STEPPING UP … Palo Alto has seen a surge of interest among residents seeking to join its most influential advisory panel, the Planning and Transportation Commission. The Office of the City Clerk received 19 applications from residents looking to fill positions that were left open when former Vice Chair Keith Reckdahl and Commissioner George Lu were elected to the council. A third vacancy will open up at the end of March, when veteran Commissioner Doria Summa terms out. The number of candidates created a dilemma for the City Council, which has historically interviewed all candidates, but which a year ago made the process more selective by limiting it only to those candidates who get support from two members for advancing to the interview phase. In this case, the council made an exception and lowered the threshold to one vote under the urging of Council member Pat Burt. “We have some people with really interesting backgrounds that we don’t know, that we only come to understand who we want to vote for through the interview process,” Burt said. “And yet many of them may be excluded from even being interviewed. … I’m inclined to want to make sure that we interview more rather than fewer.” The council agreed to lower the threshold and interview all candidates who receive at least one vote of support from council members, a condition that narrowed the list down to 13. The candidate list includes some familiar names, including former commission Vice Chair Arthur Keller, and Terry Holzemer, a teacher who is on the board of the citizens group Palo Altans for Sensible Zoning. Also advancing to the interview round are: William Glazier, Daniel Hekier, Todd James, Thomas Kellerman, Declan King, Henrik Morkner, Salim Parak, Forest Peterson, Michael Regula and Rika YeaKyung Yamamoto. The top vote getter was Kevin Ji, who advanced to the interview round with support from all seven council members (the other 12 candidates had all received between one and four votes after the council agreed to waive its two-member support rule). Each candidate will undergo a 10-minute interview on Feb. 3 before the council makes its appointments on Feb. 10.
A NEW PERSPECTIVE … Nineteen-year-old Stanford student Jessica Korobkin, often took to singing and writing songs when she faced hardships throughout her youth. But she could have never expected those songs to make up a Broadway-style musical at Stanford University. Her musical “Fading In,” explores the difficulties and complexities of eating disorders in an effort to start the conversation about the taboo subject. In the production, a young woman, new to art school in New York, is forced to confront the death of her younger sister once she learns her roommate and friend is suffering from an eating disorder. Korobkin, a pre-med student, took inspiration from her real-life experiences with a loved one who had developed an eating disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an already isolating time, Korobkin felt even more helpless, she said. “But I realized there was a story there that hasn’t really been told,” she said. “It’s a story about a person who wants to help someone with an eating disorder but doesn’t know how. Someone who might make mistakes but has the best intentions.” While Korobkin participated in many musicals growing up, she didn’t typically play instruments and make music. So when she decided to create her musical in high school, she immediately started recruiting local musicians online and soon, she was able to put on a performance at her school in Southern California. But the musical has been elevated and transformed, Korobkin said, after she connected with composer Lucy Chen, who recomposed the production. Korobkin hopes her musical will not only make people feel more comfortable discussing eating disorders, but touch on the pressure women face to uphold beauty standards, she said. People should not be blamed for eating disorders, she said – like any other disease, they can be caused by environmental factors. “If someone walks away from the musical and realizes they need to help someone in their lives, that’s a huge win for me,” Korobkin said. The musical will air at Stanford’s Pigott Theater on February 27 and 28, ticket sales will be posted online soon.