2013 08 02 paw section1 by Palo Alto Weekly

Vol. XXXIV, Number 44 N August 2, 2013

Inside this issue

Palo Alto Adult School fall program w w w.PaloA ltoOnline.com

Scientists seek personalized treatment based on your DNA PAGE 29

Transitions 17

Spectrum 18

Seniors 21

Eating 37

Movies 40

Home 49

Puzzles 66

N News Palo Alto set to ban vehicle dwelling

Page 3

N Arts Complexities abound in TheatreWorksâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; festival

Page 33

N Sports Stanford swimmer splashes to a gold medal

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CIT Y O F PALO ALTO PR ESE NTS TH E 29TH ANN UAL

TIME & PLACE 5K walk 7:00pm, 10K run 8:15pm, 5K run 8:45pm. Race-night registration 6 to 8pm at City of Palo Alto Baylands Athletic Center, Embarcadero & Geng Roads (just east of the Embarcadero Exit off Highway 101). Parking — go to PaloAltoOnline.com to check for specific parking locations.

5K WALK, 5K & 10K RUN Great for kids and families

COURSE 5k and 10k courses around the Palo Alto Baylands under the light of the Full Harvest Moon. Course is USAT&F certified (10k only) and flat along paved roads. Water at all stops. Course maps coming soon.

REGISTRATIONS & ENTRY FEE Adult Registration (13 +) registration fee is $30 per entrant by 9/13/13. Includes a long-sleeved t-shirt. Youth Registration (6 - 12) registration is $20 per entrant by 9/13/13. Includes a long-sleeved t-shirt. Youth (5 and under) run free with an adult, but must be registered through Evenbrite with signed parental guardian waiver, or may bring/fill out a signed waiver to race-night registration. Late Registration fee is $35 for adults, $25 for youth from 9/14 - 9/18. Race night registration fee is $40 for adult; $30 for youth from 6 to 8pm. T-shirts available only while supplies last. Refunds will not be issued for no-show registrations and t-shirts will not be held. MINORS: If not pre-registered, minors under 18 must bring signed parental/waiver form on race night.

SPORTS TEAM/CLUBS: Online pre-registration opportunity for organizations of 10 or more runners; e-mail MoonlightRun@paweekly.com.

DIVISIONS Age divisions: 9 & under; 10 - 12; 13 - 15; 16 - 19; 20 - 24; 25 - 29; 30 - 34; 35 - 39; 40 - 44; 45 - 49; 50 - 54; 55 - 59; 60 - 64; 65 - 69; 70 & over with separate divisions for male and female runners in each age group. Race timing provided for 5K and 10K runs only.

COMPUTERIZED RESULTS BY A CHANGE OF PACE Chip timing results will be posted on PaloAltoOnline.com by 11pm race night. Race organizers are not responsible for incorrect results caused by incomplete/incorrect registration forms.

AWARDS/PRIZES/ENTERTAINMENT Top three finishers in each division. Prize giveaways and refreshments. Pre-race warmups by Noxcuses Fitness, Palo Alto

BENEFICIARY Palo Alto Weekly Holiday Fund. A holiday-giving fund to benefit Palo Alto area nonprofits and charitable organizations. In April 2013, 55 organizations received a total of $380,000 (from the 2012-2013 Holiday Fund.)

FRIDAY SEPT 20 7PM A benefit event for local non-profits supporting kids and families

MORE INFORMATION Call (650) 463-4920, (650) 326-8210, email MoonlightRun@paweekly.com or go to www.PaloAltoOnline.com. For safety reasons, no dogs allowed on course for the 5K and 10K runs. They are welcome on the 5K walk only. No retractable leashes. Bring your own clean-up bag. Jogging strollers welcome in the 5K walk or at the back of either run.

Presented by

Event Sponsors

Community Sponsors

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Upfront

Local news, information and analysis

Palo Alto set to ban living in vehicles City Council prepares to rule on divisive proposal Monday night by Gennady Sheyner

alo Alto’s emotional two-year debate over whether it should be illegal for people to sleep in vehicles could reach its conclusion Monday night, when the City Council is scheduled to vote on the controversial ban. The ordinance would abolish Palo

Alto’s status as one of the few cities in the region that does not have any laws on the books barring vehicle habitation. Monte Sereno is currently the only city in Santa Clara County that does not have such a ban. In San Mateo County, only Colma, East Palo Alto and Portola

Valley don’t prohibit people from living in their cars. The proposal follows years of complaints from residents of College Terrace and other neighborhoods about car dwellers parking their vehicles on residential streets for extended periods of time. At the same time, Cubberley Community Center, on the southern edge of the city, has recently become what City Manager James Keene described as a “de facto homeless shelter” at

night. The number of complaints involving vehicle dwellers spiked from 10 in 2010 to 39 last year, according to Police Chief Dennis Burns. In early June, a homeless man was arrested in Cubberley for beating another man until the latter lost consciousness. Some area residents have complained that the situation is becoming increasingly unsafe for their families. Mary Anne Deierlein, a resident of Parkside Drive near

Cubberley, said she doesn’t feel safe walking with her dog anymore because of “too many weird encounters with people in bushes and behind trees, and a strong urine stench with toilet paper strewn about.” On several occasions, she said, she has been yelled at by two people regularly seen at Cubberley. “We are being impacted,” Deierlein wrote to the council in June. (continued on page 11)

HOUSING

Buena Vista residents seek to buy mobile-home park Federal and state funding could provide a low-interest mortgage by Sue Dremann

PMC Financial Services in Ashland, Ore., a consultant to residents wanting to purchase their mobile-home parks, have come up with a plan that they say could put the park property in residents’ hands. Loop has helped a number of residents in Santa Cruz County buy their parks; Sargent has helped residents in 50 parks in the Western U.S. Sargent said he doesn’t seek the parks out; he is usually contacted by someone at an endangered mobilehome park to help secure a buy. Attorneys for the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, which represents Buena Vista residents, referred the mobilehomeowners to Loop and Sargent. “It’s not easy. The hardest part is getting the owner to pay attention. I try to find out fairly early in the process if we can get the transaction closed,” Sargent said. Buena Vista’s chances “are remarkably high” — if they can get the Jissers to agree — and if they can buy the land for the fair-market value as a mobile-home park, he said.

But the Jissers “have 30 million reasons to beat on this process until somebody caves,” he warned. That’s how much the family stands to make from the deal with Prometheus. As affordable housing, Buena Vista’s value is estimated at only $14.5 million, according to an appraiser’s report done for the Jissers. “They (the residents) can’t afford to buy it for $30 million, but they can afford to buy it for the fair-market value of the park,” Sargent said, adding that he would help them find financing. At least two potential sources of mortgage financing could help secure funding. A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-guaranteed program could provide a 40-year, fixed-rate loan that is fully amortizing, Loop said. The longer-term loan allows for lower monthly payments and could include upgrades to utilities and roads and about $300,000 to $400,000 in

Veronica Weber

early 400 people living in Palo Alto’s Buena Vista Mobile Home Park might soon fight eviction with a new tactic: buying the land underneath their homes. About 70 residents met on Monday, July 29, with consultants who have helped other mobile-home park residents purchase their properties, confirmed Erika Escalante, Buena Vista Residents Association president. The possibility of going from being landless to the owners of a valuable piece of Palo Alto real estate has brought hope to many residents, Escalante said. But she cautioned that the idea is very much preliminary. The Jisser family, who own the property, announced plans last November to convert the 4.5-acre parcel at 3980 El Camino Real into 187 high-end apartments. They signed a contract with Prometheus Real Estate and Property Management to develop the property, contingent on the city granting a zoning change. David Loop, a real estate attorney from Aptos, and Deane Sargent of

The sounds of music Organist Jean Cole rehearses pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi and Dieterich Buxtehude on the large Merrit Speidel Memorial Organ at the First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto on July 30.

(continued on page 11)

EDUCATION

New two-story classroom buildings, gym, library on tap for Palo Alto students Most visible results of 2008 bond measure open their doors this month by Chris Kenrick

hen Palo Alto students go back to school Aug. 15, they’ll occupy three brandnew, two-story classroom buildings, a new gym, a new library and dozens of other new facilities across town funded by a massive 2008 school-bond measure. For some — notably students at Fairmeadow Elementary School and JLS and Jordan middle schools who have endured noise, dust, temporary

classrooms and campus detours — the long construction process will be complete, or nearly so. For others, particularly students at Duveneck Elementary School, which is embarking on three new classroom buildings, the disruptions have just begun. They’re not expected to be done until next summer. Nearly all the construction has been funded by a $378 million “Strong Schools” bond measure, ap-

proved in June 2008 by 77.5 percent of voters in the school district. The bond was aimed at modernizing old facilities and expanding capacity to meet growing enrollment. The most visible results of the bond measure will come this month, though $177 million remains in the “Strong Schools” fund for future projects — including major ones such as a new elementary school and a high school

performing-arts center. “We’ve never brought this many different projects to fruition at the start of a school year before,” said Bob Golton, the district’s facilities and bond-program manager. “I can’t predict the future, but it’s hard to imagine there’ll ever be more.” In addition to a new gym, students at Gunn High School this month will take classes in a new,

two-story building for math and English containing 28 classrooms and two labs clustered around an open courtyard. At Palo Alto High School, a contractor dispute (see sidebar) has delayed the scheduled June 2013 opening of a new Media Arts Center and two-story math and social-studies building, but work continues de(continued on page 9)

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Upfront QUOTE OF THE WEEK

450 Cambridge Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94306 (650) 326-8210

EDITORIAL Editor Jocelyn Dong (223-6514) Associate Editor Carol Blitzer (223-6511) Sports Editor Keith Peters (223-6516) Express & Online Editor Eric Van Susteren (223-6515) Arts & Entertainment Editor Rebecca Wallace (223-6517) Assistant Sports Editor Rick Eymer (223-6521) Spectrum Editor Tom Gibboney (223-6507) Staff Writers Sue Dremann (223-6518), Chris Kenrick (223-6512), Gennady Sheyner (223-6513) Editorial Assistant/Intern Coordinator Elena Kadvany (223-6519) Staff Photographer Veronica Weber (223-6520) Contributors Andrew Preimesberger, Dale F. Bentson, Peter Canavese, Kit Davey, Tyler Hanley, Iris Harrell, Sheila Himmel, Chad Jones, Karla Kane, Kevin Kirby, Terri Lobdell, Jack McKinnon, Jeanie K. Smith, Susan Tavernetti Editorial Interns John Brunett, Rye Druzin, Karishma Mehrotra ADVERTISING Vice President Sales & Advertising Tom Zahiralis (223-6570) Multimedia Advertising Sales Christine Afsahi (223-8582), Adam Carter (2236573), Elaine Clark (223-6572), Connie Jo Cotton (223-6571), Janice Hoogner (223-6576), Wendy Suzuki 223-6569), Brent Triantos (223-6577), Real Estate Advertising Sales Neal Fine (223-6583), Carolyn Oliver (223-6581), Rosemary Lewkowitz (223-6585) Inside Advertising Sales David Cirner (223-6579), Irene Schwartz (223-6580) Real Estate Advertising Assistant Diane Martin (223-6584) Legal Advertising Alicia Santillan (223-6578)

An Independent K-8 Non proﬁt School Individualized, Self-Directed Learning

DESIGN Design Director Shannon Corey (223-6560) Assistant Design Director Lili Cao (223-6562) Senior Designers Linda Atilano, Paul Llewellyn, Scott Peterson Designers Rosanna Leung, Kameron Sawyer

“Follow the child”

Essential Qualities: Respect, Responsibility, Independence

Multi-Age Classrooms “Continuity is key to learning”

ADVERTISING SERVICES Advertising Services Manager Jennifer Lindberg (223-6595) Sales & Production Coordinators Dorothy Hassett (223-6597), Blanca Yoc (223-6596)

“Children thrive on trust”

EXPRESS, ONLINE AND VIDEO SERVICES Online Operations Coordinator Ashley Finden (223-6508) BUSINESS Payroll & Benefits Susie Ochoa (223-6544) Business Associates Elena Dineva (223-6542), Mary McDonald (223-6543), Cathy Stringari (223-6541) ADMINISTRATION Assistant to the Publisher Miranda Chatfield (223-6559) Receptionist Doris Taylor Courier Ruben Espinoza EMBARCADERO MEDIA President William S. Johnson (223-6505) Vice President & CFO Michael I. Naar (223-6540) Vice President Sales & Advertising Tom Zahiralis (223-6570) Director, Information Technology & Webmaster Frank A. Bravo (223-6551) Major Accounts Sales Manager Connie Jo Cotton (223-6571) Director, Circulation & Mailing Services Bob Lampkin (223-6557) Circulation Assistant Alicia Santillan Computer System Associates Chris Planessi, Chip Poedjosoedarmo The Palo Alto Weekly (ISSN 0199-1159) is published every Friday by Embarcadero Media, 450 Cambridge Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306, (650) 326-8210. Periodicals postage paid at Palo Alto, CA and additional mailing offices. Adjudicated a newspaper of general circulation for Santa Clara County. The Palo Alto Weekly is delivered free to homes in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley, East Palo Alto, to faculty and staff households on the Stanford campus and to portions of Los Altos Hills. If you are not currently receiving the paper, you may request free delivery by calling 3268210. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302. ©2013 by Embarcadero Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited. The Palo Alto Weekly is available on the Internet via Palo Alto Online at: www.PaloAltoOnline.com

(650) 813-9131 State–of–the–art facility located at 4000 Terman Rd (cross street Arastradero) in Palo Alto

The Bowman faculty includes trained Montessori teachers, interns and teaching specialists who teach cultural, music and after–school enrichment programs. During the core school day our low student– to–faculty ratio enables us to place a strong focus on the child and deliver individualized teaching to each student.

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Our email addresses are: editor@paweekly.com, letters@paweekly.com, digitalads@paweekly.com, ads@paweekly.com Missed delivery or start/stop your paper? Call 650 223-6557, or email circulation@paweekly.com. You may also subscribe online at www.PaloAltoOnline.com. Subscriptions are $60/yr.

SUBSCRIBE! Support your local newspaper by becoming a paid subscriber. $60 per year. $100 for two years. Name: _________________________________ Address: ________________________________ City/Zip: ________________________________ Mail to: Palo Alto Weekly, 450 Cambridge Ave., Palo Alto CA 94306

‘‘

PUBLISHER William S. Johnson (223-6505)

We’re pitting residents against residents. — Michael Alcheck, Palo Alto planning commissioner, arguing that a proposed development on Page Mill Road could bring a new police HQ but also huge traffic problems. See story on page 10.

Around Town WORKPLACE ETHICS ... The ethical climate at Palo Alto City Hall is generally sunny, though many city workers feel the city can do better when it comes to rewarding strong performance and encouraging employees to speak up about ethical violations. Those are results of a survey of more than 300 employees that was recently conducted by the Office of the City Auditor. The survey asked both management and non-management workers to consider a variety of statements and give each a score between 1 and 10 (Examples: “In my local government, I am expected to tell the complete truth in my work for the agency” and “The executives in my local government treat the public with civility and respect.”). The city then received a score between 1 and 100 from the management group and, separately, the broader employee group, with 75 to 100 connoting a “strong ethical environment” and 0 to 49 indicating that the agency’s “culture needs significant change.” Palo Alto’s scores were good but far from spectacular. The employees’ anonymous answers added up to a score of 75.1, placing the city in the lowest tier of “good,” The managers were more critical, collectively giving the city a score of 70, which signifies room for improvement. Many employees said they are not being encouraged to speak up about “ethically questionable practices.” Only about 30 percent put “always” as their answer to this question, with another 30 percent saying “rarely” (the rest were either “almost always” or “sometimes”). When asked if they’re surrounded by coworkers “who know the difference between ethical and unethical behaviors, and seem to care about the difference,” only about 30 percent responded “always.” Among the managers, the statements that scored the poorest related to whether executives “create an environment in which staff is comfortable raising ethical concerns”; “appreciate staff bringing forward bad news and don’t ‘shoot the messenger’ for saying so,”; and “appoint and reward people on the basis of performance and contribution to the organization’s goals and services.” These statements received scores of 6.1, 6.1 and 5.6, respectively, on a 10-point scale. The two qualities

that don’t seem to be an issue at all are civility and avoidance of corruption. A vast majority of managers gave the city high marks (8.7) for whether executives “treat the public with civility and respect” and “refuse to accept gifts and/or special treatment from those with business before the agency.” THE NEXT BATTLE ... Fresh off two successful petition drives and riding a tidal wave of both enthusiasm and rage, Palo Alto’s land-use critics are now plotting their next battle. The group includes opponents of a recently approved housing development on Maybell Avenue, a development that they hope to quash through a referendum. The effort hit a milestone last week, when they submitted more than 4,000 signatures for the drive, more than enough to qualify for the next general election. But now they are preparing to take aim at a bigger fish — the city’s “planned community” (PC) process, which allows developers to exceed zoning regulations in exchange for “public benefits.” Bob Moss, a Barron Park resident who took part in the Maybell signature drive, said the group is now discussing an initiative that would eliminate or severely restrict this zoning, which was used for the Maybell project and for two proposed developments on Page Mill Road. Moss told the Weekly that one idea he supports is not allowing PC-zoned projects in residential zones and requiring a vote of the people on any PCzone proposal. He noted that the exact nature of the ban has not yet been determined, but he said many residents agree that this issue needs to be addressed. “I think, from talking to people, that they’re not happy with the PC zone. I’ve been saying for years; it’s a racket. The private-versus-public benefit comparison — it’s a joke,” Moss said. His idea comes at a time when foes of dense developments are coalescing into a formal coalition. The new group “Palo Altans to Preserve Neighborhood Zoning,” which led the petition drive for the Maybell referendum, has formed an official political-action committee. Former City Council candidate Tim Gray, who is the group’s treasurer, told the Weekly that he has recently filed the needed paperwork for the coalition. N

Upfront

Analysis predicts downtown parking woes will deepen Downtown North residents seek to answer the question: How bad will it get? by Gennady Sheyner

n three years, the parking shortage in downtown Palo Alto will be nearly three times as bad as it is today as the problem spreads to Crescent Park and sections of Old Palo Alto, according to an analysis conducted by a group of downtown residents and unveiled this week. Downtown currently lacks some 900 parking spaces, according to a recent city estimate, resulting in parked-up streets in neighborhoods adjacent to downtown and in frustrated residents. But the situation is expected to get much worse with the completion of major new developments. These include the Epiphany Hotel that will open at the former Casa Olga on Hamilton Avenue and at least three four-story office buildings within a few blocks of each other — Lytton Gateway on Alma Street at Lytton Avenue, 135 Hamilton Ave. and 240 Hamilton Ave. Just how bad parking’s going to get is the question that Eric Filseth and Neilson Buchanan, two residents of the Downtown North neighborhood, have been trying to answer over months of surveys and number crunching. They started with the city’s estimate of the parking shortage, then they plugged in other variables: the percentage of new office workers who will take mass transit instead of cars; the

increasing number of employees working in existing offices; and all the new building projects. The analysis, which Filseth and Buchanan presented to the Weekly on Tuesday, indicates that even if 20 percent of the new employees take mass transit, a generous estimate, downtown’s parking shortage will rise to 2,500 spaces. This also assumes that offices will have 250 square feet of space for each employee, a traditional ratio that many feel doesn’t apply to Silicon Valley’s start-ups. A tighter ratio of 100 square feet per one employee would reflect more workers per office and increase the parking shortage by 2016 to more than 3,500 spaces. The parking model, available at www.paresidentsfirst.org, is interactive and extensible. Users can plug in their own assumptions and see how the changes affect the parking deficit. The model also considers ongoing city initiatives, including the introduction of a valet-parking program in the High Street garage to maximize its use. In conducting the analysis and inviting participation, Buchanan and Filseth aim to help the city quantify one of its most urgent and complex problems. Buchanan said the goal of the study isn’t to propose solutions but to get to a consensus on what the scope of

Courtesy of Eric Filseth and Neilson Buchanan

TRANSPORTATION

A map developed by a group of Downtown North residents predicts the parking problems that will spread from downtown into neighborhoods in the coming years. the problem is. He credited the city’s transportation planners with conducting the initial survey, which indicated the shortage of 900 parking spots and identified the downtown blocks that are inundated by cars during the lunch hour. Those include most blocks in the Downtown North neighborhood and a sizable portion of Professorville and University South, located to the south of downtown. Buchanan said he’s been surveying the neighborhood four to five times a month for several months and counting the number of cars parked on every block. The model he and Filseth developed makes some broad assumptions, including the gradual spread of cars outward in a mostly even manner and the willingness of office workers to take lengthy walks to get from their cars to their desks, a stroll that in some cases would be more than a mile. Though they say it’s not uncommon for some employees to walk a long way from Downtown North to get to their workplaces (one person who works at Lyfe Kitchen

on Hamilton routinely parks in Downtown North, Buchanan said), it remains to be seen whether employees would be willing to trek all the way from the Junior Museum and Zoo near Embarcadero Road to University Avenue in 2016. On the map, the model of parkedup streets resembles an archery target with a series of semicircles, each bounded by El Camino Real to the west and the San Francisquito Creek to the north. The first arc, which represents 2014, shows 1,366 extra cars with nowhere to park and encompasses nearly the entire Professorville and University South area, indicating that the few blocks in the neighborhood that still have parking spots will not have them for long. It also shows cars starting to park in the Crescent Park neighborhood, east of Middlefield Road. By 2015, the shortage of spaces goes up to 1,858 and the arc spreads south and east, past Lincoln Avenue to the east and past Embarcadero to the south. The following year, with the car deficit at more than 2,500,

the wave of cars runs over the rest of Crescent Park and pushes further south into Old Palo Alto. “There’s no other place for the cars to go,” Filseth said. The analysis doesn’t claim to have the definitive tally for downtown’s future parking deficit, but it hopes to get debate going. Users can download the parking model, add new developments as they are proposed, factor in city initiatives such as valet parking and expanded permit parking in downtown garages, and challenge the model’s basic assumptions. Filseth and Buchanan maintain that their intent is neither to blame the city for the worsening parking situation nor to propose a specific answer at this point. It’s merely to address a significant limitation of the existing debate — the fact that the city has “no accurate view as to what we are dealing with here,” Filseth said. N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

TRANSPORTATION

Businesses blast proposed parking restrictions downtown Petition from downtown land and business owners urges Palo Alto not to adopt a residential permit-parking program by Gennady Sheyner

s downtown Palo Alto residents continue to clamor for the city to do something about the lack of parking spaces on their blocks, business owners are lining up against the most commonly proposed solution — a permit program that would limit the time nonresidents can park in the neighborhoods near downtown. This week, a coalition of downtown business leaders and property owners submitted a petition to the city arguing that a residential parking-permit program would come at a steep economic cost. The group, which includes developer Chop Keenan, Whole Foods, Watercourse Way, Peninsula Creamery and Ko Architects, stated in its letter to Chief Transportation Official Jaime Rodriguez and Acting

Planning Director Aaron Aknin that limiting the time downtown workers can park in residential areas would lead to the gradual decline of downtown Palo Alto. City staff and residents have discussed numerous versions of a residential parking program over the past three years, each with differing boundaries and rules. The first staff proposal limited the permit parking to the Professorville neighborhood, south of downtown, but was rejected by the City Council last year. Several council members argued it would merely push the parking to another neighborhood. The council directed staff to pursue broader solutions to downtown’s parking woes. But even as staff studies various ideas, including building new

parking garages and using a valet program in the High Street garage, the permit program remains in the city’s toolkit. Currently, cars can park downtown for two hours before needing to be moved. As a result, many downtown employees park all day in University South, Professorville, Downtown North and other areas with no time limits. Among the options under consideration is a hybrid program in which one side of the street in the residential neighborhoods remains open for all-day parking and the other one has a time restriction for cars without permits. None of the proposals, the petition argues, considers the needs of downtown businesses. While residents have long maintained

that the influx of office workers parking on their streets is damaging the quality of life in their neighborhoods, the business leaders assert residents are as much to blame for the scarcity of parking. The signatories argue that many in the South of Forest Avenue (SOFA) area have garages but choose to use them for storage. As a result, many prefer to leave their cars on the street. In addition, most families now have two or more vehicles, which further exacerbates the problem. “These factors have increased the resident demand for on-street parking from historical levels,” states the letter signed by 16 business and property owners. Restricting parking in the residential areas would worsen the

parking shortage for offices and service businesses and would drive many businesses out of downtown, the letter states. The result, “will be a greatly less successful and less vibrant downtown in our city.” The decline of downtown will be “slow and not noticeable in its initial stages.” “As employee parking becomes difficult and office building leases expire, office/technology companies will leave the downtown oneby-one for more attractive areas,” the business owners wrote. “This, in turn will reduce the supply of customers for restaurants, retail and service businesses. By the time the economic effects of the exodus are noticed, it will be too late to reverse.” N

