Palo Alto Weekly October 14, 2016 by Palo Alto Weekly

Palo Alto

October 14, 2016

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Vol. XXXVIII, Number 2

w w w. P a l o A l t o O n l i n e.c o m

Deciding Palo Alto’s future

City Council candidates offer their visions for growth, quality of life Page 17

Transitions 13 Spectrum 14 Worth a Look 30 Eating Out 31 Shop Talk 32 Home 37 Q News Palo Alto mother charged with ﬁrst-degree murder Q Arts Film Festival celebrates the human spirit

Page 5 Page 28

Q Sports Stanford men’s basketball preparing for long journey Page 61

Medicare Advantage Plans from Stanford Health Care The coverage. The doctors. The healthy extras. STARTING AT

PER MONTH

Come learn about Stanford Health Care Advantage (HMO) at one of our seminars in your neighborhood.

Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center 14855 Oka Rd, #201B Los Gatos, CA 95032 Sat, Oct 15 | 10:00am Denny’s Restaurant 1390 S. 1st St San Jose, CA 95110 Mon, Oct 17 | 10:00am Mon, Oct 24 | 10:00am Original Pancake House 420 S. San Antonio Rd Los Altos, CA 94022 Tue, Oct 18 | 11:00am Opa! Authentic Greek Cuisine 27 N. Santa Cruz Ave Los Gatos, CA 95030 Tue, Oct 18 | 2:00pm Tue, Oct 25 | 2:00pm

Denny’s Restaurant 2077 N. 1st St San Jose, CA 95131 Wed, Oct 19 | 10:00am

Black Bear Diner 415 E. El Camino Real Sunnyvale, CA 94087 Thur, Oct 20 | 2:00pm

Marie Callender’s 751 E. El Camino Real Sunnyvale, CA 94087 Wed, Oct 19 | 10:00am Wed, Oct 26 | 10:00am

Homewood Suites 4329 El Camino Real Palo Alto, CA 94306 Tue, Oct 25 | 10:00am

Walk in or RSVP.

1-844-778-2636 (TTY 711) 8am–8pm, seven days a week (October 1, 2016 – February 14, 2017) Bring this ad when you attend a seminar. All attendees will receive a FREE reusable tote bag!

StanfordHealthCareAdvantage.org/meet

Stanford Health Care Advantage is an HMO with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in Stanford Health Care Advantage depends on contract renewal. You must continue to pay your Medicare Part B premium. A sales person will be present with information and applications. For accommodations of persons with special needs at sales meetings call 1-844-778-2636 (TTY 711). This is not a complete description of benefits. Contact the plan for more information. Limitations, copayment, and restrictions may apply. Benefits, premiums and/or copayments/coinsurance may change on January 1 of each year. Eligible for a free drawing or prize with no obligation. Stanford Health Care Advantage complies with applicable Federal civil rights laws and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, or sex. Stanford Health Care Advantage cumple con las leyes federales de derechos civiles aplicables y no discrimina por motivos de raza, color, nacionalidad, edad, discapacidad o sexo. Stanford Health Care Advantage 遵守適用的聯邦民權法律規定，不因種族、膚色、民族血統、年齡、殘障或性別而歧視任何人。ATTENTION: If you speak English, language assistance services, free of charge, are available to you. Call 1-855-996-8422 (TTY 711). ATENCIÓN: si habla español, tiene a su disposición servicios gratuitos de asistencia lingüística. Llame al 1-855-996-8422 (TTY: 711). 注意：如果您使用繁體中文，您可以免費獲得語言援助服務。請致電 1-855-996-8422 (TTY: 711)。 Page 2 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

H2986_MA17_069_Accepted 2016

Denny’s Restaurant 814 W. Anwanna Ave Sunnyvale, CA 94085 Tue, Oct 18 | 10:00am OR 2:00pm Tue, Oct 25 | 10:00am OR 2:00pm

2632 Marshall Drive, Palo Alto Offered at $2,788,000 Warmth, Luxury, and Convenience Immaculate landscaping accents this stately 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom residence of nearly 2,100 sq. ft. (per county) occupying a lot of almost 6,700 sq. ft. (per city) in the desirable Midtown neighborhood. Spacious rooms with double-height ceilings and transom windows establish an air of luxury, yet the floorplan is thoughtfully arranged to balance elegance with comfort. An island kitchen, stone-paved bathrooms, and a handsome master suite emphasize the home’s natural sophistication, while the expansive backyard forms a peaceful, private getaway. Stroll to Midtown Shopping Center, and easily bike to popular parks, Caltrain, lively California ®

Avenue, and outstanding Palo Alto schools.

For video tour & more photos, please visit:

www.2632Marshall.com

OPEN HOUSE Saturday & Sunday, 1-5 pm Complimentary Lunch & Lattes

6 5 0 . 4 8 8 . 7 3 2 5 | i n f o @ d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | w w w. d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | C a l B R E # 0 1 9 0 3 2 2 4

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 3

OPEN SATURDAYS, 2-5PM FREE PARKING

1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park Parking lot 15

Fa c e b o o k

Farmers Market Fresh Produce Food trucks Flowers Specialty Foods Family Games KIDs ZONE Local Artisans Free Parking Cooking demos Craft Beers &Wine Farm-to-Cup

5 1 r e b o t c O , Saturday

y a d y r e Ev s e o r e H Live Music from reggae Band

“Rafa”

Page 4 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

HEAR THE STORIES AND CHECK OUT THE VEHICLES OF OUR everyday HEROES! Buy a gyro (hero) sandwich Proceeds go to local charity $1 fruit juices and sodas for the kids

cocktails

Upfront

Local news, information and analysis

DA: First-degree murder charges for Palo Alto woman Jingyan Jin, sister-in-law of victim Jenny Shi, accused in gruesome stabbing death in Greenmeadow by Sue Dremann

Palo Alto mother of two will face first-degree murder charges in the July death of her sister-in-law, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office announced on Tuesday, Oct. 11.

Jingyan Jin, 41, is accused of stabbing 65-year-old acupuncturist Jenny Shi 41 times in Shi’s bedroom on July 7, according to a Palo Alto Police Department statement of facts. Shi, a successful but very private business-

woman and angel investor, was found lifeless at her home in the 300 block of Creekside Drive of the Greenmeadow neighborhood by her sister, who called police at about 7:45 p.m. Shi had missed a 10 a.m. business appointment that day and had not been heard from since the night before, according to the police statement by Detective Eric Bulatao. A business associate and

a bookkeeper went to Shi’s home to check on her. The front door was locked and Shi’s car was still parked in the driveway. The business associate called Shi’s maid to bring a key to open the door. The maid arrived, accompanied by her husband. A contractor and Shi’s sister, Yanne Shi arrived at the house separately. All four entered the residence, but the bedroom door was locked,

according to the report. The contractor broke through the door, but there was a second door behind it, which was also locked. That door had to be removed from its hinges. Shi’s sister entered the bedroom and found Shi on the bed in a large amount of blood. All four left the residence and called police. (continued on page 11)

NEIGHBORHOODS

Neighbors resolve conflict over potential Airbnb rental Crescent Park home was to be rented to up to 14 people, but owner has reconsidered by Sue Dremann

Veronica Weber

Baring his soul Saxophonist Chris Bryant plays outside CVS Pharmacy on University Avenue in Palo Alto on Oct. 11. He’s a regular there during weekdays and also plays at venues in Redwood City and San Francisco.

EDUCATION

Building unity New Foothill College cohort program seeks to improve outcomes for black students by Elena Kadvany

rom 2014 to 2015, 328 Foothill College students transferred to California state universities. Just five of them were black. On top of that, African-American students at the Los Altos Hills community college have reported feeling a sense of “invisibility,” with no strong connections or tight-knit community on campus, according to Foothill English professor Samuel White. “We know for a fact that our African-American students here, they’re suffering,” White said.

“They’re really falling through the cracks, if you will. They are not achieving success like other populations here.” These sobering statistics and sentiments drove White and Professor Kimberly Escamilla to launch this fall a new cohort program dedicated to supporting first-year African-American students through a more concerted focus on black culture, history and community. Foothill’s new Umoja cohort (named after the Swahili word for “unity”) is one of many like it

at community colleges across the state. The broader Umoja Community, a grassroots nonprofit now sponsored by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, has since its formation in 2008 sought to promote learning about African and African-American culture through a core set of pedagogies, curricula and practices, while also providing targeted support to students who might otherwise flounder at large community colleges. (continued on page 9)

Palo Alto property owner’s idea to turn his Crescent Park neighborhood home into an Airbnb rental set off a maelstrom of protest recently, becoming perhaps an object lesson on the forces of commerce that some say are harming single-family cohesion in the city’s neighborhoods. Gordon Stewart, who grew up in his mother Betty’s three-bedroom, two-bath home and inherited the residence, was having a hard time finding a family or suitable single renter to lease the home in the 1200 block of Lincoln Avenue. So he approached his neighbors with a new idea: to lease the home to two men who would sublet the home for Airbnb rentals. Instead, neighbors circulated emails and wrote complaints to the city, culminating in protests before the City Council on Oct. 4. At the council meeting, he expressed remorse for upsetting his neighbors. He thought he was helping to reduce a crisis by providing affordable housing for young workers employed by one of the city’s burgeoning technology enterprises, he said. But in fact, what he was proposing would be illegal. A letter from the city notified him of city law forbidding renting out a house for stays of less than 30 days. The letter cited specific regulations: The municipal code, for instance, defines properties that rent space for less than 30 days as hotels, motels and dormitories, which are not allowed in single-family, R1-zoned neighborhoods. In addition, hotels and other

transient-occupancy uses are subject to the city’s 14 percent transient-occupancy tax. Stewart told the council that he has made peace with his neighbors; the proposal is off the table. Many of those neighbors are now helping him to find a suitable family to lease the house. He is asking for $6,000 a month. But beyond this instance, residents told the council last week that the city must develop a concrete strategy and, potentially, additional ordinances, to rein in transient rentals such as those on Airbnb. Though the council discussed the issue in March 2015, it declined to take any action, with members deeming the problem not urgent enough. City Manager Jim Keene indicated that city staff would monitor the situation for a year, but short-term rentals have not been placed on the council’s agenda since then. Stewart has rented the home to families since 1998 and he has never had a problem, he said. But a downturn in the rental market took him by surprise, he told the Weekly. He typically leases the home out for a minimum of a year to 18 months. But recent ads haven’t gotten much traction, he said. Then two men, one who already rents out rooms on Airbnb and the other a real estate agent, approached him for a master lease and offered to leave the worries to them to sublet the house on Airbnb. His neighbors, who said the (continued on page 12)

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 5

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

PUBLISHER William S. Johnson (223-6505)

The DeLeon Difference® 650.543.8500 www.deleonrealty.com 650.543.8500 | www.deleonrealty.com | DeLeon Realty CalBRE #01903224

FOOTHILL-DE ANZA Community College District Board of Trustees seeks applicants for its Audit and Finance Committee Candidates appointed to the volunteer Audit and Finance Committee shall act in an advisory role to the Board in carrying out its oversight and legislative responsibilities as they relate to the District’s financial management. Applicants must reside in the district’s service area, which includes the cities of Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and portions of San Jose, Santa Clara and Saratoga. Applicants may not be an employee, contractor, consultant or vendor of the district. The Audit and Finance Committee Board Policy 6401 (BP 6401) are available for review at http://www.boarddocs.com/ca/ fhda/Board.nsf/Public or by calling (650) 949-6100. Currently, two committee members are needed for four-year terms in the following category: • At-large representative In this capacity the Audit and Finance Committee will: • Review and monitor budget and financial material and reports related to financial matters, including bonds, certificates of participation and other funding instruments, to come before the Board of Trustees. • Monitor the external audit selection and engagement process. • Review independent audit reports and monitor follow up activities. • Assure availability of the Audit and Finance Committee members to meet with the Board of Trustees each year at the time of presentation of the external audit to the Board. • Consult with independent auditors regarding accounting, fiscal and related management issues. • Monitor operational reviews, findings and recommendations and follow up activities. Interested applicants should submit a resume and cover letter detailing their qualifications, and noting which of the above categories they would represent, to any of the following: E-mail: chancellor@fhda.edu Mail: Office of the Chancellor Foothill-De Anza Community College District 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 Fax: (650) 941-1638 Completed applications must be received by 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11. For more information, please call (650) 949-6100 or email chancellor@fhda.edu Page 6 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

EDITORIAL Editor Jocelyn Dong (223-6514) Associate Editor Linda Taaffe (223-6511) Sports Editor Rick Eymer (223-6516) Arts & Entertainment Editor Karla Kane (223-6517) Home & Real Estate Editor Elizabeth Lorenz (223-6534) Express & Digital Editor My Nguyen (223-6524) Assistant Sports Editor Glenn Reeves (223-6521) Spectrum Editor Renee Batti (223-6528) Staff Writers Sue Dremann (223-6518), Elena Kadvany (223-6519), Gennady Sheyner (223-6513) Editorial Assistant/Intern Coordinator Anna Medina (223-6515) Staff Photographer/Videographer Veronica Weber (223-6520) Editorial Interns Patrick Condon and Rachel van Gelder Contributors Dale F. Bentson, Mike Berry, Carol Blitzer, Peter Canavese, Kit Davey, Trevor Felch, Chad Jones, Chris Kenrick, Kevin Kirby, Jack McKinnon, Andrew Preimesberger, Daryl Savage, Jeanie K. Smith, Jay Thorwaldson ADVERTISING Vice President Sales & Marketing Tom Zahiralis (223-6570) Multimedia Advertising Sales Adam Carter (223-6573), Elaine Clark (223-6572), Connie Jo Cotton (223-6571), Janice Hoogner (223-6576), V.K. Moudgalya (223-6586), Wendy Suzuki (223-6569) Digital Media Sales Heather Choi (223-6587) Real Estate Advertising Sales Neal Fine (223-6583), Carolyn Oliver (223-6581), Rosemary Lewkowitz (223-6585) Inside Advertising Sales Irene Schwartz (223-6580) Legal Advertising Alicia Santillan (223-6578) ADVERTISING SERVICES Advertising Services Lead Blanca Yoc (223-6596) Sales & Production Coordinator Diane Martin (223-6584) DESIGN Design & Production Manager Kristin Brown (223-6562) Senior Designers Linda Atilano, Paul Llewellyn Designers Diane Haas, Rosanna Leung, Nick Schweich, Doug Young EXPRESS, ONLINE AND VIDEO SERVICES Online Operations Coordinator Sabrina Riddle (223-6508) BUSINESS Payroll & Benefits Zach Allen (223-6544) Business Associates Cherie Chen (223-6543), Elena Dineva (223-6542), Cathy Stringari (223-6541) ADMINISTRATION Receptionist Doris Taylor Courier Ruben Espinoza EMBARCADERO MEDIA President William S. Johnson (223-6505) Vice President Michael I. Naar (223-6540) Vice President & CFO Peter Beller (223-6545) Vice President Sales & Marketing Tom Zahiralis (223-6570) Director, Information Technology & Webmaster Frank A. Bravo (223-6551) Marketing & Creative Director Shannon Corey (223-6560) Major Accounts Sales Manager Connie Jo Cotton (223-6571) Director, Circulation & Mailing Services Tatjana Pitts (223-6557) Circulation Assistant Alicia Santillan Computer System Associates Chris Planessi 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 326-8210. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302. ©2015 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 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

We’re facing predators looking for single-family homeowners... —Azadeh Malek, Palo Alto resident, on restricting an Airbnb rental in Crescent Park. See story on page 5.

Around Town

EVEN MORE ‘MAGICAL’ ... The Magical Bridge Foundation has received a $400,000 grant from the Sequoia Healthcare District for the proposed Magical Bridge Playground in Redwood City, the foundation announced. The playground, which is modeled after Palo Alto’s Magical Bridge playground and is geared to the needs of adults and children with disabilities, is slated to open at Red Morton Park in late 2017 or early 2018. Sequoia Healthcare District joins the City of Redwood City as major funders of the $3.3 million project. Redwood City residents will be invited to community meetings to review design concepts and provide input.

CARROTS AND STICKS ... It’s been more than 18 months since Fresh Market shuttered at Edgewood Plaza and, with no replacement coming, nearby residents, land-use watchdogs and city officials are out of patience. On Nov. 7, the City Council will consider raising the daily fine against Edgewood’s developer, Sand Hill Property, from $1,000 to $2,000 for its failure to find a new grocer. Meanwhile, some of the candidates running for council are saying the city should go even further and make the fine $5,000 per day. The grocery store was the main “public benefit” that Sand Hill was required to provide as part of the plaza’s renovation, which also included new houses and expanded commercial space. On Sept. 12, City Manager James Keene wrote a letter to the developer with a clear message: Our patience is exhausted. “Your company has built and sold the homes and leased the balance of the commercial center, effectively achieving your objectives without providing the promised public benefit,” Keene wrote, before warning Sand Hill about the proposal to raise fees. “Our community has been patient, and I have personally offered to engage with you, Fresh Market and prospective replacement tenants if there is anything the City can do to facilitate a solution to this long-running violation of our zoning ordinance and our trust.” The proposal to raise the fee, which the City Council will take up on Nov. 7, has widespread support among

council members and council candidates, some of whom say the city should go even further to put pressure on Sand Hill, whether by raising the fine to $5,000 per day or by refusing to approve Sand Hill’s other projects in the city until the Edgewood Plaza situation is resolved. IN THE KNOW ... If a wellinformed electorate is key to any democracy, then Palo Alto voters could potentially be among the most democratic. Between the League of Women Voters forums and videos by the Midpen Media Center, residents can find answers to many questions and learn about candidates for City Council and the Palo Alto Board of Education, as well as local measures and other issues and candidates that will be on the Nov. 8 ballot. The League of Women Voters will hold forums on propositions at 4 p.m., Oct. 14, at Avenidas, La Comida dining room, 450 Bryant St.; 7 p.m., Oct. 20, at Channing House Auditorium, 850 Webster St.; 7:30 p.m., Oct. 25, at Etz Chayim, 4161 Alma St.; and 11:30 a.m., Oct. 30, at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Kennedy Room, 600 Colorado Ave. Midpen Media Center has links to the forums, statements and ballot-measure arguments for voters in Santa Clara County at midpenmedia.org/ government/santa-clara-county. Click on the internet link for each race or find upcoming cable TV playback times. A web page for voters also features video links about the state propositions at midpenmedia.org/government/ statewide-voters, including an analysis of all 17 propositions by the League of Women Voters. ON THE MOVE ... Five gray foxes that previously lived at the Palo Alto Municipal Golf Course have moved, according to Bill Leikam, who studies the creatures in the Palo Alto Baylands. He reports that one of the workers reshaping the area as part of the flood-control project found they have moved across San Francisquito Creek near the Friendship Bridge. Seventeen foxes living between Embarcadero Road and Adobe Creek still remain, Leikam said, and additional gray foxes living in the thickets along the overflow channel do not show themselves. Q

Upfront ELECTION 2016

Measure A backers hope to put dent in affordable-housing crisis One-billion-dollar bond measure includes assistance for moderate-income households by Sue Dremann

hat some officials say is the most significant measure in Santa Clara County history to help low- and moderate-income residents find affordable housing will come before voters on Nov. 8. Measure A, a $950 million bond measure, would provide funding to acquire or improve an estimated 5,000 affordable-housing units and provide assistance to 1,000 first-time home buyers, according to the county. If voters approve the measure, the county would sell bonds in three phases through 2026. Property owners would pay an estimated $12.66 per $100,000 of assessed valuation in fiscal year 2017-18, the first year of the bond sales, or about $127 for a $1 million property. After the last series of bonds is sold in fiscal year 2025-2026, property owners would pay an estimated $10.76 per $100,000 of property value. The measure is notable not just for its nearly $1 billion price tag (an estimated $1.9 billion when including the principal and interest, according to the county). It is also groundbreaking for its inclusion of low- and moderateincome individuals and families who might not qualify for aid under other housing programs. (“Low income” is defined as not exceeding 80 percent of area median income; “moderate income” is in the range of 80 percent to 120 percent of area median income, the ballot measure states. The median in 2014 was $93,854, according to the U.S. Census.) Of the total funding, $150 million may be used to provide housing for moderate-income families and individuals, with not more than $50 million for first-time home buyers. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted in June to put the measure on the ballot. The funding would be distributed through a competitive bidding process, just like any service contracted in the county, according to county Supervisor Joe Simitian’s office. Any agency throughout the county can put in a bid for the funds; the Board of Supervisors will decide whether to approve the allocation. In Santa Clara County, an estimated 6,560 individuals and families are homeless, according to measure proponents. The revenue will help make up for lost state funding after redevelopment agencies ended in February 2012, said Erica Wood, chief community impact officer for the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which is supporting Measure A. When the program ended, “a

major source of affordable-housing funding for communities went away,” Wood said. The Housing Trust of Silicon Valley noted in 2008 that agencies in Santa Clara County received $126.2 million for affordable housing. But by 2013 that figure dropped to $47.3 million per year. If passed, the measure would enable communities to leverage state and federal matching grants, which could further the measure’s impact, Wood said. But the measure does have its detractors. Mark Hinkle, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, said the affordable-housing problem is caused

by government over-regulation of builders, which has driven up the costs to consumers and discouraged construction. His organization does not support solving the housing problem by raising taxes on existing housing, he said. “This is a government solution to a government-created problem,” he said. Instead, Hinkle favors changing zoning laws to allow multifamily housing in some R-1 neighborhoods and building at higher densities. “Maintain real property rights for owners to build what they want and get rid of the red tape,” he said.

Hinkle said that while Measure A would help provide housing and programs for the most needy, it won’t reduce the affordable-housing problem in terms of the quantity of housing needed to lower prices significantly enough for low-and moderate-income people. Zoning and building restrictions on developers, he said, keep the costs elevated. The California Housing Partnership has found that 67,576 additional homes are needed for very-low-income and extremelylow income Santa Clara County renters. Hinkle also sees flaws in the oversight process the bond promises. A special Citizens’ Oversight Committee would review the annual report and ensure fiscal accountability, and an independent external auditor would review the county’s spending of bond monies. But Hinkle thinks that any dissenting vote on the oversight committee would be meaningless because only one taxpayergroup representative is likely to

be appointed. And bond-oversight committees have allowed funds to be used for other purposes than what the voters approved in the past, he said. The more than $250 million San Jose Evergreen Community College District Measure G bond approved by voters in 2010 was supposed to rebuild a run-down, 60-year-old vocational center, among other things, but $22 million was later slated by San Jose City College administrators for a theater complex. The move was branded a bait-and-switch by opponents, including the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association. Measure A, however, specifically states that proceeds from the bond would be used to acquire or improve real property for the vulnerable populations (including veterans, seniors, persons with disabilities, foster youth and victims of abuse) with, where necessary, supporting mental health or substance-abuse services. The Board of Supervisors (continued on page 11)

Palo Alto City Council www.LizKniss.com Liz@LizKniss.com

Our City and Our Schools—

WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER The more we partner with our school district, the more we beneﬁt our children and our community. I want to ensure our kids are safe and thriving. I will:

Jump-start the required negotiations regarding the future of Cubberley.

Support Project Safety Net, youth mental health initiatives and low cost after school programs to promote healthy lifestyles.

Complete implementation of the Master Bike Plan to ensure safe routes to school.

Continue to provide Track Watch—monitors at Palo Alto railroad crossings.

Make sure we have trafﬁc guards at major intersections to keep kids safe.

“ I appreciate Liz’s deep experience and thoughtful decision making— especially as it relates to our kids. From her years on the school board through all of her other elected roles, she has championed kids—their health, safety and education. ” — Terry Godfrey PAUSD Trustee

Paid for by: Re-Elect Liz Kniss for City Council 2016 • FPPC #1387729 • Tom Collins, Treasurer • 3950 Duncan Place • Palo Alto 94306

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 7

Upfront

Melissa Baten Caswell demonstrates unwavering commitment to effective teaching and learning in our schools.

COMMUNITY

New Americans program aspires to help newcomers Mitchell Park Library reaches out to Palo Alto’s non-English speakers by Patrick Condon

She has my vote and endorsement.

MelissaBatenCaswell.org

Paid by Melissa Baten Caswell for PAUSD School Board Committee 2016 ID#1388648

FOOTHILL-DE ANZA Community College District Board of Trustees seeks applicants for its Measure C Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee Candidates appointed to the independent, volunteer Measure C Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee review and report to the public on the district’s Measure C bond expenditures. Applicants must reside in the district’s service area, which includes the cities of Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and portions of San Jose, Santa Clara and Saratoga. Applicants may not be an employee, contractor, consultant or vendor of the district. The Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee bylaws are available at www.measurec.fhda.edu or by calling (650) 949-6100.

Veronica Weber

Joe Simitian Santa Clara County Supervisor, District 5, former State Senator, State Assemblyman, Palo Alto Mayor and President PAUSD Board of Education

ast year, staff at Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park Library began to notice that the city’s demographics were changing — and that a large number of visitors to the library were not being served. “There are so many public libraries doing amazing services and programs for their ‘new Americans’ audience, and quite frankly, we weren’t doing much, just a few bilingual storytimes,” said RuthAnn Garcia, the services manager for the library. So the staff implemented the New Americans program, designed to help non-English speakers assimilate into the community as well as gain their legal citizenship. Their version was modeled after the Queens Library in New York’s program of the same name; Garcia traveled to the Queens library to study their approach. “I was impressed by their commitment to adult learning and engaging their non-English speaking population with multilingual fliers, programs, life-skills workshops, literacy programs and learning centers,” Garcia said. Though many may think of libraries as centers solely for books and, now, digital media, historically, libraries have helped people become familiar with their

From left, clockwise, ESL volunteer Judy Lochead and students Lotta Ylinaula from Finland, H.G. Chung from Korea, Chikako Kojima from Japan and Claire Zhou from China discuss what it means to “be home” during their conversation group at the Mitchell Park Library on Sept. 21. community. “I love the idea that a library is the first place a person goes when new to a town,” Garcia said. Before Mitchell Park launched the New Americans program, it had a decent selection of Chinese and Russian books, but the Spanish language selection was severely lacking, according to Garcia. The library then implemented English-as-a-Second-Language

Online This Week

These and other news stories were posted on Palo Alto Online throughout the week. For longer versions, go to www.PaloAlto Online.com/news.

Stanford sex-discrimination investigation closed

Currently, four committee members are needed for two-year terms in the following categories:

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has “administratively closed” one of five investigations into violations of federal gender-equity law Title IX at Stanford University, an Education Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday. (Posted Oct.

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Kerry discusses tech’s social challenges

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sat casually on the stage of the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel ballroom in Menlo Park on Monday discussing ethical and social challenges linked with technology and the internet. (Posted Oct. 11, 12:21 p.m.)

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Trees honor Steve Jobs 5 years after death

E-mail: chancellor@fhda.edu

It’s been five years since Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer on Oct. 5, 2011. This week Old Palo Alto resident Catherine Debs, as she has in years past, put the finishing touches on a pair of trees at the intersection of Bryant Street and Lowell Avenue, decorated with ornaments celebrating milestones in the creative genius’ life. (Posted Oct. 7, 7:18 p.m.)

Mail: Office of the Chancellor Foothill-De Anza Community College District 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills, CA 94022

VIDEO: Behind the Headlines — Remembering Miner Forty Niner

Interested applicants should submit a resume and cover letter detailing their qualifications, and noting which of the above categories they would represent, to any of the following:

-H_! (650) 941-1638 *VTWSL[LK HWWSPJH[PVUZ T\Z[ IL YLJLP]LK I` W T -YPKH` 5V] For more information, please call (650) 949-6100 or email chancellor@fhda.edu

On this week’s news webcast, “Behind the Headlines,” donkey handler Inge Harding-Barlow joins Palo Alto Weekly Editor Jocelyn Dong and reporter Sue Dremann to talk about the history of the Barron Park donkeys in Bol Park, remembering Miner Forty Niner, who died last week and the community’s affinity for the animals. (Posted Oct. 7, 7:15 p.m.)

(ESL) conversation groups and bulked up its selection of foreignlanguage materials. Additionally, it programmed its computers for use by speakers of Chinese, Russian and Spanish as well as English. While these steps were significant, it was not until library staff members created their own version of a New Americans monthly program that they felt like they were truly serving non-English speakers, Garcia said. Mitchell Park library’s monthly programs cover a swath of topics. In this election year, for example, the August meeting was all about the electoral process and how to participate. Other topics have included public transportation and bilingual parenting. A “citizenship clinic” offered free help in filling out citizenship applications as well as understanding the process. “We have people coming from different Bay Area cities to attend, and we’re pleased to see the camaraderie and shared experience between the attendees,” Garcia said. In one meeting, attendees practiced idiomatic expressions, such as “drop a bomb.” Tasked with coming up with examples of this new idiom, many attendees laughed and tried to one-up each other’s examples. They also had fun with the idiom “climbing the corporate ladder.” Students also spent time comparing phrases from their countries of origin with the ones they had been learning. Instructor Kitty Merz commanded the participants’ attention with her lighthearted mood and her focus on helping the class learn about America. She (continued on page 10)

Page 8 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Upfront

Umoja (continued from page 5)

Veronica Weber

The program’s goal is to increase retention, transfer and graduation rates for students of color, though Umoja is open to students of all races. According to a 2015 report on the program’s statewide impact, Umoja students were 25 percent more likely to remain in community college, have a higher grade-point average and be ready for transfer-level work in a shorter time frame. At Foothill, Umoja is designed to provide a “safe place for students to discuss real issues that affect them and the broader community,” a press release announcing the program’s creation states. About 60 students tested into Umoja’s two tracks, one more advanced, of English, communications, psychology and mathematics courses. The classes are taught by three instructors, including White, who is African-American. (Students can take other classes outside of the program as well.) Students are admitted to the program in the fall and stay together throughout their first year at Foothill. The program also “seeks to help students develop a sense of pride, ownership and responsibility in their own speaking and writing,” the press release states. On a recent Friday afternoon, about 20 students in White’s class took turns reading out loud from a section of Malcolm X’s 1965 autobiography about teaching himself to read from a dictionary while he was in jail. Throughout the program, the students will study significant African-American figures, both past and present, from W.E.B. DuBois and Maya Angelou to Ta-Nehisi Coates and President Barack Obama. White also began the class with a traditional African call-and-response ritual meant to engender a sense of responsibility and identity: He said “ago,” (pronounced ah-go) to the class, a term “used to gain the attention of a group, or used as a way to ask permission to enter a space,” the course syllabus reads. The students responded with “ame” (pronounced ah-may), which “acknowledges the speaker and quiets the space, so that the discussion may begin.” Personal support of each student is also central to the program’s design. A designated counselor meets regularly with Umoja students and their teachers and even attends some of their classes. It’s a stark difference, White said, from the frustrating “bureaucracy of things” for many Foothill students who have a hard time scheduling time with counselors and rarely get to see the same counselor throughout their time at the community college. They’re hoping this will help improve AfricanAmerican students’ rates of retention, White said. The students will go on field trips together and participate in other enrichment activities outside of class, from checking out local four-year colleges to visiting

Tracee Cunningham, a counselor for the Umoja program at Foothill College, serves soul food to students and staff gathered for the program’s orientation on Sept. 30. the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. And with a new dedicated study and social space on campus, Umoja students have a physical space to gather and call their own. The program’s ultimate vision, White said, “is to increase success of black students and have them actually come here and leave via transfer, not just drop off.”

‘We know that if a student has a target, a tangible goal, they will likely gravitate toward that goal — with support.’ —Samuel White, Foothill English professor Officially, Foothill has signed pathways-to-transfer agreements for Umoja students with the University of California system as well historically black colleges and universities. From this year on, Foothill will track how many Umoja students successfully transfer to four-year institutions. “We know that if a student has a target, a tangible goal, they will likely gravitate toward that goal — with support,” White said. To measure success in other ways, he and the other instructors are developing quantitative goals through the community college’s institutional research department. At its core, Umoja is about the power of community. In preparation for creating the Umoja

program, Foothill surveyed its African and African-American students last year (of which there are few; only about 3 percent of the school’s 13,500-student population is black, White said). The college asked questions like “Do you have friends on campus that you socialize with?” “Have you had any African-American instructors at Foothill?” and “What could Foothill do to help you feel more welcomed or be more involved on campus?” Many students said they wanted something like Umoja — an established community or club dedicated to black students — at Foothill. The college already offers similar programs for other student populations, such as Puente, which was formed in 1993 to reduce the achievement gap between Latino and white students, but has since evolved to help all first-generation college students transfer to four-year colleges and universities. In the 2015-16 school year, the program had a 81 percent retention rate. Last year, Foothill also launched First Year Experience, a pilot program that places students who are the first in their families to go to college, foster youth, single parents and others into a cohort to support them in their transition to college. Several current Umoja students said it was the promise of a strong campus community that drew them to the program. Jason Wagner, 19, an East Palo Alto native who recently graduated from Menlo-Atherton High School, was one of several Foothill football players whom the team’s

coach encouraged to sign up for the program. The prospect of “building relationships with other people” attracted Wagner to Umoja, he said in an interview with the Weekly. Jasmine Charles, a 17-year-old Foothill student from East Palo Alto, said it was important to her to have the opportunity to learn more about African-American history and culture at school — something she’s been to exposed to at home by her parents, she said, but not in her K-12 educational experience. “My elementary school teachers never really talked about this kind of stuff, not even middle school or high school teachers,” she said. “Being able to hear from another adult besides my parents about these topics attracted me to it (the program).” Charles was also glad to see a more diverse group of students than she expected in her classes — a mix of black, white and Latino students. While the program’s target demographic is AfricanAmerican students, no applicants were turned away, White said.

Talking about black history, social movements and AfricanAmericans’ contributions to society feels even more critical, Charles said, at a time when the nation is experiencing tumultuous race relations and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. She views Umoja as providing a safe space to talk about these and other contentious topics. “If you don’t talk about it, then there are no solutions,” Charles said. “There are people ... who want to express themselves but can’t because they don’t have the community or the group to do it.” It’s well-understood at community colleges, universities and K-12 campuses across the nation that for students of color, success often depends on their sense of belonging. “When you go to a place where you don’t see many people like you, you might interpret that as you not being welcome,” White said. “We can reinforce history and contributions and culture and validity and make them understand: ‘You belong here, too.’” Q

GregCITY Tanaka COUNCIL $_o ]_ Ѵ Ѵbv|;m;u

On Planning Commission, I voted against the Maybell project due to lack of neighborhood involvement and supported California Avenue streetscape improvements

Proven Experience Drove first Residential Parking Permit program

Balanced Approach Worked with all sides on infrastructure commission

“As a parent and small business owner, I know what it means to balance family, work and community.”

