February / March 2004
Volume 16, Number 2
The OMVNA Family Talent Show and Dessert Potluck is Coming!
From the Chair: Supporting Our Schools
Leadership Mountain View Seeks Individuals for Class of 2005
Restaurant Review: Maru Ichi Japanese Noodle House
CERT Update: City CERT Training on Saturdays in May
Hot Topic Coming Around Again: Neighborhood Preservation
The OMVNA Family Talent Show and Dessert Potluck is Coming!
When: Saturday, March 27 from 1-3 p.m.
Where: Landels School Multi-Use Room (MUR)
What to bring: Yourself and your family, your enthusiasm, and (if you feel like it) a dessert to share
Come watch your friends and neighbors perform and enjoy a dessert potluck with us!
There’s still time to sign up to perform.
Contact Velva Rowell at (650) 938-0389 or editor@omvna.org if you have a family-friendly act in mind.
The deadline to sign up is March 19th if you want your name to appear in the program.
There will be one run-through (in the MUR, date and time TBD) prior to the performance to ensure that there are no glitches.
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From the Chair: Supporting Our Schools
By Ronit Bryant
I want to tell you how, in the past few weeks, the OMVNA Steering Committee (SC) has used neighborhood resources to support our local schools. The SC was recently asked for a contribution by the Measure J campaign which supported local schools and their funding needs. With a healthy balance in the bank (derived almost entirely from the newsletter), the SC checked the OMVNA by-laws for guidance. The bylaws set out goals for our neighborhood association, stating, among other recommended actions, that OMVNA will:
- Promote cultural, civic, social, educational, and recreational activities for the benefit of the residents of the Old Mountain View neighborhood.
- Coordinate with and support other community organizations and activities as appropriate.
Our local school certainly provides educational activities for the benefit of neighborhood residents. Supporting it is a worthwhile activity for OMVNA. The SC voted to donate $500 in support of Measure J.
The Steering Committee is busily planning the OMVNA Family Talent Show. The event has already been announced in our newsletter and through OMVNAtalk. The next step was to publicize it at Landels, our neighborhood school. The principal, Dr. Alicia Henderson, agreed to send out a flyer to parents. The SC decided to generate the flyer and translate it into Spanish. One problem: no Spanish speakers in the SC. So, we passed the flyer through Google translator, did some basic editing based on very basic Spanish, and then (trumpet sounds) sent out a request for help on OMVNAtalk to all 106 of our current members. I received three full translations and several editorial comments, all within a few hours! And the flyer has gone out to our neighborhood families, English and Spanish speakers, to invite them to our event. Hope to see you all there on March 27.
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Leadership Mountain View Seeks Individuals for Class of 2005
By Twana Karney
Leadership Mountain View, a nine-month training program for emerging community leaders, seeks applicants for its class of 2005. The program, sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce Mountain View, consists of daylong sessions on the second Friday of each month, starting in September, 2004 and running through May, 2005.
Class members explore leadership and community issues through discussions, expert speakers, workshops and field trips.
Topics will include how city government works and issues facing the regional economic, environmental, human services and educational systems.
People wishing to participate are invited to attend information meetings at the Mountain View Library Community Room, 585 Franklin Street, from 5:30 to 7 pm on Thursday, April 29th, or from 7 to 8:30 pm on Tuesday, May 4th.
June 4, 2004, is the application deadline. The cost is $1,500, and some scholarships are available. The class is limited to 30 participants, and Leadership Mountain View is committed to seeking participants to reflect the rich cultural and ethnic diversity of Mountain View residents.
To make a reservation to attend the information meeting or to obtain an application, contact Twana Karney, Program Director, at (650) 968-8378 or email tkarney@chambermv.org. For more information or to apply online, go to www.chambermv.org/leadership/.
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Restaurant Review: Maru Ichi Japanese Noodle House
By Shelly King
My friend Alvin was born in Taiwan, went to school in New York, and has followed his stomach around the world. His vacation pictures are all of his meals. On a recent trip to Japan, he planned his whole itinerary around the restaurants he wanted to visit, having to sometimes squeeze in two lunches a day to get to them all. So when the new Japanese noodle house, Maru Ichi, opened on Castro Street, I knew Alvin was the perfect person to invite to lunch. It wasn't a hard sell.
"How big is the menu?" Alvin asked.
"Only a few items."
"Good. The best noodle places have a simple menu. Is it fancy on the inside?"
"No, nothing fancy."
"Good. Yuppies don't know how to make noodle soup."
Alvin is very suspicious of well-decorated restaurants, which he thinks are all owned by über-yuppies. He prefers to part with a pretty penny for good food and not the decorator.
