Upfront INSURANCE
Business owners unsure about county health plan Hundreds of Palo Alto businesses are small enough to qualify, Chamber head estimates by Martin Sanchez for a cheaper plan when his original plan’s costs peaked. He said he wants to do “a lot of research” before forming an opinion on Healthy Workers. But, he said, “Whatever they’re going to do is better than what it is now.” Under the plan, which debuted last week, employers pay a $150 monthly premium and employees pay a $75 monthly premium. These premiums are roughly half the cost of other comparable plans, Meacham said. Some business owners already provide health insurance to their employees. Jeff Selzer, who runs Palo Alto Bicycles on University Avenue, said his current plan’s premiums have increased by 12 to 20 percent per year in recent years. If he did not already offer insurance and adopted Healthy Workers, some of his employees would not qualify due to earning higher than the county plan’s maximum. Gillian Robinson, who co-owns the ZombieRunner athletic shop and café on California Avenue, noted Healthy Workers’ monthly premium is cheaper than ZombieRunner’s current plan’s. “The tough part is finding everything that’s out there. ... I have a lot to do every day, and if it would require a lot of work for (only) some savings, I don’t know,” she said. Robinson said she might look into Healthy Workers when she hires new employees. But Meacham clarified Thurs-
Recycle
The tag system would only apply to those whose garbage consists of more than 10 percent recyclables, Reigel said. “One banana peel, Coke can or newspaper in the garbage will not trigger anything,” Reigel said. “The expectation is that there will not be perfect compliance.” Several residents said Tuesday they were concerned about the new proposal, particularly the punitive measures in the second year. Doug Moran said his garbage bins often include trash that was placed there by construction workers working at a site near his Barron Park house. Bob Moss, meanwhile, wondered what exactly constitutes an “egregious” violation. A garbage collector could, for example, lift the lid, see a few sheets of paper in the garbage bin and conclude that the resident is flouting the law. But the paper could have food product such as jelly smeared on the other side, which would make it ineligible for recycling. Reigel said residents who disagree with their notices would have the opportunity to call the city and work things out before any fines are issued. Rene Eyerly, Palo Alto’s solid-waste
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— waste to landfills by 2021). The ordinance revision, which is modeled on similar laws in Seattle, San Francisco and Portland, would take effect in July. In the first year, the city would send residents recycling guides, hold community meetings on recycling and update the city’s website to include all the pertinent recycling information. Meanwhile, the city’s garbage collector, GreenWaste, would be peeking in local garbage bins to identify who is throwing away large quantities of recyclable materials. Those who do will find a yellow tag on their garbage can, identifying the problem and providing additional information about recycling. In the second year, violators would be identified with red tags on their trash cans and given a few weeks to correct the problem. Those who don’t shape up will find a surcharge on their bills. If they continue to trash their recyclables, their garbage would no longer be collected, according to the tentative proposal.
Census
manager, said the city also plans to unveil new programs in the next year or so to make it easier for residents to reduce their waste. This includes picking up residents’ food scraps and other compostable materials — a service the city currently only offers to commercial customers. “We got a lot of feedback from the community that this is important for a lot of people,” Eyerly said. “We’re working as quickly as possible to provide that service and considering the most economic way to do so.” The city also plans to start offering residents smaller trash bins in the next few months to encourage less garbage disposal and more recycling, Eyerly said. But some participants in Tuesday’s meeting remained skeptical. One resident asked what problem the city is trying to solve with the new enforcement measure. Another one characterized the city’s effort to target non-recyclers as “garbage Gestapo.” Moss also questioned the city’s use of the term “zero waste” to describe its ongoing effort to encourage recycling. Even with stringent new regulations, Palo Alto will never be able to eradicate all the garbage and reach “zero waste,”
he said. Staff had estimated that about 25 percent of the current garbage consists of items that cannot be recycled or composted — a category the city has characterized as “problem materials.” This includes objects that are too soiled or contaminated to go anywhere but the black bins, as well as materials such as Styrofoam, which are too light and bulky to be recycled in a costeffective manner. “You will never have zero waste,” Moss told staff Tuesday night. “If you talk about minimizing waste instead of zero waste, people will give you more credibility.” N Staff Writer Gennady Sheyner can be e-mailed at gsheyner@ paweekly.com.
