Around Town Around Town (May 28, 2003)

LYTLE IS STILL UNDECIDED . . . Palo alto City Councilwoman Nancy Lytle is still undecided about whether she will run for re-election this fall. Lytle, who works for the San Jose Redevelopment Agency, said her hands are full with work right now because of budget cuts the governor has targeted for redevelopment agencies. So she's been too busy to think about running for re-election. On the other hand, she quipped, she may turn out to "have a lot of free time" depending on how the budget ax falls at her agency. The three other incumbents have already tossed in their hats: Mayor Dena Mossar, Vice Mayor Bern Beecham, and City Councilwoman Judy Kleinberg.

COMMUNITY MEETING OR CAMPAIGN EVENT? ... Speaking of the election, Housing-happy Peninsula Interfaith Action (PIA) is hosting a community event on Sunday, June 1 that is looking like a showcase for council members facing re-election in November. Among those already confirmed to speak: council members Bern Beecham, Judy Kleinberg, Nancy Lytle and Dena Mossar, who just so happen to be the four council members facing the end of their terms. Coincidence? We think not. The meeting itself is oh-so-Palo Alto. It's an event to launch a task force created to develop a master plan for building 616 units of affordable housing in Palo Alto. The meeting takes place at First Presbyterian Church at 1140 Cowper St. from 3 p.m. to 4:15 p.m.

CITIZEN SLUETHS SOUGHT ... Is Dennis Franz your hero? Is Cops your favorite TV show? Then how about applying for PAPD's Citizen Police Academy. The department is currently accepting applications for the next academy, scheduled to run Sept. 17 to Dec. 3. Classes discuss police procedures, including the use of deadly force, the SWAT team, and the K-9 unit. And you get to shoot a computer-simulated gun. Applications can be downloaded at www.papd.org/topics/cpa.html. Put on your seatbelt. It's a bumpy ride-along.

ADOPT-A-CREEK ... It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a streamkeeper. The San Francisquito Watershed Council and the Arastradero Preserve Stewardship Project are looking for residents to adopt sections of San Francisquito and Matadero creeks in a new campaign to step-up community creek involvement. After two training sessions, streamkeepers will be equipped to protect and monitor their creek's health against such threats as non-native species, bank erosion, vandalism and pollution. Streamkeepers will study creek ecology and spend quality time with their stretch-o-creek. The training workshops require advanced registration and will be held on Saturday, June 7 and Sunday, June 8 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Contact Katie Pilat at 962-9876, ext. 305 or creeks@acterra.org.

SCIENCE SAAVY STUDENT WINS FIRST ... When most students were shifting into "senior spring" coast-mode, Menlo School senior and Palo Alto resident Marie-Jo Mont-Reynaud was busy kicking tail at the California State Science Fair last week. Her project, which examined the effects of three non-myeloablative conditioning regimens for allogeneic bone marrow transplants on mice with B cell lymphoma, took first place and a $500 prize in the pharmacology/toxicology category. Mont-Reynaud's project was part of Menlo's Biotechnology Research Course and research was done in conjunction with the Bone Marrow Transplant lab at Stanford, where she will attend school next fall.