From the Archives

As the hunt for debris from the disintegrated space shuttle Columbia expanded the week of Feb. 9, 2003 with deployment of NASA recovery teams in California and Arizona, reports of recovered items continued to turn up, including a possible piece found on the driveway of a Woodside home.

Cynthia DeBenedetti noticed the anomalous 3-inch by 3-inch piece of black foam as a group of artist friends gathered at her Woodside home on Southdale Way for a critique, the 50-year-old landscape painter said.

Neighbors galvanizing to support worker center

Residents of the Humboldt Square townhouse development at San Mateo’s Third Avenue Gateway began the long and difficult process of lobbying others to support a day labor center. Approximately 25 people gathered at the Martin Luther King Center to find out how they can build momentum for a city-operated day labor center, or as San Mateo’s Housing and Neighborhood Improvement Manager Bob Muehlbauer likes to put it, a "worker resource center.”

Humboldt Square is a 26-unit townhouse development with units beginning at about $500,000. Although housing is scarce in the city, residents say they can’t get buyers because of a growing number of day laborers who gather looking for work outside their front door.

Two thumbs up for downtown cinema

Amidst the neon glow, over 1,500 people gathered at San Mateo’s newest attraction Feb. 4, 2003 to help the needy and sit in downtown’s new 12 screen theater.

For one can of food people got a ticket to see one of last year’s blockbuster movie’s like Minority Report, Barbershop and About Schmidt. The donated food was collected by Second Harvest Food Bank, the counties largest non-profit provider of food to needy families. Most found it a small price to pay compared the regular $9.50 admission charge. Except for one man who was assaulted at the theater, people were impressed with last night’s events. The man was punched in the face by a homeless man after he asked the man to move.

The man was asked to leave the theater and was taken away by one of the 12 police officers who were on duty at the cinema last night. The incident was handled quickly and most people didn’t even know it happened.

Gray Davis says will veto car tax hike

Breaking with most fellow Democrats in the Legislature, Gov. Gray Davis said Feb. 4, 2003 he’ll veto a bill that’s designed to trigger an increase in vehicle license fees to head off the possibility of $4 billion in local budget cuts.

"Raising the VLF out of the context of a total budget solution is unwise,” Davis said at a news conference.

The governor said signing the bill would anger Republican legislators, whose support he needs for a two-thirds vote to approve a new state budget. It would also be difficult to defend the bill against a court challenge, since it would increase a tax without a two-thirds vote, he added.

He urged lawmakers to "go back to the drawing boards” and send him a bill that includes budget cuts, but no VLF increase, "as soon as humanly possible.”

The veto was to kill a package of about $8.6 billion in state budget cuts and funding shifts that Democratic lawmakers tied to enactment of the VLF bill. Davis wants even more cuts — $12.8 billion — to begin to chip away at a deficit that could reach $34.6 billion.

From the archives highlights events five years ago this week. It appears in the Thursday edition.