working as a See DREAM ACT, page 8
GOINGS ON 24 | MARKETPLACE 25 | REAL ESTATE 27 | VIEWPOINT 18
ith the city’s ball fields more crowded than ever, the city’s youth sports leagues may soon find some relief. The City Council voted unanimously to approve the 6-acre “Shoreline athletic fields” project on Tuesday, allowing construction of two fields to begin near Shoreline Golf Links. The complex would include a Little League-sized baseball field with 60-foot base paths and a major league-size field with 90-foot base paths, along with a parking lot, bleachers, concession stand, picnic area and a playground. “We’re always trying to compete with everyone else” for space, said Mike Reelfs, president of the Mountain View Little League. “Anywhere we can have more fields for kids to play we’re all for it and we really hope this gets passed.” Mayor Jac Siegel called the project a “major milestone for the city” and said it was good to see the project finally come to fruition. Council member Tom Means said he remembered discussing the idea eight years ago when he was a city commissioner. The site, a former landfill that is currently used for city storage, is next to the south end of Shoreline Golf Links and is just across the street from Google’s Garcia Avenue offices near Amphitheatre Parkway. Within the footprint of the two baseball diamonds there is room for between two and four soccer fields, depending on the size of the soccer fields and the age of the players. A 2008 study found that the city had a 20-acre deficit in ball field space. That number is likely to be even higher, as city staff report that requests to use the city’s
ball fields have been increasing steadily over the past few years with the growth in popularity of soccer and other non-traditional sports such as lacrosse and rugby, which may also be played on the new fields. The latest cost estimate for the fields is slightly over $10.5 million but the city has budgeted only $10,080,000 for the project. Public Works Director Mike Fuller said costs could be reduced by removing the playground and cutting the size of the 165-space parking lot, which requires a retaining wall against the adjacent Crittenden slope. Council members expressed some interest in reducing the parking lot, but no one wanted to remove the playground. See FIELDS, page 10
Synthetic beats real in turf debate By Daniel DeBolt
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he sentiment was all but unanimous in Tuesday’s City Council study session that three city ball fields should use artificial turf instead of the real thing. After studying the pros and cons, city staff recommended artificial turf for Crittenden Middle School, McKelvey Park and a new ball field facility slated for Shoreline Park. “My gut response would be that I would prefer grass,” said council member Ronit Bryant. “However, I tried to both ask staff lots of questions and See TURF, page 10