Avenidas: The board considered the latest revisions to the proposal by Avenidas to renovate and expand its facility at 450 Bryant St. The board continued the discussion to Oct. 14. Yes: Bower, Di Cicco, Kohler, Wimmer Absent: Makinen Recused: Bernstein, Bunnenberg

Endorsed by: Congresswoman Anna Eshoo Supervisor Joe Simitian State Senator Jerry Hill Assemblyman Rich Gordon Vice Mayor Greg Scharff School board members Camille Townsend and Terry Godfrey And over 300 community members just like you including Bob Moss, Neilson Buchanan, Penny Ellson, Susan Rosenberg, Mark Nadim and many more.

Historic Resources Board (Oct. 14)

See www.gregtanaka.org

CityView A round-up

of Palo Alto government action this week

City Council

The council did not meet this week.

Historic Resources Board (Oct. 13)

Avenidas: The board voted to recommend approval of the proposal by Avenidas to renovate and expand its facility at 450 Bryant St. Yes: Bower, Di Cicco, Kohler, Wimmer Absent: Makinen Recused: Bernstein, Bunnenberg

Paid for by Greg Tanaka for Palo Alto City o m1bѴ bm ƑƏƐѵ վ ŲƐƒѶѶƐƒƔ

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 9

Upfront

PALO ALTO PLANNING & TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION CIVIC CENTER, 250 HAMILTON AVENUE CABLECAST LIVE ON GOVERNMENT ACCESS CHANNEL 26 ***************************************** THIS IS A SUMMARY OF THE AGENDA ITEMS. THE AGENDA WITH COMPLETE TITLESINCLUDING LEGAL DOCUMENTATION CAN BE VIEWED AT THE BELOW WEBPAGE: http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/gov/boards/ptc/default.asp

Study Session 1. Study Session with the Planning & Transportation Commission on the Comprehensive Plan Update to provide comments. For more information contact Jonathan Lait at jonathan.lait@ cityofpaloalto.org 2. The Planning and Transportation Commission will Receive an Update on Transportation Plans and Projects Along 4PKKSLĂ&#x201E;LSK 9VHK -VY TVYL PUMVYTH[PVU JVU[HJ[ 1HYYL[[ 4\SSLU at Jarrett.mullen@cityofpaloalto.org

Questions. For any questions regarding the above items, please JVU[HJ[ [OL 7SHUUPUN +LWHY[TLU[ H[ ;OL Ă&#x201E;SLZ relating to these items are available for inspection weekdays between the hours of 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. This public meeting is televised live on Government Access Channel 26. AMERICANS WITH DISABILITY ACT (ADA) Persons with disabilities who require auxiliary aids or services in using City facilities, services or programs or who would like information on the Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact (650) 329-2368 (Voice) 24 hours in advance. ***

Hillary Gitelman, Director of Planning and Community Environment

Jungwon Yoon, a librarian at the Mitchell Park Library, reads a book to her ESL conversation group on Sept. 21 during a conversation about â&#x20AC;&#x153;home.â&#x20AC;?

New Americans (continued from page 8)

ending the session by reciting and teaching them the National Anthem. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are working on getting them to the next stage, which is being able to understand what a native speaker is saying,â&#x20AC;? she explained. One of the attendees, Blanca Espa, expressed satisfaction with the program after the session. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s an easy way to practice and meet new people in the community,â&#x20AC;? she said. Although the New Americans program has only been in place for a year, it has already seen its fair share of success. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Quite a few have already become advanced,â&#x20AC;? said Jungwon Yoon, one of the librarians in charge of the program. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Since they joined our group, I can see they improved their conversa-

tional skills a lot. Also, I get positive feedback about their confidence.â&#x20AC;? Despite the programâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s launch, the library staff hardly consider the work finished. The library is eager to spread the word about its program and plans to focus on outreach. In the first six weeks of the program this fall, 150 people have participated, almost 20 percent more than attended in the first six weeks last year. Garcia and library Division Head Diane Lai are hoping the newly minted mobile Bike PALS service, along with positive word-of-mouth around the community, will help spread the word. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want to add a lot more classes focused on participation. ... We have a lot more things in mind,â&#x20AC;? Garcia explained. Garcia and Lai both stressed the importance of continuing the work they have started. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s on us to make sure we are promoting ourselves in an outwardly focused way,â&#x20AC;? Garcia said.

Veronica Weber

Public Hearing 3. 900 N California Ave [14PLN-00233]: Request by Kohler Associates Architects, on behalf of Greg Xiong, for a Preliminary Parcel Map, with exceptions, to subdivide the existing 30,837 square foot parcel into three parcels. Environmental Review: Categorically Exempt per CEQA Guidelines Section 15303(a) (New Construction or Conversion of Small Structures). Zoning District: Single Family Residential District (R-1). For more information contact Adam Petersen at apetersen@m-group.us

Veronica Weber

AGENDAâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;REGULAR MEETING â&#x20AC;&#x201C; COUNCIL CHAMBERS October 26, 2016 6:00 PM

Ricardo Montalvo, who is from Mexico, listens to fellow ESL students at the Mitchell Park Library. Added Lai, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want this to be an inclusive library that brings together the community, and the New Americans program is a big part of this effort.â&#x20AC;? Q Editorial Intern Patrick Condon can be emailed at pcondon@paweekly.com.

Lydia Kou ... a determined advocate for thoughtful change that will preserve and enhance Palo Altoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quality of life.

She will be a voice for you.

Palo Alto City Council www.LydiaKou.com Elect Lydia Kou Palo Alto City Council 2016 FPPC ID #1386681

While some change is inevitable, it is the job of the City Council to ensure that changes to our community are positive improvements that make our city better. In recent years, too often the results of change have been serious trafďŹ c congestion, parking overďŹ&#x201A;owing into neighborhoods, overburdened services and schools, loss of local-serving businesses, and even impacts on the simple enjoyment of our homes. We can â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and must â&#x20AC;&#x201D; do better. Lydia will bring positive, constructive, realistic programs to the Council to deal with these and other issues that will determine and deďŹ ne Palo Altoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s future.

Lydia Kouâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s extensive work for the community as a volunteer includes leadership/active roles in emergency preparedness and services, mediation programs, her neighborhood association, the PAUSD Measure A parcel tax campaign, the PTA, and (currently) the Palo Alto Comprehensive Plan Update Citizens Committee. She has proven her dedication and effectiveness in these and many other civic activities, and has earned the support of current and former mayors, councilmembers, community leaders, residents ... and the Sierra Club. Please check her web site for more about her positions and community support.

Lydia Kou gets results. She knows the community and will listen to and be a positive, constructive, and effective voice for Palo Alto residents.

Page 10 â&#x20AC;˘ October 14, 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ Palo Alto Weekly â&#x20AC;˘ www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Upfront

Murder

News Digest

(continued from page 5)

passed an oversight measure on Oct. 4 to strengthen independence by the oversight committee. The nine-member board includes only one member who is an affordable housing and supportive housing professional — no housing advocates — and the remainder include an auditor, business professional, representative of organized labor, civic organization member, investment professional, a member of the general public, a member of the State Bar of California and a representative of the Santa Clara County Cities Association who is nominated by the association. In addition,

Sue Dremann

(continued from page 7)

Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Christopher Walsh discusses the charges against Jingyan Jin outside the Santa Clara County Superior Court on Oct. 11. has been solved. Had this case taken place 20 or 30 years ago this is a case that might not have been solved. There were numerous initial suspects that were looked into, but ultimately what solved this case was forensic science and DNA, and that evidence led back to this defendant,” he said. Walsh said Jenny Shi that Shi was likely killed in the 24 hours prior to being found. Prosecutors and police have some ideas on the motive, but Walsh said he doesn’t want to speculate because the investigation is ongoing. “I do think that the facts — as the case proceeds forward and this information comes to light — I believe the motive will be very clear and also the location of the DNA will be very significant as a piece of evidence in this case. “I think you’ll see there is a past history that goes to the relationship, which is significant evidence in this case,” he said. On Tuesday, the diminutive Jin sat in the courtroom coman independent auditor will also be appointed by the Board of Supervisors through a competitive bid. Measure A needs a two-thirds vote in favor to pass. A Santa Clara County survey of registered voters conducted in March and early April found that close to two-thirds support the measure. Of voters surveyed in District 5, which includes Palo Alto and Mountain View, 73 percent said they would likely vote “ yes” to approve the measure. The measure has the support of more than 100 agencies, businesses, nonprofit organizations, city and county leaders, veterans and seniors groups. “This measure is the most significant funding plan we have ever had in Santa Clara County.

Judith Iglehart/The Keiretsu Forum

Measure A

No charges for Stanford student arrested for rape

Palo Alto Police Department

A number of expensive items, located in plain sight, had not been taken, but Bulatao found a chair propped against a window frame outside of the home. The ground showed marks in the dirt made by dragging the chair to the window. The window screen had been cut on three sides and a small window removed; it was found laying in the bathtub, according to the report. Jin was identified as a suspect by the Santa Clara County Crime Lab in late September by partial DNA evidence found on the window knob and on the edges of the same window, according to the report. Jin allegedly had a rocky relationship with Shi, according to a neighbor of the victim. Jin had lived in the home with her two children for a time, but she moved out about a year ago because the two women were not getting along, the neighbor said. Police also said that Jin, who is married to Shi’s brother, had allegedly threatened her husband with a knife and a stun gun, allegedly drugged a cup of his tea with Jingyan Jin Benadryl and had a verbal altercation with Shi at the home within the past year. Jin was also arrested in China in September for allegedly fighting with one of Shi’s business employees after having attempted to enter the employee’s apartment while possessing a knife and plastic gloves, according to the report. Police waited for Jin to return to Palo Alto from China and they arrested her near her home in the 700 block of San Antonio Road, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Walsh said. The DNA and her relationship with Shi will weigh significantly as evidence, he said. “This is a case that fortunately

posed and alert in a red jail uniform, waving cheerfully at three friends who had come to the court proceeding. The friends, who asked not to be named, said Jin’s two children attend school with their children. “We can’t believe that she would be accused of something like this. She is just a mother of two children. She is a very nice person. We just care about her,” one of the women said. “I’m shocked,” said another woman who described Jin as “a lovely person.” She said that Jin regularly volunteered at the school. She recalled going to Shi’s house a few times when Jin and her children lived there. She took part in a Bible-study group at the home with Jin. But “something happened about two years ago,” the friend said, although she did not know the nature of the disagreement. Shi also reportedly told Jin not to have the Bible group at the home anymore, she said. Jin’s arraignment in Santa Clara County Superior Court was postponed until Wednesday because a Mandarin-speaking translator was not available. Jin remains in custody without bail. Q It is designed to make major roads to address this problem,” said Palo Alto Mayor Pat Burt, who is one of the signers on the ballot argument in favor of the measure. Q Staff Writer Sue Dremann can be emailed at sdremann@ paweekly.com.

Corrections

The Oct. 7 story “Beloved Palo Alto donkey dies at 32” incorrectly identified the location and ownership of the donkey pasture. It is near Bol Park and is privately owned by James Witt. The Weekly regrets the error. To request a correction, contact Editor Jocelyn Dong at 650-223-6514, jdong@ paweekly.com or P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302.

The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office will not file charges against a male Stanford University graduate student arrested for allegedly raping a 28-year-old woman on campus on Sept. 24, county officials confirmed. The 22-year-old graduate student was arrested in the early hours at Lyman Graduate Residences on Campus Drive after campus police were called to his residence. Prosecutors received the case on Wednesday, Oct. 5, and declined to press charges after a review of the evidence, district attorney’s officials told Bay City News. The graduate student was arrested and booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail in San Jose. He posted his $100,000 bail and was released the next day. In a separate incident of alleged assault on the university campus on Sept. 30, a female Stanford student reported to a campus security authority that she was raped by a male whom she didn’t know. The alleged incident took place in the man’s dorm room on the east side of campus. William Larson, public information officer for the Department of Public Safety, said on Monday that the Department of Public Safety “continues to actively investigate” this incident. Stanford announced Monday that an advisory committee of faculty and students, formed to monitor the university’s ongoing work to prevent sexual violence, is seeking input on these efforts from the campus community. Q — Elena Kadvany

Wong takes lead in Foothill-De Anza fundraising Cupertino City Councilman Gilbert Wong has raised the most cash out of the six candidates vying for a seat on the Foothill-De Anza Community College District Board of Trustees. Of the current board members, only Laura Casas Frier is running this November. The other candidates are Wong, former Cupertino Councilman Orrin Mahoney, Cupertino resident Patrick Ahrens, Los Altos resident Peter Landsberger and former Foothill College employee Eric Rosenthal. Wong raised a total of $54,000 from the beginning of the year through Sept. 24, much of which accrued in fundraising prior to July 1. His top contributions include $6,000 from Cupertino resident Myong-shin Woo, listed as self-employed in the real estate industry; $6,000 from Richard Hartman, a San Jose property services manager; $6,000 from the company Thinktank Learning Inc.; and $5,000 from Cupertino resident Shobana Nandakumar, a consultant. Behind Wong is Landsberger, who raised just shy of $40,000 in campaign funds from the beginning of the year through Sept. 24. Landsberger’s large donations include $5,000 from Palo Alto venture capitalist Franklin Johnson Jr. and $3,000 from the Foothill-De Anza Faculty Association. Ahrens pulled in $9,500 from July 1 through Sept. 24, adding up to a total of just under $23,000 so far this year. Casas Frier pulled together a total of $16,335 in campaign funds as of Sept. 24, bringing her to a total of $20,754 when combined with $4,400 left over from her 2012 bid for the school board. Mahoney has raised about $5,600 so far and has made two loans to his campaign totaling $5,025. Rosenthal did not file a campaign finance statement, which candidates are not required to do if they have not received more than $2,000. Q — Kevin Forestieri and Elena Kadvany

City looks to shift fire station to Geng Road A new fire station would go up near the Palo Alto Baylands and remain there for about 18 months while the city rebuilds the existing station at Rinconada Park, under a plan the City Council is set to consider Monday night. If the proposal is approved, the temporary fire station would stand on .9-acre site previously occupied by GreenWaste of Palo Alto. The decision came down to three finalists: the Rinconada Park Tennis Courts, the Middlefield Road lot and the Geng Road site. The first two options were eliminated because of real or expected public opposition. The Geng Road location has the benefit of a lower construction cost than the other two options. City officials expect it to cost $141,000, compared to $384,000 for the Middlefield Road parcel and $290,000 for the tennis courts. Q —Gennady Sheyner LET’S DISCUSS: Read the latest local news headlines and talk about the issues at Town Square at PaloAltoOnline.com

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 11

Upfront

Airbnb (continued from page 5)

plan was to add four or five beds to each bedroom, balked at the idea of up to 14 strangers potentially rotating through the home every few days. “The problem we have with greedy actors seeking to take advantage of Airbnb is not over,” said Azadeh Malek, a neighbor. “We’re facing predators looking for single-family homeowners in our desirable neighborhoods and homeowners willing to let them do so.” A family is generally defined as an individual or a group of persons living together as a “housekeeping unit,” she said. “Anyone with common intelligence knows that finding 14 people on Airbnb, each at a different time and at different terms who come to a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house to simply rent a place to sleep, who are not

a static group of persons but an ever-changing array of individuals who may not even know each other by name, cannot possibly be construed as a bonafide housekeeping unit,” she said. Another of Stewart’s neighbors, Dawn Billman, told the Weekly that she is helping him to find a renter. She acknowledged that Palo Alto has a housing problem, but she doesn’t see rentals that last only a few days or weeks as a solution. “As a community we need to thoughtfully look at the changes taking place,” she said. Billman has heard from many people throughout the city who have experienced large numbers of transient renters in their neighborhoods, she said. She doesn’t have a problem with families renting out a room to supplement their income, and she thinks it offers an opportunity for visitors to experience what Palo Alto is about. But the constant comings and goings of so many short-term renters ultimately hurts the community, she said. Such transient renters aren’t contributing to the fabric of Palo Alto — to its schools and government — and that erodes Palo Alto and its neighborhoods, she added. The solution must come from the city, she and others said. “This is an issue that needs to be carefully looked at in the

Comprehensive Plan. Airbnb did not exist the last time the city put that document together,” Billman said. “As a community, that needs to be looked at as we prepare the next one and we need to think about what the city will look like in 15 years.” Stewart and some Crescent Park residents have a different take. “Palo Alto has a huge housing problem. I thought I would actually help balance that,” Stewart said. One resident who spoke at the City Council meeting echoed similar views. People are rightly concerned about noise, traffic, parking and unknown people in their neighborhood, an Addison Avenue man who identified himself as David said. But his mortgage and property taxes make it necessary to rent out his six-bedroom home, he said. He rents to visiting families and corporate groups when he and his family are out of town. It’s becoming a way of economic survival in the city, he said. “I’d be concerned that you don’t accidentally hurt Palo Alto families that are increasingly relying on Airbnb to get by,” he said of any additional regulations. “In our case, it allows us to supplement our family income and allows us to take part in this community.” Q

Public Agenda A preview of Palo Alto government meetings next week CITY COUNCIL ... The council plans to consider approving 200 Geng Road as a temporary location for Fire Station 3; provide direction about the parameters of an ordinance to strengthen retail protections around downtown and the South of Forest Area; and consider endorsing Santa Clara County’s Measure A. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 17, in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave. COUNCIL FINANCE COMMITTEE ... The committee plans to consider re-appropriation requests for funds to be carried over from fiscal year 216 to fiscal year 2017; and consider a recommendation to adopt a carbon-neutral natural gas portfolio . The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 18, in the Council Conference Room at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave. BOARD OF EDUCATION ... The board will hold a special study session on the 2017-18 budget from 8-10 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 18, at the district office, 25 Churchill Ave. In its regular evening meeting, the board will hear a report on the high schools’ SAT, ACT and AP results; discuss a proposed board policy on institutional review for student research; and discuss an authorization to bid renovations for a Palo Alto High School building, among other items. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the district office. ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW BOARD ... The board plans to consider 450 Bryant St., a request by Avenidas to renovate and expand its facility; and consider the appeal of a previously approved mixed-use project at 429 University Ave. The meeting will begin at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20, in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave. PUBLIC ART COMMISSION ... The commission plans to hear a presentation from Aaron Lee Benson about his artwork and the sitespecific piece planned for King Plaza; to allocate funds for temporary installation of “Truth Booth”; and approve matching funds of up to $25,000 to support the National Endowment for the Arts grant pertaining to the Code:ART initiative. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20, in the Community Meeting Room at City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave.

Page 12 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Transitions

CITY OF PALO ALTO NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

Births, marriages and deaths

Travis Krutt Travis Krutt, a resident of Palo Alto, died unexpectedly on Aug. 11. He was 27. Travis was born in San Mateo on Feb. 6, 1989, and graduated from Woodside High School. He attended the College of San Mateo and then joined the United States Air Force, serving at Travis Air Force Base and stationed in Dubai. At the time of his death, he was in training to be an EMT. His family remembers him expressing that he wanted to help people and believed in paying forward the gifts of love and care he received in his life from his family and friends. At age 7, he started travelling with his Aunt Lynn and Uncle Stephen who took him all over the world. Together they saw lions in Zimbabwe, koalas in Australia and monkeys in Bali. They zip-lined in Costa Rica, sailed in the Virgin Islands, visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and met family in Italy. He is remembered by his family for fearlessly embracing adventures. He loved cars with a particular affinity for VW Bugs and Mustangs and was known to spend many hours maintaining his and his familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vehicles. He was also a musician and played the drums, bass, cello and espe-

cially liked to play the guitar. According to his family, his version of â&#x20AC;&#x153;The House of the Rising Sonâ&#x20AC;? brought people to tears. He also enjoyed his nonnaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pasta with prawns and trips to the duck pond in Palo Alto with his nonno and beloved dog Morgan. Among other things, he liked off-roading, water-skiing, Star Trek, carnivals and taking long drives at night, blasting his stereo. He is survived by his mother and stepfather Lisa and Martin Farfan of Redwood City; father Bill Krutt of San Rafael; grandfather Vic Befera of Palo Alto; aunts and uncles Carla Befera and Bruce McLeod of Palo Alto, Lynn Befera and Steve Gold of San Francisco, Sandy Russo of Petaluma, Ray Krutt of Fairfield, Skip and Carolyn Morton of Lincoln, Rex and Peggy Morton of Lake Oswego, Oregon; and many cousins in the United States and Italy. A memorial is pending. A donation may be made on his behalf to the Wounded Warrior Project at woundedwarriorproject.org.

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NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Palo Alto City Council will hold a Public Hearing at the special meeting on Monday, October 24, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. or as near thereafter as possible, in the Council Chambers, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, to consider, adoption of a Resolution adopting the Professorville Historic District Design Guidelines. The Guidelines will be used by the Historic Resources )VHYK /9) HUK *P[` :[HÉ&#x2C6; ^OLU YL]PL^PUN +L]LSVWTLU[ Applications in the Professorville Neighborhood to evaluate the compatibility of proposed changes with the historic character of Professorville. The HRB recommends Council approval of the Guidelines. The Project is exempt from the provisions of California Environmental Quality Act per Class 8 Categorical Exemption, which applies to actions taken by Regulatory Agencies, as authorized by State or Local Ordinance, to assure the maintenance, restoration, enhancement, or protection of the environment where the regulatory process involves procedures for protection of the environment (Continued from September 12, 2016).

BETH MINOR City Clerk

Barbara L. Pease Barbara L. Pease, age 91, passed away peacefully on September 28th after a brief illness. Barbara was beloved by her family and friends, all of whom miss her deeply. Barbara was born on October 14th, 1924 in Willows, California, to Louise Donohoe Lucas and John Lucas. She was extremely proud of her Irish heritage. In 1938 her family moved to Palo Alto where her mother was a teacher. Barbara attended Jordan Junior High School and graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1942. After high school, Barbara attended the University of Oregon where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Psychology. She was active in the Delta Gamma sorority. While at the University of Oregon, she met Gilbert Pease, whom she married in 1947. Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Palo Alto where they raised their daughter, Lucinda. Barbara had many interests and was active in the community. She volunteered for over 50 years with the Auxiliary of the Lucile Packard Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hospital at Stanford. She also volunteered at the International Center at Stanford, working with international students and their families. She enjoyed travel and learning about and engaging with people from a variety of places and cultures. Barbara was a dedicated mother, grandmother, and greatgrandmother. Her daughter and granddaughters benefitted from her generosity and commitment to their growth and wellbeing. She was their advocate, always willing to listen, counsel, and support them. She proudly and enthusiastically participated in all major events in their lives. This was most evident in her recent trip to Palm Springs to attend her youngest granddaughterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wedding, which took place just a few weeks prior to her passing. Her positive and resilient spirit was an inspiration to her family. Barbara is survived by her daughter Lucinda Pease-Alvarez of Redwood City; her son-in-law, Antonio JosĂŠ Alvarez; and their two daughters, Laura Alvarez and Pilar Alvarez. She also has two great-grandchildren, Joaquin and Marisol Pellegrin-Alvarez. She was preceded in death by her husband Gilbert. A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, October 22nd at St. Bedeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Episcopal Church, 2650 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park. Memorial contributions may be made to the Channing House Employeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Fund and to The Lucille Packard Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hospital. PAID

OBITUARY

www.PaloAltoOnline.com â&#x20AC;˘ Palo Alto Weekly â&#x20AC;˘ October 14, 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ Page 13

Spectrum

LOCAL RESULTS View online Nov. 8 at PaloAltoOnline.com

Editorials, letters and opinions

Collins, DiBrienza for school board

olding our local elected officials accountable for their performance in office is not something we do very well in Palo Alto. Incumbents not only enjoy a built-in advantage but generally unconditional support from their social, political and school networks, often without a rigorous examination of how well they have actually governed. The two incumbents running for re-election to the school board, Melissa Baten Caswell and Heidi Emberling, are no exception. That is one reason why it will be difficult to elect the two qualified challengers in this race, Todd Collins and Jennifer DiBrienza. There is no way to sugar-coat our views on the performance over the last four years of Baten Caswell and Emberling; their actions on the school board, while surely well-intended, have allowed the district to gyrate from one crisis or controversy to another, undermining trust and confidence in the board, in Superintendent Max McGee and in the operation of the district. We expect and need more than good intentions from our leaders, and we have the opportunity to put in place a board with better judgment. In short, we need new blood. Emberling was elected for the first time in 2012 and is asking for a second four-year term. Baten Caswell was elected in 2007 and re-elected in 2012, the beneficiary of an extra year due to the change of elections from odd- to even-numbered years. After nine years on the board, she now seeks a third term that would bring her to 13 total years on the board. It is very disappointing that Baten Caswell chose not conform to the tradition of a voluntary limit of two terms (eight years), becoming only the second such school board member in more than 40 years (the other being current Trustee Camille Townsend). In doing so she is telling the community that she does not have confidence that others can serve as capably as she. The result is to discourage others in the community from stepping forward and to thwart the essential evolution of leadership. Her view that the board needs her institutional knowledge is the argument given by every incumbent seeking longer service and belies the fact that elected bodies regularly overcome this loss as members turn over.

With three school board seats on the November ballot (the third incumbent, Townsend, chose not to seek a fourth term) three challengers have stepped up to run against Baten Caswell and Emberling in spite of the difficult odds: Collins, a school volunteer and investment manager; DiBrienza, an education consultant and former teacher; and Jay Cabrera, a perennial candidate for multiple local offices, including for school board two years ago.

ike their supporters, we respect Baten Caswell and Emberling and appreciate their service. They are good people trying their best. But our school district has not by any measure been wellgoverned or well-led over the last four years, and these two, along with Townsend, must bear much of the responsibility. Their lack of transparency, failure to hold the superintendent accountable and inclination to retreat into closed sessions, often with shaky legal justification, has repeatedly turned important issues deserving of public discussion into tangled and largely avoidable controversies. The most recent example is the mishandling of the board’s greatest fiduciary responsibility: sound fiscal management. In May, the board majority approved a three-year union contract (a first in Palo Alto) with a 12 percent raise and an automatic equivalent “me-too” raise without regard to performance for all highly paid non-union managers and senior administrators. A month later, the board adopted a budget incorporating those raises that could only be balanced by assuming a 9 percent increase in property-tax revenue. And then just two weeks later, the district learned that the property tax increase would be only 5 percent and revenue would be $5.2 million below projections (later increased to $6.1 million.) The board failed the community on many levels. It negotiated and agreed to a costly three-year union contract without informing the public until it was already a done deal and approved by both the unions and the board in closed session. If given the chance, many in the community would have cautioned the board about the long-term risks of both the multiyear contract and the exceedingly generous pay increases. And they also would have demanded finan-

Page 14 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

cial forecasts under different revenue scenarios so that the risks could be quantified, something the board did not ask of its staff. Because of the size of the raises, no funds were available for investing in the numerous program improvements that the board had just spent months discussing with the community, a process that misled the public into believing that robust financial resources could fund programs such as foreign-language instruction in elementary schools, class size reductions, a new school and new classroom innovations. At the very time these were under discussion publicly, the board was negotiating raises behind closed doors that would consume all our new revenue, and more. Then once the mis-budgeting of property-tax revenue was discovered in early July, instead of immediately preparing financial models for the impact on this and future years, Board President Emberling and Superintendent McGee created a long drawnout process (still underway) that focused on how the mistake occurred, wasting precious time that should have been devoted to implementing adjustments to this year’s budget. Worse, however, has been the confused and convoluted presentation of this issue to the public and the attempt to paint the problem as minor when compared to budget cuts that we’ve had to make in past recessions. If the board was determined to accept the risks and uncertainties of three-year employee contracts, it should have at least deferred approval of the contract for 45 days until it could confirm it would have the property-tax revenue to pay for it. And its casual use of “me-too” raises, which has been quietly incorporated without discussion into contracts with its senior administrators, is an embarrassment.

n addition to its failures in financial management, time and time again, from the big to the small, this board has found itself out of compliance with the law or the district’s own policies. It delayed by almost two years complying with Seth’s Law, which required that complaints of discriminatory bullying be handled within clear timeframes through a formal process. It repeatedly violated the state Public Records Act by not providing the required timely responses

to document requests, at one point falling more than a year behind in releasing routine email communications between board members and district administrators. On multiple occasions, even knowing it was under scrutiny because of earlier mistakes, the board failed to ensure that timely and legally mandated investigations were done in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment by teachers and administrators. It even failed to ensure that routine minutes of its meetings were completed as required by board policy, at one point earlier this year falling months behind. But the shirking of its governance responsibility has been most striking in its handling of the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigations over the district’s handling of student bullying and sexual harassment. Acting in closed sessions for more than a year, the board not only paid its attorneys to fight and resist the OCR but to embark on a foolhardy and unsuccessful vendetta to change OCR procedures and limit its authority on a national level. Both Baten Caswell and Emberling supported this strategy, and they both voted for a June 2014 resolution that publicly (and wrongly) accused a Palo Alto parent of document tampering in an OCR case that had already been closed in the district’s favor. Both recently told the Weekly they were unaware that OCR informed the district months ago that there was had been no document tampering by the parent, only the copying and pasting of two electronic documents by OCR staff. Any responsible board would have worked cooperatively with investigators, acknowledged its mistakes and sought an early resolution that would focus on improving policies and procedures. The board’s actions to pursue a defensive strategy cost the district hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees as well as defamed a member of the community. With two major investigations of sexual harassment at Palo and Gunn high schools still open and the board having again waited too long before seeking an early resolution with OCR, it is almost a certainty that the district will soon receive more damaging findings about its handling of allegations against former Paly Principal Phil Winston and English teacher Kevin Sharp, among others.

Sadly, instead of pushing back on its lawyers and seeking second opinions, the incumbents allowed the district’s law firms to lead them into an abyss, all in secret. The poor handling of the zero period controversy at Gunn, the confusion over class-size data, the rejection of teacher recommendations on math curricula, the multi-year debate over high school counseling, the lack of enforcement of the homework policy, the transfer of Winston to a special-ed class at Jordan after his inappropriate behavior as Paly principal — these are just a few of the avoidable controversies that this board has allowed to fester.

ith three board seats up for election and only two qualified challengers running, it is a foregone conclusion that one of the incumbents will be re-elected. Since our goal is to maximize the chance that both challengers are elected, we urge voters to only cast ballots for Todd Collins and Jennifer DiBrienza. By withholding the third vote, the advantage of incumbency will be somewhat offset and there is a chance that both Collins and DiBrienza would receive more votes than one of the incumbents. Voting for either of the incumbents only serves to reduce the odds of that happening. Collins and DiBrienza will bring special and valuable expertise to the board. Collins, 55, is an investment manager with three children, two of whom graduated from Gunn and who are now in college and one who is autistic and attends a special school in San Jose. He has served on several school committees and recently chaired the elementary school subcommittee of the Enrollment Management Advisory Committee. He has been critical of the board’s handling of the current financial problem, arguing that it was a self-inflicted crisis due to the adoption of an overly generous multi-year teachers’ contract, and that once discovered, the board did not move fast enough to reduce expenses. He has also not hesitated to be open and honest with feedback to the board and administration when he has seen processes go sideways, such as McGee’s involvement with a parent group advocating a new high school at Cubberley that was (continued on next page)

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Guest Opinion

An architect critiques the Avenidas addition, with dismay by David Hirsch

or more than a year I have been following the process of review of the addition for Avenidas, the downtown Palo Alto nonprofit senior center. It began when I saw a newspaper illustration, the architect’s rendering, announcing the project with a view from the parking lot on Ramona Street behind the existing and original Birge Clark historic building. I’m a recent Palo Alto resident, an architect who has spent 50 years designing buildings in New York City, many of them renovations or additions to 19th century historic buildings. Some of these historic structures were by noted East Coast architects. Many have had intensive review by New York’s Landmarks Commission, an important commission established to preserve New York’s significant historic structures, created soon after the demolition of the famous Pennsylvania Station in 1966, an irreplaceable loss to the city. My first reaction to the Avenidas proposal was amazement. How was it possible that Palo Alto would allow the construction of the three-story addition of such incongruous quality relative to Birge Clark’s modestly scaled two-story structure? Although the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for additions to his-

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kept from the board and public. Collins believes that the district suffers from a fear of owning up to mistakes and not being transparent about its decision-making. We couldn’t agree more. DiBrienza, 45, is an education consultant and former elementary school teacher who received a doctorate in education from Stanford University with an emphasis on math instruction. She has three children, two at Ohlone and one at the private Girls’ Middle School. She has worked at Stanford to improve math curriculum and has helped teach math to aspiring teachers at the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Her focus in this campaign is the need for the school board to honor the professional judgment of its teachers more and to be supportive of innovation in the classroom. We have some concern over whether she will be able to pivot from her teacher-centric orientation to the governance and policy-making responsibility of an elected school board member, where transpar-

toric structures suggests that the new element should not copy the original, it states that it should nonetheless be compatible in massing, size and scale with the original to protect the historic integrity of the project. This new addition’s more massive design violates this principle. Furthermore, it provides a three-story glass entry directly facing a parking lot, an incompatible relationship in my opinion. My second experience was to visit with the Avenidas director of the project to see how committed Avenidas was to this scheme and to ask why the program demanded such an out-of-scale structure. It was a polite discussion but one that made it clear that there was little flexibility. Following this meeting I attended the Architectural Review Board (ARB) hearing, and after some time, the Historic Review Board (HRB) hearing. Both of these sessions were critical of many of the details, but neither suggested that there was any significant, irredeemable issue of design. Reading the history of the building led to the realization that the real cause of the disparity in the design was the retention of a one-story garage at the rear of the original building, which was deemed to be a historic structure as evaluated by the consultant conservator. This conclusion was based on evidence that it was also designed by Birge Clark and constructed soon after the original building. The original maps of that time indicated that this structure and an adjacent landscaped court were completely hidden from view, surrounded by other buildings during that

ency and oversight of administrators and teachers is critically important. Her clear preference is to address problems quietly behind the scenes, an approach that has repeatedly gotten the district into trouble. We hope that she will quickly learn, if she has not already, that this is not a winning approach in Palo Alto. Her values of inclusion, equity and student well-being are what our district needs, and we believe her experience as an educator will help other board members better understand the impacts of their decisions on the classroom and students. The election of Collins and DiBrienza, along with the retirement of Camille Townsend, will go a long way toward moving beyond the divisiveness and bad judgments of the last four years and refocusing on improving district management, transparency and decision-making. We recommend that residents of the Palo Alto Unified School District, which includes some 1,200 households in Los Altos Hills, vote Nov. 8 for Todd Collins and Jennifer DiBrienza. Q

era prior to their demolition to become a parking lot. And it was likely an afterthought by Birge Clark following the overall building design. The garage relative to the new construction in the architect’s rendering reminded me of that old adage, the “tail wagging the dog.” It is a minor and insignificant piece, hardly representative of the work of this distinguished Palo Alto architect. It is certain that this space, the combination of the garage and open space, could be used more effectively as a significant program facility, especially for seniors. At the next HRB hearing I and one other speaker proposed that the commissioners should disregard the recommendation of the historic reviewers and ask Avenidas to explore a scheme that stretches across the entire rear of the original building and eliminates the garage. This exercise would be significant if it showed that the entire program would fit into a two-story scheme. It might not require such a massive projection into Cogswell Plaza and loom over the view of the most significant facade of the Birge Clark building, the Bryant Street elevation. This change would also eliminate the lopsided, incongruous view from the Ramona parking lot, allowing a consistent expression at a scale that was respectful of the Birge Clark building. The HRB requested Avenidas to study the option. This week, the project was back at the HRB for review, with the garage preserved. According to city planning staff, this decision not to demolish the garage is because:

Letters A call for participation Editor, I note the story of the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce’s letter (Oct. 4) that asserts “preferences” against certain antigrowth candidates. As stated by the Chamber’s CEO, while the Chamber does not “endorse” candidates their mission is to “advocate for business interests so businesses are in a place to thrive and do well.” But to achieve such goals wouldn’t the Chamber be much more effective by offering reasoned arguments on how businesses can contribute to such a thriving community? Let me suggest three issues of special importance where businesses could help with concrete ideas that would help decisionmakers work toward a “thriving and healthy” community: 1. Palo Alto has a jobs-toemployed-resident ratio of over 3:1. This is among the highest

It would add to the cost of the design. The original report from the applicant’s historic consultant described the garage as a significant historic element. Q There was a previous, very preliminary scheme, which studied the elimination of the garage, but it was disqualified because of the historic report and Avenidas’ desire to maintain the courtyard and garage. These are all shopworn justifications for the original error, a slap in the face of the HRB and a violation of the due process of review. I am reminded of some of the critical issues I have faced in projects where I, as an architect, had to accept the direction of the duly empowered reviewing agency and my client was required to authorize the additional work. It is unfortunate that Avenidas, such an esteemed and needed organization, is being guided by these illegitimate decisions that have limited the architect’s options. One must realize, however, that once the building is constructed it will be a permanent commitment. The cost of redesign now is a small payment relative to the construction cost of the final building. Birge Clark’s legacy in Palo Alto deserves a better consideration. Q David Hirsch is an architect who spent most of his career in New York City but has moved to Crescent Park in Palo Alto. He is eager to continue his career interest and experience in the built environment by examining, understanding and sometimes critiquing his newfound community. Q Q

commute ratios in the country for cities over 50,000. It is matched only by a few cities like Washington, D.C. and counties like Manhattan. There are no other cities in California, not even San Francisco, that come close to this ratio. 2. Despite the fact that jobs have been growing at three times the rate of employed residents over the last decade, the share of property taxes paid by non-residential properties has declined by a full percentage point each year during that time — they now contribute only 25 percent of the tax that is the most critical tax component for all local governments (cities, schools, county, community colleges and special districts). 3. Despite the rapid expansion of commercial properties in Palo Alto over the last decade, the square footage of retail space has declined. It would serve the Chamber well to provide substantive contributions to a discussion of such important business and community issues rather than

dividing candidates into simplistic categories of friends and enemies. Greg Schmid Janice Way, Palo Alto

Eliminate tipping Editor, Your Guest Opinion of Oct. 7, “Rethinking minimum wage: One size does not fit all,” by three owners of local restaurants fails to address what I think is the most egregious part of the restaurant experience: the practice of tipping. In Europe, wages are fair and equitable, including benefits. Tipping is not expected in restaurants. (Americans don’t realize that, of course.) Fair living wages and employee rights make more sense than the current system here in America. Do away with tipping altogether. Pay people what they are due: a living wage or better, and end odious tipping. Alice Schaffer Smith Los Palos Circle, Palo Alto

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 15

TOM FORD

Public Notice 2016

Stream Maintenance Program

TRUNK SHOW

As part of its annual Stream Maintenance Program (SMP), the Santa Clara Valley Water District is performing work along several creeks through early fall of this year. The SMP removes sediment and repairs eroded creek banks throughout Santa Clara County to allow waterways to carry floodwaters safely. This work also creates more natural conditions for fish, plants and wildlife.

