Speak Out
Traffic calming has not calmed problem
The city of San Jose is promoting traffic-calming measures in a piecemeal fashion throughout the city. I question the thinking behind this. Traffic calming cannot be looked at one neighborhood at a time. Rather, it needs to be discussed in a larger context. To exemplify my logic, I quote a friend of mine: "We need traffic calming between Gilroy and Santa Rosa."
I was at the Cottle Avenue traffic calming meeting in late March and I have seen yellow "traffic-calming" signs along Hicks Avenue (two blocks west of Cherry). I have noticed that the decisions made regarding traffic calming for one neighborhood have adversely affected traffic for other neighborhoods. I also find that working with only small pockets of neighborhoods rather than a large group of neighborhoods is pitting neighborhoods against one another.
As has been reported in two different articles in The Willow Glen Resident, the city and San Jose Unified School District (SJUSD) have decided to move the school bus drop-off and pickup for Willow Glen High School and Willow Glen Middle School from Cottle Avenue to Dry Creek. Student parking has been displaced as a result of this decision. Many of those students who parked along one side of Dry Creek now park further up Dry Creek and on both sides, and further up Simpson and Robsheal avenues. Additionally, the buses now drive into the area along Cherry and Robsheal avenues, when before they did not. Contrary to what Ken Yeager and Russ Taft state (as per the April 10 article of the Resident), this is not good for Dry Creek residents. Neither is it good for the residents on Cherry, Simpson, and Robsheal avenues.
Hicks Avenue, and neighboring streets, have signs posted at Curtner that read "no turn between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m." Similar signs are posted at Minnesota. I wonder where all those who used to drive along Hicks Avenue drive now. The logical explanation is that they drive to Meridian Avenue and join the stop-and-go traffic. But instead, I believe, many of these drivers are using Cherry to Simpson to Robsheal (yes it is a loop, but you don't have to get in traffic) or using Cottle Avenue, causing additional traffic problems for a heavily used street. I have also noticed the two new signs along Cherry Avenue that state that it is another street serviced by the traffic-calming project. The problem is that Cherry Avenue is the street that is calming the surrounding streets.
When I attended the Cottle Avenue traffic-calming meeting, I voiced my opposition to moving the buses. Why? Because I am against moving one person's problem to another's front door. I think solutions can be found that will not impact others. I stated in a letter to SJUSD Superintendent Linda Murray, Mayor Ron Gonzales, Yeager and others that when traffic and parking issues are discussed, they need to include surrounding neighborhoods. Otherwise, traffic calming for one neighborhood becomes traffic calamity for another. It doesn't have to be that way.
Helen Beth Morris
Madrona Avenue
Monitor 'blight' law with caution, respect
I support the blight ordinance recently passed by the San Jose City Council. I think it is well-intended; however, I hope the deployment of code enforcement officials and the implementation of the ordinance will be done with care and respect for all.
Sometimes people do not intend to create "blight." A "dirt" front yard with wildflowers is considered a beauty in Willow Glen. The soil here allows for uniqueness and creativity, and many people have produced beautifully maintained yards without a lawn.
I'm also a bit concerned about random opinions deciding that a RV or a boat (sometimes the cost of such items is more than $50,000) can be considered blight.
As a young child, I would travel with my grandparents in their RV to go camping. My grandparents would fix meals and share their childhood stories with my siblings and me. When I see an RV on someone's personal property, I'm pleasantly reminded of some of the best times I spent with my grandparents.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I urge all of us to use caution with our judgments and to work patiently and gently in our quest to monitor blight.
Denelle Fedor
Glen Eyrie Avenue
Traffic calming needs revision, planning
I am a third-generation Willow Glen resident, and I have lived here since 1982. A lot has changed in the past 20 years, and I'm sure that if my grandparents were still living, they would also agree with that statement.
Willow Glen offers the good old small-hometown feeling today as it did back when my grandparents were alive, but with the city of San Jose traffic-calming program popping up on every street, soon there will be no way into or no way out of Willow Glen. All the streets will be closed during this time or that, or there will be no-turn now or no-turn then. Yes, the biggest change in Willow Glen in the past years is the traffic. I totally agree that drivers need to slow down, especially around the schools, residential side streets and downtown, but to keep rerouting traffic, closing streets, installing barricades, and stopping turn right or left signals is crazy.
