Portola Valley Update December 7, 2023

This week's update:

• Town Hall Closed for the Winter Holiday
• Town Hall Hours
• Revised Housing Element Release Notice
• Hawthorns Property Public Access Working Group (PAWG) Meeting 4: Design Discussion Continuation
• Home Safety Tips during the Holiday Season
• Winter Storm Preparedness and Sandbag Station in Portola Valley
• Wildfire Preparedness Committee Tip -The CAL FIRE Wildfire Action Plan
• Conservation Committee - Time to sow wildflower seeds
• Sustainability Tip - What’s up with Sustainability in Portola Valley? Possibly more than you know!
• Christmas at the Firehouse December 13th
• Message From Portola Valley School District - Trees at Corte Madera
• Gun Buyback Set for Dec. 9 in Belmont
• Portola Valley Blood Drive - January 6th
• Upcoming Events

Town Hall Closed for the Winter Holiday

Town Hall will be closed Monday, December 25th through Monday, January 1st. Staff will return to work on Tuesday January 2, 2024 but the Town Hall lobby will remain closed until January 3, 2024.

For emergencies, please call 911.

Please note, per the Town's Noise Ordinance, no construction/landscaping activities allowed on

• Christmas Day, Monday, December 25, 2023
• New Year's Day, Monday, January 1, 2024

For non-emergencies here is a list of helpful phone numbers. If you need to report any issues that you would like Town Staff to look at you can report it on PV Connect.

Town Hall Hours

Starting Monday December 4, our Town Hall officially started the new hours from Monday to Thursday and every other Friday from 8 AM - 12 PM and 1 PM - 4 PM. The Planning and Building Department's hours will remain consistent from Monday to Thursday, operating from 8 AM to 12 PM.

Thank you for your continued support and patience during this refresh period. We are committed to enhancing our services and creating an even better community space for all.

Revised Housing Element Release Notice

The modified 2023-2031 Portola Valley Housing Element (HE), for HCD review, is now available for review by the community.

This version of the HE incorporates changes made in response to the July 25, 2023 letter submitted to the Town by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) that are necessary to bring the HE into substantial compliance with State Housing Element Law. A complete matrix that summarizes the comments from HCD and the proposed responses is also available followed by the modified HE with changes in redline.

The HCD has agreed to provide a preliminary review of the modified Housing Element and will provide feedback so the Commission and Council will know if the revisions to the HE comply with State Housing Element Law. Please review the detailed cover letter to the revised HE for further information and instruction on providing public comment to the HCD, Planning Commission and Town Council. Note, comments directed to HCD will be accepted through 5:00pm Monday December 11, 2023. Public comment will continue to be accepted thereafter and will be shared with the Planning Commission and Town Council.

Next Steps:

• Wednesday, December 20, 2023 – Planning Commission
• Town Council meeting date is to be determined

Thank you for your interest in the Town’s HE. To stay up to date on the process, sign up for eNotices and select “Housing News”

Extensive additional information on the Housing Element Update is at www.portolavalley.net/housingelement.

Hawthorns Property Public Access Working Group (PAWG) Meeting 4: Design Discussion Continuation

Saturday, December 16, 2023, 9am to 1pm

Location - Midpen Administrative Office, 5050 El Camino Real, Los Altos CA 94022 and Zoom (link available on 12/13/23 on the MROSD Website or by their enotifcation system)

Meeting 4 Agenda: Continuation of preliminary design discussion (site visit to be rescheduled)

PAWG to continue to discuss initial conceptual design alternatives including parking and driveway options, internal trail system and connections, trailheads, trail uses, and local and regional connectivity opportunities. Receive public feedback.

Home Safety Tips during the Holiday Season

Safety Tips

Residents are the extra "eyes and ears" for SMC Sheriff's Office. If you "see something, say something." Promptly report suspicious behavior or noise to 9-1-1 (or non-emergency 650-363-4911, ext. 1). Make home security a daily habit.

