Sept., 2004 editor: Larry Ames
Fall General Meeting
Monday, October 11, 7 PM
(on
topics: Candidates’
Forum;
Fall
Election information;
General
Neighborhood Happenings
You get a short newsletter this time: your ever faithful newsletter
editor was away on vacation and didn’t get around to soliciting articles from
your elected representatives. However,
the newsletter can’t wait: there’s an election coming up November 2nd. (You are
registered to vote, aren’t you? The Voter
Registration forms can be downloaded from www.smartvoter.org, printed, and then mailed to the
Anyway, WGNA considered asking the candidates for U.S. President to come to Willow Glen for a debate, but we were concerned that they might actually accept, and then we’d have to make all sorts of arrangements, and have to handle the press, etc., and it would be more than our local neighborhood association could take on.
WGNA
traditionally features candidates for local office, such as City Council or
There is a local contested race of interest: for the San Jose Unified School District Board of Trustees. We have invited the two candidates for the Willow Glen area, Pam Foley and Carol Myers, to a Question-and-Answer forum, and both have accepted. We are also inviting representatives of various regional candidates and ballot initiatives to have information and be available to answer questions.
All that, plus updates on various general happenings in the neighborhood, and a chance to meet neighbors and visit friends. A good time is promised for all! See you on the 11th!
Dear Neighbors,
Like many of you, I live for the weekends. I work full time, have a very active 14 month old son, and over commit myself on a regular basis. My wonderful husband helps with the responsibilities, but by Friday I’m exhausted, and sleeping in on Saturday morning is a small pleasure I believe I’m entitled to…..until THEY moved in. Yes, our sleepy little neighborhood has avoided the port-a-potties and construction trucks until recently.
I’ve always wondered what it was like to endure a remodel or complete construction of a home while living next door. I know now and thought I should do some research before I lost another blissful Saturday morning to a jack hammer in my ear! Unfortunately, my findings are the following:
There is no control on the construction hours for projects that do not require development permits (i.e. that are approved with building permits, as are most Single-Family additions/new construction). For projects approved with a development permit, the Code limits construction within 500 feet of a residential unit to between 7am and 7pm Monday through Friday, unless the development permit specifies otherwise. One exception is Single Family House Permits for which Planning uses the following condition: construction shall be limited to the hours of 7am to 7pm Monday through Friday and to the hours of 8am to 7pm on Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays, except that construction may occur at any hour within a totally enclosed building if such construction is not audible at the property line and does not result in a public or private nuisance.
My letter is to remind everyone that we all need to live together in harmony. Enjoy your weekends, walk to the Avenue, visit your favorite coffee house or take the kids to the park. But most of all, be considerate of your neighbors – Moms need their sleep!
Helen Solinski, President
As we’ve mentioned before, WGNA has a self-guided walking
tour book for Willow Glen that describes local architecture and local
history. (The book is available at
Willow Glen Books on
… in September? Well, no, but the next newsletter probably won’t come out until after the new year, and folks may be interested in block-wise coordination of street trees. Check out the links we have on www.wgna.net, which gives a “how to” guide, and which we will update as needed with contacts for local vendors and other relevant information. Don’t wait ‘til the last minute!
It’s hard for individual residents, or even the whole community, to have any impact on the plans for a development if the first you hear of it is the sound of the bulldozers. To avoid that, California State Law requires that “public hearing notices to be sent to all property owners within a 300-foot radius of a development site a minimum of 10 days prior to the hearing.”
The current policy has quite detailed notification policies, especially on signage, that were never implemented. Also, the Outreach Policy is actually just a “guideline” and not an official “policy”. This resulted in much confusion and frustration. Affected residents did not receive early notification, and so could not participate in the planning and land use public process for development in our neighborhoods.
Willow
Glen is not alone: many other neighborhoods had the same problem, especially
the 19 neighborhoods in the City’s “Strong Neighborhoods Initiative” (SNI)
areas, where a significant amount of infill development is being planned. Willow Glen’s Greater Gardner, Gregory and
part of North Willow Glen neighborhoods are in an SNI, as is the Washington Guadalupe
neighborhood by the
The law that set up the SNIs requires the establishment of SNI -Project Area Committees (PACs) whenever the redevelopment agency might plan to relocate neighborhood residents. The neighborhood leaders on the SNI-PACs also had serious concerns about the lack of early notice to their neighborhoods. We joined them and established a Planning Outreach Committee to work with the City on a revision of the Outreach Policy.
The Committee started meeting with the Planning Department in January 2003 to revise the current policy, and by August 2003 had a proposed draft revision. WGNA and other neighborhoods were briefed on the draft during the fall 2003, as were the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Home Builders Association (HBA), the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), and various real estate development / land use consultants.
The business community and developers, and their consultants, expressed concerns about the potential cost increases as a result of expanded hearing notice requirements, prolonged process times, and undefined roles and responsibilities.
A Planning Outreach Focus Group was established in December 2003, which included representatives from WGNA and United Neighborhoods, to find common ground and to understand each others interests and concerns about the revised policy.
Meeting monthly through June 2004, the Focus Group worked toward consensus and agreed on the revised policy’s purpose and intent. The resulting proposal defines the roles and responsibilities of all the stakeholders, defines land use development project sizes and types and identifies the outreach opportunities for each, and distributes the cost of increased outreach amongst the stakeholders.