Sediment Removal • Ross Creek at Cherry (San Jose) • Ross Creek at Meridian (San Jose) • Ross Creek at Jarvis (San Jose) • Canoas Creek, spots throughout creek (San Jose) • Coyote Creek at Charcot Avenue (San Jose) • Berryessa Creek, downstream Piedmont Road (San Jose) • Lower Silver Creek, Near Lake Cunningham (San Jose) • Guadalupe River at Woz Way (San Jose) • Berryessa Creek, upstream Cropley Avenue (San Jose) • Adobe Creek, upstream of E. Meadow Drive (Palo Alto) • Stanford Channel (Palo Alto) • Calabazas Creek, downstream of Tasman Drive (Santa Clara) • San Tomas Aquino Creek, downstream Agnew Road (Santa Clara) • San Tomas Aquino Creek, downstream Great America Parkway (Santa Clara) • San Tomas Aquino Creek at Westmont Basin (Santa Clara) • Stevens Creek at La Avenida Avenue (Mountain View) • Calabazas Creek at Comer Debris Basin (Mountain View) Bank Stabilization • Guadalupe River, downstream Southern Pacific Rail Road (San Jose) • Guadalupe River, downstream Trimble (San Jose) • Berryessa Creek, upstream Cropley Avenue (San Jose) • Calabazas Creek, upstream of Old Mountain View Alviso Road (Mountain View) • Regnart Creek, upstream Festival Drive (Cupertino) • Stevens Creek at Clearcreek Court (Cupertino) • Saratoga Creek, upstream of Cox Avenue (Saratoga) • Saratoga Creek, upstream of Cox Avenue (Saratoga)

Palo Alto Oct. 5-10

SATURDAY 11AM – 3PM OCT 22ND 13th Annual Avenidas Caregiver Conference

Oct. 5-Oct. 10

Saturday, October 22 8:30am — 3pm 266 Escuela Avenue, Mountain View Keynote by Lisa Krieger, San Jose Mercury News Workshops on Cultivating Communication, Community Resources, and Changing Landscapes Boxed lunch and door prizes!

Only $40 before Sept. 26! ($65 for 2 people)

To register, call (650) 289-5400 or visit avenidas.org.

Theft related Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Residential burglary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Vehicle related Abandoned auto. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Bicycle recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Bicycle theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Driving with suspended license . . . . . . 6 Expired registration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Hit and run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Parking/driving violation . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Vehicle accident/minor injury . . . . . . . . 1 Vehicle accident/prop damage. . . . . . . 1 Alcohol or drug related Driving under the influence . . . . . . . . . . 2 Possession of drugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Possession of paraphernalia . . . . . . . . 1 Miscellaneous Adult protective services referral . . . . . 2 Animal call . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 CPS referral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Disturbance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Found property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Information case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Medical call. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Mental evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Missing adult. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Missing juvenile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Parole arrest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Returned missing person . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Suspicious circumstances . . . . . . . . . . 2 Warrant arrest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Warrant/other agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

VIOLENT CRIMES Palo Alto

542 High St., 10/08, 12:23 a.m.; battery/simple. 180 El Camino Real, 10/09, 4:49 p.m.; robbery/armed. Forest Avenue, 10/09, 8:17 p.m.; family violence/battery.

Today’s news, sports & hot picks TOOLS FOR POSITIVE AGING

Page 16 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Violence related Armed robbery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Battery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Family violence/battery. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Theft related Commercial burglary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Embezzlement/misc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Grand theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Identity theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Petty theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Vehicle related Abandoned bicycle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Bicycle theft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Driving with suspended license . . . . . . 3 Driving without license . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Hit and run . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Traffic/hazardous material . . . . . . . . . . 1 Vehicle accident/minor injury . . . . . . . . 3 Vehicle accident/prop damage. . . . . . . 5 Vehicle registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Vehicle/stored . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Vehicle tow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Alcohol or drug related Drinking in public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Drunk in public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 DUI/accident. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Possession of drugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Miscellaneous False info to police . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Found property. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Noise complaint/construction. . . . . . . . 1 Outside investigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Psych subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Suspicious circumstances . . . . . . . . . . 1 Trespassing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Vandalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Warrant/other agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Menlo Park

For more information, contact Scott Akin at (408) 630-2060 or via email at SAkin@valleywater.org. 10/2016_ET

A weekly compendium of vital statistics

POLICE CALLS

The projects listed below are part of this season’s Notice of Proposed Work. Pending regulatory approval, work on the proposed projects may continue through Nov. 30, 2016. Neighborhoods that are directly impacted by this work will receive a notice in the mail that will include project details, schedule and contact information. The projects proposed to be performed this year are listed below categorically:

Pulse

Cover Story

Deciding Palo Alto’s future Candidates for City Council tackle development, quality-of-life issues

by Gennady Sheyner / photographs by Veronica Weber

hat kind of city should Palo Alto strive to become? A cosmopolitan hub of worlddisrupting innovators or a leafy community where children play on the streets? Should it become dense enough to support more mass transit and affordablehousing developments or should it fight to retain the pleasant suburban atmosphere that led many residents to move here? These questions loom over the Nov. 8 election, which is as much a contest between values as it is between the 11 candidates vying for four seats. The stakes are particularly high this time around. In addition to the usual Palo Alto council duties — setting utility rates, crafting development policies, authorizing bike projects and reviewing citizen appeals — the new members will also be making several decisions that will linger well beyond their four-year terms. They will, in all likelihood, adopt the updated Comprehensive Plan, the land-use bible that will form the basis for all zoning decisions until 2030. It will also hire a new

city manager, with James Keene recently declaring his intention to retire in 2018, when he hits his 10-year mark. It will grapple with complex regional policies, including Caltrain upgrades and housing quotas, while making lasting decisions about local services, whether the size of the new animal shelter or the design of the city’s new public-safety building. Some of the candidates profess to be agents of change, while others promise to protect the city from it. Three — Stewart Carl, Arthur Keller and Lydia Kou — adhere toward the latter and are receiving overwhelming support from the “residentialist” side of the city’s debate over land use. All three favor, to varying degrees, continuing and potentially expanding an annual cap on new office development. Greer Stone, the chair of the city’s Human Relations Commission, also tilts toward slow-growth policies — including maintaining the city’s 50-foot height limit for new buildings. He believes the city’s encouragement of more accessory-dwelling or “granny” units will be doomed without

better enforcement of the potential violations. Like others on the residentialist side, he thinks the city should focus its new housing on priced-out teachers, firstresponders and the community’s most vulnerable residents. Others candidates — Adrian Fine, Don McDougall and Greg Tanaka — favor a less restrictive approach to development and a wider range of housing options. All have the backing of the Democratic Party establishment and of the council’s moderate wing. All are calling for new approaches and a robust community conversation to achieve housing solutions, whether it’s through neighborhood-specific “area plans” (Fine), a “housing summit” (Tanaka) or good oldfashioned public hearings (McDougall). Fine and Tanaka, as planning commissioners, have both criticized the city’s new office cap as too “blunt” a tool. McDougall is open to allowing some office growth, provided new developments meet a set of “sustainability” requirements. John Fredrich, a retired Gunn High School civics teacher run-

ning in his sixth election, proudly stands outside of the political establishment. He solicits no donations or endorsements and likes his democracy with a small “d.” He is critical of city leadership, wants to “demote” the Architectural Review Board and believes the council has been negligent in protecting the city from rampant office development. Liz Kniss, the sole incumbent in the race (the other three seats are being vacated by Mayor Pat Burt and Greg Schmid, who are terming out, and Marc Berman, who is running for state Assembly), is his opposite in just about every respects except election experience. A household name in the regional Democratic Party, the former two-time mayor has more than two decades of public service under her belt and is now running in her 10th and final election. Rounding out the field are two candidates who have designated themselves as the “outsiders.” Real-estate broker Leonard Ely III says he’s tired of watching the council study everything to death without producing any real solutions. Danielle Martell, who last

Stewart Carl

tewart Carl began his civic office park and strip-mall-style arinvolvement on the ground. chitecture increasingly intruding More recently, he shifted into and looming over residential his focus to the sky. homes, parks, small retailers and A decade ago, the College Ter- the pedestrian streetscape.” race neighborhood resident was The chief culprit, in his view, part of a citizens group who vet- is commercial development. His ted Stanford University’s housing campaign slogan — “Less office. proposals and, More Q of L” years later, re— succinctly viewed plans for lays out the vi‘ There’s no the block-long sion of Carl and such a thing College Terrace others who hold Centre devela slow-growth as “affordable opment on El philosophy on housing” Camino Real. city developTwo years ago, ment. It also in Palo Alto.’ he co-founded implies a causal relationship a cit ywide — Stewart Carl, between the citizens group Palo Alto Weekly interview two: The city’s called Sky recent office Posse, which is advocating for reducing airplane growth is threatening its “quality noise and has largely succeeded of life.” Though this idea is widely acin elevating the topic on city and cepted among the city’s “residencounty agendas. Now, as a candidate for the City tialists,” Carl’s preferred remedy Council, he is back to surveying goes further than most: a moratothe city’s development landscape rium on office development. The and is troubled by what he sees: freeze would stay in effect until too many offices, too much con- the city figures out how to address gestion and suboptimal architec- all of the problems that new projture. In response to a survey by the ects create. In a recent interview with the residents’ group Palo Alto Neighborhoods, he wrote that the city is Weekly, Carl called office con“become a hodgepodge of incom- struction the “engine that’s drivpatible architectural styles, with ing development in Palo Alto, and

it’s a highly leveraged engine.” An employee, he noted, may only need 75 square feet of space to work in, but housing this person would require 750 square feet. Such growth of office space, in his view, is not sustainable. “It’s stressing all of our infrastructure,” Carl said. “It’s stressing our ability to provide housing. It’s stressing our parking. It’s stressing our traffic. It’s putting stress on our retail by pushing up the cost

of real estate We really need to take a breather. ... It’s time to put a moratorium on and really figure out how we’re going to cope.” It’s not just the quantity of new developments that trouble Carl; it’s also the quality. He is concerned about recent developments that won approval from the city’s Architectural Review Board, only to face appeals by citizens and get struck down by the City Council (the two most recent cases are

ran in 2005, is equally tired of watching the council completely ignore issues she cares about most: the safety of children at Rinconada pool, illegal immigration and the violation of her constitutional rights by city leaders. This year’s election also presents an unusual milestone: It’s a swan song for Palo Alto’s ninemember council. Thanks to a ballot measure voters passed in 2014, this is the last election in which voters will be electing members to a nine-member council. Starting in 2018, the number of council seats will be reduced to seven and each voice will become slightly louder and potentially more influential. The candidates, for their part, hardly need to be reminded of what’s at stake. Each believes the voters on Nov. 8 will play a critical role in shaping what Palo Alto will look like years from now, and for decades to come. “This is an election about Palo Alto’s future and the type of community we want to raise our children in,” Stone said at a recent candidate forum. No one could disagree. Q the downtown developments at 437 Lytton Ave. and 429 University Ave.). In Carl’s view, the city must improve the “independence and professionalism” of the board so that the council won’t have to spend hours designing projects — which is not its area of expertise. “All art is subjective. That doesn’t mean it’s arbitrary and that one decision is no better than the other,” Carl told the Weekly. “There is better architecture and there is worse architecture, and we need a high level of architects to sort it all out.” As a relative newcomer to the city’s land-use debate, Carl has found allies on the slow-growth wing on the council, with Tom DuBois, Eric Filseth and Greg Schmid all endorsing his campaign. Former council members Enid Pearson and Emily Renzel, conservationists and stalwarts of the original “residentialist” movement in the 1960s and 1970s, are also backing him. Carl was born in suburban Philadelphia, studied transportation design and industrial design in southern California and moved to the Bay Area to earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. After stints at several Silicon Valley companies and renting “all over Palo Alto,” he settled in College Terrace about two decades ago and now works as a self-employed (continued on next page)

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 17

Cover Story

Len Ely

To emphasize this point, Ely ry it. If it doesn’t work, try cited a Palo Alto Times article something else. It’s the mantra of a thou- from 1973 in which officials sand Silicon Valley startups. It’s raised concerns about the city’s also the modus operandi of Leon- worsening jobs-housing imbalard Ely III, a City Council candi- ance. At that time, the city had date who doesn’t pretend to have more than two jobs for every housing unit; today, the ratio is all the answers. Ely, a commercial real-estate greater than three to one. “In the 43 broker with the years, we’ve firm Renault identified a & Handley, ‘If you’re happy a doesn’t have a with how the city problem, lot of people list of endorstalked about ers or, as he is functioning, it, and we’ve puts it, a “poI’m probably not spent endless litical agenda.” amounts of While others your candidate.’ money and staff tout their expe— Leonard Ely III, time studying it, riences on the Chamber of Commerce and we haven’t city’s planning fixed it,” Ely commission or candidates forum told the Weekly. their decades as Ely doesn’t neighborhood activists, Ely characterizes him- entirely agree with some of the self as “just a guy” looking to get actions that the council has taken on issues relating to development. things done. That lack of action, he argues, He is not a fan of the city’s recenthas been the problem with the ly adopted annual cap on new ofCity Council in recent decades. fice development, and he doesn’t Council members talk a big game, think much of the council’s recent but they actually don’t do any- decision to ban the conversion of thing about the issues they talk ground-floor retail space to other about, he said. They talk about uses. When the owner of 100 Adbuilding new parks, but the city dison Ave. (former site of Addison doesn’t even do an adequate job Antiques) requested a waiver from maintaining existing ones. They the ground-floor requirement, Ely talk about how noisy gas-pow- was one of several speakers who ered leaf-blowers are, but the city urged the council to support the barely enforces its ban on the ap- request, arguing that the site on pliances. And, of course, they’ve downtown’s periphery just isn’t been talking for decades about good for retail. Ely believes that rather than isPalo Alto’s insufficient housing stock while watching the problem suing sweeping regulations, the city should look at the particular get progressively worse. “If you’re happy with how the circumstances, merits and drawcity is functioning, I’m probably backs of each project and decide not your candidate,” Ely told the accordingly. “We have a cookie-cutter polaudience at the September forum sponsored by the Chamber of icy,” Ely told the Weekly. “So if you’re building a little building Commerce. Ely is a Palo Alto resident who over here, you’re under the same is challenging the “Palo Alto restrictions as if you’re building a process.” He wants less study- multi-story, multi-tenant building ing and more doing; less analysis in Stanford Research Park or out and more problem-solving. At a in the Baylands. I really believe recent League of Women Voters you have to look at these projects forum, he cited Franklin Delano on their merits and not just say, ‘If Roosevelt’s axiom to try some you don’t do this, then you can’t method and “it if fails, admit it build that.’” Consistent with that philosophy, frankly and try another.” Ely wants to bring this approach to Ely believes that limiting developPalo Alto, a city where residents ments in the downtown core to 50 have been “tolerating stagnation” feet is a mistake. “This is a place that we could for too long.

make denser and have affordable housing, possibly even housing that our first responders can live in,” Ely said at a Palo Alto Neighborhoods forum. But downtown isn’t his only answer. Ely believes the council should be more ambitious in proposing new housing, even if these projects are inherently controversial. The biggest challenge in building housing in Palo Alto is the land cost, he said, which means that the city should first identify land that can be provided at “zero cost” to enable housing for teachers, firefighters and others who would not be able to otherwise afford it. “That would be my first thing: identify those places,” Ely told the Weekly. “If they are on parklands, we’d have to go to the voters. And if we went to the voters and they turned it down, they obviously don’t want to have affordable housing in Palo Alto.” Ely hasn’t served on any local commissions, but he believes his background in philanthropy would serve him well if he’s elected. His father, Leonard Ely II, was a well-known businessman and philanthropist who served on the boards of dozens of local nonprofits and who helped form what is now the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Following in his father’s footsteps, Ely served on the boards at Adolescent Counseling Ser-

vices, the Stevenson House and the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo. As a board member at the children’s zoo, Ely worked on one of the city’s least controversial housing developments: the reconstruction of the zoo’s bobcat cage. At the Chamber of Commerce forum last month, Ely said that one thing that the city can do to help maintain its wide array of services is rely more on local nonprofits. “I think the nonprofits who work with a lot of our city services should be given a little more leeway in building things and doing things that they in turn give back to the city,” Ely said. As someone new to City Hall politics, Ely is not afraid to take an outlier position or acknowledge his ignorance about a particular subject. He has just recently learned about the city’s Transportation Management Association (TMA), the nonprofit that the city formed to combat traffic congestion by offering commuters transit passes, ride-share programs and other mode-switching amenities. At last month’s Bike Palo Alto event, he approached a staff member from the TMA stand and had a long conversation about the new approach, which he believes is well worth trying. Yet he has also spoken to people who are more skeptical and who note that many of downtown’s commuters have multiple jobs, work

odd hours or have other circumstances that preclude them from taking Caltrain. “I think one of the benefits of my candidacy is that I don’t know anything, so I come in and when we talk about something, I find out about it and I learn about it from both sides, not just one side,” Ely said. Furthermore, while he believes in public transportation, his position on the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s proposed bus cuts in Palo Alto veers from those of other candidates. While others stridently oppose the cuts, Ely favors talking to the VTA about switching to the VTA smaller buses in the north county. In his response to a Palo Alto Neighborhoods survey, he observed that many of the buses that go past his house near Middlefield Road appear empty or have just one or two riders. “I think this is strictly an economic issue and legislating the solution will just make the rest of the county subsidize our buses,” Ely said. “Also, the environmental impact of underutilized buses is enormous.” And on the topic of high-speed rail, he was clearly in the minority when he said at a League of Women Voters forum earlier this month that he supports California’s high-speed rail project and that he does not believe grade separation of Caltrain is feasible in the city. That’s not to say, however, that all of his positions stray from the mean. He believes, like most of his fellow candidates, that Palo Alto should continue to fund an animal-services operation, that it should regulate Airbnb rentals and that it should support the electrification of Caltrain. But in discussing his candidacy in recent forums, Ely has emphasized the difference between him and the other 10 candidates. “I believe I can bring to the City Council a different vision, not clouded by being endorsed by a lot of people,” Ely said at the Palo Alto Neighborhoods Forum. “I’m looking forward to being able to work with the City Council and try to move us forward and not study things so much and make more decisions.” Q Editor’s note: The candidate’s father, Leonard Ely II, who died in 2011, was one of the Weekly’s original stakeholders; his widow, Shirley, remains a shareholder.

city cannot possibly build such housing without “compromising our quality of life.” While other candidates are calling for new programs that would enable housing for teachers, police officers and other service workers, Carl believes that Palo Alto is simply past the point where it can be an affordable place for these types of employees. “There’s no such a thing as ‘affordable housing’ in Palo Alto,” Carl said. “Just using that term misleads people. We can talk about expensive housing and

somewhat less expensive housing, but that’s really what we’re dealing with here. I don’t think that, given the macroeconomic climate, we can make Palo Alto affordable in a free market to teachers and people like that.” Carl also doesn’t agree with the city’s approach to solving transportation problems, which leans heavily on promoting “transportation demand management” programs at companies. He believes it is short-sighted to rely on plans in which businesses provide transit subsidies, ride-share services

and bike amenities to get workers to switch from commuting alone in cars to taking other modes of transit. In an interview with the Weekly, he said the city’s trafficreduction efforts are “fig leaves that paper over and hide the real transportation problems we’re having ... letting people pretend like we’re solving them while we’re not.” Instead, he said at the Chamber forum, the city should be a “leader in new transportation technologies like network ride-sharing

services and driverless cars that can provide a safe transportation system for our seniors.” In Carl’s view, cars — which he said aren’t going out of style anytime soon — aren’t the problem. The problem is the office development that brings the cars in the first place and that he — if elected — would try to get under control. “Cars don’t cause traffic,” Carl said. “Traffic is caused by too many cars coming to Palo Alto to work in the offices we have overbuilt in the last decade.” Q

Stewart Carl (continued from previous page)

product-development consultant. Like others with slow-growth leanings, Carl opposes any new buildings that would exceed the city’s 50-foot height limit. He also firmly rejects the idea that the city should significantly expand its housing stock to accommodate the heavy demand for Palo Alto homes. At a recent forum sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, he argued that the

Page 18 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Cover Story

Adrian Fine

drian Fine, the chair of point, he hopes, the city will have the city’s Planning and better controls over office growth. Rather than a cap, Fine prefers Transportation Commission, isn’t exactly a “Grow, baby, conditioning approvals of development on performance metrics grow” kind of guy. He has advocated for taller (the development’s impacts on buildings in the past, calling the traffic, parking, etc.) and its support for the city’s 50-foot city’s Transheight limit portation Man“pretty arbi‘I’d rather have agement Astrary” during a homes than sociation, the May meeting of nonprofit aimthe Citizens Adparking spots.’ ing to reduce visory Committraffic in downtee that is up— Adrian Fine, town Palo Alto. dating the city’s Palo Alto Weekly interview He noted the long-term vicity can learn sion document, the Comprehensive Plan. But now from many similar efforts in the he opposes breaking the barrier, area, whether it’s Stanford Unitelling the Weekly that he doesn’t versity’s cutting-edge transporsee any point in “blasting it right tation-demand management pronow.” He would like to see more gram on its campus or the recent development in areas well-served associations formed by cities like by transit but argues that single- Walnut Creek and Emeryville. Fine also said he is concerned family neighborhoods need to be preserved and protected from new about the prospect of the office cap (which currently applies to development. He was also initially skeptical downtown, California Avenue and about the city’s cap on new office El Camino Real) simply pushing development, calling it a “blunt development to other areas. “We may see new office develinstrument” during the commission’s review and, at one point, opment in other areas and we’re voting against it. But now that it’s still not addressing the impacts the law, he said he sees no reason there,” Fine told the Weekly. to mess with it and favors keeping “I’d rather see the cities address it until the city adopts its updated the root issues rather than the Comprehensive Plan, at which symptoms.”

While controlling office development is one theme of the current council race, encouraging more housing is another. Some candidates, including Stewart Carl and Lydia Kou, have made the former the pillar of their respective campaigns; Fine is laser-focused on the latter. He believes that the city is in a deep hole when it comes to housing and that something needs to be done. A renter who lives in College Terrace with his fiancee, he points out that renters

make up 45 percent of the city’s population but have virtually no political representation. He hopes to apply Palo Alto’s famous spirit of innovation to the housing crisis. “When you have 70 percent of Palo Altans saying ‘We need more housing’ and we’re really not producing housing, that’s a shame,” Fine said, noting that between 2007 and 2014, the city had built only about 13 percent of the units that it was required to plan for under the Regional Housing

John Fredrich

n a position paper, City Coun- the panel that reviews major new cil candidate John Fredrich development and that he feels has called for more affordable been lax in ensuring that new dehousing, new parks and improved velopments are compatible with mass transit to reduce reliance on surroundings. Fredrich told the cars. That was in 1975, and much Weekly he would like to see the board either dishas changed solved or transsince then. so that But much ‘I’m always willing formed it would have hasn’t. Palo to talk about the a purely adviAlto is still sory function planning for issues people and so that its new parks, new don’t want to purview would shuttles and be limited to new housing talk about.’ broad questions sites. And Fredof context and rich, a retired — John Fredrich, compatibilGunn High Palo Alto Weekly interview ity, rather than School civics specific design teacher, is still elements. He would also add running for council. This council election is Fred- two seats to the city’s Planning rich’s sixth, as well as his second and Transportation Commission, in two years (he ran in 1975, 1977, which would see its mandate in1981, 2003 and 2014). As in the crease. The idea is to let the counpast, Fredrich is running a low- cil focus on policy issues and give budget campaign with a message the commission more purview that mixes lofty democratic ide- over individual projects. Fredrich’s philosophy on als, critique of the status quo and ideas that no one else in the race growth is fairly aligned with slow-growth “residentialist” canis discussing. One such idea is scrapping the didates. He is a fierce critic of city’s plan for a new public-safety recent commercial development building near California Av- and believes the current counenue, a project that everyone on cil was wrong in approving new the council supports. Another is mixed-use developments at the scrapping, or severely reforming, Olive Garden site on El Camino the Architectural Review Board, Real and at 441 Page Mill Road.

He goes further than most in his supports for a total moratorium on office development. But there are key differences. Fredrich in 2013 supported the housing development on Maybell Avenue — 60 apartments for low-income seniors and 12 single-family homes — that voters struck down. He also opposed the recent revised proposal, which features 16 single-family homes and earned the neighborhood’s support and the council’s approval

earlier this year. Fredrich said the development should have been required to include affordable housing — at least three units — and he disapproves of the council’s decision to let the developer, Golden Gate Homes, make a financial contribution to the city to avoid building the affordable housing. Fredrich also supports the creation of more accessory-dwelling units (also known as ADUs or “granny units”), along with minimum-lease requirements that would

Need Allocation. “No wonder we have a housing crisis!” Fine believes the city should be more aggressive when it comes to housing, whether this means experimenting with very small apartments (“microunits)” or allowing some new housing in Residential Parking Permit districts and not distributing permits to the new occupants. This, he said, would force them to bike, walk and take transit. (Fine practices what he preaches; he doesn’t own a car.) The city can never change the market dynamics that drive up housing prices, Fine said, but it can do its “fair share” for the region in creating some new supply. “We’re in an enormous housing hole and, as a region, we all need to step up to that,” Fine said. “That means each of us has to play our part, and we can’t get caught in a prisoner’s dilemma of saying, ‘Other cities are doing things but it doesn’t affect housing prices, and therefore we shouldn’t do anything.’ I don’t think that’s responsible.” Fine is a Palo Alto native who learned to ride a bike on Bryant Street and who holds a master’s degree in city and regional planning from University of Pennsylvania, spent two years working for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (the regional body best known for supplying grants for transportation projects), currently works for the social(continued on page 22)

make sure the structures wouldn’t be used for short-term rentals. Fredrich also wants to see the city rethink its plan to preserve Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, which is located about a quarter mile from Fredrich’s home in Barron Park. The city and Santa Clara County have each committed $14.5 million to buy the park from an owner who doesn’t want to sell it (the Housing Authority of Santa Clara County recently joined the partnership, and officials are talking about taking the property through eminent domain). Fredrich believes the idea is “half baked” and said the site should be redeveloped and equipped with a modern housing development with a substantial percentage of belowmarket-rate units. “All of my neighbors, they love the people at Buena Vista but they want a nicer, 21st-century housing development there; they don’t want a trailer park,” Fredrich said. Overall, Fredrich said he’s been disappointed with the council. After the Maybell election, he said he expected a change in direction. Instead, all he saw the council do was “fiddle around with an office cap” and engage in “optics” without really delving into issues. He is also critical of City Manager James Keene and Planning Director Hillary Gitelman and believes both should be replaced. The leadership in City Hall isn’t as responsive to the citizenry as it (continued on page 24)

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 19

Cover Story

In their own words: Where the candidates stand In candidate forums, endorsement interviews and questionnaires sponsored by the resident groups Palo Alto Forward (PAF) and Palo Alto Neighborhoods (PAN), candidates have opined on significant issues facing the city. Below are their answers to five key questions. Note: Candidate Danielle Martell did not participate in any of these activities and thus is absent from this grid.

CARL

ELY

FINE

FREDRICH

KELLER

Believes downtown Palo Alto can accommodate more housing and favors making an exception to the 50-foot height limit for new buildings near the downtown transit center. “This is a place that we could make denser and have affordable housing, possibly even housing that first-responders can live in.” (PAN forum)

“We need to build more housing to address the (jobs-to-housing) imbalance, but also because it is the moral thing to do.” Favors increasing density of units, enabling more housing types and allowing denser buildings near transit and services. (PAF)

Supports redeveloping the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park as an apartment building for low-income residents; would also like to see the construction of more accessorydwelling or “granny” units. “Housing can be greatly facilitated by prioritizing the creation of new and smaller and affordable units.” (PAN).

Supports more housing focused on seniors, teachers, first-responders and utility workers and believes the city should encourage more small units to accommodate one- and two-person households. “Let’s take a look at what type of housing we need most.” (PAN)

Believes the city made a mistake when it created the downtown RPP program because officials failed to predict the spillover of cars into areas just outside the permit district. Would consider broader areas for future parking districts to ensure adjacent blocks aren’t impacted.

Believes the downtown RPP program has been fairly successful but would like to see better monitoring of employees’ parking habits. Supports exploring similar programs elsewhere and wants new efforts to involve surrounding neighborhoods and be linked to transportation improvements to ensure that service workers can get to Palo Alto. “If we just say folks cannot drive to get to Palo Alto, that’s a problem.” (Weekly interview)

Believes the rates in the existing RPP program should be modified so that residents would have greater incentives to park cars off the street. Prefers the downtown model, where a share of permits is allotted for employees, to the College Terrace model, where permits are only given to residents. “Each party needs to negotiate a common solution.” (Weekly interview)

Supports eliminating worker permits from areas that the city added in the second phase of the downtown RPP program. Believes neighborhoods should be able to choose College Terrace-style programs, where no worker permits are issued. “Businesses and residents located in new buildings, which are supposed to be fully parked, should not be eligible for RPP permits.” (PAN)

Supports having developers participate in traffic-mitigation measures and asking the VTA to use smaller buses in Palo Alto as an alternative to the agency’s proposal to cut some routes. “Vibrancy is what causes a lot of traffic issues.” (LWV forum)

Supports Measure B, the countywide tax measure to fund transportation improvements. Advocates for expanding the city’s shuttle program and making it more demand-based; favors a “trench and cover” alignment for the railroad tracks; and supports exploring dynamic pricing for downtown parking. “We need to fight more creatively and actively for county and regional funds.” (CoC forum)

Opposes the Measure B tax for transportation improvements. Believes the best way to ease congestion on local streets is to “enforce all traffic laws.” “Traffic and parking problems are driven by overdevelopment.” (LWV forum)

Supports tying approvals of new development at Stanford Research Park to Stanford’s ability to reduce its traffic impacts. Calls for more enforcement of “transportation demand management” requirements and supports a “transportation impact fee” that companies would pay to fund efforts to reduce traffic. “Rapid growth in jobs is the root cause of our housing and traffic problems.” (PAN)

Does not support the city’s annual office cap and opposes a moratorium on new commercial development. Does not support the city’s new “retail protection” ordinance, which prohibits conversion of ground-floor retail to office use, and believes the ordinance should be replaced with a more flexible law. “Anytime you draw arbitrary lines you will have problems.” (PAN)

Criticized the city’s new cap on office space for being too “blunt” a tool but favors keeping it until the city updates its Comprehensive Plan. Wants to “flip” the prioritization of development in the city’s zoning code so that housing is preferred over offices. “Palo Alto has the nation’s worst jobs/housing imbalance, and it’s because we have spent decades overbuilding office space instead of housing.” (PAN)

Supports a moratorium on new office development and believes the annual cap on commercial projects should be expanded citywide. “We need to ... not create more commercial footage until we make some progress on housing.” (PAN)

Supports making permanent the city’s annual cap on new office development and tying future construction in Stanford Research Park to Stanford’s ability to reduce traffic. Does not support a moratorium on office development. “Not all growth is good. I am in favor of maintaining the annual growth limit on office space — a ‘speed limit’ on growth.” (PAN)

Supports going past the city’s 50foot height limit in the downtown core. Believes neighborhood design guidelines should only be adopted if there is a clear consensus among residents. “If everyone in the neighborhood understands that and is willing to place a deed restriction on their properties then I would be OK with that.” (PAN)

Voted to support single-story overlay districts for Los Arboles and Greer Park North. Believes the Individual Review guidelines (for multi-story homes) work well but says the city should help improve the “single-story overlay” process by creating a “kit” neighborhoods can use for their applications.

