November 09, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Editorial: Shabby treatment of David Packard

It's not as if David Packard and contractors working on a gallery museum adjacent to the Stanford Theater meant to set off too many alarms.

Nor was it a case of an operating business simply not training its staff in how to set alarms, or of people being chronically careless.

The period of frequent alarms occurred during the confusion of a construction period, when contractors were coming and going.

Packard even 'fessed up to setting a pair of the eight alarms that led to a police department decision to put the theater gallery on the "do not respond" list -- when a business exceeds six alarms in 12 months.

In a candid letter to the city, Packard said the contractor changed the code and forgot to tell him. He said he immediately called the city, apologized and offered to meet the officers out front with his identification. He paid $1,450 in fines.

As a result of the ban, Packard has delayed opening what sounds like a charming gallery/museum where he wanted to display his collection of rare old movie posters. He wanted to open the gallery Oct. 7 to celebrate his 65th birthday.

Now he won't open it until at least March, when the city's six-month ban (reduced from a usual year) on police responses ends.

There is a broader context of the situation: the police department has been plagued with nearly 4,500 false alarms a year, distracting officers who could be engaged in more important duties. Since the non-response program was initiated in 2001, the number of false alarms has dropped by nearly 1,800, between 2000 and 2004 -- a major and commendable success.

But there's an even broader context: As one letter writer points out in today's Weekly, Packard's beautiful restoration of the Stanford Theatre to a place where nostalgia reigns in the old classic films he presents there infused new energy and life into downtown Palo Alto at a time in the early 1990s when it badly needed it.

It still needs it.

This is not to say that Packard and the theater and gallery staff should be given a license to be careless about alarms -- or special treatment. It is to say that the city bureaucracy needs to exercise better judgment in handling unusual circumstances, whether it be the Stanford Theatre or any other business.

The extreme non-response threshold should be preceded by even more steeply escalating fines, and by more direct work with individual businesses. And, no matter how big or small the business, there should be recognition of special circumstances.

It just makes no sense to spend a huge amount of effort and dollars trying to show existing businesses that "Palo Alto really cares" about them while it chooses to penalize one of the highest-profile and public-spirited operations in the community -- ignoring its historic value in the reinvigoration of downtown Palo Alto.

Welcome back, again

One could not imagine a better choice for interim athletic director of Stanford University's extensive athletic program than Bill Walsh -- unless it was reappointment of Ted Leland.

Walsh will serve until a new director is hired, likely by fall.

He has said he will continue the policies of Leland, who quietly and thoughtfully has built one of the most extensive and superb athletic programs anywhere -- strengthening the academic side by providing athletes more academic and personal time. He made it posssible for more students to participate in athletics, while other institutions were cutting programs and teams.

Walsh also is an advocate of strong academic achievement by athletes, and is equally committed to Stanford's recruiting program, which he says must be the "very, very best." No one is better suited to assure that the new athletic director follows in the shoes of two visionary leaders in university athletics.

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