Away on a Trip

Alert your immediate neighbors about your absence and submit a house watch request with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. To schedule, call 650-363-4911, ext. 1 or file by online SMCSheriff.com>Services>Vacation House Checks. Ask neighbors to bring in your mail, packages, and garbage cans promptly.

For transport to the airport, use a trusted service or friend. Options such as Uber and Lyft may not be secure.

Homes

Lock all doors and windows and set alarm systems when you leave the house. Turn on a radio or TV. Put interior lights on timers. Most home burglaries occur between 9 am and 3 pm during the work week when no one is home. Burglars will knock and, if someone answers, pretend to be looking for someone or say they must have the wrong address. They’ll watch a home for movement or noise. They’ll be on the lookout for neighbors who might see them. Consider installing outdoor security cameras that capture comings and goings and that alert you when someone comes to the door.

Alarm Systems

For systems connected to a service, such as ADT or Bay Alarm, set your alarm to go directly to 9-1-1 Dispatch instead of your mobile phone. The delay in checking with the homeowner to see if it’s a false alarm is enough for a burglar to easily get in and away. SMC Sheriff's Office direct deployment by 9-1-1 enables a prompt response. SMC Sheriff's Office does not charge for false alarms.

Vehicles

Remove garage remotes or spare house keys from a car you regularly park outside. Don’t label your residence as “Home” on your GPS. Always lock your car and remove all valuables.

Garage Doors

Close and lock your garage doors. An open door is a visual invitation to come in. Be sure to lock the connecting door from the garage to the house if you have one.

USPS Mail

Put all outgoing mail directly in USPS boxes instead of leaving it in your curbside boxes for the mail carrier. Criminals look for outgoing mail every day, especially in “rural” areas. Installing a locking mailbox for incoming mail adds another layer of security. Collecting your mail promptly-- or asking a neighbor if you cannot -- is key.

Door-to-Door Soliciting

If a solicitor comes to your door, ask them for their Town permit. If they do not have one, call the SMC Sheriff’s Office non-emergency number 650-363-4911, ext. 1, with a description of the person and vehicle. SMC Sheriff's Office will want to come out immediately to talk to them. For more information or to put your address on the Do-Not-Solicit list, see Soliciting in Portola Valley.

More Safety Information

Frequently asked questions, home security tips, and much more at Town Safety/Crime on the Town website. For crime statistics, see San Mateo County Sheriff | Portola Valley, CA .

Consider setting up a Neighborhood Watch team -- or hosting a gathering if you are already part of one. Neighbors helping neighbors.

Winter Storm Preparedness and Sandbag Station in Portola Valley

As the rainy season starts it is good to be prepared for winter storms. The town has resources to help. You can review the Winter Storm Preparedness page for tips on how you can protect your home. Click here to view the page.

The Town of Portola Valley provides a complimentary emergency supply of sandbags to help its residents protect property from flooding during the rainy season.

The self-serve sandbag station is located at Portola Valley Town Center along the southern driveway, across from the basketball courts. The station is accessible daily and will remain available through the end of the rainy season. Learn more about the sandbag station here.

Emergency Contact Information

This is also an advisory to Town residents to please notify Town Staff if you see a downed tree, or other hazard, that blocks a trail or a roadway. During regular business hours, call 650-851-1700 x200 (8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Monday to Friday). On weekends or outside business hours, please call the County Dispatch at 650-363-4000, who will then alert Town staff, authorized members of the Public Works Committee, or the Fire Department. For additional important contact information, please visit the Town’s website.

Up-to-Date Weather Forecasts

For up-to-date weather forecasts and weather-related advisories, please visit the National Weather Service website at www.weather.gov.

Wildfire Preparedness Committee Tip - The CAL FIRE Wildfire Action Plan

Are you tackling your home hardening, defensible space, and disaster preparedness? Still not sure what to do? The CAL FIRE Ready for Wildfire website has many excellent resources, including a Wildfire Action Plan that is available as a PDF or as an online book. Getting ready is a process. Tackle your tasks as inch-pebbles, in order to get to a milestone. No one is going to get everything done in a day, but just keep working at it! And be proud that every little thing you do individually, makes this village safer and stronger.