Wants to demote the Architectural Review Board to make it a purely “advisory” panel and give more decision-making power to an expanded Planning and Transportation Commission. “I do not think the Planning Department is fulfilling its charge in protecting community environment.” (Weekly interview)

Believes the city’s Individual Review guidelines are “ambiguous and not sufficiently clear” and supports changing them from “guidelines” to enforceable rules. “When the plans do indicate that textured glass or opaque windows are required, the building Inspectors sometimes fail to enforce the rules. (PAN)

HOUSING Supports very limited housing growth, solely focused on lowincome employees. “We cannot possibly build that much living space (to accommodate the city’s workforce) in Palo Alto without compromising our quality of life.” (Chamber of Commerce (CoC) forum)

PARKING Supports residential parking-permit programs like the one in College Terrace, where permits are only provided to residents. Adjustments to complex programs like the one downtown will require “ongoing work” and should be informed by “feedback from affected residents who have intimate knowledge concerning how Residential Preferential Parking (RPP) is working in their neighborhood.” (PAN)

TRANSPORTATION Believes Palo Alto should focus less on public transit and biking and more on preparing for advances in ride-sharing networks and selfdriving cars. “Cars don’t cause traffic. ... Traffic is caused by the overbuilding of office in our community.” (LWV forum)

OFFICE “Palo Alto needs an immediate moratorium on new office development. The moratorium should stay in place until we have a realistic and quantifiable understanding of how much growth our infrastructure can support.” (PAN)

BUILDING DESIGN Supports the city’s 50-foot height limit and believes the city can do a better job recruiting qualified members to serve on Architectural Review Board. “We must improve the independence and professionalism of architects practicing in Palo Alto, and that must begin with improving the independence and professionalism of the Architectural Review Board.” (PAN)

Page 20 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Cover Story

KNISS

KOU

MCDOUGALL

STONE

TANAKA

Believes the city should carefully pace housing growth, focus policies on service workers and monitor the impacts of new housing on traffic, parking and other “quality of life” indicators. “Palo Alto does have to be careful about its growth rate and building housing. We cannot outpace the ability to keep up with services and schools, parks and other amenities.” (League of Women Voters (LWV) forum)

Supports exploring various types of affordable housing, including accessory-dwelling units, cluster housing and transit-oriented onebedroom and studio apartments. “We must provide a spectrum of housing and availability across all levels. We have to look at every different kind of housing that can be made available.” (Palo Alto Neighborhoods forum)

Supports new housing for teachers, first-responders and low-income residents. Does not believe the city should breach the 50-foot height limit or encourage new accessorydwelling units. “If we ever build enough new housing units to make Palo Alto affordable, we will by then (have) altered the very fabric of our city to the point where it is no longer recognizable.” (PAN)

Supports exploring construction of microunits and accessory-dwelling units. Opposes increased density in single-family neighborhoods. “Palo Alto should hold a housing summit to explore the success or failure from other communities with microunits and community housing complexes.” (PAN)

Supports phasing out permit parking for non-residents in the downtown RPP district and allowing College Terrace-style parkingpermit programs, in which permits are only provided to residents, in other neighborhoods.

Supports the downtown parking program and expansions initiated by other neighborhoods. Would like to see more programs that provide alternatives to driving downtown. (PAN)

Supports the expanded downtown RPP program and promotes reducing the number of worker permits by 200 each year. For those employee permits, priority should go to retail, restaurant and other service-industry workers. (PAN)

As president of the College Terrace Residents Association, worked to establish his neighborhood’s parking-permit program. Believes neighborhoods should be involved in program designs. “We must see how the process works, as well as understanding any unintended consequences, before changing the process.”

Is skeptical about “transportation demand management” policies that assume employees won’t use cars. Supports better coordination between the city’s shuttle program and Stanford’s Marguerite Shuttle. “Traffic has absolutely gone out of control. This problem must be addressed, and to do so, it’s imperative that the office-development annual limit be extended.” (LWV forum).

Supports the VTA tax measure and improving the city’s ride-share programs, electrifying Caltrain and “reimagining” the city’s shuttle system. “We need to work hard on alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles.” (LWV forum)

Wants to condition the approval of new developments on the developer’s ability to reduce anticipated traffic by 30 percent and impose penalties if the developer fails. Supports expanding the city shuttle system, promoting ride-sharing apps and encouraging employee carpools. “There is almost nothing that inhibits our quality of life more than traffic on our clogged streets.” (PAN)

Supports having Palo Alto join with neighboring cities to ensure north-county cities’ voices are heard at the county level. Also supports working with other cities to create “park-and-ride services” that he believes could dramatically decrease the amount of parking and traffic in the city. “Really, the solution isn’t within our boundaries; it’s working with other cities.” (LWV forum)

Supports extending the cap on commercial development beyond its current expiration date, when the updated Comprehensive Plan is adopted. Also believes the cap should apply citywide and include Stanford Research Park. “Growth cannot outstrip what our community can accommodate.” (PAN)

Opposes a moratorium on new office space but favors extending the annual office cap, setting new development requirements and measuring the impacts of new commercial developments. “Over time we need to continue to measure community livability and quality with available metrics such as air quality, congestion, canopy coverage.” (PAN)

Supports creating a limit of 50 employees for downtown companies to encourage more startups and fewer large companies (existing companies would be grandfathered). Supports retaining the existent office cap and requiring Stanford Research Park to reduce traffic to retain its current exemption from the cap. “We added so much office space and so many jobs over several years that our housing (supply) can’t possibly keep up.” (LWV forum)

Criticizes the city’s office cap as a “blunt” instrument but is in favor of keeping it — or even adopting a full moratorium — until the update of the Comprehensive Plan is completed. Supports limiting Class A office space and maintaining height limits on commercial development in the city’s main commercial areas. “Palo Alto is a renowned hub for incubating new economic sectors in startup space like bedrooms, garages, coffee shops, plug & play suites. I support maintaining this heritage.” (PAN)

Supports strictly adhering to the city’s 50-foot height limit for new buildings and promoting construction that is compatible with existing neighborhoods. Supports the emergence of “new neighborhood design patterns that reflect awareness of each property’s effect upon neighboring properties.” (PAN forum)

Favors exploring exceptions to the city’s 50-foot height limit near transit hubs to support affordable housing. Supports design guidelines for Eichler neighborhoods, possibly with collaboration of a task force of neighborhood residents. “Eichler design guidelines should be comparable with the unique characteristics of the homes and responsible to the privacy concerns of residents.” (PAN)

Supports policies to preserve Eichler neighborhoods and the city’s Individual Review process for reviewing new homes. Opposes exceeding the city’s 50-foot height limit for new buildings. “A lot of times, I look around Palo Alto, and some of our greatest eyesores are the high-rises we have.” (CoC forum)

Supported a single-story overlay in Greer Park North (with revised boundaries) but recommended denying it in Faircourt because of insufficient support. Believes the city’s design-review process needs to be “better outlined, better defined and with more upfront assistance in the process fro the city.” (PAN)

HOUSING Supports a more diverse housing stock and use of zoning to incentivize more housing construction in the downtown and California Avenue areas, where public transportation is available and retail is within walking distance. “I would like to see new housing proposed that is aimed at younger Palo Alto workers and ... for those older residents who want to downsize and yet stay in the city.” (PAF)

PARKING Supported the expansion of the downtown RPP program to Crescent Park and looks to take a similar approach, with employees getting some permits, in the California Avenue area. Supports exploring satellite parking lots and shuttles for additional parking options.

TRANSPORTATION Supports the electrification of Caltrain, supports Measure B to fund transportation improvements and helped lead the effort to form city’s new Transportation Management Association. Voted to install new garage technology that indicates the number of vacant parking spots. “We’re not an island. We have to interact with all the cities around us.” (LWV forum)

OFFICE Voted in favor of the city’s annual office cap. Supported several mixed-use projects with commercial components, including 441 Page Mill Road and 2515 El Camino Real. “We have sent a message. We may want performance measures for the future but, at the moment, I don’t think we will see any developments for awhile in office space.”

BUILDING DESIGN Opposed a citizen appeal of the proposed development at 429 University Ave. because she believes the modern design was compatible with downtown’s variety of architectural styles. Opposed a new automobile dealership in the Baylands because she felt the building was too big for the area. Supported single-story overlays in Greer Park North and Los Arboles, which ban two-story homes. Supports the establishment of Eichler design guidelines.

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 21

Cover Story

Arthur Keller

rthur Keller, a data- Stanford was requesting — zoncrunching veteran of Palo ing that would allow the density Alto’s land-use battles, Stanford was looking for. Keller officially announced his run for made the case for further studying the project’s expected traffic City Council on July 28. Unofficially, he did so on Nov. impacts and argued that simply 10, 2014, days after an election changing the name of the zone that brought a slow-growth “resi- won’t actually do anything to ease dentialist” majority to the council these problems. Or, as Keller put and minutes after the lame-duck it: “Just because a hamburger calls City Council voted not to reap- itself caviar doesn’t make it so, particularly if point him to the it tastes better city’s Planning with ketchup.” and Transpor‘ We need to be Keller’s retation Commiscareful about our moval from the sion (PTC). At commission the same meetexperiments.’ was supported ing, the council by three council appointed two — Arthur Keller, Palo Alto members who new members: Neighborhoods forum were concludattorney Kate ing their terms Downing, who co-founded the group Palo Alto the following month, as well as Forward and this summer penned Greg Scharff and Marc Berman. a provocative resignation letter Given Keller’s history of skeptithat blasted the city’s housing pol- cism toward development, his icies, and College Terrace resident ouster was seen by many as the Adrian Fine, a 29-year-old new- council’s parting shot at an eleccomer to civic service who works torate that repudiated their views at the social-network company on growth. That night, Keller fired his own NextDoor. Commission votes don’t nor- parting shot. Minutes after the mally cause a sensation, but this vote, he thanked the council for was no ordinary vote and Keller allowing him to serve, promised was no ordinary commissioner. to stay engaged in local issues and Since 2006, he had been a lead- left them with a Terminator-style ing critic of Palo Alto’s dense de- message: I’ll be back. “One positive thing about not velopments and growth policies. He voted against the controversial being reappointed to the PTC is mixed-use developments Alma if I should decide to run for one Plaza and College Terrace Centre of your seats, I’ll be able to do that (he later supported a revised ver- with a lot more free time,” Keller sion of the latter) and likened the said. Keller made good on these new affordable-housing complex at 801 Alma St. to a European for- promises. Since 2014, he has tress (its “little windows,” he said, served on the Citizens Advisory look like someone will fire arrows Committee that is working to from them). And during the com- update the city’s Comprehensive mission’s painstaking review of Plan and was elected co-chair by the massive expansion of Stanford the group’s members. He reguUniversity Medical Center, he was larly attends council meetings to known for asking tough questions offer thoughts on planning sceand challenging projections and narios, proposed developments and transportation projects. He is assumptions. An example of this came in part of the group that launched a June 2010, when Keller ques- petition to preserve CinéArts at tioned the wisdom of creating Palo Alto Square, which the thethe type of “hospital zone” that ater’s parent company was set to

Adrian Fine (continued from page 19)

network site NextDoor, and, in November of 2014, inadvertently stumbled into the middle of the city’s political tug-of-war. Days after voters brought a slow-growth “residentialist” majority to the City Council, the outgoing council voted to appoint Fine to the commission. In doing so, they declined to re-appoint Arthur Keller, a two-term commissioner with a record of challenging new developments. Suddenly, Fine found himself cast as the “pro-development” guy and saw his appointment characterized by some as a “parting shot” fired by the lame-duck council after an election loss. Fine, for his part, was

puzzled by such characterization. “You can peg me one way or the other, but I’m taking the ‘Palo Alto’ view,” Fine said in a recent interview, explaining his decision to run for council. “To me what that means is: It’s about the community members; it’s not about whether I’m pro-development or anti-development, (or) am I for Maybell or against Maybell? I’m trying to take a 30,000-foot view on this thing, which is that I love this city. There’s a lot of people who worked hard to be here. But I also want us to be an inclusive, walkable, multi-generational city of the future.” Fine has several ideas for achieving this vision. The central one involves the creation of “area plans” — neighborhood-specific vision documents forged through

Page 22 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

close in August but subsequently decided to continue operating for two years. He has also been leading the opposition to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s proposal to cut its paratransit buses. And, sure enough, he’s running for council. If Keller succeeds, he won’t have to worry about being a lone voice in the wilderness. All fourand-a-half of the council’s “residentialists” support his campaign, with Karen Holman, Eric Filseth and Tom DuBois serving as his honorary campaign co-chairs and Greg Schmid and Pat Burt (the council’s swing vote) endorsing him. That’s not to say that Keller is opposed to all growth. He voted, for instance, in favor of the Lytton Gateway development at Alma Street and Lytton Avenue after developers agreed to make contributions to the city’s parking fund and include electric-vehicle charging stations in the four-story project. He also voted for the controversial housing development on Maybell Avenue, a project that voters overturned in a referendum in 2013. Keller also said he sup-

ports building some new housing, provided it’s housing for seniors and small apartments for one- and two-person households (Keller points out that such households comprise about 60 percent of the city population, while studios and one-bedroom apartments make up only 20 percent of the city’s housing stock). He also supports requiring 25 percent of new housing developments to be set aside as below-market-rate housing (up from the current 15 percent). For Keller, the bigger problem isn’t the addition of housing but its impacts on local schools. Likewise, offices aren’t inherently problematic, but their effects on local traffic and parking are. Needless to say, he is skeptical about a current proposal to rezone a property on the busy corner of Page Mill Road and El Camino Real to enable a development with 60 small (about 500 square feet) apartments and only 45 parking spots. Under most zoning designations, such a development would have to provide between 92 and 100 spaces. The plan relies heavily on the developer’s transportation-demandmanagement programs, which

aim to keep renters from owning cars. These include the provision of free transit passes, ride-share services and bicycling amenities (including a “bike kitchen” at the ground floor). “The parking reductions proposed for this project are not based on experience with multiple comparable developments but are based on aspirational reductions in car ownership,” Keller wrote in a response to a questionnaire from the residents’ group Palo Alto Neighborhoods. “With only 6 percent of Palo Alto households not having any car, this is a recipe for spillover parking in the surrounding neighborhood, which does not have a Residential Parking Permit Program.” Keller pointed to the project as an example of “spot zoning” — i.e., zoning created to fit the proposed project, a process that “residentialists” reject as not honoring the city’s land-use vision. While cautious when it comes to growth policies, the Brooklynborn data scientist is otherwise quite at home in Palo Alto’s culture of innovation. Keller moved to Palo Alto in 1977 and earned a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University. After a stint as an assistant professor at University of Texas at Austin, he returned to Palo Alto and has since taught and conducted research at both Stanford and University of California, Santa Cruz. He advises startups and recently served on a city’s Electric Vehicle Task Force, which helped craft the 2014 ordinance that requires all new commercial developments and apartment buildings to install EV-ready infrastructure. But when it comes to development or transportation, Keller is less interested in experimenting and more interested in data. He elaborated on his philosophy at the Sept. 29 forum sponsored by Palo Alto Neighborhoods: “I think we do need to be experimenting, but we need to understand that when we say that a building will be built as an experiment — that building will be built for 50 years,” Keller said at the event. “We need to be careful about our experiments.” Q

collaboration of residents, city planners, business owners and other stakeholders. By crafting such plans for the downtown area, for California Avenue (where such a plan was recently created but not adopted) and perhaps for the San Antonio Road area. Through this effort, the community can identify potential sites for housing, figure out needed traffic improvements and come up with policies to ensure adequate parking. As a planning commissioner, Fine has favored technical critiques over ideological stances (his panning of the council’s office-cap proposal was a notable exception). An avid bicyclist, he has been enthusiastically approving the city’s recent bike projects, including a new plan for dedicated

bikeways on Embarcadero Road. Yet he has also found fault with the council’s recent plan to raise impact fees on new developments to support affordable housing. In August, Fine supported the idea of spreading out the fee increase for non-residential projects over a five-year period but then held off on a formal recommendation, agreeing instead to form a new subcommittee to vet the issue further. To address the city’s traffic and parking problems, Fine advocates for proactive engagement with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and other grantmaking regional organizations and a revision to the city’s parking policies. This means doing a better job in providing information about available parking spots

in local garages. It also means eventually going to dynamic pricing for parking to pay for transit efforts. He acknowledges that getting rid of free downtown parking probably won’t be popular but “we’ve got to eat our spinach,” he said. “We’re giving away an enormous resource for free and that’s why you can’t find parking,” Fine said. Ultimately, Fine said, addressing the city’s transportation challenges comes down to two options: Palo Alto can build more roads or it can manage things better. He said he is clearly in favor of the latter. “I’d rather devote more space for people than for cars,” Fine said. “I’d rather have homes than parking spots.” Q

Cover Story

Liz Kniss

or more than two decades, get U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo on the Liz Kniss has been the face phone to talk about airplane noise, and voice of Palo Alto out- and she can also point to grants she’s helped Palo Alto obtain for side the city’s borders. While others rightly gripe about local projects, including the soonto-be-built bike Palo Alto havbridge over U.S. ing no power ‘ We’re not Highway 101. on regional Recently, she boards, Kniss’ an island.’ made sure that resume boasts Measure B, the m emb e r sh ip s — Liz Kniss, League of VTA transporon the Santa Women Voters forum tation tax that Clara Valley will be on the Transportation Authority (VTA) and the Caltrain ballot next month, contains exboard of directors, where she has plicit wording committing the San advocated — albeit in the minor- Jose-dominated agency to invest ity — for the city’s interests. She in north-county projects, including currently serves as a member on $700 million in seed funding to put the VTA’s Policy Committee and Caltrain tracks below ground level. “I’m standing here tonight as is vice chair of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The the only one with experience,” former Palo Alto mayor has also Kniss told the audience at the Oct. enjoyed two stints as the president 4 forum sponsored by the League of the Santa Clara County Board of Women Voters. “And I’m the of Supervisors. She has weath- only one who serves on a number ered political upheavals, crip- of regional boards. That’s imporpling recessions, economic boons tant because we do need to know and grassroots uprisings. And as what’s going on around us. We’re the only incumbent in this year’s not an island.” Despite her tenures with regioncrowded council race, she believes there’s plenty of unfinished busi- al entities, Kniss admits there have been missed opportunities for colness to work on. In a candidate field that includes laborating regionally on housing neighborhood activists, data scien- and transportation. At a time when tists, lawyers and entrepreneurs, cities point fingers at one another Kniss is an outsider precisely befor failures to plan for growth cause she is an insider. She can and traffic management, which

have a ripple effect on neighboring communities, Kniss said she wishes she’d been more forwardthinking in raising and working on these issues with her colleagues in both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties “I’m sorry I didn’t think to do something more regionally with traffic before,” Kniss told the Weekly. “Because we do a great regional job with air. ... We do a good regional job with paying attention with what the state is doing. ... And

somehow we forgot to deal with the regional issue of traffic.” Kniss, who serves as president of the Peninsula Division of the League of California Cities, said she would be in favor of convening a group that would transcend county boundaries (members would include cities like Menlo Park and companies like Facebook) to collaborate on trafficfighting initiatives. While Kniss is a politician who has held office since 1985, she is

Lydia Kou

ydia Kou is always pre- said that in some ways it is. Traffic pared for the next disaster, has gotten worse, many longtime whether it’s an earthquake retailers have left town and many or a new office building that she seniors don’t bother going to exerbelieves is threatening Palo Alto’s cise classes anymore because it’s too difficult to quality of life. get there. And A seasoned while some vetera n of ‘Slogans will candidates and both the city’s not solve our council mememergency-prebers argue that paredness efchallenges.’ the city should forts and, more — Lydia Kou, Palo Alto focus on the recently, its Neighborhoods forum impacts of new land-use battles, developments Kou is a famil(traffic, parkiar presence at City Hall and a popular leader ing, etc.) rather than development in her neighborhood of Barron itself, Kou rejects this view. “Palo Alto is becoming, or tranPark, where she has spent years organizing activities to bring the sitioning into, an office park, and community together, including residents are fighting to be heard diversity events like Lunar New and to regain their quality of life,” Kou said at the Sept. 29 forum. Year or the Indian Holi Festival. Yet on the topic of land use, the “It’s not transportation or parking real-estate agent is perhaps best that’s the focus, it’s the over develknown for what she wants to keep opment. And moving forward, it’s out of Palo Alto. She believes the tension between the growth unchecked office development rate and our quality of life.” The message is one that she has is a threat to the community and that new housing, while a laud- delivered consistently since 2013, able goal, should be pursued with when she helped lead a grassroots extreme caution. In her view, the effort to overturn an approved city’s character is changing for housing development on Maybell the worse. When asked at a recent Avenue — a project that included forum sponsored by Palo Alto 60 apartments for low-income seNeighborhoods whether city life niors and 12 single-family homes. is worse now than it was in 2008, The following year, Kou ran for during the Great Recession, she the City Council with the group’s

support and fell just 135 votes shy of getting elected. Now, she’s trying again and her message is largely the same: Commercial development needs to be slowed and additional housing should be pursued only with the greatest of caution. In this view, Kou has plenty of allies. The council’s four slowgrowth members — Tom DuBois, Eric Filseth, Karen Holman and Greg Schmid — are the honorary chairs of her campaign. The

citizens group Palo Altans for Sensible Zoning supported her campaign in 2014 and is expected to do so again. And Stewart Carl, a College Terrace resident who is also seeking a council seat, told the Weekly that he decided to run because he strongly supports Kou and wants to help secure a slowgrowth majority on the council after Nov. 8. Over the past two years, Kou has sat through countless council meetings and served on the

far from an ideologue. She is not affiliated with the council’s slowgrowth residentialist wing, nor is she a big proponent of growth and density. She talks about the need to encourage a diversity of options in the city’s housing stock but has also supported setting an annual cap on office development. During the council’s 5-4 votes, she has generally sided with the three colleagues more amenable to development: Marc Berman, Greg Scharff and Cory Wolbach (Mayor Pat Burt is typically a swing vote). She joined the majority in close votes that approved recent mixeduse developments at 441 Page Mill Road and at the former Olive Garden site at 2515 El Camino Real (the council’s “residentialists” all opposed it). She was also one of four council members who voted not to uphold a citizen appeal of a largely commercial project at 429 University Ave., the former location of Shady Lane. Yet she surprised many recently when she voted against a Mercedes dealership planned for the Baylands, arguing that the building is too big for the setting. As a council member, Kniss is hyper-aware of shifting political winds and adjusts her actions accordingly. It’s not uncommon for her to cite the number of letters and comments the council has received and to use the residents’ feedback as the basis for her decisions. An example of this (continued on next page)

Citizens Advisory Committee to update the Comprehensive Plan, becoming well-versed in the city’s housing issues and trafficcongestion measurements. She has emerged in this election season as a passionate watchdog bent on preserving the city’s “quality of life.” In explaining her positions on housing, Kou speaks most concretely about the affordable kind, noting that her priority would be to create housing for service workers, teachers and others who cannot afford market-rate homes. She believes in retaining the city’s affordable housing “in-lieu” fee that developers are allowed to pay to avoid setting aside units as below-market-rate housing in new developments, a fee that some have lobbied to eliminate. For-sale below-market-rate units of this sort, she wrote in a questionnaire from the group Palo Alto Neighborhoods, can lead to “deferred maintenance” issues. Below-market-rate rental units, meanwhile, can be hard to manage if they’re scattered throughout market-rate developments. When the Comprehensive Plan committee discussed in August new mechanisms for monitoring and measuring the impacts for new commercial developments, to make sure they take care of the traffic and parking problems they create, Kou argued that the same mechanisms should be applied to housing developments, including those with (continued on next page)

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 23

Cover Story

Danielle Martell

anielle Martell doesn’t forums or public hearings but do candidate forums, emails that explain the problem kick-off parties, en- and, in many cases, levy accusadorsement interviews or election tions against city officials who she believes have violated her constituquestionnaires. She doesn’t attend City Coun- tional rights. In January cil meetings 2015 she pubany more and licly called for she doesn’t fill ‘Unwanted city the immediate out candidate changes are replacement of questionnaires. Library DirecShe doesn’t coming fast tor Monique raise money or and hard, and I LeConge Ziefill out camsenhenne and paign-finance don’t like what’s filed a claim statements. happening.’ against the city, All that stuff alleging that is for the other — Danielle Martell, Ziesenhenne igcandidates. position paper on housing nored her First That’s not to Amendment say, however, that she is shy about airing her rights. Martell similarly accused views. Far from it. It’s just that the City Attorney Molly Stump of subjects she wants to talk about — violating her constitutional rights the safety of children at the Rinco- for not granting her a “fair hearnada swimming pool, illegal im- ing” in connection with a July migration, the problems with the 2014 incident in which Martell Opportunity Center for the home- was expelled from a local library. less and formerly unhoused — are And in 2005, when Martell was in ones no one else is really paying the midst of her only other counattention to. And it’s also because cil campaign, she struck a similar her favored mode of communicat- chord when she accused then-Poing with the public isn’t City Hall lice Chief Lynne Johnson of not

John Fredrich (continued from page 19)

should be, he claims, with neighborhood problems left to fester with little action. He feels the same way about the current council. “I have a progressive idea of government, and I want the government to be more responsive to all citizens and more efficient in executing a common purpose,” Fredrich said. “I don’t see either of those camps dedicated to that yet. I see them dedicated to their particular factions, who give them total allegiance.” By the same token, when asked which side of the council’s political divide he feels more closely aligned with, Fredrich paused and chuckled. “I’m not contrarian, but I’m so used to being in a loyal opposition that it’s a little difficult to imagine being in that kind of position (of serving on the council) to begin with,” Fredrich said. “But I would be very issue specific.” Q

Liz Kniss (continued from previous page)

happened earlier this year, when the council discussed a proposed mixed-use development for 550 Hamilton Ave. After hearing from residents and from occupants of the existing building, which was slated to be demolished, Kniss ended up firmly in the “no” camp. “The developer really needs to know: Is there any appetite for this?” Kniss said. “I’m not hearing that tonight. And I think it’s important that we deliver that in a

straightforward way.” On the hot topic of housing, like on most topics, Kniss takes a moderate stance. She does not favor new high-rises but believes the city needs to add housing for low-wage earners, teachers, police officers, firefighters and seniors who would like to downsize. When discussing transportation, she points to the council’s recent accomplishments — the new parking-permit program for downtown’s residential streets; the nascent Transportation Management Association (TMA), a nonprofit charged with giving downtown employees alternatives to driving; and new technologies that, once installed, will help drivers get around the city’s congested downtown garages. If re-elected, she has said, one of her priorities on transportation will be to champion the TMA and to work to identify more funding for the Caltrain grade separation, she stated in the questionnaire from the residents’ group Palo Alto Neighborhoods. Kniss often finds herself characterized as pro-development by those on the “residentialist” side, but she rejects this view. She notes that she has not accepted any developer money for her campaign (her 460 form shows one $250 check that she received from a developer — an oversight, she said). And when the Chamber of Commerce released a letter to its members last week, warning about “anti-business” candidates and urging support for Kniss, Don McDougall, Adrian Fine and Greg Tanaka, she said she was taken aback and quickly distanced herself from the Chamber’s position. Kniss told the Weekly that she

Page 24 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

respecting her — and other Palo Alto residents’ — constitutional rights. It’s not just city officials who have allegedly trampled on her rights. In her view, the League of Women Voters is also guilty. Earlier this month, she declined to participate in a League of Women Voters candidates forum because she refuses to “support any group that disrespects our Constitution regardless of who they call themselves,” as she explained in a statement. Specifically, she took issue with the way she had been treated in 2005, during her only prior council run (she finished ninth in a 12-candidate field that year). At the time, Martell alleges, the League “disgraced our founding Constitution by aggressive and repeated attempts to censor me.” Similarly, she didn’t participate in the South Bay Labor Council’s endorsement interviews. That’s because the interviews were scheduled for the day before the official filing deadline, which opens the possibility of a last-second candidate being excluded. And, as she explained to the union in an email, it is “un-American to deny any candidate a level playing field.” But Constitutional rights aren’t her only pressing concern. Like the other 10 candidates, she is gravely concerned about the high

level of development. In an email to the Weekly, she said she has “found it heartbreaking to witness the City Council’s systematic dismantlement of beautiful Palo Alto’s charm, and their disregard for our precious heritage and resident wishes.” In lieu of interviews, Martell issued a position statement. He first proposed policy could have been proposed by any candidate with slow-growth leanings: “Stop citywide overdevelopment and our beautiful skylines from being blocked out forever, including maintaining walkable neighborhoods in which residents have access to a grocery store.” Then, things get somewhat eclectic: Martell calls for reforms of the city’s administrative hearing and appeal process to ensure due process rights. She calls for restructuring the Opportunity Center, a homeless-services nonprofit that she calls a “city-sponsored clubhouse and magnet largely for intense addicts and transients overflowing from San Francisco.” She also proposes, as an emergency measure, protecting children by ensuring that there is one supervising adult near the public swimming pool at Rinconada Park. In a position paper devoted to housing, Martell makes it clear that she doesn’t like what she sees. To-

day’s City Council, she wrote, “is turning Palo Alto into a monstrosity and grows increasingly numb to resident well-being and wishes.” “Unwanted city changes are coming fast and hard, and I don’t like what’s happening,” Martell wrote. “I’ve never experienced so many residents, of all ages and backgrounds, so openly disgruntled.” To spur housing, she proposes relocating the city’s railroad system underground and constructing two-story residences above the available property. To help finance this project, she proposes offering promotional advertising to hightech giants like Google and Facebook. She even proposes selling naming rights to local Caltrain stations to companies, though she notes in her paper that because Palo Alto only has two stations, each may end up with hyphenated names. And because she is concerned about illegal immigrants taking local jobs (a subject of a September email to the council), housing would be offered only to citizens. “This abundance of new affordable housing would exclude people with visas and permits, and include local seniors with citizenship, and Palo Alto firemen and police officers,” she wrote. Q Martell declined to be photographed by the Weekly.

had nothing to do with the group’s decision — which is practically, if not technically, an endorsement — and that she was as surprised by the Chamber’s letter as anyone else. “We knew nothing about it,” Kniss said. “It’s odd to be recommended when you didn’t know you’ll be recommended.” Regrets? She’s had a few. For one, the council failed to read the political situation in the Barron Park neighborhood before the 2013 referendum in which voters overturned a housing development on Maybell Avenue. She regrets losing the 60 apartments for low-income seniors that the project would have provided, and she considers the city’s failure to build a sizable stock of affordable housing as another missed opportunity from her recent term. One effort she strongly supports is the council’s push to preserve the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park. She also regrets the community division that the entire Maybell project and process spawned. That chapter still stings, but she told the Weekly she believes the council and the community are finally coming together again. “I think we’re in a different place now,” Kniss said. “I don’t feel this huge divide I felt in 2014. ... We’re trying to work together and trying to make things happen in the community.” Q

transportation, particularly the notion that traffic could be curtailed through “transportation demand management” programs, in which transit passes, bike amenities, rideshare services and other programs are offered to workers to stop them from driving to work solo. “Part of our traffic and parking problems are the result of the city approving projects based on assumptions that many of the employees would use transit,” Kou wrote in the Palo Alto Neighborhoods questionnaire. “But these claims were simply ‘aspirational’ — there was no enforcement mechanism and thus the landlord and occupant put little if any effort into promoting transit.” At recent candidate forums, Kou has criticized the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, which has attempted to reduce services for Palo Alto over the years and failed to fund projects as it had previously promised. Unlike most city officials and candidates, she opposes Measure B, the VTA’s ballot measure to raise the sales tax rate by 1/2 cent to pay for a host of transportation improvements (these include $1.5 billion for the extension of BART to San Jose; $700 million toward the grade separation of Caltrain in Palo Alto, Mountain View and Sunnyvale; and funding to improve highway interchanges, expressways and roads throughout the county). Palo Alto’s policies, she said in the questionnaire, should be “based on an expectation of very low service levels from VTA (the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result).”

