Cover Story school’s swimming pool to ensure a water supply. “Half a dozen streams were soon playing on the fire, under the direction of Chief Thomas Cuff of the Menlo Park department, but the blaze had already swept the dry and weathered old mansion from end to end,� the Times reported. The loss of Barron Mansion, and Palo Alto’s conduct during the blaze, helped sour relations between the neighbors. Barron Park Historian Doug Graham recalled the incident in a 2005 newsletter, quoting a former Barron Park resident who had told him in the 1980s, “They only were there to keep the fire from spreading into Palo Alto — they didn’t give a damn what happened in Barron Park.� The Barron Mansion fire was by no means an isolated incident. The following August, a blaze at 2821 Waverley St. destroyed the new home of Mary Porter. Despite a valiant effort from neighbors, who pulled out everything but the piano and the stove, the flames quickly ate up the building. This time, no one bothered
posal, animal services and transportation planning. Palo Alto belongs to a six-city coalition dedicated to keeping up with California’s highspeed rail project and a five-agency group tasked with protecting Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park from the flood-prone San Francisquito Creek. While “Shop Local� may be the mantra of downtown Palo Alto merchants, city officials are thinking regionally more than ever before.
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he trend is by no means new, but it has steamed ahead thanks to the Great Recession. With local tax revenues dropping, Palo Alto has been eliminating positions and reducing employee benefits to balance budgets. Over the past two years, the City Council has cut about 60 positions from the General Fund budget. Another 46 remain vacant to save money. At a recent council retreat, City Manager James Keene illustrated the current situation with a slide showing a slice of cheese full of holes — each hole representing a major staffing vacancy.
Veronica Weber
In December, the Palo Alto Fire Department responded to a fatal accident on University Avenue in Palo Alto, where a woman was struck by a SamTrans bus.
It’s not uncommon these days to see fire engines and police cruisers from neighboring towns routinely crossing city lines to assist their neighbors. to call the Fire Department. “None of the local fire department’s units was summoned since Mrs. Porter’s residence is outside the city limits,� the Times reported. These days, borders aren’t what they used to be. Those that separated Palo Alto from the two burned structures have disappeared. Others have merely become more porous. Palo Alto began signing mutualaid agreements in 1951, and it’s not uncommon these days to see fire engines and police cruisers from neighboring towns routinely crossing city lines to assist their neighbors. Called “border drops,� cities send their firefighting resources to incidents near the city line, regardless of the jurisdiction, said Dennis Burns, Palo Alto’s police chief and interim fire chief. The trend isn’t limited to firefighting or, for that matter, emergency response. Palo Alto is involved in partnerships with its neighbors in fields as dissimilar as water treatment, library books, garbage dis-
At the same time, Palo Alto is preparing to deal with a host of problems, from the city’s stalled quest for a seismically sound public-safety building to the impending closure of the city’s composting facility to the implications of Caltrain’s potential financial implosion. In each of these arenas, Palo Alto is banking on a little help from its friends. Most of the work has been taking place behind the scenes, at routine meetings between city managers, law-enforcement agencies and waste managers. But on Jan. 18, Palo Alto’s council publicly announced its desire to see more consolidation when it unanimously passed a resolution directing Keene to explore sharing a wide range of services — including public-safety communications, emergency planning, fire prevention, records-management and arsoninvestigation programs, evidence facilities and office and field equipment — with the cities of Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Los Altos. The resolution, which passed with
no discussion, also directs Keene to include funds in his next budget for a study of a joint public-safety communication center. The resolution is “saying that we take the issue of more regionalization and sharing services seriously and it authorizes me to see if there are economies of scale or other advantages to doing that,� Keene told the Weekly. This was by no means the first time Keene has spoken publicly about the need to rely on neighbors to get through the lean times. Last June, when the council discussed the city’s options for a new public-safety building, Keene spoke in favor of sharing resources. “In general, we’re in an era now where local governments, just as businesses have for a long time, are having to look at really different ways to organizing themselves and providing services,� Keene said at a June 7 meeting. “We don’t have the luxury of individually designed approaches to providing services when we don’t have sufficient funding. “I think increasingly we will see more efforts at looking at opportunity to share.� Since then, Keene has been at the center of these efforts. Last year, he regularly met with city managers Kevin Duggan and Doug Schmitz, from Mountain View and Los Altos, to discuss cities’ upgrades of their respective dispatch equipment. The three city managers wanted to make sure they would upgrade to the same dispatch system so that each city could coordinate emergency calls across city lines. During the course of the conversations, they started talking about fullon consolidation of dispatch services, fire-prevention programs, record management and other services to reduce overhead costs. Sunnyvale City Manager Gary Luebbers ultimately joined the discussions. This week, the city released a new study by two consulting firms that analyzed the resources in the Fire Department. The consultant recommended that Palo Alto “regionalize the city’s fire and EMS training program.�
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ayor Sid Espinosa, one of the council’s most adamant proponents of regionalization, credited the dismal economy for spurring these talks along. “The recession is sparking conversations that I don’t think would’ve happened without the pressures of cost-cutting,� Espinosa told the Weekly. “I’m not sure the conversations between the city managers would’ve happened several years ago, but necessity calls for us to think outside the box and work with other jurisdictions to cut costs.� Espinosa likes to use the word “artificial� to describe city borders along the El Camino Real corridor. But not everyone wants to abandon those boundaries altogether. Last summer, when the council’s Finance Committee was wrestling with a $6.4 million hole in the city’s Refuse Fund, then-Vice Mayor Espinosa suggested closing the city’s Recycling Center in favor of a regional approach. The committee quickly shot down the idea. (continued on page 19)
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Join us at our beautiful Albert & Janet Schultz Cultural Arts Hall for our second scintillating season!
FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS
Author Sarah Rose For All the Tea in China
Thursday, February 10 at 7:00 PM From Brahms to Piazzola Concert Saturday, February 12 at 8:00 PM Books as Works of Art Exhibit Reception
Sunday, February 13 at 4:00 PM Esn: Songs From the Kitchen Sunday, February 13 at 7:30 PM COMING IN MARCH
Suska Varda Part of Women’s Month
Thursday, March 3 at 7:30 PM Tango Dance Pary Sunday, March 6 at 7:30 PM To purchase tickets, visit www.paloaltojcc.org/arts or call (650) 223-8699. Oshman Family JCC 3921 Fabian Way Palo Alto, CA | (650) 223-8699
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