The Barron Park Association

Matadero Well Site Landscaping – More Coming Soon

 City Actions and Activities in Barron Park, Parks and Creeks, Public Works and Utilities Info  No Responses »
Apr 022013
 

Thanks to the efforts of  long time Barron Park resident Dick Placone, who went to bat on this project with the City officials, we shall see some additional landscaping of the Matadero Well site in the near future.

Matadero Well Site Landscaping Plan

Some features of the plan:

  • The existing railroad ties will be re-set and moved inward, leaving room for a 4-foot decomposed granite path along the edge (only for part of the site because there isn’t room next to the Well Site fenced area.
  • The granite path will also circle around to the rear of the site, where two park benches purchased by the community (one by the Barron Park Association and the other by the Henshel family)  will be mounted.
  • New groundcover plantings alongside the granite path.
  • More mulch, and the existing material spread out over the area as indicated.

The rehabilitation of the Matadero Well as an emergency source of water for Palo Alto was completed some months ago. The Utilities Department planned to leave the area outside of the fenced-in area the way it was before the rehabilitation effort – which was a bleak and unattractive empty lot (this land does belong to the Utilities Department, and is not under the control of the Parks Department).

This was the situation the community faced despite the persistence of  BPA President Lynnie Melena, who spent countless hours over the past several years conferring with Utilities Department people during the course of the well rehabilitation project. As a consequence she was able to get the fence and equipment painted a pleasant green befitting a creekside location, but nothing more.  The park benches purchased by the Barron Park Association and the Henshel family were still languishing in storage, waiting for an agreement with the Utilities Department on a suitable location.

This state of affairs did not sit well with Dick Placone, a long time Barron Park resident and the former President of the Barron Park Association. Dick first went to battle with the Utilities Department and leaned on City Manager Jim Keene, who assisted him by having the Utilities Department place some plants around the fenced equipment area. These are hardy, drought resistant shrubs that in a few years, with some care during this coming dry season, will create a natural screen in front of the fence. Claire Elliott, a nearby resident who works with the environmental nonprofit Acterra, has already spent time tending to the new plantings.

This still did not satisfy Dick Placone. So he leaned a little harder on City Manager Jim Keene. The City Manager provided a modest budget for some landscaping and authorized Palo Alto’s landscape architect, Peter Jensen, to prepare the plan shown above. Nearby residents have given their OK . Soon the spot will be an attractive looking place for all the folks in the neighborhood who pass by in their cars or on their bikes, and an inviting place for pedestrians to rest and relax for a short time as they walk by.

 

 

 

AT&T’s Distributed Antennas – Better than a tree?

 City Actions and Activities in Barron Park, Public Works and Utilities Info  No Responses »
Mar 312013
 

Without any public announcement, AT&Ts workers and contractors swooped through the neighborhood recently installing some of their pole-topping antennas along with the cabling and power system infrastructure. These antennas are part of AT&T’s ‘Distributed Antenna  System” (DAS), which was approved by the City Council for our part of Palo Alto in January after a long, sometimes contentious debate. This is good news for AT&T cell phone customers who (the company says) will have good service in Barron Park – or will be good news once the antennas are operational.

The antennas look like inverted wastebaskets on the top of an 8 or 10 foot post  mounted to the top of utility poles. I’ve seen two of them this week on Barron Ave- one on the 500 block and the other on the 700 block – and a third (pictured below) on the pole on Matadero just opposite the California Native Garden at the end of  Bol Park. A fourth was about to be installed on Chimalus, but the AT&T installers broke a water line near the base of the pole and the work is currently on hold pending  permanent repair by the Utilities Department.

DAS antenna and equipment mounted on pole on Matadero near Bol Park

While AT&T maintained that the antenna system was needed to improve currently poor cell reception by its customers, the debate on this specific DAS system focused on three issues:

  • aesthetics of an antenna mounted on top of a pole, and the associated equipment mounted on the side of the pole;
  • noise generated by the equipment on the pole to power the antennas and emergency back up batteries 24 hours/day;
  • microwave radiation exposure to residents who live next to an antenna, particularly in second story residences in  line of sight of an antenna.

The microwave radiation exposure issue, comparing the output and pattern of microwaves from this antenna to those from cell phone antennas on towers, is complicated and has been discussed elsewhere.  Since the antennas were not yet powered, I could not evaluate the noise.  In any event, noise would not be problem for this particular location except to some squirrels or birds nesting in nearby trees.

As to the aesthetics, it is in this writer’s opinion that the poles with the DAS antennas do not add significantly to the unsightly view of the poles themselves, with their  multiple overhead strings of power, telephone and cable lines, jumble of insulators and transformer boxes.  These antennas are not concealed or camouflaged to look like a tree, but AT&T did follow the ARB recommendations and other advice by making the equipment brown in color and so it blends in with the color of the poles themselves.  When I was a kid, utility poles were called ‘telephone poles.’  With the cell phone antennas on the top, maybe that name will come back into use.