At lunch, we each order the special which comes with a choice from the four Ramen noodle soups on the menu and a side item such as pot stickers, California rolls, or rice with tuna. We were also served a tea Alvin tells me is a buckwheat tea. The tea tastes bitter to me, but then being a Southern girl and growing up on "sweet tea" just about any tea tastes bitter to me without a big dose of sugar.
Alvin explains that the four different Ramen soups have different stock bases: bone, soy, miso, and the house combination. Alvin has the soup with the bone base and I order the Maru Ichi special. Each of our soups have a nice slice of roasted pork with seaweed and other toppings. Another fatty piece of pork adds to the flavoring of the stock. We agree the flavor of the soup is good, but we both agree it lacks a certain "kick" even after liberal additions of table pepper.
"And I like the noodles chewier," Alvin adds between explanations of the Japanese pop videos playing on the TVs in the corners.
Overall, we agree that Maru Ichi is a good place for soup. Nothing to cheer about, but we enjoyed our lunch (about $10 each) and will go back. After lunch though, Alvin suggests that we should go to Rwoya on Villa Street...just for comparison you understand. But not today. Only one lunch today.
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CERT Update: City CERT Training on Saturdays in May
By Aaron Grossman, CERT Chair
CERT means Community Emergency Response Team. Lynn Brown directs the Office of Emergency Preparedness of the Mountain View Fire Department. He will give the City’s full CERT training course, approximately 21 hours length in total, over three Saturdays: May 1 and 8 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and May 22 from 1-5 p.m. The course is normally taught on 7 consecutive Wednesday evening class sessions, plus weekend field days with the MV Fire Department. This special weekend class is at the joint request of the OMVNA and Cuesta Park neighborhood organizations, and is offered primarily to their residents. There is no charge for it.
Attending the classroom days on both May 1 & 8 is a prerequisite for the May 22 Field Day. If you can only attend one of the classroom days, we may be able to include you for that day only, but attendance is limited and priority is given to those who can attend both days. While not a requirement, this city class is highly recommended for anyone involved in the OMVNA CERT, or thinking about joining. Likewise, anyone taking the class is invited to join us, but not required to.
Registration is first come, first served. Contact Aaron Grossman at aagrossman@yahoo.com or 408 202-2802. Go online to www.ci.mtnview.ca.us/citydepts/fd/cert.htm for more information.
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Hot Topic Coming Around Again: Neighborhood Preservation
By Julie Lovins
"What a charming neighborhood!" our visitors exclaim. "You're so lucky to live here!"
I could not agree more. And I am proud of the reasons that Old Mountain View is admired.
Fifteen years ago, OMVNA was founded because of concerns about traffic increases and other unwelcome side-effects of the downtown revitalization effort then beginning. How could our neighborhood move with the times and still retain its charm?
The City paid for a lengthy, serious collaboration between neighbors and a skilled group of urban designers. Some of the recommendations in the resulting Old Mountain View Neighborhood Preservation and Improvement Plan came to spectacular fruition. We have Mercy-Bush Park and a way to initiate traffic calming.
The City Council also decided to promote voluntary residential design guidelines (available as a pink-covered booklet in the Community Development Department) and a Neighborhood Design (ND) Overlay Zone process. This is a formal mechanism for groups of contiguous properties anywhere in the City to agree on existing, pervasive residential neighborhood design elements that most people wanted to apply to major remodels and new construction. Obvious candidates in much of OMV are street-oriented houses with garages in back and front doors in front. Demonstration of a neighborhood consensus would go to the City Council for a final decision. More than ten years later, the city does not have any ND overlay zones.
Several years ago, on the basis of persistent desire to maintain the dominant design tendencies in this area, OMVNA tried to find neighborhood consensus for a small ND pilot project. It didn't happen. One of the challenges was that many of our older homes have some or most but not all of the significant design elements identified in the Plan. This is part of the diversity that comprises much of our charm.
Now, as an unexpected offshoot of the development of the Historic Preservation Ordinance, the Environmental Planning Commission is proposing ways to make the ND process workable for neighborhoods like ours. On April 13, I hope that the neighborhood will tell the City Council that it's time to revise the process and make it possible for neighborhood initiative and consensus to play a role in our destiny.
The EPC is suggesting two processes that residents could initiate to create neighborhood preservation districts or overlay zones. One such district would result in some sort of review (none is now required) of the proposed replacement for a de facto demolition to ensure neighborhood compatibility. The other, a remake of ND, would allow for more flexibility in saying what we do or don't have/want in new construction, and in specifying what oversight would apply. There would be no fee for this process. The City Council would still have the final say, following a neighborhood vote.
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