December 31, 2004

Looking back at 2004 from an Evergreen perspective

A year in review

By Bea Baechle
Editor

The start of a new year is a great time for visualizing the hopes and dreams for the next 12 months, but it’s also a good time to reflect upon the year that has just passed—the triumphs and challenges, the lessons learned and the impact of decisions made. Here are some of the local highlights covered by the Evergreen Times in 2004:

January 2004
Evergreen’s District 8 Councilmember Dave Cortese was the only seated councilmember up for election to run unopposed. With no declared opponent, this virtually guaranteed Cortese’s re-election in the March 2004 primary.

The East Side Union High School District’s Eastern Boundary Committee prioritized recommendations to alleviate overcrowding at Evergreen Valley High School and presented the recommendations to an emotionally charged, standing- room-only crowd divided into two camps: one interested in adding capacity and the other in changing the EVHS boundaries.

ESUHSD’s Superintendent Esperanza Zendejas pulled Overfelt High School’s Principal Tim McDonough to EVHS to resolve a myriad of issues brewing underneath the school’s elegant façade.

Construction of a new San Jose Bioscience Incubator began in the Edenvale area this month to support the development of new technologies and entrepreneurs in bioscience and biotechnology.

Mayor Ron Gonzales, while giving his sixth annual State of the City address, suffered a mild stroke midway through his presentation. Later that evening, Isaiah “Ike” White earned District 8’s 2004 San Jose Good Neighbor Award.

February 2004
Councilmember Dave Cortese told the Evergreen Times that his priority for the last year of his first term was to remain focused on the Evergreen Visioning Project and refine the plans for the last large parcels of undeveloped land in Evergreen. He also revealed his intent to run for mayor of San Jose in 2006.

The South Bay Islamic Association celebrated the approval of a plan to build a new mosque and community center on the 2.1 acres it owns in the rolling hills of Evergreen.

Many descendants of Evergreen’s first families gathered to view historical photos, maps and memorabilia that would soon be housed in its first permanent home—an Evergreen Heritage Room in the new Evergreen Valley College Library and Educational Technology Center to open in June 2004.

Rob Davis, a seasoned veteran of the San Jose Police Department, was officially sworn in as the new police chief of San Jose.

The San Jose Fire Department celebrated its 150-year anniversary.

ESUHSD unveiled a controversial district wide common dress proposal, and Superintendent Zendejas cancelled all but a few district credit cards based on the findings of an audit that revealed little accountability for credit card spending before she arrived.

Grettel Castro-Stanley was appointed the new principal of Mt. Pleasant High School.

Evergreen resident John Nguyen made the U.S. Olympic Table Tennis Team.

March 2004
High rent increases impacted long-time Evergreen businesses, and Klondike’s Pizza, owned and operated by the Ferreira family for 18 years, was sold. Although most of the Ferreira family remains in the Evergreen area, they bought their own building in Stockton to house a new business venture: Market Fresh Pizza Company, the first wholesale pizza factory in Northern California.

March 27 marked the opening day for Evergreen Little League’s 2004 season.

Evergreen Valley High School produced the first boys’ varsity basketball team to win a Blose 31Valley Athletic League championship with no seniors.

The Silver Oak Educational Partnership (SOEP) raised more than $90,000 at its annual dinner and auction for Silver Oak Elementary School.

The ESUHSD board of trustees decided not to change the EVHS attendance boundaries, but rather, implemented and aggressively enforced a rigorous enrollment policy to reduce illegitimate enrollment practices.

April 2004
Housing sales were red hot in Evergreen in the spring, and a sellers market led to a local real estate frenzy.

Eastridge Ice Arena, a vital thread in the fabric of the Evergreen community for 33 years, closed its doors on April 15.

Jim Cunneen, president and CEO of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, assured members of the Evergreen Business & Professional Association that the future still looked bright for Silicon Valley. The Valley still receives more venture capital funding than any place in the world, and our location as the “East Coast of the Pacific Rim,” coupled with the historical significance of Silicon Valley, are all factors that will contribute to future success.

Evergreen resident Jennifer Zhang bought Klondike’s Pizza to keep one of her favorite Evergreen traditions alive.

The city’s affirmation of the validity of same-sex marriages that took place elsewhere raised concerns by local church leaders, who threatened to lead a campaign to recall Mayor Ron Gonzales. [The recall threat ended shortly thereafter.]

May 2004
Local school districts faced tough budget decisions. ESUHSD recommended increased class size and eliminating librarians and career center technicians. Public outcry reversed plans to do the latter.