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Upfront LAND USE

Palo Alto takes aim at narrow sidewalks City hopes to encourage wider sidewalks, less-imposing buildings on main thoroughfares by Gennady Sheyner

here are few places in Palo Alto where dreams and reality clash as starkly as on El Camino Real. Envisioned by communities along the Peninsula as the “Grand Boulevard,” with generous amenities for bicyclists and pedestrians, the prominent north-south corridor has gained notoriety locally for traffic jams and hulking developments that tower over narrow sidewalks. Arbor Real, a dense townhouse community at El Camino and Charleston Road, has become a poster child among local land-use critics for everything wrong with building design today. Alma Street has also become a subject of derision, with residents complaining about imposing, inyour-face developments such as Alma Village near East Meadow Drive and the new affordable-housing development at 801 Alma, near Homer Avenue. It’s not just the gadflies who are irritated by what’s happening. Some city officials are scratching their heads over the design of the latter building. Arthur Keller, a member of the Planning and Transportation Commission, compared 801 Alma on Wednesday to a fortress. “Especially the little windows,” Keller said. “They look like someone will shoot arrows, as in one of those fortresses that you find in Europe.” Now, the city is preparing to reverse this trend. In April, four council members released a memo calling for a re-examination of sidewalk widths and building designs on El Camino, Alma and other busy stretches that have small sidewalks

and large buildings. In the memo, Mayor Greg Scharff and council members Karen Holman, Gail Price and Greg Schmid pointed to a climate of “consternation in the community” and a “strong negative reaction by members of the public as to how close these new buildings are to the street and how the buildings turn their backs on the public right of way” due to their sheer massiveness. The buildings, the memo notes, are often characterized as “unfriendly and overwhelming.” On Wednesday night, the city’s two main development-review boards met for their first discussion of the topic. Though members of the Planning and Transportation Commission and the Architectural Review Board expressed diverse and often divergent views about how to deal with the problems of narrow sidewalks and uninviting buildings, they all agreed the subject is critically important and will take many more meetings to come up with solutions. “Eventually, it’s going to ... lead us to some new El Camino Real design guidelines,” said Lee Lippert, vice chair of the architecture board and former planning commissioner. “It’s really a leading piece here to what we want El Camino Real to look like.” One thing most commissioners agreed on is that existing design rules could use an upgrade. Randy Popp, a member of the architecture board, advocated for incentives that would encourage developers to abide by new design guidelines. “The goal here is to cause change and to create the space that we’re dreaming about to get these wider

sidewalks, to get a more robust canopy along El Camino, to make it safe and to make it a focal point of our community and really a destination that people seek out,” Popp said. These incentives could include allowing greater building heights on El Camino in exchange for larger setbacks to allow more generous sidewalks, Popp said. Keller rejected this idea and cautioned that larger buildings would negatively affect adjacent homes. But everyone was open to at least exploring changes to design criteria, which include existing rules that force developers to build close to the road. Clare Malone Prichard, who chairs the architecture board, said the city should allow more flexibility in its design guidelines for El Camino. Under existing laws, buildings have the same setback requirements, whether they are retail strips, small motels or housing complexes with bedrooms on the ground floor. That should be changed, Malone Prichard said. “I’d like to see some more flexibility in the rules that really appreciate the different uses,” Malone Prichard said. She also agreed with Popp that the city should explore new incentives for developers to build farther from the road rather than rely strictly on new rules. The discussion over rule changes and incentives is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. But commissioners and board members agreed on Wednesday that they should evaluate what other communities have done to create vibrant boule-

vards. Planning Commissioner Alex Panelli encouraged his colleagues to do some research. “My concern is that we’re sitting here sort of in our ivory towers pontificating on what we believe the right code provisions will be that will compel this change to occur,” Panelli said. “I think that’s perhaps a bit unlikely. I think the market will do what the market will do given whatever the rules are there.” The idea of taking a step back and evaluating other communities’ work caught on, and the meeting adjourned with an understanding that staff will meet with chairs of both bodies, which will reconvene for another session within two months. Much of the analysis about what should constitute the “Grand Boulevard” has already been done. A coalition of cities and counties from along the El Camino corridor have spent years working on the “Grand Boulevard Initiative,” which aims to revitalize this critical thoroughfare between Daly City and San Jose. The initiative’s vision statement is: “El Camino Real will achieve its full potential as a place for residents to work, live, shop and play, creating links between communities that promote walking and transit and an improved and meaningful quality of life.” Among its proposals is an 18foot sidewalk, far larger than the 12-foot sidewalks in Palo Alto’s stretch of El Camino. But the effort to promote vibrancy by encouraging people to travel using alternatives to cars has run into some roadblocks. Each of the cities along the way has its own vision for

the corridor, which creates a challenge for regional planners. A recent proposal by the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to dedicate lanes on El Camino to buses fizzled last year after several cities, including Palo Alto, voiced concerns about possible traffic problems. Keller warned on Wednesday that the city should tread cautiously when considering any plan that would reduce the number of lanes on El Camino. He pointed to Menlo Park, where a lane reduction causes bottleneck traffic during busy commute hours. Others emphasized the need to make El Camino more bike friendly. Eduardo Martinez, who chairs the planning commission, argued that in Palo Alto, as in other cities, “the idea of the importance of the automobile is losing a little bit of its grip.” Mark Michael, vice chair of the planning commission, agreed and said improving El Camino means making conditions safer for non-drivers. “I think ultimately the quality of the experience on El Camino and other thoroughfares is going to be raised to the extent that we transition out of automobiles and to other modalities,” Michael said. N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

TALK ABOUT IT

www.PaloAltoOnline.com What do you think should be done to turn El Camino Real into a “Grand Boulevard”? Voice your thoughts on Town Square, the discussion forum on Palo Alto Online.

UTILITIES

Palo Alto considers suspending PaloAltoGreen Move buys city time to figure out how to continue program after adopting carbon-neutral portfolio by Rye Druzin

alo Alto is eyeing scaling back or ending one of its most popular and successful renewable-energy programs, PaloAltoGreen, while it finds a way to make the decade-old program relevant again as the city moves into the era of carbon neutrality. The million-dollar program, which allows residents and businesses to pay a premium to fund the city’s purchase of electricity from renewable-energy sources, has been in place since 2003. But due to the city’s progress over the years in contracting with more green-energy providers, Palo Alto’s portfolio is, for the first time ever, completely carbon neutral. In a long and contentious meeting Wednesday night, the Utili-

ties Advisory Commission voted 4-2, with James Cook and Audre Chang dissenting, to recommend that the City Council suspend the PaloAltoGreen program for residents while reducing the amount businesses pay into the program. The commission hopes that the recommendation will buy staff and the council time to come up with a viable plan for what to do with the program. Since 2012, expenses for the program have been cut in half, due mostly to lower costs for socalled Renewable Energy Certificates, which are credits that fund green-energy programs nationally. As a result, a surplus of money has gathered as customers continue to pay premium rates.

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The highly successful program has continued to be popular with residents and businesses alike, said Commissioner Jonathan Foster. The commission’s recommendation would suspend collection of residential fees and purchase of certificates while reducing costs for businesses from the current rate of 1.5 cents per kWh to 0.2 cents per kWh. “We are not going to exacerbate the problem of continuing to collect money at the rate of 1.5 cents a kWh, but we are not going to shut down and mothball and file away the program because we might come up with some way we want to recast the program in the future,” Commissioner Steve Eglash said.

Money from the program is, according to commissioner John Melton, “greening up” non-renewable energy, such as hydroelectric, which makes up half of Palo Alto’s portfolio. Currently, 21 percent of the city’s power is supplied from renewable energy. By 2017 Palo Alto plans to have half of its energy supplied from renewable sources. Palo Alto residents Bruce Hodge and Walt Hays spoke in favor of continuing the program and using it to fund a community solar initiative. The idea was considered by the commission, which decided that such a fund would be too contentious for rate payers, especially if no such community solar plan was implemented.

Foster proposed halving the cost for those enrolled in the program and using the revenue to establish a seed fund that would be used to install solar panels on Palo Alto Unified School District buildings. The idea was met with opposition from other commissioners and Director of Utilities Valerie Fong, who did not want to have a fund created when there was no plan of what to do with the money. Eglash was concerned that lawsuits could follow if the fund was not used for the purpose of installing solar panels on schools and questioned what would then happen with the money. N Editorial Intern Rye Druzin can be emailed at rdruzin@ paweekly.com.

Upfront EDUCATION

New Paly principal knows her way around campus Former counselor experienced with electronic records, construction delay by Chris Kenrick

bouquet of flowers from her in-laws greeted Palo Alto High School’s new principal Wednesday, Kim Diorio, as she returned to reassemble her dusty office after summer renovation work in the school’s Tower Building. Diorio will occupy the same desk she’s used for the past six years as Paly’s assistant principal, but she’ll now have the school’s top job following the surprise June 17 resignation of Phil Winston. Superintendent Kevin Skelly named her principal on Monday, July 29. “I’m really excited because I know the staff so well, the school and the culture and the institutional traditions,” Diorio said. The daughter of a Connecticut school administrator and a dental hygienist, Diorio grew up with the idea that she would work in education. In college at Villanova University in Philadelphia she fell in love with her psychology courses and decided to make a career in counseling. After earning a master’s degree in counseling and doing student teaching for a year in the Philadelphia

area, she worked seven years as a middle-school counselor in Weston, Conn., before coming to California in 2005. A brief foray to California a few years earlier — working in a summer program housed at Loyola Marymount University — had failed to convert her into a fan of the West Coast. “I thought I was going to fall in love with California, but I did not fall in love with L.A., so I went back to Connecticut,” she said. When she returned to California in 2005 it was because of her soonto-be husband’s job as a product manager at Google. The couple has two daughters, ages 4 and 18 months. Before joining the Paly administration in 2007, Diorio worked as a counselor for a year each at JLS Middle School and Gunn High School. At Paly she’s overseen rapid change in the college-application process as the once paper-intensive procedures have shifted to electronic communication. The paper system “created a lot of

stress on everybody,” she said. “It was just a lot of copying and paper, and we’d get colleges telling us, ‘We haven’t received your transcript yet,’ but we’d have a record that we mailed it, and it turned out to just be sitting in a pile at the college. With the electronic-transcript service Docufide, students themselves can track when colleges have received and opened the transcript, Diorio said. When Diorio graduated from New Fairfield High School in Connecticut in 1990, her six college applications were all paper. “Now we’ve got kids who, because of the Common Application, can apply to 30 colleges, and some of them do,” she said. “We need to find a way to make that process better for everybody.” She helped introduce Paly students to the online college- and career-planning program Naviance, which had been used at her school in Connecticut. Diorio also has overseen master scheduling at Paly and the school’s conversion to the online studentdata system Infinite Campus.

Last year Diorio transitioned to facilities, construction, budget and discipline at Paly and got acqua inted with major renovation in progress at Kimberly Diorio the school. Opening of two major buildings — media arts and a two-story classroom for math and social studies — has been delayed from the original projected date of June 2013, partly due to an unresolved claim of contractor Taisei, now in litigation. But the firm continues to work on the job. “Now they’re saying December, fingers crossed,” Diorio said. But other major construction, including a science addition, new performing-arts center and new athletic center, will follow, meaning that portable classrooms will remain in Paly’s quad “at least three more years,” she said.

Arriving in Palo Alto from suburban Connecticut was “a breath of fresh air” in terms of the parent community, Diorio said. “I felt people were happier, nicer, not as anxious — it seemed a better partnership with the schools,” she said. “The value on education is strong in both places, but being in Fairfield County was very intense. I was also there during 9/11, which really affected our community and increased the anxiety there.” On the other hand, resources for schools in Connecticut — one of the highest-spending states on education — were far greater, she said. Diorio’s Mountain View home is a 10- to 15-minute drive from Paly, making it easy for her to get the kids home and fed and return for evening events, if needed, she said. “We got little Paly T-shirts made up for them, and they love it. Every time we drive down El Camino they say, ‘There’s Paly! There’s Paly!” N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be emailed at ckenrick@paweekly. com.

LAND USE

Citizen lawsuit aims to stop Maybell project Coalition claims Palo Alto violated environmental laws in approving development by Gennady Sheyner

coalition of Palo Alto residents have filed a lawsuit against the city, seeking to overturn the City Council’s approval in June of a new housing development on Maybell Avenue. The group, called Coalition for Safe and Responsible Zoning, served the city with the court papers Wednesday afternoon, July 31, City Attorney Molly Stump told the Weekly. The council is scheduled to discuss the lawsuit Monday night. The lawsuit seeks to reverse the City Council’s decision to rezone the site at 567 Maybell Ave. to “planned community,” a designation that allows the developer to exceed density regulations. The change will allow the nonprofit developer Palo Alto Housing Corporation to build a 60-unit apartment complex for low-income seniors and 12 single-family homes near the intersection of Maybell and Clemo avenues. The project is facing a massive pushback from the community, with residents having already completed two successful signature drives to bring the approval to a referendum. The new lawsuit is the latest step in the concerted opposition, which was initially focused in the Barron Park, Green Acres and Green Acres II neighborhoods but which now includes land-use critics

from other areas of Palo Alto. Joy Ogawa, who took part in a recent lawsuit challenging the proposed reduction of lanes on California Avenue, is representing the coalition in the new suit. The lawsuit identifies the coalition as a limited liability company whose members are “residents and taxpayers in the City of Palo Alto.” “(The) coalition was formed, in part, for the purposes of protecting the environment and safety on Maybell Avenue and of preserving the character and integrity of the pastoral and residential nature of the Barron Park and Green Acres II neighborhoods and environs, which would be directly affected by the proposed project,” the lawsuit states. The suit focuses on the city’s environmental-review process for the Maybell project and the council’s decision to loan $5.8 million to the Housing Corporation well before the review kicked off. It also takes aim at the city’s traffic analysis and argues that the council has “failed to adequately consider the significant impacts that the project would have on the neighborhood in terms of traffic and parking, safety of bicyclists and pedestrians, access of emergency vehicles, accelerated deterioration of Juana Briones Park

‘If we allow this project to go forward the way it’s constituted, we’re going to encourage other developers to keep asking for changes in zoning and expect it.’ —Michael Lowy, member, Coalition for Safe and Sensible Zoning (recreation), aesthetics, including obstruction of a public view of the foothills, air quality, greenhouse gases, and hazardous waste and hazardous materials.” Critics seek to reverse the approval and, at a minimum, require a fuller study considering all the aforementioned impacts and other reasonable alternatives for the site. Most of the arguments in the lawsuit echo the criticism expressed by residents over a series of highly emotional meetings in May and June, prior to the City Council’s approval of the project on June 18. Many critics complained about the city’s process

for approving the project, including its loan to the Housing Corporation in 2012. The suit alleges that the loan effectively predetermined the outcome. By approving the loan, the suit states, the council “committed itself to approval of the project without any CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) review and effectively foreclosed the possibility of a ‘no project’ alternative, and abused its discretion, exceeded its jurisdiction and proceeded in a manner contrary to law and without the support of substantial evidence in the record.” Traffic, a subject of grave concerns during the Maybell debate, also looms front and center in the suit. During the public hearings, residents presented videos of traffic conditions on Maybell, which included footage of students on bikes sharing driving lanes with long streams of slowly moving cars. The plaintiffs point to analyses from traffic experts that dispute the city’s finding that the development wouldn’t cause significant traffic problems. The reviews found that the city’s consultant used outdated traffic data and failed to count bicycle and pedestrian data in the busy school corridor. The city has maintained that there would be very few traffic problems because

most seniors in the new development would not be driving during the peak hours. The suit also claims the city did not adequately consider other proposed developments in the area in determining that there would be no major changes to traffic volume or patterns. It argues that the city should have completed a full Environmental Impact Report for Maybell rather than proceeding with a less-detailed review known as a “mitigated negative declaration.” For many opponents of the Maybell project, the council’s approval is part of a growing trend in developers requesting and receiving zoning exemptions. Michael Lowy, a member of the Coalition for Safe and Sensible Zoning who signed the verification for the lawsuit, urged the council not to send the developers a message that they should expect the city to change its zoning code upon request. “The idea that zoning can be changed in every instance is something that we have to guard against,” Lowy told the council on June 17. “If we allow this project to go forward the way it’s constituted, we’re going to encourage other developers to keep asking for changes in zoning and expect it.” N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

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Upfront

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NEIGHBORHOODS

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rescent Park neighborhood residents whose blocks are inundated at night by cars from East Palo Alto may soon have a solution to their parking woes, though just about everyone agrees that the solution is, at best, a consolation prize. The Palo Alto City Council will consider on Monday a plan to ban overnight parking for a year on several blocks near the the Newell Road bridge, which connects the two cities, counties and communities. For months, residents on the Palo Alto side of the divide have complained about cars from the other side of the bridge taking up their parking spaces and leaving behind trash. The best solution, residents say, would be a residential parking-permit program, which would restrict the hours non-residents can park on the neighborhoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s streets. But as more than 40 residents from Crescent Park learned at a meeting with city staff Tuesday, such a program is at best months, if not years, away. The council last year rejected parking permits for Professorville, which lies south of downtown Palo Alto, and council members urged staff to consider solutions that are more comprehensive and that would not merely push the problem over to the next block. Staff is now putting together a process for neighborhoods that want a parking-permit program, Chief Transportation Official Jaime Rodriguez told a packed room at the Lucie Stern Community Center. In the meantime, the city is reluctant to grant such a program to any neighborhood, including Crescent Park. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not something we can move forward in the near term,â&#x20AC;? Rodriguez said. Banning overnight parking is an idea whose popularity fluctuates wildly from one neighborhood block to another. On sections of Edgewood Drive and Newell, the areas closest to the East Palo Alto border, the percentage of surveyed residents who said they would support the ban was between 80 percent and 100 percent. Just south of that, on Hamilton Avenue, support dropped to 70 percent. Further away from the city line, on Dana Avenue, support dropped even further. On the west side of the Dana and Newell intersection, only 30 percent voiced support for a ban; on the east side of the intersection, 54 percent supported it. Each view was articulated Tuesday. Some residents argued that the ban would be an important first step in the neighborhoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effort to obtain a more permanent solution. Others argued that the ban would be a waste of time and that it would only push the cars into other parts of the neighborhood, where no ban exists. Jason Fox, who lives on Southwood Drive, on the western edge

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The closer Palo Alto residents live to the Newell Road bridge, the likelier they are to support a ban on overnight parking on their blocks, according to a city survey. of the troubled area, was in a latter camp. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is the most insane proposal Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever heard because all youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to do with this proposal is to move the problem to another block,â&#x20AC;? Fox said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to do.â&#x20AC;? But most of the attendees agreed that the ban, while imperfect, is worth trying. Those near the East Palo Alto border were particularly adamant about the need for nearterm action. Neighborhood resident Richard Yankwich, who has been talking with Palo Alto and East Palo Alto officials about this problem for the past year, said the ban might be the best way to convince East Palo Alto officials to do something about the parking problem. Most of the cars come from the Woodland Park neighborhood west of U.S. Highway 101, which is filled with apartment complexes. With most apartments allotted only one parking space per unit, tenants have been forced to seek parking elsewhere, including Crescent Park. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think we need to do this on a trial basis and see where it goes because if we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like it, we can vote it out, and we can say we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like the way it is,â&#x20AC;? Yankwich said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really a city-to-city issue not a resident-to-resident issue,â&#x20AC;? he later added, drawing the loudest applause of the evening. A drive through the area illustrates the extent of the parking. At about 11 p.m. on Tuesday, the stretch of Edgewood on either side of Newell was filled almost to capacity. While there were open spaces near Island Drive, the situation changed further east down Edgewood. Be-

tween 1462 Edgewood and Phillips Road, there were 59 parked cars and one open space. Shortly after 11 p.m., three people parked their cars in the neighborhood and then walked over the Newell bridge. On the East Palo Alto side of the bridge, there wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t a single open space on Clarke Avenue. Nearby Woodland Avenue was also filled to the brim, with only one parking space open, all the way at the eastern end of the road, near West Bayshore Road. The problem isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just the shortage of parking, residents said. In some cases, the cars block their driveways and drivers leave broken bottles, used condoms and other refuse behind, residents complained. If the council approves the staffâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recommendation on Monday, parking would be banned between 2 and 5 a.m. on blocks in which 70 percent of surveyed residents expressed support for the idea. Residents who wish to park overnight would buy a permit for $5 per night. Staff will also have the authority to later expand the overnight ban to the blocks where support is currently less than 70 percent if those residents submit a petition showing significant interest. Rodriguez acknowledged Tuesday that the overnight ban is â&#x20AC;&#x153;not a perfect solution.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;This concept of having an overnight parking restriction is very intrusive to residents,â&#x20AC;? Rodriguez said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s effective. It stops the abuse thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not an ideal solution.â&#x20AC;? He noted that city staff has been (continued on page 12)

Upfront EDUCATION

Dispute delays opening of two Paly buildings

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New classroom building, Media Arts Center now projected for December finish

dispute with a contractor has delayed this fallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opening of two major new buildings at Palo Alto High School â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a twostory classroom building for math and social studies and the schoolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new Media Arts Center, school officials said. Taisei Construction Corporation continues work on the buildings â&#x20AC;&#x201D; most recently telling the school it will complete the work by December â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but the firm has filed suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court over $1.65 million in disputed costs. Taisei says the Palo Alto school

district owes the money because of authorized change-order requests. In its court complaint filed June 21, the company said the change orders were due to â&#x20AC;&#x153;unbuildable design elements within the plans and specifications which caused Taisei and the subcontractors to slow or stop construction activities, and in several cases remove and replace completed work elements so that buildable follow-on work could be completed.â&#x20AC;? Palo Alto school officials said they were never served with the complaint and tracked down the lawsuit themselves when checking

court records after hearing Taisei had filed similar litigation elsewhere. The district announced the lawsuit July 18. Earlier mediation over the claim was unsuccessful but work continues on the two Paly buildings, district officials said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re required by law to continue work, and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re still obligated to complete the terms of the contract,â&#x20AC;? said Tom Hodges of fs3Hodges, who is under contract with the school district to manage construction. N â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Chris Kenrick

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Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new this fall on Palo Alto campuses: Gunn High School s .EW SQUARE FOOT GYM weight and fitness center, retractable seating for 2,200 s .EW DANCE STUDIO s 2EPLACEMENT OF SEVEN TENNIS courts and three outdoor basketball courts s .EW SQUARE FOOT TWO story building with 28 classrooms for math and English s .EW FIVE CLASSROOM WORLD LANguages building opened in April 2013

Palo Alto High School s !THLETIC STADIUM IMPROVEMENTS including bleachers, track resurfacing, concession and picnic area s .EW SQUARE FOOT TWO story media-arts building (delayed until at least December) s .EW SQUARE FOOT TWO story math and social-studies building (delayed until at least December)

JLS Middle School s .EW SQUARE FOOT TWO story building with 10 class-

Building (continued from page 3)

spite the litigation, and contractors have told the district to plan for occupancy in December. At both JLS and Fairmeadow, new, two-story classroom buildings will come on line. Earlier completions under the bond measure include a new, twostory classroom building at Ohlone Elementary School, which opened in 2011, and a new aquatic center at Gunn, which opened in 2010. The construction process at each campus began with staff-parentstudent â&#x20AC;&#x153;site committees,â&#x20AC;? who discussed priorities; architectural planning; and review by the Division of State Architect in Sacramento, which by law must approve all public school facilities in a process that can take up to a year. N

rooms s -ODERNIZATION OF SCIENCE WING TO add two labs and support space s .EW STUDENT COURTYARD BIKE parking cage and rally court s ,ANDSCAPE DRAINAGE AND PAVING improvements

Jordan Middle School s .EW SQUARE FOOT SIX CLASSROOM BUILDING FOR SIXTH GRADE s .EW SQUARE FOOT CAFETOrium building s -ODERNIZATION OF SCIENCE WING TO add two labs and support space s 2ECONFIGURATION OF OLD CAFETOrium into music and choral classrooms s 2ECONFIGURATION OF OLD MUSIC building for art classrooms s 3TORM DRAIN SEISMIC AND PAVING improvements

Terman Middle School s .EW LIBRARY EXPANSION ADJACENT to old administration wing s .EW DRAMA CLASSROOM BUILDING s 2ECONFIGURATION OF OLD LIBRARY into new administration offices s 2ECONFIGURATION OF ' 7ING TO RE-

locate computer resource lab s 2ECONFIGURATION OF OLD ADMINIStrative office into computer lab and two classrooms s 3EISMIC UPGRADES

Fairmeadow Elementary s .EW SQUARE FOOT TWO story building with eight classrooms s 3MALL ADDITION AND RENOVATION OF library wing s 2ECONFIGURATION OF UPPER CLASSroom wing into kindergarten classrooms

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Duveneck Elementary s %ARLY CONSTRUCTION ON NEW 10,000-square-foot, two-story building with eight classrooms s %ARLY CONSTRUCTION ON NEW SINGLE story kindergarten building with two classrooms s %ARLY CONSTRUCTION ON NEW SINGLE story three-classroom building s 2ENOVATION OF EXISTING CLASSROOM building into library Source: Palo Alto Unified School District

Public Agenda A preview of Palo Alto government meetings next week CITY COUNCIL ... The council plans to have a closed session to discuss the status of labor negotiations with the Service Employees International Union, Local 521, and with the managers and professionals group; to discuss potential litigation relating to the State Water Project Property Tax Levy; a lawsuit from the Coalition for Safe and Sensible Zoning; and existing litigation involving the California Capital Insurance Company. The council will then convene for its open session, where it will consider an ordinance prohibiting vehicle dwelling. The closed session will begin at 5 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 5. The regular meeting will immediately follow in the Council Chambers at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.). COUNCIL INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE ... The committee plans to continue its discussions of results of a recent survey and make recommendations to the council about next steps in considering an infrastructure finance measure. The meeting will begin at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 6, in the Council Conference Room at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.). CITY COUNCIL ... The council plans to meet in closed session to review the performance of the city attorney. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at City Hall (250 Hamilton Ave.).

