News digest News digest (December 05, 2003)

Glitch delays Downtown North survey

Residents and businesses in the Downtown North area will not receive a survey about traffic barriers this week, as had been expected. Instead, the city of Palo Alto transportation division plans to mail the surveys by Dec. 18, according to Carl Stoffel, a city transportation engineer.

For the past five-and-a-half months, the neighborhood north of University Avenue has had seven of its streets blockaded, in an effort to reduce traffic using the neighborhood as a cut-through. The survey will solicit neighborhood opinions on the traffic-management plan and various alternatives.

The city's transportation division originally hoped to get the surveys out in late October, chief transportation official Joe Kott said in a previous interview. However, a failure to notify all residents of a public meeting in early November required the city to hold a second meeting last night, and delayed the process by a month.

Residents and business owners will have one month to return the surveys, Stoffel said. The surveys are not a binding vote, but will be taken into consideration along with statistical data and feedback from other city departments, such as police and fire. After the city has compiled the results, the planning and transportation commission will hold a public meeting on the issue, tentatively planned for early February.

-- Jocelyn Dong
Utility bill snafu

An unknown number of utility bills did not go out last month to Palo Alto residents, and the city has granted a one-month extension to those customers who did not receive their bills, a representative to the city's utility company said this week.

"We had a highly uncharacteristic little glitch in our mailing process," admitted Linda Clerkson, the utility company's communications manager.

The city sent out approximately 2,000 letters to customers alerting them to the situation, although it expects the actual number of uncollected bills to be much lower than that amount. The utility company has approximately 29,000 customers. --Bill D'Agostino
Palo Alto, EPA Sanitary District settle claim

The city of Palo Alto and the East Palo Alto Sanitary District have settled a claim the district submitted to the city in May of 2001, Palo Alto officials announced this week.

The district alleged the city overcharged them by $3.6 million for wastewater treatment services. In the settlement, the city does not agree or admit that they overcharged.

"They thought they would find some bomb that showed we were overcharging them, but they never came back saying they found anything," said Bill Mayfield, Palo Alto's senior assistant city attorney.

Instead, the city and district agreed to share the cost of purchasing a new meter -- with a price-tag in the hundreds of thousands of dollars -- to measure the district's sewer line, and to use a new process for calculating the district's charges.

The city will also increase capacity for the district, to allow for more development in East Palo Alto. Currently East Palo Alto is allowed to get 2.9 million gallons of wastewater per day treated. The new deal would let them use 3.3 million gallons.

Palo Alto's treatment facility also serves Stanford, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View. None of the other cities have alleged overcharging, according to Phil Bobel, Palo Alto's Environmental Compliance Manager.

East Palo Alto Sanitary District officials were not available for comment.

-- Bill D'Agostino
Children's health foundation awards grants

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health in Palo Alto has awarded $1.2 million in grants to 10 organizations, including three which do work in East Palo Alto.

The Family Support Center of the Mid-Peninsula was awarded $100,000 over two years for a child abuse prevention program in East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park, El Concilio was given $110,000 over three years for youth activities in East Palo Alto, Fair Oaks and Redwood City, and Bay Area Community Resources was given $75,000 over two years for a middle school enrichment program in East Palo Alto.

Other grants focus on services in Santa Clara County, including $85,000 over three years to the county Human Relations Commission to expand the county Youth Task Force in to include middle school students in advising the Board of Supervisors. .

-- Don Kazak
Five Stanford students win Marshall scholarships

Five current and recent Stanford University students have won prestigious Marshall scholarships to study in the United Kingdom for two years.

The five are: Sameer Ahmed, who received a bachelor's degree in international relations in June; Marden Nichols, a senior studying for a bachelor's degree in classics and a master's degree in interdisciplinary studies in humanities; Nick Rodriguez, a senior studying for a bachelor's degree in public policy and a master's degree in international policy studies; Michael Sulmeyer, who received a bachelor's degree in political science in 2002; and Tracy Williams, a senior majoring in political science and economics.

Two other Stanford students recently won Rhodes scholarships.

--Don Kazak

E-mail a friend a link to this story.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]