Now it's up to our City Council to courageously stand up for resident interests and insist that Menlo Park gets a better deal. See analysis in comment section of Web Link

"Since Stanford plans to use the apartments for staff and faculty housing, the university will not be required to pay property taxes on those units."

Why don't we fix this aberration in the property tax code? And, while we're at it, do the same for the SMCCCD housing at Canada College? These properties should be paying the same taxes as their neighbors.

"The development agreement also stipulates to pay $1 million over 10 years to the Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation, which raises funds for Encinal, Oak Knoll and Laurel elementary schools and Hillview Middle School."

This is a convoluted scheme to hide the true cost of the government education system.

"City Attorney Bill McClure said Stanford already leases about 180 apartments in the city of Menlo Park to house its students, faculty and staff, and gets a property tax exemption on those. Some of those residents might move into the Middle Plaza apartments and not add to lost property tax revenues for local schools."

Hello! What kind of nonsense is this? Go back and do your homework, Bill.

So I can create a nonprofit buy a house in Menlo Park to house my nonprofit employee, Me, and be exempt from property taxes. Sounds like a plan.

Back to the exempt Stanford housing portion, does that mean they pay no taxes for the police dept, fire dept, city operations, etc? That to put it mildly s**ks.

Stanford is a business which takes in hundreds of millions in donations and rents each year. Donations which reduce donor taxes and then SU is exempt? I would hope that they are paying prop taxes on the land buildings of the industrial park and the shopping center. What did they use to call the Big Four - The Robber Barons?

Congratulations to Commissioner Barnes for stating the obvious: there simply isn't enough information to make a good decision. I hope the City Council will demand more. It wouldn't take long, and would help justify whatever decision they ultimately make.

The worst kept secret in town is that Barnes wants to run for City Council. Barnes hedged his bet by voting for the project and voting against the development agreement.

If this is so good for menlo park, where is the proof? I could not any financial analysis in the staff reports. Who would run a business without a handle on the financial
Impact of decisions. Why should the city make decisions on the blind? Prove that this is a good financial deal.

It seems like no one is concerned about one other issue with this, and several other projects that are being considered. They are tearing down HERITAGE trees!! This project alone it getting rid of 18 of them. The one at the old Beltramo's site is tearing down 7 more. What's the point of designating a tree as heritage, if they are just going to be allowed to tear them down anyway. Just another way for the city to get money... charging a fee for a permit to allow them to tear the trees down.

SAVE THE TREES!!!!

This deal sucks. I supported development of this property when the idea was it would NOT house Stanford employees as that would not generate property tax revenues that will be very necessary to take care of the residents of the residential portion of this project. Stanford either needs to NOT use it as housing for Stanford employees OR pay whatever the property taxes would actually be if it wasn't tax exempt. If Stanford won't step up and do that, then forget it.

As much as I hate the blight of the vacant lots I am unwilling to carry the tax burden for Stanford. The Stanford that is worth billions of dollars. I'll take teh blight before I carry a billionaires water.

Menlo City Council are you listening? This is a crappy deal. Demand Stanford pay their fair share. This deal doesn't make that happen

"Stanford has proposed to build 215 one- and two-bedroom apartments"

Can we please have some real mixed housing units built in central Menlo Park? I understand that we don't want over-subscribed schools, but as far as I can tell, there are very few developments where 3-bedroom apartments are being built. Let's not kid ourselves and think that we're building a true community by building more one bedroom apartments for single tech workers and two bedroom flats for young couples with no children and Stanford post-docs. Yes, we need those spaces, but we need more than that. People still want to live here, they still want to have children, and there's a real need for housing somewhere between the $4M mansions, the $2M tear downs, and a 2-bedroom apartment rental for a family of four in our city.

For those of you who will respond that families of four will move into a 2-bedroom, you're right...they (we) will. But should that be our community? Is that what we're building here?

One more thing...

Yeah, not good that Stanford won't pay property taxes here. Put in three bedroom apartments, but do not rent them out to Stanford staff in a tax-exempt manner.If Stanford is developing this property but they are not paying property taxes, they're not fully investing in our community.

The MPCSD should rezone to exclude that property from the district. Problem solved.

"The MPCSD should rezone to exclude that property from the district."