Like many other candidates, she supports the city’s recently imposed annual cap on new office development, though she argues that it doesn’t go far enough. Today, the 50,000-square-foot cap applies to downtown, California Avenue, El Camino Real and is set to expire once the city adopts its updated Comprehensive Plan. She wants the cap to cover the entire city, including Stanford Research Park, and to continue after the Comprehensive Plan’s adoption. Until the city has a way to verify that proposed traffic-reduction policies actually work, office growth should be tightly controlled. She rejects as unproven concepts like “car-free,” “carlight” and “smart growth” — in which it’s assumed that residents of higher-density buildings will take public transit or use bikes and not own cars. She also does not believe the city should allow taller-than-50-feet buildings, greater density or fewer parking spaces at buildings based on assumptions about changing lifestyles. Every candidate, she said at a recent forum, supports things like “inclusiveness,” “better transportation” and “quality of life.” But slogans, she added, will not solve our challenges. “We need a council with wisdom to involve our community in a thoughtful and deliberate way that embraces innovation but does not rely on unproven assumptions about future lifestyles and transportation until we see these things actually work in Palo Alto,” Kou said. “Because we’re all in this for the long term.” Q

Lydia Kou (continued from previous page)

below-market-rate units. Kou is equally skeptical when she discusses the city’s approach to

Cover Story

Don McDougall

hen Don McDougall most of his competitors in the race. talks about building A fan of Richard Florida, an urban a sustainable city — theorist who often writes about the which is quite often — he’s not “creative class,” McDougall chamjust talking about Teslas and so- pions the creation of more “gathering spaces.” He also firmly belar panels. For McDougall, a retired CEO lieves that the city should rethink of several data-analytics compa- some of its traditional assumptions and plan for the nies, the phrase changing trends is both an aspi‘ We have to have in how people ration and the choose to live lens through some belief and get around. which he would that there is While many view all mawith slowjor policies if a sea change growth leanings elected to the happening and oppose new deCity Council. velopments on In the broadest accept it.’ the grounds that sense, “sustainthese projects ability” refers — Don McDougall, harm the local to something Palo Alto Weekly interview quality of life, that is “good McDougall befor the citizens of today and it’s good for the citi- lieves this doesn’t have to always zens of the future,” McDougall be the case. If the city pursues told the Weekly. The environment sustainable housing and transporis obviously a part of it, he said, tation policies, he said, it’s posbut on a more specific level, the sible to have growth without all term also connotes the city’s abil- of its nasty side-effects of more ity to maintain a healthy economy congested traffic, parking, etc. “I think sustainability is reand provide needed housing and transportation. It means not grow- ally quality of life for Palo Alto,” McDougall said in July, during a ing too quickly or too slowly. On both housing and transporta- meeting of a Citizens Advisory tion — the two most-debated is- Committee for the Comprehensues of the current election season sive Plan update. “I think quality — McDougall expresses a higher of life is really sustainability.” When it comes to housing, Mcwillingness to experiment than

Dougall said he favors evaluating a wide range of options, including accessory-dwelling units, microunits, cluster housing and high-density housing near train stations. He doesn’t want to see unsustainable growth, but he would have no problem allowing exemptions to the city’s 50-foot height limit to enable five-story housing developments in areas well-served by transit. “If we really care about housing, we need a city council going in that says, ‘Let’s evaluate all op-

tions,’” McDougall said in a recent interview. “There are lots of things that are ‘no’ already.” Similarly, when it comes to transportation, he believes that the concept of reducing traffic through a transportation-management association (which would offer incentives such as public transit passes and ride-share subsidies to local employees who forego driving solo to work) “is absolutely workable and can succeed.” Along those lines, he is open to the 60-apartment development

Greer Stone

omeless veterans. Strug- City Hall, including Colonel Nigling nonprofits. Seniors cole Malachowski, the director of struggling to make it on a the White House initiative to end homelessness, and several veterans fixed income. These are some of the con- who talked about their struggles to stituents of Palo Alto’s Human adjust to life after war. The event ended with thenRelations ComMayor Karen mission, an Holman signadvisory board ‘I’ve talked to ing a pledge to that tries to use people who feel end veterans’ its soft powers homelessness. (convening foinvisible.’ This spirit of rums, making compassionate recom menda— Greer Stone, collaboration is tions on grants Palo Alto Weekly interview what Stone, the to nonprofits) son of a teacher to tackle hard issues. And Greer Stone, the com- and a deputy sheriff, hopes to mission’s energetic chair, believes bring to the council. Born in Redthe city can do a lot more to help wood City, he graduated Palo Alto those in need — those who find schools and earned a law degree themselves on the fringes of Palo from Santa Clara University in 2012. The following year, at the Alto’s upper crust. Stone, who at 27 is the young- age of 23, he won an appointment est of the 11 candidates in the race, to the commission, rising to vice hasn’t been involved in the city’s chair in 2014 and to chair in 2015. recent bitter land-use tussles, but His service on the commission, he in his brief but busy career in civic said, has allowed him to see the service, he’s become well-versed city “from a completely different with local housing and transpor- point of view.” “I talked to people who feel intation problems. As a member of the commission, he had a hand in visible: the unhoused, the people evaluating needy nonprofits and who suffer from mental health isorganizing forums on issues such sues, our teenagers and senior citias affordable housing, veterans zens,” Stone said. Now, the Midtown resident beand mental health. The commission’s Veterans Summit last Oc- lieves his insights and experiences tober brought about 100 people to will help him make a valuable

contribution to the council, which remains roughly split between slow-growth “residentialists” and those more amenable to new development. Stone said he envisions himself as “an independent.” Yet Stone’s council bid has the backing of the council’s slowgrowth faction, with Holman cochairing his campaign committee (along with Mayor Pat Burt, who sometimes votes with the “residentialists”), and Tom DuBois and Eric Filseth each endorsing his council run. He believes the city’s

50-foot height limit for new buildings is essential to preserving Palo Alto as an aesthetically pleasing place. He is also skeptical about the creation of new accessorydwelling units (ADUs or “granny” units), noting that once they’re built they can be used as gyms and home offices. “Even if we could regulate the use of these ADUs, code enforcement would be nearly impossible,” Stone wrote in a response to a questionnaire by the group Palo Alto Neighborhoods. “During a

recently proposed for the corner at the busy intersection of Page Mill Road and El Camino Real. In terms of experimenting, this project is a twofer: Its apartments are smaller than almost anywhere else in the city (about 500 square feet) and its parking is purposefully insufficient (the idea is that the renters would take transit, bike, etc.). Other candidates, including Lydia Kou and Arthur Keller, see that as a recipe for disaster. McDougall sees the concept as utterly plausible and worthy of exploring. “I think we have to have some belief that there is a sea change happening and accept that and allow buildings that have less of the overhead expense of parking and other things,” McDougall told the Weekly. A Calgary native, McDougall lived in Boston, near Denver and in Portland, among other places, before moving to Palo Alto 13 years ago. In addition to serving on the Citizens Advisory Committee (and the CAC’s Sustainability Subcommittee), he is the vice chair of the Library Advisory Commission and an environmental educator with the nonprofit Environmental Volunteers. A data junky, McDougall has been one of the citizen committee’s leading proponents of measuring and managing — whether this refers to the traffic problems of a particular development or the cumulative impacts of various de(continued on next page)

time when code enforcement has been nearly nonexistent, to believe we could enforce uses of these ADUs is laughable.” The city, he said, shouldn’t try to provide housing for everyone who wants it — an impossible task by all accounts. Rather, it should focus on teachers, first-responders and other service workers who are essential to Palo Alto and who are increasingly priced out of the city. “We have to focus housing on those who need it most,” Stone said at the Sept. 29 forum hosted by Palo Alto Neighborhoods. To do that, Stone said the city should beef up its inclusionaryzoning requirement by directing new housing developments to offer 25 percent of their units at below the market rate (up from the current set-aside of 15 percent). He also wants to talk with the Palo Alto Unified School District about the prospect of using district sites for teacher housing, a concept that he said has been implemented effectively in Santa Clara. Above all, Stone said, new housing should be compatible with the neighborhood in which it’s built. He also wants to take away a developer’s ability to claim a “hardship” and to pay an in-lieu fee instead of providing the required below-market-rate housing. “There is a balance there of being able to add affordable housing, but doing it in a slow, paced way (continued on next page)

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 25

Cover Story

Greg Tanaka

hen residents of Palo Alto who in 2012 opposed the Lytton rose up in 2013 to over- Gateway development, a four-stoturn freshly approved ry office building at the corner of plans for a housing development Alma Street and Lytton Avenue. At on Maybell Avenue, the level of op- the time, he argued that the develposition seemed to catch most city oper should build more actual parking for the general public instead of officials by surprise. But Greg Tanaka, a member of simply contributing to the city’s the city’s Planning and Transpor- parking fund. Yet despite his tation Commisskepticism on sion, saw the these prominent revolt coming ‘If you try to look and controverfrom miles away. through one sial projects, In February Tanaka isn’t 2013, months lens, you get a known as either before the opstalemate.” a slow-growth position began “residentialto gather steam, — Greg Tanaka, ist” or a “proTanaka looked at Palo Alto Weekly interview growth” housthe empty Couning advocate. cil Chambers Among the most during a public hearing for the project and spotted notable features of Tanaka’s civic service is his consistent habit of a problem — a lack of awareness. “I think if the people really steering clear of ideological camps. knew what was being built across Tanaka’s ideology, such as it is, is the street, there would be more of non-ideological by design. “If you don’t have a true dialogue, an outcry there,” he said at that meeting, referring to the proposed you’ll have a firestorm,” Tanaka 60-apartment building for low-in- said at a recent interview, recalling come seniors and 15 single-family the Maybell episode. “If you try to look through one lens, you get a homes. For Tanaka, who has spent six stalemate. “Going to a project or plan with a years on the planning commission and last year served as the commis- predetermined idea of what’s right sion’s chair, community buy-in is is actually wrong because it alienkey to any major decision. While ates people. You’re not necessarily that in itself is not an unusual po- productive,” he said. For Tanaka, the lessons of the sition for a City Council candidate (no one campaigns against com- Maybell referendum are clear: Bemunity collaboration), Tanaka takes fore the city talks about broad soluthis to a new level and he backs up tions to its housing problems, everyone — council members, property these words with votes. That February, he was one of two owners, immediate neighbors and commissioners who voted against other community stakeholders — initiating a zone change that would needs to come to the table to air enable the Maybell project because views and vent frustrations. And of concern about a lack of neigh- before the city makes any major borhood buy-in. He was also one of policy decision or approves any deonly two planning commissioners velopment, there needs to be plenty

Don McDougall (continued from previous page)

velopments on the community’s quality of life. “You’re never going to control what you don’t measure” is how he put it at the August meeting. He doesn’t favor a moratorium on office growth as some of the other candidates do, and his moderate views have garnered him support from the likes of former Mayor Larry Klein, Vice Mayor Greg Scharff, Councilman Marc Berman, state Sen. Jerry Hill and Assemblyman Rich Gordon. McDougall is nevertheless cautious when it comes to office space. He is in favor continuing the city’s existing annual 50,000-square-foot cap for office development in downtown, California Avenue and El Camino Real. Currently, the cap is set to expire when the Comprehensive Plan is updated. But McDougall believes the cap should remain beyond that and that it should be supplemented with new “develop-

ment requirements” that address the impacts of new buildings. As someone who once ran a company that did data work for the U.S. Census, McDougall loves to bore in on the details of local demographics and plan accordingly. He noted at the May meeting of the citizens’ committee that, depending on which projections one uses, the growth in children in Palo Alto in the next 15 years is estimated to be between 0 or 15 percent. That, he said, is very small compared to the growth in seniors, which is expected to be greater than 100 percent. “Do we need more playing fields for those aging populations?” he asked, in discussing park amenities. “No, we don’t need more Frisbee fields for the 80-year-olds.” Then he reverted to one of his favorite themes. “Maybe we do need interesting, comfortable, attractive gathering places. They don’t necessarily need to be just stone benches to sit on but a place that a group of people could logically go with your cohorts, your age group, your

Page 26 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

of data and analysis to support the change. Putting labels on people and proposing dramatic solutions without adequate outreach or data are the surest paths to failure, from Tanaka’s perspective. Both Tanaka’s rigor and his spirit of inclusiveness were reflected in how he conducted himself as chair of the planning commission in 2015. Every issue was thoroughly vetted and every question or concern that any commissioner brought up was placed on a list. The commission would then painstakingly go through that list (which at times included more than a dozen items) and every member would have a chance to support, oppose and elaborate on each issue. This method often led to extremely long meetings. But it also led to increased clarity about where every commissioner stood on every aspect of a given policy. It also ensured that no stone was left unturned. So what are Tanaka’s personal

perspectives on how to achieve progress? That is less clear, even on the major issues. His position on collaboration is so strong that it seemingly crowds out all others. On the recently adopted 50,000-square-foot cap on office development, Tanaka and his commission colleagues in 2014 blasted it as an approach a “blunt tool.” But now he says he would like to see the cap remain until the city updates its Comprehensive Plan. Asked to articulate a vision for the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, whose closure — and possible rescue — is pending, he said he’s seeking a solution that the public will accept. More recently, Tanaka and his colleagues have slowed down the city’s plan to raise impact fees that developers have to contribute for affordable housing. After holding two hearings on the topic and reviewing more than 300 pages of analysis, the commission agreed to

bridge club, your chess club,” he said. “And if we sprinkled more of those around — that creates the idea of a gathering place.” Q

efforts to improve traffic flow, Stone believes the city should do more to ensure that the “transportation demand management” (TDM) programs proposed by developers — which typically include offering workers subsidies, bike programs and ride-share options — actually work. “Currently, I feel the TDM policies are not enforced,” Stone said. “Developers can say, ‘I’ll make sure traffic will be reduced by 20 percent’ and we believe them. ... They don’t follow up, and there’s no teeth to the policy. What do they fear? Nothing.” To address that, Stone would require all new developments to include transportation-demandmanagement policies that would reduce the project’s potential resulting traffic by at least 30 percent. He would then require the developer to return to the council a year after the project is completed to prove that the plan has worked. If it hasn’t, the city would assess a penalty and use the fees it collects for traffic-decongestion projects. At the same time, Stone thinks

Greer Stone (continued from previous page)

that really reflects the values of the neighborhood ... and the look and feel of the neighborhood,” he said. Stone is even more cautious when it comes to office growth. He supports retaining the cap on new office developments in downtown, California Avenue and El Camino Real, and conditioning new development in Stanford Research Park on Stanford’s ability to decrease traffic congestion. He would like to see downtown leases restricted to companies with 50 or fewer employees, a move that he believes will help the city retain its legacy as an incubator of innovation (once a company outgrows its location, it should be encouraged to move to Stanford Research Park, he said). When it comes to the city’s

form a subcommittee to future vet the topic before making any recommendations (former planning commissioner Arthur Keller, who is running against Tanaka, recently chided this approach as “paralysis by analysis.”) Despite the occasional policy disagreements, Tanaka has earned support from the more pro-growth council members, including Cory Wolbach and Greg Scharff. He has also been endorsed by state Assemblyman Rich Gordon and other Democratic dignitaries and, as of mid-October, was vying with Liz Kniss for the highest contributions received in the race. Tanaka, a Los Angeles native and high-tech entrepreneur, dove into local issues about a decade ago, shortly after he moved to Palo Alto. He has served as the president of the College Terrace Residents Association and as a member of the city’s Infrastructure Blue Ribbon Committee, which surveyed the city’s infrastructure needs and proposed ways to fund the projects. Tanaka is currently the CEO of the company Percolata, which helps retailers recruit optimal sales staff. He believes working professionals don’t get as much representation in City Hall as they should and he hopes to correct this. “The voice of working professionals, especially working families, is very, very small,” Tanaka said in a recent interview. “Even though they pay the bulk of the taxes and make the bulk of the population, their voice is not wellheard today.” Tanaka’s business commitments have occasionally got in the way of his civic duties. Earlier this year, he had to attend meetings in Seattle, which fell on Wednesday nights, and missed four commission meetings, more than any other commissioner. Though civic watchdogs raised their eyebrows, Tanaka (continued on next)

the city should be proactively pursuing some new developments: He wants a new playground in north Palo Alto modeled after Mitchell Park’s recently constructed Magical Bridge playground, which offers amenities for children of all abilities, and a new public swimming pool in north Palo Alto, too. Much like Burt and the council’s residentialist members, Stone believes the recent tech boom has exacerbated the city’s 3-to-1 jobshousing imbalance (the ratio of jobs in the city to employed resident), which he calls “the root of many of the woes we’re facing in Palo Alto.” He believes his approach to restricting office growth and building new housing in a careful, focused way is the best way to address this problem. “We should not sacrifice quality for quantity but instead ensure that even higher-density housing is high-quality housing that we can all be proud of,” Stone wrote in the PAN questionnaire. “This includes having adequate access to light, parkland and aesthetically pleasing buildings.” Q

Cover Story

Greg Tanaka (continued from previous page)

said the absences were anomalies. Throughout his entire commission tenure, his attendance record is higher than 90 percent, and he vows that, if elected to the council, meeting attendance will not be an issue. At a Palo Alto Neighborhoodssponsored forum, he reiterated one of the biggest lessons he’s learned through his years of civic service: “It’s really important to hear the community’s voice and to hear community concerns about what’s needed, what are the impacts and how do we make sure we maintain our quality of life,” Tanaka said. “That’s something I’ve always done.” Q Editorial Interns Patrick Condon and Rachel van Gelder contributed to this report.

WATCH THE CANDIDATES ONLINE www.PaloAltoOnline.com Videos of the City Council candidates’ endorsement interviews with the Palo Alto Weekly’s editorial board are available to view at PaloAltoOnline.com and YouTube. com/paweekly. In the interviews, the candidates share their views on development, recent controversies and Palo Alto’s next city manager. Also, an archive of articles, photos and video from this campaign season have been collected and posted at Storify.com/ paloaltoweekly.

CITY OF PALO ALTO NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Palo Alto City Council will hold a Public Hearing at the special meeting on Monday, October 24, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. or as near thereafter as possible, in the Council Chambers, 250 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto, to consider the proposed Storm Water Management Fee. The October 24, 2016 Public Hearing will be conducted as a protest hearing in which the City will accept written protests against the proposed fee from owners of parcels of real property subject to the fee. At the close of the public input portion of the Public Hearing, the City Clerk will count the written protests received on the matter and announce the results. If a majority protest does not occur, Council may adopt a resolution calling a mail ballot election for April 11, 2017 to allow owners of parcels subject to the Storm Water Management Fee to vote on whether the fee should be imposed. At the October 24, 2016 Public Hearing, the City Council will also consider the adoption of a Resolution amending Utility Rule and Regulation 25 (Special Storm and Surface Water Drainage Utility Regulations) to exempt owners of WHYJLSZ [OH[ KV UV[ JVU[YPI\[L Z[VYT ^H[LY Y\UVɈ to the City’s storm drain system from paying the proposed Storm Water Management Fee. BETH D. MINOR City Clerk

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www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 27

Arts & Entertainment A weekly guide to music, theater, art, culture, books and more, edited by Karla Kane

FILMS for a better world

Courtesy of UNAFF

United Nations Association Film Festival celebrates the human spirit by Peter Canavese

“Paper Lanterns” explores the “never forget” mission of Shigeaki Mori, who does outreach education about the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.

Courtesy of UNAFF

n an election year when racism and xenophobia have played a significant role in the national conversation, there’s no better time for UNAFF, the United Nations Association Film Festival. UNAFF celebrates its 19th year with the theme “Compass for a Better World,” and though the festival has a San Francisco arm and a “Traveling Film Festival” with a national and international reach, UNAFF remains distinctly a Palo Alto-area institution. Stanford University educator and film critic Jasmina Bojic founded the festival with the help of the Stanford Film Society and the local nonprofit UNA Midpeninsula Chapter, and venues include the Aquarius Theatre, four sites on the Stanford campus and Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, among others. The festival kicks off Oct. 20 at the Aquarius with opening words by Palo Alto mayor Patrick Burt. UNAFF presents documentary films with an emphasis on human rights issues and aims to spotlight “current events from across the globe.” This year’s

his story and how he ‘chose’ to be an amputee and never gave up on his dream of being a triathlete. Just hearing their stories inspired me, and I thought it would be wonderful to

program includes 60 films, among them six world premieres and 16 U.S. premieres, with more than 50 of the filmmakers in attendance to meet the public and field questions. Among them is Sunnyvale-based filmmaker Harleen Singh, whose short film “The Odd Couple: A Story of Two Triathletes” details the local human interest story of Jeff, a below-the-leg amputee, and Parvin, a Sikh man dealing with an injury. With Jeff’s example and encouragement, Parvin pursues his goal of participating in a triathlon, and a friendship builds in the process. The daughter of an Indian army officer, Singh once worked on the “corporate side of things” at National Geographic Channel and The History Channel, but felt the siren call of her personal creativity. Singh quit her job, turned her attention to filmmaking and began by studying film at the Midpen Media Center. A subject landed in her lap during a social dinner with Parvin, a friend. The conversation turned from health in general to Parvin’s struggle to be a triathlete. “Over the course of the conversation, I just got drawn to his story — his journey, his struggles, his friendship with Jeff were all interesting elements. Then I met Jeff and heard

“Under the Turban” explores the roots, character, and diversity of the world’s fifth largest religion: Sikhism.

Courtesy of UNAFF

“Sonita” takes an unflinching look at the political and patriarchal obstacles facing an 18-year-old undocumented Afghan immigrant living in Tehran. Page 28 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

her permission and, worse, struggles to make the rent. Her family’s solution: sell Sonita as a bride to a new family. Sonita’s unbowed creativity and personality (and the education she pursues) give the film a hopeful spirit but also inspire powerful sadness and anger at her plight. (The film screens Oct. 22 at 8:15 p.m. at the Mitchell Park Community Center.) Barry Frechette’s “Paper Lanterns” (Oct. 23 at 8:20 p.m. at Mitchell Park Community Center) explores the “never forget” mission of Shigeaki Mori, who does outreach education about the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. A witness to and survivor of the bombing (when he was in his third year of school), Mori’s curiosity and love of history led him to research the event. He saw healing potential in empathy, and thus commemorates not only the tens of thousands of Japanese victims, but also the little-known fact that a dozen American POWs died in the blast. Frechette takes his camera around Japan and America to interview veterans, witnesses and family members, collecting stories and sharing in Mori’s educational goal by following him in his work. The stylish and energetic “Under the Turban” (Oct. 23 at 1:30 p.m. at Mitchell Park Community Center), by filmmakers Satinder Garcha, Michael Rogers and Meghan Shea, emerges from a 9-year-old’s question: “What makes me a Sikh?” To help young Zara answer the question, Satinder Garcha and Harpreet Bedi travel around with their children and a camera, meeting with practitioners and scholars to explore the roots, character and diversity of the world’s fifth-largest religion.

share their journey on the screen to inspire others to follow their dreams and never give up,” she said. In explaining the pull of her debut film, Singh offered, “What is really appealing to me about ‘The Odd Couple’ is that, as humans, all of us have challenges in life. But most of us do nothing and accept our fate — we would rather find an excuse to overplay the challenges and feel demotivated. Parvin and Jeff, however ... both have one passion, to push their own limits.” Commitment to personal growth and social causes, regardless of the cost, is a common theme in many of the festival’s short and feature documentaries. Take “Sonita,” director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami’s unflinching look at the political and patriarchal obstacles facing an 18-year-old undocumented Afghan immigrant living in Tehran. An artistic impulse drives Sonita, who raps and is hatching a plan to start a group with a boy and record a song. But her poor family hasn’t granted

These few examples only scratch the surface of the globally ranging subject matter explored in the festival’s entries. What drew local filmmaker Singh to the story of “The Odd Couple” aptly describes the potential in every film at UNAFF. “All successful movies have some sort of a universal human element that allows people to relate to the story,” Singh said. “When people imagine themselves as part of a film, the characters become real and that’s where the human connection takes over.”Q Freelance writer Peter Canavese can be reached at pcanavese@bcp.org. What: UNAFF 2016 Where: Venues in Palo Alto, Stanford, East Palo Alto and San Francisco When: Oct. 20-30 Cost: $10 for individual screenings; $180 festival pass Info: Go to unaff.org

Arts & Entertainment REVIEW THEATER

When Irish eyes are smiling ‘Outside Mullingar’ is a rewarding rom-com by Kevin Kirby

n the 1997 film “The Devil’s Own,” Brad Pitt’s character, an IRA operative running guns from New York to Dublin, issues this warning: “Don’t look for a happy ending. It’s not an American story. It’s an Irish one.” Kevin Berne

This axiom — that there are no happy endings in Irish stories — is reinforced by a casual look at the Irish plays that have found success on Broadway in recent decades: works by Conor McPherson, Brian Friel, and Martin McDonagh, among others, in which the characters’ lives are so overshadowed by the Troubles and/or centuries of systemic poverty that any unambiguously upbeat ending to their stories would be impossible. All bets are off, though, with “Outside Mullingar,” John Patrick Shanley’s tale of Irish farmers, now offered by TheatreWorks. Set in a peaceful and fleetingly prosperous contemporary Ireland, “Mullingar” is a quirky, character-driven pastorale that offers at least the plausible hope of a happy resolution. This is not to say that Shanley’s script is lacking in a requisite sense of Celtic melancholy. Quite the opposite. The action begins on a rainy evening, immediately following the burial of Chris Muldoon, a lifelong farmer whose relentless battle with the local crows has finally reached its end. Muldoon’s widow Aoife and daughter Rosemary have been invited for a drink by the neighbors: curmudgeonly Tony Reilly and his middle-aged son Anthony. The early scenes are filled with gallows humor, meditations on death, long-held grudges, and a debate about the inheritance of the Reilly farmstead that suggests we are in store for a wee Irish riff on “King Lear.” But then something odd happens. The thrust of Shanley’s tale shifts, and suddenly we are watching a will-they-or-won’t-they romantic comedy featuring 40-something Anthony and nearly-40 Rosemary — both still single and both clinging to secrets that may scuttle their romance before it gets off the ground. Rod Brogan (Anthony) and Jessica Wortham (Rosemary) bring this fraught interpersonal dynamic to life with panache and endearing humor. In addition, Brogan handles the play’s most poetic language — canticles to damp grass and speculations on the hierarchy of being — without sounding pompous or sappy, and Wortham’s slowly ratcheting desperation in the final scene is a masterful exercise in sublimation and dramatic timing. (Bonus points to Wortham for the best mimed puddle-jumping you’re likely to see on any stage.) Steve Brady (Tony) and Lucinda Hitchcock Cone (Aoife) are similarly adept performers. Hitchcock Cone finds the perfect tone of wry resignation for the widow Muldoon, and Brady shepherds the elder Reilly through a transformation that is crucial to the shape and themes of the show. TheatreWorks’ founding artistic director Robert Kelley is at the helm for this production, and he and his artistic team have done an excellent job bringing Shanley’s not-so-dire vision of Ireland to the stage. Lighting designer Steven B. Mannshardt and sound designer Cliff Caruthers start us off with a rainstorm that wraps the Reilly farmhouse in a post-funereal gloom. As rendered by scenic designer Andrea Bechert, the Reilly home is packed to the ceiling with old furniture and whatnots, including an ancient icebox and cast iron stove, and trimmed with oppressively dark woodwork. A cloudy sky-

Thursday, November 3, 7:30pm Saturday, November 5, 2pm Saturday, November 5, 8pm Sunday, November 6, 2pm

Rod Brogan (as Anthony Reilly) and Jessica Wortham (as Rosemary Muldoon) are neighbors with long-held secrets in “Outside Mullingar.” scape looms above and behind. Once the tone of the play shifts, the action moves to Rosemary’s kitchen, which Bechert has painted white and yellow, furnished with slightly less ancient appliances, and decorated with a few carefully chosen items that indicate a simple but by no means barren life. It is in this kitchen that Rosemary and Anthony are finally able to speak their long-held — and frankly quite absurd — secrets, and here that the hope and humor of Shanley’s story burst into full bloom. It may be worth noting that Shanley is not actually an Irish playwright. Though of Irish-American descent, as the surname suggests, he was born and raised in New York. His play “Doubt: a parable” (produced by TheatreWorks in 2008) won a Pulitzer, and his screenplay for “Moonstruck” earned him an Academy Award. “Outside Mullingar” grew out of time that Shanley spent, as an adult, on his cousin’s cattle farm in the Irish Midlands. It seems that this time also gave Shanley a good ear for the rhythms and idioms of the Irish dialect; his writing has all the lilt and wistful poetry that you would expect of Irish drama. Unfortunately, the Irish accents in TheatreWorks’ production are not as uniformly convincing. Brogan’s brogue, in particular, sounds less than organic. The accent waxes and wanes, especially in the play’s early scenes, and seems to consist primarily of a few Irish diphthongs welded on top of line readings that miss the cadences of a typical Irish dialect. The other actors fare better. Wortham, Brady, and Hitchcock Cone deliver believable accents, though there is more variation between them than you might expect from characters who have lived their entire lives in the same insular farming community. The opening night performance also had a few minor pacing problems: from ungainly pauses that suggested actors searching for lines, to important transitions that felt arbitrarily rushed. But, as we have come to expect from Kelley and TheatreWorks, the flaws are small and the rewards are great. “Mullingar” is well worth the visit. Q Freelance writer Kevin Kirby can be emailed at penlyon@peak.org. What: “Outside Mullingar” Where: Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View When: Through Oct. 30, Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m., Wednesdays at 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m., Thursdays-Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. & 7 p.m. Cost: $19-$80. Info: Go to theatreworks.org or call 650-463-1960.

Menlo-Atherton Performing Arts Center Tickets: www.menloweballet.org

1.800.595.4849

SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY PRESENTS 30 Years of the Center for Literary Arts: A Celebration Featuring

LUIS VALDEZ Author, Director, and Playwright

WED OCT 19 - 7PM HAMMER THEATRE CENTRE 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose CA

FREE $30.00

General Admission VIP (reception and preferred seating)

SJSU

CENTER FOR LITERARY ARTS Co-sponsored by

Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana

For ticket information visit litart.org The Center for Literary Arts @CLASanJose

Events are wheelchair accessible. If you need special accomodations, please call 408.924.4673.

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 29

Arts & Entertainment

520-strong and growing:

WorthaLook

A community alliance

Save the 2,008 a toolkit of proposals for nurturing trust, joy, and meaning at Palo Alto’s high schools

— Jennifer DiBrienza, school board candidate

Courtesy Anitta Toivio/BABA

“I appreciate the grassroots effort of Save the 2,008, which has been out in front in the conversation about classsize, homework, grading, and a more connected climate in our high schools. These are priorities that I share.”

Art festival Book Arts Jam

“I applaud Save the 2,008’s community spirit and share their desire to improve the well-being of our high-schoolers through some simple, nuts-and-bolts reforms—creating stronger campus ties, a more vibrant environment, and a deeper sense of belonging.” — Todd Collins, school board candidate

“Save the 2,008 is a gift to the community.” — Ken Dauber, school board member

Christened for the number of students and teachers at our hardest-hit school two years back, Save the 2,008 aims to ease stress, nourish human ties at Gunn and Paly through simple changes concerning class size, social media, grade-reporting, academic fraud, course-loads, and homework. Our 521 supporters include parents, PAMF physicians, faith leaders, realtors, Stanford professors, yoga and martial-arts, music and drama instructors, attorneys and authors and ﬁlmmakers.

cherish our teenagers add your voice to our chorus at

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Page 30 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Long live print! Challenging conventional notions about books for two decades now, The Bay Area Book Artists are holding their 15th annual Book Arts Jam, a fair featuring hands-on activities; a gallery of modern book arts; artists’ talks and exhibitions; and even a continuous letterpress printing demonstration on Sunday, Oct. 16, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Palo Alto Elks Lodge (4249 El Camino Real). A diverse array of book art (manipulated books, ‘zines, handmade paper, fine-art prints, sculptures and more) will be displayed. Speakers include Kristen St. John, discussing the conservation of artist books at Stanford University; Don Drake and Robert Perry presenting books and poetry; a panel of Bay Area Book Artists members exploring the topic of “play”; and Karen Rush, who will discuss “dreaming in book form.” Local book artists among the more than 30 who are presenting work include Jamila Rufaro, Virginia Phelps and Anitta Toivio. Go to bookartsjam.org.

Library fun Menlo Park Comic Con Love all things fantasy, sci-fi or anime, but couldn’t make it to San Diego’s official Comic Con this year? Menlo Park will offer its own Comic Con on Saturday, Oct. 15, with manga drawing classes, comic book trading, live music, animation screenings, seminars and cosplay. The event will run 3-7 p.m. at the Menlo Park Library at 800 Alma St. Throughout the event, there will be animation screenings and comic-related crafts, an area for artists and vendors to sell art and books and comic book trading. Scheduled specifics include performances by “The Cantina Band” (including songs from movies and video games) and Margaret Davis and Kristoph Klover playing the music of J.R.R. Tolkien; “women in comics” and “how to get your comics published” seminars by CEO/ publisher Anna Cebrian; and a manga-drawing class for kids and teens. Go to menlopark.org.

Music ‘The Voice Machine’ “The Voice Machine,” a collaboration between music professors from Stanford University and U.C. San Diego, will present new works by several composers, performed by U.C. San Diego’s kallisti ensemble, on Sunday, Oct. 16 (2:30 p.m.), and Monday, Oct. 17

(7:30 p.m.), at Dinkelspiel Auditorium, 471 Lagunita Drive, Stanford. The pieces performed include Constantin Basica’s episodic “Knot an Opera!,” Caroline Miller’s absurd-workplace-set “How to Survive a 100-Hour Workweek,” Jesse Marino’s Neo-Futurist-inspired “Experiments in Opera II” and Alexandra Hay’s “Metanoia,” an interactive “music play space” that will take place during intermission, with audience participation encouraged. The show is free. Go to events.stanford.edu/events/624/62447/.

Author talk Ziggy Marley Musician Ziggy Marley (yes, son of Bob), has written a cookbook of wholesome meal plans (think coconut-curry squash soup, roasted yam tart and more) based on the traditional Jamaican and Rastafarian “ital” recipes he grew up with and the Persian/Israeli cuisine inspired by his wife’s cultural roots. Marley (who in addition to an extensive music career has also founded the Ziggy Marley Organics line of food products and published a children’s book) will present “Ziggy Marley and Family Cookbook” at Kepler’s (1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park) on Wednesday, Oct. 19, at 5 p.m. Admission is $20, or $40 including a copy of the book and a place in the signing line. Go to brownpapertickets.com/ event/web/2596606.

Above: Anitta Toivio’s “A Little History Book,” created out of handmade paper with stones, plant parts and hair, will be part of this year’s Book Arts Jam, a fair featuring hands-on activities; artists’ talks and exhibitions; and even a continuous letterpress printing demonstration on Sunday, Oct. 16, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Palo Alto Elks Lodge.

