February 11, 2005

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Classifieds

Palo Alto Online

ReaderWire

Baylands are where they are and cannot be located elsewhere. They provide a tranquil escape from urban intrusion just five minutes from our homes. They also provide home to many birds and animals that have only this area in which to live.

The heavy industrial garbage/recycling processing plant (not just a drop-off center) conflicts directly with open space and park use and can never be as important. It will simply duplicate the SMaRT station that Palo Alto uses for two-thirds of our garbage now, and it will cost rate-payers more.
Emily Renzel
Forest Avenue, Palo Alto

Park and trash?

Cities usually sort garbage in industrial areas. Why does Palo Alto want to sort its trash in a park?
David Bubenik
Homer Avenue, Palo Alto

Greed leaves sour taste

I actually gasped when I read Kiki's is to become another great business forced out of downtown by greedy landlords (Weekly, Feb. 9).

Where are our council members to step in and fight for these unique stores that make people want to stroll through Palo Alto? It's the quaint stores and specialty shops that lure people into town. If they want Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn and "the big boys" who can pay huge rents, go to Stanford Shopping Center or any other shopping mall.

Downtown must be protected from those who prey on small, successful businesses like the fabulous Kiki's and Cafe Verona (whose space still remains vacant). We Palo Alto homeowners must protect our property values by creating a charming, not generic, downtown.

Are residents helpless in this inevitable demise of downtown or can we do something about it? I encourage any informed readers to advise via Daryl Savage's "ShopTalk."
Caroline Osters
Fulton Street, Palo Alto

Time to police the police?

Palo Alto City Council members Jim Burch and Hillary Freeman, City Manager Frank Benest and Police Chief Lynne Johnson would like the Human Relations Commission (HRC) to become, in essence, a police review board. I'm opposed to this.

What is needed is a police oversight board that is completely independent of the city and of the police and that has the authority to subpoena police records and do independent investigations of complaints against the police. The HRC is not set up to be more than it already is -- a sounding board for the public and a liaison with the police chief. As a city commission, it does not have the independence called for.

I hope the HRC will ask the police chief on Feb. 10 if the cameras she is thinking of purchasing would have been able to pick up and record the Hopkins beating had they been in place then. Also, if the police can turn them on and off at will, what good are they? The council might as well save the money.
Natalie Fisher
Ellsworth Place, Palo Alto

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