Friends of Santa Teresa Park Meeting, 9/3/09
	Attendees: Mike Boulland, Ronald Horii, Kitty Monahan, Shirin Darbani, Roland LeBrun, Woody Collins, Sam Drake, Ed Jackson, Mario Blaum, Dan Schneider, ranger Ryan Lugo. On 9/11, Ash Kalra will take a tour of Santa Teresa Park. Shirin Darbani brought the District 2 newsletter. it has a story about the Albertson Parkway opening. On 9/26, the District Quarterly Community Meeting will be held on 9/26 in the Edenvale Library Community Room. 9/19 is Coastal Cleanup Day at Coyote Creek and Hellyer Park. Treasurer's Report by Mario Blaum: we spent $5.54 on postage. We registered with the California Department of Justice in Sacramento as a California non-profit, filed with the Attorney General and Secretary of State. Our account balance is $461.05. Last month's meeting minutes were approved. Ron showed a slideshow, showing the Coyote Creek Trail opening, the Albertson Parkway dedication and street crossings, fire at the Pueblo Area, graffiti'd trail signs, bug night displays, views of the Pyzak Ranch, pigs on the hill behind the Norred Ranch, oak galls, the Coyote Alamitos Canal from the Joice Trail, and sunset views. Servando Perez from the City of San Jose's Anti-Graffiti Program gave a presentation on the program. They have a volunteer form that you can sign, mail, or fax in to register as an anti-graffiti program volunteer. As a volunteer, you receive training and materials to remove graffiti. There is a 24-hour graffiti hotline: 408-277-2758. Call if you see graffiti. Give the location, a description of the graffiti and its color, your name and phone number. They will call you back with the status. If the graffiti is on property within the city's jurisdiction, they will send out a crew to clean it up. If it is on private property, they need the owner's permission to clean it up. The hotline will call other appropriate public agencies if it is in their jurisdiction. Graffiti removal is done by staff, volunteers, juvenile offenders sentenced to graffiti removal, and truant kids. They also contract with the San Jose Conservation Corps to do removal on public waterways. Inmates from the Santa Clara County Dept. of Corrections do large-scale graffiti removal on underpasses and creek bridges. Only inmates who have been convicted of low-risk crimes are allowed to work. They are supervised and do not go into neighborhoods. If private property owners do not give permission for graffiti removal, the case is sent to code enforcement. The owners can be cited. Volunteers are covered by the city's workmen's compensation. They receive paint, solvent, and safety tools. The paints come in standard colors: beige, gray, and brown. Volunteers are trained with the best practices. They are not allowed to touch private property because of liability issues. If taggers get caught, they may be charged with a felony if the cost of the damage exceeds $400. The San Jose Police have a public portal to send pictures of graffiti. They save it for 3 years. Taggers get charged with all the damage they cause. If the taggers are minors, parents must pay the costs of the cleanup. The cost includes travel to the site and is related to the size of the graffiti. A 4X6 tag is usually a felony. The money goes back to the general fund. The taggers will not be let off probation until they pay. If the graffiti is gang-related, it will be cleaned up in 24 hours, as it tends to provoke crime. Gang tags include the roman numerals for 13 and 14 with 3-4 dots. They can have 3-letter acronym in old English style. Gangs are territorial. They cross out each others' tag. Paintballs are considered graffiti. They are starting to get information out to the schools. If kids get caught, they have to go to a mandatory tag class. The budget for the graffiti removal program is $1.8-1.9 million, for staffing and labor. San Francisco has a budget of $22 million for graffiti removal. Mike: In our park agreement, we said we would monitor graffiti. Ryan Lugo, park ranger at Hellyer, talked about graffiti removal in the county parks. The problem was that park interpreters or volunteers would find graffiti, clean it up, without reporting it to Hellyer. They are working on a plan. They want to document the graffiti, clean it up, and get a report done. If the interpreters find it, they will photograph it, and tell the rangers. The rangers will come up and will write a report the same day. They want to document the graffiti for prosecution. Call Hellyer at 225-0225 if you see graffiti in the park. Call dispatch if the tagging is in progress.  Maintenance or a ranger will clean it up. If the project is large, they may go through the volunteer office to get volunteers to help. Mike talked to Drew Merry (maintenance) about getting the proper paint for covering graffiti. The Water District has a concern about paint: it should not get into the creeks. The Adopt-a-Trail program does not include graffiti removal. They are still working on the Adopt-a-Trail process. Work will start on restoring the old barn in the next couple of months. They have gone out to bid on the barn. Mike talked about the presentation of the Santa Teresa Historic Site Plan at the Parks and Recreation Commission meeting. Antoinette Romeo had accurate transcripts of the site plan meetings. The final plan may be different from the current plan. They may move the bus stop. The CEQA meeting was for environmental concerns. Next will come the planning. It will not be financed until 2011 at the earliest. It is not in the capital improvement plan for 2010, which has not been approved yet. The commission voted to approve the CEQA document. They had to do that to proceed with the process. The Santa Teresa Community Fest is on 9/19 at George Page Park. Mike will bring the tables, chairs, and shades. He'll drop them off at Ed's the night before. Mike and Kitty will be there in the afternoon. Ron will be there at 9:00. We'll need maps, sign-up sheets, Play Here brochures, and copies of our newsletter. We talked about the Pyzak House. The windows are boarded up with plywood. The roof is covered with tarps. What happened to the roof tiles? Roland will be in charge of the Pyzak House sub-committee. Putting an interpretive sign on Coyote Peak is OK with Robin Schaut. Woody said he saw serpentine sunflowers and Mt. Hamilton thistles by the seep on the Stile Ranch Trail. He saw  small rare pink flowers on the steep banks along the Fortini Trail. Ron's outdoor photography class is on 9/26 at 9:30 am at the Bernal Ranch. Sam is giving a geocaching class at Calero on Saturday Oct. 17 at 8:45 am. Return to the Friends of Santa Teresa Park Home Page

Created 9/29/09 by Ronald Horii, secretary of the Friends of Santa Teresa Park