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OMVNA Newsletter
September 2007
Volume 19, Number 6
The OMVNA Newsletter is distributed to 1900 households and 175 downtown businesses by dedicated volunteers. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the OMVNA Steering Committee. Let us know what you think!
Editor: Bruce Karney
Phone: (6 - 9 PM only) 964-3567
E-mail: editor@omvna.org
Mail: 833 Bush St., Mountain View 94041
IN THIS ISSUE:
City Awards OMVNA $1500
Light Brown Apple Moth Invades Mountain View
OMVNA Steering Committee Nominees for 2008
Our House is a Very Very Very Nice (Small) House
Planning, Training are Key to Disaster Response Effort
Trail Extension is on Track
Trailblazer Race Sept. 30
Don't Flush Old Medicine
Steering Commmittee Meets
Steering Committee News
City Seeks Developer for Affordable Housing in OMV
OMVNA Gets a Tax Bill
The Critter Column: Ravens vs. Crows
LMV Scholarship Winner
New Moms Meet-up
Energy Action: Navigating the Complexi-ties of Carbon Offsets
Our Newsletter Sponsors
On August 17 the City awarded OMVNA $1500 to defray the costs of our Summer Ice Cream Social. These funds are part of a program of neighborhood grants that have been in operation for approximately six years.
OMVNA wishes to express its gratitude to the City for its sup-port of our neighborhood's end-of-summer celebration. More than 400 neighbors enjoyed our best Ice Cream Social to date!
Light Brown Apple Moth Invades Mountain View
Homegrown fruits and vegeta-bles from Mountain View, Palo Alto and parts of other nearby communities are under quarantine because of the invasion of the Light Brown Apple Moth. Those of us living in the quarantine zone may not transport homegrown produce anywhere, even within the neighborhood.
The August 18 San Jose Mer-cury News ran an extensive article and the material in this article is excerpted from their coverage.
These moths have the potential to do devastating harm to California's agricultural economy be-cause they feed on a wide variety of valuable crops.
- Plant material - including fruits, vegetables, herbs, plant parts and cut flowers - cannot move from or within a quarantined area. In other words, if you grow it on your property, it must stay on your property.
- Set out your yard waste as usual. Green yard waste that is removed from quarantine areas by municipal pickup services is being treated to ensure that any moths or larvae contained within it are killed.
- Cooked, dried or home-canned foods may leave the quarantine area.
- Plants and plant products pro-duced outside a quarantine zone can move into a quarantined area. But once it's in the zone, it stays in the zone.
- Gardeners at community and school gardens should contact the county agriculture office at 1553 Berger Drive in San Jose to schedule an inspection; (408) 918-4600. Once a garden has been inspected, produce may be removed from the site for a specified period.
- Movement of plant materials from retail and wholesale nurseries with the quarantine zone is OK, as these businesses are operating under a compliance agree-ment and have been inspected.
A map of the quarantined areas is online at this URL: www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/pdep/LBAM_QUAR_SCLARA_SMATEO_07.jpg
OMVNA Steering Committee Nominees for 2008
Each year a Nominating Committee is formed to identify residents who are willing to spend a few hours each month serving on the OMVNA Steering Com-mittee. This year's Nominating Committee members are: Kim Copher (Chair), Bruce Karney, and Paul Goldstein.
The Committee nominated the candidates listed below. In cases where no name is listed, recruitment will continue until a suitable candidate is found. If you would like to serve on the Steering Committee, please phone Kim Copher at 650 814-2503.
Chair: Noam Livnat
Vice-Chair: Bruce Karney
Treasurer: Aaron Grossman
Secretary: TBD
Newsletter Editor: TBD
Community Liaison: Ken Rosenberg
At Large: Hugh Donagher
At Large: TBD
The Nominating Committee also tapped Aaron Grossman to continue to lead OMVNA's CERT Committee.
The election will be held at our next General Meeting on Saturday, October 27. Details will ap-pear in next month's newsletter.
Our House is a Very Very Very Nice (Small) House
By Ken Rosenberg, OMVNA Chair
I often talk about how nice it is to live in the best part of town: the downtown!
We are blessed with great parks, recreation, restaurants, and shopping. My family and I love it here! Our only problem is -- our house.
We purchased a complete fixer-upper on Mercy Street five years ago and poured thousands of dollars into its renovation. We turned a 1440 square foot dilapidated home (some might call it "unusual" or even "charming") into a modern 1750 square foot house. My wife, who acted as general contractor, made hun-dreds of the decisions that play an integral part in our enjoyment of the home. For my part, I assisted in the demolition, painted, and installed chair rails and crown molding. When we are home, we are happy and content with our house and the choices we made, except for one thing. The flow of our house doesn't work!
