Campaign information –

To view Levine’s endorsers click here. 

To view Levine’s website click here.

Editors Note:  PCA does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

We have known Sarah Pearson, an incumbent running for Piedmont School Board re-election, as a friend and fellow community volunteer for most of the decade we have lived in Piedmont.  The qualities we most value in Sarah as a school board member are:  her deep connections in the community which allow her to readily gather input and feedback; her collaborative and transparent approach to problem-solving; her commitment to thoughtful and thorough decision-making; her openness to new ideas and willingness to ask questions; her tireless energy, wit, compassion and intelligence.  In her first school board term, we believe Sarah has been an effective and constructive leader during a time of enormous change in the district in terms of budgetary challenges, leadership transitions and curriculum change, to the benefit of our students in terms of performance and wellness.  We hope you’ll join us in casting a vote for Sarah Pearson for School Board on November 8.

Susan Miller-Davis and Jonathan Davis, Piedmont Residents

Editors Note: Opinions expressed are those of the authors.  PCA does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

 November 8, 2016 General Election

Alameda County Registrar of Voters

Announcement:

The League of Women Voters of Piedmont has voted to endorse Measure H1, the Piedmont School Improvement/Modernization Bond.

The endorsement is based on presentations to the LWVP board as well as the League sponsored General Election Voter Forum on September 20, 2016.

Don’t forget to vote on November 8.

Last day to register is October 24, 2016.

Submitted by Piedmont League of Women Voters

Editors Note:  The Piedmont Civic Association does not support or oppose specific ballot measures.

Statement provided by City Council Candidate N. “Sunny”Bostrom-Fleming:

Piedmont is the 3rd richest town in America.  (Google 10 richest towns in America – Wall Street 24/7 USA Today, May 23, 2015).  We have enough wealth to be a small nation, and there are actually nine countries with populations less than ours.  There are probably 50 Piedmont citizens who have the telephone numbers of the U.S. President on speed dial.  As a rich, connected, educated entity we can do amazing things as long as they are ethical and legal.  Few cities in the world can.  We have no excuses for short sightedness or selfishness. Our schools and civic center for the arts, and religious organizations, and scouting programs, are inspiring.  The evidence of our labors is the character of our children.  Last year, over two hundred people of different faiths , age 15 – 18, traveled to Mexico and built 17 houses for needy families.  Last Sunday, a group of 5th graders raised $850.00 by selling lemonade to help end world slavery.

I am an idea person, and my ideas have already led to the enhanced safety of Piedmont.  I have lived in Piedmont most of my life, except while away traveling or at boarding school.  I am the only candidate that attended Piedmont Schools, and I a grateful graduate of Piedmont High School.  My own house was ransacked by a burglar, who stole among other thing, a velum of the gutenberg bible.  I thought about what could have been done to have prevented that.  The crime had increased approximately 40%, and I decided to run for city council to try to have cameras and license plate readers installed.  Although I fell short of the number of votes required to win, my ideas were promptly adopted and implemented by our excellent police force, under the direction of our superb chief of police and crime went down by 30%.  I hope that you will vote for me, so that I can continue to improve the safety of our city.  For example, our sidewalks are extremely hazardous.  All citizens have the right to the expectation of horizontal sidewalks.  Many of our walkways are severely buckled, largely because of the tree roots, some of which are ten inches thick.  These conditions are particularly evident on Seaview Avenue and Highland Avenue.  We all love trees. They add greatly to the beauty of our city, in addition to polishing the air.  But we can no longer risk the health and safety of our citizens.  It is also possible, that by not attending to this problem, the city can have legal repercussions.

The time has come for us to join the 900 other American cities and several nations, including England, that have banned Pitbulls (Google Pitbull attacks), and you will clearly see why.  Last week a Montclair woman was hospitalized after an attack, while gardening on her own property.  A Seaview Avenue woman that was walking a small dog, was terrorized by two large pit bulls, and rescued at the last moment.  These dogs have been shown on Youtube, climbing an eleven foot cyclone fence.  They are escape artist.  30% of the people that they kill and attack are their own owners.  Every two weeks, another person is mauled to death, and thousands others are disfigured with wounds.  A woman’s entire left arm was chewed off at the shoulder last week, and her right arm at the elbow.  A two year old girl was killed on September 24th.  There are two ways to handle this.  Before someone in our Piedmont family is tortured in this way or to grievously handle it afterwards.  The pit bulls have a short life expectancy of 7 to 8 years.  Existing dogs are neutered, microchipped, and tattooed with their name, and DNA swabbed, and must be insured by the owners, and must wear muzzles while outside of their homes.