The revised Outreach Policy
6-30, after being recommended for approval by the Focus Group and the San Jose
Planning Commission, is expected to be approved by the City Council. It will be a very significant improvement in
early notification to
To read the Proposed Revision of City Council Policy 6-30: Public Outreach, go to http://www.sanjoseca.gov/planning/, or follow the link on the wgna.net webpage.
I get asked a lot… Don’t you just love working on the Avenue? I have to admit I really do. I get to walk to work and since I work in retail, I get to meet a lot of you, the locals. It’s always fun to meet someone that you’ve seen emails from on the eList or people that you see or read about in the Willow Glen Resident. But I enjoy getting to know everyone, because you are all my neighbors. I think working on the Avenue got me more interested in getting involved in the community. Being on the Avenue I hear a lot about what people like about our community and what concerns them. Willow Glen has its share of challenges, but it also has a lot going for it. I’m always impressed with the dedication that this community has to keeping it feeling like a small close knit neighborhood. That’s why I love being a Willow Glen resident and now a WGNA appointed Board member.
If you
have something that is hazardous waste you can dispose of it legally and for
free. All you have to do is to make an appointment and drive to the location at
the time of your appointment to drop off the chemicals. Chemicals
accepted by the Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Program fall into one of four
D.O.T. hazard categories
Flammables: paints, dry or wet, petroleum based products,
and polishes.
Corrosives:
acids, bases, batteries, and drain clog remover.
Toxics: poisons, pesticides, garden chemicals,
ammonia, & solvents.
Oxidizers: pool chemicals, hydrogen peroxide, iodine,
and perchlorates.
In order to schedule a drop-off
or just to ask questions, please call the Santa Clara County HHW appointment
line at (408) 299-7300, Monday to Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Keep in mind that the containers
and the boxes or bags you put them in will not be returned.
When
you go you don’t even have to get out of your car: you just pop the trunk and
drive through -- they take it out and you go on your way. Don't be discouraged
by a long line because it moves very quickly.
Note that there are some things that
Note
that most of this was plagiarized from the
The Nominating Committee Chair, Kris Cunningham, certified that a sufficient number of valid ballots were received to provide the required quorum to approve the slate of candidates for the WGNA Board, Officers, and the next Nominating Committee. The 2004 - 2005 WGNA Board is:
President: Helen Solinski
1st VP: Edward Rast
2nd VP: Ellen Santomauro
Treasurer: Margaret Hardy
Secretary: Sharon Fierro
Elected Board: Joan Bohnett, Hugh Graham, Matt Hall and Charley Luckhardt
Nominating Committee: Jim Gardner – Chair; Kris Cunningham, Sharon Fierro, Vern Ladd, and Lynn Repetsky.
The WGNA President is to appoint at least 2, and at most 4 additional Board Members. President Solinski has appointed: Larry Ames, Carol Rossebo, and Jim Spence.
Many thanks to all who voted!
There is a lot going on in Willow Glen, but much of it happens so quickly that it is hard to capture in a newsletter. To keep a finger on the pulse of the community, subscribe to the eList. A free service of the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association, the eList is an electronically-connected community of over 500 subscribers to a list-serve mailing list. Write to your neighbors with a question, or alert them to a concern; listen in on their responses and conversations. Learn about current events in Willow Glen, find out about new businesses in the area, search out a vendor that sells just the item you’ve been looking for, be appraised of situations or happenings in your area. To join the eList, just write to admin@wgna.net with the words “join eList” in the subject line (or “digest eList” for a periodic compendium of recent posts).
The eList has grown to become more than one person can handle. WGNA 2nd VP Ellen Santomauro now expertly handles subscription services (e.g., joins and drops), and Board Member Hugh Graham is invaluable with the compilation of community recommendations (see below). I continue my role as “moderator”.
The WGNA website software also enables us to set up special local email lists, such as for a block-wise Neighborhood Watches or for coordinating block-parties and street festivities. Contact us at BlockMail@wgna.net, and we’ll set it up.
Do you need the name of a good car repair shop? Would you like to talk to some landscapers about replacing that plain front lawn with a tree shaded garden? Do you need the names of some plumbers fast to fix that leaking pipe? If your answer to these or similar questions is ‘yes’, check out the Willow Glen Neighborhood Association website at www.wgna.net.
A link to a ‘Community Recommendations’ page is found on the website home page. The recommendations cover services, businesses and products from ‘acupuncture’ to ‘writer’. The recommendations are from your neighbors: they are not the opinion of the WGNA or its Board.
The recommendations have been made on the WGNA eList (see above) and are generally made in response to requests for help from other members of the community. These recommendations are from residents of Willow Glen who feel strongly enough about their opinion on a particular business or service that they are willing to be directly quoted and cited on the website.
Each recommendation should include the name and telephone number of the subject business. Usually, it also includes its location. If provided, it may also include a website link. The email address of the recommender is linked so that you may contact the person for further information regarding the subject of the recommendation. The date of the recommendation is noted. Comments of persons who agree or disagree with the recommendation and are willing to be quoted (as indicated by the phrase “okay to quote”) are also included on the web page.
If
you find a business no longer exists or its telephone number has been changed,
tell the website administrator at webmaster@wgna.net. The accuracy of
these recommendations is only as good as the information provided by you, the
members of our community.
Tired of giving out candy for Halloween? Wish there was something healthier, something
that would raise consciousness rather than the sugar level? Check out “Books for Treats” at http://www.BooksForTreats.org, or contact Rebecca
Morgan at 408/998-7977 or rebecca@RebeccaMorgan.com.