It was originally a 2 BR/1 BA and is now a 4/2 post-renovation. When we have company, everybody congregates in the living room. Unfortunately, it is also our dining and family room. It's simply too tiny to be all of these things. We enjoy entertaining, so we are constantly feeling over-crowded when we have more than one family over at a time.
So, like many of you, the question we're asking is: do we stay or do we move? Staying is easier and more affordable. The house works, it's just not ideal for us. If we move, will we really be able to pull out enough equity to buy a larger home? Even if we can, how comfortable will we be paying so much more property tax?
Sigh. This certainly is not an easy decision. I have spent a great amount of energy and time getting to know my neighbors and being active in the neighborhood. Simply put, I like it here and you all have helped me. Ultimately, we will decide what is best for our family and go forward from there. Until then, I predict angst in my living arrangement.
Planning, Training are Key to Disaster Response Effort
By Aaron Grossman, CERT Chair
OMVNA CERT is the Com-munity Emergency Response Team, the neighborhood group focused on preparing our neighborhood for a regional disas-ter and helping with post-disaster communication and response.We will respond to any event that overwhelms the ability of fire, police, and other public services to maintain public health and safety. A major earthquake is the most likely event, but not the only one possible. Public power and telephone communications are likely to fail, and public water supplies are uncertain. It will be up to each neighborhood to maintain its well-being.
Our members will first make sure their own families are safe. Then we will use our radios to coordinate with each other to sur-vey each area, assess the situation, and determine the response. OMVNA CERT provides the communication and coordination structure to help the neighborhood get through a disaster. We are recognized by the fire, police, Red Cross, and other public service agencies as a designated emergency community service organization. Our members will interface with those agencies through our ham radio volunteers.
Naturally, the more skills and training a CERT member has the more he/she can do to help out.However, there is no minimum level of training required beyond a 45 minute orientation and commitment to help. We purposely keep the time required to a minimum. There is a ten minute radio check each month, an annual two hour meeting and drill on a Sun-day morning in January or early February, and usually another two hour exercise during the summer. We encourage all of our members to participate as much as possible in these practice events, but atten-dance is not mandatory.
The goal is to have at least one OMVNA CERT member on each of the approximately 60 blocks in Old Mountain View. Our 42 current members cover 35 blocks, so we need at least 25 more members. The benefits of joining CERT include getting to know more of your neighbors, helping them get ready by giving them one of our free preparedness hand-out sheets, knowing better how to get your own family pre-pared, and the use of a disaster team backpack for as long as you are a CERT member. Each backpack is valued at $100 and in-cludes a two way radio, heavy duty long life LED flashlight, hard hat, vest, and an assortment of disaster response materials.
If this interests you, e-mail me ataagrossman@yahoo.com or call me on my cell phone: 408 202-2802. We will set up an in-formal 45 minute orientation session and get you on board. This is a fun and easy way to get involved, and can greatly benefit your own family.
Construction of Stevens Creek Trail under El Camino Real is on schedule to finish next spring.This exciting new stretch of trail will create a safe and attractive pedestrian and bicycle path alongside the creek, completely sepa-rate from the busy traffic above. South of El Camino the trail will extend to Sleeper Avenue. Further south, the difficult last stretch will be built to MVHS and two over-crossings of Highway 85 will reconnect the Dale and Heather-stone neighborhoods to the rest of the city.
The imminent completion of the Mountain View portion of the Stevens Creek Trail is one giant step toward realizing the dream of the Friends of Stevens Creek Trail: a continuous trail from the bay to the mountains. The Friends of Stevens Creek Trail is a 501(c)3 non-profit that organizes public and private trail support, trail and creek clean-ups, and education programs. As the only organization focused entirely on promoting the trail and wildlife corridor, FOSCT works in all four cities along the creek: Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos and Cupertino.
The Friends are hosting the13th annual Trailblazer Race and Walk on Sunday September 30.The race is FOSCT's major annual fundraiser. It will start at 8:30 a.m. by La Avenida along-side Stevens Creek Trail, will include USATF certified 5K and 10K runs, a 5K trail walk, and free children's races afterwards. Go to www.stevenscreektrail.org for more details and to register.
Old Mountain View residents are encouraged to bicycle there on the trail and take advantage of a free bike corral provided by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition.
Volunteers are needed to help with registration and other tasks. Please send an e-mail to aagrossman@yahoo.com if you can help for an hour or two.
