May 25, 2004

Weed control

Greystone Estates neighborhood beautifies setting

By Bea Baechle
Editor

Drive up the hill on Sequoia Creek Drive just off of Neiman Boulevard and you’ll find elegant Greystone Estates tucked away in the rolling hills that have become the identifying signature of the Evergreen/Silver Creek Valley.

Thanks to one of the residents of this five-year-old neighborhood, the 570 feet leading up to the first Greystone Estates home looks a lot neater today than it did a few months ago.

Wayne Chin, an applications engineer with Agilent, spearheaded a three-phase community effort in the past six months to remove the unsightly weeds that multiplied each season in the 4-foot strip between the sidewalk and road. The owners of the private, undeveloped property above the sidewalk weren’t too concerned about that little strip of land.

“In the first two years of the new neighborhood, we had a neighbor weed clean-up day and that worked for a while,” explained Chin. “But as time passed with new families moving in, interest faded.”

So Wayne Chin hooked up with a San Jose Adopt-a-Street project coordinator at Evergreen’s annual Day in the Park celebration last October to see what he could do about it. She connected Chin to Frank Vargas, a tree crew supervisor for the city of San Jose, and the timing was right.

The city was looking for outlets to dump excess woodchips. With permission from the private property owners, Chin asked Vargas to deliver a truckload of woodchips the next time his crew was in the area on another job. Once the woodchips were delivered, Chin organized the neighbors to come out and help distribute them.

A few neighbors completed the heavy prep work on April 24, and the rest of the neighbors came out May 8 to remove weeds, cut and lay down weed block and then scatter wood chips on top of almost 7000 square feet of land.

“We just wanted the entryway into our neighborhood to be presentable and nice,” said Greystone Estates resident Linda Rosenberry on a lunch break with food donated by El Rancho Steakhouse.

“Now our evening walks will be a lot nicer,” added James Kawamoto, Chin’s neighbor and “right-hand man.”

Javier Castelblanco, another Greystone Estates resident, explained that the neighborhood had first come together on a school boundary issue and over concerns about future development projects proposed for the area.

“In the process of unifying to present our case to Councilmember Cortese, from that point, we became a community,” said Castelblanco, crediting Cortese for helping to set the foundation of unity to overcome initial concerns in this new neighborhood.

“I think the sense of community comes from the root, but also from the top,” added Castelblanco.” I think it’s exactly the way it’s supposed to work. This is community and government at its best.”

If you’re interested in obtaining woodchips to cover weeded areas in your neighborhood, contact Frank Vargas or Jorge Ibanez at (408) 998-6180. To learn more about municipal codes that property owners must abide by, contact San Jose’s Code Enforcement (408) 277-4528.