HomeMy WebLinkAboutMay 19History Committee Meeting Minutes
May 19, 2009
Meeting called to order at 2:16 pm by Mary Ann Malcolm, Chair.
Roll call
Committee Members present: Bill Downey, Les Earnest, Maryann Malcolm, Bob Stutz
Committee Member absent: Nobuko Cleary
Associate Member present: Barbara Packard
Council Liaison absent: Jean Mordo
Review of Minutes: The Committee reviewed and approved without modification the
minutes of its 4/21/09 meeting.
Historical Sites and Structures Subcommittee. The Committee was pleased to see that
Barbara Packard is recovering from her illness and will resume work on this project.
Town Picnic display. Committee members are invited to participate in selecting
historical artifacts to be displayed at the Town Picnic on June 7. This will be done at the
beginning of the Inventory Subcommittee Meeting in Council Chambers on Tuesday,
May 26 at 1:30 pm. The Subcommittee will continue cataloging artifacts after that.
Requests to Council. The Committee will request that the Council fund an outside
agency to scan the Town’s historical artifacts and to create a facility to display some of
these artifacts. We note that the History Committee unanimously adopted the following
resolution at their meeting on June 17, 2008.
Whereas the Town has a number of historical artifacts that are worthy of public
display and whereas there likely are additional artifacts that residents might be
willing to donate, we recommend that the Council adopt a long range plan to
make these materials accessible through a combination of additions to the Town
website and the creation of a Los Altos Hills History Museum and in the
meantime encourage the public donation to the Town of both historical artifacts
and private funding for this project, to be kept in a separate Town account.
That resolution was offered along with a number of other recommendations to the
Council at their meeting on August 28, 2008 but though they approved a number of our
recommendations for street and pathway names they chose not to act on this resolution.
The Committee requests that they now address this issue.
Jean Mordo reportedly will ask the Council to add four additional members to the History
Committee.
Biography Project. Les Earnest suggested that the Committee consider only people who
are prominent nationally or internationally or who played very significant roles in the
development of our town. He offered the following first cut at the categories to be
considered:
Academics
Artists
Athletes
Entrepreneurs & Business Leaders
Governmental Leaders
Inventors
Philanthropists
Writers
Les proposed that nominations be accepted from any source, that decisions about who to
include be made by the History Committee, which would assign responsibility for writing
the biographies and that each one would be about one page in length. The Committee
agreed to use these guidelines to begin the project.
Public Comment None.
Meeting Adjourned at 3:05 PM
Submitted by Les Earnest, Secretary