Why is the city still operating under a General Plan last revised in 1994?

Why has Council Member Fergusson ignored drafting an updated Residential Zoning Ordinance after she lead a referendum on the Winkler/Duboc RZO and used the issue to get elected 5 years ago?

Why has Council Members Fergusson and Robinson allowed the Green Ribbon Task Force to spend almost 3 years bragging about their process but producing nothing?

How can Council Members Cline, Robinson, Fergusson and Cohen now convince the developers for the Cadillac site to return with a project that includes mixed-use of retail, housing and office after arrogantly giving the same project no support in 2007?

Who can trust these 4 council members who seem to be serving only their very small base of angry people?

How many years can this city survive economically with such an inept council?

This Council started the El Camino/Downtown planning process - unlike past Councils that ignored staff recommendations to do so. This Council has stated their intention to tackle the large M-2 business district next. Let's all hope they do.
The Council has made it clear that it respects the current zoning rules and the process that is creating a Specific Plan for El Camino and Downtown. This clarity is important for developers, property owners, businesses, and residents.
The Cadillac site property owner has made it clear that housing doesn't "pencil" for his project and that he wants to move forward now. Isn't that his right?
The Green Ribbon Task Force is continuing its efforts within the community. After all, most of the "green" actions need to come from the actions of residents and businesses - not the city.
The City's economic survival is challenged by an unprecedented national economic decline. This Council does need to hold the City Manager accountable for a sustainable budget.
I do agree with the editor that the city should establish a carbon policy before it takes up the Menlo Gateway project. The Council also should establish a fiscal policy as well, since the only certain revenue-producing part (to the city) of the current project proposal is the hotel. The remaining approximately 1.6 million square feet of office, health club, parking garages may generate no city revenue but literally tons of traffic and carbon.

This version of the Cadillac site project was conforming, the prior one was not. It was John Boyle who cast the lone vote against a conforming project, as it was Nicholas Jellins who cast the lone vote against the conforming Menlo Square project. While pro-development supporters are fond of accusing Green council members of abusing discretion, it is actually the pro-development council members who abuse their discretion.

BTW, I disagree that "transit oriented" projects will reduce emissions. Since the requirement to review carbon emissions in EIRs is new, none of the many "faux" TOD projects has yet been reviewed for emissions. I predict TOD emissions will be through the roof because of the unmitigated automobile traffic they generate. Wait until you see the emissions for the new downtown plan.

The Green Ribbon Task Force may be mired in feel-good symbolic politics, while council has a huge power to regulate emissions through CEQA which it is wasting.

The Bohannon Project would generate ~24,000 metric tons CO2e, about 22% of predicted future (2025) emissions, which the EIR claims would be mitigated to about 15,000 metric tons CO2e, but no-one understands how the EIR preparer counted the mitigation effects. Yet another danger in emerging "green" politics -- how are emissions measured and is it accurate?

I don't know how Gibboney computes his 3-4.5% figure.

Most of the Bohannon emissions (70%) are associated with project auto traffic.

Of the 1.776M total square feet of development on the Bohannon Project, only the 173k sf hotel (10% of the project) produces net revenue above costs. The health club and the office are net money losers and impact pigs. The health club generates 25% of the total project traffic, doubles the hotel operators revenue, but is not largely not taxable.

There is legitimate doubt if the new office is needed to support the hotel. So far hotel operators have carefully said and written that office is needed for the health club membership, whose revenue helps the hotel operator.

Palo Alto is currently reviewing a hotel east of 101 that doesn't require additional office and conforms to the existing height limit.

Web Link

Everyone is fixated on how much carbon will be generated by traffic related to new development projects in MP. What about the local jobs that would be created. Currently, and I don't know the numbers so this is a guess to make the point, I'll bet that a large majority of MP residents travel out of MP to work. If the development community was encouraged to build in MP, more local jobs would be available to residents, thus reducing their carbon production-and keeping the sales taxable dollars they spend during the day (i.e. lunches, etc.) in MP. People don't seem to want to count the carbon they produce commuting 20+ miles to work everyday, they only want to count the carbon produced by people who live elsewhere and would commute to MP to work.

