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Issue date: May 19, 2000

Duck race is something to quack about

Editor:

We have something to quack about. A big thanks to our communities of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Mountain View for their support in the Great CHAC Duck Race. Our event on May 6 was successful and fun and brought attention to the many good programs that CHAC provides for our communities.

Every one of our sponsors deserves recognition. Our major sponsor, Microsoft, was very generous in their support; we welcome them to our community. SGI was also very giving in donations and volunteers. The list goes on and on.

For those of you not familiar with CHAC, we are a joint powers agreement with the three cities and the associated school districts to provide a counselor in each school and programs for prevention and education in alcohol and drug abuse and conflict resolution. We also provide advice to parents and in-house counseling. We were started 26 years ago by a group of concerned parents and have continued to concentrate on showing kids positive alternatives in order to help create healthy lives.

Thanks again to our communities for showing their concern and support.

Kris Casto, CHAC Board President

and Wyatt Allen, CHAC Event Chair

Praise for Faravelli's stance in day worker debate

Editor:

I want to commend Mountain View City Councilman Ralph Faravelli for his honesty, his openness, and his good sense in the remarks he made at the April 25 city council meeting, especially in regard to moving the job center that serves illegal aliens to the city-owned community center at Rengstorff Park.

Though the children and youth deserve special consideration and protection, so do the frail elderly who use the park and the senior center. Rengstorff Park already has periodic problems with transient drinking and drug dealing.

The merchants at San Antonio Shopping Center are complaining about losing business due to the workers' interference with customers, their drinking, pot-smoking and urinating in public.The general dilapidation of the area is produced by the hoards of illegal aliens who loiter there looking for employers who would hire them illegally to exploit them and evade employment taxes.

Fortunately, many employers seem not to go for that kind of thing.

Elements of Mountain View city government seem bent on facilitating what is essentially an unlawful enterprise, by encouraging and supporting the hiring of illegal aliens so as to induce them to remain in the United State illegally. It certainly seems to be bad public policy.

The merchants at San Antonio Shopping Center need and deserve relief. But for the city council even to contemplate putting the job center in a city-owned building is illegal and bad policy. The city would also be facilitating the degradation of another neighborhood.

I quote from the city attorney's opinion on the interpretation of the state law issued Aug. 23, 1994: "The approach most consistent with the state legislation would be to avoid public dollars being spent to offer employment services either through operational or financial support." All of the city officials evidently need to be reminded of that.

The fact that anyone wants to parse definitions and not call them undocumented, when they are in fact and in law undocumented aliens whose very presence in the United States is a continuing crime, is ludicrous.

The city of Mountain View needs to pass the ordinance banning street solicitation and they need to quit sponsoring this illegal activity--i.e., encouraging employers to hire illegal aliens.

Sharon Webster

San Antonio Road, Palo Alto

Undocumented workers do not deserve public money

Editor:

I have not seen any of the discussion of the "day worker" issue address the fact that these people are here illegally.

On Friday, May 5, I approached a total of 10 men out of the 100 or so around the street and in the parking lot near Fresh Choice on El Camino Real. They were all seeking work, and I asked them point blank if they had any documentation or identity papers. Only two of them could produce anything. The rest readily admitted to having none.

Why should Mountain View spend our tax money helping people to find work when they are here illegally? It is not up to a city council to create its own immigration policies.

Steve Yurash

Rorke Way, Palo Alto

Timing of janitors' march is troublesome

Editor:

I just read your article on the Justice for Janitors march that occurred on April 27th and I feel the need to relay some comments on this situation.

I am a public safety dispatcher with the city of Mountain View, a position I have held for 12 years. My division (emergency communications, which includes 911, police and fire dispatching) is represented by SEIU Local 715, and our contract expires at the end of June.

I find it troublesome that SEIU held its march in our city and that the march will cost the local government a great deal of money just before SEIU is to begin negotiations with the city's representatives.

Quite frankly, if I represented the city in these upcoming negotiation sessions, I would remind SEIU of the high costs involved in mitigating the march and that the budget is already a concern (as outlined in a recent San Jose Mercury News article).

I realize that the march was initiated by SEIU Local 1877 (my local is 715), but I don't think SEIU looked at the big picture when this was planned. I do think that compensation for janitorial work should be increased, but the timing and location chosen by SEIU was poor, and I don't think the SEIU staff properly discussed the matter beforehand with the city employees who are represented by this same union (and were directly affected by this march).

I AM a pro-union worker; I have been a contract negotiator and a division shop steward for several years in Mountain View. I just think SEIU didn't do enough homework before planning this march.

Kevin Hobbs

City of Mtn. View Public Safety Dispatcher II

Domestic partner benefits are irrelevant to utility hikes

Editor:

In his letter of May 12, Donald Letcher attempts to connect non-existent domestic partner benefits with water-rate hikes and cable conversion costs.

Rather than address the cost of the benefits and whether or not they are reasonable, he goes on about various city-imposed fees, some as much as three years old, and attempts to connect them to domestic partner benefits which do not exist yet.

How can something with no cost be related to three-year-old fees? It can't, because Mr. Letcher's argument is only meant to inflame anti-tax fervor and blindly misdirect it towards the target of his prejudice.

The reality is that many companies (including several of Mountain View's corporate citizens) offer domestic partner benefits, and their experience has been that the cost impact is negligible. There is no reason to expect that it should be any different if the city were to do the same.

In fact, if all those city employees currently in domestic partnerships were to get married to opposite-sex spouses, the cost would be similar, and would also have to be included in the city budget. Is Mr. Letcher proposing that the city employees should be unmarried in order to save property owners money?

Where I do agree with Mr. Letcher's wording, at least, is with his repeatedly referring to "families (including domestic partners)." People who commit to loving, supporting and caring for one another are a family.

Bert Lo

Villa Street

Editor:

In last week's Voice, Gary Wesley reminded us that the filing deadline for city council candidates is early August. In the same issue, Rhonda Scherber reminds us that "ineffective, corrupt, immoral, etc." people would be willing to run for city council seats. I thank both of them for their concern and I would strongly urge some long term residents to run for city council.

Mt. View is growing in a direction I don't like -- much higher rents, higher density housing, greatly increased traffic, and an exodus of the long-term residents who are being run out by the established city bureaucracy through new fund-raising schemes.

I feel the city council should act as a buffer -- not a rubber stamp -- to the self-serving entrenched city bureaucracy and give some concern and protection to the long-term, existing Mt. View residents.

I hope good candidates are not deterred by the expensive campaigns that most incumbents wage. I believe long-term residents (the voters) are smart enough to see through those "big money" tactics and would come out to support new people who would protect them from the bureaucracy that actually runs the city (no matter who is on the council).

Let's get candidates who will back off on ambience and gentrification programs when costs are passed on to property owners and renters (i.e. PG&E utility, and huge benefit increases for city workers, including domestic partners benefits) and not add new fees such as mandatory code inspections of single family homes and duplexes. Instead, let's keep housing costs down, including water rates, which seem to go up 12 to 14 percent every couple of years.

Let's get candidates who will not allow city bureaucracy to tax out any more existing property owners or renters for the benefit of the "big money" newcomers they are still trying to attract.

I would love to see some new candidates who would help and protect what's left of Mt. View's long term residents and small businesses.

And, yes, I know no one would vote for a person with a name like Letcher. Sorry! I didn't pick it--I just got it.

Donald Letcher

N. Rengstorff 