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PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL

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COMMUNITY

Palo Alto Buddhist temple to host Obon Festival

THIS IS A SUMMARY OF COUNCIL AGENDA ITEMS. THE AGENDA WITH COMPLETE TITLES INCLUDING LEGAL DOCUMENTATION CAN BE VIEWED AT THE BELOW WEBPAGE: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/knowzone/agendas/council.asp

(TENTATIVE) AGENDA – SPECIAL MEETING – COUNCIL CHAMBERS August 5, 2013 - 5:00 PM CLOSED SESSION 1. LABOR- SEIU and MGMT/PROF 2. CONFERENCE WITH CITY ATTORNEY/LEGAL COUNSEL Potential Litigation Relating to State Water Project Property Tax Levy Section 54956.9(c) - Potential Initiation of Litigation - 1 Case 3. Potential Litigation Capital Insurance CONSENT 4. Approval of Contract Amendment One to Contract S13149754 with Renne Sloan Holtzman Sakai LLP in the Amount of $60,000 for a Total Contract Amount of $90,000 to Additional Labor Relations Services 5. Utilities Advisory Commission Recommendation that Council Approve Changes to the Performance Measures and Strategic Initiatives in the 2011 Utilities Strategic Plan 6. Adoption of Resolution Establishing Fiscal Year 2013-14 Secured and Unsecured Property Tax Levy for the City of Palo Alto’s General Obligation Bond Indebtedness (Measure N) 7. Approval of Resolution Authorizing the City Manager to Submit a Grant Application to, and Accept on Behalf of the City of Palo Alto, a Grant of Funds Made by the County of Santa Clara for the Purpose of Emergency Management, Preparation, and Training 8. Ordinance to Restrict Use of the City Seal 9. Ordinance to Allow for the Use of Electronic Signatures in Documents Used by the City 10. Submittal of Mitchell Park Library and Community Center BiMonthly Construction Contract Report 11. Adoption of a Resolution Authorizing the Filing of an Application for Federal Surface Transportation Program (STP) Funding and Committing the Necessary Non-Federal Match and Stating the Assurance to Complete the Project for Street Resurfacing Project 12. Adoption of a Resolution allowing the Implementation of a OneYear Trial No Overnight Parking (2AM-5AM) Program on streets within the Crescent Park Neighborhood 13. Adoption of Resolution Authorizing the Filing of an Application for the Federal One Bay Area Grant (OBAG) Funding for the Adobe Creek/Highway 101 Bridge Project and Committing the Necessary Non-Federal Match and Stating the Assurance to Complete the Project. 14. Adoption of a Resolution Authorizing the Filing of an Application for Federal Vehicle Emissions Reductions Based At Schools (VERBS) Funding for the Arastradero Road Schoolscape – Multiuse Trail and Committing the Necessary Non-Federal Match and Stating the Assurance to Complete the Project 15. Approval of a Contract Amendment with Baker & Taylor in the Amount of $390,000 to Purchase Library Materials for the City Library System ACTION ITEMS 16. Public Hearing: Adoption of a Resolution Conﬁrming Weed Abatement Report and Ordering Cost of Abatement to be a Special Assessment on the Respective Properties Described Therein 17. Public Hearing: Adoption of an Ordinance Adding Section 9.06.010 to the Palo Alto Municipal Code to Prohibit Human Habitation of Vehicles STANDING COMMITTEE MEETINGS The Infrastructure Committee will meet on Tuesday, August 6, 2013 at 4:00 pm to discuss; 1) Baseline Survey Results and Make Recommendations to the City Council on Next Steps in Considering an Infrastructure Finance Measure The Finance Committee Meeting on Tuesday August 6, 2013 at 7:00 P.M. has been cancelled. The Regional Housing Mandate Committee on Thursday August 8, 2013 at 4:00 P.M. has been cancelled.

(TENTATIVE) AGENDA – SPECIAL MEETING – COUNCIL CONFERENCE ROOM August 7, 2013 - 6:00 PM 1. Closed Session City Attorney Annual Review Page 10ÊUÊ Õ}ÕÃÌÊÓ]ÊÓä£ÎÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊÜÜÜ°*> Ì " i°V

Japanese celebration will include food, dance and demonstrations by Karishma Mehrotra

imi Okano, Jeanette Arakawa and hundreds of other volunteers are busily working at the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple on Louis Road, putting together the final touches on food and decorations. Yesterday, the focus was on udon and soba noodles. Soon, they will be preparing their specialty: teriyaki chicken. The work is part of the build-up toward this weekend’s Obon Festival, a Japanese celebration honoring ancestors, at the temple on Saturday, Aug. 3, from 5 to 9:30 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 4, from noon to 9:30 p.m. Okano, who is Awakawa’s cochair for the festival’s cultural programming, said the festival has historically been a community event, and each area celebrates in its own unique way. In Palo Alto that means the signature Obon Odori dance, a dance that the temple’s new reverend, Dean Koyama, said is the core of the festival. “It came to be an event where those of us who are living will think about who we are grateful to and will remember the people that passed before us,” Okano said. “So the dance also will commemorate lives past and appreciate the moment we are here.” The dance will be Sunday at 7:30 p.m. It was originally called the “Good Harvest Dance” when dancers would call ancestral spirits to help

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The Bon Odori program, shown here at the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple in August 2007, will be presented on Aug. 4 at 7:30 p.m. with the harvest. Arakawa said that the dance is an expression of gratitude towards family and ancestors who have shaped each individual’s character. Circles in the dance symbolize giving life to memories, where one is connected to the living and the dead, she said. The dance won’t be the only spectacle this weekend. On Saturday, a reading, question-and-answer session and book signing will feature three authors: Susan Austin, author of the children’s book “The Bamboo Garden”; Tom Graves, author and photographer for the portraits and stories in “Twice Heroes: America’s Nisei Veterans of WWII and Korea”; and Naomi Hirahara, author of her detective series’ latest install-

ment “Strawberry Yellow: A Mas Arai Mystery.” The festival will also feature exhibits focused on bonsai (the art of growing miniature plants), suiseki (spiritual art with natural stones), ikebana (flower arrangements) and various other forms of art. Both days will feature Taiko drums, Buddhist services by the new reverend, samurai and martialarts demonstrations and numerous other musical performances. “It gives us an opportunity to self-reflect,” Arakawa said. “The way you learn about your religion is applying to your everyday life. We get a lot of opportunities to reflect on what we’re doing and our actions.” N

LAND USE

Traffic, parking top residents’ concerns with Jay Paul project Planning commission considers scope of Environmental Impact Report for Page Mill office development by Karishma Mehrota

hen community members came to Palo Alto officials to discuss what an environmental study for a proposed commercial development at 395 Page Mill Road should examine, there were two words on almost everyone’s lips: traffic and parking. The project would add 311,000 square feet of office space to a site that currently includes AOL’s Silicon Valley headquarters. The San Francisco developer Jay Paul Co., who pitched the project last year, proposed to build a $49.3 million new public-safety building at 3045 Park Blvd. in exchange for the plan’s approval. The project’s scale makes it one of Palo Alto’s largest proposals under “planned community” zoning, a designation that allows developers to exceed building regulations in exchange for negotiated benefits. While the city sees a new police building as a major benefit, on Wednesday the Planning and Transportation Commission got to

hear about the potential downside of the proposal from residents arguing that it will lead to parking and traffic nightmares. The Wednesday meeting was the second “scoping session” for the project’s Environmental Impact Report. The goal was to determine the scope of the report’s analysis. Just about everyone agreed that traffic issues should top the list. “This proposal raises interesting philosophical issues like how much development we want in the city or should the city be selling zoning?” former mayor Dick Rosenbaum said. “But for the (environmental study), the main issue has to be traffic.” Other speakers expressed similar reservations. “There is so much talk about traffic and parking tonight, I’m afraid the (Planning and Transportation Commission) is going to be called the Parking and Traffic Commission,” resident Art Lieberman said. Both the commission and community members stressed the im-

portance of accurately gauging how many employees would work within how many square feet. The city currently assumes the traditional model of 250 square feet per employee, a ratio that some people feel is outdated (many startup companies have a ratio closer to 100 feet). Some at the meeting emphasized the increasing bicycle and pedestrian traffic in the area and the cumulative effect of other developments, including the proposed mixed-use building at 3159 El Camino Real, which includes apartments, retail and a major expansion of Equinox Fitness. “The planning department seems to be on an ever-more-rapidly moving stairway, struggling to keep up with the increasing number of projects, one by one, treated in isolation when the traffic and the transportation issues really are in common,” said Lieberman, president of the Barron Park Association. “The only (continued on page 15)

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Buena Vista (continued from page 3)

File photo/Veronica Weber

emergency reserves. HUD offers a program specifically designed for residents who are considering buying a mobile-home park. Loop helped residents of the 100-space Blue Pacific Mobile Home Park in Aptos purchase their park through the program in 2011, he said. Californiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Housing and Community Development agency also has a Mobile Home Park Residential Ownership Program that offers long-term, low-interest-rate loans. The state loan would be used as a supplemental mortgage source on top of the federal program, he said. The residents would also need to put in some funding, since the lenders want to see equity. â&#x20AC;&#x153;These arrangements are very typical. Residents have to have some skin in the game,â&#x20AC;? Loop said. The funding would come from membership shares in a residentowned cooperative that would be a nonprofit corporation. About 60 to 70 percent of residents would need to participate. Shares would cost about $3,000 per unit. Sargent estimated residents would pay a $500 down payment and $25 monthly loan payment for the membership. On top of the membership, rents would likely be about the same rates residents currently pay, he said. When residents own the land, it often changes the dynamic within a mobile-home park for better, Loop said. There is a pride of ownership; people fix up the houses, adding new paint and gardens. And someone who wants to bring in a new mobile home is more likely to join a park that residents own, he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Gradually, older homes get replaced. The quality of life comes

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The trailer homes at the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, seen here in September 2012, are threatened by sale of the property. up. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a much more elegant solution,â&#x20AC;? he said. The million-dollar question is whether the Jissers and Prometheus will want to sell to the residents. Joe Jisser said he hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t heard about the residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; possible buyout, and he deferred to Prometheus when asked if he would consider the deal. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are in a contract with Prometheus. If the tenants want to make an offer, that would not involve us,â&#x20AC;? he said, reiterating a statement he made in December. Jon Moss, Prometheus executive vice president, did not return a request for comment. Sargent said a proposal by the Palo Alto Housing Corporation to buy 1.15 acres at the back of the Buena Vista property for 65 units to house some of the residents wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t solve the problem, especially for the many others who could not be housed there. Having an affordable-housing nonprofit corporation buy the whole property can work out well, but people still donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t own the park, Loop said. The model also isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily less costly for residents.

The housing corporations â&#x20AC;&#x153;are still in it to make money â&#x20AC;&#x201D; they have fees and charges. The rents will be higher,â&#x20AC;? he said. Candice Gonzalez, Palo Alto Housing Corporation executive director, said she is not sure if the rents would be higher than if residents were to purchase the property. She has not heard further from Prometheus regarding the housing proposal. At Loopâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own mobile-home park in Aptos, which he helped to buy, the park was under a rent-control ordinance prior to purchase, and residents paid $425 per month. At the time that residents were considering a buy-out, an affordablehousing nonprofit group wanted to purchase the land. They estimated rents would rise to $625. Residents purchased the park instead, and they initially paid $525 a month. That sum has since gone down to $500, he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;For eight years weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve had stable rents, and we expect it to stay stable for several more years,â&#x20AC;? he said. N Staff Writer Sue Dremann can be emailed at sdremann@paweekly.com.

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Council (continued from page 3)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our daily lives as tax-paying citizens are being modified because of this unsafe situation. This is a significant character change for this site and the surrounding services, shops and residential areas.â&#x20AC;? At the same time, dozens have come out against the proposed ban, calling it inhumane and insensitive to some of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s neediest residents. Many have equated it to an attempt to criminalize homelessness. Cybele LoVuolo-Bhushan urged the council in a letter to give the homeless community more time to find an alternative solution. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is terrible to ask people to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;just move onâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; when there is really no place for them to go and no real options for them to sustain their lives,â&#x20AC;? LoVuolo-Bhushan wrote. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Please do not take any action yet to ban people (the poorest of the poor) from sleeping in their cars.â&#x20AC;? If the council adopts the ban, which has already been endorsed by its Policy and Services Committee, the decision will not have come lightly. Since 2011, officials and community members have explored

TALK ABOUT IT

www.PaloAltoOnline.com What can be done to help people who live in their cars, and whose primary responsibility is it? Share your ideas on Town Square, the discussion forum on Palo Alto Online.

other options, including the possibility of having churches provide parking for car campers, similar to a program in Eugene, Ore. Despite extensive outreach to the faith community, the proposal fizzled because of lack of interest. Staff has also been working with local nonprofits, most notably the Downtown Streets Team, to refer vehicle dwellers to social-service providers. With little progress on the proposed alternatives, the councilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Policy and Services Committee voted 3-0 on June 25 to endorse the ban. Councilman Larry Klein noted that the city is merely â&#x20AC;&#x153;plugging a holeâ&#x20AC;? with this ordinance and argued that Palo Alto wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be â&#x20AC;&#x153;striking into new territoryâ&#x20AC;? by banning vehicle habitation. If the City Council follows suit, the ordinance would take effect in September â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 31 days after a second, formal vote that would take place within 11 days of Mondayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s meet-

ing. After this period, the city would conduct outreach for 60 days before enforcement would begin. Even after this 60-day period, the city would give warnings for 30 additional days. After that, police would begin enforcing the ban primarily on a complaint basis, with citations issued â&#x20AC;&#x153;only as needed,â&#x20AC;? according to a new report from the Planning and Community Environment Department. The ordinance would not apply to mobile homes or guests of city residents who park adjacent to the residentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dwelling for up to 48 consecutive hours, according to the proposed ordinance. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Recognizing the sensitivity of the issue, the proposed ordinance will be accompanied by enforcement procedures based on an outreach, social service, and incremental enforcement approach,â&#x20AC;? the report states. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Staff is aware that for many individuals living in vehicles there may be extenuating economic, mental, or physical health issues that are difficult to overcome and that may be best addressed by one or more of the local social service providers.â&#x20AC;? N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.

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This Sunday: Average Joe Rev. David Howell, preaching Outdoor Worship in our Courtyard An Open and Affirming Congregation of the United Church of Christ We celebrate Marriage Equality!

Inspirations is a resource for ongoing religious services and special events. To inquire about or to reserve space in Inspirations, please contact Blanca Yoc at 223-6596 or email byoc@paweekly.com

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talking to East Palo Alto officials about the problem, but not much has been done. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s some hope in the city that the problem will be addressed as part of East Palo Altoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s process for adopting a new General Plan, a process that is just starting. Margaret Trujillo, an East Palo Alto resident who is part of a working group dealing with the General Plan, urged the Crescent

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s happening here? Where: Edgewood Shopping Center, 2080 Channing Ave., Palo Alto What: Renovation of the historic signage, with 1950s elements When: Currently in design; installation in one to two months Who: Sand Hill Property Company Cost: More than $100,000 Impact: Minor construction activity in the parking lot Of note: The historic sign will be placed parallel to Embarcadero Road for better visibility and the metal frame refinished in a muted moss green. A 130-square-foot, trapezoidal aluminum marquee panel with the words â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Fresh Marketâ&#x20AC;? at the top of the frame will bring back the original, 1950s design. The sign will be illuminated on the street side only. Metal panels below and between the frame will feature the business names. The historic horizontal â&#x20AC;&#x153;Edgewood Shopping Centerâ&#x20AC;? sign will use the original letters, to be refinished in bronze. N

â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Sue Dremann Source: Plans submitted to the city by Sand Hill Property Company

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Park residents to include her city in the discussion. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think the concern Crescent Park has is reflective of concern East Palo Alto has,â&#x20AC;? Trujillo said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think when you say â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;work togetherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; as a Crescent Park community, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d ask you to open your minds to the East Palo Alto community as well because you are part of the community.â&#x20AC;? N Editorial Intern John Brunett contributed to this report. Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be emailed at gsheyner@paweekly.com.

The former vice president of a Palo Alto software firm took a plea deal on Monday, July 29, for one charge of felony commercial burglary for pasting fraudulent barcodes on LEGO toys at local Target stores, Duffy Magilligan, Santa Clara County deputy district attorney, said. Thomas Langenbach, 48, was originally charged with four counts of commercial burglary, which could have netted him up to five years in prison. Instead, he will be sentenced to three years probation and six months in custody. Of that, 30 days will be spent in county jail and 150 days will require an ankle monitor. He will also pay restitution for the items, which were valued at $345, Magilligan said. Langenbach went into four Target stores on three different dates and purchased the toys at greatly lowered prices. To get the lower prices, he switched the barcode tags with ones he created on his computer, which were scanned at the register, according to a criminal complaint by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office. He had been “ticket switching” LEGO boxes since April 20, 2012, at the Mountain View, Cupertino and Target stores and another Target near his San Carlos home, according to police. Officers found hundreds of unopened LEGO sets — many specialedition items — at his gated, multimillion-dollar home, according to court papers. Six of the seven items stolen from the stores were found at Langenbach’s home, according to a police report. N — Sue Dremann

Woman seriously hurt in Opportunity Center assault A Palo Alto woman who was attacked at the Opportunity Center at 33 Encina Ave. is recovering from life-threatening injuries, and her alleged attacker has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon, according to police. A drunken man allegedly attacked the 60-year-old woman on July 19 while she was talking on her cell phone in the hallway outside her apartment, Palo Alto police Agent Marianna Villaescusa said. Michael Rowe Guilford, 46, of San Jose was staying with a friend and had been drinking for more than a day, according to the police report. He became enraged that the woman was in the hallway and allegedly began swearing at her, punching and kicking her multiple times, Villaescusa said. The woman was later identified as Vivian (Venus) Sarmago. Initially police believed Guilford had only scratched Sarmago, who had minor marks on her forearm and neck. She declined medical aid because she had a later doctor’s appointment, Villaescusa said. Guilford left the Opportunity Center after the attack. Police found him at Town and Country Village Shopping Center in a pharmacy, where he was allegedly yelling expletives at a female employee. He was arrested and booked for being drunk in public, misdemeanor battery and a probation hold. Later that day Sarmago complained about having a headache; her boyfriend found that she could not be awakened and summoned paramedics. She was unconscious when they arrived and was taken to the hospital, Villaescusa said. Police later located a witness, who told police Guilford repeatedly hit and kicked Sarmago. She has been hospitalized with serious injuries since that time. Guilford was booked on charges of assault with a deadly weapon on July 20, Villaescusa said. N — Sue Dremann

Gunn science team ranks second in cybersecurity A Gunn High School science club walked away with second place in a national cybersecurity competition for students earlier this month. Fifteen members of Gunn’s Research Science & Invention Club went to Orlando, Fla., to compete in the finals of a contest that required problemsolving, extemporaneous public speaking and an essay on issues relating to physics, encryption and public policy on cybersecurity and privacy. The competition was part of the TEAMS (Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science) sponsored by the Technology Student Association, a membership organization of 150,000 aspiring engineers and scientists. Emily S. Wang, president of the Gunn club, which meets during school lunch hours, said team members spent hours “pre-studying” for the contest and “dedicated their holidays” to preparation. Contestants learned a lot about collaboration, public speaking and problem solving, she said, adding: “I believe that these takeaways are what makes the experience valuable.” In the public speaking part of the contest, teams were handed a topic and given 15 minutes to prepare. Wang said Gunn team members divided up the problems according to their interests. In addition to Wang, team members were Kelsey Chan, Marcus Goldszmidt, Justin Li, Matthew Li, Lauren Luo and Julia Qin. Members of Gunn’s ninth- and 10th-grade team, who placed 13th in the nation, were Andrew Huang, Andrew Ku, Annie Ku, George Lee, Michael Qu, Simon Rufer, Trevor Wang and Justin Yang. N — Chris Kenrick

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Former tech exec takes plea deal in LEGO scam

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Oliver Peoples & Paul Smith

Upfront

Online This Week

These and other news stories were posted on Palo Alto Online throughout the week. For longer versions, go to www.PaloAltoOnline.com/news or click on “News” in the left, green column.

Stanford to replace diplomas over signature mix-up A mix-up over the signatures on Stanford University diplomas issued during the 2012-13 academic year — which may be more than 6,000 — has led the university to offer replacements, according to a spokeswoman. (Posted July 31, 1:58 p.m.)

Bus breaks off crossing arm, crosses tracks A SamTrans bus broke off a lowering railroad-crossing arm and hurtled across the tracks at the Oak Grove Avenue train crossing in Menlo Park on July 31, shortly before the train arrived, a witness said. (Posted July 31, 9:37 a.m.)

TRUNK SHOW Sat. August 3

2012

Lux Eyewear 1805 El Camino Real, Palo Alto Èxä°ÎÓ{°Î ÎÇÊUÊÜÜÜ° ÕÝ«> > Ì °V

Car drives onto Alma off-ramp, hits cop car A gold Chevrolet Impala collided head-on with a police car after it turned the wrong way from Alma Street onto an Oregon Expressway off-ramp. (Posted July 30, 5:17 p.m.)

A big pro baseball debut for Palo Alto High grad Palo Alto High grad Tyger Pederson got his minor-league baseball career started over the weekend in a big way with the AZL Dodgers of the Rookie Arizona League. (Posted July 30, 4:13 p.m.)

Teacher, administrator named Terman principal A longtime Palo Alto teacher and middle-school administrator was named Tuesday as principal of Terman Middle School. Pier Angeli LaPlace, who has taught in Palo Alto for more than 20 years, replaces Katherine Baker, who has moved to the district office. (Posted July 30, 4:06 p.m.)

Back to school in July Nearly 150 Palo Alto elementary and middle-school teachers returned to school Monday for an optional four-day “summer institute on the teaching of writing.” (Posted July 30, 12:58 p.m.)

Baby with no kidneys treated at Lucile Packard A tiny baby born without kidneys to a United States Congresswoman is receiving treatment at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. The baby will likely be the first to survive a diagnosis previously considered fatal. (Posted July 30, 10:39 a.m.)

Ambulance woes unlikely to hurt Palo Alto As Santa Clara County looks for ways to cope with the massive losses suffered by its private ambulance provider, Palo Alto is expecting few interruptions to its own city-run ambulance operation. (Posted July 30, 9:31 a.m.)

WOMEN & CANCER QUARTERLY TALK SERIES

OVARIAN CANCER Current and Novel Treatment Strategies THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 6:30PM – 8:00PM Arrillaga Alumni Center 326 Galvez Street Stanford, CA 94305

The Stanford Women’s Cancer Center

Apartment fire displaces Palo Alto family A two-alarm fire forced a mother and her young child out of an apartment and displaced the family in Palo Alto’s Charleston Meadows neighborhood on Monday morning. (Posted July 29, 1:52 p.m.)

Lawsuit settled, plane-crash victim to rebuild The owner of an East Palo Alto day-care center who lost her home and livelihood after a plane slammed into her house in February 2010 has reached a settlement with Tesla Motors and the deceased pilot’s estate, according to papers filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court.

and the Stanford Health Library announce

(Sunday, 9:20 a.m.)

a new quarterly series featuring talks on

Opponents of Maybell complete signature drive

women’s cancers.

