Worried about Ukrainian co-workers, Silicon Valley tech companies mobilize to aid refugees and the war effort

Alex Tauber, CEO of Veer Technologies, had four employees in Kharkiv, Ukraine. All of them moved to other cities when the war began. Tauber worked with some of his employees in Ukraine to design T-shirts that are now being sold at Alice's Restaurant to raise money for Ukrainian refugees. Photo taken March 14, 2022 by Gennady Sheyner.

Matt Brown has not been able to sleep for more than two or three hours at a time since the night of Feb. 24, when Russian soldiers invaded Ukraine and began shelling large cities and obliterating small ones.

For Brown, the CEO of the Palo Alto-based company Waverley Software, the conflict is not an abstraction. A large contingent of Waverley's workforce is in Ukraine and when the war began, about 200 were in Kharkiv, a city east Ukraine that has been devastated by Russian bombing over the past three weeks. Most left in the days after, with some saying goodbye to their parents and pets for possibly the last time, he said. About 30 have stayed.

"There are a few people there who can't leave," Brown said during a recent interview at Alice's Restaurant, a community hub in Woodside that is now raising money to support Ukrainian refugees. "They have family or are in an area where they feel it's too dangerous or they don't feel safe getting out of their home or basement. So, they're kind of trapped."

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As Russian invasion continues, Ukrainians find allies in their communities

Photo by Magali Gauthier

Bomb shelters and air raid sirens have become a part of everyday life for the family of Andrii Anpilogov, a Palo Alto resident who grew up in Kyiv and whose mother, sister and other family members still live there.

"The day is quieter than the night," Anpilogov, 36, said in an interview Monday when asked about his relatives' day-to-day life while under attack by the Russian military. "Closer to night, you hear sirens and alarms, you go to the bomb shelter and you sleep if you can. Then you wait until morning and go back to the apartment."

A software engineer, Anpilogov is one of more than 10,000 Ukraine natives who now live in the Bay Area. He also has extended family in Sumy, a city in northeast Ukraine that experienced a fierce battle in the first days of the Russian invasion. Like many others, he has spent recent days checking in with loved ones, attending rallies and lobbying Silicon Valley giants to take a more active stance in the conflict, which in just days has upended the geopolitical order

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Investigation: After employee's death, Palo Alto fights charges of safety violations

Donatus Okhomina Jr., was on his fifth day on the job as an electrical lineman for the city of Palo Alto Utilities when he went out on what would prove to be his final assignment.

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Jackie Speier's retirement sets of speculation about successor

Courtesy U.S. House Office of Photography.

Jackie Speier's announcement on Tuesday that she will not seek another term in the U.S. Congress has created a rare political opportunity for elected officials throughout the 14th Congressional District, who seldom get a chance to run for an open seat.

But any speculation over who will seek to succeed Speier, D-San Francisco/San Mateo, a political icon who won her first election 41 years ago, hinges on a major wild card: The district that Speier has been representing is in the midst of being reshaped and its boundaries won't be known until late December.

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Exclusive: Five Palo Alto officers sue city over BLM mural

Photo by Elena Kadvany

When Palo Alto invited Bay Area artists a year ago to paint a "Black Lives Matter" mural in front of City Hall, the city had hoped to signal its commitment to racial justice and equity in the aftermath of the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

In doing so, however, the city also has attracted criticisms and a legal threat from its own police ranks, with several officers expressing concern about the mural's depiction of Joanne Chesimard, a civil rights activist in the Black Liberation Army. Chesimard, better known by her chosen name, Assata Shakur, was convicted in 1977 of killing New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. She subsequently escaped from prison and fled to Cuba.

She was depicted in the second "E" of the 16-letter mural, along with the phrase, "We must love each other and support each other." The letter containing Shakur’s image was created by Oakland-based painter Cece Caprio, one of 16 artists whom the city selected to develop the mural. The project was completed on June 30 and the mural remained on Hamilton Avenue for four months before the city removed it.

Five Palo Alto police officers — Eric Figueroa, Michael Foley, Robert Parham, Julie Tannock and Christopher Moore — filed a complaint in Santa Clara County Superior Court against the Police Department and city last month, claiming that they have suffered discrimination and harassment because of their opposition to some of the imagery in the "Black Lives Matter" mural that the city commissioned in June 2020.