The most recent measure that has just thrown me over the edge is the sign for no left turn onto Hicks Avenue from Minnesota between 7 and 9 a.m. and 3 and 7 p.m. At the opposite end from Hamilton Avenue onto Hamilton Way there is no left turn from 3 to 7 p.m. Yes, I did see all the survey hoopla being performed by the city of San Jose traffic-calming program. The city has posted the signs, started enforcing them, calming the traffic and issuing citations to violators. I'm being punished like so many other residents of Willow Glen, including the homeowners on Hicks Avenue, Hamilton Way and various other side streets. Why? Because we now have to go around, six hours out of the day. Hicks Avenue is a throughfare with a posted speed limit of 30 mph, not 25 mph like a residential street. It is also a divided (painted) lane street, unlike a residential street. We are losing a throughfare street during the major commute times of the day. Come on, now. There is not, and I repeat, not that much traffic at any time on either street. Did somebody survey the drivers? I bet 90 percent of them were Willow Glen residents trying to get home to their families.
Survey says... soon we go round in circles.
Cathy Moilan
Brace Avenue
RVs should not be be labeled blight
I just finished rereading Sheila Sanchez's opinion in the May 15 issue of the Willow Glen Resident, as well as the WGNA article by Michelle C. Crowe. I am concerned about Sanchez's statement that the proposed blight ordinance targets owners of RVs, boats and campers that are parked in the street.
At present state laws limit street parking to 72 hours. This is reasonable for those of us who do not have driveway or side yard space and must use storage facilities (with associated costs and risks). The proposed ordinance is considering limiting property owners parking their vehicles on their own land--not in the street or on the sidewalks. I find it hard to consider the present day RVs as ugly and a "blight." Most RV owners take good care of them and should be permitted to store RVs on their property. Any specific cases of run-down and unregistered vehicles should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis under current regulations.
Bill Wright
Elkhorn Court
Against proposed city blight ordinance
I am responding to your editorial on the "city blight" ordinances in the Willow Glen Resident.
I don't understand why I am in the minority in opposing these ordinances. I don't like plants and I don't have time to buy a bunch of them and take care of them. I have two jobs and am going back to college. I am struggling enough as it is. This is the same reason I don't have children or a herd of cattle: I don't want them. I can't afford them. I don't have time.
I don't know most of my neighbors. The ones I know, most of them I don't like. I don't care what they are doing or what their property looks like. I have no right to intrude on their business, and they have no right to intrude on mine. The neighbors and the city have no more right to tell me what my yard should look like than what color my house, car or dog is.
Why are you bothered by "unattractive" dirt and cement lots? It's not yours. You don't even have to look at it. Why aren't those teenagers helping landscape their school? Maybe they don't have enough to do with classes, sports, school exit exams, and required community service. (Community service should never be required. These are kids, not convicts.) Maybe they don't care what it looks like either. It's not theirs, it's the district's or the state's. As far as I'm concerned, if the city wants the lawn or the park strip to look a certain way they can come and do it themselves. It's bad enough they've planted trees up and down the street that they expect the residents to take care of--trees that drop leaves and seed pods to clutter the sidewalk, whose branches tangle in the power lines and whose roots break up the cement.
The city "blight ordinances" are no more than snob laws. The local yuppies will have their cell phones out, reporting every patch of crabgrass they see. (They can afford to store their boats and RVs off-site, or build "approved" structures for them.) You doubt people will take the time to abuse the complaint system; I think the system itself is an abuse of power. I don't consider myself part of any community--I just live here. I mind my own business. I'm not a bad neighbor, just an indifferent one. Now the city wants to penalize those of us who don't enjoy scrabbling around in the dirt like peasants on our days off. Or those of us who don't get days off.
I don't mean to come across rudely, but I am deeply offended by these absurd proposals. I am just giving you my opinion, and I agree wholeheartedly with you that the issue should be considered further before any laws are enacted.
Jax Miller
Willow Glen
Stop whining about DeCinzo's cartoons
Let's stop with all those whining and sniveling anti-DeCinzo letters, fellow Willow Glen Resident readers. I'm constantly amazed at the volume and tone of what seems like an endless flood of letters accusing DeCinzo of single-handedly undermining the fabric of Willow Glen.
If DeCinzo's cartoons do "harm to our community" then we are a thin-skinned population that needs to toughen up and honestly ask ourselves why we are reacting so strongly. Could it be that there is a strong element of truth to many of DeCinzo's talented social satires?
It's a good thing the Willow Glen Resident hasn't employed the talents of a national political cartoonist or he would be quickly dragged beyond the town line behind a fleet of latte- and cellular phone-laden SUVs and European sport sedans!
Philip Levine
Los Gatos
Correction
A cover story photograph caption in the May 15 issue of the Willow Glen Resident incorrectly identified Scott Dietz. The cutline also incorrectly stated that his mother, Carla Dietz, was another child's mother. The story inadvertently left out several paragraphs, including those in which the writer described how Dr. Stafford Grady Jr. booked two seats on a flight out of the Bay Area to Boston and had an ambulance meet the mother and daughter when they arrived. That was 19 years ago and the girl is still alive.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