A grassroots effort to stop a proposed housing development on Maybell Avenue in Palo Alto hit another milestone Friday afternoon when citizens submitted a petition to City Hall with more than 4,000 signatures, far more than was needed to bring the issue to a citywide vote.

At Stanford we are making great strides in Speaker: Oliver Dorigo, MD, PhD

improving the treatment of ovarian cancer.

(Posted July 26, 4:57 p.m.)

This talk will discuss some of the new treat-

Incoherent man arrested inside Palo Alto home

Director and Associate Professor Division of Gynecologic Oncology Stanford Women’s Cancer Center

ment options available as well as the clinical

A man who was rambling around inside a Palo Alto home at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, July 24, was arrested for possession of heroin and trespassing into an inhabited dwelling, police Agent Marianna Villaescusa said. (Posted July 26, 4:09 p.m.)

trials available at the Stanford Women’s Cancer Center.

This event is free and open to the public. To register call 650.498.7826 or register online at healthlibrary.stanford.edu/lectures

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Upfront

Page Mill project (continued from page 10)

people who are happy about (the) work flow are the consultants doing the traffic studies.â&#x20AC;? Fred Balin, a College Terrace resident, agreed that the city needs to address problems by looking at the cumulative effects. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The benefit of this project (the police headquarters) is at the top of this cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s priorities,â&#x20AC;? Balin said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But there is not sufficient support from residents to fund it. Public confidence in land-use matters is not good. And if the project is approved, residents will still have the final say.â&#x20AC;? Bob Moss, a frequent critic of dense developments, shared his estimates about the development: It would draw more than 2,100 workers and 1,700 car trips each way during rush hour, adding more congestion to nearby small residential streets, he said. But that wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t his only concern. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have a real problem with (toxic) contamination, with health risks, with parking, with traffic, with (the job and housing balance). Other than that, this is a wonderful project!â&#x20AC;? Moss said sarcastically. Planning commissioners also had some concerns. Commissioner Michael Alcheck said that the public benefit from this development could

not come at the expense of the living standards of Palo Alto residents. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have to be brutally honest with ourselves, which is to say that we welcome developments that meet our guidelines, but it canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t impact our residents to such an extent,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It just seems cruel for the city to encourage this development and welcome this public benefit, while not at the same time preserving the standard of living.â&#x20AC;? Alcheck suggested that traffic solutions should act like taxes: discourage certain behaviors with higher taxes. In other words, decrease available parking and force businesses and employees to seek alternatives. Acting Planning Director Aaron Aknin suggested a similar solution, which Chair Eduardo Martinez called the San Francisco plan of â&#x20AC;&#x153;You can build it, but they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come.â&#x20AC;? Alcheck suggested some untapped resources to counter traffic mayhem, like business-run traffic solutions (think Google buses) and residential parking-permit programs. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I want to highlight something that we all already know, which is that parking issues are not unique to this neighborhood,â&#x20AC;? Alcheck said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The reluctance to implement a residential-parking permit program â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or more aptly, the speed â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is devastating. I wish I could be prouder. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re pitting residents against residents. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re

pitting home owners against business owners.â&#x20AC;? Alcheck also said that the notion that the permit program is complex is â&#x20AC;&#x153;insulting,â&#x20AC;? given the working model in San Francisco, where many neighborhoods have such programs in place. Martinez ended the night by listing the guidelines from the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Comprehensive Plan, including â&#x20AC;&#x153;avoid abrupt changes in scale between residential and non-residential areas and between residential areas of different densitiesâ&#x20AC;? and â&#x20AC;&#x153;use a variety of planning and regulatory tools, including growth limits, to ensure that business change is compatible with the needs of Palo Alto neighborhoods.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sort of part of our core beliefs, that when we introduce a project, the scale has to relate to whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s there,â&#x20AC;? Martinez said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;(The housing) is there. People live there. People love it. And people are here tonight to defend it.â&#x20AC;? N Editorial Intern Karishma Mehrota can be emailed at kmehrota@ paweekly.com.

CITY OF PALO ALTO NOTICE OF A DIRECTORâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S HEARING To be held at 10:00 A.M., Friday, August 9, 2013, in the Palo Alto City Council Conference Room, 1st Floor, Civic Center, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Go to the Development Center at 285 Hamilton Avenue to review ďŹ led documents; contact Alicia Spotwood for information regarding business hours at 650-617-3168. This item was continued from the meeting of July 18, 2013 505 Embarcadero Road- [13PLN-00206] Request by Heather Trossman, on behalf of Nicholas Jittkoff, for an Individual Review, a Fence Variance (for a 6 ft. tall fence within the Embarcadero and Cowper setbacks), Historic Review and Home Improvement Exception (for encroachment into the rear yard setback) for a 343.4 sq. ft. addition (ďŹ rst ďŹ&#x201A;oor 168.6 sq. ft. and second ďŹ&#x201A;oor 174.8 sq. ft) to an existing 1,980 sq. ft. two story Historic Category 4 residence. Aaron Aknin Interim Director of Planning and Community Environment

palo alto buddhist temple

CityView A round-up of

taiko games obon dancing silent auction cultural program & lecture japanese & american food & music

Palo Alto government action this week

City Council The council did not meet this week.

Planning and Transportation Commission (July 31)

august 3, 2013 5:00-9:30p august 4, 2013 12:00-9:30p

Sidewalks: The commission held a joint session with the Architectural Review Board to discuss potential changes to sidewalk widths and design criteria for new buildings on El Camino Real. Action: None Golf course: The commission commented on the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the reconfiguration of the Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course. Action: None 395 Page Mill Road: The commission discussed the scope of the Environmental Impact Report for 395 Page Mill Road, a proposal by Jay Paul Co. for 311,000 square feet of commercial development and a new police headquarters for the city. Commissioners and residents stressed the need to study traffic and parking issues. Action: None

Utilities Advisory Commission (July 31) PaloAltoGreen: The commission voted to suspend the PaloAltoGreen program for residential customers and to lower the charged rate for commercial customers. Yes: Eglash, Foster, Melton, Waldfogel No: Chang, Cook

Architectural Review Board (Aug. 1) 711 El Camino Real: The board approved the design of a four-story addition to the Westin, which includes 23 guest units. Yes: Unanimous 611 Cowper St: The board approved a design for a new four-story building featuring three stories of office space and one story of residential at 611 Cowper St. Yes: Alizadeh, Lew, Lippert, Malone Prichard Recused: Popp

LETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S DISCUSS: Read the latest local news headlines and talk about the issues at Town Square at PaloAltoOnline.com

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Eileen Krinsky Eisenson Eileen Krinsky Eisenson, 93, of Palo Alto, CA, died peacefully surrounded by family on July 3, 2013. She was the wife of the late Dr. Jon Eisenson, mother of Peg Krome (David Gaskill), Susan Krome Neben (Bruce Neben) and Stan Krome (Joanna Morgan), Elinore Lurie (Larry Lurie), grandmother to Philip and Aaron Levinson, Abraham and Amy Neben, James and Rosanne Luri, PJ and Aviva Gaskill, Kristi Cetrulo and Giancarlo Cetrulo and great-grandmother to Sirus and Soﬁa Cetrulo and Soren Gaskill. Eileen was born on May 30, 1920, in S. St. Paul, Minnesota. She attended the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota graduating with a BA in English, beginning a Masters in Social Work cut short by WWII when she moved to Miami Florida to work in the Civilian Censor Bureau. While raising 3 children, she was active in the League of Women Voters, Scouts, Great Books, Nutrition and Exercise. She loved nature and the great out of doors and was a world traveler. In 1970 Eileen moved to Palo Alto, California where she zestfully lived the rest of her life, meeting and married Jon Eisenson and living on the Stanford University campus for 25 years. Eileen worked as a Social Worker for San Mateo County for 11 years. Eileen’s life passions, was

however, music and singing. She began singing lessons at 15 and continued through her college years, singing professionally at 9 weddings around the country. She also sang in the Congregation Beth Am choir, in Los Altos, CA. Eileen loved her life on the Stanford campus and was the perennial college student auditing classes for 20 years there in Music and Art Appreciation and Jewish studies. She was a loving and devoted wife, mother, grandmother and dear friend. She loved gathering the whole family together, whether on Martha’s Vineyard, at the Stanford Faculty Club or at Skamania Lodge in Oregon. Eileen was a beacon and an inspiration to all who knew her. Even in the face of adversity and severe health issues, she was the eternal optimist. She lived her life to the very end with love, a sense of humor, dignity and with gratitude. To her Life Was a Song A special note of thanks to Pathways Hospice and the caring and wonderful staff of Palo Alto Commons. Donations are suggested to the: Parkinson’s Institute, www.thepi.org or Congregation Beth Am, Rabbi Marder’s discretionary fund, www.betham.org/give. PA I D

OBITUARY

Doris Lorents

October 15, 1930 - July 22, 2013 Palo Alto, California Doris Mae Bry was born in 1930 and grew up in a family of ten children, six boys and four girls in Manvel, North Dakota. At the age of sixteen, she contracted polio during an epidemic year and was hospitalized for a year, receiving extensive treatment with the rigorous Sister Kenny method. That, along with physical therapy and Doris’ native persistence, led to a remarkable recovery. She walked with a single cane for most of her life and never considered herself handicapped. She graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where she met and later married her physics lab assistant, Don Lorents. They were married in 1952. From 1952 to 1958, while Don was a graduate student, Doris worked as a dietician at the University of Nebraska, and then as head dietician at Nebraska State Hospital in Lincoln where she ran a kitchen that served 1,600 patients a day. In 1959, Doris and Don moved west to Palo Alto where daughters Chris and Nancy were born. Doris was devoted to her girls and their activities. She helped organize the Palo Alto Bobby Sox Girls Softball League that both girls played in, and chaired the league for a year. She was also an active PTA volunteer in the girls’ schools. The family spent a sabbatical year in Aarhus Denmark during this time, where they made life-long friends

that resulted in many visits back and forth. Doris was a long-time member of the Palo Alto Branch of AAUW where she held several positions and enjoyed many interest groups. She was proud of her Norwegian heritage and became a charter member of Sigrid Undset Lodge of the Daughters of Norway when it was organized in 1987. She was active in the Lupus Society, the Breast Cancer Survivors group and the local Post Polio Syndrome group—always helping others who were likewise affected by these illnesses. She joined the Palo Alto Unitarian Church where she found a community that shared her values. Doris was close to all her large extended family. She made friends easily and kept them for life. She loved people (especially babies) and she loved sharing life stories. In all ways, Doris was a loving, kind, generous, strong, and courageous person. She will be greatly missed. Doris Lorents passed away quietly on July 22, 2013 at her home in Palo Alto. She is survived by Don, her husband of 61 years, as well as her two daughters, Chris and Nancy, Nancy’s two girls, Karolina and Kaelyn, and hundreds of family, adopted family, and dear friends. A memorial service is planned for August 31, 2013 at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Palo Alto, CA.

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PA I D

OBITUARY

Pulse

A weekly compendium of vital statistics

POLICE CALLS Palo Alto July 24-31 Violence related Battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Child abuse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Domestic violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Sex crime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Family violence/court order . . . . . . . . . .1 Theft related Commercial burglaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Credit card forgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Grand theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Petty theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Residential burglaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Shoplifting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Alcohol or drug related Drunk in public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Drunken driving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Possession of drugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Sale of drugs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Under the influence of drugs . . . . . . . . .1 Prescription forgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Miscellaneous Animal call. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Found property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Lost property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Penal code violation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Outside assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Psychiatric hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Warrant arrest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Warrant/other agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Menlo Park July 24-31 Violence related Child abuse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Theft related Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Grand theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Identity theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Petty theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Residential burglaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Vehicle related Auto theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Driving w/suspended license . . . . . . . . .6 Hit and run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle accident/minor injury . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle accident/no injury. . . . . . . . . . . .3 Alcohol or drug related Drunk in public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Drunken driving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Possession of drugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Miscellaneous Coroner case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

(continued on next page)

Loi Gendzel Loi Gendzel was a resident of Palo Alto from 1962 to 2012. She moved to the retirement community at The Forum in Cupertino in May of 2012. Born and raised in New York City, an only child, she graduated from Freeport High School on Long Island and then from Barnard College (Columbia University) in 1951, having majored in political science (international relations). She earned her Master’s in Social Work from the Columbia School of Social Work in 1956 while working at New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center. She married Ivan Gendzel MD, on May 4, 1957. They relocated to San Francisco in 1958 and then lived on the Peninsula and in Oakland before moving to Palo Alto in 1962 moved to Palo Alto. Their son Glen and daughter Amy were raised and schooled there. Active in PTA, the 4H, and school enrichment programs, Loi later taught Oriental Brush Painting at Avenidas (Palo Alto Senior Center) for thirty years and was an active volunteer with UNA – USA, serving on the Board and helping to set up the Library and Information Center. Loi and Ivan traveled extensively (frequently with their young adult children) during the 1980s and 1990s. Because of increasing heart problems, she was scheduled for heart surgery in August, but died suddenly at home. Loi is survived by her husband of 56 years, Ivan Gendzel of Cupertino; son Glen Gendzel, his wife Colleen Hamilton, and their children (Joelle & Louis), of San Jose; daughter Amy Taylor, her husband John Taylor, and their children (Grace and Jackson) of Everton, England (UK); and sister-in-law Sue Ezekiel and her husband George Ezekiel, of Oakland, and their two sons (Dan & Jack) and their families. Loi was a loving wife, mother, and grandmother who doted on her family. She was also a gifted artist and musician who loved teaching and sharing these interests with her students and fans. She will be sorely missed by her family and friends. A Celebration of Life will be held at The Forum (23500 Cristo Rey Drive, Cupertino) on Sunday, August 4 at 2 p.m. Please do not send ﬂowers. However,if you wish to make a donation in Loi’s memory, consider: - Avenidas (the Palo Alto Senior Center where Loi taught for thirty years): https://www.avenidas.org/you or -United Nations Association - Midpeninsula Chapter (where Loi volunteered for many years): http://www.unamidpen.org PA I D

O B I T UA RY

Transitions

Visit

Lasting Memories

Births, marriages and deaths

Pulse

Margarita Perdido

(continued from previous page) Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Found property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Information case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Outside assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Psychiatric hold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Suspicious circumstances . . . . . . . . . 4 Suspicious person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Warrant arrest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

Atherton July 24-31 Violence related Assault and battery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Theft related Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle related Abandoned auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Miscellaneous traffic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Suspicious vehicle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Vehicle accident/minor injury . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle accident/no injury. . . . . . . . . . . .1 Vehicle code violation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Miscellaneous Construction complaint . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Found property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Hazard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Medical aid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Suspicious circumstances . . . . . . . . . . .7 Town ordinance violation . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Warrant arrest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

VIOLENT CRIMES Palo Alto Edlee Avenue, 5/15. 1:00 p.m.; sex crime, report taken. 300 Pasteur Dr., 7/22, 12:30 p.m.; simple battery. Alma Street, 7/24, 11:00 a.m.; domestic violence/battery. Ramona Street, 7/25, 10:00 p.m.; domestic violence/battery. Fulton Street, 7/27, 4:04 p.m.; family violence, disobeying court order. Vista Avenue, 7/29, 1:54 a.m.; child abuse, sexual.

Menlo Park 400 block Ivy Dr., 7/25, 3:50 p.m.; child abuse, report taken.

Atherton 500 block Middlefield Rd., 7/28, 9:14 p.m.; simple assault and battery, report taken.

Margarita (Margaret) Perdido, 91, of Palo Alto died at 10:08 a.m. on Tuesday, July 23, at Stanford Hospital. She was a longtime resident of Palo Alto, where she lived for more than 50 years. She was born on June 17, 1922 in Cabanbanan, Manaoag, Pangasinan, Philippines, to Faustino and Gregoria Villa. In 1952, she married Johnny Mababa Perdido, a World War II and Korean War veteran who served 20 years in the U.S. Army. He was also from Manaoag, Pangasinan, Philippines. She is preceded in death by her parents; husband; brother, Bonifacio Villa and sister, Marina Villa. She is survived by her son, John Albert Villa Perdido Jr.; daughters, Arlene Ann Villa Perdido Suarez and Doris Mary Villa Perdido Gordon; six grandchildren, Fernando Juan Perdido Suarez II, Michael James Suarez, Diana Leah Willson, Victoria Gabrielle Willson Fernandez, John Adam Perdido and James Aaron Perdido; two greatgrandchildren, Johnny David Fernandez and Fernando Caleb Pagba Suarez III; sister-in-laws, Mercedes Rambayan, Bening Valdez and many nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.

Births Sirin Onur and Leonardo Hochberg, Palo Alto, July 21, a boy. John Hatfield and Xin Wei, Stanford, July 23, two girls. Scott and Carolyn Mezvinsky, Palo Alto, July 25, a boy.

Betty Lee Betty Lee, born November 26, 1926 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, passed away peacefully in her home in Santa Cruz on July 25, 2013. Betty lived in Menlo Park for the majority of her life and devoted herself for over 40 years to the education of young children as a teacher and Director of the Kirk House Preschool at the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. She touched the lives of many young students and cared deeply for each one. Betty brought a remarkable spirit of generosity, loving heart, warm smile, and contagious laugh to every aspect of her life, including her family, her nursery school children, her friends at Eastern Star, and her many other communities.

Betty had a large, loving family in both California and Canada. She was married to Stanley Lee for 39 years, with whom she raised their son Russell in their Menlo Park home. She enjoyed countless visits, chats, travels and cups of tea with her sisters, brother, g ra ndd aug hters , nieces, nephews and many friends. Her bright enthusiasm and unconditional love and kindness will be carried on by all those who were lucky to have Betty in their lives. Please join us in celebration of the life of Betty Lee at the Menlo Park Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, August 6 at 10:30 am. In memory of Betty, please read a book to a child. PA I D

OBITUARY

She loved to cook, clean and spend time tending to her rose and flower garden. She was also very active in the Church of Christ (INC) and served as a deaconess until she was 80 years old. A visitation will be held Thursday, Aug. 1, from 11:30 a.m. until 9 p.m. at the Alta Mesa Memorial Chapel in Palo Alto. The memorial service will be held on Friday, Aug.

An online directory of obituaries and remembrances. Search obituaries, submit a memorial, share a photo.

2, from 11 a.m.-1 p.m., also at the Alta Mesa Memorial Chapel.

Don Edward Mclean Don Edward Mclean, who had connections to Menlo-Atherton High School with his wife, Kay, died. He was a native of Los Angeles and later moved to Sunriver, Ore. A memorial service will be held in Oregon on Aug. 8.

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Donald Frank Koijane, 82 February 14, 1931 – June 12, 2013 Donald Frank Koijane, 82, passed away Wed., June 12, 2013, at Tahoe Forest Hospital ECC in Truckee, CA with services provided by Hospice. Don was born Feb. 14, 1931, in Chicago, Ill to Edward Ignatius and Lillian (Lill) Koijane. He was married March 8, 1958 to Minna Alicia Grace Burrell in Darien, Conn. for 39 yrs until her death in 1997. Donald will be missed by his 3 children, Jeannette Koijane (Markus Faigle) of Honolulu, HI, Andrew (Renee) Koijane of Homewood, CA, and Margaret (Michael) Nehorai of San Jose, CA, and 6 grandchildren; Mitchell, Matthew, Michelle, and Morgan Nehorai and Bergen and

Anders Koijane. A public memorial will be held in his honor Aug. 10, 2013 at 11:00 am at the church at 5700 Comanche Dr., San Jose, CA 95123. Burial will take place at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto, CA. Full Obituary & Condolences: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/obituaries/ memorials/donald-frank-koijane?o=3579 PA I D

OBITUARY

Mary Thayer Rintala August 5, 1910 - July 21, 2013 Resident of Palo Alto Mary Rintala passed away peacefully on July 21, 2013 after a brief illness, at the age of 102. She is survived by her son, William T. Rintala (Helene), her daughter, Katherine Rintala Glad (Lester), her grandchildren, Elizabeth MacKellar (Betsy) Leach (Brian), Allison Thayer Rintala, Mary Christina Glad Ward (Dan), Marina Glad Brabham (Jim) , Nicholas Charles Glad (Kristy) and her great grandchildren, MacKellar Brook Leach, Trevor William Leach, Hunter Elizabeth Leach, James Brabham, III and Quinn Glad. Mary was preceded in death by her husband of 63 years, Rudolph A. Rintala, and her sister, Katherine Roberts. Mary was born in Charlotte North Carolina and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In the 1920’s, she moved with her mother and sister to San Diego. In 1928 she entered Stanford University. She graduated from Stanford in 1932 with a degree in psychology. Mary married Rudy, a four sport letterman and her classmate at Stanford, in 1936. After their son, Bill, was born in 1938, Mary and Rudy moved to Burlingame. In 1940, their daughter, Katy, arrived. Mary

was involved in the PTA, the school board, the Girl Scouts and other charitable activities in Burlingame. In 1959, Mary and Rudy moved to Atherton where they resided for the next 40 years. Mary continued to participate in a variety of charitable activities including Allied Arts and The Family Post. She was an active member of the Atherton Garden Club and won a number of prizes for her f lower arrangements. She was also an avid golfer. In 1990, after Rudy’s death, Mary moved to Webster House in Palo Alto where she renewed old acquaintances and made many new friends. Mary continued to play golf at the Stanford Golf course into her nineties. She continued to support Stanford athletics, as she and Rudy had done, through the Cardinal Club. A memorial service for Mary will be held at the Stanford Chapel on Tuesday, August 6 at 2:00 pm. A reception will follow at Webster House. In lieu of f lowers, memorial gifts may be made to the Stanford Fund, the Diamond Club (which supports Stanford baseball ) or one’s favorite charity. PA I D

OBITUARY

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Editorial

As City Council returns, sticky issues await From banning overnight car camping to controversial development proposals, council members face complex and emotional issues as they return from summer break

alo Alto City Council members had better be rested after their month-long break, because they have a volatile set of issues lined up for as far as one can see. Monday night the topic will be a proposed phase-in of a ban on sleeping in vehicles, an issue that has been cycling through city processes for the last five years without resolution. Originally planned for consideration in September, the timing of next week’s discussion, during a week when more families are probably away on vacation than in town, suggests a desire by Mayor Greg Scharff to get this issue behind it with as little tumult and visibility as possible. It will be an uncomfortable meeting regardless, as there is great compassion and concern for the homeless among Palo Altans and an organized opposition effort. But the council must separate the importance of helping the homeless from permitting dwelling in vehicles or turning a blind eye to what is happening at the Cubberley Community Center. As Council member Gail Price courageously concluded when she shifted positions and voted for a ban on car dwelling in committee, we are not helping the homeless by our current hands-off approach, and we are allowing a bad situation at Cubberley in particular to get worse with the passage of time. What is needed, she said, was intensive help and referral to support services. The council chambers will undoubtedly be filled Monday night with impassioned advocates for delaying any action so other options can again be explored. But it is long past time for an ordinance, and we hope the council is finally ready to be decisive. The City Council also returns to a pair of messy issues pertaining to Palo Alto’s west side. It’s June approval of a Palo Alto Housing Corporation-sponsored development on Maybell Avenue. near Briones Park appears to be coming right back to center stage in the form of a referendum that appears likely to qualify for a city-wide vote. And the proposed redevelopment of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park is facing vigorous resistance by those wanting to help the park’s low-income residents and prevent the conversion of the land into highpriced housing. These are more than debates over zoning and traffic. Wrapped up in them are questions about our values, where Palo Alto is headed, and how important economic diversity is to the community. The Maybell and Buena Vista proposals bring into sharp focus the delicate issue of how much we wish to invest in preserving or creating low-income housing, and how much should come at the expense of higher density and other impacts on individual neighborhoods. This is an important conversation to have, and has been all but ignored in the quiet work being done to update the city’s comprehensive plan. Without being deliberately addressed, these issues will continue to surface only in the context of specific development proposals, which is the worst place to formulate policy. With commercial development proposals coming at the city at an unprecedented pace, the City Council is also facing a growing public discontent over the city’s approach to parking, traffic, zoning and design. A massive proposal for a 300,000 square-foot building next to the AOL building at Park Boulevard and Page Mill Road on a site that is already built out to the maximum allowed under the zoning is barely on the radar of most community members, yet it is already in the pipeline for formal analyses and rezoning. Meanwhile a series of community meetings will attempt to gather input on how 27 University Ave., site of John Arrillaga’s proposed office towers and theater, should be developed. And studies of both the future of the California Avenue business district and downtown are in process, with a focus on how much development should be planned for and how parking and traffic should be managed. Downtown parking problems are another hot potato issue for the City Council, and the council’s decision last November to lump a possible residential parking-permit system with the downtown development study has only served to increase frustration among virtually everyone who lives between the creek and Embarcadero Road. This week’s release by some neighborhood activists of an open source online tool for projecting future parking deficits downtown is a welcome grass-roots initiative, but also one that reflects resentment over the process. Public agitation over new development is clearly and justifiably on the rise, and the council would be wise to develop a more coordinated and proactive approach to engaging the community on them. Referenda should be acts of last resort for citizens. They reflect a failure in the normal processes of government and a wake-up call that there is significant discontent. While the economic rebound driving these development pressures is good news, the City Council needs to hear that message and make sure its decisions are aligned with evolving community views.

