Congratulations are in order for Jan Pepper, now beginning her second one-year stint as Los Altos mayor. Pepper previously served as mayor in 2015.
She will now preside over a city council that is well intentioned but could stand to improve its efficiency. Meetings have been dragging on and on. We have a suggestion.
The title of a Nov. 27 letter to the editor – “Los Altos City Council supports citizens” – is misleading at best.
Burning through $100,000 of our tax dollars (with no end in sight) and allowing Shaw Consulting to claim we need “3,000 square feet or larger with at least 20 feet separation from dais to speaker podium” for council meetings (without a shred of supporting data) is more like throwing citizens under a bus.
We are always listening to or reading about how to improve downtown vibrancy. There is much talk about parking or lack thereof, how to attract shoppers and diners, but there is one thing the discussions lack – how to keep businesses here.
Downtown small business owners face challenges such as rising rents, competing with online sales, declining foot traffic and lack of staff.
The State Auditor’s office recently released the results of a study ranking the fiscal health of 471 cities in California, with the results conveniently accessible in a new website: auditor.ca.gov/bsa/cities_risk_index. We should thank State Auditor Elaine Howle for making these data available.
We are writing to state our disappointment with the Town Crier’s choice to publish in the Nov. 13 print edition a number of vitriolic, anonymous comments from its online edition, which baselessly criticizes us individually, the Los Altos School District Board of Trustees and the hundreds of people who went to the workshop to support the district. We don’t believe this meets our community or journalistic standards.
In online comments, commenters often post loosely, and sometimes even use the anonymity of such forums to launch personal attacks – benefiting from lack of editorial oversight or factual verification by professional journalists. To republish and promote such attacks is irresponsible.
I want to say thank you for the honor and privilege of serving as mayor of Los Altos this past year.
As parents who care deeply about our local public schools, we entrusted the Los Altos School District to run a fair and representative community engagement process around facilities. We were told that the process would help result in solutions to address the long-term facilities needs for all district students, including finding a permanent site for Bullis Charter School. We attended info sessions, participated in charrettes, listened to others, shared our opinions and participated in workshops. As we near the end of the process, we are becoming increasingly concerned that its flawed design works against true community engagement.
This process of voting on proposals was stacked against the charter school. Bullis Charter School may be the largest public school within the district, and the only school with a fully integrated K-8 teaching model, but together we make up only 20% of the district public school population. Bullis Charter School parents, by percentage, were quite engaged at the workshops and charrettes. No matter how many showed up, we were always going to be outnumbered.
The Town Crier welcomes letters to the editor on current events pertinent to Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View. Write to us at 138 Main St., Los Altos 94022, Attn: Editor, or email editor Bruce Barton at bruceb@latc.com. Because editorial space is limited, please confine letters to no more than 200 words. Include a phone number for verification purposes. Anonymous letters will not be printed.
You can also have your say right here at losaltosonline.com – scroll to the bottom of any story to add a comment.
Town Crier staff are cataloguing the local businesses staying open to serve you
Have a biz to add? Email Megan at meganw@latc.com.
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