Repair work at the Joyce Ellington branch library.

On my way to work this morning I saw that repair work has begun on the Joyce Ellington branch library building in the Northside. The building was damaged on Sept. 7 or 8 when a police chase ended with the fugitive crashing into the southeast corner.

Given the need (I hope) for a competitive bid process to hire the repair workers, and the likely state of city finances, I’m impressed that they’ve gotten started working on this just a month after the damage happened.

The owner of this house wants to demolish it and four other units on the property to build new houses.

A proposed property development at the corner of N 15th St and Berryessa Rd has caught the attention of nnasj, and was also a discussion topic at tonight’s 13th Street Neighborhood Advisory Committee (NAC) meeting. The property owner wants to demolish five homes, currently rental units, and build in their place four new detached homes.

The property currently contains two Spanish-style bungalows, one of which has three attached apartments. The courtyard between the two buildings is paved and used for parking. The three apartments look to be incredibly small, maybe only one or two rooms each, and built with minimal architectural detail at minimum cost. The two bungalows, though, presumably are considerably older, and have the kind of style that would make them terrifically desirable if they were only freshly painted and located in Willow Glen.

The owner wants to knock all of that down and replace it with four contemporary two-story houses. In a neighborhood dominated by bungalows, the planning department have somehow concluded that the impact of this change on the “existing visual character or quality of the site and its surroundings” would be “less than significant”, which is at least a highly debatable conclusion.
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Tuesday, August 5, is National Night Out. You can participate by locking your doors, turning on outside lights, and spending an evening outside with neighbors and police.

National Night Out (NNO) is a nationwide program that organizes individual communities against local crime. Last year, over 11,000 communities across the country, and about 60 neighborhoods in San Jose, participated in National Night Out. Conceived in the early ’80s to increase participation in town watch programs, NNO in San Jose today has shifted emphasis toward improving contact between neighborhoods and the Police Department.

The goals of National Night Out are to

• Heighten crime and drug prevention awareness;
• Generate support for, and participation in, local anticrime programs;
• Strengthen neighborhood spirit and police-community partnerships; and
• Send a message to criminals letting them know that neighborhoods are organized and fighting back.

Around San Jose, the bay area, and the whole country, volunteers will participate by showing support for their police officers and arranging activities to bring out the community to meet their police, usually in local parks.

In my neighborhood, San Jose’s Northside, National Night Out will be celebrated with an outdoor showing of the movie The Water Horse in Backesto Park, a picnic dinner for 500 people, and DJ music by Northsider Victor Tapia. The picnic dinner begins at 6 PM, and the movie will be shown at dusk.

If your neighborhood has a National Night Out event planned, please leave us a comment and let us know.

The Northside Neighborhood Association will host its annual flea market in Backesto Park this Saturday, August 2. Backesto Park is located at the corner of 13th and Jackson Streets just northeast of downtown. In past years, the Northiside flea has kept the spirit of a classic flea market or community yard sale, featuring mostly used and recycled goods, not cut-rate new stuff.

The market is open from 8 to 4 and admission is free for shoppers. Proceeds from the vendors’ fees benefit the Northside Neighborhood Association, San Jose’s oldest neighborhood association.

I’m not sure of the details, but the fire department was out at two locations just two blocks away from each other this afternoon. First I saw them at 11th and Jackson Streets, apparently mopping up after a fire in an RV parked in the street. Then at 13th Street they were cleaning up after another incident, although I didn’t see any damaged building or vehicle.

This morning I joined about 6 other volunteers to work on the restoration project at the historic water fountain in central San Jose’s Backesto Park. This work is being done by the Friends of Backesto Park, a subcommittee of the North 13th Street Neighborhood Advisory Committee.
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