Conforming Project - above - is correct that the Bohannon Project generates automobile traffic from the perspective of a traffic study looking at extra cars on our streets. However, a common error in the carbon neutral debate is to expand that automobile traffic to greenhouse gas generation. The Bohannon project is not giving birth to automobiles and people. They already exist and are producing that carbon with or without the Bohannon project.

Unless the goal of Conforming Project (and the Almanac) is to stop development rather than address global warming, they should support the removal of automobile traffic in calculating a projects carbon footprint.

Sure, jobs and cars already exist, but how do Careful or What About Jobs know that development in Menlo Park will reduce either carbon or traffic? Do you really think that MP residents will quite their jobs elsewhere to work in MP, and then when they want a new job they MOVE to be close to that job? What about the spouse or kids? ALthough not trivial, the lunches workers eat do not make nearly the economic benefit that business to business taxable activities do.
Let's face it, there are strong forces such as the local association of governments and even the state of CA that want growth, a lot of growth. Each city needs to come to grips with how much of that they believe is sustainable for their community, and even whether every city must become highly urbanized even without decent transit options like truly urban areas. Because traffic congestion has such a large impact on quality of life and on carbon, it cannot be ignored.
When projects like the Bohannon proposal bring so much traffic and other negative impacts, very little revenue from large components of the project, it is fair for the city and Council to ask whether the overall package as proposed is worth it. A much smaller project with fewer negative impacts works in other cities. Why not here?

There are many conflicting issues going on here. This is not a simple fix one or two things and all will be ok.

As far as I ma concerned, the green movement in the City, and elsewhere has been somewhat miss-directed. They have bought into everything that Al Gore preaches and are un-willing to examine further.

There is no doubt that global climate change is taking place. A little reading will tell you that global warming has been going on for 500 to 1000 years. Nothing really new here, over long periods of time, warming and cooling cycles have always been taking place.

What is wrong here is the belief that the warming is chiefly the effects of consumption of fossil carbon based fuels, which produce CO2. This increased CO2 in the atmosphere is supposedly the reason why the temperatures on a long time basis are increasing. That is the popular view. That is a view that has not been confirmed in science and that is a view that many many scientists dispute.

So the green leaders in our community all preach this dogma, yet none seem to be scientists, but are lawyers, other professionals and most certainly are buying into this because that's the view currently in vogue. There are certain entites in the City that seek to ride these views into higher political office or promote their positions in private industry, or both.

My view, is the green movement is good, because it will promote conservation of fossil fuels -- after all there is only a certain amount of these resources on the globe. But when you get into mitigation using carbon tax as a trade off, which is supposed to reduce the CO2 in the air, you have missed the boat entirely. You will still be burning the fossil fuels and you are still using up that valuable resource. The same should be said of efforts to sequester CO2 from coal burning, a very expensive and now not practical alternative. The correct approach is conservation.

The Bohannon project is generating its huge amount of emissions because of the needed auto transportation. It will require vast amounts of new housing and is growth inducing in the extreme. The project is not a Menlo Park project, but a big urban project. It should be killed. It doesn't fit here and our Planning Commission and Council need to fully understand the consequences of this project.

This is on only 15 acres of property that the Bohannon family owns. They own much more, more than another 50 acres on the east side of 101, and re-development of their property on the west side of 101 could also be in the future.

So as residents of Menlo Park, are you gong to be in favor a a trend to build 140 foot high buildings with thousands and thousands of new homes to be added, thus converting our lovely community into another another cookie cutter city like Redwood City or Mountain View, both of who embrace this kind of development, or are we going to stick to our general plan, which has produced such a wonderful place to live.