Eating Out BURGER A NEW KIND OF

Redwood City startup creates a veggie burger that tastes, impossibly, like meat

Top, textured wheat and potato proteins form the vegetable base of Impossible Foodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s meatless burger, aiming to recreate the taste and texture of a real ground-beef burger. Left, the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Impossible Burgerâ&#x20AC;? was engineered to look, smell and taste like a beef burger, yet is made entirely from plant-based ingredients.

by Anna Medina | photos by Veronica Weber

hat if plants could actually mimic the flavor and texture of meat? Many have attempted it with varying degrees of success, as most us who have tried a dry and uninspiring veggie burger can attest. At best, it tastes good, but not remotely like meat. At worst, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the resignation that nothing will ever truly compare. Certainly, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s difficult to convince meat-lovers that anything could fully resemble the sensory experience involved, from the sizzle of the patty on a hot grill to the charred, caramel aroma that permeates the air, to that first, juicy bite of a burger thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still slightly pink in the center. Only in the fictional world of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factoryâ&#x20AC;? could Oompa Loompas in white lab coats achieve the impossible by creating chewing gum that tasted like a scrumptious dinner. But this is Silicon Valley, where scientists in lab coats really do seek to achieve the impossible, albeit without the wonky blue wigs. While on sabbatical from teaching at the Stanford University School of Medicine several years ago, biologist Pat Brown founded Impossible Foods, seeking to curb the environmental impact of meat production by using plants and sciences to create a more sustainable, meatless burger that still tastes like the real thing. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I decided that problem was the use of animals as food technology. (It) is by far the greatest threat to the global environment right now, and it was apparent that nobody was really making a serious effort to treat it as a solvable problem,â&#x20AC;? Brown said in a media open house

Pat Brown, founder and CEO of Impossible Foods, talks with reporters during an open house at the Redwood City-based startup on Oct. 6, 2016. at the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Redwood City headquarters last Thursday. People around the world who love meat, fish and dairy are not going to stop eating them, creating a tremendous demand for food whose production is causing an ongoing environmental catastrophe, he said. Rebekah Moses, Impossible Foodsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; senior sustainability analyst, highlighted the environmental impact of beef consumption with the example of a single cow. According to Moses, this cow is alive for 1.5 to two years, during which itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s walking around, burning calories and emitting methane gas. By the time it gets to the plate, it has consumed 12 pounds of grain for every pound of beef. In terms of land use, about 30 percent of the ice-free surface of the

planet iis devoted producevo vottedd ttoo prod ducing animals directly, Moses said. As for freshwater use, about 25 percent goes into animal agriculture, with about the same level of emissions as is produced by the entire transportation industry â&#x20AC;&#x201D; planes, trains, cars and rocketships included. This was what led Brown to establish Impossible Foods in 2011. â&#x20AC;&#x153;So animals are really, if you think about it, just a technology for transforming plants into meat, fish and dairy foods,â&#x20AC;? Brown said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We had the opportunity to basically take a fresh look at that problem and say, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;OK, if you were in 2016 trying to come up with the best possible way to make this category of foods sustainably, affordably, scalably, delicious, optimized for nutrition and so forth, how would you do it?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Well, the last thing you would probably ever think of is, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just put plants into animals and kill them and eat them.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? So Brown took a 21st-century approach to solving a 21st-century problem. He and a group of scientists have spent the past five years developing a fundamental molecular understanding of what makes meat, meat. At the Oct. 6 open house, Celeste Holz-Schietinger, a principal scientist at Impossible Foods, demonstrated assembling the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s flagship product: a plantbased burger. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We chose ground beef â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the burger. It is central to American culture and so many other cultures as well. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also something that we thought we could do, even though very difficult,â&#x20AC;? she said.

Music Director Thomas Shoebotham Assistant Conductor Lee Actor

Russian Masters

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Tchaikovsky Francesca da Rimini Prokofiev Symphony #5

8 pm* Saturday, October 22, 2016 Tickets: * 7:30pm $22/$18/$10 Pre-concert talk 4000 Middlefield Rd, Palo Alto, CA at the door + Post-concert or online www.paphil.org reception

Cubberley Theatre

(general / senior / student)

www.restorationstudio.com

According A di to Holz-Schietinger, l S hi i one of tthe scientists he first fir irst st things thi hing ngss th thee sc scie ient ntis ists ts nonoticed is that meat is made up of transitions: in color, from red to brown; in texture, from squishy to chewy; in flavor, from blandly sweet and metallic to roasted, caramelized notes. Based on this observation, they used science to tackle the â&#x20AC;&#x153;meat experience.â&#x20AC;? The burger Holz-Schietinger assembled started with water, wheat and potato protein. But the truly novel secret ingredient was a heme protein, which makes blood red and allows us to breathe and hold oxygen. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s found in muscles and in most plants as well. â&#x20AC;&#x153;For us, what we identified and had never been discovered before was that to create meat flavor, all of those aromas that take place upon cooking, heme is what drives that and what creates that,â&#x20AC;? she said. In fact, when in the presence of heme, the nutrients, amino acids, proteins and sugars in beef react to create the aromas and the meat flavor, she explained. After introducing the heme, Holz-Schietinger added coconut oil, which has a similar melting property as tallow from an animal, she explained. This â&#x20AC;&#x153;fat releaseâ&#x20AC;?

combined bi d with i h a soy protein i controls trol tr olss how how the the burger burg bu rger er cooks coo ooks ks as as well well as its melting profiles. It also contributes to what Holz-Schietinger described as the â&#x20AC;&#x153;mouth-coatâ&#x20AC;? or â&#x20AC;&#x153;mouth-feelâ&#x20AC;? of ground beef. Glycogen, a carbohydrate; konjac, also known as Japanese yam; and xanthan gum are added to help hold the ground beef together. Inside the Impossible Foods lab, scientists explained how they use various instruments and machines to gather data on the molecules and components that make meat smell, taste, feel and behave the way that it does under various conditions and temperatures. For example, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the gas chromatography-mass spectronomy machine that typically is used to measure alcohol in blood samples or to detect traces of flammable liquids at suspected arson sites. At Impossible Foods, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s used to identify the flavor molecules in food. Across the lab, past beakers and scales and stainless steel equipment, Sergey Solomatin, another principal scientist, explained how various machines help to collect data about the texture of meat. (continued on next page)

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Eating Out

Impossible Foods

ShopTalk

(continued from previous page)

One machine measures the force needed to puncture a piece of meat while another measures how beef firms up as it’s being cooked, and yet another collects data on how fat melts. All of this data characterizing animal meat and its components and behavior helps scientists find plant components that produce the same elements. The burger is also completely vegan- and nut-free, and has no cholesterol, hormones or antibiotics, according to Impossible Foods. Impossible Foods is starting to find success beyond Silicon Valley labs. The company is partnering with restaurants in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles to serve its burger, the first of which was well-known chef David Chang’s Momofuku Nishi in New York City. When Chang first tasted the burger, he posted a photo on Facebook of a dripping, juicy Impossible Foods burger, declaring: “Today I tasted the future and it was vegan ... I can’t really comprehend its impact quite yet … but I think it might change the whole game.” Last week’s cooking demo was followed by a picnic — the moment of truth during which reporters had the chance to taste the burger for themselves. With a light pink tinge on the edge of the patty, the burger not only looked meatlike, it tasted so as well. Notably, it

by Daryl Savage

The Impossible Foods burger in its raw form shows the blood-red color of the burger’s signature ingredient, heme, a protein that gives ground-beef burgers their signature taste, yet also exists in plants. Impossible Foods extracts heme from fermented yeast. was not dry and did not fall apart. And by the end of the picnic, almost all of the burgers were gone. Though it may be a while before the Impossible Burger’s ground beef is available at your local grocery store, the company’s scientists continue to push the boundaries of the impossible as they look to re-create other meat, fish and dairy products in the most scalable, environmentally conscious and nutritious way. Q Editorial Assistant and Intern Coordinator Anna Medina can be e-mailed at amedina@paweekly. com.

CAFFE RIACE REVAMPED … Caffe Riace, the established, authentic Italian restaurant that has stood the test of time in Palo Alto, is reinventing itself. In short — new chef, new menu, new management. “The owners are no longer involved. They moved to Italy. We’re the new management,” said Roberta Rosa, who, with her husband, Marlon Moreno, are the general managers of Caffe Riace. They have a multiyear lease on the restaurant, which began Sept. 3, 2016. Caffe Riace began 19 years ago in an unlikely location off the main drag of California Avenue. Located at 200 Sheridan Ave., it takes up a good part of the first floor of a four-story, 30-unit, luxury apartment building. Rosa said her past has little to do with the food industry, although her family owns restaurants in Brazil. “My background is in business development,” she said. Rosa is hoping to partner with local artists as she prepares to remodel the restaurant’s interior. The main dining room will be transformed into a wine bar and art gallery. “I’ve been trying to find local artists, painters, and photographers at meetups so that we can partner

with them and display their art for sale,” she said. The restaurant also will display artisan tablecloths, chairs and dinner plates. “If someone likes a chair that’s been painted, they can buy it,” she said. The change into an art gallery means the very large Italian mural that covers an entire wall in the current dining room will be removed. “We’re going to repaint all the walls in the remodel and we’ll have new, smaller tables for the wine bar,” Rosa said. The transitions extend into the menu. “The old menu was homemade Italian food. We’re trying to have more modern food and expand into more European cuisine. We want to add tastes from other countries, but we’ll keep a few of the old Italian specialties,” she said. Some new items include lamb ragout, ceviche and crab cakes. Rosa said the Salmon Riace and Fettucine Alfredo on the old menu will stay, but both will have different presentations. “We’re slowly changing the menu, but the Penne Siciliana also will stay, even though we are using white wine instead of red wine. We’ve already seen an increase in customers in the past few weeks. To be honest, a few have

not liked our changes, but overall, it’s good,” said Rosa. Other developments for Caffe Riace include new menu items every month, as well as a fixed-price monthly themed dinner. The fixedprice October dinner is scheduled to take place Oct. 31. Although specific dishes and prices are still to be determined, diners can expect a lot of pumpkin-flavored, darksauced items in the four-course Halloween dinner, which will include wine, according to Rosa. It’s almost impossible to discuss Caffe Riace without referring to its courtyard, which seats the bulk of its customers. Approximately 80 people can dine outside, where the centerpiece in the courtyard is a fountain that has a classic nude lifting a washing machine over her head. A blue, 1950s Fiat greets diners at the front gate, two Italian motor scooters grace one side of the courtyard, and a couple of other classic nude statues round out the unconventionality of the area. Caffe Riace’s uniqueness has not gone unnoticed. The restaurant has made OpenTable. com’s list of the 100 Best Outside Dining Restaurants in America for the past two years.

Got leads on interesting and news-worthy retail developments? Daryl Savage will check them out. Email shoptalk@paweekly.com.

“

World-music fans won’t want to miss this group, which specializes in extraordinary male harmonizing and makes Georgian vocal music thrilling and spiritually moving” —Los Angeles Times

CELEBRATING SEASON FIVE AT BING CONCERT HALL

ENSEMBLE BASIANI SUNDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2:30 PM

COMING UP SOON: the choir of the Georgian patriarchate Ensemble Basiani, plus the Bay Area's very own Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. live.stanford.edu 650.724.2464

SEASON MEDIA SPONSORS

PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE ORCHESTRA WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 7:30 PM

Page 32 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

MOVIE TIMES All showtimes are for Friday to Sunday unless otherwise noted. For other times, reviews and trailers, go to PaloAltoOnline.com/movies. Movie times are subject to change. Call theaters for the latest. The Accountant (R) Century 16: 9:30, 10:30 & 11:25 a.m., 12:40, 1:40, 2:40, 3:50, 5:50, 7, 8, 9, 10:10 & 11 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 4:50 & midnight Sun. 4:50 p.m. Century 20: 11:45 a.m., 2:45, 5:45 & 8:45 p.m. In X-D at 1:15, 4:15, 7:15 & 10:20 p.m. In DBOX at 11:45 a.m., 2:45, 5:45 & 8:45 p.m. American Honey (R)

Guild Theatre: 12:20, 3:40, 7 & 10:15 p.m.

Beware of Pity (Not Rated)

Stanford Theatre: Sat. & Sun. 5:35 & 9:10 p.m.

The Birth of a Nation (R) ++1/2 Aquarius Theatre: 1:50, 4:25 & 7 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 9:30 p.m. Century 16: 10:05 a.m., 1, 4, 7:30 & 10:20 p.m. Century 20: 11:10 a.m., 2, 4:55, 7:45 & 10:40 p.m. Bolshoi Ballet: The Golden Age (PG) Century 16: Sun Click theater name for showtimes Century 20: Sun. 12:55 p.m. Deepwater Horizon (PG) +++ Century 16: 9 a.m., 5:10, 7:50 & 10:45 p.m. Sat. & Sun. 11:40 a.m., 2:30 p.m. Century 20: 10:50 a.m., 1:30, 4:30, 7:35 & 10:15 p.m. Denial (PG-13) Century 20: 10:55 a.m., 1:35, 4:25, 7:10 & 10 p.m. Palo Alto Square: 1:15, 4:15 & 7:15 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 10 p.m. The Girl on the Train (R) ++1/2 Century 16: 9:15, 10:15 & 11:15 a.m., 12:15, 1:15, 2:15, 3:15, 4:15, 5:15, 6:15, 7:15, 8:15, 9:15, 10:15 & 11:15 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 12:01 a.m. Century 20: 11 & 11:40 a.m., 12:50, 1:50, 2:40, 3:50, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40, 7:30, 8:30, 9:35 & 10:20 p.m. The Guardsman (Not Rated)

Stanford Theatre: Fri. 7:30 p.m.

Hell or High Water (R) +++ Aquarius Theatre: 3:05, 5:25 & 7:45 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 10:05 p.m. Kevin Hart: What Now? (R) Century 16: 9:50 a.m., 12:20, 2:55, 5:25, 7:55 & 10:25 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 11:35 & midnight Century 20: 11:55 a.m., 2:35, 5:20, 8 & 10:40 p.m. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) (Not Rated) Stanford Theatre: Sat. & Sun. 3:55 & 7:30 p.m. The Magnificant Seven (PG-13) Century 16: 9:20 a.m., 12:30, 3:55, 7:20 & 10:30 p.m. Century 20: 12:55, 4:20, 7:25 & 10:40 p.m. Masterminds (PG-13) Century 16: 11:30 a.m., 4:30 & 9:35 p.m. Century 20: 12:15, 2:55, 5:25, 7:55 & 10:35 p.m. Max Steel (PG-13) Century 16: 9:35 a.m., noon, 2:35, 5, 7:05 & 9:30 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 11:55 p.m. Century 20: 11:05 a.m., 1:45, 4:35, 7:05 & 9:45 p.m. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (PG) Century 16: 9:05 & 11:30 a.m., 2:25, 4:55, 7:25 & 9:50 p.m. Century 20: 11:15 a.m., 1:40, 4:10, 7 & 9:30 p.m.

High Performance Care For High Performance Cars

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (PG-13) Century 16: 9:25 a.m., 3:45, 5:25, 7 & 10:05 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 12:35 p.m. Fri. & Sun. 11:05 a.m. In 3-D at 2:20 & 8:35 p.m. Century 20: 10:50 a.m., 12:20, 1:55, 3:30, 4:50, 6:30, 7:50 & 10:45 p.m. In 3-D at 9:40 p.m. In DBOX at 12:20, 3:30, 6:30 & 9:40 p.m. The Queen of Katwe (PG) +++ Century 20: 3:40, 7:20 & 10:25 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 12:10 p.m. Palo Alto Square: 1, 4 & 7 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 9:50 p.m. Reunion in Vienna (Not Rated)

Stanford Theatre: Fri. 5:40 & 9:05 p.m.

Snowden (R) +++1/2 Century 20: 6:45 & 9:55 p.m. Fri. 12:25 p.m. Fri. & Sat. 3:35 p.m. Storks (PG) +++ Century 16: 10 a.m., 12:25, 2:50, 5:20, 7:45 & 10:10 p.m. Century 20: 11 a.m., 1:25, 4:05, 6:35, 9:15 & 10:45 p.m. Fri. & Sat. noon, 2:25, 5:15 & 8:15 p.m. Sun. 11:40 a.m., 4:40 p.m. Sully (PG-13) ++ Century 16: 9 a.m., 1:55 & 7:10 p.m. Century 20: 12:05, 2:30, 5:10, 7:40 & 10:25 p.m. Taxi Driver 40th Anniversary (R)

Century 20: Sun. 2 & 7 p.m.

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

Aquarius: 430 Emerson St., Palo Alto (327-3241) Century Cinema 16: 1500 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View (800-326-3264) Century 20 Downtown: 825 Middlefield Road, Redwood City (800-326-3264) 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) ON THE WEB: Additional movie reviews and trailers at PaloAltoOnline.com/movies

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www.ecargarage.com | 650-493-7877 | contact@ecargarage.com www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 33

Breast Cancer: Advances in Diagnosis and Care A COMMUNITY TALK

SPEAKERS

Carl Bertelsen, MD Surgical Oncologist

Kathleen Horst, MD

This year, about 246,000 women will receive a breast cancer diagnosis. But thanks to advances in detection and treatment, there is a decrease in breast cancer deaths among U.S. women. Join Stanford Medicine doctors as they discuss breast cancer care and the latest updates in treatments and breast reconstruction, survivorship and research.

Radiation Oncologist

Arash Momeni, MD Reconstructive Plastic Surgeon

Lidia Schapira, MD Medical Oncologist

George Sledge Jr., MD Medical Oncologist

Learn from breast specialists about: • Medical and surgical treatments including targeted therapy

• Clinical research and cancer genetics

• Latest advances in radiation therapy, including accelerated partial breast irradiation

• Breast reconstruction options (Special Break-out Session)

Stanford’s breast cancer experts will share the latest information and answer your questions.

Saturday, Oct 15 9:30am – 11:00am

Sunnyvale Community Center @ the Senior Center 550 E. Remington Drive, Sunnyvale, CA

SPECIAL BREAK-OUT SESSION

Please join us from 11:15am – 12:00pm for a break-out session about breast reconstruction after the Community Talk. Speakers include: Arash Momeni, MD and Dung Nguyen, MD. Reserve your space Free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Please register at stanfordhealthcare.org/events or by calling 650.736.6555. Page 34 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

PALO ALTO CITY COUNCIL CIVIC CENTER, 250 HAMILTON AVENUE BROADCAST LIVE ON KZSU, FM 90.1 CABLECAST LIVE ON GOVERNMENT ACCESS CHANNEL 26 ***************************************** 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/gov/agendas/default.asp AGENDAâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;REGULAR MEETINGâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;COUNCIL CHAMBERS October 17, 2016, 6:00 PM Special Orders of the Day 1. Life Saving Recognition Ceremony to Recognize Police and Fire First Responders for Saving a Young Man Consent Calendar 3. Utilities Advisory Commission Recommendation That the City Council Adopt a Resolution Amending Utility Gas Rate Schedules G-1, G-1-G, G-2, G-2-G, G-3, G-3-G, G-10 and G-10-G, to Include a Separate Transportation Charge as a Discrete Pass-Through Component and to Reduce the Distribution Charge by the Initial Transportation Charge (TV\U[ VM WLY ;OLYT ,Ń&#x153;LJ[P]L 5V]LTILY (WWYV]HS VM *VU[YHJ[ 5V * >P[O 2LUULK` 1LURZ *VUZ\S[HU[Z PU [OL ;V[HS 5V[ [V ,_JLLK (TV\U[ VM [V 7YV]PKL +LZPNU :LY]PJLZ MVY [OL UL^ 7YPTHY` 6\[MHSS 3PUL H[ [OL 9LNPVUHS >H[LY 8\HSP[` *VU[YVS 7SHU[ >HZ[L^H[LY ;YLH[TLU[ -\UK *HWP[HS 0TWYV]LTLU[ 7YVNYHT 7YVQLJ[ >8 (UU\HS 9L]PL^ VM >PSSPHTZVU (J[ *VU[YHJ[ 9LUL^HSZ (WWYV]HS VM 5VU 9LUL^HS MVY (75 HUK (WWYV]HS VM ,_LTW[PVU <UKLY :LJ[PVU VM [OL *HSPMVYUPH ,U]PYVUTLU[HS 8\HSP[` (J[ (KVW[PVU VM ;OYLL 9LZVS\[PVUZ [V ,_LJ\[L :[H[L 9L]VS]PUN Fund (SRF) Financial Assistance Applications, Designate [OL (TV\U[ VM 7YVQLJ[ ,_WLUKP[\YLZ [V IL 9LPTI\YZLK I` SRF Proceeds, and Pledge Revenue for Repayment of SRF 3VHUZ" (TLUK [OL :9- (ZZPZ[HUJL (NYLLTLU[" HUK (\[OVYPaL *VU[YHJ[ (TLUKTLU[Z >P[O 9>8*7 7HY[ULYZ Mountain View and Los Altos, East Palo Alto Sanitary District, and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University for the Funding of the Sludge Dewatering and Load Out Facility, the Primary Sedimentation Tank 9LOHIPSP[H[PVU [OL -P_LK -PST 9LHJ[VY 9LOHIPSP[H[PVU HUK the Laboratory Environmental Services Building for the >HZ[L^H[LY ;YLH[TLU[ ,U[LYWYPZL -\UK -HJPSP[PLZ H[ [OL 7HSV (S[V 9LNPVUHS >H[LY 8\HSP[` *VU[YVS 7SHU[ 9>8*7 7 VSPJ` HUK :LY]PJLZ *VTTP[[LL 9LJVTTLUKH[PVU [V (JJLW[ [OL +PZHIPSP[` 9H[LZ HUK >VYRLYZ *VTWLUZH[PVU (\KP[ 8. Policy and Services Committee Recommendation to (JJLW[ [OL *P[` (\KP[VY Z 6Ń?JL -PZJHS @LHY 7YVWVZLK >VYR 7SHU 7VSPJ` HUK :LY]PJLZ *VTTP[[LL 9LJVTTLUKH[PVU [V (JJLW[ [OL *P[` (\KP[VY Z 6Ń?JL 8\HY[LYS` 9LWVY[ HZ VM 1\UL :,*65+ 9,(+05.! (KVW[PVU VM HU 6YKPUHUJL (TLUKPUN [OL *P[`ÂťZ 4PUPT\T >HNL 6YKPUHUJL [V (SPNU >P[O [OL :HU[H Clara Cities Association Recommendation to Increase the 4PUPT\T >HNL [V WLY /V\Y PU ;OYLL :[LWZ! VU " VU " VU " HUK H *70 0UJYLHZL (M[LY 0UKL_LK [V [OL )H` (YLH *70 >P[O H 7LYJLU[ *HW HUK UV ,_LTW[PVU -09:; 9,(+05.! :LW[ 7(::,+! Action Items 11. Approval of 2000 Geng Road as the Temporary Location for -PYL :[H[PVU 5V +\YPUN *VUZ[Y\J[PVU VM [OL 9LWSHJLTLU[ -PYL :[H[PVU 5V 12. Discussion and Direction Regarding Parameters of an Ordinance Strengthening Retail Protections in Downtown and the South of Forest Area (SOFA II)

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STANDING COMMITTEE MEETINGS The Special City School Liaison Committee Meeting will be held in the Community Meeting Room on Thursday, October H[ ! (4 [V KPZJ\ZZ! <WKH[L VU 7(<:+ HUK *P[` Sustainability Programs.

www.PaloAltoOnline.com â&#x20AC;˘ Palo Alto Weekly â&#x20AC;˘ October 14, 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ Page 35

Page 36 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

Home&Real Estate

OPEN HOME GUIDE 56 Also online at PaloAltoOnline.com

A weekly guide to home, garden and real estate news, edited by Elizabeth Lorenz

Home Front

GARDEN MYTHS VERSUS SCIENCE ... UC Master Gardeners will hold a class on “Garden Myths and Garden Science: How to Know What Really Works,” on Thursday, Oct. 20 from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Do carrots really love tomatoes? Will bone meal help bulbs grow better? Master Gardener Candace Simpson will discuss how some common garden advice stacks up against science-based gardening information. The class will be at Palo Alto’s Rinconada Library, 1213 Newell Road.

Send notices of news and events related to real estate, interior design, home improvement and gardening to Home Front, Palo Alto Weekly, P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302, or email elorenz@ paweekly.com. Deadline is one week before publication.

Growing your own food is great until evidence of rodents appears by Elizabeth Lorenz

A night-vision n camera caught thi this is ra ratt in aaction ctio ct ionn in a P Professorville rofe ro fessorville resident’s basil. b

rofessorville resident Dexter Girton is an avid gardener who began noticing something was eating his crops. When he was convinced it was rats, his engineering background kicked into gear and a night-vision camera he rigged confirmed his suspicions. “There have always been a few rats in our garden through the year, with a little damage here and there. I had noticed a gradual increase in rat damage for the past four years. But this spring and summer the damage was the worst, by far, in 30 years of gardening. They ate things that were never touched before -- like entire basil plants and green citrus. Usually, they would eat some dried tangerines and a few ripe tomatoes, but this year they ate green and ripening tomatoes, and then they destroyed a lot of pluots ... and pummelos. I wasn’t prepared for this and before I could find an effective method to keep them away they had eaten half of the green and ripening tomato crop.” “I’ve caught 21 (rats) in traps since January but there are many more. I have 11 snap traps and one electronic trap,” he said. “The adult rats are smart and avoid the traps while the young rats are more careless, as shown in my (nighttime) video recordings. “I know the damage was being caused by rats because I use motion-activated night vision cameras to record videos of their behavior. They prefer fruit over any bait I put in the traps. “This spring I took the approach of excluding them from my tomato plants and fruit trees

Courtesy of Dexter Girton

FABULOUS FABRIC ... The 8th Annual FabMo Textile Art Boutique will be held Saturday Oct. 22 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Palo Alto Elks Lodge, located at 4249 El Camino Real. FabMo is a MountainView-based nonprofit organization started by a Palo Alto couple that collects high-end fabric, wallpaper, carpet and tile samples from design showrooms in San Francisco and San Jose. These are samples that were formerly just thrown away. The organization has a dual mission of reducing unnecessary waste (over 70 tons of material are collected yearly) and encouraging creativity. The Textile Arts Boutique is a craft show designed to showcase the creative talents of the FabMo community and promote the concept of creative reuse to the public. All items for sale at the Boutique must contain at least 30 percent FabMo-sourced materials.

Rats!

Rats eat holes in fruit as it hangs on trees and often come back to the same piece of fruit again.

that are not near fences or buildings.” He uses 9,000-volt shock wires that are similar to those used by farmers and ranchers. The shocks don’t kill the rats, he says, but “teaches them a lesson.” Any more voltage and it would be dangerous to people and pets. Girton listed all of the 16 fruits and vegetables that rats have damaged in his yard. They range from avocados to basil to peaches, raspberries and tomatoes. He is not alone. Master Gardener Candace Simpson, who lives in Barron Park, started noticing holes eaten in her tomatoes and cucumbers growing in her side yard, and began a hunt for rats. “I started looking around and asking where could these rats be coming from? My neighbors had a very overgrown (lantana) hedge, very tangled and totally dense.” Once she discovered that the neighbor’s hedge did have evidence of rats, her neighbors quickly took it out. “I have had no rat damage in my side yard since.” She said rats usually eat holes in fruit or vegetables but will leave it in place and come back the next night to eat more. Squirrels, on the other

Advice and information Advice from the Santa Clara County Vector Control District: Q Avoid attractants like pet food and fruits and vegetables. Q Exclude them with barriers Q Trim and prune trees to keep access to fences and roofs limited Q Keep garbage covered Q No pet bowls or dripping faucets/hoses Q The animals shouldn’t have access to food. According to the University of California, while rats are much larger than the common house mouse, a young rat is occasionally confused with a mouse. Once rats have invaded your garden or landscaping, unless your house is truly rodent proof, it is only a matter of time before you find evidence of them indoors. Experts say to inspect your yard and home thoroughly. If the answer to any of the following questions is yes, you may have a rat problem. Do you find rat droppings around dog or cat dishes or pet food storage containers? Do you hear noises coming from the attic

Courtesy of Dexter Girton

NATIVE PLANT SALE ... Conserve water and make your garden beautiful this season by introducing California native plants. The Santa Clara Valley Native Plant Society and Acterra Nursery will hold a Native Plant Sale at Hidden Villa Ranch in Los Altos Hills on Saturday, Oct. 15 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Browse T-shirts, books, posters, and note cards featuring native plants. Renew or purchase a new native plant society membership. Free demonstrations will include a planting method for native plants at 12:30 p.m. and “Success with Native Plants” at 1 p.m. Speak to experts about lawn alternatives such as native perennials, wildflowers, and grasses. Free parking. Come early for the best selection; bring boxes to carry your purchases home. For more information: www.cnps-scv. org email: cnps_scv@yahoo.com or call (650) 260-3450.

hand, pick the fruit and take it with them to eat it. She said cooperating with neighbors is essential. “One person trying to correct the situation in their yard is never going to correct it. “ She said in her own and fellow gardeners’ experience, the uptick in rats is partly due to the increase in home gardening. “There’s such a new emphasis on growing food. The popularization of the back yard garden,” she said. “The overpopulation is due to an abundant food supply and very good places to live. Gardeners may need to get together as small neighborhood groups.” Rats don’t necessarily just prefer an overgrown or neglected garden. “It doesn’t have to be ugly for a rat to be living there,” Simpson said. While it might be tempting to head to the nearest hardware store to buy traps and poison, Santa Clara County Vector Control District spokesman Jose Colume says not so fast. These districts provide free inspections from expert technicians to help residents. If you suspect you have rats, Colume, a community resource specialist for the district, says to contact your county vector control district first before calling a commercial pest control company or trying to deal with the problem yourself. Technicians from the Santa Clara County Vector Control District can inspect the house perimeter and do a back-yard inspection for free. “Our inspectors are very well trained to find entry points and paths,” he said. “If you cannot see the ground, the rats can nest there,” Colume said, pointing out that low shrubs, ivy, or generally covered vegetation without good turnover is attractive to rats. Even if you don’t have the shrubs, your neighbor might, while you have the food. “One yard can be the food source and the other yard can be the nest,” Colume said. “Normally it’s not very far. These animals don’t like to commute.” Technicians set “snap traps” in the most effective places. Snap traps are not dangerous to other animals or wildlife, but will dispose of the rats efficiently. “We don’t advise rat poison,” he said. Poisoning rats can be dangerous to other animals and often isn’t as effective as traps, especially if the sick rats travel to your neighbor’s yard to die. While composting is an excellent way of (continued on page 38)

just after dusk? Have you found remnants of rat nests when dismantling your firewood stack? Does your dog or cat bring home dead rat carcasses? Is there evidence rodents are feeding on fruit/nuts that are in or falling from the trees in your yard? Do you see burrows among plants or damaged vegetables when working in the garden? Do you see rats traveling along utility lines or on the tops of fences at dusk or soon after? Have you found rat nests behind boxes or in drawers in the garage? Are there smudge marks caused by the rats rubbing their fur against beams, rafters, pipes, and walls? Do you see burrows beneath your compost pile or beneath the garbage can? Are there rat or mouse droppings in your recycle bins? Have you ever had to remove a drowned rat from your swimming pool or hot tub? Do you see evidence of something digging under your garden tool shed or doghouse? Q —Elizabeth Lorenz

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 37

Home & Real Estate

Rats! (continued from page 37)

recycling, be sure (the bins) don’t attract rats, he said. Get a tight-fitting covered bin and secure even the lower portion. Rats, he said, can get through anything with holes larger than a person’s thumb. According to University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources/ Integrated Pest Management, people don’t often see rats, but signs of their presence are easy to spot. In California, the most troublesome rats are two introduced species: the roof rat and the Norway rat. Norway rats, sometimes called brown or sewer rats, are stocky burrowing rodents that are larger than roof rats. Their burrows are found along building foundations,

beneath rubbish or woodpiles, and in moist areas in and around gardens and fields. Nests can be lined with shredded paper, cloth, or other fibrous material. When Norway rats, which weigh up to 18 ounces, invade buildings, they usually remain in the basement or ground floor. Norway rats live throughout the 48 contiguous United States. Roof rats, sometimes called black rats, are slightly smaller than Norway rats. They weigh about 5 to 10 ounces and they have pointed muzzles. Unlike Norway rats, their tails are longer than their heads and bodies combined. Roof rats are agile climbers and usually live and nest above ground in shrubs, trees, and dense vegetation such as ivy. In buildings, they are most often found in enclosed or elevated spaces such as attics, walls, false ceilings, and cabinets. Q

INFORMATION Santa Clara County Vector Control: (408) 918-4770 email: vectorinfo@deh.sccgov.org Web site: sccvector.org (you can also download an app here to allow you to send photos directly and receive notifications from the vector control district. Response should happen in at least 3 business days.

Courtesy of Dexter Girton

Aluminum mesh protects pummeloes from rats’ teeth.

San Mateo County Mosquito and Vector Control (650) 344-8592 email: info@smcmvcd.org Web site: www.smcmvcd.org University of California Agriculture and Integrated Pest Management: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/ pn74106.html

HOME SALES

Home sales are provided by California REsource, a real estate information company that obtains the information from the County Recorder’s Office. Information is recorded from the deeds after the close of escrow and published within four to six weeks.

East Palo Alto

220 Azalia Drive E. Moreyra to D. Ramde for $630,000 on 08/31/16; built 1951, 2bd, 860 sq.ft.; previous sale 03/24/2011, $210,000 2157 Clarke Avenue N. & P. Lobue to A. Ayars for $700,000 on 08/31/16; built 1951, 3bd, 1,020 sq.ft.; previous sale 04/29/2011, $300,000 2302 Oakwood Drive J. Liang to Portnov Trust for $768,000 on 09/07/16; built 1946, 3bd, 1,494 sq.ft.; previous sale 02/26/2010, $320,000 2266 Pulgas Avenue L. Nay to M. Ahmad for $708,000 on 08/31/16; built 1953, 3bd, 1,000 sq.ft.; previous sale 09/03/2014, $305,000

Los Altos

1873 Alford Avenue S. Hastings to J. Baumbach for $2,388,000 on 09/23/16; built 1953, 3bd, 1,833 sq.ft.; previous sale 09/1971, $30,500 10671 Groveland Drive Powers Trust to M. Dhamija for $1,756,500 on 09/23/16; built 1955, 3bd, 2,422 sq.ft.; previous sale 06/23/1977, $129,500 315 Quinnhill Road Adl 1’ to R. Frei for $4,501,000 on 09/23/16; built 2015, 5bd, 4,605 sq.ft.; previous sale 05/01/2015, $2,250,000

Menlo Park 724 Oak Grove Avenue #7 R. Snell to Lumpkins Trust for $725,000 on 09/07/16; built 1985, 1bd, 598 sq.ft.; previous sale

07/25/2014, $602,000 1312 Windermere Avenue O.Ortiz to J. & E. Yu for $900,000 on 08/31/16; built 1951, 3bd, 1,060 sq.ft.; previous sale 12/28/2009, $280,000

Mountain View

373 Foxborough Drive Jacobs Trust to S. & A. Deboisset for $2,000,000 on 09/23/16; built 1976, 5bd, 2,694 sq.ft. 541 Leona Lane S. & H. Rayden to Tang & Kon Trust for $2,650,000 on 09/26/16; built 1956, 4bd, 2,249 sq.ft.; previous sale 07/28/2009, $1,078,000 1740 Morgan Street Brennan Trust to D. & B. Cook for $1,220,500 on 09/23/16; built 1955, 3bd, 1,104 sq.ft. 550 Ortega Avenue #B130 G. Jower to T. Nin for $1,071,000 on 09/23/16; built 1992, 2bd, 1,199 sq.ft.; previous sale 10/28/2009, $545,000 509 Sierra Vista Avenue #7 W. Jautz to Y. Zhuo for $850,000 on 09/23/16; built 1982, 2bd, 1,070 sq.ft.; previous sale 08/03/2004, $428,000 255 South Rengstorff Avenue #51 H. & N. Nguyen to D. Xu for $805,000 on 09/23/16; built 1965, 3bd, 1,292 sq.ft. 100 West El Camino Real #30 C. Loeffel to P. & S. Aggarwal for $1,010,000 on 09/26/16; built 1981, 2bd, 1,337 sq.ft.; previous sale 10/14/2004, $527,000

Palo Alto

1350 Byron Street Sensabaugh Trust to Gimon Trust for $3,205,000 on 09/23/16; built 1928, 4bd, 2,584 sq.ft. 1430 Greenwood Avenue Galbraith Trust to B. & J. Galbraith for $4,970,000 on 09/21/16; built 1950, 3bd, 2,261 sq.ft.; previous sale 10/06/1986, $280,000 3224 Greer Road Nittler Trust to L. Zhang for $2,108,000 on

09/21/16; built 1952, 4bd, 1,364 sq.ft. 685 High Street #5B Foster Trust to S. Shere for $1,630,000 on 09/23/16; built 1981, 2bd, 1,485 sq.ft.; previous sale 08/14/2015, $1,550,000 2317 St. Francis Drive C. Papatheodorou to S. Khare for $2,725,000 on 09/23/16; built 2006, 4bd, 3,032 sq.ft.; previous sale 07/31/2002, $690,000 2510 Webster Street TarlinFox Trust to Deng Trust for $2,900,000 on 09/23/16; built 1947, 3bd, 2,034 sq.ft.; previous sale 10/24/1990, $465,000

Portola Valley

131 Brookside Drive Sanguinetti Trust to C. Ferrari for $3,000,000 on 09/07/16; built 1948, 3bd, 2,240 sq.ft. 135 Wyndham Drive T. Hayes to Anderson Trust for $3,600,000 on 09/06/16; built 1950, 4bd, 3,270 sq.ft.; previous sale 06/18/2010, $2,250,000

BUILDING PERMITS

50 El Camino Real, revise tree plantings, fence line and open space modifications at rear of site 1055 Hutchinson Ave. install 240-volt,50-amp receptacle in front left corner of garage to charge Tesla 337 Kipling St. install new window at rear of garage. $500 4000 Terman Dr., replace four self-contained air cooled classroom heat pumps. $63,979 2449 Waverley St., revision to add shear wall in master bedroom 620 Sand Hill Road, renovation of existing first-floor bar. Scope of work includes replacement of existing bar and remove fireplace, lighting, fixtures and finishes, ceiling. $479,591 115 Waverley St., demolish detached garage

JUST LISTED 350 IRIS WAY, PALO ALTO CHARMING HOME READY TO MOVE IN A wonderful opportunity to live in one of the best neighborhoods in North Palo Alto! Beautifully remodeled with lovely gardens, this home offers traditional style, high-end appliances and a family-friendly street only a block from Duveneck Elementary School. Welcome home! $2,798,000

TWILIGHT TOUR OPEN HOUSE OPEN HOUSE Friday, 9/30 OPEN SATURDAY Saturday, 10/1 & Sunday, 10/2 & SUNDAY 5:00-7:00 1:30-4:30 1:30 – 4:30

Realtors who know your neighborhood JENNIFER BUENROSTRO

650.224.9539 jbuenrostro@apr.com BRE #01733750

ISABELLE COLE

650.814.0360 icole@apr.com BRE #01996039

Square footage, acreage, miles and other information herein, has been received from one or more of a variety of different sources. Such information has not been verified by Alain Pinel Realtors. If important to buyers, buyers should conduct their own investigation.

