Excuse the crudeness, but when is the MP council going to grow a pair?

This was the obvious solution since both the applicant and the opposition wanted it on the ballot. I haven't watched the full meeting, but I did see they voted to approve it, right?

You would prefer they ignore the wishes of the applicant when they didn't throughout the process?

4 hrs of pure babble ! Everyone including the council knew it was going to approve this project, so why waste 4 hrs to say yes ! This is the most dysfunctional council, we have ever seen. No one knows how to make a decision without waffling. Is Ferguson for real, all she is worried about is her plants, flowers and trees.When these 3 seats are up, hopefully someone from the Belle-Haven area will choose to run, we need 3 new people on the council! The Fire District got 2 new really good people on it, now it is time for the city council to do the same, no incumbents only new faces. How much is this going to cost our city that has a negative budget ? Get this project started with the least amount of BS & expense.

There is a two word description that most aptly defines the essence of the majority membership of the Menlo Park City Council and the first word is Cluster.

Perhaps Menlo Park should adopt the Swiss Cantonal system wherein the citizens vote directly on practically everything.
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Wikipedia:
"Voting in Switzerland is the process by which Swiss citizens make decisions about governance and elect officials. Voting takes place over the week-end, with emphasis being put on the Sunday. At noon on that day ("Abstimmungssonntag" in German), voting ends.

Switzerland's voting system is unique among modern democratic nations in that Switzerland practices direct democracy (also called half-direct democracy), in which any citizen may challenge any law at any time. In addition, in most cantons all votes are cast using paper ballots that are manually counted.

Approximately four times a year, voting occurs over various issues; these include both referenda, where policies are directly voted on by people, and elections, where the populace votes for officials. These votes take place during the weekend. Federal, cantonal and municipal issues are polled simultaneously, and the majority of people cast their votes by mail.

Only 25% to 45% of all eligible citizens typically cast their votes, but controversial proposals (such as EU membership or abolishing the army) have seen voter turnouts of about 60%."

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If Menlo Park adopted this system and added internet voting then they could have an election every week. And the Council could simply meet once a year to elect a Mayor who, like the Swiss President, would have no powers except ceremonial duties. The Council's sole role would be to advocate as individuals for and against each of the issues being voted on by the citizens.

C'mon tea baggers, you can do better than that!

Cut and paste does not an intellect make.

Truth - know WHAT to cut and paste is indeed a useful skill. Much more so than Truth without either truth or facts.

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More on the Swiss system - looking even better:

Every village, town or city has a deliberative assembly — in some villages, it is the town meeting (usually called "Landsgemeinde"), where all adult citizens may vote by show of hands. At such meetings the citizen can also present oral or written proposals which are voted on at the next meeting. In larger towns, elected assemblies take the place of the town meetings.

The municipal assemblies vote on changes to the "town statutes" (Gemeindereglement), governing such matters as the use of public space, on financial commitments exceeding the competence of the executive branch, and on naturalisations.

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I love that part about voting on things which exceed the competence of the executive branch.

Mr. Carpenter is soooooo right. Key word "competence" is soley missing..Instead of saying city council maybe they should be refered to as the "Village Idiots". The Menlo Park Village Idiots, kind of catchy isn't it ?

Truth should be made a ward of the court.

This might be the lamest group of tea baggers in the country. Glen Beck would be ashamed.

The Council voting 4:1 for this project was huge.
And it was smart of them not to let the usual crowd of referendum-happy, nay-saying would-be project slayers frame the debate WAS indeed "growing a pair." Often leadership means you have to do what's pragmatic and unifies a community, not purely act on "priniciple." I applaud the four who could see this (and those 4 don't always see eye to eye - far from it).

Bottom line: It was not worth risking the whole project going away - or a delay in the revenue stream for the City -- if the typical Menlo Park dynamic continued here and the nay-sayers caused a one-year delay. The developer himself felt this way, and so did all councilmembers but one -- Boyle -- and even he said he'd support the measure on the ballot once it was on the ballot.

There is nothing to be afraid of in putting this one rare largest ever project on the ballot - it's clearly good for the City and its impacts have been mitigated as much as possible and a decent package of much- needed community benefits will be received.

Better to be proactive and break the prior pattern.

Even more important now is to stay focused on the SUBSTANCE of that's good for this CIty, as well as the substance of this project, instead of obsessing on ***process, Process, PROCESS.*** (This means you, John Boyle).

Time to move forward, focus on the positive and grow up as a community and learn new approaches that work.

Why do we elect leaders anyway? Seriously? Aren't THEY supposed to make this decision, based on the countless amount of hours of debate and discussion? Are these guys/gal THAT afraid of possibly not getting re-elected to a city council seat? Is power that important? It can't be the salary! What a waste of time, money and energy. The only thing I guess we can be happy about, is that there was not the time honored Menlo Park tradition of asking for a survey to be completed! And Ms.Ferguson, could we take that $500K worth of landscaping and put a big green blanket over the car dealership lots, the theater and Mattison property?

Spare us the make a decision speecj. I just watched the meeting and there was no ambiguity about council's support for this project. The vote for ballot is to get this project on the table now not let it drift like Derry et al.

Stop trying to make a political point out of this, it looks cheap and obvious. Either you just want to play the political game or you didn't bother going to or watching the actual meeting.

Weak.

They should put Kelly on the "Weeds and Seeds" Committee. OMG, are you kidding me ! $500k for weeds and seeds, flower pots and little white picket fences ! Hopefully her term is up, what is she on anyway ? I will tell you one thing, just be carefull, that we do not divide Menlo any further. East Menlo, West Menlo, Belle Haven. East Menlo & Belle Haven need their own person on the city council, since we always "speak for them". That whole area is important now & in the future..We do not need a "Mason Dixon Line" within our already divided city.

I think she is on wacky tobaccy

This project is not worth worrying about.
It is not going to happen no matter the vote of the council or of the MP residents.
The developer will not immediately start building because the hotel industry is in such poor shape and he will never build this project because of the same reason.

""Occupancy and revenue are expected to plummet this year. About 36% of full-service U.S. hotels will lack the cash flow needed to pay their monthly mortgages in 2009 vs. 21% in 2008, says Mark Woodworth of PKF Hospitality Research."" (Web Link

This recession is not over and the recovery is more like a receding horizon. In other words . . . it aint gona happen. Sorry folks.

Acomfort -

Given the amount of time it takes to get these large projects approved, financed and constructed, it is extraordinarly difficult to also factor in the state of the economy.

By the time the financing is required and by the time the hotel opens, it may be boom times in Silicon Valley again (one can hope).

Mr. Bohannon's challenge is getting voter approval, not financing and, barring outright catastrophy, not the economy.