Letters to the Editor

Just say no to patrols

Editor,

Please tell John Ochwat (Weekly, May 11) and others dismayed by the Cleanup Patrol's notices that they needn't sweat it--they can "just say no!" Most folks don't realize that the city has no serious will to enforce: It relies on chumps like you and me to actually respond to their requests. We have trouble spots in this neighborhood that have been a plague and nuisance for years--and despite please from neighboring property owners, very little has ever been accomplished by city officials asked to remove decommissioned vehicles, trash, even fire hazards.

It may also have occurred to some citizens to wonder why a few transgressions in their tiny street should be of more concern than the highly visible commercial areas along major routes. Take El Camino (--please!). Along its entire length, there are parking areas sprouting weeds, unsightly empty lots and vacant businesses, even slag heaps of dirt and broken asphalt. Yet no effort is being made to correct these eyesores. Why is the city not concerned about these insults to our genteel appearance?

I wouldn't mind having a clean, attractive city like Vancouver or Singapore. (Say, any chance we can get these incipient gang members to be sentenced to real cleanup patrols, that employ action instead of words, and kill two birds with one stone?). But I think some priorities that make sense, and enforcement where it's really needed, would do more for our city in the long run.

Parents must participate

Editor,

There must be other practical ways to meet our educational needs than through more county sales taxes as State Sen. Tom Campbell suggests, (Weekly, May 13).

The county and state cannot solve all of our problems. It seems to me it is time more parents played an active role in their children's education by donating their time and help in and outside the classroom. All of us have special talents and skills. What better place to share them than in the classroom helping the children of our community? Isn't this part of being a parent?

Graduation thank-you

Editor,

Next month, our son Nigel will be graduating from the University of Oregon with a bachelor of science degree in finance. Nigel was, and still is, a learning disabled student with chronic dyslexia and auditory recognition problems which were diagnosed when he was 3 years old. We are very proud of his academic achievement and want to convey our heartfelt thanks to all the caring Palo Alto Unified School District teachers and teaching aides who should take credit for his subsequent success.

Among those to whom we owe a special vote of thanks are Miriam Bodin, Sandra Huff (Hinzman), Mrs. White, Mrs. Young, Marianne O'Dell, Irv Rollins in School Administration and Nigel's personal tutor, Kathy Thomas (Blansett), who keeps in touch with him even now. Thank you all for believing in Nigel when his progress seemed so slow and difflcult; he would never have been able to graduate from a four-year university without your remarkable dedication.

Building a bridge

Editor,

As a parent of a second-grader at Addison school, I am writing to commend the principals and teachers of Addison and Costano schools in their efforts to build a bridge between the communities of Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. Grants from the Hewlett Foundation and the Peninsula Community Foundation, with assistance from Cisco Systems, enabled the schools to engage the kids in a cooperative music, art and dance program that brought together kindergarten through second-graders from Costano school in East Palo Alto and Addison school in Palo Alto.

Traveling to each other's schools, making arts and crafts projects together, and dancing to the universal rhythms of African and Caribbean music, brought the kids together in an uplifting, enriching program. As a finale, there was a Mardi Gras performance that had kids, parents, and teachers from both sides of the freeway shaking their noisemakers, waving their homemade masks, holding hands, and dancing to the infectious beat of the Caribbean Fantasy Players. I hope that this sister school exchange program is the first of many more efforts to foster friendship and community between our two cities.

Misplaced enforcement

Editor,

I would like to solicit the Palo Alto Weekly readers' opinions on two incidents that my wife and I have experienced recently in our Menlo Park neighborhood. At best, these incidents create inconvenience and annoyance; at worst, they undermine our confidence in local government and police and diminish the quality of life in Menlo Park.

It seems perverse to my wife and I that we have had two--yes, two--parking citations in three months on and outside our own property. The first incident was with regard to the city ordinance prohibiting street parking between 2 and 5 a.m. without a permit and the second was with regard to the law prohibiting "parking on a sidewalk."

With the first citation we are given a clear message that forgetfulness is a crime that requires punishment. Surely readers who have two cars and single-car garages will appreciate that a single garage may be used exclusively for one of the cars--the one most vulnerable to crime--and that as a consequence the other car can be parked on the street to enable access to the garage. What Menlo Park residents may not currently appreciate is that they will be expected to pay a parking ticket every time they forget to move their second car and leave it on the street, which was our experience on Feb. 24.

With the second citation, parking on a sidewalk, we are forcefully made to understand the limitations of our property. Avoiding forgetfulness and moving your second car immediately onto your driveway (so you won't later forget) is a good way of avoiding crime of street parking and the consequent punishment. However, those with short driveways should be wary of leaving any clearance in front of their car to allow them to open their garage during the evening. If this results in your car extending into part of the sidewalk, you will wake up to find that the police have walked along your driveway to the windshield of your car and delivered another message--a ticket that essentially states that you cannot park your own car on your own driveway without breaking another traffic law (believe it or not, this is literally true for us since even by pulling our car right up against the garage, the car still extends beyond the available driveway). This happened to us on April 25.

To sum up I pose a question: are we to to be punished by our own law enforcers for harmless cases of forgetfulness or for wishing to access our garages at night? Is this what living in Menlo Park is about? I am pleased that the Menlo Park police patrol our streets at night and that this is to enforce the law, but when the results begin to turn against the residents then I think we have lost our way.

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