Veronica Weber
Vivian Wong
Veronica Weber
Upfront
In a few years, children as young as Daliya Paul, left, and Bella Quezada, both 4 — seen here in their Young Fives classroom at Greendell School in Palo Alto — will be eligible to start kindergarten only if they turn 5 before Sept. 1, thanks to a new kindergartenreadiness law proposed by two Palo Alto teachers. of good news on both fronts. With 2010 coming to a close, the project, for which city voters approved a $76 million bond in November 2008, is steaming ahead on schedule and under budget. The project set sail in April, when the Downtown Library closed its doors. When doors reopen in the summer of 2011, the small branch will be equipped with a new program
Iris Moroney, 10, attended the grand reopening of the refurbished College Terrace Library in November. This year renovations to the Downtown Branch and a complete rebuild of the Mitchell Park Library and Community Center began. room, technology space and a larger collection. The large and well-used Mitchell Park branch was demolished in September and will re-emerge in the summer of 2012 with a large program room, an expanded collection, a small café and LEED Gold certification. The construction project — by far the biggest and most expensive in the Measure N package — was expected to cost the city about $49 million. In a rare bit of positive financial news, the bids for the Mitchell Park project came in about $8 million below budget. Expansion of the Main Library will commence once the Mitchell Park branch reopens.
In addition to progressing with the three bond-funded projects, the city also completed its eagerly awaited rehabilitation of the College Terrace Library, which reopened in November with a new roof, wider aisles, a host of electrical and mechanical upgrades and better accessibility for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The City Council lauded the progress of all the library projects at a recent meeting with the Library Advisory Commission. Mayor Pat Burt told the commission, “We’re at a transformation period in libraries and you get to be at the center of the transformation. ... The one constant
Palo Alto residents set up camp at Juana Briones Park, as part of the “Quakeville” disaster drill in September. The drill included a search for a missing person. you’ll have is change.” Councilman Greg Schmid said he expects the good news to continue. “We’re going to have new library branches all over town opening up in the next two years, each one more exciting than the last,” he said.
Campout of the Year: Quakeville Quakeville, a neighborhood trialrun campout at Juana Briones Park on Sept. 11, became the year’s disaster-prep symbol for emergency preparedness, one of five goals the Palo Alto City Council set for 2010. The event was the brainchild of Lydia Kou, the Barron Park Associa-
tion’s emergency-prep coordinator. It was supported by the city and the Palo Alto Neighborhoods group. Nearly 60 Barron Park, Leland Manor and Green Acres neighborhood residents turned out for the overnight dress rehearsal for a major earthquake and neighborhood evacuation. The all-volunteer group Palo Alto Neighborhood Disaster Activities (PANDA) handled logistics and staged a surprise “missing person” search. “There’s no way the city has enough emergency personnel to even come close to taking care of the entire community in the event of disaster,” Mayor Pat Burt told the campers. (continued on page 8)
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