Thank you, Rachel, for this fantastic editorial. As a fellow member of Menlo Together, and someone who cares deeply about our community, I fully support the sentiments you express. I hope our fellow residents will join us to make the vision for Menlo Park that you outline into a reality.

What will the impact be to our local school system from the type of building you are advocating for in Menlo Park Jen Wolosin? How many new students will be generated from the Menlo Together plan? Will we need to pay more taxes in school bonds if we build the amount of new housing you are talking about? MPPCSD has expressed concern about the impact of students generated from the Specific Plan developments. Have you checked in with MPCSD regarding Menlo Together's plan? The Sequoia Union High School District is concerned about impacts from the General Plan and the impact on already over crowded Menlo Atherton High School. What will be the impact on the High School from the Menlo Together plan?

I am not arguing against your plan. I am just wondering if you have thought through all the impacts of what you are advocating for?

What if you like things more or less as they are, and you don't want a transformative plan with large amounts of new housing?

Good opinion and I agree. although this has been the case here in MP for decades. After all Menlo Park, as we know it, was build as a car centric suburb in the 1950s & 60s. Parking will always be an issue, despite ample parking in the acres of downtown dedicated it.

As long as the overall value continues to be "I got mine, who cares about the kids etc..." our housing, traffic and labor issues will only g4t worse

Menlo Together = developer mouthpiece

Instead of prioritizing the needs of those who would like to move here, how about prioritizing the needs of those who already live here? Even if we cram housing into every square inch of space -- as the developers prefer -- we will never be able to accommodate the demand, and the families that move here won't have green space for recreation or adequate schools for their kids. And we'll have turned a pleasant community into an eyesore.

Here's a novel idea: let's put our residents first, developer profits second. I believe the new council members were elected because residents were tired of the pro-developer council mindset and wanted to return to a liveable community. I hope this new council is able to overlook the well-funded pro-development contingent and listen to the voices of those of us who live here.

What about the interests of the people who live here and want their children to be able to live here too? To say that prioritizing the "needs" of the people who already live here means locking out our children and everyone else is pretty self-centered. And it completely ignores that the housing crisis is a major factor in generating traffic congestion. If we want to fix our traffic jams we have to create more housing closer to the jobs. It's all of a piece: far-flung housing generates traffic woes, and surface transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the Bay Area. It doesn't have to be skyscrapers, but adding three and four story apartment buildings above retail on El Camino, for the length of El Camino, would go a long way to easing the regional housing crunch and it would mean adding housing near transit. That's not the end of the world and it doesn't mean the destruction of Menlo Park. The idea of a suburb as a car-dependent community of single-family homes is not sustainable, and the sooner we acknowledge that the better.

Growth is here no matter what Menlo Park does. The decisions we make now will either make traffic, housing costs, and air quality worse, or not.

pro Menlo, I think you are mistaken/confused about Menlo Together.

As I understand it, they are motivated to solve the thorny and interrelated housing/transportation issues that affect us all (as well as the environmental and equity consequences of our inadequate housing and transportation). While the group as a whole remained neutral in the recent election, individuals in the group worked hard on the campaigns of incoming council members. And they are funded by a grant from Karen Grove's foundation–-not by developers. Anyway, if you're indeed pro Menlo, it's hard to argue with the mission of this group.

Web Link

More housing will create more traffic because there will be more people trying to get to more places. That's a pretty straightforward equation.

The idea that people will move to the same town as their job is magical thinking. Research has indicated that people will choose single family homes + a commute over high-density urban housing. Too, people don't move whenever they change jobs, or when their employer relocates. (How many people do you know who sell their houses and transfer their kids to new schools with every career move?) Finally, for all the sanctimonious talk about accommodating all kinds of people, the new housing, even those ugly complexes along the freeway, is priced at the high end.

