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Saratoga City Council to choose new mayor and vice mayor on Dec. 6

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

City council reorganizationThe Saratoga City Council is set to choose the mayor and vice mayor for 2024 at its Dec. 6 meeting, set for 7 p.m. in the Civic Theater. During the reorganization, city council members and the community will also have the opportunity to recognize this year’s mayor and vice mayor. A reception will be held following the reorganization.To attend virtually, visit https://www.saratoga.ca.us/calendar.aspx?EID=1893 for the Zoom link.Carol SingSaratoga Federated Church is hosting its third annual Community Carol Sing on Dec. 9 at 6 p.m. The open-air sing-along is a family-friendly event. Carolers can warm up with free cocoa and cookies, and there will be gifts for kids and adults as well as snow to play in. The church is located at 20390 Park Place.Second Harvest campaignTo meet the high need for food assistance in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley announced its holiday campaign to raise $30 million by year’s end. The numbe...

Sunnyvale launches into the holiday season

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

On the first Saturday of December, the annual Holiday Tree Lighting brings the community together in downtown Sunnyvale to launch the holiday season.This year’s tree-lighting celebration is set for Dec. 2, 5-7:30 p.m., on Murphy Avenue. The event features performances by Dance attack and Sunnyvale School District choirs. For more information, visit https://sunnyvaledowntown.org/events.Before the tree lighting on Saturday, Cityline Sunnyvale is offering free family holiday portrait sessions from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at 241 S. Taaffe St. Reserve a session at Eventbrite.com.During that same timeframe, the developers at Cityline are also hosting a holiday artisan market with Creative Communal. The pet-friendly event will be held at 300 W. McKinley Ave. and will feature local makers, live music and activities for children.Other holiday events set for Dec. 2 include Breakfast with Santa and Winter Wonderland, both slated for the Sunnyvale Senior Center. Early birds can sit down for the first me...

Saratoga High School seniors create Green Bike with peers in Taiwan

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

Saratoga High School seniors who collaborated with their peers in Taiwan on a pedal-powered project presented their green bike recently at a forum in New Taipei City.Naomi Hsieh, Owen Liang and Eric Norris partnered with students from Jhangshu Creative Technical High School to present a collaborative project at the New Taipei City Multi-Action Green International Carbon Neutral (MAGIC) Youth Forum held Oct. 23-27. Their Green Bike, or G-Bike, is a power-generating bicycle that features a corresponding app tracking the amount of carbon the user saves by biking instead of driving.Starting in spring, the three Saratoga students met virtually for five months with their peers in Taiwan to brainstorm and collaborate on an environmentally friendly project that would contribute to a carbon-neutral future.“We spent extensive time brainstorming about trash sorters, beach cleaners and even 360-degree videos to show local culture,” Eric Norris said in a statement. “While all of our ideas fulfil...

Study: Milpitas has 4th most affordable heating costs in state

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

Bringing the heatMilpitas ranked fourth in California in a recent study of most affordable cities to heat a home in winter. Overall, the study by HVAC Gnome determined that 94 of the most affordable cities to heat in the country are in California. The study ranked cities based on energy costs, cost inflators and lack of energy efficiency. It looked at average monthly electricity and gas bills, periods of extreme cold, the average size of homes and residential energy efficiency code adoption, among 10 total metrics.Milpitas came in behind Los Angeles, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale in the study. San Jose was No. 10.Second Harvest campaignTo meet the high need for food assistance in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley announced its holiday campaign to raise $30 million by year’s end. The number of people Second Harvest serves doubled during the pandemic—from 250,000 to 500,000 a month—and although the pandemic has waned, the need for food assistance has spi...

Campbell performer makes a ‘Bee’ line back to TheatreWorks after 13 years

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

When Jenni Chapman previously appeared with TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in 2010, she was about the same age as the character she’s currently playing in the company’s production of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”As a teen, Chapman played author Harper Lee’s alter-ego Scout twice for TheatreWorks, first in “To Kill a Mockingbird” then again in “A Christmas Memory.”“That was half my life ago,” says the Campbell resident. “I just got married in September.”Now a young adult, Chapman is portraying middle school student Logainne in “Bee,” running Nov. 29-Dec. 24 at  Palo Alto’s Lucie Stern Theatre.“I’m used to playing kids,” Chapman says. “I have a baby face.”Age difference aside, Chapman has a strong personal connection with her “Bee” character.“Logainne is very autisticly coded. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 25,” she says. “I vividly remember going through a lot of things she goes through. … Your value is about what you can provide for others.“I didn’t really meet myself u...

