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- 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.
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