December 14, 2007

D8CRT kicks off 2008 meetings Jan. 8

Topics range from pandemic flu to logo contest winner

By Bea Baechle
Special to the Times

The District 8 Community Round Table reconvenes on Tuesday, Jan. 8, with a wide variety of speakers and several awards to give away.

A representative from the Santa Clara County Public Health Dept. will address the D8CRT about the possibility of a flu pandemic.

Pandemic influenza or pandemic flu is a worldwide outbreak of a new flu virus for which there is little or no immunity or protection in the human population. Scientists and health professionals are concerned that the flu virus that has been reported in birds—called avian flu—may develop into the next human pandemic.

Pandemic influenza can spread easily from person-to-person, causing serious illness and death. A person infected with the pandemic flu virus can be contagious for 24 hours before symptoms begin to show and for up to 14 days after. This makes it very easy for the virus to spread quickly to large numbers of people.

A pandemic flu virus has little or nothing in common with the flu viruses we get every year; and there is no vaccine currently available to protect you against a new pandemic flu.

The Santa Clara County Public Health Dept. is working with other local, state and federal agencies to respond to pandemic influenza and to maintain essential health care and community services. However, with as many as 1 in 4 people getting sick during a pandemic, services and supplies that we count on every day may not be available.

Every individual could be on their own, without easy access to care, for quite a while. This makes being prepared even more important. Learn how to limit the spread of this kind of disease at home, and how to better prepare our community for this type of potential emergency.

San Jose Neighborhood Commission
Ernest Guzman will return to the D8CRT to give an update on the new neighborhoods commission that’s being designed to find solutions to common neighborhood problems.

At the December D8CRT meeting, four members of the D8CRT volunteered to serve on an ad hoc neighborhoods commission advisory team for this new city commission. Minh Duong, Blanca Esquivel, Bob Gill and Rose Herrera will join this advisory team to help decide how the 30 commissioners—three from each San Jose City Council district—will be selected.

The new neighborhoods commission is scheduled to convene in April for a two-year pilot program.

Other topics
Rounding out the speaker section of the meeting, Monique Melchor will talk about One Stop San Jose Center.

Two awards will also be presented on Jan. 8. First, the winner of the logo contest will finally be revealed. The D8CRT received dozens of entries in the past months, which were narrowed down to five finalists by the D8CRT Steering Committee. Members of the D8CRT voted for their favorite among those five at the Dec. 11 meeting. The winner will receive a $100 gift card on Jan. 8, and a photo in the Evergreen Times.

The D8CRT will also present an award to the first “volunteer of the quarter.” The D8CRT is still accepting nominations until Dec. 31. Visit the Yahoo user group listed at the end of this article to find an application form if there’s someone you’d like to nominate.

Last but not least, D8CRT President Jim Zito will discuss some proposed bylaw changes that will be voted upon in February. The Round Table will also be discussing the possibility of a general meeting day change.

The next District 8 Community Round Table meeting will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008, at the Evergreen Branch Library, 2635 Aborn Rd., from 7 – 9 p.m. For more details on the D8CRT, visit the organization’s Yahoo User Group site at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/D8C_RoundTable/.