Due to the decline in economic conditions, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) will implement routing and frequency service changes beginning January 11, 2010.
After an extensive public input process, VTA revised its original service reduction plan to
include the public’s comment and implement some of the changes noted below:

Route Changes

Line 33 and 47 combined to provide improved east-west service
in Milpitas
Line 42 extended to Menard Drive
Line 81 will only operate between Cupertino Square and
Santa Clara Transit Center on weekends

Discontinued Saturday Service

VTA Bus Lines 11 and 13

Discontinued Sunday Service

VTA Bus Lines 13, 42, 43, 45 and 46

Schedule and/or Frequency Changes

VTA Light Rail; and Bus Lines 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 81, 82, 88, 89, 101, 104, 121, 140, 168, 180, 181, 304, 328, 330 and the DASH Shuttle.

Please plan ahead. Get your revised route timeguide onboard light rail and buses
by January 1. Contact VTA Customer Service for a free trip plan.
Visit www.vta.org/servicereductions for the detailed list of changes.

VTA Contact Information:
(408) 321-2300
TTY Only (408) 321-2330

I find the letters to the editor about Walmart very interesting. Mr Whiteside’s letter (December 3 Milpitas Post) lacks a factual basis in reality. The Walmart expansion will indeed negatively impact Savemart and will jeopardize nearly 65 grocery workers at Savemart and possibly other local stores.

The City of Milpitas hired CBRE, a consultant for Walmart, to do significant parts of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR). While this relationship between the City and Walmart creates a financial incentive for CBRE to favor the proposed Walmart expansion, the recently released draft (EIR) states that SaveMart on Calaveras Blvd would likely close as a result of the Walmart expansion.

The Milpitas General Plan states that the city must attempt to retain businesses and expand employment in its land use decisions. The Walmart expansion, then, violates the City’s General Plan because it is likely to close not retain businesses.

Mr Whiteside appears to parrot the corporate line and the prepared talking points of a “benevolent” Walmart. I urge him to read the draft EIR prepared by Walmart’s own consultant.

However, I shouldn’t be too harsh on Mr Whiteside. The document is 524 pages making it barely comprehensible to the average citizen, and disrespectful of all those who would engage in this process. The draft EIR appears to violate CEQA standards which call for reports to be no more than 125 pages.

Walmart’s own consultants have buried the harsh reality amid hundreds of pages of legalese that the expansion project is a job killer for many Milpitas residents who have worked at SaveMart for decades and have contributed to our local economy.

I oppose the expansion of the Walmart store and I wish our new Planning Commissioner, Erik Larsen, the best as he represents the interests of Milpitas residents and works to protect our quality of life. No one deserves to lose thier job in this economic down turn – - the worst since the Great Depression.

Jennifer Touchton
Milpitas Coalition for a Better Community

Dear neighbors,

I am against the Walmart expansion for several reasons.

The main one is that it will add 85 low paying, under insured jobs, in which employees are unfairly treated.

The Real Facts about Wal-Mart

While Wal-Mart isn’t the only big box store criticized for its policies, it has become a symbol for much of what is wrong with employers. Wal-Mart reported a net income of over $11 billion last year—surely plenty of money to remedy some questionable workplace practices—yet stories persist about wage law violations, inadequate health care, exploitation of workers, and the retailer’s anti-union stance. Altogether, some 5,000 lawsuits are filed against Wal-Mart each year, or roughly 17 suits per working day.

Wal-Mart is the single largest importer of foreign-produced goods in the United States, and the majority of its private-label clothing is manufactured in at least 48 countries around the world—and almost none in the United States.

While paying their American workers substandard wages, they have forced American workers out of work by refusing to stock American-made products, preferring Communist-made products from China.

We need a Whole Foods, a Tree of Life, a Trader Joes in Milpitas before we need a bigger Wal-Mart!

Ann Zeise
GoMilpitas!

This past Thursday, November 19, a second community meeting was held about the proposed Walmart Supertcenter.  The City of Milpitas has now released the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the project application. The public has 45-days to comment.

We heard loud and clear from neighborhood residents, faith leaders, community organizations, and grocery workers that the City that Milpitas does not need a Walmart Supercenter. Preliminary analysis shows that a Supercenter comes with a lot of risks.

• Displacement of local businesses. Milpitas already serves as a regional retail magnet. A 24-hour Supercenter will not generate substantial gains in sales tax revenues, since it will simply displace other existing retail.
• Urban decay. As businesses close as a result of a Supercenter, property values will fall due to urban decay and property tax revenues will be lower than otherwise.
• Traffic congestion. The Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) states that the 24-hour Supercenter will have ‘significant unavoidable impacts’ on the roadways due to traffic increases.
• Lower wages. Wal-Mart pays lower wages and benefits than most of its competitors, particularly in the grocery arena. These lower wages will impact Milpitas’ economy since many employees are likely to be residents. These new jobs will displace higher paying jobs in the grocery industry.
• Lower quality of life. When a community’s mom-and-pop operations lose to national big-box chains, the community loses as well. And although Wal-Mart is located on the other side of the Interstate, a 24-hour Supercenter will impact the entire city, including your neighborhood stores.