Latest line: A good week for Joe Simitian, a bad week for Barbara Lee

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

Joe SimitianSanta Clara County supervisor and former state senator, assemblyman and Palo Alto mayor finally gets his chance to run for Congress as Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, announces retirement. And he has $680,000 in campaign funding already.    Barbara LeeNew poll shows Oakland congresswoman now in fourth place in the U.S. Senate race to succeed Dianne Feinstein. Meanwhile, with less than four months until the primary, her plan to win the state Democratic Party endorsement falls short.   Lassen CountyRural northern county has the cheapest median housing price of any California county — just $247,500, new data shows. But its population, which voted 75% for Trump, is aging and shrinking. And the largest employer there? Prisons. 

Share the Spirit: Richmond nonprofit gives a boost to immigrant families looking to better their children’s lives

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

There may come a day when 2-year-old Mauricio runs into a real-life problem that feels unfixable. In the meantime, though, nothing in the world is too tall a task for his toy hammer.As he clack-clack-clacks on the wooden table in a side room at the Oakland office of Brighter Beginnings, the boy glances up at his mother, who has temporarily given up shushing him.Blanca Panigua-Rodriguez, 27, has a lot more to think about in this moment: receiving a high-school GED, finding a steady job, overcoming her inner demons and making a case to regain custody of her other three sons.These are the kinds of things for which hammers — toy or otherwise — are of little use.But what does bring her relief is the help she receives from Brighter Beginnings, a Richmond nonprofit that assists mothers across the East Bay with a range of needs, from extra diapers to child care assistance to an everyday helping hand.“I’ve felt a lot of emotional distress,” said Panigua-Rodriguez, who lives...

They said it: Drugs are deadly

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

“Fentanyl will kill you as easily as a bullet. It is killing the children of our community.”— Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen, after charging a San Jose couple with murder over the death of their 18-month-old daughter who had lethal levels of the opioid fentanyl in her body and whose parents had been using the drug. Three Bay Area babies have died of fentanyl poisoning since May.

Caught dumping illegally? Better clean up your mess and more: Roadshow

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

Q: If I were a judge and dealt with those charged with graffiti and trash crimes, as part of their sentence, I would start by issuing a monetary penalty and 50 hours of community service. The community service would be related to the crime committed, such as requiring them to remove graffiti or to pick up trash. For repeat offenders, community service would be 100 hours.If the offender is a minor, one of the parents would be required to be with the minor.Bruce Beyer, SunnyvaleA: And…Q: A couple of years ago someone was dumping dirt and rubble on Durham Road in Fremont near the Interstate 680 intersection. This was dumping on an industrial scale. I would estimate it was around a dozen full dump truckloads over a week or two. I immediately reported this to Fremont Code Enforcement and happily, the city and/or landowner cleaned it up and placed some concrete barriers to prevent trucks back up and dumping future loads.As far as I know, the company responsible for the dumping was n...

The Sharks hit rock bottom three weeks ago. Here’s how they’ve picked up the pieces

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:04:40 GMT

SAN JOSE – Members of the San Jose Sharks left SAP Center three weeks ago feeling as if they had hit rock bottom. They had just given up 10 goals for the second consecutive game and there was speculation, fair or otherwise, that their coach was in jeopardy of losing his job.Now the Sharks are going into Monday’s game against Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals feeling about as good as they have all season.The Sharks on Saturday scored twice in the third period, got several key saves, and held on to a 4-3 home win over the Vancouver Canucks, the same team that trounced them by nine goals in their own building at the start of the month.Mike Hoffman and Mikael Granlund both scored in the third period and Calen Addison and Tomas Hertl each added two assists as the Sharks improved to 4-1-1 at home since that 10-2 drubbing at the hands of Erik Karlsson and the Pittsburgh Penguins on Nov. 4. That loss came two days after the Canucks crushed San Jose 10-1, handing the team its most lo...