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Spectrum Editorials, letters and opinions

Tribute to Mr. Tanner Editor, I read your obituary notice about my former teacher: I think of no teacher more often than my English teacher, Mr. Tanner. I can still hear his booming voice ranting at the chalkboard about our punctuation mistakes, ensuring we’d never forget his lessons. Each week he gave a short story-writing assignment, and almost every week it was mine that he chose to read aloud to the class. In doing so, Mr. Tanner was the first and only male teacher to encourage my talents. Laurie Claire Anderson Drive, Los Altos

Missing big picture Editor, What your story on Buena Vista misses is the bigger picture. There are two competing sets of rights and interests here among owners, with very different outcomes foreseen for each. The Buena Vista landowner wants to sell (likely going from merely rich to “wow” rich), while the homeowners lose everything — homes, jobs, schools, community, friends, and for many, family, if they are forced from the area. The required compensation to residents will never make up for the loss and misery (though it must come close as possible). But wait — there is a sensible way out — the landowner, re-developer, Buena Vista homeowners and affordable housing experts can cooperate to build replacement housing as part of the redevelopment as has been done before in Palo Alto, and very successfully for all. The rich would still get richer, but the low-income Buena Vista residents would remain, perhaps losing home ownership, but keeping everything else. In the meantime, let’s not blame Buena Vista residents for the shortcomings of the landowner’s paperwork. There are effective and ineffective ways to gather information. Here the landowner apparently thinks if residents are just told what to do and when to assist with their own demise, they will line up compliantly to do as ordered. If unreasonable methods are used in the guise of the reasonable, it seems the owner hopes his effort will be legally sufficient. He can do better. There is a reasonable resolution to this dilemma. Winter Dellenbach La Para Avenue, Palo Alto

A visitor’s suggestion Editor, I am visiting family here from Connecticut and have followed the Maybell discussion. My regular walks in the area have given me a good sense of the difficult issues Palo Alto has to deal with. Indeed the city has to provide affordable housing to its seniors!

Indeed the city has the responsibility to safeguard its children going to three schools in that very neighborhood! The choice is between two right things. Should the Maybell-Clemo land be utilized only for senior or any other housing? The great and affluent town of Palo Alto has a golden opportunity to extend the wonderful Juana Briones Park across Clemo, which in any case is a street blocked to through traffic. A small reading room or some other public facility could be included creatively in this space. These will add to the beauty and quality of life of this wonderful town. Just a suggestion from a visitor. Akram Piracha Stawberry Hill Court Stamford, Conn.

Please ban this ban Editor, How do we define ourselves as citizens of Palo Alto? How does the Palo Alto Process affect the poorest of our residents? The proposed ban on car sleeping may increase segregation in mostly

white Palo Alto. Because many disabled residents live in cars, evicting them may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, at least in spirit. Is this who we are? Is this how we treat the weak? Please ban this ban! Margaret Fruth Ventura neighborhood, Palo Alto

We ask for a vote Editor, Opinion letters to Palo Alto newspapers lead one to think that the residents of Barron Park and Green Acres (BP-GA) are opposed to low-income housing for seniors. This perception would be totally false. We are not opposed to low-income housing, especially for seniors. The Buena Vista trailer park has been a part of the neighborhood for many years. Many are quite upset that Mr. Jisser has decided to evict the trailer park residents so that the property can be developed for more lucrative purposes. When I first moved to BP, it was not part of the city of Palo Alto. We negotiated many times to maintain (continued on page 20)

WHAT DO YOU THINK? The Palo Alto Weekly encourages comments on our coverage or on issues of local interest.

What do you think should be done to turn El Camino Real into a “Grand Boulevard”?

Submit letters to the editor of up to 250 words to letters@paweekly.com. Submit guest opinions of 1,000 words to editor@paweekly.com. Include your name, address and daytime phone number so we can reach you. We reserve the right to edit contributions for length, objectionable content, libel and factual errors known to us. Anonymous letters will generally not be accepted. Submitting a letter to the editor or guest opinion constitutes a granting of permission to the Palo Alto Weekly and Embarcadero Media to also publish it online, including in our online archives and as a post on Town Square. For more information contact Editor Jocelyn Dong or Editorial Assistant Eric Van Susteren at editor@paweekly.com or 650-326-8210.

Check out Town Square! Hundreds of local topics are being discussed by local residents on Town Square, a reader forum sponsored by the Weekly on our community website at www.PaloAltoOnline.com. Post your own comments, ask questions, read the Editor’s blog or just stay up on what people are talking about around town!

Guest Opinion

Let’s not discriminate against the vehicle dwellers by George Mills ur city is grappling with how best to treat residents who have only their cars to sleep in. One proposal from the City Council called for willing faith communities to host a few “vehicle dwellers” in their respective parking lots for a threemonth pilot project. Recently that proposal was dropped. In its place a new proposal is up for consideration at the Aug. 5 City Council meeting that would ban all vehicle dwelling in the city. Palo Alto Friends Meeting, a Quaker congregation, was interested in the pilot proposal and explored whether to participate. We met with city staff and residents in our neighborhood, and attended council hearings. We offer reflections here on things we have learned and on why we strongly oppose a city-wide ban on vehicle dwelling. Learning No. 1: Many people have deepseated, visceral fears of even the idea of “unknown homeless people” in their neighborhoods. It is natural to feel protective fear when the safety of home or children is thought to be at risk. But our congregation has had a very positive experience hosting the Hotel de Zink homeless shelter every December for over 15 years without serious incidents or complaints, so the risks of having vehicle dwellers in our parking lot, while real, seemed quite manageable to us.

In the end, however, we reluctantly decided not to host vehicle dwellers at Friends Meeting, at least not for now. We felt we could not disrespect the deep fears of a number of our neighbors, even though we thought and still think it could work. Learning No. 2: Options for people who currently resort to living in their cars are woefully inadequate. Waiting times for temporary shelter are weeks or months, and for long-term housing, years. If vehicle dwelling is banned, even with increased “outreach,” many of these residents will end up on our streets without shelter, probably creating more problems than if they lived in their cars. Learning No. 3: Palo Alto is full of compassionate people. Even opponents of hosting at our site praised our “good intentions.” We have met many engaged, compassionate neighbors, city staff and social service workers while exploring this issue. Twenty-three of 25 public speakers at the June 25 hearing passionately urged the council to help vehicle residents, not to ban them. Learning No. 4: The Palo Alto municipal code explicitly protects people from discrimination based on housing status: Section 9.73.010(b): Freedom from Arbitrary Discrimination. It is the policy of the city of Palo Alto to protect and safeguard the right and opportunity of every person to be free from arbitrary discrimination on the basis of their race, skin color, gender, ... housing status,..., weight or height. Learning No 5: Virtually all rationales we have heard for banning vehicle dwelling stem from concerns about perceived char-

acteristics of homeless people in general, not about harm caused by vehicle dwelling itself. As evidence, consider that the draft ban is specifically crafted to exempt guests of residents, who are (we imagine) not homeless but “just visiting.” Also, recent hearings on vehicle dwelling have been dominated by discussion of the “homeless encampment” at Cubberley Community Center, where only a fraction of those encamped live in cars. Clearly this discussion has been all about homelessness, not vehicles. We at Friends Meeting conclude that the proposed ban on vehicle dwelling amounts to arbitrary discrimination based on housing status and, as such, appears inconsistent with municipal code section 9.73.010(b). It is discrimination because it is homelessness that defines the category of vehicle dwellers who are considered “problematic” (remember, “guests” are exempted). It is arbitrary because the banned behavior is not in itself harmful and does not necessarily result in the behaviors most often cited as reasons for the ban. Specific behaviors such as urination, drugs, assault, and so on are already prohibited by Title 9 of the municipal code or by state law. It is discriminatory to take away a right from all people in a class (the homeless) simply because a few of them may commit unrelated, already-prohibited behaviors. Palo Alto can do better. We support the positive steps recommended in the city staff report of June 25 for increased outreach and referral (though referral isn’t of much use if there are inadequate services

to refer people to, so gaps in these services need to be addressed as well). We are also encouraged by the number of Palo Alto residents who are conscientiously searching for ways to contribute personally to solutions rather than passing the problem off to others. We recognize that reasonable, thoughtful people might not reach all the same conclusions we have. We leave you with some questions for self-reflection (we call them “queries”) that we are using to guide our own participation in this public dialogue: Query No. 1: Am I honest and straightforward when presenting my views on vehicle dwelling? Do I listen to others with interest and respect? Do I seek understanding and solutions, rather than victory? Query No. 2: Are my views based on objective knowledge and experience? Do I recognize and try to limit any prejudice or excessive fear I may have? Query No. 3: Do I understand what it is like to be without a home? Can I imagine myself in that situation? (“I never thought it could happen to me.”) Query No. 4: Do I understand what social service options are and are not realistically available to residents in financial distress who have lost, or may lose, their housing? With heart, reflection and dialogue, Palo Altans working together can find solutions for our city that are better than the ban. Please share your ideas with the City Council by Monday, Aug. 5. N George Mills is co-presiding clerk at Palo Alto Friends Meeting. He can be reached at clerk@pafm.org. The Meeting is in complete unity with this statement.

Streetwise

Is there a parking problem in Palo Alto and, if so, what can we do to fix it? Asked on Cambridge Avenue, Birch Street and California Avenue, Palo Alto. Interviews and photographs by Karishma Mehrotra.

Steve Augustine

Linda Kirsch

Grace Lee

Julia Simon

McHale Newport-Berra

Engineer Middlefield Road “I don’t see it as a huge issue to be honest with you. Downtown is obviously the biggest issue. But, I don’t see it as a big problem.”

Guidance counselor Green Acres, Palo Alto “’I think it’s a grave disservice to the business to have the parking as messy as it is. ... Parking is very relevant for merchants. I don’t know what the answer to the (problem) is. Part of it is the amount of density this city is allowing.”

Retired South Palo Alto “Parking is a problem. ... We do need more spaces. Adding to existing structures is a solution.”

Silicon Valley Boys Choir director Waverley Street, Palo Alto “We don’t have that big of a problem as compared to Berkeley or Boston.”

Graduate student California Avenue, Palo Alto “To be honest, I haven’t encountered a huge parking problem. ... We are able to walk a lot. We can walk to the library, park, farmers market, whatever. So I haven’t found it to be much of an issue.”

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Spectrum

Letters (continued from page 18)

the relaxed, semi-rural atmosphere before voting to join the city. This struggle continues. The purpose of the petitions is to inform the city that changes in the Comprehensive Plan and/or zoning regulations (CP-Z) are very important to the residents and we should be able to vote on them. The petitions address this change in CP-Z for the property to allow a high density development by fiat instead of vote. This represents a huge change in the character of the neighborhood. The area immediately abuts a city park and an R1 neighborhood. Nearby traffic is impossible morning and afternoon whenever schools are in session. The petitions do not oppose senior housing. They oppose the CP-Z

change by fiat. Changes on Arastradero Road have impacted our traffic problems significantly. Cut-through speedsters are far too common. Be careful, your neighborhood could be next. Our petitions only seek a vote of the residents of Palo Alto regarding changes to the Comprehensive Plan and zoning. We ask for a vote. Jean Wren Matadero Avenue, Palo Alto

On parking permits Editor, A couple of points about the business petition against residential permit parking: I have to give them credit for chutzpa — they say, “The problem is that residents have more cars than the property was designed for.” What about the uses occupying commercial buildings that have no parking — building once used for low-intensity uses, now filled with 20 to 30 high-tech workers? They

are causing the problems, not us. Most of the owners signing the petition were service businesses who should be joining with the neighbors to fight the city who is granting exceptions, violating the zoning rules, ignoring environmental processes and approving uses and projects that do not have parking — like the latest proposal at 240 Hamilton. Get real, the residents, your customers, didn’t cause this problem — your friends the commercial property owners (who also escalate your rents) and the city that allows too much development without adequate support — they are the problem. You already have twohour restricted parking for customers (enforced free by the city); you just want a free place for your employees to park, that you want us to subsidize with the livability and safety of our homes. Really? Ken Alsman Ramona Street, Palo Alto

Unhoused refugees Editor, When I woke up this a.m., safe in my own warm bed with a bathroom close by, it occurred to me that the 7,000-plus unhoused people in Santa Clara County are actually refugees. The unhoused are refugees caught in a political and economic system that does not properly do what government should do: take care of its people. The U.S. does not come up to the same standard as other developed countries in providing healthcare, housing or education. Most European countries and Canada are way ahead of us. We are very quick to respond and rush in to crises in other countries. What about our own refugees? Don’t they need a place to be safe, and tents, food and medical care? They were only asking for a place to park and bathrooms; but a church representative said, “We wanted to

have the unhoused at our church, but the city of Palo Alto said our bathrooms had to be staffed all night by a security guard, and we couldn’t afford it.” What is wrong with this picture? Dana M. St. George Campesino Avenue, Palo Alto

Fresh Market fail Editor, I own a home two blocks from this eagerly anticipated new market. I am sad to say that this market is doomed to failure. I hoped it would replace Piazza or Whole Foods on my shopping trips. However, it can’t. Whoever did the research for this market site was way off base. Its produce is not good. Its selections are limited. I still have to drive to the aforementioned markets to get what I need to cook a dinner. Very sad. Lynne Myers Channing Avenue, Palo Alto

This week on Town Square Town Square is an online discussion forum at www.PaloAltoOnline.com Citizen analysis shows parking woes deepening Posted by Craig Laughton, a resident of the College Terrace neighborhood, on July 31, 2013 at 9:28 a.m. Era of free parking is over “This has to be across the city if they want to do it at all.” Correct. That is what the city of Davis, Ca. finally determined, based on its ‘push out’ experience. The citizens of Palo Alto have a reasonable expectation that their neighborhoods will be livable. A city-wide RPPP is a major step in that direction. IMO, it has worked well in College Terrace (CT). CT has been an incubator for the concept, and details matter. Politically, it might be better to allow each neighborhood to opt in, as they begin to feel the parking pressures. However, the most efficient way is to do it by fiat (probably won’t happen). The fundamental issue is too many cars downtown, especially for employees. The obvious answer is to develop satellite parking shuttle lots, as has been mentioned by several posters on this blog. Caltrain lots are one obvious example, which begs the question: Why not just take Caltrain to PA? BART should circle the Bay and head down to Salinas, period. The Baylands could provide a satellite lot (including multi-deck parking structure), too, with shuttle buses (note: I strongly recommend the undedicated ten acres that is proposed for the anaerobic digestion industrial plant foolishness). Don’t forget parking meters in retail/institutional areas, like Redwood City and UC Davis have. Also, I don’t understand why Crescent Park (CP) can’t have it own RPPP, if it wants it. The current issue there is EPA overflow parking, but CP will soon face Downtown parking expansion. If they want it, why not? The era of free parking in PA, on demand, is over. Posted by CrescentParkAnon., a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, Aug. 1 11:30 a.m. Permits aren’t the answer Parking in Palo Alto is good for all of us, and having others able to park here is also good for all of us. The problem target are those who abuse the privilege. Why make all Palo Alto suffer because of a few jerks who park badly? Making everyone pay fees and get the occasional ticket is just a way to suck more money from us and make life more full of friction. Stanford is not a real city, it is a university, and I don’t give a darn what they do there. I think Redwood City, and I often go there for movies, and their Century Theaters have their own free parking, but if I had to park on the street and go through that irritating pay-for-parking system I’d never do it ... first on principle, but second, who want to muck about with paying for parking in the rain or when you are in a hurry? There are certain infrastructure things that is the government’s responsibility to provide, if reasonable, and the Palo Alto Parking Model has always worked, and still does for

the most port. For growth we might need another parking structure ... build it and quit this talk of picking my pocket for more money while causing me more inconvenience! Parking Permits just mean more full-time employees, more to do that accomplishes nothing, more inconvenience, a ticket or over the years when you don’t realize your permit is out of date or your new car does not have a permit. City Government, this is one thing you can do - do it, do it so we do not need to worry about it and just get it done.

Baby with no kidneys treated at Lucile Packard Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Jul 31, 2013 at 7:57 a.m. Human life is valuable I think it is important to say that all human life is valuable and worth saving. I think the article is showing that medical advancement and particularly medical personnel are striving forward in their medical knowledge so that problems which some time ago had no chance to overcome, are now successfully being treated. All medical breakthroughs start with low success expectations, but through each failure as well as each success, more knowledge and experience makes subsequent attempts more likely to succeed. Routine procedures now were once thought of as new and ground-breaking, and without them they would not be routine today. Hopefully this baby’s experience will help many more families in the future. Posted by Concerned Retiree, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Jul 31, 2013 at 11:07 a.m. What is the cost? This is an ongoing, extravagant procedure to save a baby (?) whose chances of leading a normal life and making a contribution to the world are quite limited. What is the total cost of this gee whiz procedure? At least we know that this Congresswoman will get the best health care for her and her baby (?) which tax payers’ $$$$ can provide. And, of course, those who use Stanford for normal procedures will be donating to this questionable cause. It is best to let some fetuses pass without being born. I question the wisdom of bringing this already marginalized life into this world.

Palo Alto set to ban vehicle dwelling Posted by Resident, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood on Aug. 1 at 11 a.m. Ban won’t solve the problem This ban is not going to solve the problem, just move it somewhere else. I think that preventing people from using the Cubberley lot is probably a good idea and also preventing people from camping in streets is also a good idea. However, the real problem is that there is no regional,

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state or even national method of helping homeless people. I am not sure what the answer is, but by just banning them it is just pretending the problem doesn’t exist. Whether these people are homeless from circumstances or choice, whether it is mental health or laziness, these are still people and all human life is worth helping. Charities can only do so much, it has to be looked at from the top. Mental health issues are not going away, and expecting people with these issues to fend for themselves is not working as they don’t or won’t. We do need to have some comprehensive plan as a society to deal with these individuals. Government handouts to subsidize low-income people is only encouraging them to expect more handouts. Charities are to some extent enabling the homeless. Throwing money at individual or organized programs help some, but not all. It is about time to rediscover institutionalized mental health programs to help those either unwilling or unable to made sensible decisions for themselves. Their families are unable to force them to look out for them either. All possible creative ideas must be looked into. Greenmeadow Resident, a resident of the Greenmeadow neighborhood, on Aug. 1 at 12:15 p.m. Police need tools for problem Just this month at Cubberley, a man was beaten until he was unconscious. This week a Cubberley “camper” took at swing at a police officer who approached him because he was publicly intoxicated (against the law). The incidence of these events has increased significantly as the homeless population at Cubberley has mushroomed in the last three years. More than half of citywide police service calls related to vehicle dwellers in 2012 were at Cubberley. The police need some tools to deal with this growing problem. While some homeless people are just good folks who have had some very bad luck, many are psychologically unstable and substance addicted. Real public health and safety problems come with that. This isn’t about criminalizing the homeless. If you read the staff report, the ordinance prioritizes connecting people appropriately to services to help them. The police (front line public safety staff) need a tool to help them to make that connection. That said, some of the homeless ARE wanted criminals. A car is a good place to hide if you don’t want to be tracked. Police should connect those people with the justice system. The vast majority of other cities in San Mateo and Santa Clara enacted bans and pushed their problem here, creating an acute situation in Palo Alto, and especially at Cubberley, that we no longer have adequate resources to address. Palo Alto cannot, by itself, solve a REGIONAL problem. Please ask the cities around us to engage in identifying and funding a REGIONAL solution instead of dumping their problem on us. A Cubberley “camper” said this week that a Mountain View police officer directed him to Cubberley, telling him it was a “safe place” to be. Hmmmmm.

AUGUST 2013

LivingWell A monthly special section of

news & information for seniors

What will Palo Alto look like when Baby Boomers turn 80? Even with exercise and nutrition, chronic illness and ‘major life events’ come with age

by Chris Kenrick alo Alto may be a mecca for young tech entrepreneurs, but it also has a disproportionately high number of residents 65 and over — and that segment is expected to grow as Baby Boomers age in place. The oldest Baby Boomers, born in 1946, turned 67 this year. The tail end of the cohort, born in 1964, is 49. People 65 and over comprised 17.1 percent of the city’s population in the U.S. Census of 2010 — up from 15.6 percent in 2000. In California as a whole, seniors make up just 11.4 percent of the population. Age by itself is a poor yardstick for predicting what people will need or what the community will look like. “There are some very young 80-year-olds and some very old 60-year-olds,” notes John Sink, vice-president for programs at the nonprofit senior agency Avenidas. But even as many Boomers vow to stay young through exercise and nutrition, chronic illness and “major life events” such as loss of a spouse inevitably

Veronica Weber

A roadsign warns drivers to slow and look for seniors on WebsterStreet near University Avenue.

(continued on page 21)

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Living Well

AUGUST 2013 Calendar of Events

August Events for Active Adults

Friday August 2

Saturday August 10

Friday August 16

Friday August 23

AARP Tax Assistance

Successful Aging Celebration

Podiatry

9-10-30 am Free by appointment only @Avenidas

9:30 am-1:30 PM Free PAMF Mountain View Campus

Aveneedles Knitting Group 2:30-4:30 pm Free @Avenidas

9am-4:30 pm $40 members/$45 non members @Avenidas

Successful Aging Celebration

Monday August 5

Monday August 12

Monday August 19

Monday August 26

Senior Adults Legal Assistance

Massage and Reﬂexology

Senior Adults Legal Assistance

Acupuncture

10 am-2 pm Free for Santa Clara County residents only @Avenidas

9:15 am-11:30 am $25 @Avenidas

Sat. Aug. 10, 9:30 am - 1:30 pm Palo Alto Medical Foundation 701 East El Camino Real, Mountain View A free day of seminars, art, music, food, prizes, a movie and more! Call 650-934-7380 for more information or to register.

Avenidas Fitness Camp Tues. Aug. 20 to Thurs Aug. 22, 9 am - 3 pm Channing House 850 Webster St., Palo Alto Call 650-289-5436 for more information or to register.

Family Caregiving 101 A year-long series of free workshops Avenidas Rose Kleiner Center, 270 Escuela Avenue, Mountain View Call 650-289-5499 for more information or to register. s Self-Care Thursday, Aug. 22, 7 pm s Falls Prevention Thursday, Sept. 26, 7 pm

s Stress Management Thursday, Oct. 24, 7 pm s Family Dynamics Thursday, Nov. 14, 7 pm

10am-12pm Free @Avenidas

1:30-4 pm $35 members/$45 non @Avenidas

Spouse and Partner Caregivers Support Group

Tuesday August 13

Tuesday August 20

Tuesday August 27

1:30-3 pm Free @Avenidas

Stanford Caregiver Support Group

12-1 pm Free @Avenidas

Camp Avenidas Summer Fitness Academy

Tuesday August 6

Everything You Wanted to Know About Hoarding 12-30-2 pm Free @Avenidas

(650) 289-5400 | www.avenidas.org

2 pm $2 members/$5 non members @Avenidas

An Evening with Host of Bay Area Backroads

Wednesday August 14

Wednesday August 7

Chess 1-4 pm Free @Avenidas Thursday August 8

Advance Health Care Directives 9-11 am $5.00 by appointment only @Avenidas

Spinal & Muscle Stretching Intro Workshop 11am-12pm $20 members/$30 non members @Avenidas Friday August 9

Resources and programs for positive aging

Movie “Age of Champions”

10 am-3:30 pm 8/20 thru 8/22 $75 members/$105 non member at Channing House

Social Ballroom Dancing 3-4:30 pm Free @Avenidas

Skin Cancer Screening 1-2 pm Free by appointment only @Avenidas

6:30pm-8:30pm $10 800 Middle Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 Reservation: (650) 326-2025 Ext 222 or Email knwachob@peninsulavolunteers.org Wednesday August 21

Adult Child Caregivers Support Group 6-7:30 pm $10 donation @Avenidas

12-1 pm Free @Avenidas Wednesday August 28

Drop-in Blood Pressure Screening 9-10:30 am Free Cubberley Community Center, PA

Adult Child Caregivers Support Group 6-7:30 pm $10 donation @Avenidas

Reiki 9am-12noon $30 members/$35 non members by appointment only

Thursday August 29

Pole Walking for Mobility

@Avenidas

2:30-4:45 pm $15 members/$20 non members @Avenidas

Health Insurance Counseling

Thursday August 22

Friday August 30

9-11 am Free for Santa Clara County residents only @Avenidas

Spinal and Muscle Stretching

Foot Hand Nail Care & Pedicure 9 am-1:30 pm $40 members/$45 non =-members (for manicure) $50 members/$55 non-members (for both manicure & pedicure) @Avenidas

Thursday August 15

11am – 12 noon $20 members/$30 non members @Avenidas

AARP Driver Safety 2-6:30 pm $12 members/$14 non members by appointment only @Avenidas

Caregiver Workshop “Taking Care of You” 7 pm Free 270 Escuela Ave, Mountain View

Palo Alto’s Leading Provider of 24/7 Live-In Home Care Best for You. We expertly match caregivers with your needs. Cost Effective. Our one-to-one client care is the lowest cost and highest quality on the Peninsula. Special Training. Our caregivers attend regular classes through our Home Care Assistance University. Quality and Safety. We run Department of Justice background checks on all our potential employees and administer a psychological examination, developed by on-staff PhD psychologists, to test for honesty and conscientiousness. All of our caregivers are bonded and insured and are employees of Home Care Assistance.