Page 38 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

151 Seale Avenue, Palo Alto Luxury Craftsman in Old Palo Alto Style, grace, and function harmonize in this contemporary Craftsman 6 bedroom, 4.5 bathroom home of over 4,600 sq. ft. (per <8-:?J 5:/8A05:3 3->-31 @4-@ 5? @A/710 C5@45: 45348E /;B1@10 !80 "-8; 8@; 813-:@8E -<<;5:@10 -:0 Ō1D5.8E 01?53:10 @45? .>-:0

:1C 4;91 1:6;E? - 05B5:1 5?8-:0 75@/41: @C; 8-A:0>E ->1-? -:0 - C-87 ;A@ 8;C1> 81B18 C5@4 - .-> -:0 - <;@1:@5-8 C5:1 /188-> The property of 7,500 sq. ft. (per county) is immaculately landscaped, and the garage can serve as a studio. With just moments to %@-:2;>0 ':5B1>?5@E -852;>:5- B1:A1 -:0 &;C: ;A:@>E (588-31 E;A /-: -8?; 1-?58E .571 @; ?;A34@ -2@1> "-8; 8@; ?/4;;8? For video tour & more photos, please visit:

www.151SealeAve.com Offered at $5,688,000

OPEN HOUSE

Sunday

1:30 - 4:30

6 5 0 . 4 8 8 . 7 3 2 5 | m i c h a e l r @ d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | w w w. d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | C a l B R E # 0 1 9 0 3 2 2 4 www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 39

1492 Webster Street, Palo Alto MAJESTIC NORTH PALO ALTO CRAFTSMAN ESTATE • Over one-half acre (approx. 23,033 sq. ft.) with potential for subdivision • 6 bedrooms and 4.5 baths arranged over 3 levels • Approximately 4,223 sq. ft. of living space (buyer to conﬁrm) • Detached garage for up to 6 cars (approx. 870 sq. ft.) plus attached workshop building (approx. 470 sq. ft.) • Acclaimed Palo Alto schools (Walter Hays K-5, Jordan Middle 6-8, Palo Alto High 9-12 - Buyer to verify enrollment)

OFFERED AT $9,890,000 WWW.1492WEBSTER.COM

1550 Waverley Street, Palo Alto PRIME OLD PALO ALTO CRAFTSMAN GEM • 5 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms arranged over 2 levels • Approximately 3,540 sq ft (buyer to conﬁrm) • Approximately one-third acre (13,235 sq ft; buyer to conﬁrm) • Tucked away pool and cabana with half-bath • Acclaimed Palo Alto Schools(Walter Hays Elementary, Jordan Middle, Palo Alto High- buyer to verify enrollment)

OFFERED AT $8,599,000 WWW.1550WAVERLEY.COM

62 S Clark Avenue, Los Altos CONTEMPORARY MASTERPIECE IN PRIME LOS ALTOS • 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms arranged over 2 levels • Approximately 3,254 sq ft of living space (buyer to conﬁrm) • Approximately one-third acre (13,860 sq ft; buyer to conﬁrm) • Elegant living room with high ceilings and doors to private rear landscaped yard. • Top-Rated Los Altos Schools (Almond elementary, Egan Middle School, Los Altos High- buyer to verify enrollment)

OFFERED AT $3,998,000 WWW.62SCLARK.COM

OPEN SUNDAY 1:30-4:30PM

(650) 475-2030

lhunt@serenogroup.com CalBRE# 01009791

(650) 475-2035

laurel@serenogroup.com CalBRE# 01747147

www.LeannahandLaurel.com Page 40 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

This information was supplied by reliable sources. Sales Associate believes this information to be correct but has not veriďŹ ed this information and assumes no legal responsibility for its accuracy. Buyers should investigate these issues to their own satisfaction. Buyer to verify school enrollment.

622 Leahy Street, Redwood City â&#x20AC;˘ Elegantly appointed end-unit townhome offers resort style living close to Atherton â&#x20AC;˘ 1,900 square foot property features 3 bedrooms, including a master suite and 2.5 bathrooms â&#x20AC;˘ Spacious living room with high ceilings, fireplace, and sliding doors open to a private patio â&#x20AC;˘ Formal dining room with built-in wine cabinetry â&#x20AC;˘ Updated kitchen with eat-in dining area has access to the front balcony â&#x20AC;˘ Attached two-car garage â&#x20AC;˘ Hardwood floors, 2 balconies and a private patio â&#x20AC;˘ Complex offers a beautiful pool and lawn area â&#x20AC;˘ Easy access for commuting, close to shops and restaurants

$998,000 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; WWW.622LEAHY.COM OPEN SAT & SUN 1:30-4:30PM

(650) 475-2030

lhunt@serenogroup.com CalBRE# 01009791

(650) 475-2035

laurel@serenogroup.com CalBRE# 01747147

www.LeannahandLaurel.com

OPEN HOUSE SATURDAY & SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15 & 16, 12:00 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 5:00PM

1020 Sharon Park Drive M E N LO PA R K Sophisticated Serenity in a Convenient Location â&#x20AC;˘ Approx. 3,080 square feet on 19,400-square-foot lot Â&#x2021; EHGURRPV XSJUDGHG EDWKURRPV DQG RIĂ&#x20AC; FH â&#x20AC;˘ Separate living and dining rooms, with gorgeous views Â&#x2021; 6HSDUDWH IDPLO\ URRP ZLWK Ă&#x20AC; UHSODFH DQG DFFHVV to patio Â&#x2021; 5HQRYDWHG NLWFKHQ ZLWK QHZ TXDUW] FRXQWHUWRSV LVODQG QHZ VWDLQOHVV DSSOLDQFHV SOXV VHSDUDWH seating area Â&#x2021; /DUJH VXQQ\ SULYDWH ODQGVFDSHG ORW ZLWK VHYHUDO patios Â&#x2021; ([FHOOHQW /DV /RPLWDV VFKRROV â&#x20AC;˘ Convenient to shopping, parks, and transportation

Offered at $3,488,000 www.1020SharonPark.com

lynn wilson roberts

650.255.6987 lwr@wilsonroberts.com LynnWilsonRoberts.com License #01814885

www.PaloAltoOnline.com â&#x20AC;˘ Palo Alto Weekly â&#x20AC;˘ October 14, 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ Page 41

OPEN HOUSE SUNDAY 2–4PM

PROFESSORVILLE

COMMUNITY CENTER

1320 Webster Street, Palo Alto Offered at $5,750,000 | 1320webster.com

1404 Harker Avenue, Palo Alto Offered at $2,195,000 | 1404Harker.com

SOLD

DOWNTOWN BUILD OPPORTUNITY

ATHERTON ESTATE

847 Webster Street, Palo Alto | Lot ±7,500 sf Offered at $2,998,000

393 Atherton Avenue, Atherton Offered at $8,500,000 | 393atherton.com

SOLD

DUVENECK

CRESCENT PARK

5 Phillips Road, Palo Alto Offered at $4,300,000 | 5phillipsrd.com

1145 Lincoln Avenue, Palo Alto Offered at $2,349,000 | 1145Lincoln.com

MICHAEL DREYFUS Broker 650.485.3476 michael.dreyfus@dreyfussir.com License No. 01121795

NOELLE QUEEN, Sales Associate 650.427.9211 noelle.queen@dreyfussir.com License No. 01917593

ASHLEY BANKS, Sales Associate 650.544.8968 ashley.banks@dreyfussir.com License No. 01913361

DOWNTOWN PALO ALTO 728 EMERSON ST, PALO ALTO | DOWNTOWN MENLO PARK 640 OAK GROVE AVE, MENLO PARK | DREYFUSSIR.COM Each Office is Independently Owned and Operated.

Page 42 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

127 Pinon Drive, Portola Valley Lavish Woodland Sanctuary Flaunting elevated views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, this trophy residence of approx. 6,800 sq. ft. (per town) designed by Michael Moyer celebrates natural privacy and one-of-a-kind amenities. Holding 3 bedrooms and 3 full and 3 half baths, the home -8?; ;Ŋ 1>? - V .10>;;9 V .-@4 3A1?@4;A?1 -:0 -: 5:@1>5;> /8-0 C5@4 C-8:A@ -:0 >1:/4 8591?@;:1 D@>-;>05:->E 45348534@? 5:/8A01 - @>5 ?@;< 181B-@;> - 6-C 0>;<<5:3 C5:1 /188-> -:0 - <-8-@5-8 9-?@1> >1@>1-@ Ō ;-@5:3 ?@-5>/-?1 81-0? @; 3->01:? ;Ŋ 1>5:3 waterfalls, a spa, and the fully functional guesthouse. Undevelopable open space surrounds the two parcels of nearly 18 acres (per county) that form this property, ensuring continuous privacy and unspoiled panoramas. For video tour & more photos, please visit:

www.127Pinon.com Offered at $19,988,000 6 5 0 . 4 8 8 . 7 3 2 5 | m i c h a e l r @ d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | w w w. d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | C a l B R E # 0 1 9 0 3 2 2 4 www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 43

Selling your home? First, meet with Michael Repka.

Meet with Michael today for tax and legal advice before listing your home. Unlike most real estate agents, Michael holds two law degrees and has years of experience as a real estate and tax attorney, giving his clients a unique advantage as most other brokerages do not provide an in-house attorney to help clients. In addition, the expertise and marketing available through the team at DeLeon Realty are the very best in the business. Meet with Michael to discuss any preliminary tax and legal questions about selling your home and let him tell you more about what makes DeLeon Realty’s innovative approach to real estate so successful. There is no cost or obligation for this consultation. However, Homeowners that have a current listing contract with another agent are excluded.

650.488.7325 | www.deleonrealty.com | CalBRE #01903224

Page 44 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

PROVEN RESULTS Our successful track record of home listing preparation, marketing, and proven negotiation skills means that our listed condos consistently sell for more. In apples-to-apples comparisons of listed condos, our listings consistently sell for higher prices with fewer days on market.

PENDING WITH MULTIPLE OFFERS 8 DAYS ON MARKET | WITH MULTIPLE OFFERS

425 Magritte Way, Mountain View | The Mondrian | 3 bed, 3 bath, 1,670 sq. ft. | DOM: 8

PENDING AFTER SEVEN DAYS ON MARKET 7 DAYS ON MARKET | WITH MULTIPLE OFFERS

184 Wiley Terrace, Mountain View | 3 bed, 3.5 bath, 1,654 sq. ft. | DOM: 7

WE SELL CONDOS AND TOWNHOMES EXCLUSIVELY Condo Connect Realty has built an expertise and understanding of condos and townhomes by focusing exclusively on their sale and purchase. Our team understands the nuances and intricacies of homeowner association rules and regulations and ensures that buyers and sellers are completely familiar with their possible repercussions. We also know the strengths and unique selling points of each complex and market these selling points to the broadest possible audience.

GET YOUR BEST POSSIBLE RESULT www CondoConnectRealty com www.CondoConnectRealty.com

650.543.8536 | CalBRE #02012195 | info@ condoconnectrealty.com www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 45

Bay Area Collection Menlo Park. Palo Alto. Burlingame 650.314.7200 | paciﬁcunion.com

APPOINTMENT ONLY

52 Atherton Avenue, Atherton $19,000,000 6 BD / 7+ BA

147 Stockbridge Avenue, Atherton $18,950,000 6 BD / 6+ BA

53 Magnolia Drive, Atherton $7,100,000 4 BD / 3.5 BA

16 Farm Lane, Hillsborough $5,600,000 4 BD / 5.5 BA

Rare 2.87 acre private estate in the heart of Atherton! Magniﬁcent seasonal gardens surround an elegant, meticulously maintained home.

Hamptons estate home completed in May 2016. Approx 1.1 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds and privacy.

Constructed in 2001 with additional recent renovations, this custom home is a masterpiece of East Coast-inﬂuenced architecture.

Situated up a curving, gated driveway, this Tuscan masterpiece has bucolic views of the enclave of Farm Lane.

LeMieux Associates, 650.465.7459 Carol MacCorkle, 650.868.5478

APPOINTMENT ONLY

Gina Haggarty, 650.207.5192 LeMieux Associates, 650.465.7459

APPOINTMENT ONLY

OPEN SUN 1-4

APPOINTMENT ONLY

197 Glenwood Avenue, Atherton $5,495,000 5 BD / 3 BA

980 Berkeley Avenue, Menlo Park $5,395,000 5 BD / 5.5 BA

714 Arroyo Road, Los Altos $3,988,000 5 BD / 3.5 BA

2250 Ramona Street, Palo Alto $3,898,000 4 BD / 3.5 BA

Magniﬁcent Tudor estate is one of Atherton’s early treasures. More than one acre with majestic palms and heritage oaks,.

Classic, traditional appeal unfolds at this spacious two-story home in the desirable Menlo Oaks neighborhood.

Beautifully maintained custom home completely renovated and expanded in 2001. Large family room/kitchen opens to a private 17,500 sf lot with a big pool.

Elegant home on expansive lot in prime Old Palo Alto location. Light ﬁlled rooms, dramatic high ceilings, large kitchen, separate dining room, detached garage.

LeMieux Associates, 650.465.7459

LeMieux Associates, 650.465.7459 Michael Hall & Tricia Soliz, 650.465.1651

Sharon Witte, 650.269.6700

APPOINTMENT ONLY

OPEN SUN 1:30-4:30

PENDING

APPOINTMENT ONLY

55 Palmer Lane, Atherton $3,895,000 4 BD / 2.5 BA

28 Sneckner Court, Menlo Park $3,490,000 4 BD / 4 BA

1 Quail Court, Woodside $2,158,000 5 BD / 3 BA

42039 Via San Luis Rey, Fremont $1,798,000 4 BD / 3 BA

Surrounded by mature trees, a sun-swept lawn, and shade gardens, this serene home is a wonderful blend of old and new.

This classic, elegant home offering ~3,970 square feet is located on a desirable Menlo Park cul-de-sac street surrounded by the beauty of Stanford Open Space land.

this beautiful home has ocean and sunset views and sits on a largely ﬂat 2.6-acre lot with a barn and pasture.

Chic Newly Rebuilt and Expanded 4 Bedroom 3 Bathroom Home, Full Bedroom & Bath Downstairs With Private Entrance.

Darcy Gamble, 650.380.9415

Greg Stange, 650.208.5196

LeMieux Associates, 650.465.7459 LeMieux Associates, 650.465.7459

Page 46 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 47

A Luxury Collection By Intero Real Estate Services

Sand Hill Estates, Woodside

5 Betty Lane, Atherton

11627 Dawson Drive, Los Altos Hills

$35,000,000

$24,800,000

$15,995,000

Listing Provided by: Dana Cappiello & Cutty Smith Lic.#01343305 & 01444081

Listing Provided by: David Kelsey, Tom Dallas, Greg Goumas Lic.#01242399, 00709019, 01878208

Listing Provided by: David Kelsey, Tom Dallas, Lic.#01242399, 00709019

91 Selby Lane, Atherton

291 Atherton Avenue, Atherton

26880 Elena Road, Los Altos Hills

$14,900,000

$14,688,000

$10,988,888

Listing Provided by: Catherine Qian, Lic.#01276431

Listing Provided by: Nancy Gehrels, Lic.#01952964

Listing Provided by: Dan Kroner, Lic.#01790340

10440 Albertsworth Lane, Los Altos Hills

27466 Sunrise Farm Rd, Los Altos Hills

40 Firethorn Way, Portola Valley

$11,488,000

$9,500,000

$6,888,000

Listing Provided by: Greg Goumas & John Reece, Lic.#01878208 & 00838479

Listing Provided by: Greg Goumas, Lic.#01878208

1100 Mountain Home Rd.,Woodside

161 Willow Road, Menlo Park

1250 Miramontes Street, Half Moon Bay

$5,850,000

$2,998,000

$2,800,000

Listing Provided by: David Kelsey, Tom Dallas, Lic.#01242399, 00709019

Listing Provided by: Dana Cappiello & Derek Cappiello, Lic.#01343305 & #01983178

Listing Provided by: Dana Cappiello, Lic.#01343305

See our entire luxury collection at www.InteroPrestigio.com ©2016 Intero Real Estate Services Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate and a wholly owned subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc. All rights reserved.

Page 48 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. This is not intended as a solicitation if you are listed with another broker.

The Solution to Selling Your Luxury Home.

26880 Elena Road, Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 | $10,988,888 | Listing Provided by: Dan Kroner Lic.#01790340

www.26880ElenaRoad.com Customized to the unique style of each luxury property, Prestigio will expose your home through the most influential mediums reaching the greatest number of qualified buyers wherever they may be in the world. For more information about listing your home with the Intero Prestigio International program, call your local Intero Real Estate Services office. Woodside 1590 Cañada Lane Woodside, CA 94062 650.206.6200

Menlo Park 807 Santa Cruz Avenue Menlo Park, CA 94025 650.543.7740

Los Altos 496 First Street, Ste. 200 Los Altos, CA 94022 650.947.4700

www.InteroRealEstate.com www.InteroOpenHomes.com 2016 Intero Real Estate Services Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate and a wholly owned subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc. All rights reserved. • Palo All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. This is not intended as a solicitation if you arewww.PaloAltoOnline.com listed with another broker.

Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 49

Think you can’t afford a Fabulous New House & Guest House Near Menlo Park or Palo Alto??? THINK AGAIN!!!! THEN COME SEE 331 OAK COURT

OPEN SATURDAY & SUNDAY 1– 4 PM

Desirably located in Menlo Park’s Willows neighborhood Cul de sac location just North of Palo Alto’s University Avenue Beautifully landscaped 10,663 sq ft lot (approx. 1/4 Acre) Plans for enclosed garage included Close to Silicon Valley, Stanford, 101, SF/SJ airports, & downtown PA ALL NEW CONSTRUCTION! 3350 sq. ft.

Main House • 5 Br 3.5 Ba (2720 sq. ft.) • Two separate bedroom wings • Two master suites • Central great room, kitchen and outdoor entertainment area

Guest House • 1 Br 1 Ba. (630 sq ft) • Separate

house with separate utilities, laundry & parking

• Rental

income estimated at $4000/month

The perfect property for either shared or individual ownership!

OFFERED AT $3,788,000 /V^ JHU `V\ HɈVYK [OPZ MHI\SV\Z UL^ S\_\Y` H[ H MYHJ[PVU VM [OL WYPJL&

Marie Straube

• Buy with a friend or co-workers as tenants-in-common! • Use all incomes to make qualifying for a loan much easier.

Broker

• Rental income can further reduce the monthly payments. • ,HJO V^ULY LUQV`Z [OL ILULÄ[Z HUK [H_ HK]HU[HNLZ VM OVTL V^ULYZOPW • Percentage of ownership is decided by buyers and does not have to be equal. Example: With 2 equal owners, the price equates to only $1,894,000 each! With 3 equal owners, the price equates to only $1,262,666 each!

650-906-6902 BRE #00520530

MarieStraube@me.com

For more information please visit www.331OakCourt.com

161 Willow Road Menlo Park, California 5 Bedrooms | 4 Full Bathrooms 3,215 Sq. Ft. | 8,660 Sq. Ft. Lot Beautiful New Construction with high-end finishes. Just a short distance to Facebook, and both downtown Palo Alto and downtown Menlo Park. Drive Home in Style! This home comes with a brand new Mercedes C300! White with silk beige interior and equipped with multimedia package.

Offered at: $2,998,000 See the virtual tour: www.161WillowRd.com

Dana Cappiello

Derek Cappiello

415.264.5464

650.743.9337

dana.cappiello@yahoo.com www.DanaCappiello.com

DCappiello24@gmail.com

Lic.#01343305

Lic.#01983178

Page 50 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

2016 Intero Real Estate Services, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate and a wholly owned subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc.All rights reserved. All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. This is not intended as a solicitation if you are listed with another broker.

14123 Tracy Court, Los Altos Hills High-Tech Architectural Masterpiece Meticulous attention to detail augments the design of this breathtaking 7 bedroom, 6 bathroom residence of nearly 6,000 sq. ft. (per appraisal) that occupies premises of 1.3 acres (per appraisal). Highly sustainable and state-of-the-art, the smart home includes a reliable, eco-friendly geothermal energy system and versatile spaces like a two-story au pair unit. As functional as it is stylish, this /;:@19<;>->E >1@>1-@ 1Ŋ;>@81??8E ;<1:? @; ;A@0;;> 85B5:3 ->1-? 45348534@5:3 - 75@/41: - ?<1/@-/A8-> <;;8 C5@4 -: 1D/5@5:3 C-@1> 21-@A>1 -:0 - /A?@;9 <8-E ?@>A/@A>1 :6;E 85B5:3 C5@45: ?@1<? ;2 "1->?;: >-?@>-01>; ">1?1>B1 -:0 C5@4 -//1?? @; 1D/1<@5;:-8 "-8; Alto schools (buyer to verify eligibility). For video tour & more photos, please visit:

www.14123TracyCourt.com Offered at $7,788,000 6 5 0 . 4 8 8 . 7 3 2 5 | m i c h a e l r @ d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | w w w. d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | C a l B R E # 0 1 9 0 3 2 2 4 www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 51

6 4 5 L O M A V E R D E , P A L O A LT O LARGE LOT IN DESIRABLE MIDTOWN NEIGHBORHOOD HIGHLIGHTS

OPEN HOUSE SATURDAY & SUNDAY 1:30-4:30 PM

Listing Agent: Tim Foy CalBRE# 00849721 Cell: 650.387.5078 Tim@MidtownPaloAlto.com

â&#x20AC;¢ 1 â&#x20AC;¢ $ ( $ % â&#x20AC;¢ 0 ! â&#x20AC;¢ $ + ! % â&#x20AC;¢ & â&#x20AC;¢ ( ! & ! $ ( â&#x20AC;¢ % ) !& â&#x20AC;¢ % ! ( ! + + ! ! " â&#x20AC;¢ ' ! ! + $ $ â&#x20AC;¢ /+3.2 , , % + ', â&#x20AC;¢ 4+023 , , !+ ',

O F F E R E D A T $2,495,000 Co-Listing Agent: Joann Weber CalBRE# 01896750 Cell: 650.815.5410 Joann@MidtownPaloAlto.com

Midtown Realty, Inc. â&#x20AC;¢ 2775 Middlefield Road â&#x20AC;¢ Phone: 650.321.1596 â&#x20AC;¢ www.MidtownPaloAlto.com

4 3 6 H I G H S T R E E T # 4 0 3 , P A L O A LT O GORGEOUS PENTHOUSE IN DOWNTOWN PALO ALTO HIGHLIGHTS â&#x20AC;¢ Incredible open floor plan with abundant natural light â&#x20AC;¢ Can be converted back to 2 bedrooms â&#x20AC;¢ Gleaming hardwood floors throughout â&#x20AC;¢ Remodeled bathroom â&#x20AC;¢ Washer & dryer inside â&#x20AC;¢ Two exclusive use terraces â&#x20AC;¢ Spacious living area with wood burning fireplace â&#x20AC;¢ Wonderfully updated kitchen â&#x20AC;¢ Dual pane windows â&#x20AC;¢ Radiant heat â&#x20AC;¢ Located on the top floor â&#x20AC;¢ Gated complex with secured parking â&#x20AC;¢ Walking distance to restaurants, shops, Stanford University, Cal-train, and parks â&#x20AC;¢ 790 sq. ft. of living space, approx.

O F F E R E D A T $1,275,000 Listing Agent: Tim Foy CalBRE# 00849721 Cell: 650.387.5078 Tim@MidtownPaloAlto.com

Co-Listing Agent: Joann Weber CalBRE# 01896750 Cell: 650.815.5410 Joann@MidtownPaloAlto.com

Midtown Realty, Inc. â&#x20AC;¢ 2775 Middlefield Road â&#x20AC;¢ Phone: 650.321.1596 â&#x20AC;¢ www.MidtownPaloAlto.com Page 52 â&#x20AC;¢ October 14, 2016 â&#x20AC;¢ Palo Alto Weekly â&#x20AC;¢ www.PaloAltoOnline.com

255 N. CALIFORNIA AVE. PALO ALTO

• 2 spacious bedrooms • 2 updated bathrooms • Master suite with leading to landscaped patio • Large living room with wood burning fireplace and gleaming hardwood floors • Formal dining area and light-filled eat-in kitchen calBRE# 01330133

• Wonderful, mature landscaping • Located on a tree-lined in Old Palo Alto with easy access to schools, parks, transportation and California Avenue shopping • Excellent Palo Alto schools • 1,373 sq. ft. of living space, approx. • 5,320 Sq. ft. lot, approx.

OFFERED AT $2,495,000

Cell: 650.380.4507

Jane@midtownpaloalto.com

Listing Agent: Tim Foy • 2775 Middlefield Road • Phone: 650.321.1596 • www.Midtownpaloalto.com

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 53

437 College Avenue, Palo Alto Offered at $1,988,000 Luxurious Townhome by California Avenue Within strolling distance of exceptional local amenities, this upgraded 4 bedroom, 4 bath townhome of approx. 2,300 sq. ft. (per appraisal) integrates luxury and versatility within a peaceful, convenient community. The flexible layout can easily accommodate any lifestyle, and includes two fireplaces, soaring ceilings, and an interior bathed in natural light. Highlights like private decks, newly remodeled bathrooms, and two posh master suites make this lofty retreat highly desirable. This community is mere steps to Stanford University, Caltrain, and exciting California Avenue, including Michelin-rated dining, and will also allow you to easily reach top-ranking schools like Escondido Elementary (API 927), Jordan Middle (API 934), and Palo Alto High (API 905) ®

(buyer to verify eligibility).

For video tour & more photos, please visit:

OPEN HOUSE Sunday 1:30 - 4:30 pm

www.437College.com 6 5 0 . 4 8 8 . 7 3 2 5 | i n f o @ d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | w w w. d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | C a l B R E # 0 1 9 0 3 2 2 4

Page 54 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

775 GARLAND DRIVE, PALO A LTO OPEN SAT & SUN 1:30-4:30

his adorable North Palo Alto 2 bedroom/1.5 bath home is located on a beautiful, winding street, shaded by trees. Designed to take advantage of its garden setting, a private courtyard leads to the front door.

Extensive windows fill the spacious living and dining rooms with natural light. Hardwood floors and french doors beckon outside to the large covered patio and garden surrounding the home. Both bedrooms are spacious with large closets. The full bath offers both a tub and stall shower. The cheery kitchen has a gas range and crisp white tile counters. A separate laundry room, a half bath and an attached double garage, complete the home. The courtyard, lush vegetation and covered patio are perfect for enjoying outdoor living - al fresco dining, entertaining or quiet relaxation! Freshly prepared and awaiting a new owner! Living Area: 1,317 sq. ft. (Per County Records, unverified by Alain Pinel Realtors) Lot Size: 6,210 sq. ft. (Per County Records, unverified by Alain Pinel Realtors)

Offered at $2,199,000 www.775Garland.com Included among the top Real Estate Teams in the Nation by the Wall Street Journal

555 Palo Alto sales...and counting! T :: 650.543.1195 Stay Connected!

Carol Carnevale

Nicole Aron

BRE#00946687

RE#00952657

E :: carolandnicole@apr.com

State-of-the-art real estate, State-of-the-heart relationships! www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 55

www.CarolAndNicole.com

THIS WEEKEND OPEN HOMES UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL TIMES ARE 1:30-4:30 PM

ATHERTON

LOS ALTOS HILLS 4 Bedrooms

3 Bedrooms 86 Mesa Ct Sun Coldwell Banker

$4,988,000 324-4456

13920 Mir Mirou Dr Sat Deleon Realty

6 Bedrooms

4 Bedrooms 84 Edge Rd Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 40 Isabella Ave Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 91 Belleau Ave Sun Deleon Realty 282 Camino Al Lago Sun Coldwell Banker

$5,395,000 462-1111 $6,800,000 462-1111 $2,798,000 543-8500 $5,780,000 325-6161

5 Bedrooms 399 Atherton Ave Sun Coldwell Banker

$6,399,000 324-4456

12008 Adobe Creek Lodge Rd Sat Deleon Realty

$4,988,000 543-8500 $6,988,000 543-8500

MENLO PARK 2 Bedrooms - Condominium

1100 Sharon Park Dr #24 Sun 2-4 Alain Pinel Realtors 1280 Sharon Park Dr #33 Sat/Sun Intero Real Estate 1230 Sharon Park Dr #63 Sat/Sun Alain Pinel Realtors

120 Selby Ln $9,998,500 Sun 2-4 Dreyfus Sotheby’s Realty 400-6364

BURLINGAME 3 Bedrooms 2720 Trousdale Dr Sat Intero Real Estate

$1,850,000 622-1000

$1,049,000 462-1111 $1,418,000 206-6200 $1,498,000 462-1111

3 Bedrooms 1226 Laurel Ave Sat/Sun 1-4 Coldwell Banker

$699,000 324-4456

LOS ALTOS $1,345,000 324-4456

4 Bedrooms 22805 Aspen Dr Sat/Sun 1-4 Intero Real Estate

$2,689,000 206-6200

5 Bedrooms 62 S Clark Ave Sun Sereno Group

665 Monte Rosa Dr #914 Sat/Sun 1-4 Coldwell Banker

3 Bedrooms - Townhouse

626 Sand Hill Cir Sat/Sun 1-4 Coldwell Banker

$3,998,000 323-1900

6 Bedrooms

331 Oak Ct Sat/Sun 1-4 Straube Associates 1730 Holly Ave Sun Alain Pinel Realtors

$949,000 323-7751

1968 Silverwood Av Sat/Sun Coldwell Banker

3 Bedrooms

741 San Pablo Dr Sat/Sun Alain Pinel Realtors

4173 El Camino Real #15 Sat/Sun Coldwell Banker 101 Alma St #1203 Sat/Sun Coldwell Banker

4 Bedrooms

1020 Sharon Park Dr $3,488,000 Sat/Sun 12-5 Alain Pinel Realtors 323-1111

8 Woodleaf Avenue • Redwood City E HOUS – 4: 3 0 OPEN 3 1: 0 10/16 y a d n Su

3 Bedrooms 60 Linaria Way Sat/Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 100 Coquito Way Sun 1-4 Coldwell Banker 120 Coquito Way Sun 1-4 Coldwell Banker 237 Mapache Dr Sat Deleon Realty

$2,595,000 529-1111 $2,095,000 324-4456 $2,599,000 324-4456 $8,888,000 543-8500

REDWOOD CITY

$2,199,000 462-1111 $2,495,000 321-1596 $1,325,000 325-6161 $1,998,000 325-6161

1404 Harker Ave $2,195,000 Sun 2-4 Dreyfus Sotheby’s Realty 274-9744 2711 Louis Rd $2,298,000 Sun 1-4 Sereno Group 323-1900 127 Hawthorne Ave $2,345,000 Sat/Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 462-1111 321 Everett Av $3,150,000 Sat/Sun Coldwell Banker 325-6161

4 Bedrooms

$7,988,000 543-8500

PORTOLA VALLEY

5 Bedrooms

3 Bedrooms

228 Princeton Rd $4,250,000 Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 462-1111 1225 Whitaker Way $3,785,000 Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 462-1111 28 Sneckner Ct $3,490,000 Sun Pacific Union International 314-7200

1245 Hamilton Ave Sat Deleon Realty

$1,298,000 462-1111

360 Everett Ave #5B $1,898,000 Sun Dreyfus Sotheby’s Realty 208-8824 775 Garland Dr Sat/Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 255 N California Av Sat/Sun Midtown Realty

$2,495,000 321-1596 $3,680,000 520-3407

5 Bedrooms

4 Bedrooms

2 Bedrooms - Condominium

2 Bedrooms

645 Loma Verde Av Sat/Sun Midtown Realty 3239 Maddux Dr Sat/Sun Keller Williams

$749,000 325-6161

PALO ALTO

3 Bedrooms - Condominium $1,850,000 851-2666

$3,788,000 906-6902 $5,850,000 462-1111

MOUNTAIN VIEW

2 Bedrooms - Townhouse

4 Bedrooms

2 Bedrooms - Condominium 73 3rd St #31 Sun Coldwell Banker

626 Sand Hill Cir $1,850,000 Sat/Sun 1-4 Coldwell Banker 851-2666 2451 Sharon Oaks Dr $1,645,000 Sat/Sun 1-4:30 Alain Pinel Realtors 462-1111 2429 Sharon Oaks Dr $1,588,000 Sat 1-4 Sereno Group 323-1900 638 18th Ave $1,588,888 Sun 1-4:30 Coldwell Banker 324-4456

3 Bedrooms - Condominium

EAST PALO ALTO

1150 Hidden Oaks Dr $3,875,000 Sat/Sun Coldwell Banker 324-4456 1140 Deanna Dr $3,950,000 Sun 1-4 Intero Real Estate 269-4097 161 Willow Rd $2,998,000 Sun Intero Real Estate (415) 994-4979

2 Bedrooms - Condominium

3 Bedrooms

7 Bedrooms

5 Bedrooms

1550 Dana Ave $3,795,000 Sat/Sun 12-4:30 Alain Pinel Realtors 323-1111 2632 Marshall Dr $2,788,000 Sat/Sun 1-5 Deleon Realty 543-8500 240 Emerson St $3,998,000 Sun Stephanie Savides, Broker 464-3581

3 Bedrooms 622 Leahy St $998,000 Sat/Sun Sereno Group 323-1900 1127 Ebener St $1,185,000 Sat 2-4/Sun 1:30-4Alain Pinel Realtors 462-1111 562 Hillcrest Way $1,849,000 Sun Alain Pinel Realtors 462-1111 1101 5th Av $985,000 Sat/Sun Coldwell Banker 324-4456 28 Circle Rd $1,398,000 Sat/Sun Coldwell Banker 325-6161

4 Bedrooms 2638 Brewster Ave $1,838,000 Sat/Sun 1-4 Intero Real Estate (415) 994-4979 76 Nevada St $3,175,000 Sun 1-4 Cowperthwaite & Company 851-8030 8 Woodleaf Ave $3,247,000 Sun Dwell Properties 575-3822

WOODSIDE 4 Bedrooms 245 Olive Hill Ln Sun Coldwell Banker

$6,475,000 851-2666

4 Bedrooms 970 Mountain Home Rd $12,900,000 Sun 2-4:30 Alain Pinel Realtors 529-1111

5 Bedrooms 22 Starwood Dr Sun 1-4 Alain Pinel Realtors

$5,998,000 529-1111

MBA: The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania BA: Waseda University, Japan

Xin Jiang

Speaks Japanese & Chinese Fluently

650.283.8379 xjiang@apr.com XinPaloAltoProperty.com

4 Bedroom + Media/5th Bedroom | 3.5 Bath | 3-Car Garage 4,300 sf Home | 14,100sf Lot Offered at $3,247,000

Take a Vimeo Video Tour: http://tinyurl.com/8Woodleaf

Luxury Woodhill Estates on edge of Woodside – ideally located close to San Francisco & Silicon Valley. Over the top upgrades! Gleaming hardwood throughout, multiple French doors, alarm system, air conditioning, wine storage, & built-in cabinetry. Chef ’s dream kitchen with granite counters, custom cabinetry, prep island, Thermador double ovens & gas cooktop, Bosch dishwasher, SubZero refrigerator, sunny nook with built-in workstation. Sophisticated master suite with luxurious bath ~ air tub, separate, shower & walk-in closet. Additional master suite on main floor is perfect for in-laws or au pair. Family room opens to gourmet kitchen with built-in entertainment center, brick fireplace. Expansive media/5th bedroom with French doors & balcony. Professionally landscaped ~ manicured gardens, lush lawns, mature trees, sun filled patio & peaceful retreat with fountain. Award winning Roy Cloud K-8 School. Walk to beautiful Barkley Fields & Playgrounds.

