Community leaders in Daly City’s Bayshore are working to increase the contact between police and residents in their neighborhood in an effort to combat feelings of isolation and concerns about crime.While many residents would like to see more officers in their neighborhood, city budget constraints have kept staffing levels low in recent years. Instead, the department is working with a coalition of community groups to hold a series of meetings on current crime issues in all the city’s neighborhoods.
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Green Hills School in Millbrae was one of seven schools in San Mateo County recognized Tuesday by state education officials as a California Distinguished School.Parent Ana Benavides couldn’t agree more."This is a great school," the Millbrae resident said while waiting to pick up her daughter at Green Hills on Tuesday.That daughter needed help with reading once — and got it, in the form of tutors. "Now she’s doing pretty well. When kids need help, they always find a way to help," Benavides said.
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WThe news Tuesday that seven schools in San Mateo County had received a prestigious state honor serves to remind us of the success stories that are occurring every day in our classrooms.North Star Academy, Ormondale School, Las Lomitas Elementary School, Encinal School, Central Elementary School, Green Hills Elementary School and Portola Elementary School were named "Distinguished Schools" by the state Education Department on Tuesday, an honor bestowed on 377 schools in the state.
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The year's first case of West Nile in the county was confirmed Friday in a dead crow found near Moss Beach, launching what experts say could be the most severe season for the virus so far locally.After an unusually warm winter and drenching spring, the mild temperatures have allowed many mosquitoes, typically active only during the summer months, to survive the winter and begin breeding early. At the same time, the salt marsh mosquitoes normally active in winter are also thriving, county Vector Ecologist Chindi Peavey said.
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A pair of weekend slayings brought San Francisco’s 2006 homicide rate to just below last year’s level for this date.The San Francisco Police Department reported 96 homicides in 2005, The City’s highest rate in a decade. The 2005 rate came on the heels of a bloody 2004, during which The City counted 88 killings, a staggeringly high number after the relatively peaceful late 1990’s and early millennium.
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When Christopher Dahl felt a small earthquake rattle his Civic Center residential hotel a few weeks ago, a bolt of dread seized him — he fully expects the 1916 brick building to collapse in a heap of rubble during a large temblor."I would either be dead because the building collapsed or out of the building," Dahl said of a major earthquake. "Every day, the clock ticks that little bit closer to the next big one."
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A San Mateo homeowner's attorney will argue in court next month that City Hall's attempt to eject him from his property is unconstitutional, according to arguments filed last week.
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A Peninsula watchdog group will receive a major payout from Pacific Gas and Electric for costs associated with fighting to reroute the Jefferson-Martin power line connecting two substations in Redwood City and Brisbane.The group, 280 Corridor Concerned Citizens, will receive more than $718,000 in reimbursement for attorneys, experts and consultantsthat members paid up front starting in August 2004. Two other groups, Women’s Energy Matters and Californians for Renewable Energy, will also receive payments of $127,000 and $35,000, respectively.
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Icebergs are dangerous and deceptive because almost 90 percent of their bulk is invisible below the water’s surface.San Francisco’s budget for the 2006-07 fiscal year resembles an iceberg. Even with an unexpected $137 million in one-time increased revenues, the iceberg looming below the surface is in the form of billions of dollars in retiree health benefit liabilities and obligations that aren’t reported anywhere on The City’s balance sheet.
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California’s smog prevention agency last week approved a wide-ranging plan to cut air pollution at state ports 40 percent below 2001 levels, even as the amount of goods entering California is expected to triple in 15 years.
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Nineteen-year-olds aren’t typically known for inspiring selflessness. Then again, Abe Guerrero is hardly a typical 19-year-old.An inpatient at University of San Francisco’s Children’s Hospital for the past six months, Guerrero’s easy smile and engaging individuality are never more clearly displayed than in a simple one-on-one conversation. But a documentary that Guerrero wrote, storyboarded, directed, starred in and recently premiered for friends and hospital staff does a pretty good job of reproducing the effect.
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Belmont resident Jim Newton has a dream, and it is filled with power tools. This summer, he plans to open up a workshop filled with the kinds of machines that help people make things, available constantly to his fellow Peninsula tinkerers, machinists, robot-makers and do-it-yourselfers. "This is an open-source kind of thing for makers to be able to have a place to go build stuff," Newton said.
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Office vacancy rates around the Peninsula continued to decline in the first quarter of 2006, signaling a small but steady upswing in industry, real estate analysts and city officials said.According to a soon-to-be-released quarterly report by NAI BT Commercial, San Francisco and every San Mateo County city except one saw a decrease in the amount of vacant office square footage in the first quarter of 2006 compared to the same quarter last year. The company’s reports are widely used by municipal economic development departments around the Peninsula.
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More than 15,000 people on San Mateo County’s coast were left without regular telephone access — including the ability to call 911 — after a landslide struck a fiber-optic cable in the hills above Half Moon Bay on Saturday."The damaged cable is in a coastal, mountainous area near Highway 92 that is not accessible by vehicle," AT&T spokesman Ted Carr said.
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At the two-year anniversary of the sweeping workers’ compensation reform that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed through the Legislature, there is good evidence that many small and large businesses have significantly reduced their insurance costs and applied the savings to creation of new jobs.
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