Portola Valley Weekly Update February 16, 2023

This week's update:

• A Valentine to Portola Valley Volunteers
• Housing Element Update Progression
• Workshop - Choose Your Climate Future
• Annual Portola Valley Town Broom Pull
• Conservation Committee Tips - Planting Guide
• Sustainability Committee Tips - Home Energy and Water Use
• Free Program Explores How Food Choices Affect Climate Change
• Upcoming Events

A Valentine to Portola Valley Volunteers

Portola Valley loves our volunteers. They are the heart and soul of our community and we deeply value the work they do. Right now, the Town has 138 volunteers across 18 committees, 2 commissions, and 1 Town Council. Our volunteers help make our Town more beautiful, more safe, more informed, and more resilient. On Friday, we hosted our Volunteer Appreciation Party. After three years we were finally able to gather again and celebrate all the accomplishments and hours our volunteers have devoted to the Town. Thank you to all our volunteers! We appreciate the passion and dedication you bring to our community.

Housing Element Update Progression

Last night, the Planning Commission passed a motion 5-0 to recommend approval of the environmental review document for the Housing Element Update. The Commission recommended adoption of the Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration (IS/MND) with two additional recommendations: 1) Adoption of the “Project Design Features” from the Colleagues Memo from Commissioners Targ and Brothers, with the exception of the Finance item, to be implemented through the mechanism of Council’s choice; and 2) Consider for adoption the “Key Approaches for Fire Safety” presented by Fire Marshal Don Bullard at the meeting.

To stay up to date on the process, please sign up for Town eNotices and choose Housing (calendar) and Housing News.

Useful Links

• Town's Housing Element Update webpage
• Town's Ad Hoc Housing Element Committee's webpage
• Track the Housing Element update public meeting process (including links to recordings and other helpful documents from all the public meetings)
• FAQ on the Housing Element update and related environmental review process

Workshop - Choose Your Climate Future

A hands-on workshop to discover how to recover a healthy climate

Thursday, February 23, 7 pm-9 pm, at the Portola Valley Town Center

Join the hands-on event. Refreshments Served!

Join us to play with En-ROADS, a powerful online simulator, to explore how we can ensure a livable, sustainable climate by the end of this century.

This workshop is fun, free and open to everyone with a curious mind! No prior background in climate change is needed. Just come and explore!

Co-developed with the MIT Sloan School, En-ROADS is an easy-to-use planning tool that has been used in workshops in over 190 countries with over 200,000 people, including Members of Congress, community leaders, and the general public. It is based on the latest science and is updated monthly to stay current.

You will have a chance to learn about the most popular solutions to the climate crisis AND to propose and test your own scenarios. This 2-hour session will be lively, as we learn together what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll also hear about possible ways to get involved to make a difference.

Bring your laptop or share with others. Because the simulation tool is online, it’s possible for participants to bring a laptop to the session and concurrently run their own what-if experiments. Feel free to bring your own fully-charged Mac or PC!

This workshop is sponsored by the Sustainability Committee of the Town of Portola Valley.

The workshop leaders will be: Steve Levin, PV resident and En-ROADS Climate Ambassador and Laura Iyer, Leader of the CCL En-ROADS Engagement Action Team and an En-ROADS Climate Ambassador

Annual Portola Valley Town Broom Pull - Sunday, March 5

Please join the Portola Valley Conservation Committee, community volunteers and Scout troops and spend a couple of hours pulling this invasive weed from public lands and rights-of-way.

Meet at 9:00 AM at the Historic Schoolhouse – we will be done by noon.

Bring friends and neighbors – it’s a fun way to contribute a little muscle power and tackle this problem as a team

Please bring water and gloves and wear long sleeves and close-toed shoes

Did you know that Broom is:

• Highly invasive and extremely flammable
• One mature plant can produce 10,000 seeds per season and can live up to 20 years
• The seeds can germinate even after 60+ years
• Seed pods can burst with enough force to fling seeds many feet away
• Outcompetes and chokes out native vegetation
• Poisonous to large domestic animals and makes pastures impenetrable
• Re-sprouts from the roots (pull it out by the roots, when the soil is wet and with a weed wrench)
• Impossible to easily remove once the soil is dry
• DO NOT mow, it will re-sprout and be even harder to remove by the roots

French Broom is one of our nastiest invasive local shrubs. It spreads quickly, choking out both natives and other desirable plants and it is very flammable. It is especially a problem in our Open Space Preserves.

Conservation Committee Tips

The Conservation Committee’s most recent tip is a planting guide for our local native plants. Late fall and early winter are the ideal time to be planting natives, especially after the epic rains we received in January. Read the whole tip here.

Sustainability Committee Tips - Home Energy and Water Use

The Sustainability Committee provides a series of tips to help plan your personal and household sustainability goals. Go to the Sustainability Tip page for current and past tips. This tip provides some easy ways you can use technology to understand your home energy and water use.

Free Program Explores How Food Choices Affect Climate Change

The Citizens Environmental Council invites you to a free program called “The Earth on Your Plate” on Thursday, February 23, to learn about the enormous impact that food choices have on climate change and the planet. Cosponsored by Burlingame’s Parks and Recreation Department, this program will take place from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the Burlingame Community Center at 850 Burlingame Ave. in Burlingame.

There is no admission charge, but pre-registration is required at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/510185858637.

Mohan Gurunathan will explore the connections between our daily food choices and climate change, deforestation, species extinction, water scarcity, air and water pollution, ocean dead zones, world hunger, and many other serious environmental and social problems. You’ll learn how simple dietary changes, adopted on a large scale, are essential for solving some of humanity's greatest challenges.

Mohan is an engineer, entrepreneur and activist who has lived and worked in Silicon Valley for more than 20 years. An expert on food systems sustainability, he is a well-known public speaker on environmental, public health and animal welfare issues.

The Citizens Environmental Council’s mission is to champion regional sustainability through education, advocate for environmental and climate policies, and empower young environmental leaders. For more information, visit cecburlingame.org or email info@cecburlingame.org.