Crime preventing measures can be divided into two main types.  Things that an individual household can do.  1.  Smart phone enabled recording cameras that will allow homeowners to view their home, with additional cameras facing the street, to assist the police in tracing perpetrators.  2.  Alarm systems connected directly to the police department, instead of to 3rd party commercial monitoring systems.  3.  Police departments themselves – we need to enable our police department to be able to retain license plate reading data, to assist with future cold case investigations.

Last month, a young woman was smashed in the head and face by a brick that was thrown through the wind screen of her police patrol vehicle.  Her injuries are grave.  Last month a 60 year old police officer was shot to death through the front wind screen of his patrol car.  Police cars have no more protection than that of a civilian car.  Recent occurrences would suggest to prudent and sympathetic hearts and minds that the time has come to change this.  I Googled used armored cars.  I was interested in finding out how much mint condition civilian styled armored cars would cost.  They are protected by light weight alloys, which add very little weight to the vehicles, and offer tremendous protection.  They cost between $20,000.00 and $50,000.00 each.  Piedmont has five police cars.  If ours cost $30,000.00, and sold them for $15,000, we would only have to pay a small amount for them to be protected.  The men and women of the Piedmont Police Department are willing to take a bullet for us during the day and while we sleep.  There was a day when body armor was thought of as an extreme degree of protection.  Everyone now sees the value of body armor.  Within 20 years, police cars will have bullet proof glass and armor as the norm.  It’s better to lead and err on the side of caution, as our department has been the leader on adopting city cameras and license plate readers.  We are dealing with city matters which involve $30 Million here, $100 Million there, converting 100% of our police vehicles is something that could possibly be done for $75,000.00, and save the life of one of our valued professionals.

I think that it would be a gracious and seemly act to change the name of the portion of Oakland Ave. that is within Piedmont to Ambassador Stevens Drive, to honor the son of a Piedmont family who represented America, and who lived and died to represent the best of American value, and “truly achieved the honorable.”  As a graduate of Piedmont High School, whose life fulfilled the motto “Achieved the Honorable.”  This would require the replacement of 24 street signs.  It would be wonderful if this could be done .  This would just require the installation or replacement of 24 street names signs.  It would be nice if this could be done, so that both of his parents could see this token of esteem that we have for their son.

One of the greatest things about attending Piedmont High School was experiencing the art on the walls of the high school. The walls were filled with framed reproductions of art from fine museums throughout the world.  There were hundreds of pictures and paintings.  I don’t know what happened to them.  When I was 14, I wrote a small book describing the location of each work of art, the history of the painting, and the history of the artist.  I had the privilege of attending very expensive schools, and I would never say that anything was as superb as the atmosphere of the art filled Piedmont High School.  I would be very anxious to do anything that I could as a member of the city council to promote the arts in the Piedmont School system, starting with grade school.

If you help to place me on the city council, I promise that I will devote all of my energies to funnel your ideas to building an even better Piedmont.

N. “Sunny” Bostrom-Fleming, Candidate for Piedmont City Council

Editors Note:  Opinions expressed are those of the candidate.  The Piedmont Civic Association does not support or oppose candidates for public office. 

The City Council will consider the allocation of funds at their October 3, 2016 meeting starting at 7:30 p.m. in City Hall. The meeting will be broadcast live on Channel 27 and from the City website.

Also, on the agenda are:

10/03/16 – Approval of a Street Use Permit for the Annual Turkey Trot Race Sponsored by PTT Thanksgiving Race, Inc.

10/03/16 – Consideration of a Conditional Use Permit for Belardi/Ostroy for a Marketing Office at 1345 Grand Avenue #101 & #102

10/03/16 – Consideration of a Funds Balance Policy Pursuant to Governmental Accounting Standards Board 54 as Recommended by the City’s Auditors

“keep some of the stop signs that are proven to ensure the safety of the driver and remove others…”

In my 17 years of living in Piedmont, I did not realize that I had an opportunity to have my voice heard in City Council meetings. It was really cool to see everyone’s ideas being heard and seeing them being taken into consideration by the Council.

