CASTRO VALLEY FORUM A COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER SERVING CASTRO VALLEY SINCE 1989
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 2025
YEAR 37
BUILDING COMMUNITY
INSIDE YOUR
Meadows Finds Purpose and Meaning in CV
FORUM
A Green Mind CV fifth grader walks to school daily for Earth Day awareness
By Michael Singer CASTRO VALLEY FORUM
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A Powerful Talk ‘Paralyzed to Powerful’ speaker comes to Castro Valley in May
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By Mike McGuire CASTRO VALLEY FORUM
A New Law Law permits passing of decedent’s home without a full probate
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INDEX Classified Ads ........ 8 Events .................. 4 Homes .................... 6 Obituaries ........... 11 Opinions .............. 11 Our Town ................ 3 Seniors .................... 5 Sheriff’s Report .... 3 Sports ................... 12 Weather ................ 2 WWW.MYCVFORUM.COM
NO. 16
Local restaurants still reeling from a postCOVID pandemic slowdown can apply for resilience grants of up to $5,000 through April 26, thanks to an industry-focused non-profit. Restaurants Care, a program of the nonprofit California Restaurant Foundation, is offering its grants with funding from Pacific Gas & Electric Co., among others. The related California Restaurant Association is an advocacy group for the state’s restaurant industry. There will be 230 grants awarded around the state. Past winners have included at least one from Castro Valley and several each from San Leandro and Hayward. Restaurants can use those grants to train employees, buy kitchen equipment, upgrade their technology or overcome unforeseen hardship. To qualify, restaurants must be in PG&E’s service area, have five locations or fewer, and generate less than $3 million in revenue annually per location. The grants aim to help restaurants strengthen their business, support their customers, and prepare for the future.
Gary Slate, president and CEO of the Castro Valley-Eden Area Chamber of Commerce, said the Chamber is not involved with awarding the Resilience grants, but will happily help local businesses apply if they contact the Chamber. They are at info@castrovalleychamber.com, or call (510) 537-5300. Slate said, “We’ve helped local businesses apply for other grants in the past, and we’re happy to help with this one. You don’t even have to be a Chamber member, though we’d happily welcome you if you’d like to join.” Some 1,603 independent restaurants in California have received past grants to build resilience within their businesses, according to Restaurants Care. Some 28 percent used the money to upgrade equipment, 25 percent used it for employee training and retention, 24 percent for the restaurant to survive the drop in revenue from COVID-19, 13 percent to survive loss of business during the Hollywood strikes, six percent for technology upgrades and four percent to overcome unforeseen hardship. see GRANTS on page 3
When you ask Marian Meadows what fuels her work, her answer is simple yet profound: connection, compassion, and community. “I am about the Golden Rule and helping people find purpose and meaning,” Meadows told the Forum. As the Coordinator of Behavioral Health at Castro Valley Unified School District, Marian Meadows Marian has spent over a decade building bridges between But Marian’s roots in Castro schools, students, families, Valley go back even further. and the broader community— “My family is old-school quietly becoming one of the Castro Valley,” she says. Her town’s most influential leaders grandfather, Dr. Neil McMilin youth mental health and lan, was an oral surgeon at wellness. see MEADOWS on page 10
MAC Airs their Grievances with EBMUD Site to curb a proposed long-term soil-moving project from the utility. After chastising the East EBMUD has had a trench Bay Municipal Utility District soil stockpile site on Miller (EBMUD) at a recent meeting, Road, off Redwood Road, the Castro Valley Municipal where excavated materials Advisory Council (MAC) from pipeline construction and chose to air their grievances maintenance activities have and concerns as an action item been stored since the 1970s. at their meeting this Monday. The site also stores rock and sand for backfill. Soil removal Back in March, the MAC took the unusual step of mak- projects were completed in see MAC on page 11 ing a motion to ask the county By Amy Sylvestri
CASTRO VALLEY FORUM