The City of Milpitas should not allow the Supercenter. Let’s maintain our quality of life. Tell the City to reject the Wal-Mart expansion, like many other Bay Area cities. The deadline for letters is Friday, December 18 at 5:00 OM.  Letters should be addressed to:

Ms. Cindy Hom, Assistant Planner
City of Milpitas
Planning and Neighborhood Services Department
455 E. Calaveras Boulevard
Milpitas, CA 95035
E-Mail: chom2@ci.milpitas.ca.gov

Thank you for getting involved.  Also a letter or email to the Milpitas Post would be very helpful.  The next meetings about the Walmart proposal will be Thursday, December 10, 6:00 PM at AMF Mission Bowling Lanes, and Saturday, January 9, 8:00 AM, at Sunnyhills United Methodist Church.  Please call me to RSVP, (408) 786-8133 cell.

Erik Larsen, Lay Leader
Sunnyhills United Methodist Church

Silicon Valley Unwired is proud to announce the pending turn up of the free citywide WiFi network we announced at the State of the Community address on April 22, 2009. The network is in its final testing phases and we plan on having it available to the public in a few weeks. Watch this space (and our website) for more information as it becomes available.

We have been very busy since the announcement reconfiguring the network to make it more streamlined and efficient in preparation for opening it up to the public. Not only have we installed the latest software versions on the existing equipment, we have also moved nodes around the city and even added more than 10 nodes to the network. From our experience in Mountain View, we think Milpitas should have around 500 nodes to cover the city properly. Currently the network has just over 300 nodes, so obviously we have a ways to go. As our non-profit is able to raise more donations, we will begin to purchase and install the additional needed radios. We have added two addtional backhaul distribution sites by erecting portable tower systems at two Fire Station locations. This has given us the flexibility that we need to expand the network by distributing bandwidth more evenly throughout the network.

While we have improved the network quite a bit from the Earthlink days, it will still take more funding to further develop it into a world class system (adding addtional nodes, gateways, and point to multipoint systems). We have been successful thus far in reconfiguring the network to operate more efficiently with increased bandwidth for the end user and with less maintenance required on ours or the city’s part.

For those of you not familiar with how a citywide WiFi network works, here are a few details. Most citywide WiFi networks actually have 2 wireless networks — 1 is the “access” network which uses WiFi and has mesh nodes in various neighborhoods around the city (green and blue arrows below), and the second is the Capacity Injection Layer or backhaul network (orange arrows below). Note there are 4 basestations in our design for the Milpitas network. The backhaul network is, of course, much higher speed than the access network, but the available connections are fewer and more expensive.

Milpitas WiFi Network

The access layer is standard WiFi using 802.11b/g protocol. Note that the access network is designed primarily as an outdoor network — mostly because of the physics of the radio frequencies assigned to WiFi. Unlike cellular networks which use much lower frequencies which can go through building walls much better, WiFi devices are confined to the assigned unlicensed spectrum. While the nodes out on the street light poles transmit at the maximum power allowed — 1 watt –, most laptops and handheld devices transmit at levels closer to 60 milliwatts. They do this, understandably, to conserve battery life, but it does limit their range.

To boost the transmit power of the client devices, we (and almost all other Wireless ISPs) recommend using a wifi modem — a device which translates the wireless WiFi signal to standard Ethernet which you can plug into a local switch or directly into a computer or through a small local WiFi repeater in your home. Check in the wifi modem section of our web pages to find some suggested devices which work in the network and where you can buy them.

Check our website for a FAQ about the network and how to connect as well as a map of where the current nodes are and how to reach us. Please be patient as we are working hard to bring this network up to our standard as quickly as possible.

Blog sign up works, and if you just need a contact blog for elections, let’s say, great, just delete it when you are finished with it, we manage the rest. The default theme works just fine for a quickly built broadcast point for your group or event.

Welcome to Blogs.gomilpitas.com. We are just getting started and pardon our mess.

The blogs are ready, there are over 94 themes to choose from. Pick a name and a theme and get started.

Any size or limited time blogs, regardless of how finely focused, have a place here at the goMilpitas Blogs community. We will be limiting the mix of blog types to a percentage of blogs with a physical address or phone exchange within a hundred miles or contributes to this community directly. This will probably be modified notice.

The themes are widget ready. Widgets are being added and a list will be avaiable in your admin area of your blogs. If you have had a wordpress blog before this will work much the same.