Around Town Around Town (August 31, 2005)

INSERT BANNER HEADLINE HERE ... Businesses beware: A complaint from Barron Park resident Bob Moss about an illegal balloon triggered a change in how the City of Palo Alto will now respond to illegal signs, balloons and banners. In mid-August, Moss complained to the city about a sign shaped like a hot-air balloon on the top of the Ford dealership on El Camino Real near Arastradero Road. A code enforcement officer examined the balloon, which advertised a nationwide sale, realized it was illegal, and gave the dealership two weeks -- the standard time to correct an code violation -- to remove the balloon. That action seemed preposterous to Moss, who felt that giving the dealership two weeks to remove the balloon would allow it to have two weeks of illegal advertising. Upon reflection, city officials agreed, and now will give business owners only three days to remove illegal signs and banners, according to Planning Manager John Lusardi. "If you can put it fairly quickly, you can take it down fairly quickly," he said. The Ford's banner, however, will remain until Sept. 1. "We felt that we had to fulfill that initial notice," Lusardi said. That displeases Moss. "I want it down yesterday and last week," he complained. "These guys are getting away with too much."

ATHERTON IN THE TIMES ... Athertonians woke up on Sunday to find their town featured in the New York Times. But the report wasn't flattering. "You would think that if you plunked down $10 million for a home, including millions to buy three adjoining properties, you could count on a little freedom to roam," reporter Gary Rivlin wrote. "But then the occasional mountain lion traipses across your land and, if you are Barbara Proulx, you feel trapped, afraid to let your two young sons out by themselves because of the dangers lurking outside." The article -- which noted that Barbara Proulx and her husband "are hardly the only ones in the area feeling like prisoners in their multimillion-dollar homes" and that wildlife experts feel locals are overreacting because mountain lions "present an infinitesimal threat" -- was the subject of almost immediate punditry in the blogosphere. "I'm sorry, but the notion that Mr. & Mrs. Software feel (like) prisoners in their own palatial estate -- and can't even let Johnny and Chippy go to the tennis court on their own! -- because of the lion , is just too comical for words," wrote Thomas Smith on the conservative blog, The Right Coast. "How much do you want to bet Mr. and Mrs. Software are Democrats and know all about how we should handle Iraq. All this, because somebody saw a lion. Oh eek! Somebody call 911, somebody call the lawyers!" Meanwhile, a writer on the Blog Harris Online wrote of Atherton: "The fact of the matter is that neither the residents nor the police department have enough to do with their time over there."

STICKS AND STONES . . . We're not exactly sure what happened to the artist who had been scheduled to do one Italian street painting at last weekend's Palo Alto Festival of the Arts. But while colorful chalk images appeared like magic on patch after patch of asphalt on Tasso Street -- from artful copies of the works of Renaissance masters to Disney cartoonists -- the square honoring the boards of the Palo Alto Foundation for Education and All Schools Fund was still blank at the festival's close. Well, almost blank. Some charitable artist had sketched in a white stick figure wearing a top hat inside the square, which drew giggles from passersby. Fortunately, even though the square was empty, the groups' coffers were not. A total of $14,000 in entry fees from the street-painting event went to Palo Alto Partners in Education, the school fundraising organization that recently came into being, the result of a recent merger of the two groups.

HOBEE'S TO THE (WILDLIFE) RESCUE ... When executives at Hobee's Restaurants heard about budget cuts to Wildlife Rescue, it decided to put their blueberry coffeecakes where their hearts are. In September, Hobee's will donate 15 percent of the proceeds from dinners sold at its two Palo Alto location on Saturday nights to aid the struggling nonprofit. "Healthy wildlife is important to everyone at Hobee's," said Peter Taber, Hobee's President, in a statement. In 2004, the Palo Alto-based Wildlife Rescue saved more than 2,100 animals and reached more than 11,000 community members with the wildlife education program that stars Socrates, the educational owl, the press release noted.

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