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Living Well

Veronica Weber

Seniors play soccer at the Stanford/ Palo Alto Community Playing Fields on April 26, 2012. The men belong to a 60 and up recreational soccer club that meets four days a week.

Boomers turn 80 (continued from page 21)

There are some very young 80-year-olds and some very old 60-year-olds.

— John Sink, vice-president for programs, Avenidas

come with the years. Sink, who watches the numbers as he helps plan programs for “older adults,” says, “We’re studying the needs of folks very carefully. “It’s hard to go by age. You have to go by needs and interests.” An informal 2006 “white paper” on the impact of aging Boomers on Palo Alto — authored by a task force of community leaders, including city officials — raised the specter of a community where “upwards of 40 percent of our total population will be 55 years of age or older” by 2030. That surprising projection was based on a survey of more

Page 24ÊUÊ Õ}ÕÃÌÊÓ]ÊÓä£ÎÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊÜÜÜ°*> Ì " i°V

than 300 Palo Alto Baby Boomers, who said they aim to age in their homes and remain active in the community, according to the paper, titled “Impact of the Aging Baby Boom Population on Palo Alto’s Social and Community Services.” It was co-authored by Richard James, then director of community services for the City of Palo Alto and Lisa Hendrickson, president and CEO of Avenidas. The survey found that 80 percent of Boomers, who possess a higher education level than any past generation, have no plans to leave Palo Alto when they retire. That, and other surveys confirm that “older adults going forward are not going to fit the same model of older adults of the last generation,” Sink said. “They have a different self-image, different view of inde(continued on page 26)

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Living Well

Boomers turn 80 (continued from page 24)

Veronica Weber

From left. Dee Ellsworth, Sue Kemp, Hsiu Lee and Peter Hanson do a belly-dance inspired move while dancing in the Zumba Gold class taught at Avenidas on March 6, 2013.

Our life here

Palo Alto Is The

BEST PLACE To Retire. Webster House is now a member of Episcopal Senior Communities, the not-for-proﬁt organization that owns and operates Canterbury Woods, Los Gatos Meadows, Lytton Gardens, San Francisco Towers, Spring Lake Village, and St. Paul’s Towers. Ideally located near the wonderful mix of shops, restaurants, and art galleries, our newly renovated apartments, gracious amenities, enriched services, and new programs make living here a style of life that offers you real peace-of-mind in a welcoming community with the advantages of continuing care. To learn more, or for your personal visit, please call 650.838.4004.

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pendence and self-sufficiency and of what they want. They’re very interested in health, fitness and nutrition.” High on the priority list for this group are strategies for “aging in place” — staying in the home, but using an array of supports to do things like help turn a mattress, clean the gutters or care for a family member. Sink segments current and future users of older-adult services into a range of categories: lifelong learners, health seekers, practical-help seekers, volunteers and the frail elderly. The relative sizes of those categories could shift as Baby Boomers age.

Even as Palo Alto’s over-65 population expands, so does its cohort under the age of 18. In a recent snapshot of Palo Alto’s current senior population, gleaned from a January 2013 survey of Avenidas users, Sink found that 40 percent come to the agency for “lifelong learning” opportunities; a third come for practical help; one in five come for fitness and not quite one in five come for the weekday hot lunch program, La Comida. Twenty percent of respondents (81 out of 398) described themselves as “caregivers” to a spouse or another household member, a figure significantly up from 13 percent in the past. “People don’t self-identify as caregivers, but we’re starting to see that dial go up,” Sink said. “A big chunk” of today’s seniors have no monthly housing expense, with mortgages already paid off, he said. However, nearly half the Avenidas survey respondents said they’re living on incomes of less than $50,000 a year. Sink said he has yet to fully analyze the survey and also is awaiting age-specific data from the 2010 Census, particularly on income. “We take our responsibility as being experts on older adults in Palo Alto very seriously because part of our charter is to consult with the city on the needs of older adults in the community,” he said. As Palo Alto’s over-65 population expands, so does its cohort under the age of 18. The segment of the city’s population that’s under 18 grew from 21.2 percent in the 2000 Census to 23.4 percent in 2010. In the same period, enrollment in the Palo Alto school district has grown from 10,000 to 12,400 as of last fall, and school leaders are looking to build new elementary and middle-school classrooms. N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be emailed at ckenrick@paweekly. com.

Living Well

Senior Focus CELEBRATE SUCCESSFUL AGING ... Check out the latest aging startups, learn about “aging in community” or talk with the author of “Smart After 50: The Experts Guide for Life Planning for Uncertain Times” at the Aug. 10 Successful Aging Celebration sponsored by Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Avenidas. The event, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at PAMF’s Mountain View Center, 701 E. El Camino Real, Mountain View, is free, but space is limited. To guarantee a seat at an educational seminar and/ or a screening of “The Happy Movie”, call 650 934-7380. STARTING IT UP ... Eyeing the graying Baby Boomers, more than a dozen aging-related startups are scheduled to display their wares at Aging 2.0 Startup Showcase, part of the Aug. 10 Successful Aging Celebration at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation’s Mountain View location. Among them are Caresolver, which generates a “customized, task-based care plan tailored to your loved one” after users enter data about the person’s health and living conditions online. Also on hand will be Live!ly, which places motion sensors around the home of an older person and permits activity patterns to be shared with distant family members. Live!ly also features LivelyGrams, which automatically convert electronic messages and photos into a “personalized mailer to an elder loved one” that is automatically sent by postal mail to an elder loved one every two weeks. “It’s a way for non-Internet users to enjoy photos and status updates from loved ones; social networking in hard-copy form!” the company explains on its website.

Making the decision to move, selling your home, and moving is a big job. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You don’t have to do it all alone.

Nancy and her experienced team will assist you from start to ﬁnish. Planning Prioritizing Pricing and marketing your home Completing the myriad of forms Negotiating offers Managing the escrow process Packing Cleaning Estate Sales Donations Finalizing your sale while coordinating with you and your family or advisors to assure a successful outcome

NANCY GOLDCAMP Seniors Real Estate Specialist Certiﬁed Residential Specialist

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MOVIE CLUB ... “Refreshments, drinks and fun” are included in the Thursday Movie Club, which runs year-round — even in August — at Avenidas, 450 Bryant St., Palo Alto. The upcoming schedule includes The Great Race” on Aug. 8; The Intouchables” on Aug. 15; “Won’t Back Down” on Aug. 22 and “Quartet” on Aug. 29. Screenings, free for Avenidas members and $2 for nonmembers, begin at 1:30 p.m. N

Items for Senior Focus may be emailed to Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Chris Kenrick at ckenrick@ paweekly.com.

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Cover Story

Entering a

brave new world A STORY BY REBECCA WALLACE PHOTOS BY VERONICA WEBER

GENOMICS AIMS TO MOVE MEDICINE FROM ‘DIAGNOSE AND TREAT’ TO ‘PREDICT AND PREVENT’

s the director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine, Michael Snyder was already a believer in improving people’s health by analyzing their genomes. On April 11, 2011, he became a member of the choir. That’s when he got the official word that he had type-2 diabetes. He might never have spotted the condition so early, except that he’d had his own genome sequenced, and he and his lab members had discovered that he had a genetic predisposition. “We didn’t expect it,” Snyder said in an interview in his campus office. “I happened to go in and get the glucose test because my genome said I was at high risk.” It turned out that Snyder’s blood sugar had been climbing even as he and his team analyzed his genome. Glucose tests yielded increasingly higher results, and his diabetes was diagnosed. In essence, the researchers had been watching the inception of a disease. Since Snyder, 57, had a physical exam only every two or three years and didn’t know of any diabetes history in his family, the condition might have gone undetected for a long time. But now he was able to swiftly cut dessert from his diet and dramatically increase his exercise. “I had one bite of wedding cake in 2011,” he confessed. His bloodsugar levels improved. For Snyder, the moral of the story is clear. While complete genomesequencing is not yet widely used, its promise for people’s health — and that of their families — can’t be denied, he believes. In his case, his diagnosis inspired his siblings to also get glucose tests, and in some cases, start exercising to improve their own blood-sugar levels. “I’m a believer in the future,” he said. Snyder, who also chairs Stanford’s genetics department, has headed the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine since its birth in 2010. It’s an interdis(continued on next page)

A Stanford researcher displays a flow cell used to store genetic material for sequencing.

ÜÜÜ°*> Ì " i°V ÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ Õ}ÕÃÌÊÓ]ÊÓä£ÎÊU Page 29

Cover Story

Right: Atul Butte, far right, and fellow researchers at his Stanford lab listen as Weronika SikoraWohlfeld presents her findings on biological molecules communicating in a similar fashion to computer circuitry. Below right: Catharine Eastman, a life-science research assistant at the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine’s DNA-sequencing center in Palo Alto, prepares DNA samples for study. Far right: Atul Butte holds up a GeneChip, which scans and stores genetic information for use in research. (continued from previous page)

ciplinary effort with an ambitious mission: to continue analyzing the human genome (a person’s complete set of DNA) and its molecular makeup and then translate findings into individualized medicine. Researchers believe DNA holds valuable information on predicting, diagnosing and treating conditions as diverse as cancer, schizophrenia and asthma and anticipating which medications may work better for a particular patient. Through genomics, researchers are also developing vaccines made from DNA and RNA. In addition, they’re seeking to lower health care costs through preventive care: as many describe it, moving medicine from “diagnose and treat” to “predict and prevent.” “I’ve never seen a more exciting time in medicine than now,” said center Co-director Stephen Galli, who also chairs Stanford’s pathology department.

t’s been a banner 23 years for the young field of genomics. The U.S. Human Genome Project, an international enterprise led by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, officially kicked off in 1990. The aim was to “discover the complete set of human genes and make them accessible for further biological study, and determine the complete sequence of DNA bases in the human genome,” according to the project’s website. The project was expected to last 15 years, but researchers and technology were ahead of their game. By 2000, leaders had announced that a “working draft” DNA sequence of the human genome had been completed. In 2003, the project was declared finished, all 3 billion DNA letters in the human genome

successfully sequenced. The science of genomics was off and running. Researchers at Stanford and numerous other institutions saw the promise early on. With whole genomes being sequenced, they could look for genetic variations: differences between individuals’ genomes that could signal genetic diseases, risks for diseases and potential ways that people could react to medications, pathogens and other environmental influences. Many variants have no effect, but the ones that do can have dramatic ramifications. Since the first human genome has been sequenced, the process has continued to improve, and the cost and time needed for sequencing has dropped significantly. The Human Genome Project cost about $2.7 billion in fiscal-year 1991 dollars. Today, a complete sequencing of a genome can be done for a few thousand dollars, in a day. People also use the term “the $1,000 genome” to refer to a future when complete sequencing — and a personalized plan of medicine coming out of it — will be accessible to

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the public at large. On a smaller scale, there are now companies that provide commercial genotyping to the public, providing a partial DNA analysis from a saliva sample. “It has some value,” Snyder said of the practice. One of the firms, the Mountain View-based 23andMe, promises to give clients insight into what diseases they may be at risk for. It also offers a look at a client’s ancestry — in some cases, helping seek out “new-found relatives.” While genomics was developing as a science, Snyder was working at Yale University. In the early days, researchers studied genes one at a time; he took part in an early project that analyzed thousands of genes at once. Full-genome sequencing looked like an exciting future. “The cost of sequencing was dropping in 2005 and 2006. We saw that you’d be able to sequence for an ordinary person,” he said. By the start of 2009, the year he came to Stanford, two genomes were sequenced, with more to come. The center he now heads was established

the following year. Stanford’s genomics program, which includes an off-campus sequencing facility in Palo Alto with machines from the Hayward-based Illumina Inc., is one of a few in the country to receive funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Other institutions that

have gotten grants from the institute include the California Institute of Technology, Harvard Medical School and Yale University. Snyder describes much of the genomics work done at Stanford today as clinical research rather than clinical. Lab researchers studying the genome are exploring a variety of questions. Which genes are linked

Cover Story

NOTICE OF A PUBLIC MEETING of the City of Palo Alto Architectural Review Board (ARB) 8:30 A.M., Thursday, August 15, 2013 Palo Alto Council Chambers, 1st Floor, Civic Center, 250 Hamilton Avenue. Go to the Development Center at 285 Hamilton Avenue to review filed documents; contact Diana Tamale for information regarding business hours at 650.329.2144. 537 Hamilton Avenue [13PLN-00268]: Request by Korth Sunseri Hagey Architects for a Design Enhancement Exception (DEE) to allow the proposed roof-top canopy to exceed the 40 foot height limit by 11'-6" on a property within the CD-C(P) zone district. Environmental Assessment: Exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) per CEQA Guidelines Section 15303. 636 Waverley Street [13PLN-00262]: Request by Hayes Group Architects for a Major Architectural Review for the demolition of a onestory, 1,406 sq. ft. office building and construction of a new, 10,328 sq. ft., four-story mixed use building with commercial uses on the first and second floors and two residential units on the third and fourth floors, on a property within the CD-C(P) zoning district. Environmental Assessment: Exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) per CEQA Guidelines Section 15303. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request an accommodation for this meeting or an alternative format for any related printed materials, please contact the City’s ADA Coordinator at 650.329.2550 (voice) or by e-mailing

Jennifer Li-Pook-Than, a post-doctoral associate in Stanford’s genetics department, prepares DNA samples for a polymerase chain reaction that will be used to study a gene variant. to heart disease? What can genes reveal about predispositions to cancer or whether a tumor will grow? How is genetic material related to autoimmune responses, autism, asthma? Stanford has also launched a repository for genetic samples to create a database that could aid in future study. In some cases, sequencing is also used in individual patients’ care at the university’s hospital system. For example, a patient with an unusual syndrome that baffles doctors might have his genome sequenced in hopes of finding out what the condition is and what existing drugs might work for it. “For a long time, we’ve known how to use individual genes,” Galli said. For instance, if a person has cystic fibrosis, doctors would know to test his or her child for it, or to tell a patient about potential risks to his or her unborn child. Today’s use of genes is broader, Galli said: “We’re able to tell you that you have a specific mutation and that this particular medicine might work well for you.” But with full-genome sequencing not yet widely available, genomics is still more a science of the lab than of the physician’s office. The average doctor has not been trained on how to interpret sequencing results and to communicate with patients about them, nor are all doctors convinced that the technology has widespread use in individualized medicine, Snyder said. “We’re still cave people in terms of our prowess at this.”

hat’s why Stanford’s work in genomics is an interdisciplinary effort. It’s not just about the researchers delving into questions of science in the lab. As genomics moves toward being translated into widespread personalized medicine (or precision medicine, as some call it), many other questions arise: how to interpret the data that emerge from labs and studies; how to train doctors and

other health care workers to deal with the data; how to help patients and doctors grapple with the ethical questions that arise; how to protect patients’ privacy. More broadly still: Who owns genetic information, and how should society use it? Stanford faculty members in various disciplines are involved with genomics, extending beyond the genetics department. There are people from pediatrics, pathology, developmental biology, bioengineering, computer science, biomedical ethics, psychiatry.

‘The patient needs to have a choice. It involves how you think about your own future, your children’s future, whether you’re going to have children.’ —Stephen Galli, co-director, Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine Atul Butte perhaps best personifies the interdisciplinary approach. He’s an associate professor of pediatrics and genetics and the chief of the division of systems medicine. Along with his M.D. and doctorate, he has a degree in computer science, where he started out. “I still love to code when I have time to do it,” he said during an interview in his campus office. There, his framed diplomas and stacks of science magazines are joined by a sign from a TED conference, where he gave a talk called, “What if you outsource three double-blind mice?” While Butte’s colleagues are in the lab or the clinic generating data, he’s helping them make sense of the findings and turn the data into clinical recommendations. He and his team perform statistical analyses on genomic data, look for patterns as they map, compare and analyze the data that other researchers from

all around the world have put out there, often on the Internet. “We all benefit from sharing what we can contribute,” he said. “It’s one thing to learn from a big data set. It’s another thing to learn from two of them. ... What do 10 researchers see? What do 100 researchers see?” Once scholars like Butte have analyzed the data, concrete ideas may emerge that can help patients. For instance, a study of cancer patients might yield a clue to which genetic variant is connected to an adverse reaction to a particular drug. Butte has also focused on finding new ways to use old drugs. Often, a medication already approved by the FDA for one condition may be beneficial for another. In one case, Butte analyzed publicly available data from the Internet on lungcancer patients and saw that the tricyclic antidepressant desipramine had a surprising positive effect on the cancer. He notes that “drug-repurposing” has a long history (Viagra, for instance, was originally an angina drug) but not to this extent. In true Stanford tradition, Butte and others started a company. He’s a founder and scientific adviser at NuMedii, a Palo Alto firm that translates the “Big Data technology” developed in Butte’s lab into finding new uses for existing drugs. Butte also makes use of technology developed by other firms. He holds up a chip made by Affymetrix Inc. in Santa Clara. Called the GeneChip, the measurement tool scans DNA samples to seek out genetic variations. “People use these to figure out patterns,” he said. “This chip is amazing.” Snyder and Galli agree that the data analysis done by Butte and his team is a key component to their work at the center. Without the results from studies being properly interpreted, doctors would be as lost as the pharmacist in a cartoon popular with people working in genom(continued on next page)

Amy French Chief Planning Ofﬁcial

City of Palo Alto ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that a Draft Mitigated Negative Declaration has been prepared by the Palo Alto Department of Planning and Community Environment for the project listed below. In accordance with A.B. 886, this document will be available for review and comment during a minimum 30-day circulation period beginning August 5, 2013 through September 3, 2013 during the hours of 9:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. at the Development Center, 285 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. The document will also be available on the web at www.cityofpaloalto.org/planningprojects . This item will be considered at a public hearing by the Architectural Review Board, Thursday, September 5, 2013 at 8:30 AM. in the Palo Alto City Council Chambers on the first floor of the Civic Center, located at 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, California. Written comments on the Mitigated Negative Declaration should be provided to Clare Campbell, Department of Planning and Community Environment, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94301, or via email at clare. campbell@cityofpaloalto.org, by 5:00 PM on September 3, 2013. 1400 Page Mill Road [13PLN-00188]: Request by Hanover Page Mill Associates for Major Architectural Review to allow the construction of one two-story 86,925 sf commercial building with below and at grade parking, replacing the existing square footage of the two commercial buildings (no change in floor area), on behalf of Leland Stanford University in the RP (Research Park) zone district. Aaron Aknin, Interim Director of Planning and Community Environment In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, listening assistive devices are available in the Council Chambers and Council Conference Room. Sign language interpreters will be provided upon request with 72 hours advance notice.

5K WALK, 5K & 10K RUN

SEPTEMBER 20 REGISTER ONLINE: PaloAltoOnline.com/moonlight_run ÜÜÜ°*> Ì " i°V ÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ Õ}ÕÃÌÊÓ]ÊÓä£ÎÊU Page 31

Cover Story

Post-doctoral associate Bin Chen sits beside a computer monitor displaying his graph of data on new medications’ treatment of disease.

TALK ABOUT IT

www.PaloAltoOnline.com Would you want to know what diseases you’re at risk for? Share your opinion on genomics on Town Square, the discussion forum on Palo Alto Online.

(continued from previous page)

ics. There are many versions of the comic, but basically, as Galli puts it: “Someone walks into a pharmacy, hands a pharmacist a piece of paper and says: ‘This is my genome. Tell me what I need.’” With all the interpretation, disciplines and training needed in genomics, there’s another popular joke in the field, too: “We’re heading toward a $1,000 genome and a million-dollar interpretation.”

hen the topic of genomics comes up among people outside the field, the discussion can be very different. It often boils down to one central question: Would you have your genome sequenced? Which really means: Would you want to know what you’re at risk for? Other questions are inextricably woven in: What would you do if you found out you were at risk for a serious condition? Would you want your family to be tested? Issues of psychology, ethics, responsibility are forever entwined with genomics. At Stanford, the Center for Biomedical Ethics plays a major role in the university’s work in genomics, with center Director David Magnus actively involved. He and his colleagues are used to being brought in to help researchers, physicians and others address ethical issues in many disciplines. As a young science, genomics raises even more issues, some of them unprecedented. One of the most common questions that many institutions are grappling with is one of the most fundamental, Magnus said: What sequencing results should be given to patients? “It’s easy to say we can give pa-

tients whatever they want, but it might not mean anything” to someone not trained in genetics, he said. This goes back to the need for more training of physicians in helping patients deal with sequencing results. In addition, he noted, genomics’ young age means there are many things that even high-level scientists haven’t figured out yet. “Whenever you do a full sequencing of anyone, you’ll find variations that will be of unknown significance,” he said. With a genetic variation, the stakes can end up being very high: matters of health and sickness, life and death. As sequencing technology continues to become more widely available, it means more high-stakes choices that patients have to make about their own health and the health of their relatives. Overall, genomics, Galli said, “is going to increasingly require patients to play a big role in taking control of their own health care.” That starts with the first decision: whether a person wants to have his own genome sequenced. While doctors grapple with the question of how much information to give to patients, they also have to realize that some patients won’t want it. Galli uses the example of the risk for developing early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Some people are planners and will want to know. They’ll want to make sure that their families will be provided for, that they’ll get to do what they want early in life. “Even they may be sorry they know it, but they’ll ask for it,” he said. Other people will want to know only if something can be done about it — if their future condition will be treatable. Still others won’t want to know at all.

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‘Genomics is a no-brainer. It needs to become standard care.’ —Michael Snyder, director, Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine “The patient needs to have a choice,” Galli said. “It involves how you think about your own future, your children’s future, whether you’re going to have children. What’s right for one person may not be right for another.” Another question of ethics related to genomics is one of privacy. Can people’s health data really be kept anonymous when study results are shared on the Internet? Can people be identified by their genetic information, even if their names are kept out of it? What could be done with those data? Magnus said that privacy is one of the major ethical issues that keeps coming up around genomics. But he points out that privacy has always been a concern in health care.

In one sense, protecting privacy is the same as it’s always been: having good computer security, building firewalls, keeping names off study data. Many large databases used for genomics research are restricted to vetted researchers and not open to the public at large, he said. With genetic information, though, security may need to go farther, he said. In some cases people could theoretically look at public records, such as voter rolls, and combine them with study databases to try to identify individuals. “That’s a new challenge, and people are working to find ways of dealing with the bioinformatics challenge,” Magnus said. “People really are trying to think through policies and try to do the best we

can. It’s always hard to anticipate every curve.” Patients can also play a role in protecting their own privacy. Magnus has heard stories of people going on social media and sharing details they’ve learned about their own genome, whether it’s serious information from a full sequencing or something that seems more innocuous, obtained from a partial genotyping from a commercial company. “People may think it’s innocuous to share things on Facebook, like the inability to taste cilantro, and yet the details might be sufficient to identify people in a larger database and now know whether they’re at risk for early Alzheimer’s, and an employer could decide not to hire them,” Magnus said. Such horror stories are largely hypothetical at this point, Magnus noted. “We’re trying to focus on the concrete issues that we can address now.” Back in his office, Snyder, ever the advocate, painted a brighter picture of the future. He imagines a day when the average person will go to the doctor and not get just a few limited tests. Instead, anyone will be able to get a full genome sequencing, meaning that a patient could be tested for “hundreds of thousands of things” at each doctor’s visit. Patients will be able to anticipate and respond to risk factors, adverse medication responses. They’ll be able to make lifestyle changes and improve their health, and work with their doctors to design therapies for anticipated problems. “Genomics is a no-brainer,” he said. “It needs to become standard care.” N Arts and Entertainment Editor Rebecca Wallace can be emailed at rwallace@paweekly.com.