Have you seen the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons? If it didn't get that way from a radia-tion overdose, the culprit was probably low levels of Prozac, Cipro or some other medicine that got into a creek or the bay be-cause it was flushed down a toilet instead of being disposed of prop-erly.
On Thursday, Sept. 13 you'll be able to safely dispose of old medications at "Thursday Night Live" on Castro Street. Volunteers from the Fire Department will be stationed near California Street to take care of them.
The Regional Water Quality Control Plant at 2501 Embarca-dero Way in Palo Alto accepts medicine drop offs Monday through Friday, 8 - 5. See www.cleanbay.org for more in-formation or call 650 329-2598.
Future meetings: September10andOctober 8 at 7:30 p.m. at 580 Castro in the Chamber of Commerce Board Room. Everyone is welcome to attend!
July 9
City employee Peter Skinner alerted us to the upcoming "Thursday Night Live" events on Castro Street this summer. The city is paying for these events, which were suggested by the Cen-tral Business Association. Treasurer Aaron Grossman reported a balance of $11,776.
We continued the planning for the Aug. 19 Ice Cream Social.
For several years we have shared a PO Box with Marian Concus, who has recently moved out of the area. We will investigate ways to continue to receive postal mail at a PO Box.
August 13
The Committee learned that OMVNA has received a tax bill of $800 for 2004 and 2005 (see article in column 3). Aaron Grossman is investigating ways to resolve this situation.
We have $10,933 in our bank account, but will be spending more than $1,000 on the Ice Cream Social.
Several Steering Committee members have decided to step down from the Committee in 2008, necessitating a significant recruiting effort.
A neighbor contacted us about underage patrons at the Monte Carlo night club. Kim Copherwill look into this situation.
The City has issued a Request for Proposal to non-profit developers to bid on the Evelyn Ave-nue affordable housing project for very low income families. Appli-cations are due September 24.
Preference for renting an apartment in the new development will be given to those who live or work in Mountain View. The City will provide funding to prepay the long term ground lease at fair market value. $7 million has been set aside from various housing funds. The one-acre site is zoned for a maximum density of 50 units.
To learn more about affordable housing in Mountain View, visit web.mac.com/aah751/iWeb/AAH/ .
OMVNA Gets a Tax Bill
By Aaron Grossman, Treasurer
OMVNA may be facing back taxes of $800 a year for 2005 and 2006. OMVNA was registered as a California corporation as of April 29, 2004 but did not complete the necessary paperwork with the state Franchise Tax Board to become a Public Benefit (non-profit) organization and qualify for exemption from taxes. As I understand it, this happened because of miscommunication between several successive OMVNA board chairs. OMVNA also needs to register with the IRS as a 501c4 Social Welfare Organization to establish federal tax exemption.
I am currently working to submit the state paperwork and will ask for retroactive tax exemp-tion. If that fails, our current funds are more than adequate to pay those bills. Naturally, I would much rather put the money into future local activities. If anyone has expertise in these matters and is willing to advise us on how best to proceed, please contact me at aagrossman@yahoo.com.
The Critter Column: Ravens vs. Crows
By Jack Perkins
We're seeing a lot more crows in the neighborhood. They are loud, dissonant and sometimes contemptuous. I don't like them.
Ravens are a different story. If you see a black bird and think "that crow is huge!" you're look-ing at a raven. Ravens are far more intelligent than crows and more interesting to observe.
Pioneer Park has two resident ravens. They croak rather than caw and they have a complex vocabulary that is often very musical. They are fine mimics and can mimic the human voice.
The common raven (Corvuscorax) has the largest brain and highest intelligence of any bird.Their IQ is on a par with wolves.
Spend 15 minutes watching them and you'll see they are not just reacting to their environment - they are thinking. Sometimes I swear they are pondering prob-lems, working out solutions in their minds before trying them.
Ravens eat carrion and garbage every chance they get. They will dislodge baby squirrels from their nests and eat them. They also eat rats, nestlings, eggs, and insects.
Raven populations have in-creased since 1980 and they are successfully adapting to our urban environment.
Teresa Testa is the recipient of OMVNA's scholarship to Leadership Mountain View. Teresa grew up in Los Altos and still roots for St. Francis Lancers. She now lives on View Street. Before returning to her native area she studied at Notre Dame in South Bend and earned her Mas-ters degree in psychology at NYU. Today, she works as a sales analyst at the Electric Power Research Institute.
