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Community Interest
City Hires Assistant City Manager
After a significant, in-depth recruiting process, Redwood City announced
today the hiring of Ms. Audrey Ramberg as the city’s assistant city manager.
Ramberg was most recently senior advisor and project leader for the County
of San Mateo and brings with her a great deal of experience in the wideranging
field of municipal management. She will start work in Redwood City
on March 18.
“I’m very pleased to welcome Audrey to Redwood City. I know she’ll
excel as a crucial member of our executive team,” said City Manager Bob
Bell. “Audrey offers Redwood City a wide range of experience and success
in every aspect of municipal management and a great combination of skills,
talent and knowledge. She beat out over 100 candidates in what was a very
competitive process.”
Ramberg has over 22 years of experience in public service and holds an
M.B.A. from Stanford University as well as a B.A. in political science and
economics from Duke University.
“Redwood City is really an excellent fit with my experience and interests,
and I believe I can bring a lot of value to the organization,” said Ramberg. “I
want to work with people who thrive on continuous improvement, who take
very seriously their commitment to the community and who are proud of the
excellent services they provide — and that describes the people who work
for Redwood City. I’m truly looking forward to joining the ongoing efforts of
Redwood City as it moves forward in so many ways.”
In addition to serving as a key resource for leading and facilitating strategic
planning and citywide process improvement initiatives, in this newly created
position Ramberg will oversee the city’s human resources and public information
functions, along with the operations of the city manager’s office. She will also
serve in the city manager’s absence.
Prior to her most recent work with San Mateo County, Ramberg held a number
of key positions in local government, including assistant city manager in Menlo
Park, assistant to the city manager in Palo Alto and assistant to the San Mateo
County manager. She has also worked in a high-level consulting capacity and was
founder/director of Peninsula Partnership for Children, Youth and Families.
Cañada College Introduces African Wasp
to Help Control the Olive Fruit Fly
significant portion of its history attached to or within a single host organism.
The exploration took researchers to South Africa, Namibia, India, China and
other countries. Scientists shipped a number of parasitoids to California and
studied them in quarantine before identifying two — Psyttalia lounsburyi
and Psyttalia humilis — that have been released throughout the state’s olive
growing region. Both species were released at Cañada in 2010–11. “These
wasps are specialists,” Nieto said. “They have co-evolved with the olive fruit
fly and are well-suited to utilize the fruit fly larvae for reproduction.”
The wasps are very small and look like little ants with wings. They are
also incapable of stinging people. And while they pose no threat to people or
animals, they pose a major threat to olive fruit flies.
Female wasps deposit eggs into a fruit fly maggot inside of an olive. The
egg hatches into a smaller larva that feeds internally on the maggot. After this maggot
pupates, instead of a fly emerging, a wasp emerges to seek out additional maggots.
Since the wasps were released on campus, Nieto and his students have been
monitoring the progress of the little African wasp. “Cañada College is one
of only two sites in the state where Psyttalia lounsburyi has been recovered
for two consecutive years,” Nieto said. “This is encouraging, but several
challenges exist and could still derail this project.”
Nieto said the wasp population is dependent on the density of the fruit fly
population so, as the fruit fly population shrinks, so do the densities of the wasps.
“The wasps will not completely eliminate the pest,” he said. “Instead, our
project strives to reduce the olive fruit fly population in regions outside of
commercial production. That includes olive trees that are used for landscaping,
located in preserved open space or in residential areas that are not managed
and thereby act as a pest reservoir, capable of reinfesting commercial olive
groves annually.”
Cañada has partnered with UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, the California
Department of Food and Agriculture and the United States Department of
Agriculture on this project. A scientific paper describing the work will soon
be submitted to the journal Environmental Entomology.
The college also received funding from the San Mateo County Community
College District Trustees Fund to help integrate the research into the Biology
110 curriculum at Cañada.
“Students collectively generate hypotheses, design experimental protocols,
collect olives, rear out insects, graph results and write a paper describing the
project,” Nieto said. “Having hundreds of these trees on campus provides
instructors and students wonderful learning opportunities that are literally
steps away from the classroom. While I’m still in the process of refining this
curriculum, I think it’s a wonderful example of how undergraduate students
can participate meaningfully in active research.”
Redwood City Fire Department’s
“Fire Protection Rating” Improves
A small African wasp that is the natural enemy of the olive fruit fly appears
to be gaining a toehold in the olive trees on the campus of Cañada College in
Redwood City which could bring good news to California’s olive growers.
Diego Nieto, an adjunct biology professor at the college, and students in
Biology 110 are part of a statewide effort to find a way to control the olive
fruit fly, whose larvae feed on the fruit of olive trees and is considered a serious
pest. California produces more than 95 percent of the olives grown in the U.S.
The olive fruit fly was first discovered in California in 1998 and was
later found in San Mateo County in 2001. California is the only area in the
Western Hemisphere where the olive fruit fly has been found. Scientists
discovered that natural predators in California were largely ineffective in
controlling the spread of the fruit fly.
“The olive fruit fly is in the family Tephrididae, which is home to several
serious agriculture pests, including the Mediterranean fruit fly, Mexican fruit
fly and Oriental fruit fly,” said Nieto. “These flies are capable of utilizing ripening fruit
for oviposition, which makes them especially damaging to fruit production.
The fruit flies we commonly encounter, on the other hand, are in the family
Drosophilidae and are only capable of laying eggs in overripe fruit.”
The widespread and rapid establishment of the olive fruit fly in California
led to a worldwide search for parasitoids, an organism that spends a
The Redwood City Fire Department announced that after extensive evaluation,
its fire-protection services, as rated by an insurance industry advisory
company, improved from a Class 3 to a Class 2.
The classification by Insurance Services Office Inc. (ISO), known as the
Public Protection Classification (PPC) program, assesses the fire-protection
efforts in a particular community. The Redwood City Fire Department was
graded on communications, water supply, operations, training, and fire
prevention codes and programs. The department received an overall score of
89.27 out of a possible 100 total points. This new rating places the department
in the top 1 percent safest of all U.S. municipal rated fire departments.
“Our recent evaluation indicates the commitment made by our City Council,
city management, the Redwood City Water Division and San Mateo County’s
public safety communications,” said Fire Chief James Skinner. “We are extremely
proud and dedicated to be providing the best services to our community.”
ISO collects information on municipal fire-protection efforts in
communities throughout the United States. In each of those communities,
ISO analyzes the relevant data using its Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS).
The company then assigns a Public Protection Classification from 1 to 10.
Class 1 generally represents superior property fire protection, and Class 10 indicates
that the area’s fire-suppression program doesn’t meet ISO’s minimum criteria.
By classifying communities’ ability to suppress fires, ISO helps the communities
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