Arts & Entertainment

Mark Kitaoka

A weekly guide to music, theater, art, movies and more, edited by Rebecca Wallace

A photo from last year at TheatreWorks’ New Works Festival, taken during a reading of the new musical “Being Earnest.”

“Gather at the River” playwright Laura Marks, who draws on her Kentucky roots.

new play by a New York writ-

er follows a liberal city slicker who volunteers in Kentucky with a group of evangelical

Christians. Sounds like a comedy poking fun at Southerners, or a treacly tale of a tough cookie find-

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O\RA]cbV

ing her soft side? Like real life, the

A liberal New York protagonist

picture is far more complex.

meets a group of Kentucky

For one, the playwright, Laura Marks, grew up in Kentucky. Though she long ago had her accent drilled out of her in acting classes, she still sounds nostalgic about her rural childhood. In an interview, she rhapsodizes about “going to a little pink country church with my grandma and the sort of vivid immediacy of religion that I experienced there ... so personal and so vital and very moving.” Nostalgia aside, this is also a playwright who takes on contemporary issues, such as bank foreclosures and unemployment. She’s written her Kentucky story, “Gather at the

evangelicals in new festival play

River,” as a nuanced look at two cultures meeting and meshing. Protagonist Ellen is a 40-year-old who gave up her career as a lawyer to become a stay-at-home mom and is now looking for something important to do with her life. Heading from New York to Kentucky to volunteer with the Christian group ends up being “a kind of accidental journey of self-

by Rebecca Wallace

discovery” in which she faces herself and her own beliefs, Marks says. Meanwhile, the Kentuckians, while strict in their faith and lifestyle, are not so rigid that they believe they know it all. “It’s a play that investigates questions of faith and the power that those ideas hold in our country,” Marks says, “and the polarized nature of our country right now. ... It’s

important to me that we not just be laughing at these people.” Audiences can come to their own conclusions — and give their own feedback — when “Gather at the River” comes to Palo Alto later this month. Marks and her play will be part of this year’s New Works Festival at TheatreWorks, with staged readings on Aug. 16 and 18. Now in its 12th year, the festival presents readings of new plays and musicals that are still being developed, giving the audiences the chance to comment on in-progress works and the creators the time and space to refine them. Playwrights, composers and lyricists come from all over to take part in the festival, working with directors and actors to present their visions on the Lucie Stern Theatre stage. Other shows scheduled for this year’s festival are: the musical romance “Cubamor,” with book and lyrics by James D. Sasser and music and lyrics by Charles Vincent Burwell; the bittersweet comedy “The Great Pretender,” by David West Read; “Mrs. Hughes,” a musical drama about Sylvia Plath, with music and lyrics by Sharon Kenny and book by Janine Nabers; and the 1920s-inspired farce “Laugh,” by Beth Henley (who also wrote “Crimes of the Heart”). (continued on page 35)

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Arts & Entertainment

Anything for the pennant Businessman sells his soul for baseball glory in Foothill’s entertaining ‘Damn Yankees’ by Karla Kane

THEATER REVIEW ever, he still hasn’t gotten over the baseball dreams of his youth and is beyond frustrated by his favorite team’s dismal place in the standings. When slick Satan shows up (under the name “Applegate”) to offer Joe the chance of a lifetime, he’s hesitant. Being a shrewd businessman, he agrees to give Applegate (Jeff Clarke) his soul in exchange for baseball glory but only with an escape clause: He has until the final game of the season to change his mind. Applegate inexplicably agrees and within moments old Joe is transformed into strapping young Joe Hardy (Daniel Mitchell), full

David Allen

ver wonder, during the San Francisco Giants’ improbably triumphant end to their 2012 season, if there was a supernatural element at play? You might, after viewing “Damn Yankees,” Foothill Music Theatre’s current production. In this now-classic show (first presented on Broadway in the 1950s), the basic plot of Faustian legend is given an all-American twist when a baseball fanatic sells his soul to become the world’s best ball player and help his beloved — but hapless — Washington Senators win the pennant. “Old” Joe Boyd (Matt Tipton) has a comfortable home and a loving wife, Meg (Mary Melnick). How-

Young Joe Hardy (played by Daniel Mitchell, center) with the Washington Senators. of physical strength and a stronger singing voice. Applegate quickly gets Joe signed with the Senators, who, as led by their kindly manager Benny Van Buren (Richard Lewis), try to make up in heart what they lack in wins. With Joe on the team, the players and their fans dream of finally defeating their toughest rival, the titular “damn” Yankees. As in many tales of devilish dealings, though, it’s not all peanuts and Cracker Jacks. Nosy reporter Gloria Thorpe (Caitlin Lawrence-Papp) suspects that Joe may be hiding a secret, while Joe finds himself torn between his love of the game and his desire to return to his life with loyal Meg. Applegate, sensing Joe’s commitment to the deal wavering, sends in his closer, the sultry minion Lola (Jen Wheatonfox). But it seems the battle between Joe and his demons will continue right through the end of the pennant race. The “deal with the devil” storyline is always a compelling one, no matter how many times it’s seen, and “Damn Yankees” is no exception, with a zippy script by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop. The plot left me with a few questions, especially in regard to the extent or lack thereof of Applegate’s powers, but it doesn’t really matter. There are a few famous tunes in the soundtrack, by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross (most notably “Whatever Lola Wants”), but for the most part the music is pleasant but unremarkable. In terms of performance quality, ideal leading man Mitchell and his love interests Wheatonfox and Melnick proved the most adept singers while Clarke, who has the most fun role as the devil bemoaning his waning influence in the world, sometimes strikes out vocally. Charming Holly Smolik and Dana Johnson scored big laughs as dizzy groupies Doris and Sister Miller, while the team of eager young ball-

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Yankees” is, if not a grand slam, a very enjoyable show and a winning choice for a summer production. Plus, now when I watch a Giants game it’ll be difficult for me not to imagine Bruce Bochy leading the boys in a locker-room rendition of “Heart.” N What: “Damn Yankees,” presented by Foothill Music Theatre Where: Smithwick Theatre, Foothill College, 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills When: Through Aug. 18, with shows Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Cost: Tickets are $12-$28. Info: Go to foothillmusicals.com or call 650-949-7360.

David Allen

The Devil (Jeff Clarke) grins at the smooth moves of his minion Lola (Jen Wheatonfox).

players gained the biggest cheers at curtain call. The show’s original choreography was by dance innovator Bob Fosse, and he’s a hard act to follow. The dancers give the Fosse style their best but don’t always pull it off. On the other hand, it’s a clever feat to be able to convey the action of a baseball game without having to show any of it, just well-played reactions. I really appreciated the full sound of the orchestra, led by Catherine Snider. It’s a delight to hear the interplay among strings, woodwinds, percussion and brass rather than just a cheesy keyboard. Also delightful are the retro costumes by Tina To and sets by Margaret Toomey. On the whole, Foothill’s “Damn

Arts & Entertainment

Michael Repka

North and South (continued from page 33)

John Keon

Marks says she’s looking forward to having “a whole week to spend with the play, fine-tuning things” at New Works. “Most readings you rehearse for a couple of hours and put it up. This is going to be a much more in-in-depth experience.” Most of the six actors taking part in the script-inhand reading of “Gather at the River” will be local and new to Marks, with the exception of Dale Soules, an actress whom the playwright is bringing in from New York. Soules will star as “strong and shrewd” Hazel, one of the three Kentucky women who interact with the protagonist, Marks says. She’ll be familiar to some local audiences; she played Big Edie in “Grey Gardens” at TheatreWorks in 2008. The playwright herself may also be familiar after her play “Bethany” was staged in New York earlier this year. It starred America Ferrara as a woman hit hard by the recent recession. (The writer’s husband, the actor Ken Marks, played the bad guy.) The New York Times praised the play for the “clear, compassionate attention it pays to the corrosive effects of the economic downturn on the battered middle class.” Marks says “Bethany” was inspired in part by her own layoff. In 2009, the Juilliard graduate was let go from a corporate job, and “just poured all that anxiety into ‘Bethany,’” she says. Fortunately for her, becoming a full-time playwright has paid off. “Bethany” is now scheduled for its first major regional production, at the Old Globe in San Diego, and will head to the Main Street Theater Company in Houston after that. In the meantime, Marks will be here in Palo Alto, working and hoping to make “Gather at the River” strike another resonant chord with audiences. “It’s the best kind of work,” she says. N

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Composer Sharon Kenny, whose new musical with book writer Janine Nabers (not pictured) is “Mrs. Hughes.”

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Know Knew Books

What: The 12th annual New Works Festival at TheatreWorks, with staged readings of new plays and musicals, and a “Meet the Festival Artists” afternoon Where: Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto When: Aug. 10-18. Scheduled readings: “Cubamor” at 8 p.m. Aug. 10, 14 and 17; “The Great Pretender” at 2 p.m. Aug. 11 and at 4 p.m. Aug. 17; “Mrs. Hughes” at 8 p.m. Aug. 11 and 15 and at noon Aug. 18; “Laugh” at 8 p.m. Aug. 13 and noon Aug. 17; and “Gather at the River” at 8 p.m. Aug. 16 and 18. “Meet the Festival Artists” is at 4 p.m. Aug. 18.

Playwright Beth Henley (“Crimes of the Heart”), whose new work is “Laugh.”

WE ARE

Cost: Single events are $19, and an all-festival pass is $65. Info: Go to theatreworks.org or call 650-463-1960.

M OV IN G . . . Kris Rogers Photography

James D. Sasser is the playwright behind the musical romance “Cubamor.”

TO LOS ALTOS 366 State St., Los Altos Closing Our Doors August 19

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E V E RY T H I N G “Thank You” to our loyal customers Visit us at our new home in September

Playwright David West Read, he of the bittersweet comedy “The Great Pretender.”

415 S. California Ave, Palo Alto

(650) 326-9355 Composer Charles Vincent Burwell wrote the music and lyrics to “Cubamor.”

www.knowknewbooks.com ÜÜÜ°*> Ì " i°V ÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊ Õ}ÕÃÌÊÓ]ÊÓä£ÎÊU Page 35

Arts & Entertainment

Matched CareGivers

Worth a Look

(650) 839-2273 www.matchedcaregivers.com

‘Iolanthe’

Family Doctor Noize

“U Airy” is one of the colorful paintings by Judy Gittelsohn now on exhibit at Vino Locale in Palo Alto.

Art

‘Vowels to Dine By’ Local artist Judy Gittelsohn describes her new painting series as abstract. But chances are many people can find specific meaning in them, with the letters O and U playing prominent roles. Gittelsohn, who runs the Art For Well Beings center in Palo Alto, contributes a personal connection as well. The paintings in the series, which is titled “A Few Vowels; O, U and E, an Ode to Emily,” pay tribute to her cousin Emily Georges Gottfried, who died suddenly in January from an uncommon blood disease. “Emily lived life large. She was a song leader, a cantor and a community organizer. 1,200 people attended her funeral,” Gittelsohn wrote in a SEPTEMBER 20 press release. Vowels were meaningful to the Oregon singer, and have had heightened importance to the artist as well — Gittelsohn had trouble / with her own speech after a recent thyroid surgery. Her cousin became ’ ‘ ’.” her muse for the series. The paintings are now on display -Claudia Puig, at Palo Alto’s Vino Locale at 431 Kipling St., in an exhibition called “ , . “Vowels to Dine By.” A reception is scheduled for Aug. 8 from 6 to 8 A JOYOUS MOVIE , p.m., with the exhibition continuing THE BEST ONE I’VE SEEN IN A VERY LONG TIME.”

++++

“

Opera

British government comes under the satirical microscope this month in Mountain View when Lamplighters Music Theatre brings its take on Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Iolanthe” to the city’s Center for the Performing Arts. In the classic comic opera, a band of fairies take on the British House of Lords, while fairy Iolanthe’s half-human son tries to marry the Lord Chancellor’s Ward. A war of the sexes — and of the mortals and immortals — ensues, with the politicians not coming off as the brightest bunch. The tale is fueled by a witty libretto and a score that’s said to have been influenced by Wagner and Mendelssohn. The Lamplighters, a San Francisco troupe established in 1952, performs with a full orchestra. Local performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Aug. 10 and 2 p.m. Aug. 11, at the theater at 500 Castro St. in downtown Mountain View. Tickets are $53/$48 general, $48/$43 for seniors, and $25/$20 for children, students and teachers. Go to lamplighters.org or call 415-2274797.

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through Sept. 22. For more information on the venue, go to vinolocale.com or call 650-328-0450.

THIS SUMMER S LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE

WAY WAY WONDERFUL -Joe Morgenstern,

NOW PLAYING AT SELECT THEATRES CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATRES AND SHOW TIMES

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This Saturday might be that rare day when kids actually like going to the doctor. The headliner for the penultimate show in Palo Alto’s Twilight Concert Series is Doctor Noize, he of the cleverly wacky kids’ music. The Doctor (also known as Cory Cullinan) rocks out as a one-man band armed with electronic-music looping technology, often arranging music live on stage with the help of his young spectators. The Doc, who is also a music teacher, has local and school creds to back him up. Raised in Los Altos, he has a music degree from Stanford University and several recordings to his name, including the Phineas McBoof CDs and his “Grammaropolis” album. Songs from the latter include the piano-blues tune “I Got The Blues” (which could be called “Ballad of the Misunderstood Pronoun”) and the power-punk number “Welcome to Grammaropolis.” Doctor Noize is scheduled to perform at 7 p.m. Aug. 3 at Mitchell Park at 600 E. Meadow Drive. The concert is free, and audience members often bring blankets and picnics. The Twilight series finishes up on Aug. 10 with a bunch of teen bands performing at 7 p.m. in Mitchell Park. For more about the concerts, go to cityofpaloalto.org or call 650-4634930.

Community Obon Festival

It’s almost time — the 65th time, that is — for the Obon Festival to bring traditional dance, taiko drums, carnival games, bonsai, ikebana, food and drink, and temple tours and talks to the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple. Lanterns are being hung in the sanctuary and the public is invited to the annual free event. When the temple gong rings at 5 p.m. this Saturday, Aug. 3, the weekend begins. The traditional Buddhist celebration honors participants’ ancestors. Festivities often include food offerings made at altars and temples, and lanterns glowing. At the Palo Alto event, the gong-sounding will be followed by a 5:15 Buddhist service led by the Rev. Dean Koyama. He will then give a talk called “Buddhism in Everyday Life,” which he’ll repeat at 1:30 p.m. Sunday. Other scheduled events on Saturday: a minyo/taishogoto performance of Japanese folk music and dance at 6 p.m., followed by a koto/ shakuhachi performance of Japanese stringed instruments and flute at 7 p.m.; and a demonstration of kendo (Japanese fencing) at 9 p.m. Sunday brings the festival’s central event: Bon Odori circular folk dancing, starting at 7:30 p.m. Meanwhile, games, ikebana and bonsai demonstrations, a silent auction and other events will continue throughout the weekend. The temple is at 2751 Louis Road in Palo Alto. For more information, go to pabt.org or Wendy Sakuma, Taylor Yamashita and Sammy Yamashita prepare for the Bon call 650-856-0123. Odori dancing at a past Obon Festival.

Eating Out FOOD FEATURE

Cookies rule (with ice cream, too) Creamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s custom-made ice cream sandwiches find fans in Palo Alto by Elena Kadvany ed putting things in between their motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s homemade cookies. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Chocolate bars, marshmallows. One time I tried to feed my dad a Hot Wheels metal car between two cookies,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go over too well. Ice cream was our favorite one to do.â&#x20AC;? Soon the Shamiehsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; creations became locally famous, with friends coming over after sports games or practices to eat ice cream sandwiched between two freshly baked cookies. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We knew it was good and we knew people liked it, but we never thought about making it a commercial venture until a few years ago when the economy changed,â&#x20AC;? Gus said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We decided ... if we like it, maybe others will like it too.â&#x20AC;? And they have. In 2010, the family opened up a shop on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley,

Christophe Haubursin

t Cream, downtown Palo Altoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new ice cream sandwich haven, there are an estimated 2,000 combinations of cookies and ice cream to choose from, said co-owner Jimmy Shamieh. You can go classic with a hefty scoop of French vanilla ice cream smushed between two hefty, warm chocolate-chip cookies. You can indulge your sweet tooth and go with a double-chocolate-chip cookie on top, peanut butter on the bottom and salted caramel ice cream in between. With 20 ice cream flavors, 10 kinds of cookies (not counting the gluten-free and vegan options) and nine toppings, the possibilities at Cream are seemingly endless. Cream is a family business, owned and operated by a father-son team from Millbrae. Gus Shamieh, Jimmyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s son, said it all began 25 years ago when he and his sister start-

The line at Creamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Palo Alto location often stretches out the door and onto University Avenue.

DINNER BY THE MOVIES AT SHORELINEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S

Cucina Venti ons ervati s e r g in accept

able l i a v a ng cateri Now

(continued on page 38)

Acqua Pazza Acqua Pazza, (meaning crazy water) is an old ďŹ shermen of the Neopolitan area. The term itself most likely originated from Tuscany where the peasants would make wine, but had to give most to the landlord, leaving little left for THEM TO DRINK 4HE PEASANTS WERE RESOURCEFUL AND MIXED THE STEMS SEEDS AND pomace leftover from the wine production with large quantities of water, bringing it to a boil, then sealing in a terracotta vase allowing it for several days. Called lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;acquarello or lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;acqua pazza, the result was water barely colored with wine, which the ďŹ sherman may have been reminded of when seeing the broth of the DISH COLORED SLIGHTLY RED BY THE TOMATOES AND OIL )T BECAME VERY POPULAR IN THE UPSCALE TOURISTY #APRI )SLAND IN THE S

From our kitchen to yours. Boun appetito! Chef Marco Salvi, Executive Chef

Pesce allâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Acqua Pazza Fish in Crazy Water s 4 EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL s GARLIC CLOVES IN LARGE DICE s 4 )TALIAN PARSLEY l NELY chopped s LB RIPE CHERRY TOMATOES chopped

s LEMON SLICED s 0INCH OF CRUSHED RED PEPPER s 2IPE BLACK OLIVES s SALT AND PEPPER s LB WHITE l SH CUT INTO PIECES (sea bass or red snapper)

To cook: Place the olive oil and garlic in a large skillet and sautĂŠ on medium heat. As soon as the garlic begins to brown remove the garlic, add the pepper ďŹ&#x201A;akes and let the oil cool.

1390 Pear Ave., Mountain View (650) 254-1120 www.cucinaventi.com

Hours: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday

Pour water into the pan with the cooled oil, about Â˝" deep. Add half of the parsley, the tomatoes and the lemon slices. Add the ďŹ sh slices, skin side down, and season the ďŹ sh lightly with salt; top with the rest of the parsley. Place the skillet back on the stove on medium-high heat and bring the water to a boil cook for about 10-15 minutes, turning the ďŹ sh to cook on the both sides. Make sure the ďŹ sh is only half covered by the water. Adjust salt, and add pepper if necessary. Transfer the ďŹ sh to warm plates, pour a little of the crazy water over and around the ďŹ sh, making sure to include some tomatoes. Toss in some black olives and serve immediately.

Eating Out

Christophe Haubursin

An aerial view of the production line at Cream in Palo Alto. (continued from page 37)

PENINSULA

Discover the best places to eat this week! AMERICAN

New Tung Kee Noodle House

Armadillo Willy’s

947-8888 520 Showers Drive, Mountain View www.shopmountainview.com/luunoodlemv

941-2922 1031 N. San Antonio Road, Los Altos www.armadillowillys.com

INDIAN

The Old Pro

Janta Indian Restaurant

326-1446 541 Ramona Street, Palo Alto www.oldpropa.com

462-5903 369 Lytton Ave. www.jantaindianrestaurant.com

ITALIAN

Thaiphoon

Cucina Venti

323-7700 543 Emerson Ave, Palo Alto www.ThaiphoonRestaurant.com

254-1120 1390 Pear Ave, Mountain View www.cucinaventi.com CHINESE

Chef Chu’s

close to the U.C. Berkeley campus. They had lines out the door, and still do, said Palo Alto manager Matt Petersen, who approached the Shamieh family for a job after standing in line for 20 minutes at the Berkeley location about a year and a half ago. “I was looking for a new project and I was like, ‘This is brilliant, this is awesome,’” Petersen said. With Petersen as Cream’s first franchisee, the family headed to Palo Alto, opening the shop’s doors on University Avenue in mid-June. The Palo Alto location — which used to house Michael’s Gelato & Cafe — is a bigger space than Berkeley’s and offers a larger menu, with 20 ice cream flavors compared to Berkeley’s 16. As the store’s acronym-name (Cookies Rule Everything Around Me, inspired by hip-hop group Wu Tang Clan’s song “Cash Rules Everything Around Me”) suggests, at Cream they take their sweets seriously. You can custom-create your own ice cream sandwich, combining any of the cookies

— either two of the same or mixand-match — with a scoop of ice cream, plus toppings. “I just like that it feels homemade,” said Chris Winn, a Redwood City resident who tried Cream for the first time with his son Christian on a recent afternoon. Christian, with a stray drop of ice cream on his chin and his chocolate-chip cookie/ chocolate ice cream sandwich already half eaten before he walked out the door, agreed. Jenny Fernando, who drove from work in Menlo Park on a recent afternoon to get a scoop of salted caramel ice cream sandwiched between two turtle cookies (chocolate with chocolate chips, pecans and caramel) said she likes “that you get to play with the flavors a little bit.” “And it’s inexpensive,” she added. “And it’s delicious.” Paying less than three dollars for a generous scoop of ice cream and two large cookies is almost unheard of, but part of Cream’s mission is to make its treats affordable for everyone. “We don’t want to sacrifice premium quality for affordability,” Gus Shamieh said. “My dad used to say, ‘When I took you to Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, I would need to take out a small bank loan to afford it.’ So that was really key for us: to make it affordable for families to come and not have to break the bank to treat (their) families.” Though ice cream sandwiches ($2.99 or $2.50 if you pay cash) are the main event, Cream also offers milkshakes ($5.49), floats ($5.49), malts ($5.99) and scoops of ice cream (one scoop for $1.49). Baked goods include cookies (one for 79 cents, two for $1.49), brownies and raspberry, blueberry and lemon bars. Most of the baked goods go for $2.99. There are also two soy ice creams (mint chip and cherry chip), four vegan cookies and various gluten-free cookie options. In addition, there’s a half-sandwich option (one cookie is cut in half and the halves stacked to make a half sandwich for $1.75), multi-flavored milkshakes ($5.75) and milkshakes with cookie mixed in ($6.25). On Taco Tuesdays — 8 to 10 p.m. on Tuesdays — visitors can snag a sweet taco, made from a flat waffle curved up on the sides to create

Read and post reviews, explore restaurant menus,

948-2696 1067 N. San Antonio Road www.chefchu.com

and more at ShopPaloAlto,

Ming’s

ShopMenloPark

856-7700 1700 Embarcadero East, Palo Alto www.mings.com

and ShopMountainView

get hours and directions

Christophe Haubursin

A Cream employee assembles an ice cream sandwich with snickerdoodle cookies. Page 38ÊUÊ Õ}ÕÃÌÊÓ]ÊÓä£ÎÊUÊ*> Ê Ì Ê7ii ÞÊUÊÜÜÜ°*> Ì " i°V

Eating Out cookies nor the ice cream are made on site. The Cream experience also sets itself apart on Thursdays and weekends, as the store stays open until 2 a.m. Petersen said the option to stay open late and piggyback off downtown Palo Alto’s nightlife was a draw for opening there. The company also recently launched a delivery service with Palo Alto-based startup Fluc, which allows users to track the status of an order in real time on a map via GPS. Users can communicate with their drivers and update their order if need be. Delivery is only for ice cream sandwiches at this point and for smaller orders (15 or fewer)

within a 7-mile radius. Petersen said most deliveries so far had destinations on the Stanford campus. Online reviewers have made various complaints (the cookies aren’t always served warm, cookies harden too quickly, waiting more than 30 minutes in line for a dessert you could make yourself at home is ridiculous) but the ever-present line out the door at Cream speaks for itself. Info: Cream is at 2440 University Ave. in Palo Alto. Hours: Mon.-Wed. noon to midnight; Thurs.-Fri. noon to 2 a.m.; Sat. 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.; Sun. 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Go to creamnation.com or call 650-321-2390.

Christophe Haubursin

a vessel to hold three ice cream scoops and two toppings for $3.50. The ice cream shop also operates on the principle that there’s more to Cream than cookies and ice cream. “It’s not just an ice cream sandwich, but rather an experience,” Shamieh said. “When you walk in there’s music blasting, and some of the team members are dancing and singing along with the music.” Music is indeed constantly blasting at the Palo Alto location, usually a selection of current pop hits that teenaged and younger customers seem to enjoy. The distinct smell of freshly baked sweets wafts out the open French doors and onto University Avenue, though neither

Salted-caramel ice cream is paired with snickerdoodles.