Such a detachment would require LAFCO approval and such approval would not be granted unless a suitable successor agency were willing to take on the current MPCSD responsibilities.

The comments here feel like the endgame of the "I got mine, screw you" generation.

Let's look out for the interest of all residents, both those that buy and those that rent.

Let's assume that kids deserve a good education, even if they're in an apartment. The idea of blocking students from MPCSD is an incredibly selfish and short-sighted one.

We should be building 3br rentals, and they should be a significant part of new development. A market rate 3br rental generates plenty of property taxes, at least as long as there isn't some Prop 13 loophole mixed in there.

The real problem is the combination of "I got mine, screw you" attitudes and prop 13. If we could phase prop 13 out, issues like school funding for new development (including rentals) would be much easier to solve.

Great! More traffic.

I'm very discouraged that the heritage trees are being cut down, and that only 10 one bedroom apartments will be for low income tenants. That sounds like a ploy to only house singles or couples and no children since those units are one bedroom. I was hoping to see more units for our hard working service industry families. They are the backbone of our city and would be well served if they could walk to work in Menlo Park's downtown restaurants and other service jobs. Our projects seem to have forgotten them.

In the last few years, the MPCSD board has voted to include/exclude a few properties from the district, notably 600 Willow, which was part of Ravenswood for decades despite being surrounded by the MPCSD. And those residents pay property taxes. Never heard of LAFCO and I doubt they have any authority here.

According to what I've read, people who live in faculty housing on campus pay property taxes. However, the Escondido Village units do not, so the children of grad schools get to attend school for free.

Has this 1992 case regarding university exemptions on property tax been superseded? Web Link I can find nothing newer.

"The Palo Alto Unified School District urged the court to deny the exemption, saying much of its money comes from taxes on the Stanford leases."

I stand corrected - school district boundaries are not controlled by LAFCO..

"The county committee on school district organization has a major role in the review and approval of proposals to change school district organization in the county. This chapter discusses how the members are selected, how committees should function, and how they are financed. "


This rule would preclude exclusion of the 500 ECR project from MPCSD:

"iv. Leapfrogging Prohibition. On or after January 1, 1981, no school district may be newly formed or reorganized so that any portion of it is completely separated by territory of another school district. (EC 35543) "

@Once Again

I believe the court case you cite is Connolly v. Orange County. If that ruling still holds, Stanford would have to pay property taxes on even the apartments it rents out as long as no "educational purposes" occurs there. And I can't imagine any educational purposes would be allowed at Middle Plaza unless it was zoned for that purpose.

I suspect that ruling doesn't hold. Everyone seems to be working under the assumption that Stanford won't pay any property taxes on its housing. But I would love to be proven wrong.

I don't have much faith in the Menlo Park city attorney, however. He says that when a private property owner leases to someone affiliated with Stanford, that owner gets a property tax exemption. So, if I take one credit at Stanford's Continuing Education program, I can exempt myself from property taxes. And it doesn't have to be Stanford. It's any educational institution.

142K of Office = ~ 1,000 Employees. Current Density is 135/SF per Employee and even more dense for the high cost real estate markets.

Predicting 500 Employees is nonsense along with 930 parking spaces for the project.

This project will severely cripple the Allied Arts Neighborhood and the Middle Avenue Traffic will become even more dangerous.

Current projections should take into account the 1,000 Employees and their "day-trips" and traffic solutions proposed accordingly.

The high rents for the project will easily support building it and Menlo Park should see their share of the profits. Stanford will pass on the RE Taxes to the New Tenants and the residents will be left with more Traffic. Stanford isn't paying those Taxes.....

maybe MP comes up with a formula that punishes more trips than what is being "assumed." That way MP residents can come up with a monetary # that will satisfy them if Stanford is wrong about the traffic impacts.

Stanford is a great neighbor but they have a corporate Real Estate team and are very sophisticated. They are reaping huge benefits and most likely the builder will donate the construction costs so this all could be free anyway.

Candidly, I think we should put in a couple of nice sports fields a big park and call it a day.

Too bad the citizens of mp fought having condos built there in 2002, not university housing. and for those complaining about stanford's non-profit status, please remember that anyone who has been here more than 15 - 20 years is not paying anywhere near their share of property taxes either.