DA: Menlo Park did not break law by hiring consultant, publishing info on Measure M

Please publish all costs related to all the time spend by the city extracting documents for the public records request.

When you tote up the bill for Measure M don't forget to add the cost of the study done by the City, the cost of the election and the forever lost property tax revenues from projects that have been delayed 12-18 months.

And then add a contingency of another million or so for the slew of lawsuits that the Measure M folks will file in their continued attempt to stop the earth from revolving and freeze everything in time.

When I first read the allegations, I was suspect. I will have an extremely hard time believing anything this person says in the future. Maybe never.

Good job staying within the letter if not the spirit of the law, city manager! You figured that stonewalling and refusing to produce documents would allow you to avoid prosecution, and you were correct. You won the battle but you will most assuredly lose the war.

Conspiracy-believers will never be satisfied as they find no amount of conflicting evident sufficient and feel no need to produce their own persuasive evidence. It's best to simply ignore them and be thankful they are a minority.

Lessons Learned writes "You won the battle but you will most assuredly lose the war." What "war" is referred to?

The city has stonewalled the inquiry by refusing to provide a number of documents produced by the consultant hired by they city. The city staff should be ashamed of themselves, and the City Council needs to act to provide more sunshine. If additional information supports the DA's conclusion, then this can be put to rest. But if additional information contradicts it, then appropriate actions can be taken by the DA and the City Council.
This is not at all about Measure M and all about a government we can trust.

California and the City of Menlo Park have sunshine laws. The City needs to enforce them. Since the City Manager and senior staff are in the middle of this controversy, it is up to the Mayor and rest of City Council to insist on sunshine.

After an independent investigation by the DA found insufficient evidence to prosecute the nay-sayers now want more -" If additional information supports the DA's conclusion, then this can be put to rest."


As I posted above "And then add a contingency of another million or so for the slew of lawsuits that the Measure M folks will file in their continued attempt to stop the earth from revolving and freeze everything in time."

The DA may have passed on this, but the council definitely should not! We compensate this guy, McIntyre, north of a quarter million a year and he has to pay someone to read newspapers and write position papers on a topic with which he should be thoroughly familiar. What gives? Is he intellectually challenged? There is no way he could get away with this behavior in private industry.

I love all of these pro Measure M folks posting under anonymous names and calling on the Council to waste more time and effort on a DEAD issue. They will do anything to try to bring everything to a halt.

The city has an ordinance, and so does the state, requiring public information to be made available upon request. The failure - no, the refusal - of city staff to provide requested information should be of concern to everyone. As stated previously, this is not about Measure M; it is about sunshine and it is about following the laws of our city and state. We should care very much about this.

""It is clear from the documents produced by the City that the City Staff was engaged in a campaign to defeat Measure M "

Please be so kind as to post these alleged documents.

Even though there was no violation of the law, the City Manager did not use good judgement, wasting time and money on a pointless anti-Measure M puff piece.

Council directed McIntyre to hire a consultant and approved it prior to the consultants hiring - see Cat Carlton's statement published by this paper. The City Manager didn't want to throw the council under the bus.

""It is clear from the documents produced by the City that the City Staff was engaged in a campaign to defeat Measure M "

Please be so kind as to post these alleged documents.

Dear @Robert, you are very creative. This was a witch hunt, so there as no bus involved.

This story always ends the same, the grand inquisitor will eventually end up in the river.

Maintaining a city website that is accurate and up-to-date is a big deal. Hiring people that know how to do this kind of work is very difficult, especially in Silicon Vally when the economy is booming. Malcolm Smith should have been the perfect person for the job based on his resume, but he clearly doesn't understand the role of government. We can safely assume Malcolm Smith's name won't be showing up on those new hiring reports.

Not so long ago, people made a big stink about the Nutty costume. If you attend any of the events the city puts on in Freement Park, you will see Nutty out with the kids, and everyone seems to be having a great time. We are fortunate to have a city manager that has some enthusiasm for making Menlo Park a wonderful place to live, work and raise a family.