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$16.50 an hour and the top position, which Kamenelis holds, pays $37. The Palo Alto Census Office — its official name even though it’s actually located in downtown Mountain View — has 60 people currently working in the office and 70 working in the field, he said. The biggest hiring surge will come after April 1 when Kamenelis expects to hire as many as 1,000 people. Those workers will personally visit households who have not returned their census forms. Tracking people down in person nationally costs the government $80 million to $90 million for every 1 percent of people who don’t return the forms. The effort is massive, even on a local level, he said. The Palo Alto Census Office covers about 194 census tracts, with 45 of those considered “hard to count” — including Stanford University, he said. The 194 tracts are in Palo Alto, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View and all of San Mateo County. Kamenelis tries to hire people who live in the census tract where they’ll be working. People are more likely to open their doors to a neighbor than to a stranger, the reasoning goes. “When we look for people we look for them based on where they live, the languages they speak and how well they do on our test, which looks for accuracy and precision,” he said. Kamenelis said he expects to hire 40 or 50 Stanford students to do the work on campus. Bilingual workers are also desired. Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese and Tagalog are among languages spoken by those hired. Last week, field workers handdelivered census forms to 2,500 residents who do not have mailing addresses. Most were on the San
Correction
In the story on the Yiddish Culture Festival (Palo Alto Weekly, Feb. 5, 2010), the percentage of Yiddish speakers murdered in the Holocaust was incorrect. According to Jon Levitow, the correct estimate is about 50 percent. The Weekly regrets the error. To request a correction, contact Managing Editor Jocelyn Dong at 650-326-8210, jdong@ paweekly.com or P.O. Box 1610, Palo Alto, CA 94302.
Courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau
P
alo Alto business owners appear uncertain about joining a new county health care plan for uninsured workers, despite promises it would cut monthly insurance premiums in half. The plan, “Healthy Workers,” was developed by local advocacy groups Working Partnerships USA and Santa Clara Family Health Plan and the county-run Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System. Healthy Workers is open to those who earn less than $18 per hour and work more than 20 hours per week at businesses with two to 50 employees, Working Partnerships USA spokesman Jody Meacham said. “There are such a great number in our county who are without care,” Santa Clara County supervisor Liz Kniss, a registered nurse, said. “This plan will give them the dignity and respect of having health care coverage.” Hassem Bordbari, the owner of Barron Park Florist on El Camino Real, said he canceled health insurance for himself and his two employees one year ago because their combined monthly premium reached $2,400. He knows several neighboring shop owners who cannot provide insurance either, he said. “(Health care) in this country is all getting bad, especially when you are getting older. ... We live by the grace of God that nothing happens to us,” he said. Bordbari unsuccessfully looked
day that businesses cannot switch to Healthy Workers from another plan. Only small businesses that are not now offering health coverage are eligible, he said. Paula Sandas, the president and CEO of the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce, said the majority of the chamber’s estimated 575 member businesses are small enough to qualify for Healthy Workers. “In Palo Alto, I would guess we are talking about small retail and restaurants. ... This is a really good thing for businesses,” she said. Healthy Workers has been in development since 2006, Meacham said. The plan provides standard medical care at a discount to people who would otherwise rely on Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System emergency rooms — the county’s medical “safety net” — for treatment, he said. Since emergency-room visits cost the county more than regular doctor’s appointments, the money the Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System saves through reduced emergency-room use will make up for the discount, he said. “Even if (discounted care) is still costing us money, we still come out ahead,” Kniss said. Sandas said that Healthy Workers’ limited selection of participating clinics could be a problem for business owners. The only participating clinic in Palo Alto is the MayView Community Health Center on Grant Road. Meacham said Working Partnerships USA will monitor the program’s effectiveness and accessibility in the coming months. “If there’s tweaking that needs to be done ... we want to be involved in that,” he said. N Editorial Intern Martin Sanchez can be e-mailed at msanchez@ paweekly.com.
East Palo Alto seventh grader Angela Ayala’s poster won a San Mateo County-wide poster contest to encourage participation in the upcoming U.S. Census. “Don’t the people of E.P.A. need more $? So, make yourself count for the 2010 Census,” the poster urges. Mateo County coast in Montara and El Granada, as well as in the wooded community of La Honda, he said. This week, the workers turned their attention to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, contacting managers and seeking their cooperation for the April 1 count deadline. “On the night of (March 30) or the morning of the 31st, from midnight to 7 a.m., we mobilize and go to the homeless encampments and we count the folks there,” he said. The workers will approach homeless persons in teams and will be mindful not to wake up campers, he said. Because homeless persons are transient, the bureau may issue blankets or other identifying markers once someone is counted in a soup kitchen so he or she won’t be double-counted elsewhere, he said. Approximately $436 billion in federal funds for highways, hospitals, schools, roads, nursing homes and more are allocated based on census data. “There’s a huge amount of money in play,” he said, emphasizing the importance that every person be counted. Kamenelis said workers are trained neither to be invasive nor to get inappropriate personal information about anyone. “We simply want to count,” he said. There is no reporting of persons to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, he said. “We have to be very careful because there’s a fear about the census — a fear about the government — and we wrestle with that with everybody. “We all take an oath and we face five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for disclosing any personal information. We treat it as national security — top secret,” he said. N Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be e-mailed at ckenrick@paweek ly.com.
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