The Evergreen School District announced $1.06 million in cuts and alerted the community to expect a parcel tax on the November ballot.

The Evergreen Valley United Methodist Church celebrated its 25-year anniversary May 16.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST) announced plans to relocate the company’s headquarters and research functions to southeast Evergreen in the former Dade Behring building on Yerba Buena Road.

A report from the prestigious consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton named San Jose “the most livable city.”

A Books on Par fundraiser raked in $70,000 for James F. Smith School.

A group of Evergreen residents joined Councilmember Dave Cortese on a bus trip to Sacramento to discuss the K-14 education budget with legislators and convince them not to be intimidated by the governor’s popularity when it came to education funding decisions.

Evergreen swimmers Shannon Simonds and Dory Isaacs were among four Bay Area swimmers to earn the number one high school time in the nation during a Central Coast Section 400-meter freestyle relay—more than seven seconds under the All American time.

Chaboya Middle School’s girls’ soccer team players were crowned undefeated champions in league play and the play-offs.

June 2004
Based on a feasibility plan conducted in June 2002 and a series of community meetings held in 2003 and early 2004, a draft master plan of the Thompson Creek Trail was released. The six-mile trail will stretch along the Thompson Creek corridor from Lake Cunningham to Heartland Way.

The Building Trades Council and its 24 construction union members picketed the Eastridge Shopping Mall, accusing General Growth Properties of Chicago of importing low-paid workers for the mall’s $100 million renovation. John Petersen of General Growth countered that although the general contractor hired for the remodeling project was based in Arkansas, 22 of the 28 subcontractors working on site were Bay Area companies, and another three were based in other parts of California.

Members of the Evergreen Visioning Project task force split up into four small working groups to discuss the delicate balance of new development on four major opportunity sites with the desired community amenities and transportation improvements. These sites included: Pleasant Hills Golf Course at Tully and White Roads, the open space at Evergreen Valley College, the industrial property above Murillo Road (between Aborn and Yerba Buena Roads) and the Arcadia property adjacent to Eastridge Mall.

A record number of almost 50 employees retired from the Evergreen School District.

Nine-year-old Evergreen resident Tharusyan Pillay won first place in the 2004 U.S. Kids Golf State Championships.

July 2004
The Philadelphia Phillies drafted former Evergreen Little Leaguer and Silver Creek High School student Kevin Rose to the minors.

Both the ESUHSD and the Evergreen School District decided to place a parcel tax on the November ballot to offset huge budget shortfalls stemming from increased costs, coupled with state-imposed budget cuts to education.

A dead crow found in Evergreen was the first confirmed case of the West Nile virus in Santa Clara County.

Silver Creek High School revealed plans for a new streetscape and a two-story building with new science and computer labs to replace 13 portable classrooms.

James Lee Mirassou, lifelong vintner and part of America’s oldest winemaking family, died July 30 at the age of 61.
The San Jose Police Department launched a renovated Web site offering the city’s nearly 925,000 residents access to comprehensive information tracking crime in their neighborhoods: www.sjpd.org

Darnell Strom, a 23-year-old Evergreen native, was among the first to work on planning the Democratic National Convention held July 26 – 29 in Boston, Mass., following an internship with former President Bill Clinton.

The Santa Clara Sporting Pumas, a U.S. Club Soccer team comprised mostly of Evergreen players, won the National Cup Championship in the Premier Boys U12 category in North Carolina.

EVHS student Jamie Martinez qualified for the Olympic swimming trials, but did not make the team.

August 2004
Evergreen residents Bill and Sandy Bellou, owners of Times Media Inc., upgraded the Evergreen Times from a monthly to a bi-weekly format. One of the new features unveiled was a monthly Evergreen history series entitled “Paths to Evergreen,” authored by Evergreen historian Colleen Cortese.

Thousands of Sikh Americans celebrated the grand opening of their magnificent new temple in the Evergreen foothills. The $10 million structure situated on 40 acres of land is the most expensive Sikh temple in the United States.

About 200 Evergreen residents attended the Canyon Creek Park groundbreaking. The park is projected for completion in April 2005.

The proposed ESUHSD common dress policy failed to garner wide support among the district’s students and parents.

With the start of a new school year, efforts instead focused on enforcing the district’s dress code and issuing ID badges for every student.

