New tremor for PV Town Center New tremor for PV Town Center (October 27, 2004)

Despite its location on the famous and dreaded San Andreas Fault, the town of Portola Valley has managed to become one of the Bay Area's most livable and desirable communities.

And although the town suffered little in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that shook the San Andreas and pummeled San Francisco and the East Bay, rising concern about traces of the fault found on the 11.2-acre Town Center property has convinced town officials that they need to raze their homey, hand-me-down buildings and move to what is likely to be a safer site.

This controversial decision eventually gained wide support, although a small minority of residents, led by former mayor Bob Brown, have bitterly opposed the plan. They claim that the town buildings, now about 50 years old, should undergo an engineering analysis and be retrofitted to conform with current building codes rather than be destroyed.

Mr. Brown's apparent dismissal of concerns for town employees and residents being inside buildings threatened by a known earthquake fault does not square with responsible governing in a modern-day world. Town officials have already heard from the state and their insurance agent, who say the time has come to move out of the buildings.

And to meet concerns of town employees who no longer felt safe in the offices sitting on the fault, the town has moved its staff into a portable building on the site. Signs posted on the old buildings warn that they are susceptible to collapse in an earthquake.

The latest volley from Mr. Brown, a letter sent last week to most Portola Valley households, touts the conclusion of a U.C. Davis professor emeritus who claims that tree root systems "effectively reinforce" the soil and that densely packed soil under a building is "much stronger" than ordinary soil. The professor's views have been soundly refuted by Sheldon Breiner, the chair of the town's Geologic Safety Committee, who rightfully finds the supposition to be about as meaningful as the town's passing an ordinance declaring an "earthquake free zone" around the buildings.

Mr. Brown's refusal to accept the conclusions of a $250,000 geotechnical study, done just two years ago, and lend his support to town leaders -- who are well on their way to designing a new town center -- is an unnecessary distraction that is beginning to get old.

Mr. Brown cites the high cost of building a new Town Center as a reason to retrofit the old buildings, apparently regardless of the safety concerns. Although architects told the Town Council on October 13 that the cost of building material is going up, and although the town has only $3.5 million banked for what could be a $15 million project, there are ways to finance the center, including building it in phases.

After painstaking and expensive research, Portola Valley leaders made the right decision to move the Town Center to a new, and safer, location. Any other decision would have been fraught with liability and unacceptable to the employees and citizens of Portola Valley.

It was an agonizing, expensive and painful decision, but one that had to be made.

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