Pedestrian Safety on the Bol Park Shared Path

 Parks and Creeks  3 Responses »
Mar 212013
 

By Art Liberman

While walking along the Bol Park shared path, I have had a number of close calls with bicyclists riding at excessive speed. When I mention this to other residents, some tell me that they, too, have had similarly uncomfortable experiences. And I know of two Barron Park residents who were struck and knocked down while they were walking in the park by students who were riding their bikes carelessly.

Most bicyclists are responsible, careful and attentive. Some bicyclists call out as they approach, and others ring their bell. That’s a basic requirement, but  ‘yell or bell’  is not enough if a bicyclist is riding at high speed on a path where there are also elderly walking slowly, kids on tricycles, toddlers running over the hill from the play area, families pushing strollers to the donkey pasture, and folks walking their pets. I am a bicyclist myself, and I often ride around the neighborhood and along this path. I am aware of the hazards a fast moving bicycle poses to pedestrians; it is a disaster waiting to happen.

The solution is simple. Bicyclists must SLOW DOWN when they are near pedestrians. Bicyclists need to know that the path is to be shared with pedestrians and that they need to slow down. To reinforce that message, I am advocating that the Parks Department place the following sign (based on one that’s on a path in the Los Angeles area) at the path entrance and at a number of places along the path:

Bol Park Shared Path – SLOW DOWN- SHARE THE PATH

The Bol Park path is a ‘Shared Path,” not just a bike path. Bicyclists may not realize this and, from the sign currently at the path entrance, be under the mistaken  impression that they have exclusive rights to the path:

“Bike Path” sign at entrance to Bol Park Shared Path

Continue reading »

Barron Park School Has IT!

 School Activities and Events  No Responses »
Mar 102013
 

from Greta Gize Olbrich

IT …as in Information Technology.

Barron Park School is the only school in PAUSD, and one in just a handful in the Bay Area that teaches coding in the classroom in a program supported by code.org , a non-profit foundation dedicated to growing computer programming education.

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, among the supporters of this initiative, both believe that “every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn how to code.”  Barron Park School has taken the initiative and is providing this opportunity to its students. See Barron Park on the list of schools who are participating in this program :  http://www.code.org/learn/find-school

Barron Park’s Educational Technology Teacher Specialist, Smita Kolhatkar, holds a very unique staffing position at the school. She is a full-time teacher, but splits her instructional time at all grade levels and all classrooms.  And what’s more, Barron is the only elementary school in PAUSD to host a full-time Educational Technology Specialist. Smita helps augment the ways in which technology is used to enhance teaching and learning. There is a lot of excitement on the campus with this additional resource to invest in supporting our teachers to use the digital tools that are constantly evolving. She’s introduced Tynker, LEGOMindstorm, SCRATCH, and SCRATCH 2.0 to the students during class time. There’s also a very popular SCRATCH/Tynker club at noontime.

Update on the Matadero Bicycle Boulevard

 City Actions and Activities in Barron Park, Streets  No Responses »
Mar 062013
 

In October, I (Art Liberman) published a post  on this website about the proposal by the City to create a Bicycle Boulevard on Matadero Ave.

While this was one of the “priority proposals”  in Palo Alto’s new Bicycle and Pedestrian Transportation Plan, it was never really vetted within the Barron Park community. In fact, the Plan’s input came through the PABAC (the Palo Alto Bicycle Advisory Committee) that reports to the Chief Transportation Official, without any real consultation with the neighborhood groups.

In the past week, there’s been a lively discussion on the Barron Park issues email list, BPA-issues@googlegroups.com (if you are not already on the list and want to subscribe, just click on the “BPA Email Lists” navigation tab and enter your email address under the name of the list).

What precipitated the recent online discussion was an indication that the City was about to go ahead with the design of the Bike Boulevard on its own, without community outreach or soliciting its input.

The lively back and forth indicated that some people didn’t understand what was being proposed, or why this project was going forward at this time. Others chimed in and helped by providing some historical background and context. And still others came up with a number of suggestions and ideas (about striping, parking, signage on cross street, etc..) that would not have been included in a design without it coming from those who use the road frequently for riding, for walking and for driving. And especially from those who live on it.

In responding to these concerns, the Department’s Director, Curtis Williams, wrote to Lynnie Melena, BPA President:

The City of Palo Alto has not started any type of design work for the Matadero Bicycle Boulevard project and staff does not anticipate proposing bicycle lanes, as we know they wouldn’t fit on Matadero Avenue.  Project elements likely to be studied will include “Share the Road” bicycle markings (Sharrows), signage to designate the bicycle boulevard, crosswalk improvements at the Bol Park Path, and traffic calming measures at the Josina intersection.

…….Based on the limited work scope, staff had hoped to design the project in-house, with staff working through a community outreach process. However, given the recent level of concern expressed, we will use one of our on-call transportation consultants to assure we can look at any and all options brought forth by the residents. Staff wants to begin and an outreach process with the Barron Park community and work through the design together.

When the consultant team is on board, probably mid- to late-April, we’ll notify residents via post card and e-mail regarding meeting schedules, and coordinate with you and the Board.  We’ll do our best to try to have the meetings held at Barron School to accommodate residents.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries