LosGatosObserver.com

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for December 18-23, 2009?

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for December 9-16, 2009?

Monday night, the Los Gatos town council voted in a new mayor. The chosen one was Vice Mayor Dianne McNutt who had previously served as mayor from Nov. 2005 to Nov. 2006.

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for November 12-18, 2009.

Police reports taken by the Los Gatos/Monte Sereno Police Department for Nov 2-8, 2009.

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for November 3-11, 2009. This week includes live music, chocolate and wine tasting and a historic homes tour.

Herbert Earl Thompson, age 83, passed away peacefully on Sept. 24 2009. 

The town’s commissioners found a Los Gatos resident’s remodeling project too extreme for approval at last night’s Planning Commission meeting.

Anyone who was in the Bay Area on Oct. 17, 1989, remembers exactly what they were doing and whom they were with at 5:04pm, when the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake hit.

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for October 8-15, 2009. This week includes live music, a local artist lecture and a visit from Assemblyman Ira Ruskin and the California Pops Orchestra performing famous movie soundtracks.

Nannie Elizabeth Jorgensen passed away peacefully on October 3, 2009 at the age of 94.

After 25 years of service, Community Against Substance Abuse (CASA) still strives for a drug-free community.

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for October 1-7, 2009. This week includes a huge community garage sale sponsored by the town of Los Gatos and the city of Monte Sereno, as well as live music and some great events at the library.

Ten questions with Los Gatos Library Director Peggy Conaway. What does this very active resident like best about the town, who are her favorite residents and what’s her favorite spot?

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for September 24-30, 2009.

A small business in Los Gatos is helping to lead the green charge in Silicon Valley, and it isn’t the type of business you would expect.

A disaster drill is being held on Saturday, Sept. 19, by the Los Gatos/Monte Sereno Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) from 8am to 1pm in Los Gatos.

Dredg started the same way most bands do, forming at Los Gatos High, playing on campus, at parties, at the local teen center and then, eventually, at local clubs. “I can remember our first real gig, at the Cactus Club in San Jose,” recalls guitarist Mark Engles.

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for September 17-23, 2009.

Leanne Keltie and Bradley Cobb will getting married on Saturday, Sept. 19, at the Los Gatos Methodist Church in Los Gatos, with Reverent David Wolf officiating.

Trevese Restaurant has called it quits after a two-and-half-year year run. Mike Miller said his eye-popping $24,000-a-month rent and inability to grow his local customer base were largely responsible for the closure.

Ten questions with Los Gatos resident Diane McNutt. What does this very active resident like best about the town, who are her favorite residents and what’s her favorite spot?

A few local roads will be closed in the evening and early morning hours from Sept. 14-22, to complete a slurry seal project.

A new wine bar might be coming soon to Los Gatos, and the town’s planning commission proved to be in favor of it Wednesday night.

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for September 10-16, 2009.

Police reports taken by the Los Gatos/Monte Sereno Police Department for Aug. 26-Sept. 6, 2009.

Ten questions with Los Gatos resident Barry Gordon. What does this very active resident like best about the town, who are his favorite residents and what’s his favorite spot?

Lunch just got a whole lot healthier for the environment at St. Mary’s School in Los Gatos, and the students can’t get enough of it.

Looking for something to do around Los Gatos? Check out this community calendar for September 3-9, 2009. Some highlights of the week: Jim Stevens and Friends at Testarossa Winery, A Labor Day Grill and a Happy Hoofers outing.

Los Gatos High School’s new principal, Markus Autrey, is setting new standards and getting ready for a fresh academic year in a place he knows pretty well.

Beautiful, loving, wife, mother and grandmother Betty Menichetti passed away August 8, 2009 at the age of 85. In lieu of a memorial service, the family will be planning a “Celebration of Life” on October 18, 2009. She is also survived by her sister Mary Sokolis and her niece Mary Ellen Delhaute and her husband Lee, along with numerous other nieces and nephews.

After experiencing the frustration of putting her father into a care facility, Barbara Smith decided to start her own company, Ask Barbara, to help seniors find the perfect assisted-care home.

In a tastefully decorated hospital room, in the arms of a beaming mother and the watchful eye of a smiling father, slept Connor Kikuo Kozuki. His tuft of black hair matched that of his happy parents. Connor has the distinction of being the first baby born in El Camino Hospital Los Gatos since it reopened.

The Los Gatos city clerk shot down two petitions sponsored by past town councilmember Steve Glickman on Wednesday.

With a glass of red wine in one hand and a microphone in the other, Santa Clara County’s first poet laureate Nils Peterson spoke to a crowd on Friday night at the Los Gatos Museums Gallery.

Peterson read several of his original poems throughout the evening and lectured on the relation between poetry and art to over 100 people.

Like many Silicon Valley high-tech workers, San Jose’s Sheri Tate dreamed of leaving the world of cubicles and long boring meetings to start her own business. As a marketing and product manager for various technology firms, she figured that her business would be high-tech related. Instead, she went a more low-tech but far tastier route—superpremium ice cream.

Topics for the Monte Sereno Town Council meeting tonight include the request for a tree removal permit to remove an Eucalyptus tree, and a weed abatement report from the county fire marshal.