This will be the last tip of 2023, so please take this opportunity to thank the many people in town who work for the safety of the public: the Town Council, Town staff, WFPD, the Sheriff’s office, Public Works, and the many committees and their volunteers (WPC, EPC, Public Works, Conservation). Thank you to Kari Chinn and Selena Brown for their oversight of these tips.

Conservation Committee - Time to sow wildflower seeds

Now is the perfect time to sow wildflower seed for a beautiful display of native wildflower diversity in your own yard. Best to sow before January, these early rains have given germination a good start.

Loosen the soil a bit before sowing and tamp down after. A good initial sprinkling will help them settle in place. Keep the area weed free and moist (not wet) if we don’t get rain for a few weeks.

Below find photos of just a few of our local native wildflowers that are available by seed.

Sustainability Tip -What’s up with Sustainability in Portola Valley? Possibly more than you know!

Dear Portola Valley Friends and Neighbors,

Some of the things I love most about Portola Valley are how deeply we care for our neighbors, our environment, including our frog pond, our dark skies, extensive trails, and the varied wildlife, wildflowers, and beautiful trees that share our yards and open spaces with us. And our belief in an attitude of “If not me, who? If not now, when?” that powers our volunteering in town and in efforts to improve conditions in the world at large.

I (Dr. Leslie Field) recently joined the PV Sustainability Committee led by Scott Elrod, and I’ve been asked to give a brief overview of three important climate change efforts led by Portola Valley residents, each with the potential for large positive effects for PV and potential benefits far beyond our own town borders.

First, I’ll introduce Bright Ice Initiative, my second nonprofit, (founded in March 2022), whose aim is to preserve ice in regions where we can obtain permission for research testing and where it is most needed.

You may wonder:

1. Why care about ice? Because its reflectivity has been helping to keep temperatures and weather patterns stable throughout human history, and its accelerating disappearance due to rising temperatures from global warming, is in a positive feedback loop, which in turn accelerates further temperature rise, climate instability, and risks of sea level rise, permafrost melt, water crises (floods and droughts) and species extinctions.

2. Why care about a feedback loop? The loss of ice is a leverage point on climate. If we slow the ice melt, we can, to a certain extent depending on location and scale, slow the climate damages and risks. The question I asked myself years ago was simple – what safe nature-based bright reflective materials might preserve icy reflectivity and slow the melt? We’ve developed solutions that work, and that have passed our safety metrics. We stay on the lookout for any unintended consequences, or potential risks, because “First do no Harm” has been one of our guiding principles for many years.

3. What have you accomplished? Since starting the new nonprofit, we have, with our collaborators, published our peer-reviewed work detailing our research test methods and results, which showed significant slowing of ice melt. The observations were accompanied by a detailed thermodynamic model that was consistent with the measurements. This year we also conducted research tests on pond ice and sloping and darkened areas with our collaborators in Minnesota - and on a glacier in Iceland. In 2024 we are planning to do research tests on glacial ice in India and in Iceland. We work with an Indigenous expert in Environmental Impact Assessment and Water Quality who lives in the Himalayas, and glaciologists from Indian Institute of Technology Indore and the Icelandic Met Office.

4. Why Iceland? This is a great location for our first tests on actual glaciers, because Iceland’s leadership, especially Former Icelandic President Grimsson, hosts one of the most impactful Forums on Arctic matters in the world, the Arctic Circle Assembly; Iceland has strong connections with neighboring Greenland, which is melting rapidly; and because the Icelandic Meteorological Office has proven to be a wonderful collaborator with our Bright Ice Initiative team for this work.

5. Why India? Because the water supply of more than 1 billion people is at risk from glacial melt; flooding and droughts are already destroying infrastructure, homes, and agriculture; and the food for roughly 1/3 of the world comes from India. We and the Healthy Climate Initiative have built solid collaborations that include a key glaciologist from IIT Indore and a key environmental impact assessment and water quality expert from the Indian Himalayas.