The officers are specifically objecting to the city's failure to promptly remove the image of Shakur, who fled to Cuba and was designated by the FBI as a "domestic terrorist" after her prison escape. The five officers are also taking issue with the mural's depiction of a portion of a logo that they say is attributed to the New Black Panthers, a political organization that was founded in 1989 in Texas and that is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "virulently racist and anti-Semitic" (the group is distinct from the Black Panther Party). The complaint from the five Palo Alto officers includes a quote from King Samir Shabazz, former head of the party's Philadelphia chapter, who according to the Southern Poverty Law Center talked about this hatred for white people in a 2009 documentary. ("You want freedom? You're going to have to kill some crackers," he said, according to the nonprofit).

Notwithstanding the allegation, the image of the black panther, which is visible in the letter "R" on the mural, is an element of both the original Black Panther Party emblem and the one adopted by the New Black Panthers.

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Palo Alto takes heat over solar permitting

David Coale the Barron Park home where he installed solar panels. Photo by Magali Gauthier

Barry Cinnamon is a true believer when it comes to solar power.

For the past 20 years, his Campbell-based company, Cinnamon Energy Systems, has been installing solar panels and energy storage systems all over the Peninsula — with one notable exception. About 10 years ago, he decided to stop working in Palo Alto — stifled by the high costs and city's chronic permitting delays.

"Palo Alto is so bad with solar permitting that every single reputable solar company has basically abandoned and refused to do solar and solar storage work in Palo Alto," Cinnamon told this news organization in a recent interview. "It's so expensive, time consuming and frustrating."

He recalled the 2010 incident that made him throw in the towel. First, the city requested that he provide them with a printed installation manual for the solar inverter that his company was installing, even though it was available online. After he submitted one — and waited more than three weeks for a response — the city requested a specification for a bracket he would use to attach the inverter to the wall. He provided that and waited a few more weeks. Then he was asked to provide engineering drawings for the screws he would use to attach the bracket that affixes the inverter to the wall. Then more waiting.

By the time Cinnamon was asked for specifications for the torque tool his company was using to drill in the screws for the bracket, he had accumulated a 5-inch-thick loose-leaf notebook of engineering plans and supporting documents.

And he'd had enough.

"I called the customer and said, 'We're done.' We walked away and gave the customer's deposit back," Cinnamon said. "We saw that this is never going to end."

Cinnamon is hardly alone. Contractors and Palo Alto residents are awash with horror stories about the city's permitting process, whether for solar systems, generators or electric vehicle chargers. Some companies, like Cinnamon's, now stay away from Palo Alto altogether. Others, like Cobalt Power, add a $2,500 surcharge when installing in Palo Alto, according to emails from the company that the Utilities Advisory Commission saw last month.

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Fire Department confronts recruiting challenge as female firefighters opt out

Jennifer Krusing, right, helps clear debris after a house fire on Channing Avenue in Palo Alto in June 2013. Krusing, who retired in 2019, is one of several high-ranked female firefighters who have left the city in recent years. Embarcadero Media file photo.

When Catherine Capriles was hired by the Palo Alto Fire Department in 1994, she was part of a group of 10 incoming firefighters: five men and five women.

Capriles, who retired as deputy chief in 2018, said that during the earlier part of her tenure, Palo Alto had a higher proportion of women than any department in the state, going to as high as 13 women at its apex. The chief who hired her, Ruben Grijalva, prioritized recruitment of women and minorities, she said. The class before hers, she noted, had seven women and three men.

"He made it a priority," Capriles told this news organization. "He fought for and made specific decisions toward recruiting minorities and women."

Today, the Palo Alto Fire Department is one of many across the nation that is struggling — and failing — to recruit female firefighters. According to a recent Santa Clara County civil grand jury report — titled "Why aren't there more female firefighters?" — Palo Alto had 90 male firefighters and just five female firefighters in 2019. After the retirement of a female captain last December and staffing reductions due to budget cuts, the city now has 81 firefighters, four of whom are women, Fire Chief Geo Blackshire said Monday during the City Council's discussion of the report.