She loves living in Old Mountain View with her border collie, Mollie. She especially enjoys the restaurants, coffee shops, book-stores, rollerblading or cycling on the Steven's Creek Trail, and the Farmers' Market. Teresa also enjoys making jewelry and tutoring students. She's excited to take on new adventures as member of Leadership Mountain View's class of 2008.
New Moms Meet-up
By Beth Wilson
I have lived in Old Mountain View for three years, but it wasn't until "baby made three" in March that I suddenly noticed that new parents - and babies -- were com-ing out of the woodwork! I thought that it would be nice to connect with other OMV parents to share experiences and have a little fun, so I started a group just for OMV parents at meetup.com.
We plan to meet for walks, coffee, play groups, downtown MV park/coffee meet-ups, etc.
Check out our web page sahm.meetup.com/2399/ for more information. As a member you can e-mail the group and post messages. We will set up events based on the needs and interests of members. Please feel free to invite local new parents to join. The more the merrier!
Energy Action: Navigating the Complexi-ties of Carbon Offsets
By Bruce Karney
Back in high school history class you may have learned about a practice of the 16th century Ro-man Catholic Church called selling indulgences. In a nutshell (and with apologies to those who hold different views on this prac-tice 490 years later), the controversial part of this idea was that one could obtain forgiveness for past sins by donating money to the Church to support good works. The practice of selling indulgences was held in such re-
vulsion by some priests and bish-ops that it was a primary cause of the schism that led to the forma-tion of Protestantism.
Let's fast-forward to 2007, and move from religion to global warming - a topic that many view with near-religious zeal. Are carbon offsets a valid way to respond to the climate crisis, or are they a just a way for environmentalists to salve their consciences for a price?
The Carbon Footprint
As I described in last month's column, it is not hard to calculate your carbon footprint - the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) you put into the atmosphere each year as a result of driving, flying, burning natural gas and using
electricity. Last year my family's CO2 production was 26 tons and we expect it will be 18 tons this year. That's 9 tons per year for my wife and another 9 for me.
Unfortunately, the planet's ability to absorb CO2, given the current human population of 6.6 billion, is only about 3 tons per person. So, despite our best ef-forts to date, my wife and I are making global warming worse with each passing year. Like most residents of North America and Europe, we are creating more carbon dioxide pollution than the planet can handle.
We have plans to reduce our carbon footprint further, but so far we can only see how to get to about 7 tons/person/year without making larger changes in our way of living than we are prepared to undertake. Do we have any other options? We do, and that's where carbon offsets come in.
The Big Idea
The main idea behind carbon offsets is that we can offset the harm from our emissions of CO2if we invest in activities that either
- Prevent the release of greenhouse gasses
- Remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere and safely sequester them.
One example of the first kind of offset would be to invest in a project to capture methane that emerges from landfills as buried trash decomposes. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas, and is the primary constituent of natural gas. By capturing the methane before it disperses into the atmosphere and burning it for heat or to generate electricity, the methane capture project makes a direct and measurable reduction in the release of greenhouse gases. Here in Mountain View we have an excellent example of this kind of project at Alza, which has tapped into the methane being generated by our closed landfill.
The classic example of green-house gas storage and sequestration is tree planting. If my wife and I were to buy an acre of land that had already been cleared and plant trees on it, within a few years those trees would absorb many tons of CO2 per year as they grew.
If they were long-lived tree species, and if we arranged that the land would never be sold and the trees never harvested, then they would lock up our excess carbon emissions for several centuries until they died of old age, fell, rotted, and released their store of CO2 back into the atmos-phere. Assuming we planted enough trees, we could sleep as guilt-free during our remaining years as any 16th century indul-gence-buying nobleman.
Where to Get Them
The most convenient source of carbon offsets for natural gas and electricity use is PG&E's new ClimateSmart program, launched in July. It allows an average fam-ily to offset its carbon emissions for $4.31 per month. See www.pge.com/about_us/environment/features/climatesmart.html for details or to sign up.
For auto travel and air travel, I recommend the program offered by Acterra and the Sierra Club. See www.cool-it.us/index.php?refer=acterra for more in-formation or to sign up.
An excellent article on this topic appeared in the Aug. 26 Mercury News under the title "Getting Smart About Buying Carbon Offsetting" You can find it online at mercurynews.com.
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The OMVNA Newsletter
is published by a volunteer editorial committee & distributed to some 2200 homes and businesses by volunteers.
To get in touch with us:
- Write to P.O.Box 391328, Mtn. View, CA 94039
- E-mail the editor editor@omvna.org
- Find us on the Web at http://www.omvna.org
The opinions printed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the OMVNA Steering Committee.