So, go ahead Menlo Park. Let the developers guilt you into allowing all kinds of high density development. The result will be the diminution in quality of life for all, new residents as well as current ones. And you can be sure that the people who profit from this overbuilding don't live in Menlo Park, preferring communities that don't allow widespread overgrowth, family-friendly cities, like ours used to be.

Any discussion of values and growth, should also address the tragedy of how many oaks and other trees have been sacrificed by Menlo Park (Tree City) in the name of development. Not only do we lose the many, many benefits they provide, but they also add to the value of our community by just being part here and being part of it.

The San Mateo Grand Jury recently issued a report that criticized our local fire board for not having a strategic plan. Menlo Park needs one too!

A community-based strategic plan is considered a municipal best practice. While I appreciate the ideas in the editorial, the responses illustrate the lack of agreement as to just what our priorities should be. To help resolve these matters, I believe we need to develop a community-based strategic plan that reflects the main priorities and aspirations of our community and a clear set of strategies to achieve our collective vision of our future. Once developed, we need an accountability framework to regularly measure and report on progress – and adjust as needed.

All other plans in MP would then reflect and support the implementation of the Community strategic plan. Right now, we have a broad array of various development plans (and other types of plans) but no overarching plan! We also lack a shared, short list of agreed-upon values.

A community-based strategic plan, based on considerable community input, would deliver many benefits. It would give council a decision-making framework to shorten council meetings and drastically cut down on the influence of special interests. It would also reduce the decision-making churn that has resulted in wasted time and money, and reportedly staff frustration and departures. It would give us all a broader overall direction and help us to work together towards a shared vision of MP.

The process does not have to be onerous. However it will take time because it needs to involve a whole-of-community (including staff) engagement process. I've written about this topic before and suggested the book "Elevating Trust in Local Government: The Power of Community-based strategic planning" by Rick Davis and Dan Griffiths. I urge anyone interested in a better MP to read this book and see if you don’t agree that MP residents would benefit from having an overall strategic plan. This type of plan is our best assurance that our local government will make decisions in the best interests of the residents and small business owners who also need their interests protected.

We can also learn from examples developed by cities (Tacoma 2025) in America and even Australia! I recently returned from a trip to Australia where I learned that, apparently, local cities and regional areas are required to have an integrated planning and accountability framework in the form of a community-based strategic plan that “sits above all other Council plans and policies in the planning hierarchy.” These community strategic plans essentially address four key questions for the community:
• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to be in ten years’ time?
• How will we get there?
• How will we know when we’ve arrived?

I see much room for optimism in MP’s future and I’m thankful that so many concerned residents want to help MP become the best that it can be!

What are the odds that "pro Menlo" lives in a developer-subdivided tract that was split up in a time of rapid growth and no "public benefit/impact" extortion? Somehow, they're always the ones that act sanctimonious while pulling up the drawbridge and saying "sorry you gotta commute from Stockton... actually NOT sorry!"

Thank you Rachel, Jen, Tunbridge, Kate for trying, even though I think "pro Menlo" sadly represents the values of most MPers...

This is a great discussion—thanks so much to Rachel for kicking it off with her well-reasoned comments, and also to the other contributors who have voiced their own thoughtful opinions.

I would urge anyone interested in the topics raised here to take a look at the strongtowns.org web site. Strong Towns is an organization that promotes new thinking about how we can make our communities strong and resilient. (See Web Link They have developed one of my favorite thought experiments: the Strong Towns Strength Test (Web Link I think that applying this “test” to the problems we currently face in Menlo Park can help us frame these issues in a productive manner and ultimately can point us to solutions that will make us a stronger community in the future. Indeed, this approach could even be used as the basis for a Menlo Park strategic plan, as suggested by Lynne Bramlett.

As we welcome a new year, I hope that the members of the City Council, and all residents of (and visitors to) Menlo Park, can work together to address the problems we face as a community and help make Menlo Park as strong a town as it can possibly be.

