"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.

Focus the 'Tos

Today is "Focus the Nation," a national teach-in on global warming. It comes amidst a lot of exciting progress on climate change at UCLA Law. Last week's law review symposium highlighted some of the best idea for addressing the problem. The school announced that it had received a $5 million gift to open the country's first center for climate change law. A group of students has embarked on an effort to personally comply with the Kyoto Protocol. And I even got to meet one of the impostor Jonathan Wieners. (Details to follow in another post).

But this blog is not about the nation, the globe, or even UCLA Law. It is about the 'Tos, which joined the party last week.

Thanks to the efforts of Kacey Fitzpatrick and the other folks behind Cool Los Altos, our city has pledged to meet the Kyoto Protocol by 2012. This seems like it will require rethinking, among other things, how much we want to continue use free public parking to subsidize driving. I'm not optimistic that we will necessarily pull it off -- at least so long as council member and blog whipping boy Ron Packard believes that the only thing Los Altos should do about the great challenge of our time is promulgate weak revisions to the building code. But at least it will be nice to know that we inspired Iraq.

Los Altos election special (with special guest star, my mother)

Though this Tuesday's election will not inspire the attention that last year's did, we here at NOE still take seriously our duty to inform the public about local politics.

Four candidates are running for three open seats on the Los Altos city council.

Ron Packard: Readers no doubt expect us to jump at the opportunity to get rid of Packard, who is largely responsible for the most embarassing thing to happen in Los Altos this millenium and sometimes seems to think he's mayor of Pleasantville. Not so. Packard has a lot of experience, having also spent two terms on the Mountain View council. He has a reputation as a thoughtful and generous man, and serves on the board of the Day Worker Center. Of course, the real reason I'm voting for Packard is that I need material for this blog, and he provides it.

David Casas: Casas was somewhat of a shit-disurber on the VTA Board at a time when it sorely needed its shit disturbed. He also always returned my phone calls when I was looking for a comment or an interview. On the other hand, his kid was kind of a brat the one time I met him. That would likely be enough for my mom not to vote for him, but that was few years ago.

Randall Hull: Hull seems like a friend of bicycle commuting and renewable energy usage. However, he used to do some contract work for the Town Crier, so he's already got one foot in the grave.

Megan Satterlee: I know almost nothing about Satterlee other than that her ballot statement refers too frequently to "preserving" Los Altos. However, she's an alum of UCLA School of Law. The added prestige that my degree would carry with an alum on the Los Altos City Council is too great to pass up. Sorry Randall.

The only other thing on the ballot is Measure O, which would revise the city's phone tax to include cell phone and broadband users while lowering the rate from 3.5% to 3.2%.

Nobody has written a argument against this idea, though there is this:

Mom: "I don't know what this one is about. I'll probably vote yes. I usually vote yes on everything."

Me: "That one is a tax cut." [Yes, I know this is only partially true.]

Mom: "Okay, I'll vote no then. Why would they cut taxes?"

My mom's voting system for candidates: vote for women.
My mom's voting system for other measures: yes on everything (except tax cuts.)

Town Crier: Parade idea is totally gay

Tortured logic in the award-winning editorial pages of this week's Town Crier argues that a planned gay pride parade is unnecessarily divisive for a community that already has an annual Homecoming parade to bring it together (except for the private school kids).

Still smarting from criticism over its decision to proclaim a ban on all offensive proclamations, most notably those regarding the extent to which high school students should be embarrassed about their sexuality, the Los Altos City Council is now under pressure to approve a June parade proposal. According to the Mercury, offers of support have poured in from all over, further embarrassing a city (and an anonymous editorial writer) that already had much to be ashamed of.

I'm not sure how the vote will go, but the Mormon mayor credited with orchestrating the rejection and subsequent prohibition of gay pride proclamations said that Los Altos is so tolerant that it doesn't need a parade.

Said Ron Packard:

The citizens of Los Altos are highly educated and already extremely tolerant and respectful of others, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.

Of course, we still hate gays and Mexicans, and people who celebrate Halloween.