City Beat

Neighbors' association addresses many needs

WGNA asked to support variety of improvement efforts

By Kate Carter

The Willow Glen Neighborhood Association earned its role as the community's leader last week as it addressed a wide variety of important local issues at a marathon monthly meeting.

The WGNA board was visited by San Jose Unified School District officials asking for support for their Measure F school bond, a representative of the Coastland Avenue area that wants traffic calming photo radar, Palm Haven residents looking for help setting up a nonprofit bank account and a Kilo Avenue resident wanting support for opposition to a residential increase at a nearby rehabilitation group home.

Those issues were considered by the board before it discussed its own business.

The board also finished the city grant application process it began in December for this year's Founder's Day street festival. The association is taking the lead on planning the event but will need more involvement from the community to make it happen. It plans to hold a community meeting in March to solicit help and ideas and also needs to secure full nonprofit status, of which it now only has part, to qualify for the city funds.

The association also began discussion on its May general membership meeting and election and plans to send out two newsletters prior to the event.

SJUSD Superintendent Linda Murray made the evening's first presentation to the board, detailing Measure F, which is on the ballot for voters who live in the district that will be in the upcoming March 5 election. The measure is to approve a $429 million school bond to continue improvements in the district's school facilities and open space. It will tax property owners a maximum of $60 per $100,000 of assessed property value each year for 25 years, Murray said.

She also said that passing the bond would make the district eligible for additional state school funds that could be on the November ballot and that 3 percent of the district's budget is being set aside for preventative maintenance costs, so such bonds won't be necessary in the future.

The board asked Murray and other district representatives present--facilities and construction manager John Cimino and school board trustee Carol Myers, who represents Willow Glen--if the money would go to make Willow Glen Elementary School more attractive. The school, located in the visible location near Willow Glen's downtown area, has received some upgrades, but members of the board were concerned that the school's new buildings are portables and are still not very appealing.

Cimino said the bond would be equitably distributed throughout the district to meet the needs of each school and would just cover more basic improvements and also landscaping. He and Murray assured the board, however, that they would do something to make the school site more attractive and may reconfigure the space there to be more amenable to students' playground activities.

Coastland Avenue resident Sigurd Hadland asked the board to sign the neighborhood's application for a city photo radar unit, called NASCOP, to automatically ticket drivers traveling more than the street's limit of 25 miles per hour. He said the street suffers from high-speed cut-through traffic between Pine and Curtner avenues and is working with the city to slow it down. The NASCOP program is one way they hope to do that, he said, and the board agreed and signed the application.

Several members of the Palm Haven historic conservation area in northern Willow Glen asked the board for help establishing a nonprofit bank account. The neighborhood is distinguished from the rest of the community by several large pillars along its edges that the residents said need repainting and upgrading. They are raising the money to do approximately $12,000 worth of improvements, they said, but they need an account to put the money and also a way for donors to make their contributions tax-deductible.

The board said it's in the process of applying for full nonprofit status and wasn't sure if one of its sub-accounts would necessarily qualify as tax-exempt. However, board secretary Cathy Marshall said she would work with the neighborhood to get an account, possibly through the United Neighborhoods Association.

"I think this is the type of behavior we'd like to encourage," president John Gibbs said.

The board also discussed how to respond to Kilo Avenue resident Greg Misakian's request that it support his neighborhood's efforts to prevent a residential addiction-recovery group home in the area from expanding the number of clients it houses. Misakian filled the board in on the issue that is becoming increasingly important to residents and the city council, as the approval of Proposition 36 in 2000 now sends more criminal drug and alcohol abusers to treatment facilities rather than prison or jail.

In particular, he said, the city's Planning Commission Feb. 27 will hear the neighborhood's appeal of the planning department's approval of increased residencies at homes on Kilo and Meridian avenues. Misakian asked the board to do whatever it could to show support for the rights of neighbors to know about and chime in on rehabilitation homes in their communities.

As the item wasn't on the agenda prior to the meeting, Gibbs said he was uncomfortable having the board take a stand on Misakian's issue. However, the board decided it was appropriate to write a letter to the commission and the city council expressing its concern that neighborhood rehabilitation homes are carefully monitored.

Around The Glen

Carl Heintze: Steiger lookalike isn't flattered by resemblance

Sports Briefs

High school sports