Lots of ways to love the latke
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DECEMBER 16, 2016 VOLUME 24, NO. 47
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Police investigate MVHS teens over nude photos TEENS ALLEGEDLY USED DROPBOX TO DISTRIBUTE PHOTOS OF VICTIMS By Kevin Forestieri
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Mauricio Torres helps daughter Amira put on a snowman hat at the Day Worker Center’s holiday party for members and their families on Dec. 9.
Day Worker Center helps members cope with uncertainty NONPROFIT LOOKS TO EXPAND ITS OFFERINGS BEYOND JOB PLACEMENT By Mark Noack
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ast month marked the 20th anniversary for the Mountain View’s Day Worker Center, and to celebrate, the nonprofit threw a party. It was a festive mixer bringing together the nonprofit’s donors and laborers, many
Mountain View Voice
2016
of them foreign born, who daily queue up at the center to find an honest day’s work. But in many ways, the Nov.
10 festivities were overshadowed by the election just two days earlier, which delivered some mixed results. Locally, voters approved a rent control measure to help the city’s struggling tenants. Nationally, voters See DAY WORKER, page 11
olice are investigating several Mountain View High School students following reports that the teens shared nude photos over the file-sharing service Dropbox, according to the Mountain View Police Department. The investigation, launched in late August, involves both male and female suspects from multiple high schools — all minors — using Dropbox to distribute photos, and two juvenile victims have been identified, according to police spokeswoman Katie Nelson. Police are not disclosing specific details on the case, including how the juveniles were victimized, as the investigation is ongoing, and as of Wednesday, none of the suspects had been arrested or charged with a crime. “We’re wrapping up our investigation, and in the next couple of weeks we will be presenting this case to the district attorney’s office,” Nelson said. Although sharing inappropriate photos over social media,
Council dumps plan for biweekly garbage pickup FOOD-SCRAP COMPOSTING PROGRAM TO KEEP WEEKLY GARBAGE COLLECTION SCHEDULE By Mark Noack
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mid fears of foul diapers and pet waste spilling into the streets, the Mountain View City Council on Tuesday night decided to dump a controversial composting program that would have reduced trash pickup to every other week. The garbage proposal rejected by the council at its Dec. 13 meeting was seen as a surefire way to
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nudge residents to compost more of their food scraps. If implemented, the proposal showed the potential to reduce about 50 percent of the waste going to the landfills, decrease greenhouse gases and encourage aggressive recycling practices throughout the city, according to city staff. But those gains would have come mainly from switching single-family homes from their current weekly garbage pickup
to an every-other-week schedule, essentially forcing residents to compost and recycle to free up space in their trash cans. A large turnout of residents at the council meeting explained that the biweekly schedule was simply asking too much of many households. A similar program attempted in Portland, Oregon resulted in residents reportedly throwing 120 pounds of dirty diapers each day into their
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recycling bins since their garbage cans were jam-packed, said Lori Robbins, a Mountain View resident who helped launch an opposition campaign. “How would you council members feel if you had to make an illicit run to a dumpster at midnight or secretly dump your trash in one of your neighbor’s bins?” she said to the council. “All residents should have access to weekly garbage pickup.”
particularly on photo-sharing services like Snapchat and Instagram, has been an increasing problem for schools and law enforcement, this is the first situation the Mountain View Police Department has seen where minors used a file-sharing service to upload and distribute photos, Nelson said. Seven officers and detectives, including school resource officers and members of the Cyber Crime Unit and Child Crimes Unit, have been working on the case since August, interviewing several students and families in order to narrow down the pool of suspects. Police ensured that students involved in the investigation received access to counseling services, Nelson said. “Social media has triggered an unprecedented number of cyberbullying cases,” Nelson said. “We wanted to make sure that they have support if they felt like anything was traumatizing in any form or fashion, or are feeling stressed or depressed.” See TEEN PHOTOS, page 6
Variations on the food-scraps plan program have been tested out in Mountain View since last year in two Old Mountain View neighborhoods. In that pilot run, a subset of residents switched to a biweekly schedule were able to dramatically drop the amount of garbage they were producing, but they were generally dissatisfied with the change. Suzanne Martinez, an Old Mountain View resident in the pilot program, said she estimates that about one-third of the garbage cans in her neighborhood See GARBAGE PICKUP, page 11