L aura

BERTOLACCI

CA BRE #00868180

www.LauraBertolacci.com

Broker Associate, Partner 650.575.3822 Laura@LauraBertolacci.com 1500 Laurel Street, Suite B San Carlos, CA 94070

Connect with Laura on LinkedIn

The DeLeon Difference® 650.543.8500 www.deleonrealty.com 650.543.8500 | www.deleonrealty.com | DeLeon Realty CalBRE #01903224

Page 56 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

1245 Hamilton Avenue, Palo Alto Exquisite Luxury in Crescent Park Captivating gardens trim this recently remodeled 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath residence of over 4,100 sq. ft. (per plans) that provides a poolhouse -:0 018534@2A8 3>;A:0? ;2 UV TTT ?= 2@ I<1> /5@EJ :6;E - Ĺ&#x152;1D5.81 C-87 ;A@ 8;C1> 81B18 -:0 ?;;@45:3 ?A: 85@ ?<-/1? 5:/8A05:3 -: 1813-:@ 3;A>91@ 75@/41: .A>?@5:3 C5@4 /8-??5/ /4->9 -:0 9;01>: -91:5@51? : A<<1> <-@5; ;B1>8;;7? @41 <;;8?501 >1@>1-@ C4581 - B->51@E ;2 2>A5@ @>11? ->1 2;A:0 @4>;A34;A@ @41 C>-<->;A:0 3->01:? %7E 85@ -:0 B1>?-@581 @41 <;;84;A?1 ;Ĺ&#x160;1>? - C1@ .-> -:0 - C-88 .10 %@>;88 @; <;<A8-> ':5B1>?5@E B1:A1 81-:;> "->011 "->7 -:0 AB1:1/7 8191:@->E I " ]YZJ I.AE1> @; B1>52E 18535.585@EJ For video tour & more photos, please visit:

www.1245Hamilton.com Offered at $7,988,000

OPEN HOUSE

Saturday

1:30 - 4:30

6 5 0 . 4 8 8 . 7 3 2 5 | m i c h a e l r @ d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | w w w. d e l e o n r e a l t y. c o m | C a l B R E # 0 1 9 0 3 2 2 4 www.PaloAltoOnline.com â&#x20AC;˘ Palo Alto Weekly â&#x20AC;˘ October 14, 2016 â&#x20AC;˘ Page 57

Marketplace PLACE AN AD ONLINE fogster.com

E-MAIL ads@fogster.com

P HONE

650.326.8216 Now you can log on to fogster.com, day or night and get your ad started immediately online. Most listings are free and include a one-line free print ad in our Peninsula newspapers with the option of photos and additional lines. Exempt are employment ads, which include a web listing charge. Home Services and Mind & Body Services require contact with a Customer Sales Representative. So, the next time you have an item to sell, barter, give away or buy, get the perfect combination: print ads in your local newspapers, reaching more than 150,000 readers, and unlimited free web postings reaching hundreds of thousands additional people!!

INDEX Q BULLETIN

BOARD 100-155 Q FOR SALE 200-270 Q KIDS STUFF 330-390 Q MIND & BODY 400-499 Q J OBS 500-560 Q B USINESS SERVICES 600-699 Q H OME SERVICES 700-799 Q FOR RENT/ FOR SALE REAL ESTATE 801-899 Q P UBLIC/LEGAL NOTICES 995-997 The publisher waives any and all claims or consequential damages due to errors Embarcadero Media cannot assume responsibility for the claims or performance of its advertisers. Embarcadero Media right to refuse, edit or reclassify any ad solely at its discretion without prior notice.

fogster.com

THE PENINSULA’S FREE CLASSIFIEDS WEB SITE Combining the reach of the Web with print ads reaching over 150,000 readers!

fogster.com is a unique web site offering FREE postings from communities throughout the Bay Area and an opportunity for your ad to appear in the Palo Alto Weekly, The Almanac and the Mountain View Voice. 152 Research Study Volunteers

Bulletin Board

DID YOU KNOW 7 IN 10 Americans or 158 million U.S. Adults read content from newspaper media each week? Discover the Power of Newspaper Advertising. For a free brochure call 916-288-6011 or email cecelia@cnpa.com (Cal-SCAN)

115 Announcements PREGNANT? CONSIDERING ADOPTION Call us first. Living expenses, housing, medical, and continued support afterwards. Choose adoptive family of your choice. Call 24/7. 1-877-879-4709 (Cal-SCAN) PREGNANT? CONSIDERING ADOPTION Call us first. Living expenses, housing, medical, and continued support afterwards. Choose adoptive family of your choice. Call 24/7. 877-362-2401 Coin Show, Nov. 6, 2016 Peninsula Coin Club Coin Show, Sunday Nov. 6, 2016, Napredak Hall, 770 Montague Expy, San Jose, CA. Free parking and admission. Open 10AM to 4PM. Fabmo Selection Event HUGE USED BOOK/CD/DVD SALE Music School Faculty Concert

Anxiety Treatment for Adults 60+ This project uses a DVD-based psychological treatment to help people learn to manage anxiety and stress. The study is 8 weeks long, with 2 testing sessions (each pays $30) at the Palo Alto VA. You may be eligible to participate if you are 60 and older, have anxiety or worries, and have not been diagnosed with dementia. For more information call (650) 493-5000, press 1, 1, and dial extn. 68899.

155 Pets Yorkshire Terrier Puppies Male 2 AKC Yorkie Males(Sacramento Area) avail Oct 6. Raised in our living room Mom is our pet. Their tails not crop, it is inhumane. $700.00 530-598-0331

130 Classes & Instruction AIRLINE CAREERS begin here. Get started by training as FAA certified Aviation Technician. Financial aid for qualified students. Job placement assistance. Call Aviation Institute of Maintenance 800-725-1563 (AAN CAN)

133 Music Lessons Christina Conti Private Piano Instruction Lessons in your home. Bachelor of Music. 650/493-6950

For Sale 202 Vehicles Wanted CASH FOR CARS Any Car/Truck 2000-2015, Running or Not! Top Dollar For Used/ Damaged. Free Nationwide Towing! Call Now: 1-888-420-3808 (AAN CAN) DONATE YOUR CAR, TRUCK OR BOAT to Heritage for the blind. FREE 3 Day Vacation, Tax Deductible, Free Towing, All Paperwork Taken Care of. Call 800-731-5042 (Cal-SCAN)

Hope Street Music Studios Now on Old Middefield Way, MV. Most instruments, voice. All ages and levels 650-961-2192 www. HopeStreetMusicStudios.com Paul Price Music Lessons In your home. Piano, violin, viola, theory, history. Customized. BA music, choral accompanist, arranger, early pop and jazz. 800/647-0305 Susan Jackson Piano Instruction (Mus. Bac) Classical, jazz, theory. Beginner to advanced. 650/326-3520

Got an older car, boat or RV? Do the humane thing. Donate it to the Humane Society. Call 1-800-743-1482 (Cal-SCAN) Old Porsche 356/911/912 for restoration by hobbyist 1948-1973 Only. Any condition, top $ paid 707 965-9546 (Cal-SCAN)

210 Garage/Estate Sales

135 Group Activities Diwali Celebrations, October 29

Los Altos, 430 Lassen Street, Oct 15 & Oct 16 Palo Alto, 1018 Loma Verde Ave, Oct. 15, 8-4 Palo Alto, 2580 Waverly Street, Oct. 8, 10:30-1:30

230 Freebies

Safe Step Walk-In Tub! Alert for Seniors. Bathroom falls can be fatal. Approved by Arthritis Foundation. Therapeutic Jets. Less Than 4 Inch StepIn. Wide Door. Anti-Slip Floors. American Made. Installation Included. Call 800-799-4811 for $750 Off. (Cal-SCAN)

Kid’s Stuff 345 Tutoring/ Lessons K-12 Math Tutor (Taught 10yrs) - TBD SAT/PSAT 1on1 prep/tutoring Tutoring with Dr.Pam: 404.310.8146

Mind & Body 425 Health Services ELIMINATE CELLULITE and inches in weeks! All natural. Odor free. Works for men or women. Free month supply on select packages. Order now! 844-703-9774. (Cal-SCAN) Got Knee Pain? Back Pain? Shoulder Pain? Get a pain-relieving brace -little or NO cost to you. Medicare Patients Call Health Hotline Now! 1-800-796-5091 (Cal-SCAN) Life Alert. 24/7. One press of a button sends help FAST! Medical, Fire, Burglar. Even if you can’t reach a phone! FREE Brochure. CALL 800-714-1609.(Cal-SCAN) MAKE THE CALL to start getting clean today. Free 24/7 Helpline for alcohol & drug addiction treatment. Get help! It is time to take your life back! Call Now: 855-732-4139 (AAN CAN) OVERWEIGHT? We have helped thousands of people since 1980! 100% money-back Guarantee on our USA made products! “Trial Pack” available and product Discounts! Linda (800) 319-5558. (Cal-SCAN) Struggling with DRUGS or alcohol? Addicted to PILLS? Talk to someone who cares. Call The Addiction Hope and Help Line for a free assessment. 800-978-6674 (AAN CAN)

440 Massage Therapy DID YOU KNOW 144 million U.S. Adults read a Newspaper print copy each week? Discover the Power of Newspaper Advertising. For a free brochure call 916-288-6011 or email cecelia@cnpa.com (Cal-SCAN)

FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY - FREE

245 Miscellaneous Diwali Celebrations, October 29 Please join us to celebrate Diwali on October 29th from 6:30-9:30 pm. Enjoy the beats of Bollywood music with DJ, dance, food, arts and crafts, Raffle and much more! For questions: melange.ca@gmail.com

145 Non-Profits Needs DONATE BOOKS/HELP PA LIBRARY WISH LIST FRIENDS PA LIBRARY

150 Volunteers ASSIST IN FRIENDS BOOKSTORE ASST SECTION MGRS FOR FOPAL FRIENDS OF THE PALO ALTO LIBRARY JOIN OUR ONLINE STOREFRONT TEAM

DIRECTV. NFL Sunday Ticket (FREE!) w/Choice All-Included Package. $60/mo. for 24 months. No upfront costs or equipment to buy. Ask about next day installation! 1- 800-385-9017 (Cal-SCAN) DISH Network -NEW FLEX PACK Select the Channels You Want. FREE Installation. FREE Streaming. $39.99/24 months. ADD Internet for $14.95 a month. CALL 1-800-357-0810 (Cal-SCAN) HOME BREAK-INS take less than 60 SECONDS. Don’t wait! Protect your family, your home, your assets NOW for as little as 70¢ a day! Call 855-404-7601 (Cal-SCAN) Protect your home with fully customizable security and 24/7 monitoring right from your smartphone. Receive up to $1500 in equipment, free (restrictions apply). Call 1-800-918-4119 (Cal-SCAN)

Stanford Museum Volunteer

TECHNOLOGY HP Inc. is accepting resumes for the position of Field Technical Support Representative in Palo Alto, CA (Ref. # HPPALLASR1). Monitor onsite delivery of software services, pre-sales, post-sales or delivery support, installation and configuration for customer environments. Travel required up to 50% to unanticipated locations throughout the U.S. Mail resume to HP Inc., c/o Andrew Bergoine, 11445 Compaq Center Drive W. Houston, TX 77070. Resume must include Ref. #, full name, email address and mailing address. No phone calls. Must be legally authorized to work in U.S. without sponsorship. EOE.

Jobs 500 Help Wanted Golf Course Maintenance Worker Callippe Preserve Golf course is looking for full or part time employees. No experience required but it is beneficial. Benefit package available to all full time employees. Must have valid social security card and pass a drug test. Positions available immediately.

Classified Deadlines:

NOON, WEDNESDAY

Technology Hewlett Packard Enterprise is an industry leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster. HPE is accepting resumes for the position of Firmware Engineer in Palo Alto, CA (Ref. #HPECPALTUDS2). Design, develop, maintain, test, and perform quality and performance assurance of campus and data center networking system software products. Mail resume to Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, 5400 Legacy Drive, MS H1-2F-25, Plano, TX 75024. Resume must include Ref. #, full name, email address and mailing address. No phone calls. Must be legally authorized to work in U.S. without sponsorship. EOE.

Structured Settlement? Sell your structured settlement or annuity payments for CASH NOW. You don’t have to wait for your future payments any longer! Call 1-800-673-5926 (Cal-SCAN)

636 Insurance Health and Dental Insurance Lowest Prices. We have the best rates from top companies! Call Now! 888-9894807. (Cal-SCAN)

640 Legal Services DID YOU KNOW Information is power and content is King? Do you need timely access to public notices and remain relevant in today’s hostile business climate? Gain the edge with California Newspaper Publishers Association new innovative website capublicnotice.com and check out the FREE One-Month Trial Smart Search Feature. For more information call Cecelia @ (916) 288-6011 or www.capublicnotice.com (Cal-SCAN) Lung Cancer? And 60 Years Old? If So, You And Your Family May Be Entitled To A Significant Cash Award. Call 800-9903940 To Learn More. No Risk. No Money Out Of Pocket (Cal-SCAN) Xarelto users have you had complications due to internal bleeding (after January 2012)? If so, you MAY be due financial compensation. If you don’t have an attorney, CALL Injuryfone today! 1-800-425-4701. (Cal-SCAN)

Home Services

560 Employment Information PAID IN ADVANCE! Make $1000 A Week Mailing Brochures From Home! No Experience Required. Helping home workers since 2001! Genuine Opportunity. Start Immediately! www.IncomeStation.net (AAN CAN) PAUSD Coach Openings

Business Services 604 Adult Care Offered A PLACE FOR MOM The nation’s largest senior living referral service. Contact our trusted,local experts today! Our service is FREE/no obligation. CALL 1-800-550-4822. (Cal-SCAN)

609 Catering/Event Planning EVERY BUSINESS has a story to tell! Get your message out with California’s PRMedia Release — the only Press Release Service operated by the press to get press! For more info contact Cecelia @ 916-288-6011 or http://prmediarelease.com/california (Cal-SCAN)

715 Cleaning Services Isabel and Elbi’s Housecleaning Apartments and homes. Excellent references. Great rates. 650/670-7287 or 650/771-8281 Silvia’s Cleaning We don’t cut corners, we clean them! Bonded, insured, 22 yrs. exp., service guaranteed, excel. refs., free est. 415/860-6988

748 Gardening/ Landscaping J. Garcia Garden Maintenance Service Free est. 25 years exp. 650/366-4301 or 650/346-6781 LANDA’S GARDENING & LANDSCAPING *Yard Maint. *New Lawns. *Clean Ups *Irrigation timer programming. 20 yrs exp. Ramon, 650/576-6242 landaramon@yahoo.com MLB Landscape & Concrete Service CleanUp/Landscaping/Driveways/sidewalks/patios/pavers/stamp concrete, etc... Call for a FREE estimate at (650) 771-3562.

Economy Pie & Baked Goods Home-baker in Palo Alto, permitted and professionally trained. All cakes can be made gluten-free. EconomyPies.com.

No phone number in the ad?

624 Financial Do You Owe Over $10K to the IRS or State in back taxes? Our firm works to reduce the tax bill or zero it out completely FAST. Call now 855-993-5796 (Cal-SCAN)

GO TO

fogster.com

SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY benefits. Unable to work? Denied benefits? We Can Help! WIN or Pay Nothing! Contact Bill Gordon and Associates at 1-800-966-1904 to start your application today! (Cal-SCAN)

go to fogster.com to respond to ads without phone numbers

Page 58 • October 14, 2016 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com

for contact information

MARKETPLACE the printed version of

fogster.com

751 General Contracting A NOTICE TO READERS: It is illegal for an unlicensed person to perform contracting work on any project valued at $500.00 or more in labor and materials. State law also requires that contractors include their license numbers on all advertising. Check your contractor’s status at www.cslb.ca.gov or 800-321-CSLB (2752). Unlicensed persons taking jobs that total less than $500.00 must state in their advertisements that they are not licensed by the Contractors State License Board.

757 Handyman/ Repairs AAA HANDYMAN & MORE Since 1985 Repairs • Maintenance • Painting Carpentry • Plumbing • Electrical All Work Guaranteed

Lic. #468963

(650) 453-3002 Alex Peralta Handyman Kit. and bath remodel, int/ext. paint, tile, plumb, fence/deck repairs, foam roofs/repairs. Power wash. Alex, 650/465-1821

759 Hauling J & G HAULING SERVICE Misc. junk, office, gar., furn., green waste, more. Local, 20 yrs exp. Lic./ ins. Free est. 650/743-8852

771 Painting/ Wallpaper Glen Hodges Painting Call me first! Senior discount. 45 yrs. #351738. 650/322-8325, phone calls ONLY.

Roe General Engineering Asphalt, concrete, pavers, tiles, sealing, artificial turf. 36 yrs exp. No job too small. Lic #663703. 650/814-5572

Palo Alto, 4 BR/2 BA $5200/mo. A classic Eichler with an atrium on a cul-de-sac in midtown. Tile floors, bookshelves. 702-419-4833

779 Organizing Services

Redwood City (Emerald Hills), 2 BR/2.5 BA - $3595

Closet Organizer, Stylist

781 Pest Control

809 Shared Housing/ Rooms ALL AREAS ROOMMATES.COM Lonely? Bored? Broke? Find the perfect roommate to complement your personality and lifestyle at Roommates.com! (AAN CAN) Palo Alto, 1 BR/1 BA - $ 1,375.

Attic Clean-Up & Rodent Removal Are you in the Bay Area? Do you have squeaky little terrors living in your attic or crawlspace? What you are looking for is right here! Call Attic Star now to learn about our rodent removal services and cleaning options. You can also get us to take out your old, defunct insulation and install newer, better products. Call (866) 391-3308 now and get your work done in no time!

795 Tree Care Arborist View Tree Care Prune, trim, stump grinding, root crown excavation, removals, ornamental prune, tree diagnostic. Jose, 650/380-2297

Real Estate

810 Cottages for Rent

825 Homes/Condos for Sale

BORROW $150K to $1 million Easy Qualify CONSTRUCTION & Owner builder loans www. EasyConstructionLoan.com Since 1980, CA Bro Lic #00426805 NMLS id #303135 (Cal-SCAN)

Sunnyvale, 3 BR/2 BA - $1,700,000

830 Commercial/ Income Property Professional Office Space

840 Vacation Rentals/Time Shares

Palo Alto Downtown, 2 BR/2 BA - $3900 Palo Alto, 2 BR/2 BA - $3900 Palo Alto, 2 BR/2 BA - $3200/mo

775 Asphalt/ Concrete

805 Homes for Rent

N. Arizona Wilderness Ranch $249 MONTH - Quiet secluded 37 acre off grid ranch bordering 640 acres of State Trust land. Cool clear 6,400’ elevation. Near historic pioneer town and fishing lake. No urban noise. Pure air, AZ’s best climate. Mature evergreens and grassy meadows with sweeping views across wilderness mountains and valleys. Abundant clean groundwater, free well access, loam garden soil, maintained road access. Camping and RV use ok. $28,900,$2,890 down, seller financing. Free brochure with similar properties, photos/ topo/map/weather area info: 1st United Realty 800.966.6690 (Cal-SCAN)

855 Real Estate Services

Redwood City, 3 BR/2.5 BA KENTFIELD COMMONS, GATED, POOL,FPLC, YARD,LOFT LIKE, CASSIDYRE 4157174242

Authentic Italian Villa www.selvamica.com

DID YOU KNOW Information is power and content is King? Do you need timely access to public notices and remain relevant in today’s highly competitive market? Gain an edge with California Newspaper Publishers Association new innovative website capublicnotice.com and check out the Smart Search Feature. For more information call Cecelia @ (916) 288-6011 or www. capublicnotice.com (Cal-SCAN)

Fogster.com is a unique website offering FREE postings from communities throughout the Bay Area and an opportunity for your ad to appear in The Palo Alto Weekly.

San Carlos, 2 BR/2 BA - 2695

Los Altos Country Club - $5950 Los Altos Country Club, 3 BR/2.5 BA $4250/month Menlo Park - $6000.00/month

“It Is U!”--so let’s swap it out. Matt Jones

850 Acreage/Lots/ Storage

Palo Alto, 2 BR/2 BA 1100 SF, 2 blocks from Gunn HS. no smoking/pets, phone 650-493-4980

801 Apartments/ Condos/Studios

STYLE PAINTING Full service interior/ext. Insured. Lic. 903303. 650/388-8577

Mtn. View Asphalt Sealing Driveway, parking lot seal coating. Asphalt repair, striping, 30+ years. Family owned. Free est. Lic. 507814. 650/967-1129

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Answers on page 60

Across 1 Three-year-old, e.g. 4 Indiana-Illinois border river 10 Coll. application figures 14 Abbr. in a military address 15 Grand Canal bridge 16 “___ Kleine Nachtmusik” (Mozart piece) 17 Author Grafton, when researching “T is for Tent”? 19 Look after 20 Daily Planet reporter Jimmy 21 Seemingly endless span 22 Lauder of cosmetics 23 “Buffy” spinoff 25 Buffy’s job 26 He plays Iron Man 28 Foot-pound? 30 Actress Acker of 23-Across 31 Go back to the start of an ode? 36 “Yoshi’s Island” platform 38 Not a people person 39 You, in the Bible 40 Put the outsider on the payroll on the Planet of the Apes? 43 “Kill Bill” actress Thurman 44 “Slow and steady” storyteller 45 Explosive compounds, for short 47 Dough 50 Ditch the diversions 51 Cut off from the mainland 52 Hexa-, halved 54 Eventually be 57 Half of CDVIII 58 1980s fashion line that people went bats#!@ crazy over? 60 Event that may play happy hardcore 61 Jockey who won two Triple Crowns 62 Abbr. on a golf tee sign 63 “Moral ___” (Adult Swim show) 64 1970s space station 65 Tavern overstayer

Down 1 ___ Tuesdays 2 Down Under gemstone 3 Rush song based on a literary kid 4 Laundry-squeezing device 5 “You Will Be My ___ True Love” (song from “Cold Mountain”) 6 Einstein Bros. purchase 7 “And another thing ...” 8 “Star Trek” phaser setting 9 “Green Acres” theme song prop 10 Takes home the kitty, perhaps? 11 Devoutness 12 “Bonne ___!” (French “Happy New Year”) 13 Meal with Elijah’s cup 18 Early Quaker settler 22 High-voiced Muppet 24 Fine facial hair 25 Jessye Norman, e.g. 26 Marathon’s counterpart 27 Atlanta Hawks’ former arena 28 Daybreak 29 Abound (with) 32 Pacific salmon 33 Home of an NBC comedy block from 1983 to 2015 34 San ___, Italy 35 Positive votes 37 0, in some measures 41 Six feet under, so to speak 42 “Way to go!” 46 It may be changed or carried 47 Brewery head? 48 One of four for Katharine Hepburn 49 Garnish that soaks up the gin 50 “And that’s ___!” 52 Bosporus dweller 53 Like blue humor 55 “Augh! Erase that step!” computer command 56 Subtle attention-getter 58 Krypton, e.g. 59 “How We Do (Party)” singer Rita ©2016 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@ jonesincrosswords.com)

This week’s SUDOKU

THE PENINSULA’S FREE CLASSIFIEDS WEBSITE Combining the reach of the Web with print ads reaching over 150,000 readers! To respond to ads without phone numbers go to www.Fogster.com Answers on page 60

www.sudoku.name

www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 14, 2016 • Page 59

MARKETPLACE the printed version of

fogster.com

Legal Notices 995 Fictitious Name Statement MARICELAS FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 621368 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Maricelas, located at 2076 Lucretia Av. Ap. 305, San Jose, CA 95122, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: Copartners. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): YESENIA CONTRERAS 2076 Lucretia Av. Ap. 305 San Jose, CA 95122 MARICELA ALVARADO 2076 Lucretia Av. Ap. 305 San Jose, CA 95122 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on 8-1-2016. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on September 13, 2016. (PAW Sept. 23, 30, Oct. 7, 14, 2016) AMERICAN ENERGY SOCIETY FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 621358 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: American Energy Society, located at 654 Gilman St., Palo Alto, CA 94301, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: A Corporation. The name and residence address of the

registrant(s) is(are): THE EXPERT NETWORKS, INC. 8109 Cabernet Ct. San Jose, CA 95135 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on N/A. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on September 13, 2016. (PAW Sept. 23, 30, Oct. 7, 14, 2016) PRIME MAINTENANCE SERVICE FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 621474 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Prime Maintenance Service, located at 539 Alma Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: A Corporation. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): PREMIER PROPERTY MANAGEMENT INC. 539 Alma Street Palo Alto, CA 94301 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on 2004. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on September 16, 2016. (PAW Sept. 30, Oct. 7, 14, 21, 2016) GB ACCOUNTING FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 621552 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: GB Accounting, located at 539 Alma Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: A Corporation. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): PREMIER PROPERTY MANAGEMENT INC. 539 Alma Street

Palo Alto, CA 94301 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on N/A. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on September 19, 2016. (PAW Sept. 30, Oct. 7, 14, 21, 2016) SEEBLICK PROPERTIES FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 621050 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Seeblick Properties, 824 San Francisco Ct. Stanford, CA 94305, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: An Individual. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): ROBERT A. HUGGINS 824 San Francisco, CA 94305 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on 12/1/1994. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on August 31, 2016. (PAW Sept. 30, Oct. 7, 14, 21, 2016) SproutU, LLC FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 621582 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: SproutU, LLC, located at 4049 Middlefield Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94303, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: A Limited Liability Company. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): SproutU, LLC 4049 Middlefield Rd. Palo Alto, CA 94303 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on 7/27/2016.

THE PENINSULA’S FREE CLASSIFIEDS WEBSITE TO RESPOND TO ADS WITHOUT PHONE NUMBERS GO TO WWW.FOGSTER.COM This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on September 20, 2016. (PAW Oct. 7, 14, 21, 28, 2016) PENINSULA PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMPANY FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 621721 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Peninsula Property Management Company, located at 2450 Watson Court, Palo Alto, CA 94303, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: Copartners. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): JASON D. PEERY 2450 Watson Court Palo Alto, CA 94303 DAVID W. PEERY 2450 Watson Court Palo Alto, CA 94303 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s) listed above on 06/01/2006. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on September 22, 2016. (PAW Oct. 14, 21, 28, Nov. 4, 2016) EFFICIENT SPACE ORGANIZERS FICTITIOUS BUSINESS NAME STATEMENT File No.: 622284 The following person (persons) is (are) doing business as: Efficient Space Organizers, located at 3980 El Camino Real #87, Palo Alto, CA 94306, Santa Clara County. This business is owned by: An Individual. The name and residence address of the registrant(s) is(are): UMBELINA MARTINEZ 3980 El Camino Real #87 Palo Alto, CA 94306 Registrant began transacting business under the fictitious business name(s)

listed above on N/A. This statement was filed with the County Clerk-Recorder of Santa Clara County on October 7, 2016. (PAW Oct. 14, 21, 28, Nov. 4, 2016)

997 All Other Legals NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF: MARCEL VINOKUR Case No.: 16PR179653 To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both, of MARCEL VINOKUR. A Petition for Probate has been filed by: CHRISTOPHER C. SLOAN in the Superior Court of California, County of SANTA CLARA. The Petition for Probate requests that: CHRISTOPHER C. SLOAN be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent. The petition requests the decedent’s will and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court. The petition requests authority to administer the estate under the Independent Administration of Estates Act. (This authority will allow the personal representative to take many actions without obtaining court approval. Before taking certain very important actions, however, the personal representative will be required to give notice to interested persons unless they have waived notice or consented to the proposed action.) The independent administration authority will be granted unless an interested person files an objection to the petition and shows good cause why the court should not grant the authority.

A HEARING on the petition will be held on November 18, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. in Dept.: 10 of the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara, located at 191 N. First St., San Jose, CA, 95113. If you object to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney. If you are a creditor or a contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined in section 58 (b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal delivery to you of a notice under section 9052 of the California Probate Code. Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law. You may examine the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk. Attorney for Petitioner: Jan Marie Hales, Hales & George 19040 Cox Avenue, Suite 3 Saratoga, CA 95070 (408)255-6292 (PAW Oct. 7, 14, 21, 2016)

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Sports Shorts

SOCCER HONOR . . . Stanford redshirt junior goalkeeper Andrew Epstein was named Pac-12 Player of the Week. The honor is the second of Epstein’s career, the first of the season for the Cardinal and Stanford’s 25th all-time player of the week selection.

Christian McCaffrey’s playing status may come down to a game-time decision. He’s been limited to 84 yards rushing over his last two games.

Stanford seeking improvement against the Irish Cardinal looks to plug the holes, fill the gaps by Rick Eymer he running game practically non-existent the past two games, the last thing Stanford football coach David Shaw needs is to proceed without one of the top running backs in the nation. That’s exactly what he is staring in the face this weekend when the Cardinal (3-2) heads to South Bend for its nonconference game against Notre Dame (2-4) Saturday at 4:30 p.m. (NBC) Christian McCaffrey, who got knocked around in Stanford’s 4212 loss to Washington State last weekend, may be a game time decision. McCaffrey, last year’s Heisman Trophy runner-up, was held out of most of the second half against

the Cougars. He joins a growing list of sidelined players. “He got banged up over the course of the game and it didn’t make sense to put him back in,” Shaw said. “We will be cautious with him as with everybody else. I will have no answer until Friday or maybe Saturday.” After rushing for 436 yards over his first three games, all victories, the junior has been limited to 84 total rushing yards over his last two games, both losses. McCaffrey averages 188.2 allpurpose yards, third among FBS schools in the country, though he has not scored a touchdown since the USC game and has three on (continued on next page)

David Bright (64) said it should make no difference who is at running back.

HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL

Atherton bragging rights at stake Friday

ON THE AIR Friday

M-A, SH Prep clash in important PAL contest

WNBA Finals: Minnesota at Los Angeles, Game 3, 5 p.m., ESPN2 College volleyball: Arizona at Stanford, 8 p.m., Pac-12 Bay Area

by Glenn Reeves or years rivalries between Atherton schools in football didn’t amount to much. Menlo School and MenloAtherton were on different wavelengths. Sacred Heart Prep didn’t start playing football until the late 1990s. Once SHP got its program going, a natural small-school rivalry came into being between the Gators and their neighbors, Menlo. But then the SHP program accelerated beyond the furthest reaches of most anyone’s imagination, winning two Central Coast Section Open Division championships and making two

Saturday College football: Stanford at Notre Dame, 4:30 p.m., NBC

Sunday

Pam McKenney/Menlo Athletics

WNBA Finals: Minnesota at Los Angeles, Game 4, 5:30 p.m., ESPN2 College men’s soccer: UCLA at Stanford, 5 p.m., Pac-12 Bay Area

Thursday College women’s soccer: Colorado at Stanford, 6 p.m., Pac-12 Bay Area