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Residents are encouraged to help out in wrap over 500 toys and books tonight at Red Morton Gym in Redwood City.

The gift wrapping event, set to run from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Red Morton Community Center at 1120 Roosevelt Ave., will support the annual Redwood City/San Mateo County Toy & Book Drive.

The drive serves hundreds of local families in need through various fundraising and donation efforts, including toy and book barrels located at dozens of local businesses and public centers, along with sponsorships and donations from many individuals and businesses.

Sequoia Yacht Club (SYC) donated bicycles this year, while the engineering department at Redwood City-based Zazzle.com donated a collection of Legos and books. Hoot Judkins Furniture launched a Toys for Tax promotion where it paid the sales tax for purchasers who donate a toy for the effort. A Tournament for Tots softball competition also helps contribute toys to the large pile, adding to the eclectic list of fundraising efforts. Unfortunately, a Charity Softball event featuring local law enforcement and fire officials had to be postponed due to last weekend’s rains.

And there’s also been many community members assisting police and sheriff’s officials in gathering, transporting and sorting the gifts, from Rotarians to members of the Girl Scouts and British Swim School.

At the end, Santa Claus delivers presents personally to each child’s home escorted by uniformed police officer, deputy sheriff or firefighter personnel.

Photo courtesy of the Redwood City/San Mateo County Toy and Book Drive Facebook page.

Riders’ satisfaction with Caltrain has steadily grown in recent years, with the latest annual Customer Satisfaction Survey finding 82-percent of passengers were somewhat or very satisfied with their experience, while 3-percent were somewhat or very dissatisfied, the transit agency announced today.

The recent survey of 3,313 passengers revealed the highest rating for station and onboard experience since 2005, at 4.07 on a scale of 1 to 5. Significant gains have been since 2014, when the rating was 3.93, the transit agency said.

Contractor Corey, Canapary & Galanis has conducted the survey since 2013, but Caltrain has been doing customer satisfaction surveys since 1998.

The rider experience at stations showed a “statistically significant decrease” in cleanliness of stations and parking lots, which dropped from 3.99 last year to 3.90 this year.

Onboard trains, riders reported cleanliness of train interiors at 3.85, only slightly better than 3.82 last year and it was 3.88 in 2016.

Riders reported increasing courtesy among conductors (from 4.37 in 2017 to 4.42 in 2018), increasing on-time arrivals at a rider’s destination (4.07 in 2017 to 4.16 in 2018) and adequacy and clarity of routine onboard announcements (from 3.72 in 2017 to 3.81 in 2018).

These survey results may or may not reflect recent changes by Caltrain since the previous survey, which include reduced weekend service (headways increasing from 60 minutes to 90 minutes to accommodate electrification construction), fare increases to the zone fare, the Go Pass, the Monthly Pass, the Monthly Parking Permit and the elimination of the 8-ride Ticket. Also different this year is the pilot program allowing bikes to board first at Mountain View, Palo Alto and Redwood City stations and a new Caltrain mobile ticketing app, among others.

“The biggest gains in the survey were in the categories of on-time arrival, being informed of delays and the adequacy of onboard announcements,” according to the report. “The survey showed a decrease in station dwell times, which could be attributed to the pilot Bikes Board First program launched earlier this year.”

An effort to clean up a homeless encampment in Redwood City was spearheaded by the homeless people living there.

David Shearin, executive director of Street Life Ministries, the nonprofit serving local homeless and at-risk populations, told Climate Online he received a call Tuesday from some of the homeless folks living in the encampment located in the northern El Camino area. They decided to take the initiative to clean up their campsite, bagging up all of the trash and setting it on the side in a pile. Shearin was told it was an effort to draw less attention to the site from local authorities.

When Shearin saw the cleaned up site, he was impressed at the amount of work that was accomplished. Illegally dumped old mattresses and pallets had been collected, so Shearin  contacted Chris Rasmussen, the homeless outreach coordinator for the Redwood City Police Department, asking Rasmussen to contact Public Works. Public Works responded in a big way, joining in the cleanup effort, Shearin said.

“They went out there with their large trailers,” Shearin said. “[Public Works workers] saw how great a job [the homeless people] had done, and so they got out and started raking.”

The nonprofit shared photos of the effort on Facebook.

This isn’t the first time Streetlife Ministries has been involved in such cleanups. In April, it held a Community Clean Day at Shasta Street under Woodside Road alongside the Redwood City Police Department. The area was the site of an abandoned homeless camp and was neglected by state agencies.

“Thank you to everyone involved!” the nonprofit stated on the social media platform regarding the latest effort. “We love Redwood City and how our community comes together. Our homeless folks often get a bad rap, but we want ALL to know that this was a group effort that was started by our folks on the street to make our city look better and to be part of the solution.”

A program offering discounts for the purchase of electric vehicles in San Mateo County is gaining attention.

Now through Dec. 31, Peninsula Clean Energy’s Go Electric EV incentive program provides thousands in savings for buyers and leasers.

With rebates provided by Peninsula Clean Energy, the auto manufacturer, California Air Resources Board and the IRS, one Redwood City man reduced the price of his brand new all-electric Nissan Leaf by more than $13,000, according to ABC7 Bay Area’s Michael Finney and Randall Yip, who recently produced the story titled, “Generous electric vehicle rebate in San Mateo County offered.”

The news station reports drivers can get up to $23,000 in rebates in certain circumstances.

Since Peninsula Clean Energy started the program in October, Nissan of Burlingame reported a 66-percent increase in sales, according to the report.

Peninsula Clean Energy is funding the program via revenues generated from selling electricity. To learn how to access the savings, visit Peninsula Clean Energy’s site here to see the rebates offered from the organization as well as the local dealerships. At the bottom of that webpage, you’ll find links to information on how to access state and federal rebates.