Around Town Around Town (August 07, 2002)

TAMING THE CREEK . . . Heavy-duty construction equipment was to begin moving into place today or Thursday in a $3 million effort to tame the occasionally unruly San Francisquito Creek that separates Palo Alto from Menlo Park and East Palo Alto -- sometimes politically as well as physically. The long-discussed project will take special care to balance work so the risk of flooding is not increased on one side or the other, a concern that has complicated matters for years. The timely project -- as another "El Nino" winter is being predicted -- will restore levees on the Palo Alto side of the Bayshore Freeway to their original 1958 height. Erosion, subsidence and wear has left them up to two feet lower, according to flood-control officials. No one is guaranteeing protection against such a flood as the one that hit the area in 1998, however, which is labeled a "100-year flood" because it has a 1 percent chance of occurring in a given 100 years. Across the creek, an 1,100-foot section of temporary floodwall will be replaced with a permanent structure, higher and with a better foundation. The project is the outgrowth of the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority (JPA), created in 1999 to loosen up the political logjam over creek. The Joint Powers Authority will be talking about what to do about that kind of flood with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But no one is speculating on what percent chance something might be done by any given year.

LIBRARY-BOND ADVOCATES CHEER . . . More than 220 Palo Altans have kicked in $36,195 (so far) to help fund the campaign for a nearly $50 million "Libraries Plus" bond measure that is to appear on the November ballot. "We are excited and grateful for the strong, early support we've received from Palo Altans from different neighborhoods, businesses and organizations," said former Palo Alto Mayor Gary Fazzino, who is co-chairing the campaign with former Mayor Lanie Wheeler. The council voted officially Monday night to place the bond measure on the ballot. The $49.1 million bond measure would add space at the Palo Alto Children's Library and upgrade its roof, plumbing, lighting and electrical systems, plus create a new building at the Mitchell Park Community Center that would replace the existing library and community center while incorporating a new "homework center."

LOOKING FOR AN OAK TREE? . . . For four years, 47 volunteers have been stalking oak trees in Palo Alto, trying to guess size and variety of back-yard trees by branches visible from the street, as part of an Oakwell Survey sponsored by Canopy, the Palo Alto tree-advocacy group. Volunteers found between 9,000 and 13,000 native oaks -- part of the variance depends on whether you count clusters of oaks as a single tree or as individual trees. And they found that 84 percent of the oaks are coast live oaks, 15 percent are valley oaks, with just 1 percent classed as blue or black oaks. The volunteers left behind information about the proper care of oak trees for residents. The Barron Park neighborhood has the most oaks, with 1,239. Only one of the 46 other Palo Alto neighborhoods, Garland, has no native oaks. The oak-hunters found that 13 percent of all Palo Alto parcels have at least one oak. Overall, the further a neighborhood is from the bay the more oaks it has, according to Canopy Executive Director Howell Lovell, Jr. Canopy has just published a booklet delineating the study's findings. It may contain the real secret of Palo Alto's high housing prices: a quotation from Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed both Stanford University's landscaping and New York's Central Park. "Every lot or homesite which boasts an oak tree is worth more than one without trees. Property owners need to be educated . . . to realize that it pays to care for the health of their trees as they would for their own well-being."

HP's HELPING HAND FOR SMALL BUSINESSES . . . Electronics giant Hewlett Packard Co. and Start Up, a tiny East Palo Alto "microbusiness organization," unveiled a new program to promote the growth of small businesses in the East Palo Alto/Menlo Park area this week. HP Chair and CEO Carly Fiorina and President Michael Capellas spoke at an economic development forum Monday morning. After they spoke, Fiornia and Capellas observed the distribution of a dozen new computer systems to local business owners by Start Up -- through a Small Business Development Initiative, a signature project of HP's East Palo Alto Digital Village Grant Program.