6. What about Greenland and Antarctica? Both are critically important, especially for sea level rise concerns, and we’re engaging in discussions concerning both regions.

7. What aspects do you consider? There is so much that goes into an effort like this: possible technologies, testing effectiveness and safety, policy frameworks, fundraising to do the work, understanding local peoples’ concerns, and collaborating on solutions that satisfy everyone’s needs, communicating the status of the work through local and scientific talks, teaching, and engagement with scientific and local experts in the icy regions, and sharing our results with climate modeling experts to further evaluate potential best places to benefit from this work, and potential impacts.

8. How could I learn more? To learn more, navigate to the Bright Ice Initiative, Inc. website, reach out to me at leslie@brighticeinitiative.org, or to our team at info@brighticeinitiative.org

9. Extra credit: Also, if of interest, I teach an annual class at Stanford on Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Climate Change, EE292H. This year it will be held in Winter Quarter, once per week, with lectures by myself and wonderful guest lecturers. If I’m granted a large enough room for auditors, I’ll welcome your attendance. Please do wear masks if you come in person. We usually record the class, so if the room is too small for auditors, I can share the recordings of interest to you for your own personal education (but please don’t post the recordings further.)

Now, let’s investigate the work of Dr. Armand Neukermans, a PV Resident Scientist who is an expert in droplet formation from his work at Xerox and at Hewlett-Packard. Armand got interested in climate 50 years ago, through his work with Jim Lovelock at HP. He and his team have worked hard for over a decade on a method called Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB).

Much like Bright Ice’s localized glacial ice preservation, MCB is considered a low-risk technology, using nature-based materials for brightening areas in need of preserved reflectivity. In MCB, the aim is to generate nano sized droplets of saltwater, called cloud nuclei, from spraying seawater into the air. These nuclei lift and join low hanging marine clouds, where with the right supersaturation, the nuclei develop into micron sized droplets, like the rest of the clouds. This makes the cloud denser and whiter, thereby reflecting more incoming sunlight away from the earth, providing some form of artificial sunscreen. It is now well understood that burning fossil fuels, besides producing CO2, also provide us with sun protection due to the sulfate pollution, which will be lost in the near future as fossil fuels are eliminated.. The MCB technique may provide a temporary stopgap measure to avoid planet temperature overshoot due to the excessive CO2 accumulation already in the atmosphere while the crucial measures of fossil fuel elimination and carbon sequestration are implemented at scale.

The focus of Armand’s group of volunteers has been on the detailed design of sprayers that can deliver 10^15 to 10^17 nuclei per second of the right size. While the formation of small laboratory quantities is relatively easy, this is a complex and challenging task to design a mechanism to hold up to corrosive salt water at scale. Several of these designs were implemented in the ongoing attempts of cooling the Great barrier Reef in Australia with promising but not yet definitive results. His group has been working with the University of Washington, PARC, Cambridge University, and New South Wales. Armand tells me that he is now looking at an intriguing alternative method, using superheated water to generate the nuclei for brightening at the desired locations.

It should be noted that fellow scientist/engineer of Armand’s, Professor Emeritus Stephen Salter, of Scotland and Australia, has also done diligent long-term work on some other aspects of MCB, illustrating how efforts near and far can complement each other in humanity’s urgent race to reduce climate harm.

MCB is an important technique to watch, with its potential for temporary, benign treatments that can be potentially remotely controlled to react to changing climate risks and weather conditions.

The third local resident featured today is Dr. Brent Constantz, Founder of Blue Planet Systems (www.blueplanetsystems.com). Brent is an expert on marine environments and biomineralization, who uses his skills to reduce CO2 emissions from cement production, one of the largest industrial sectors and one of the largest CO2 emitters.