By the way, I think it is a hopeful sign in this era of internet trolls that many of the folks posting comments in this discussion thread have used their real names. I know that the Almanac has been reluctant to require this practice, but I personally put more faith in the comments made by folks willing to disclose their own identities than in those made by people who hide behind anonymity.

Too bad the editorial staff here allows ad hominem attacks. pro Menlo has a lot of good points.

We are not going to build our way out of the housing shortage. No more than you can build your way out of traffic jams with more lanes on the freeway. Zoning is a part of people's property rights. Parking requirements, setbacks, minimum lots sizes are all part of that.

The residents are perfectly within their legal and moral rights to preserve their community and property rights. The politics of envy are ugly and dangerous.

Businesses which keep adding employees are to blame for the congestion around here and the high housing prices. In a sense, they are abusing the commons, dumping unmitigate-able impacts on the communities around them.

Those who commute are also to blame. In all cases they make a choice which they see as being in their best interest, but we who live here pay the price for their choice.

We should be looking into ways to build effective mass transit, to relieve these impacts, and businesses should pay the full freight of employing people here. In that case there would be fewer employees, less traffic. Business would have a strong incentive to decentralize their operations, which would benefit everyone.

Some considerations:

There are no "silver bullets" for solving housing and traffic problems; and short of a recession, they will get worse.

Regional mass transit solutions sound appealing but are tough to negotiate, expensive to build and "take forever".

The inventory of single family homes is static; new apartment and condos will remain expensive as long as demand exceeds supply (the foreseeable future)

Realistically, one has three choices: either adapt, complain or leave.

High-speed rail should have focused on connecting the Peninsula to communities between Pleasanton and Sacramento not San Francisco to LA. But that opportunity was squandered.

Thank you David Roise for posting the link to the Strong Towns website. I have signed up for their mailing list and will study the details as soon as I can, along with taking the survey. I also see that the City is holding its annual goal-setting meeting on January 11 from 1-5 p.m. at the Arrillaga Family Gymnasium. I've posted notice to NextDoor -- please spread the word. Below is my NextDoor post:

At the annual goal setting meeting, Council sets its priorities for the year. Anyone interested in influencing the direction of MP's local government, or in being more involved and aware, should attend this event. Web Link That would include residents, small business owners, local stake-holders and others. Attending and making public comments helps Council to hear from a broad spectrum of voices and perspectives throughout MP.

Following our financials also is critical as the spending illustrates the actual priorities so here's a link to the just published MP's Comprehensive Annual Financial report. Web Link The Government compensation in California site might also be of interest Web Link The total number of employees in 2017 differs in both documents and I don't know why. Unfunded pension liabilities and the number of MP city employees (compared to other cities our size) may also be discussed at the meeting.

The editorial spoke about values. The residents need to be deeply involved in determining our values. Unfortunately, the City of Menlo Park Values statement Web Link at the HR section of the MP website seems developed by staff and primarily aimed at staff and business interests. (I wouldn't call everything included a value either.)

Instead, we need a process to determine a short list of values to guide decision-making in MP. This kind of activity would be a precursor to developing a community-based strategic plan such as the Tacoma 2025 Citywide Vision and strategic plan. Web Link Another way to approach strategic planning is based on a short list of guiding priorities such as the example from (a town I recently visited) Albany in Western Australia. Web Link

Our new city manager should be a person deeply familiar with community-based strategic plans and other modern municipal best practices. I'd also like to see new Sister cities picked at least in part because they are progressive cities with community-based strategic plans. This way, we can learn from them and vice versa as our new council and staff work together to implement modern urban management methods such as municipal benchmarks.

Finally, I notice that the City of MP's mission statement (page 2) Web Link is almost identical to the one from the City of Oxnard. Web Link Interestingly, Oxnard's includes the phrase "open, transparent government" whereas that's missing from MP's. I don't know why these two mission statements are almost identical. However, it begs the question as to why and who developed the mission statement? Were residents, small business owners and other stakeholders involved?

Seems to me it's time to also take a new look at just what MP's mission should be and if it reflects residents priorities.