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Experts: Economic recovery will take years

Photo by Magali Gauthier

As the number of COVID-19 cases continued to spike across Santa Clara County this week, Palo Alto's city leaders found themselves staring at two distinct but related assignments: manage a raging health crisis and try to save the local economy from falling into a rapid downward spiral.

The county's shelter-in-place orders, which have been in effect since mid-March, may have prevented a deeper public health crisis in the region, but they have also taken a heavy toll on the business sector. Scores of restaurants and retailers have shut down. Some eateries pivoted to outdoor dining, only to find the activity suddenly prohibited under the county's most recent stay-at-home directive. Other businesses, including gyms, hotels and entertainment venues, face an even more uncertain future as residents curtail their travel plans and the work-from-home model continues to stick.

So far, the effects of the economic recession on the Peninsula have been significant but geographically uneven. In some areas, sales tax revenues have remained relatively flat; in others, they have plunged steeply. Palo Alto and Mountain View both fall in the latter category, according to a report from Thomas Adams, whose firm Avenu Insights and Analytics serves as Palo Alto's sales tax consultant. In the third quarter of 2020, sales tax revenues in Palo Alto dropped by 23.2% from the same period in 2019. In Mountain View, the decline was 24.2%. By contrast, sales tax revenues in Redwood City and San Mateo shrank by only 0.1%, while in Walnut Creek they went up by 1.3%, according to Adams.

As the number of COVID-19 cases continued to spike across Santa Clara County this week, Palo Alto's city leaders found themselves staring at two distinct but related assignments: manage a raging health crisis and try to save the local economy from falling into a rapid downward spiral.

The county's shelter-in-place orders, which have been in effect since mid-March, may have prevented a deeper public health crisis in the region, but they have also taken a heavy toll on the business sector. Scores of restaurants and retailers have shut down. Some eateries pivoted to outdoor dining, only to find the activity suddenly prohibited under the county's most recent stay-at-home directive. Other businesses, including gyms, hotels and entertainment venues, face an even more uncertain future as residents curtail their travel plans and the work-from-home model continues to stick.

So far, the effects of the economic recession on the Peninsula have been significant but geographically uneven. In some areas, sales tax revenues have remained relatively flat; in others, they have plunged steeply. Palo Alto and Mountain View both fall in the latter category, according to a report from Thomas Adams, whose firm Avenu Insights and Analytics serves as Palo Alto's sales tax consultant. In the third quarter of 2020, sales tax revenues in Palo Alto dropped by 23.2% from the same period in 2019. In Mountain View, the decline was 24.2%. By contrast, sales tax revenues in Redwood City and San Mateo shrank by only 0.1%, while in Walnut Creek they went up by 1.3%, according to Adams.

"While you can look at statewide numbers, each jurisdiction is its own entity and has its own trends," Adams said during a Nov. 30 panel discussion on the impending economic recovery.

In Palo Alto, the trends are looking particularly grim. City staff are currently projecting a $34.6 million drop in tax revenues, with sales-tax receipts decreasing by $13.8 million from last year's $34.3 million and hotel-tax revenues plunging by $14.4 million, from $29.3 million to $14.9 million, as hotels still report vacancies of about 80%.

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Bay Area's new growth plan eyes massive housing influx in Silicon Valley

Sometime in early 2021, city planners throughout the Bay Area will receive a daunting assignment: a mandate to accommodate their cities' "fair share" of the region's projected housing growth.

For cities like Palo Alto and Mountain View, this will mean building more than 10,000 homes between 2023 and 2031, and raising their total housing stock by more than 33%.

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Meet the ten candidates vying for the Palo Alto City Council

From top to bottom, left to right: Pat Burt, Rebecca Eisenberg, Lydia Kou, Ed Lauing, Steve Lee, Raven Malone, Greer Stone, Greg Tanaka, Cari Templeton and Ajit Varma are running for the Palo Alto City Council this fall. Photos by Magali Gauthier.

The race for Palo Alto City Council has drawn a diverse set of candidates, each of whom has their own vision for tackling the mounting issues facing the city.

From detailed profiles to video interviews to our editorial board's endorsements, here's what you need to know about the 10 candidates.

To read the series of profiles, click here.