September 15, 2015
WHAT’S HAPPENING’S TRI-CITY VOICE
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Save the Old Hayward Library In June 2014, citizens of Hayward passed Measure C. They voted for additional police services, fire stations, street repairs, more maintenance workers, and a new library. Did they know that with those funds the old library building would be torn down when the new library is built? Well, it will be torn down unless the City Council of Hayward changes their minds. The bids are in from the contractors, and the cost to tear down the old library, make the basement into a water tank and cover it in pavers will be between $5.2 million and $8.8 million. Is that what was voted for? The group Save the Old Hayward Library has been formed to try to stop this waste. What’s the purpose of the water tank in the old building’s basement? It would collect rain run-off from the new library and the parking structure next to it to use as gray water. Trying to save
water is a commendable goal but at what price? If every drop that falls on the new library and the parking structure is collected, the payoff on this investment would take about 600 years at current water costs in the city. Is that the best use of over 5 million taxpayer dollars? The Save the Old Hayward Library group wants to save the old building and convert it into a creative space to help revitalize downtown Hayward. It would be an art gallery and performance space along with a maker lab and tech incubator. The group’s hope is to create a dynamic place in the heart of the city where art and technology can be brought together—a synthesis of what makes the Bay Area great. This idea is supported by the Hayward Arts Council, Sun Gallery, A.R.T. Inc. of Castro Valley, and faculty and staff of both Chabot College and CSU East Bay. This would be a center for the
larger community to celebrate art and technology. Save the Old Hayward Library fully supports building the new 21st-century library. But a creative space would be a better complement to the new library than another empty lot in downtown Hayward. The Hayward City Council will vote on this at their meeting September 15 at 7 p.m. in the Hayward City Hall. Go to the meeting and tell the Council where you stand on tearing down the Old Hayward Library.
SUBMITTED BY PAUL WEST
Vision has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise the $60,000 it needs to get started. Mraz and his foundation are supporting, while Organic Valley, a longtime sponsor, is making dollar-for-dollar matching donations, doubling the impact of every gift. Common Vision believes that every child deserves a direct relationship with healthy, organic food, but growing social inequality deprives millions of California students of this right. Today, over 6.5 million American kids live in food deserts, and 3.6 million are enrolled in free and reduced public school lunch programs in California alone. For many kids a school lunch of over-processed, high-calorie filler is their main meal of the day. School orchards are edible classrooms that provide students with fresh fruit and a direct relationship with healthy foods. Orchards on campus solve local and global problems by creating access to fresh food while serving as living laboratories that offer kids hands-on opportunities to learn earth sciences at a time when there has never been a greater need for eco-literacy. Students
learn essentials about everything from the importance of protecting pollinators to reversing the global climate crisis. As California’s deepest drought on record puts unprecedented pressure on commercial agriculture, school orchards irrigated with ultra-efficient drip systems create urgently-needed nutritional oases that grow food closer to home using less water. Campus to cafeteria school orchard programs cut water usage to grow fruit by over 40 percent and carbon emissions by almost 100 percent compared to imported fruit that travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. “Common Vision is a lean, green, orchard planting machine,” shares Leo Buc, director of Common Vision. “Our school orchard program already serves over 100,000 low-income students on a tiny budget. With the help of countless donors, volunteers, and partners we’ll make it a million by 2025. Give a kid a piece of fruit, and feed her for a day. Teach her how to care for an orchard and feed her community for generations!” For more information, visit CommonVision.org.
T
en years ago a small grassroots group of nutritional justice activists from Northern California retrofitted a pair of buses to run on recycled vegetable oil and solar power, and set south on a mission to plant orchards at low-income public schools throughout the Golden State. Since their humble beginnings, Common Vision has planted over 6,500 fruit trees at hundreds of schools from San Diego to Sacramento, attracted seed money from corporate leaders like Organic Valley, Nutiva and Clif Bar, and even won an Emmy Award for a PBS television documentary about their one-of-a-kind traveling treeplanting troupe, best known to students as “Fruit Tree Tour.” Now, with a little help from multi-Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter Jason Mraz and farming cooperative Organic Valley, the all-volunteer army of modernday Johnny Appleseeds is announcing its most ambitious goal yet— orchards in the ground at 1,000 California public schools by 2025. To reach to its goal, Common
SUBMITTED BY ANNIE SNELL Join local herbalist Kiyoko Guillory-Gonzalez on Saturday, September 19 at Hayward Library Weekes branch to discover the medicinal uses of common vegetables you can grow in your own kitchen garden, and learn how to extract their healing properties. Get to know food combinations that flush out the kidneys, detox the liver, and cleanse the colon. Spices are not just for flavor but a chance to prime digestion, cleanse the blood, and improve circulation. Get recipes for soups that will not only soothe the mind, body and spirit, but also prepare and boost your immune system for the winter ahead. No registration is required. Kitchen Garden Medicine Workshop Saturday, Sep 19 2 p.m. Hayward Library Weekes Branch 27300 Patrick Ave, Hayward (510) 293 - 5566 www.library.hayward-ca.gov Free
Learn more at www.change.org/p/haywardcity-council-save-the-old-hayward-library or https://www.facebook.com/save theoldlibrary Michael Wallace Hayward
Page 19