Introduction

As the year 2000 arrived, the “Turn of The Century” brought with it a number of significant changes in the evolution of town structure and management. The accumulation of events at this time, leading up to the elections in early 2003, triggered changes with a number of divergent rippling side-effects.

Primary among these events were some power struggles amongst different town factions that that contributed to the birth of an organization which became known as Hills2000. Indirectly, these events also led to organizational changes in the town - which rocked the boat to also tip the balance toward formation of a town History Committee and the evolution of the town’s “newsletter” into the “Our Town” magazine as we know it today

The origins of all this were three main events that triggered the initial formation of Hills2k - these events were independent but happened to occur at roughly the same point in time. Two were in response to the actions of some rogue Council Members who wanted to initiate actions that went against the whole idea of “rural” Los Altos Hills – and the third was a Council Election that drove the nail home in response to the two other events by causing the removal of two council members who had proposed and supported the unpopular moves.

The first of these was the idea of selling off some of the Town-owned open space - as being a "better and higher use" of the town's assets - selling off the land to developers for big bucks would bring millions of $$$ to the town’s coffers and reduce taxes etc. Some contemporary documentation can be found in the following links

• San Jose Mercury News - Editorial by Huey Johnson

• Article in Newsletter of Committee for Green Foothills

• Text of Official Initiative

The second major occurrence, purely by chance at the same time but otherwise unrelated... (Except triggered by the same rogue Council Members) the Council actually took an action to destroy some (rural) town assets that created uproar amongst residents.

Let me explain the background...

The Town maintains a "Master Plan" map to do with Town Pathways and Trails. This is not just a map of completed and publicly accessible pathways, but is also a planning document where future proposed trails are in some stage of planning or partial completion. Creating a complete trail usually involves collecting the necessary easements (for different sections of the trail) over a span of many years as different parcels of land come up for development and easements can be obtained.

So the map also records lots of independent (unconnected) easements that are on hold - until enough have been collected to be able to join them up into a longer usable pathway that joins with other existing pathways.

This rogue Council decided that there were already enough existing-and-completed pathways in town, and therefore to abandon ("give back") all the (so far unused) easements that were being held in abeyance until they could be knitted into a longer path joining other paths.

Not only did the council discuss this idea of ditching all such easements - they actually got a majority vote to do it. All "unused" pathway easements that had taken years to accumulate were abandoned by the town.

You can read more about the reaction of some Town residents in The SFO Chronicle and LA Town Crier here

• San Francisco Chronicle

• Los Altos Town Crier

A couple of citizens reacted swiftly to collect enough signatures for a "Referendum" to overturn and effectively undo the council's action... This necessitated collecting a certain number of resident voter’s signatures and within a certain limited period for the referendum to succeed.

The ring leader was Scott Vanderlip - I can't remember the names of any others that were involved but there were others of course - and the referendum succeeded. Council’s action was nullified by a successful referendum of the voters.

Never happened before. Total shock. Council members shot down. Over-ridden by their electors.

At about the same time, new council elections were due, and two new candidates surfaced who promised to restore the balance of council members opposed to ideas such as "Selling Open Space" and "Return Pathways Easements".

At the next election the two fresh candidates Dean Warshawsky and Breene Kerr (referred to during the election as the informal ticket of "Breene and Dean") carried the day

So three events conspired together

• The "Open Space Initiative" (Prime mover Nancy Couperus)
• The "Pathways Referendum" (Prime mover Scott Vanderlip)
• The "Breene and Dean" campaign (Evangelists Duffy and John)

to cause the gathering of names (and email addresses) belonging to like-minded people who were involved in these campaigns. These lists of people became the formative core of Hills2000.

One of these lists was the “official” list of signatories (“endorsers”) required to qualify the “Open Space Initiative” for the ballot – this list was part of the official documentation and can still be seen here

• List of Endorsers for Open Space Initiative

Two other residents in particular (Duffy Price and John Harpootlian) became deeply involved in gathering names and promoting the new candidates for Town Council. It was them who assembled the diverse collections of names into a mailing list, and at the same time created an associated 501(c)(3) membership organization known as “Hills2000 Friends of The Hills” together with an associated web-site..

(Note – there is currently no internet domain called Hills2000.org – instead John opted to create the website using the facilities of a company called “Weebly” and the web site is at https://hills2000.weebly.com )

But Duffy Price had also been the writer/editor/publisher of the Town’s Newsletter for many years and was keenly sensitive to the process of gathering and broadcasting information to the Town’s wider resident population. Accordingly Hills2000 sponsored and organized a number of public informational events and gathering in Town. These included talks on various subjects at Town Hall as well as an “Open House” walking tour of wineries near Westwind Barn. The latter developed over the years to a regularly scheduled (every two years) Vines and Wines event at Town Hall. (See http://www.couperus.org/Vintners )

Around this time, it became apparent that the “Los Altos Hills Historical Society” (a private organization, run independently and not officially affiliated with the Town) was winding down through lack of membership as well as aging of its primary organizers. They had previously been responsible for organizing and presenting many informational public talks at Town Hall, and now the idea was born for the Town maybe to have its own “History Committee” which could now take over this mantle.

Closely related to this function was the idea of such a Town History Committee might function as the organizational “home” for sponsoring and contributing to the Town’s Newsletter. This had heretofore been produced primarily by Duffy Price at her kitchen table – a task in which she had previously relied on for assistance from the same general group of people.

Accordingly a new and more formal structure was set up within the Town to create, edit and publish a totally revamped town newsletter to be known as “Our Town”. The History Committee was charged with helping facilitate production of the Town’s Newsletter which in turn helped the further evolution of that publication from a few sheets of paper printed by duplicating machine to a more professional magazine-style publication as we know it today.

The idea of creating a new Town committee to deal with preserving the past through documentation and making the story available to the residents as lectures and in magazine form was well received. But it in turn surfaced a related concern. If there can be a History Committee to preserve the Heritage of our past, perhaps there we should create a new committee tasked with looking after our current ongoing heritage - the Open Spaces that were so recently under threat. While their legal protection was now covered, they also needed ongoing protection in terms of nurturing and husbandry and general maintenance. Just as Pathways were protected and maintained by a Pathways Committee, so too the Town's Open Spaces needed to be protected by a Town Open Space Committee. And thus it was that the Open Space Committee was born as yet another impact triggered by the events in Town around this time.

In summary, the arrival of the Millennium brought with it a cascade of a number of significant events that each had impact on the underlyiing fabric of Los Altos Hills.

1. The initial idea of selling off the Town’s Open Spaces,
2. The actual abandonment of all unused Pathway Easements, begat a citizen organization to
3. The above two events begat a mmovement for regime change by to elect two new different council members Town Council as well as
4. Organizing voters for the upcoming election triggered the formation of the Hills2000 organization.
5. As a side spin-off off these changes, came the formation of the Town’s History Committee and
6. the formation of the Town's Open Space Committee and finaly
7. a new-born version of the resident-driven Town Newsletter – named “Our Town” came into being

That’s it in a nutshell.

Following is a copy of the recommendation from the Community Relations Committee to create a formal History Committee within Los Altos Hills