PORTOLA VALLEY NOTES PORTOLA VALLEY NOTES (May 18, 2005)

Town Center rebuild: Fundraising study Ok'd

A fundraising analyst is being brought in as the Portola Valley Town Council, town staff and community volunteers begin to come to terms with the problem of financing a new building-and-playing-field complex at Town Center.

In a May 11 meeting, the council voted unanimously to commission a fundraising feasibility study from the San Francisco-based consulting firm Zimmerman Lehman for a fee of $35,000, payable in four installments. The completed study is due this fall.

Zimmerman Lehman was one of three firms invited to respond to a detailed request-for-proposal from the Steering Committee of the Portola Valley Community Fund. Firm president Robert M. Zimmerman impressed the committee with his candor, said committee member SallyAnn Reiss at the council meeting.

"We want just hard, cold facts, like them or don't like them," she said.
Full environmental report planned for Town Center

Bowing to a "historic resources" provision in state law that could hand opponents of the Portola Valley Town Center project a means to gum up the works, the Town Council is choosing to extend an environmental study a couple of weeks and spend another $20,000 to commission a full environmental impact report.

The one-story school buildings at Town Center that were built in the 1950s, and since the 1970s had been used for a town hall, library and community activities, are old enough to qualify as historic structures.

By commissioning an EIR, the council will have the authority to decide on the disposition of the buildings, said Mayor Ed Davis. Without it, the town would be handing project opponents a challenge opportunity "on a silver platter," said Dan K. Siegel, the acting town attorney.

The report is due in the fall.

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