The Toll House Hotel in Los Gatos has probably never seen as much fringe and feathers as it did on Saturday night during the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce’s gangster themed 10th anniversary party. Though the “Some Like it Hot” theme did reflect back to the ’20s when the first Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce started, Saturday night remembered 1999, the year that the newest incarnation of the chamber was formed and the people who helped build the chamber to what it is today.

“Ninety days” was the theme of this ceremony on Friday afternoon. Ninety days to change from Community Hospital of Los Gatos to El Camino Hospital Los Gatos, ninety days to staff a hospital, and ninety days to reopen for the community. “This ribbon-cutting ceremony represents a promise kept to this community,” said Ken Graham, CEO of El Camino Hospital. “And here we are just 90 days later.

The Los Gatos Library is encouraging children to challenge their minds and embark on reading adventures with the annual Summer Reading Program.

Look here for upcoming Town Council, commission and committee meetings for June 24, through July 1, 2009. Agenda items will be updated as they appear.

Fifteen thousand bright-yellow rubber ducks serenely floated down Los Gatos Creek at Vasona Lake Park Sunday, raising money for 20 local charities. The event was the second annual Silicon Valley Duck Race, which was sponsored by Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley. Other local charities signed up to be “duck buddies,” an honor that included selling rubber ducks to raise money for their charities. and having an information booth at the event.

Look here for upcoming Town Council, commission and committee meetings for June 18, through June 24, 2009. Agenda items will be updated as they appear.

Students walked out the front doors of Los Gatos High School on Friday evening four across, girls in white and boys in black. Smiling and laughing they waved to a sea of family and friends gathered on the front lawn as they made their way to their seats. In total, 432 students were among the graduating class of 2009, and 80 of those graduated with honors. “This is a really nice group of kids,” Principal Doug Ramezane said.

A Los Gatos couple has made a generous donation to San Jose State University’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center. SJSU alumni and longtime Los Gatos residents Larry Arzie and David Stonesifer bequeathed $1 million the LBGT Resource Center, which was established in fall 2008. It’s the largest donation the center has received.

The seventh consecutive year of Vasona Vibrations kicks off Saturday with the Avalanche Choir, purveyors of the finest Americana, folk and bluegrass tunes, featuring authentic five-part harmonies accompanied by guitar, mandolin, banjo, dobro, bass, piano and percussion.

Last night’s town council meeting brought out quite the crowd. About a dozen people came by to speak about about a proposed building on 15400 Los Gatos Boulevard. While most came to air their displeasure at the new building,  and voiced concerns about how it would increase traffic, cause safety issues and possibly block views, a few came to support the project and its design.

NC Boardshop in Los Gatos announced today that it will host the Red Bull Triple-Set on June 14. The Red Bull Triple Set is a best-trick contest that got world recognition when it was featured in the skateboarding video Strange Note and in Skateboarder magazine last year.

This Wednesday, May 20, the fifth annual CineCats Film Showcase of Los Gatos will be taking place at Calvary Church. The theme of this year’s contest is “Small Films, Big Ideas” with three categories: K-8, high school, and over 18 years old. The films are less than 10 minutes long and were judged by a panel of regional film and video professionals.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc., has joined TechForEducators.com’s board of advisors.

More than two hours were spent deciding that the Town Council would do nothing regarding two contested agenda items at the Monday night meeting.

A group of experts came to Fisher Middle School Saturday to answer questions from the community regarding the Los Gatos General Plan.

On Saturday, May 2 in the Multi-Purpose Room of Fisher Middle School, 19195 Fisher Avenue, the Town of Los Gatos is organizing four community panels to discuss with residents, experts and service providers the key topics in the General Plan Update.

For its Arbor Day celebration Friday, Los Gatos added eight trees to the 20,000-plus that already live in town, which was again named as a “Tree City USA.”

The Art Museum of Los Gatos presents a lecture on Thursday, April 23, by Cathy Kimball of the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. The topic is: “Art in the Present Tense: What it Takes from the Past; What It Brings to the Future.

Today four Los Gatos/Monte Sereno police officers will be receiving awards for their investigation into the Mark Achilli homicide.

The main topic of conversation at Monday night’s town council meeting was money. The raising of fees and the allocation of funds for grants and scholarships were the two most debated agenda items.

Under one proposal, fees would be raised to cover costs, or raised a general 3 percent, which is tagged to the U.S. Consumer Price Index. There are about 350 total fees for the town of Los Gatos. Two new fees were added this year—a $75 firearm storage fee and an alarm registration fee.

“Three, two, one…” and hundreds of children burst from their parents’ grasps and tore into the Easter-egg-strewn lawn. Yelling and screaming, they ran around the field grabbing as many brightly colored eggs as they could reach. Parents tried to follow with cameras snapping away.

Possession of burglary tools, drug possession, more drug possession, and a stolen surveillance camera (!).

The back-and-forth between Los Gatos residents and architect Ken Rodriguez went on for two and a half hours at the Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday night, as they argued the merits of a 40,000 square-foot office and retail building at 15400 Los Gatos Boulevard.

The Los Gatos Town Council is gathering at 6 p.m. Thursday for a retreat to discuss various city boards, including the youth commission, the library board, the arts commission, the community service commission, the parks commission, and the transportation and parking commission. They’ll examine what is going on with them, where they are headed and what they have accomplished.