Let them eat tacos

Note to self: speaking at city council meetings may be more effective than wearing a paper bag over your head.

The taco truck survived, for now, as Megan Satterlee and David Casas joined Ron Packard in opposing an ordinance to force mobile food vendors away from school property. Mayor Val Carpenter and Council member Lou Becker were silent on the issue.

MVLA Superintendent Barry Groves presented the problem to the combined city council and school board, and seemed perplexed that people would see this as an issue of social justice. I followed by reminding the council of the last time it got in the business of telling people where they could stand and pointing out that cities with laws against gypsies need to be extra careful when passing discriminatory ordinances.

"The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination."

Tensions are rising (with an assist to the Daily News) over a rejected proposal to discuss term limits for board members at next week's joint meeting between the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District board and the Los Altos City Council. Just imagine what they will say when they actually do discuss something.

Next Monday's meeting will feature a long-awaited decision on the high school district's request for the city to do something about all those damn taco trucks.

Council member Ron Packard, whose position on this issue won him the blog's endorsement in the fall, e-mailed his reasons for opposing a potential ban to colleague David Casas. He is so thoroughly correct that I am going to reprint them here sans commentary. (Also, I can't think of anything funny to say.)

The proposed ordinance smacks of socio-economic discrimination. Students with vehicles can drive and eat wherever they want. Those without vehicles cannot. If the major concern is quality of food consumption, then the District should consider alternatives (whether closed campus or whatever) that apply to all groups, not just one.

The city has already had to allocate police time and efforts to enforce the parking restrictions around the high schools due to the District's approach to student parking. I suspect the high school would be a vigilant complainer each time the vending vehicle exceeded its limited stay. As such, the city's police resources would often be removed for other important functions to enforce the vending vehicle restrictions during school day. I do not feel that is a wise allocation of our police resources.

While nutritional eating habits are important, here the market-place has met a need for the less-mobile, which is already met by other means for the mobile. Let the District go back to the drawing board to come up with another solution that doesn't tax our police department and smack of discrimination.

Booooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Below is an e-mail from the principal of Los Altos High School sent out to all coaches earlier today.

From: Satterwhite, Wynne
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 12:02 PM

To: Cave, Kim
Cc: Cave, Ralph; O'Neal, Morenike; Dawson, Cristy
Subject: Music at Athletic Events

Hi Kim,

At the Board of Managers meeting this morning, we voted that lyrics will no longer be allowed at athletic events. Please make sure that your coaches know that this rule goes into effect immediately. (Minutes to follow).

Thanks!

Wynne

Good idea, bad idea

Good idea: Giving high school students a glimpse of local government by holding a meeting of a local government agency at the high school.

Bad idea: Holding out the Los Altos City Council as an example of how government works.

The Los Altos City Council is holding its Dec. 3 meeting at Los Altos High School to introduce students how the local government decision-making process works.

For those just joining us, the Los Altos City Council:

• once passed a law forcing day workers to stand on the other side of the street. (After several defeats in court, the city had to settle the case for $65,000).
• responded to a request by an LAHS student group to proclaim a Gay Pride Day in Los Altos by instead passing a proclamation that it would not issue proclamations about issues the mayor, who at the time happened to be a Mormon guy, found offensive. (In response, the students filed for a parade permit that the city legally had to grant, costing the city about $12,000 in police services).
• repealed a law against claw machines only to leave intact an anti-gypsy ordinance.

Taco-flavored kisses

The Los Altos City Council is now 1-for-2 in deciding whether or not it's a good idea to pass municipal ordinances preventing groups of Mexicans from using public rights of way.

Los Altos didn't change its laws Tuesday to keep a taco truck from feeding high school students, but the idea appears to be gaining support from some council members.

The city is considering a change to its municipal code that would discourage mobile unit vendors from selling food to Los Altos High School students.

One possible ordinance includes limiting to 10 minutes the amount of time a food vendor could remain in one spot during a two-hour period.

This is vintage stuff. The last time Los Altos set out to pass a racist ordinance like this, it nearly banned lemonade stands. Now it is considering making ice cream trucks illegal. This calls for a protest.

By way of background, my alma mater is an open campus with parking passes cheap enough that everyone can afford to drive his or her BMW to school. Rich kids can spend their lunch hour at Jack-in-the-Box or Maldonado's or anywhere else. Strangely, only blog whipping boy Ron Packard seems to get this.

Council Member Ron Packard said he tried out the truck's offerings and bought a burrito and taco for a bargain price of about $3 or $4. Packard said he doesn't want to be unfair to students who don't have cars and can't drive to a restaurant of their choice.

Even though he's right on about this, I am having trouble picturing him hanging out by a taco truck in the back of the high school. I know that high schoolers don't vote, especially not those from other cities, but this has a sort of Dukakis-in-a-tank kind of feel to it, not to mention a George-Bush-on-a-"ranch"/Fred-Thompson-in-a-pickup-truck kind of feel).