To ease the overcrowding at Evergreen Valley High School, ESUHSD formed a partnership with Evergreen Valley College to create a new EVHS Biotechnology Academy. Twelve portables were also installed on the EVHS campus to ease crowding during the first school year that the school would actually house all four grades.

Evergreen Valley College President Clay Whitlow retired in light of the EVC’s board of trustees’ decision not to renew his contract.

September 2004
All Evergreen School District schools met their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets mandated by the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation.

After 45 years in business, Pleasant Hills and Cypress Greens Golf Courses closed on Sept. 30 without warning, catapulting worried neighbors to the Evergreen Visioning Project’s task force meetings to voice their concerns.

Seven candidates vying for two seats on the ESUHSD board of trustees participated in the first of several forums in the most hotly contested local race.

The San Jose City Council approved the Coyote Valley Specific Plan Progress Report, which includes plans for 25,000 new homes and 50,000 new jobs just south of Evergreen in District 2.

Evergreen native Regina Clewlow formed a non-profit organization, Engineers for a Sustainable World, which hosted its second national conference at Stanford University so participants could learn about designing appropriate technologies to help developing countries.

San Jose adopted a new lobbyist ordinance requiring lobbyists to divulge more about closed door meetings and politically motivated donations that might influence the decisions of city officials.

About 1,600 local youth kicked off their fall soccer season on the opening day for the Mt. Hamilton Soccer League on Sept. 11.

October 2004
EVHS social studies teacher Mark Gross was one of seven Bay Area teachers to receive National Semiconductor’s Internet Innovator Award for a collaborative problem-solving project called “My Little World,” where 147 freshmen created their own countries and role-played international conflict scenarios. In a surprise gesture of generosity, Gross gifted his $10,000 award (less taxes) to EVHS.

Evergreen volunteers worked countless hours to inform local residents of the value and need to pass local school parcel taxes to ease budget woes.

Thousands of residents flocked to District 8’s Day in the Park—A Multicultural Festival, for a day of food, fun, cultural entertainment and information gathering.

Two years after Beshoff MotorCars opened for business in the Evergreen area to sell Mercedes-Benz cars, business is booming, yet efforts to secure a restaurant tenant have been slow, and an acre of land stands vacant.

Silver Creek High School senior Bobby Tang, driving a group of friends to settle a dispute at Dove Hill Park, was shot and killed when members of an opposing Asian group ambushed the car. Hundreds of the popular student’s friends attended his memorial.

Neighborhood leaders in West Evergreen celebrated the groundbreaking of Meadowfair Park.

San Jose Animal Care Center opened the doors of its $18 million, 50,000-square- foot animal shelter for needy animals in five cities, including San Jose. The Humane Society of Silicon Valley will no longer provide animal shelter to San Jose.

November 2004
Both local school parcel taxes at the elementary and the high school level failed to reach the 66.7 percent of the vote required to pass in the Nov. 2 election. The ESUHSD immediately began community outreach to help tackle the budget crisis.

Two Evergreen residents—newcomer Lan Nguyen and incumbent Craig Mann—filled the vacant seats on the ESUHSD board of trustees.

The first bioscience start-up companies—Cytolution and Manoa Medical, Inc.—moved into the South San Jose’s Bioscience Incubator.

The renovated Boys and Girls Club-Smythe Clubhouse in West Evergreen celebrated its grand reopening Nov. 8. The William D. Smythe Family Foundation funded two-thirds of the $750,000 improvement project. The San Jose Redevelopment Agency covered the rest.

Evergreen resident and ESUHSD trustee Craig Mann filed a wrongful employment termination claim against the city.

December 2004
Evergreen resident Colonel Robert Hipwell returned home for the holidays with a Purple Heart. He suffered an injury as the senior officer in charge of a rescue effort involving 50 U.N. workers from nine burning compounds.

The Evergreen Branch Library, constructed in 1975, closed Dec. 22. It will be torn down to make way for a new and improved, larger branch library scheduled to open sometime in 2006.

San Jose continued to be rated the safest big city in America among the 32 cities with populations greater than 500,000.

Mt. Pleasant High School’s Cardinal Tribune, the school newspaper, and the Cardinal Quill, the school’s literary magazine both received coveted gold medal ratings from the prestigious Columbia Scholastic Press Association.

Evergreen residents embraced the holidays at Windermere’s Winter Wonderland, the Night of Lights, Chanukah candle lightings, Christmas in the Park, the new Downtown Ice Rink, Toys for Tots drives and much, much more. Happy New Year, Evergreen!