My father had spoken at a School Board meeting because he was against the plan for the Haven’s elementary schoolers when their school was under construction. He didn’t like the idea of taking the kids to Emeryville on a bus every day. Of course, the Board still decided that taking the kids to Emeryville was the best plan of action, but the fact that my dad got to express how he felt about the situation personally to the Board is remarkable.

The name of the governmental body is the Piedmont City Council and the purpose of the meeting on September 19 was to address certain issues concerning Piedmont such as the recent abundance of stop signs, and protecting our community from mosquitoes with Zika virus. The City Council meets at least once every two weeks.

The 9/19/16 City Council meeting started off by addressing the issue with the stop signs. Two gentleman talked about and were strongly against the stop signs. They complained about how the stop signs were too excessive and the decision to put the stop signs in was made over summer break when lots of people are away on vacation. They demanded studies to be done on whether or not it is statistically safer to have stop signs or not and seemed to be extremely offended that the City would dare put more stop signs in place.

At first, I was appalled at how many people were complaining about the new stop signs, but then again I could also see where they are coming from because I have noticed that the stop signs around the Wildwood area of Piedmont are a little excessive and in some cases unnecessary. That doesn’t mean I am against the new stop signs but I am against some of them because I don’t believe every new stop sign is beneficial to our safety, but rather tedious to the driver. The best plan of action would be to keep some of the stop signs that are proven to ensure the safety of the driver and remove others that just make the stop signs excessive.

Another concern in Piedmont are the mosquitoes and possible spread of the Zika virus. A presentation was created by Robert Dickinson to ensure the safety of the community from mosquitoes. The recent scare of the Zika virus spreading into the United states sparked this presentation which informed us of many methods of avoiding and lowering the number of mosquitoes in our community. You could start by wearing long sleeved clothes and their are also mosquito eating fish that are available to people who are interested in raising them.

Since Piedmont wants to renovate Coaches Field and Linda Beach the council agreed to appropriate twenty-five thousand dollars to Coaches Field and thirty-five thousand dollars to Linda Beach.

I did not speak and neither did any of the other students, and I think it was because we felt ill-informed on the subjects spoken about. Prior to the meeting, I did not have any idea about what was going to be discussed and since I did not know how to obtain the information that would be covered at the City Council I did not contribute. If I had known we would be discussing the new stop signs, I would have mentioned how some are beneficial but most make driving around Piedmont very tedious.

I had the gracious opportunity to interview City Council candidate, Jen Cavenaugh, who was very helpful and informed on the issues concerning Piedmont, especially concerning Beach Field and the great uses for it. When I asked Ms. Cavenaugh how she will get her concerns addressed, she said, “I will continue to come back to the City Council and get everyone’s opinions on what they have to say.” Ms. Cavenaugh is running for City Council and I personally think she would be an excellent addition to the Council, as she is very intelligent and informed on the issues concerning Piedmont.

Donald Rendall, Piedmont High School Senior

Editors Note: Opinions expressed are those of the author.

“Someone willing to give of their time and drill down “-

Our interim mayor’s endorsements in yesterday’s paper cited two skill sets that he thinks are needed on City Council – law and finance.  With all due respect to members of the bar, there were three lawyers on City Council when the flawed Piedmont Hills Underground Utilities District contract was approved.

Financial acumen?  The 2011 Municipal Tax Review Committee calculated that a 50% increase in the Sewer Tax was needed.  Rejected by the voters, 4 years later the Sewer Fund is the most solid city account and the work is ahead of schedule – the tax could probably withstand a 50% cut.

Volunteers do their best but are at the mercy of staff reports. What is needed for Council is commitment and initiative  – someone willing to give of their time and drill down into city matters to make sure we get the best services for our community without wasteful spending.

Anyone who has worked with Jen Cavenaugh knows how committed she is when she takes on a job.  Having spear-headed the Facilities Maintenance subcommittee on this year’s Budget Advisory and Financial Planning Committee, she is the perfect person to put on Council now to oversee this new spending program. Her initiative with the Piedmont Recreation Department showed that she wants to make our community better. I wholeheartedly encourage you to vote for Jennifer Cavenaugh.

Garrett Keating, member of Jennifer Cavenaugh’s campaign committee and a former Council member.

Editors’ Note:  PCA does not support or oppose candidates for public office.

Pictured are Hari Titan with his wife Roopal and his daughter.