Blue Planet Systems captures and permanently sequesters CO2 by converting it to carbonates to be reacted further for use as aggregate in concrete manufacture, turning the embodied carbon levels of concrete from carbon emitting to carbon negative. The company’s technology and products have already been piloted in a concrete project at SFO and will help California reach its sustainability goals as legislation that requires sustainable practices in building materials becomes required. More information can be found in this recent article on Brent’s company, Blue Planet Systems, available at this link.

What are your thoughts? What problems in climate do you see as most urgent? What potential paths come to your mind as most helpful? Are you working on a project to help avert climate disaster? Please let us know so the Sustainability Committee can spotlight your work, too.

For myself, I’ve found over the years I’ve spent staring into the fiery pits of the hell that climate change is already bringing, that I can stay positive by creating, testing, and evaluating safe localized solutions for potential use, sharing what we learn, and continuing my own learning about the amazing and hopeful work others are doing in climate.

As Katherine Hayhoe, wonderful climate communicator and scientist says, “None of us can fix climate alone”. And like Dr. Hayhoe, I am convinced that what we can do together, with the brilliance and resources in our area and beyond, could be amazing. If we start now and give it our all, it may just be enough to preserve a habitable world. Let’s try it and see.

With thanks for your interest, and best regards,

Leslie Field, Ph.D.

Christmas at the Firehouse December 13th

Message From Portola Valley School District - Trees at Corte Madera

I am writing to share an important update regarding the trees at Corte Madera School (“CMS”) within the Portola Valley School District (PVSD) and to inform you about our proactive measures to ensure the safety and well-being of our community.

The PVSD is committed to maintaining a safe and vibrant campus environment, and part of this commitment involves periodic assessments of the health and condition of the trees on our school grounds. Recently, one of the trees at CMS had a major limb failure that damaged some tables beneath the canopy. Fortunately, no one was injured. Subsequently, we consulted with an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified master arborist and tree risk assessor to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the overall condition of the trees at CMS.

Following the inspection, we learned that five Valley Oak trees on the campus have significant defects and are at the end of their lives, posing a threat to public health and safety. The arborist recommended several options, including the removal of these trees, and after careful consideration, PVSD staff and Board of Trustees have decided to prioritize the safety of our community by proceeding with their removal. At their November 16 meeting, the Board of Trustees approved the removal of the trees. The decision-making process involved a thorough risk assessment, considering factors such as the trees nearing the end of their life cycle, associated costs, and the paramount importance of safety.

We understand the significance of these trees to our community and the local environment. However, it is essential to highlight that the removal of these trees has been deemed necessary to safeguard against potential risks. Importantly, the removal will not negatively impact the health, safety, and prosperity of the surrounding trees, nor seriously compromise the aesthetics and general welfare of the area.

Given the urgency of the situation and the potential intensity of winter weather, we have decided to proceed with the removal during the upcoming winter break. We believe that swift action is crucial to address any potential hazards before they escalate. The five trees are identified in the map below, and labels will be placed on the actual trees.

After the removal is completed, we are committed to investing in the future of our campus by planting new, healthy trees as part of our overall landscape plan. We recognize the importance of preserving our natural landscape and are dedicated to maintaining a well-balanced and sustainable environment for generations to come.

We appreciate your understanding and support as we work together to enhance the safety and beauty of our school environment. Our commitment to due diligence, safety, and community involvement remains steadfast, and we look forward to your continued collaboration.

Warm Regards,

Roberta Zarea, Superintendent

Gun Buyback Set for Dec. 9 in Belmont

The County and partners are holding an anonymous gun buyback on Saturday, Dec. 9, at 400 Harbor Blvd., Belmont (Google map link.) From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., law enforcement officers will accept all guns, no questions asked, in exchanged for cash: $50 for nonfunctioning firearms; $100 for handguns, shotguns or rifles; $200 for assault weapons as classified by the state of California.

To those planning to attend, transport firearms unloaded and in the trunk of your vehicle.

Portola Valley Blood Drive - January 6th

A blood drive will be held on Saturday January 6th at the Alpine Hills Tennis & Swim Club. Appointments are available between 8:30 and 1:30 PM.

CLICK HERE to schedule an appointment.