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https://n2v.paloaltoonline.com/square/print/2009/09/28/barrie-coate-cal-ave-videographer-please-help-me-find-him

Town Square

Barrie Coate Cal Ave Videographer: Please Help Me Find Him

Original post made by Fred Balin, College Terrace, on Sep 28, 2009

Our citizen’s event yesterday with Barrie Coate at the California Avenue Farmer’s Market was special, timely, extremely informative, and influential.

It was videotaped by a gentlemen I spoke with and who’s name I have forgotten. Please help me locate him so we can make this important video available ASAP.

He is about 5’ 10”; with brown eyes, salt and pepper hair; he is middle-aged and slender. He had a consumer-level camcorder on a tripod with an extension mike. Said he knew some folks at the Palo Alto Media Center (but my inquiry there so far has not been successful)

Mr. Barrie Coate Videographer, if you read this message or someone who was there knows him, please contact me ASAP at fbalin@gmail.com

In the meantime and in addition, would other folks who were there, please post to this Town Square thread the most important things that you learned from his presentation.

Comments

Posted by mj
a resident of College Terrace
on Sep 28, 2009 at 4:44 pm

Having Barrie Coates come and talk about selecting street trees for California Avenue during the Sunday morning Farmers Market was a stroke of genius. What a charming and amusing gentleman, and what a depth of knowledge and wisdom about the kinds of things we should consider when choosing street trees. And he was even familiar with our trees that were chopped down.

Interesting to learn that to obtain new street trees from the tree nurseries takes months of lead time. So that must mean the decision to remove all the holly oaks was made many months ago if Public Works intended to plant replacements almost immediately.

Also Interesting to learn that red maples are definitely not the only choice and maybe not even be a very good choice compared to the alternatives, though it sounds like CADA would have chosen nice tidy artificial trees if they could have!

Now, how do we get the Public Works Department to truly work with the community to reach the best possible outcome for the new California Avenue landscaping?

Let's hope it's not the same old so called City Hall process where "community outreach" so often means "we will pretend to listen then proceed with what we were intending to do anyway." I get that feeling about the goal of rezoning California Avenue to transform it into high density blocks of buildings. Of course the building owners must be salivating at the thought, and also the powers that be at city hall who can't wait to jump on this trendy bandwagen. But then we will be saying goodbye to our little stores who will be evicted during the construction and welcome the chain stores that can afford to rent new expensive retail spaces.

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