Statement:

I’m a member of the Havens Dads Club and recent board member of the Piedmont Makers group. I’ve also been a member of the Piedmont Neighbors and Newcomers group since we first moved to Piedmont.

I love the Piedmont community and enjoy connecting with fellow parents and showing my out of town friends the beauty of living in the Bay Area.

Both my parents were educators. My father was a high school math and science teacher and my mother was an elementary school teacher. However my parents insisted I did my own homework and made sure it was done. If I got questions wrong I had to understand why it was wrong. I think my parent’s focus on education led me to go for higher education myself. I was the first person in my extended family to get a PhD in any subject.

I earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1993. While finishing my degree, I volunteered to join a search committee for selecting the Vice President of Academics at the University of Waterloo. Being a public university, that process had to be very rigorous and transparent. I learned the importance of a paper trail to accompany decision making. I see the same level of rigor in hiring for Fin-Tech and other Internet startups over the past 20 years of my career. These include a thorough job description with job requirements that materially impact on the job performance.

In 1993 I taught college level Computer Science courses at a small liberal arts school and experienced first hand the difficulties of teaching students with a wide variety of skills, interests and levels of commitment. I found most students unprepared to learn programming and were in the class because it will lead to a career. This is likely an artifact of teaching at a smaller college and should not be the case for good schools.

I spent most of my career working in California as a “Big Data Scientist”. This field is vital to financial firms and high tech companies. Huge volumes of customer data like from credit card and banking transactions or to online activies are analyzed to help firms predict risks and opportunities at an enterprise level. I also have a U.S. patent on using and explaining the behavior of advanced computer programs that are used to identify highly suspicious fraudulent activity on credit cards.

My wife, Roopal, and I moved to Piedmont in November 2008. We moved here because we loved the beauty of Piedmont, the feeling of a safe community, a very high performance school district and the comparative value we got for the home price we paid for at the time. My son briefly went to Piedmont High School and we have a daughter who is now in 5th grade at Havens Elementary.

I am still amazed at the performance of PUSD students on scholastic tests. This remained generally true during the 2008-2011 recession and is still true post-transition to common core (CAASPP) testing. I built an online app to view CAASSP test results(link is external) for all school districts in any county in CA. I believe student performance has a lot to do with being raised by high performing parents, good teaching methods in school and dedicated caregivers and tutors who provide abundant extra curricular support and learning opportunities.

In late 2013 I was at a Haven’s Club meeting where a presenter talked about renovating the Alan Harvey theater that would require no incremental taxation. I found this to be mathematically suspect and decided to investigate prior PUSD bond offerings. It felt like I was in uncharted waters. Most of the school board thought process was outsourced to bond consultants who had a hard time correctly explaining the details of what they were doing. Taxpayers were paying fees to these consultants for work that was not being done by salaried district staff. Like math, finance works in favor of whomever is crunching the numbers. If the district is not doing the math to maximize the benefit for the students and taxpayers, outside consultants were not going to do that for us unless the board knew exactly what to ask for. This is a general problem with any kind of outsourcing.

I was also questioning why performing arts was being emphasized over other fields of study that lead to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) jobs. At first I was told most STEM jobs were off-shored and therefore not important to emphasize. This was troubling to me because I knew that scientific thinking and good critical thinking skills pay off in finance, healthcare and legal jobs that on the surface appear to have nothing to do with STEM. Later the Piedmont Makers group championed adding Arts to the list as a counter balance, leading to STEAM with an emphasis on shared facilities and shared maker spaces.

I also found that renovations were getting more expensive as building codes were being revised with increased regulation. I helped compare the Alan Harvey theater renovation (+ expansion) plan to nearby new theater construction, which the district did not do. I found that you could get greater design flexibility and functionality from new construction at almost the same cost as a renovation. This may be counter-intuitive at first until you look at the actual costs paid by nearby school districts.

Many of you might have seen one of my periodic surveys. I do this to take a pulse on what other parents are thinking and see if my ideas resonate. This helps me fight for things the public actually agrees with. The School Board should engage in more public opinion surveys to get ideas (with open questions) and gauge priorities before holding formal elections.

You’ll find a lot more details on my ideas on the “Campaign of Ideas” tab.

Click the “Contact Hari” link on my website to send me your thoughts. Website link is below. 

HariTitan.com

Editors Note:  PCA does not support or oppose individual candidates for public office.