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Weak start, strong finish Terrone Pizzeria overcomes miscues with delicious, rustic Italian fare by Dale F. Bentson

Michelle Le

The lunch hour begins at Terrone.

Michelle Le

y first impression of the Terrone pizzeria-ristorante-bar was awful. On that initial visit, I ordered the farro calamari ($12) with green onions, bell pepper and parsley, on crostini. The large portion was void of flavor and too dry, and while the toasted baguette added crunch, it didn’t add much else. To give it some pop, I squeezed the lemon from my iced tea over the salad. Then came the quattro stagioni pizza ($17) with San Marzano tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, artichokes, mushrooms and olives. It was a dreadful pizza. Though the imported ham was high-quality, it covered only half the pie. The other half was divided among flavorless canned black olives, bland mushrooms and artichoke hearts that hadn’t been properly drained. The ‘chokes left a puddle of water atop the pizza that percolated through to the crust, making it soggy. Half the pizza was inedible. Fortunately, initial impressions aren’t always indicative, and Terrone redeemed itself on subsequent visits. After that first experience, the food was pleasant, carefully prepared and encouraging. Terrone is a derogatory term, referring to southern-Italian farmers. The principals of Terrone Pizzeria all hail from Calabria and Puglia, the toe and heel of Italy and a cradle of outstanding cuisine. Let us not forget that the ever-popular pasta puttanesca literally means “whore’s spaghetti.” Oh, those Italians. Franco Campilongo managed the Palo Alto location of Pasta? for eight years while Kristyan D’Angelo ran the kitchen. Franco’s cousin Maico Campilongo joined them in the latter days of Pasta? When that operation segued to Figo, the trio incubated then hatched Terrone Pizza in the old Bistro Elan space on South California Avenue in early February. The interior space underwent a cosmetic revision. Black and white is now the dominant motif with silver framed mirrors and simple sconces sharing wall space. Lighting is minimal but effective. Overall, it’s simplicity-chic complete with bare-topped tables. The Bistro Elan vegetable and herb garden out back has been supplanted with more tables, umbrellas and party lights. On a later visit, eggplant polpette ($10) proved a better appetizer. The eggplant had been shaped into spheres, breaded and deepfried, then nested in a rich creamy Taleggio truffle cheese sauce. It was a soothing way to whet the appetite. The house-made cavatelli ($17), a decora-

Terrone co-owner and executive chef Kristyan D’Angelo preps a pizza for the brick oven. tive, short, slightly knotted pasta, was aromatic and alluring. Sauced with “beef stew,” it was a meatier, bolder version of bolognese sauce, topped with parmesan and chopped herbs. I tried another pizza. The margherita ($14), with ripe red San Marzano tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, fragrant basil and olive oil, put my mind at ease. It was as mouth-watering as it was artistic. The slightly charred crust was pliable — in that perfect state between

cracker-y and doughy. Terrone’s imported, wood-fired, refractory brick Marra Forni pizza oven is capable of temperatures in excess of 900 degrees. Pizzas bake with astounding speed: about 60 seconds. The cheese melts perfectly with the crust, just starting to bubble and blister, Neapolitan-style. Besides serving appetizers, pastas and pizzas, Terrone offers steak, fish and chicken entrees ($16-$25).

For dessert, the tortino al cioccolato ($8) was a cupcake-sized, medium-dense chocolate cake topped with vanilla gelato. What’s not to like? Totally satisfying. However, the panna cotta eclipsed it. The lemon panna cotta with berries ($8) was an outstanding example of what panna cotta — literally, cooked cream — should be. There are no eggs in panna cotta; it is not a pudding or a curd. It is much lighter and simpler to make, yet most domestic versions are dense custardy affairs. The Terrone version, feather-light, melted as it hit the tongue, leaving a silky creaminess in the mouth. Deliriously good. Panna cotta is not a filling dessert, but it is lush and wonderful when executed this well. Wine-wise, I was underwhelmed. The markups were very high for mostly groceryshelf wines. There were no vintages posted on the menu, either. Not to belabor the point, but restaurant wine markups are hovering at stratospheric levels, and not just at Terrone either: everywhere. Think about this when you buy wine by the glass. That singular pour is essentially what the restaurant/bar paid for the entire bottle. As for Terrone’s wine assortment, not of much interest. It looked to be a distributor’s list rather than a well-thought-out selection of interesting boutique wineries to complement the fare. Despite the grievances, my overall experience at Terrone Pizza ended up being positive. The food was skillfully prepared; the service was always prompt and efficient; and the ambiance had a good vibe to it — and that panna cotta makes a visit worthwhile. N Terrone Pizzeria, 488 South California Ave., Palo Alto; 650-847-7577; terronepizza.com Hours: Mon. - Sat.: 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. Sun.: 11:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.; 5-9 p.m.

Reservations CCredit cards Parking Children Catering

Takeout

Outdoor dining

Alcohol: full bar Corkage: $15 Noise level: loud Bathroom cleanliness: very good

Private parties

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“Want to see great acting, from comic to tragic and every electrifying stop in between? Then focus on Cate Blanchett in ‘Blue Jasmine.’ Her triumphant performance is one for the time capsule. Alec Baldwin plays with all the conniving charm that he can muster. Sally Hawkins is the deﬁnition of wonderful. Andrew Dice Clay nails his role. Bobby Cannavale is ever superb. Louis C.K. is a tender, wicked surprise. Peter Sarsgaard is excellent. Michael Stuhlbarg is sleazed to perfection. Lacing laughs with emotional gravity, Woody Allen is working at the top of his game, sending out each laugh with a sting in its tail. ‘Blue Jasmine’ is not to be missed.” -Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

Alec Baldwin Cate Blanchett Louis C.K. Bobby Cannavale Andrew Dice Clay Sally Hawkins Peter Sarsgaard Michael Stuhlbarg

Written and Directed by

Woody Allen Filmed in San Francisco

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS PRESENTS IN ASSOCIATION WITH GRAVIER PRODUCTIONS A PERDIDO PRODUCTION “BLUE JASMINE” ALEC BALDWIN CATE BLANCHETT LOUIS C.K. BOBBY CANNAVALE ANDREW DICE CLAY SALLY HAWKINS PETER SARSGAARD MICHAEL STUHLBARG CASTING BY JULIET TAYLOR PATRICIA DICERTO COSTUME DESIGNER SUZY BENZINGER EDITOR ALISA LEPSELTER, A.C.E. PRODUCTION DESIGNER SANTO LOQUASTO DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAVIER AGUIRRE SAROBE, ASC CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER JACK ROLLINS EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS LEROY SCHECTER ADAM B. STERN CO-PRODUCER HELEN ROBIN PRODUCED BY LETTY ARONSON STEPHEN TENENBAUM EDWARD WALSON WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY WOODY ALLEN © 2013 GRAVIER PRODUCTIONS, INC.

WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM

CINEMAS 16 STARTS FRIDAY, CENTURY 1500 N. Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View (800) FANDANGO AUGUST 2 VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.BLUEJASMINEFILM.COM

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Movies OPENINGS

Blue Jasmine --(Century 16) Recently, Sony Pictures Classics was sued by the rights holders of William Faulkner’s work, who objected to Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” employing the slightly paraphrased quotation “The past is not dead. Actually, it’s not even past.” Last month, Sony prevailed, and eight days later, released Woody’s latest, “Blue Jasmine,” in which the words have changed but the song remains the same. “I want the past past,” says Jasmine. Fat chance of that. The haunted protagonist of “Blue Jasmine,” played by Cate Blanchett, can’t forget her bygone bliss and the horrifying loss of it. A Park Avenue socialite accustomed to quality time in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard, Jasmine has lost it all and landed on the San Franciscan doorstep of her working-class sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a good soul sorely tested by her long-absent sibling’s out-oftouch demands. Jasmine asks, “People reinvent themselves, don’t they?” but what she craves is something more like reinstatement. She rejects a job opportunity in a dentist’s office (“Jesus! It’s too menial!”) and thrills to the possibility of repeating history by attaching herself to a man for security, an unsettling theme for both sisters. Badly burned by her Bernie Madoff-esque husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), Jasmine sees new possibilities with a sleek, well-appointed diplomat (Peter Sarsgaard). Jasmine and Ginger were both adoptive sisters, but when Jasmine made her social-clambering escape, she never looked back, becoming accustomed not only to a certain lifestyle but to a fabulous selfishness, insulated by willful obliviousness. “When Jasmine doesn’t want to know something,” Ginger explains, “she has a habit of looking the other way.” But Jasmine’s fall has broken her, and that nervous breakdown has left her manic and prone to all-consuming flashbacks that Allen layers into the story with structural finesse, each memory plausibly triggered by a present moment. Meanwhile, Ginger has a loving if somewhat boorish fiancé in Chili (Bobby Cannavale), her own replacement for an ex-husband (Andrew Dice Clay’s surprisingly resonant Augie). Naturally, Jasmine’s dissatisfaction with anything she deems déclassé (including, to her constant horror, herself) pits her against Chili, which contributes to Ginger’s exploration of another romantic option: Louis C.K.’s middleclass sound engineer Al. While the story is awash in the various prevarications the characters inflict on each other, it’s the ultimate, socially agreed-upon lie of class distinction that pervades “Blue Jasmine.” (Unfortunately, Allen proves a bit dialect-deaf in casting San Francisco’s working-class men, to a one, in the New York-mook mold.) Certainly, “Blue Jasmine” is Allen’s riff on “A Streetcar Named Desire” (“A Cable Car Named Desire”?), an impression only helped along by the casting of Blanchett, who played Blanche DuBois in an acclaimed 2009 production transplanted from Sydney to Brooklyn. Blanchett is a force of nature as Jasmine: the beating heart that keeps the conspicuously schematic picture alive and kicking, and a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination. Though “Blue Jasmine” is much more of a drama than a comedy, Blanchett’s comic brio, in Jasmine’s blithely imperious manner, magically complements her tragic mental fragility and self-defeating desperation. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material, language and sexual content. One hour, 38 minutes. — Peter Canavese

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Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg in “2 Guns.”

2 Guns --1/2 (Century 16, Century 20) By not being instantly dismissible with a comparison to some other movie, “2 Guns” wins some audience goodwill right out of the gate. Yes, it’s based on a graphic-novel series, but not a famous one, and while we’ve seen plenty of R-rated action buddy comedies before, the stream of amusing banter here comes with plotting that has a few good tricks in reserve. Don’t get me wrong. “2 Guns” is as glib as all getout, and once the characters’ hidden agendas are all out in the open, the film begins to feel pretty longwinded in taking care of its business of Mexican standoffs, explosions and demolition derbies. But the compensation of Denzel Washington, joined with surprising effectiveness to Mark Wahlberg, is not to be underestimated, and the release feeds into the zeitgeist of intense disillusionment with corrupt government institutions. Washington and Wahlberg play wheeler-dealer Bobby “I Know a Guy” Beans and “junkyard dog” Michael “Stig” Stigman, a pair of dealers who — when stiffed by Mexican drug-cartel head Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos) — mutually agree to a compensatory savings-and-loan robbery. That scene partly plays out in the film’s engagingly schtick-y opening sequence, which establishes a cool rapport between the stars and their characters before screenwriter Blake Masters (working from Steven Grant’s comics) and director Baltasar Kormákur (“Contraband”) roll back the clock for some context. How the plot unfolds, and what the characters are really after, is best left unexplained here, but it does come to involve $43.125 million, and the sticky fingers of U.S. Naval Intelligence (in the person of James Marsden) and the CIA (repped by a drawling, creepy-comic Bill Paxton). The rot of corruption has disillusioned Bobby to the point where he continually insists to Stig, “There is no code,” explaining why he has no “people” or “family.” Of course, Stig just as insistently gravitates toward being both to Bobby, in true buddy-comedy tradition. Bobby’s cynicism extends to withholding commitment from co-worker-with-benefits Deb (Paula Patton), who may or may not be worthy of trust. Once it expends its big twists in the early going, “2 Guns” begins a decline into the familiar toward an ending that could be described, in style and substance, as predictable. But there’s fun to be had getting there, mostly in the game playfulness of the leads and the pleasingly tart dialogue (Olmos, underplaying delightfully, gets the zinger “It’s a free market ... not a free world”). With its truth-in-advertising title and movie-star charm, “2 Guns” will probably connect with audiences; if so, it’s certainly sequel-ripe. Rated R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity. One hour, 49 minutes. — Peter Canavese

Movies MOVIE TIMES All showtimes are for Friday through Sunday only unless otherwise noted. For other times, as well as reviews and trailers, go to PaloAltoOnline.com/movies. 2 Guns (R) ((1/2 Century 16: 11 a.m. & 1:40, 4:30, 7:15, 9:55 p.m. Fri-Sat also at 11:15 p.m. Century 20: 10:35 a.m. & 1:15, 3:55, 6:35, 9:15 p.m. In XD 11:55 a.m. & 2:35, 5:15, 8, 10:40 p.m. 20 Feet From Stardom (PG-13) (((

Aquarius Theatre: 2:15, 4:30, 7, 9:30 p.m.

Apartment for Peggy (1948) (Not Rated) Stanford Theatre: Sat-Sun 5:40, 9:35 p.m. Blackfish (PG-13) Sat-Sun also at 12:30 p.m.

Palo Alto Square: Fri 2:45, 5, 7:25, 9:55 p.m.

Blue Jasmine (PG-13) ((( Century 16: 9:45 a.m. 11:15 a.m. & 12:35, 2, 3:15, 4:50, 5:50, 7:35, 8:45, 10:10 p.m. Fri also at 11 p.m. Sat also at 11:15 p.m. The Conjuring (R) Century 16: 10:50 a.m. & 1:45, 5:05, 7:50, 10:30 p.m. Century 20: 12:05, 2:45, 5:25, 8:10, 10:50 p.m. Despicable Me 2 (PG) (( Century 16: 9:15 a.m. & 2:35, 7:55 p.m. In 3D 11:$5 a.m. & 5:20, 10:20 p.m. Century 20: 10:20 a.m. & 3:15, 8:10 p.m. In 3D 12:50, 5:40, 10:35 p.m. The East (PG-13) (((

Palo Alto Square: Fri 4:30, 9:45 p.m.

Flying Down to Rio (1933) (Not Rated)

Stanford Theatre: Fri 7:30 p.m.

Footlight Parade (1933) (Not Rated)

Stanford Theatre: Fri 5:35, 9:10 p.m.

Fruitvale Station (R) ((( Aquarius Theatre: 2:45, 5, 7:30, 9:55 p.m. Century 20: 10:55 a.m. & 1:05, 3:20, 5:35, 7:55, 10:20 p.m. Ghostbusters (1984) (PG) Girl Most Likely (PG-13) ((

Century 16: Sun 2 p.m. Century 20: Sun 2 p.m. Palo Alto Square: Fri 1:45, 7:15 p.m.

Grown Ups 2 (PG-13) Century 16: 9 & 11:35 a.m. & 2:05, 4:35, 7:25, 9:55 p.m. Century 20: noon & 2:30, 5, 7:30, 10:15 p.m. The Heat (R) (( Century 16: 11:10 a.m. & 1:55, 4:40, 7:45, 10:25 p.m. Century 20: 11 a.m. & 1:45, 4:25, 7:10, 10;05 p.m. Iron Man 3 (PG-13) (((

Century 16: 10 p.m. Century 20: 8:55 p.m.

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) (Not Rated) Stanford Theatre: Sat-Sun 3:35, 7:30 p.m. Monsters University (G) (((1/2 Century 16: 9:25 a.m. & 2:25, 7:30 p.m. In 3D 11:55 a.m. & 5 p.m. Century 20: 10:30 a.m. & 3:45 p.m. In 3D 11:45 a.m. & 4:50 p.m. Sat 10:30 a.m. & 3:45 p.m. In 3D 11:45 a.m. & 4:50 p.m. Pacific Rim (PG-13) ((( Century 16: 12:25, 7:05 p.m. In 3D 9:20 a.m. & 3:35, 10:05 p.m. Century 20: 1:35, 7:45 p.m. In 3D 10:35 a.m. & 4:45, 10:45 p.m. R.I.P.D. (PG-13)

Century 20: 1:10, 6:20, 10 p.m. In 3D 2:20, 7:25 p.m.

Red 2 (PG-13) (Not Reviewed) Century 16: 9:40 a.m. & 12:40, 7:20, 10:20 p.m. Fri & Sun also at 4:05 p.m. Century 20: 11 a.m. & 1:45, 4:30, 7:20, 10:10 p.m. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (R)

Guild Theatre: Sat Midnight.

The Smurfs 2 (PG) (Not Reviewed) Century 16: 9:05 & 11:40 a.m. & 2:15, 8 p.m. In 3D 10:!5 a.m. & 1, 4:!5, 7:10, 9:45 p.m. Century 20: 10:40 a.m. & 1:20, 4, 6:45, 9:20 p.m. In 3D noon & 2:40, 5:20, 8, 10:40 p.m. The To Do List (R) (Not Reviewed) Century 16: 4:55, 10:30 p.m. Century 20: 11:35 a.m. & 2:15, 5:05, 7:40, 10:15 p.m. Turbo (PG) (( Century 16: 9:10 a.m. & 2:20, 7:40 p.m. In 3D 11:50 a.m. & 4:55, 10:15 p.m. Century 20: 11:25 a.m. & 2, 4:20 p.m. In 3D 10:25 a.m. & 12:55, 3:25, 5:55, 8:20, 10:45 p.m.

A sampling of recent weekly reviews follows. For the full reviews, go to PaloAltoOnline.com/movies Fruitvale Station --1/2 Bay Area audiences may feel they need no introduction to Oscar Grant III when it comes to “Fruitvale Station,” a based-on-atrue-story film about the young local’s last hours on Earth. But Bay Area-bred writerdirector Ryan Coogler feels it’s precisely the point that we all do need to get to know the man — as more than a victim frozen in time. The film begins with the infamous cellphone video of Grant’s ignominious end in the titular BART station, pointing up that this is what we have seen and mostly know of Grant. What follows, in docudramatic form, strives to round out our knowledge of this ordinary 22-year-old American male, to return this symbol to his humanity as a son, a grandson, a boyfriend, a father. “Fruitvale Station” tallies the toll of what was lost on New Year’s Day 2009. Rated R for some violence, language and drug use. One hour, 30 minutes. — P.C. (Reviewed July 26, 2013) Girl Most Likely --1/2 Take the great Kristen Wiig out of the indie comedy “Girl Most Likely,” and it would be unbearable. The question is whether fans will want to watch her struggle to keep a film afloat for 103 minutes. Wiig plays Imogene Duncan, a once-promising playwright who squandered a fellowship and now finds her life unraveling. Her dreams of marriage, domestic bliss and a playwriting Tony obviously aren’t in the cards. Dumped by her upscale-cad boyfriend and her

MOVIE MINIS magazine-editor boss, Imogene stages a cry-for-help suicide and winds up in the care of her estranged mother, Zelda (Annette Bening). And so Imogene finds herself an unwanted house guest in the New Jersey home she’s spent a lifetime trying to escape. There, she catches up with her crab-obsessed brother Ralph (Christopher Fitzgerald) and discovers her room’s been rented to conspicuously sexy Yale-bred song-and-dance man Lee (Darren Criss), and that her mother has taken up with the disconcerting George Bousche (Matt Dillon), who claims to be a CIA agent with the wisdom of the samurai. Rated PG-13 for sexual content and language. One hour, 43 minutes. — P.C. (Reviewed July 19, 2013) Pacific Rim --1/2 “Go big or go home” may have been the mantra for the producers of “Pacific Rim.” The blockbuster from director Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) delivers its action on a massive scale while paying homage to Japanese monster flicks. On the surface, the film seems like little more than “Transformers vs. Godzilla,” but undertones about teamwork and del Toro’s deft touch keep the picture from drowning beneath its own weight. The spectacle takes place in the not-too-distant future, when deadly creatures begin emerging from the Pacific Ocean. To battle said beasts, human beings develop life-sized robots (called “jaegers”) operated by fighters. One is Raleigh Becket (“Sons of Anarchy” heartthrob Charlie Hunnam). A tragedy forces Raleigh

World War Z (PG-13) (Not Reviewed)

Turbo --1/2 In this CGI-animated adventure from DreamWorks, a garden snail wants nothing more than to be fast as a race car. Since it’s the premise of the movie, we’re bound to accept that an accidental swim through a nitrous-oxide-flooded engine will give Theo the snail his wish. But this magical occurrence also installs a car radio in Theo and brake lights in his butt (if snails had butts, that is). Re-christened Turbo, Theo (Ryan Reynolds) continues to enjoy lucky coincidences and a minimum of strife or effort in achieving his goals. Soon, they’ve set their sights on the Indy 500, which, after Turbo becomes a viral sensation, bows to public pressure and allows the snail to race against the likes of French-Canadian five-time Indy champ Guy Gagne (Bill Hader). As per Turbo’s mantra, “No dream is too big, and no dreamer too small.” Rated PG for mild action and thematic elements. One hour, 36 minutes. — P.C. (Reviewed July 19, 2013)

Aquarius: 430 Emerson St., Palo Alto (266-9260) Century Cinema 16: 1500 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View (800-326-3264) Century 20 Downtown: 825 Middlefield Road, Redwood City (800-326-3264)

LET’S DISCUSS: Read the latest local news headlines and talk about the issues at Town Square at PaloAltoOnline.com

CinéArts at Palo Alto Square: 3000 El Camino Real, Palo Alto (493-0128) Guild: 949 El Camino Real, Menlo Park (266-9260) Stanford: 221 University Ave., Palo Alto (324-3700) Internet address: For show times, plot synopses, trailers and more information about films playing, go to PaloAltoOnline.com/movies

The Way Way Back (PG-13) (((1/2 Century 20: 11:15 a.m. & 1:55, 4:35, 7:15, 9:55 p.m. Guild Theatre: 2, 4:30, 7:15, 9:55 p.m. The Wolverine (PG-13) ((1/2 Century 16: 10:30 a.m. & 1:30, 2:30, 4:45, 8, 9 p.m. In 3D 9:30 & 11:30 a.m. & 12:30, 3:45, 5:45, 7, 10:15 p.m. Century 20: 11:30 a.m. & 2:30, 3:30, 5:30, 8:35, 9:35 p.m.

to rethink his career path, until military leader Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) urges him back into the biz. Raleigh will have to click with rookie Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) to defend against a kaiju onslaught while researcher Newton Geiszler (Charlie Day of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and mathematician Hermann Gottlieb (Burn Gorman) hunt for a scientific solution. Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence, and brief language. Two hours, 11 minutes. — T.H. (Reviewed July 12, 2013)

Century Theatres at Palo Alto Square Friday Only 8/2 Blackﬁsh – 2:45, 5:00, 7:25, 9:55 Girl Most Likely – 1:45, 7:15 The East –4:30, 9:45 Sat- Thurs (Excluding Monday) 8/3-4 & 8/6-8 Blackﬁsh – 12:30, 2:45, 5:00, 7:25, 9:55

ON THE WEB: The most up-to-date movie listings at PaloAltoOnline.com

Monday Only 8/5 Blackﬁsh – 2:45, 5:00, 7:25, 9:55

Century 20: 7 p.m. In 3D 9:50 p.m.

( Skip it (( Some redeeming qualities ((( A good bet (((( Outstanding

Tickets and Showtimes available at cinemark.com

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Sports Shorts

SWIMMING

The time to strike is now

OF LOCAL NOTE . . . Palo Alto High grad Aubrey Dawkins, a 6-foot-5 shooting guard and son of Stanford men’s basketball coach Johnny Dawkins, will attend New Hampton School in New Hampshire in the fall and will be a member of the Class of 2014. Dawkins averaged 18.8 points and 7.0 rebounds while shooting 50 percent from the field and leading the Vikings to a 12-0 record and title in the SCVAL De Anza Division (23-4 overall) and a berth into the NorCal playoffs. New Hampton has been one of the leading basketball programs in the country over the years and has produced numerous players who have gone on to play and coach at the collegiate level. . . . Menlo School grad Drew Edelman helped lead the American team to a gold medal in women’s basketball at the annual Maccabiah Games that wrapped up last week in Israel. Not only did her team win the championship, but Edelman was named the Most Valuable Player. The USC freshman (this fall) scored 30 points in the final game, a 77-26 romp over Canada on July 28. She also scored 18 points in a semifinal victory over Australia.

ON THE AIR Friday Swimming: FINA World Championships, 9 a.m.; Universal Sports

Saturday Swimming: FINA World Championships, 10 a.m.; NBC

Sunday Swimming: FINA World Championships, 1 p.m.; NBC