Some might dismiss it as a Town Crier Police Blotter item, a sad but insignificant story – a young man found dead in his car Dec. 14 outside the McDonald’s restaurant on El Monte Avenue in Mountain View near the Los Altos border.
Local media covered the story and used it to highlight the systemic failure of the area’s jobs-to-housing imbalance. The high cost of living is not only making it difficult to live here, it’s also making it difficult to work here.
In today’s world, there is a growing amount of hand-wringing and worse regarding the widening divide between Americans. While reading horrendous headlines during my morning coffee at street-side java joints around town, I’ve noticed a positive sign among the negativity: Communication is increasing.
The interchange isn’t necessarily occurring between members of the blue team and the red team, Gen Z and the Greatest Generation, the hills and the flatlands, Main Street and State Street, but between pooches and their proud owners.
In a letter to the editor, a citizen injured in a fall while walking at night blames the city’s poor street lighting (“Poor lighting poses public-safety danger,” Dec. 19).
Excuse me? Darkness at night comes with living on Earth.
City of Los Altos Community Development Director Jon Biggs, in his column “Nothing misleading about city’s revised ADU regulations” (“Other Voices,” Nov. 14), claims the recent ordinance changes proposed by city staff and approved by the city council were “in response to recently adopted state legislation” and “followed several public meetings held by the city council.” That is completely contrary to the facts and the city’s own records and transcripts.
At a recent meeting, Kim Cranston of Los Altos Forward shared some numbers from the recent election. Per his research, 82.9 percent of registered voters in Los Altos participated in the election, a higher percentage than in Mountain View, Campbell, Sunnyvale or San Mateo. (Direct comparisons were only possible in cities where there were city-specific measures on the ballot.) Fantastic!
Per Cranston’s research, Los Altos has a track record of high voter participation. In the November 2016 election, the town hit 90 percent participation, and in the previous midterm election in 2014 managed 64.5 percent, outranking its neighboring communities’ participation rates in both years.
I don’t have any empirical evidence to bolster this observation, but it certainly feels palpable to me that there has been a subtly thunderous shift in the ethos of Silicon Valley.
In my long career in human resources management, I observed that successful companies had many common core values. One of these was how employees and managers should communicate with each other.
The phrase “praise in public, admonish in private” describes one of these values.
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.
