A Hole in our Heart & Soul

After 26 years here, Pat Dixon is leaving Redwood Shores. Most of you know Pat only from her “Swan Lady” column in the PILOT. Pat has been a tireless advocate for this community in her service on many Boards and Commissions in San Mateo County. I cannot say more than was in the Proclamation from the RWC Council honoring her service. A copy is on RSCA.org: Redwood City Honors Pat Dixon

Pat is leaving a big hole in the heart and soul of Redwood Shores.

New System for Taking Police Reports…

Like almost every agency in every city in California, our Police Department is working to find new ways to continue to provide basic services more efficiently, even with declining resources. This means finding ways to free officers from lower-priority tasks so they are available for more important duties.

One plan already in place is a voluntary system that would let you “self-report” minor property crimes without the need to have a police officer tied up taking the report. The criteria are that:

1. the property crime is not in progress,
2. the property loss is less than $10,000, and
3. no suspect information is available.

Examples of crimes that could be self-reported would be petty theft, vandalism, hit & run collisions, and auto burglaries. Again, self-reporting without the need to have a police officer on-site to take the report is entirely voluntary. When you make the report yourself, that report becomes an “official police report” and goes into the police crime reporting system just as if a sworn officer had taken the report. You get a copy of the “official police report” for insurance or other purposes, again, just as if a sworn officer had taken the report.

You still have the option of having an officer come and make the report if you wish. But when you make the report yourself, you free up that officer for other duties. More complete information is available at http://www.redwoodcity.org/police/ . Look for “Report Crime On-Line” in the lower left hand corner.

…and for Seeing Crime Report Activity On-line

One of the comments we received in our winter 60 Second Survey was “ability to know about crime in RWS through some pro-active mechanism”. This is an issue RSCA has raised with RWC Police for the past few years. By the time your read this, you should be able to go to CrimeReports.com and search “Redwood City” to see crime reports for the past month. There are tools to the right that will let you select what type of crimes you want to see on the map.

This is a system that the RWC Police command staff are now using, and you can see that many of our neighboring cities are also using this system. While crime report “media logs” have been available on the RWC Police web site for some time, this new tool is a great step forward in increasing the visibility of criminal & police activity in our City. Kudos to the department for making this information more easily available to the public.

Why We Want Your Email

RSCA is required to notify all Shores residents and businesses of specific events like our Annual Business meeting each year. It costs us at least 45¢ to send a postcard notice, and even more if we need to send a letter. We now have over 5,400 residents and almost 700 business in the Shores, so those mailing costs are significant. It costs us much less an one penny each to send an email notice.

We currently have over 600 Shores residents & businesses on our email list, and we use our email list to make sure you are aware of all our community events during the year. If you would like to be on our email list, simply go to RSCA.org and under “Feedback”, click on the “Join our email list” button to sign up.

OUR PRIVACY POLICY:

Your information is for use only by Redwood Shores Community Association in contacting you. We do not share, sell, or provide our contact list to any other person or organization.

RSCA’s 60 Second Survey

We do appreciate all of you who made time for our “60 Second Survey” of issues affecting the Shores, and we especially appreciated those who took time to offer additional comments. The results were not surprising, with the highest concern naturally being the levee certification, with public safety issues a close second.

One responder had this suggestion: “It would be nice to hear different view points from the pilot. It seem like the same voices say the same message. How about allowing others to voice their opinion, especially since we don’t all think the same way?”

We agree, and we would like to hear from you. If you would be interested in writing a column for the PILOT, either one time or on a regular basis, simply contact me or PILOT Editor Carol Mertens at

— Harris Rogers, RSCA President

In the first of my monthly missives, I want to again thank all of the Redwood City officials and Council Members who took time to be at our Annual Meeting in February. I continue to be impressed with all of those who serve the City, and with their willingness to listen and have a conversation with us about our concerns and theirs. Same for our School District Superintendent and school staffs.

One of RSCA’s primary roles is advocacy for the interests of Shores residents and businesses. But our strong advocacy can sometimes be mistaken for an adversarial role, and I don’t think that describes our relationship with the City or the School District over the past few years. We have found City staff cooperative at all levels in listening to and dealing with our concerns, and we have an ongoing, positive dialog with our School District.

We don’t say “thank you” enough to those who serve us. Let’s change that. If you see any Redwood City employee here in the Shores – whether it is our police, fire, public works, maintenance, or other City staff – walk up and say “thank you for being here.”

Same for our teachers and school personnel. Take the time to say it.

Our Little Island

Redwood Shores is an island. We are surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by Hwy. 101.

We live on an island. Although we are part of Redwood City, there is no boundary of the Shores that borders any other part of Redwood City. You have to travel 1? miles on a freeway to get from any part of the Shores to the closest part of Redwood City.

You realize just how isolated we can be whenever there is an accident on either the Dumbarton or San Mateo Bridges or on Hwy.101. Travel to and from the closest part of Redwood City can take 10-20 minutes, and sometimes it can take as long just to get to the other side of the freeway on either Ralston or Holly.

We don’t yet have the 2010 Census data, but the best estimates are that we have over 15,000 residents in the Shores. During the business day we probably have as many people coming into the Shores as leave to work. That means there are 15,000+ people here in the Shores at all times – days, nights, or weekends.

There are only two ways to get in or out of the Shores, and both involve overpasses that could be seriously compromised in a major seismic event. That would leave 15,000+ people stranded without City services or any other service that would need to come from the other side of Hwy. 101.

I make this point because we have a continuing discussion about a permanent public safety presence (i.e., police & fire protection) in the Shores. We have a fire station located in the Shores, and it is fortunate that the station was manned at the time of a recent fire at Lighthouse Cove, a condominium complex with 4-to-12 residence units in each building. (And we have many, many similar multi-family residential buildings in the Shores.) The quick response from the Fire Department’s Station 20, just a few blocks away, limited the damage to a single unit. Had the response come from the other side of Hwy.101, FOUR families might have lost their homes.

(The recent events in Japan have also reinforced the need for each household to be prepared for an emergency on “our little island”. More on that in coming issues of the PILOT.)

RSCA’s 60 Second Survey

We do appreciate all of you who made time for our “60 Second Survey” of issues affecting the Shores, and we especially appreciated those who took time to offer additional comments. I will try to provide some details next month. We will ask for your input on other issues when we open another survey later this spring.

Tree Roots, Street Repairs & Sidewalks

In December, one of our members raised the issue of tree roots damaging the pavement along sections of Marine, Bridge, and Redwood Shores Parkways. The City has responded quickly to repair the pavement along those sections, so you should have a smoother drive now. Weather permitting, most of the work should be completed by the time you read this.

— Harris Rogers, RSCA President