Menlo Park: City hires consultant to audit public communications

$50,000 to learn how to use Twitter, Facebook, and Nextdoor? That's ridiculous. This Council throws away our money like Kleenex.

Less 'communicating' more listening.

Me thinks this decision to hire a communications consultant was lacking in communication with the MP residents. Enough Facebook, Twitter etc as excuses for communicating.

"The city of Menlo Park plans to pay a consultant up to $50,000 to audit 'HOW' the city communicates with the public, and advise city staff on communication methods. (emphasis added)"

Biggest problem, of course, is not HOW city communicates, but WHAT city communicates. Concealment and non disclosure are biggest problems. Keith would not even allow a disclosure proposal to be considered by Council. Council secret communications with developers, and others, a big problem.

George Fisher wrote, "Keith would not even allow a disclosure proposal to be considered by Council."

Actually, Keith brought up this topic during a meeting where council discussed the proposal. There was no support for the idea.

You mean fake news...

Mayor Keith never brought the disclosure item up, either on or off the agenda. She forced the item to be raised by proponents during Councilmember reports. Then Keith argued against putting it on the agenda for consideration and all but one Councilmember sided with her.

The Almanac even wrote an editorial is support of consideration of the item, but Keith stonewalled it.

And the sad Palo Altofication of Menlo continues.

We can all watch the video. There was a discussion and council agreed to bring the calendar item back at goal setting.

Pubkic comment is part of every meeting. Mueller was not able to get a single resident to speak in favor of his calendar proposal, even after the Almanac wrote about it.

Real news...get some sleep! Why are you posting at 2:40am in the morning in Menlo Park?

Fact checking takes time. Fake news never rests.

The primary issue isn’t whether Councilmembers and the Cuuncil want to make more disclosure, it is whether they are required to, or should, make more disclosure. The paid independent consultants should examine what disclosures should be made and when.

George, you state that "concealment" is the biggest issue. If your elected officials are dishonest, published calendars won't enforce more honesty. Peter Carpenter made this point in another thread.

2:40am in the middle of the night is 10:40am in the morning in Ireland where Kirsten Keith and her husband John Woodell have been traveling.

Maybe the new consultants can help Keith craft a message about her decision to drown the Willows in traffic. Read here what Gary Lauder posted about it:

"Posted by Gary Lauder
a resident of Atherton: other on Nov 15, 2017 at 4:16 pm

This article and most of the comments to it are about the temporary(?) consequences during the construction period. The real travesty will be the waste of time and emotional energy from the worsened traffic jams that this interchange change will result in from 2019 until ????. In economic terms, the cost of the incremental wasted time will measure in $billions, which will make the $70M that is being wasted to do this pale in comparison.

I tried to warn the city council about this starting in February of 2016:

A year ago, I made public comments at a CC meeting and provided this handout:

The only council members who tried to fight it were Catherine Carlton and Ray Mueller (although they were more genteel than I would have been).

PO & RC did talk with me, but did not act. KK and Alex McIntyre never responded to multiple attempts to communicate about this. Ultimately the latter 4 are responsible."

******

Or maybe Keith needs communications assistance to help her respond to editorials criticizing her delight in supporting enormous developments:

Web Link

'Menlo Park city officials, including Mayor Kirsten Keith, who express delight at Facebook's proposal and explain this is just what the city had in mind when it approved its new general plan last year, do a disservice to their constituents and to the region.'

These are all great ideas. Please come to a council meeting and speak up during public comment.

The comment: “These are all great ideas. Please come to a council meeting and speak up during public comment.” appears to be merely an attempted avoidance mechanism by a council member or surrogate. There is no need for more comment than made online in a generally accepted newspaper site generally read by council and staff. However the suggestion does reinforce the unfair home field advantage of Council at Council meetings to in avoid public desires.

Public comment as generally handled at Council meetings is a humiliating worthless effort by homeowners and the general public. First, public comments are often stopwatch timed and officiously curtailed. If the comment is not on agenda item, no action may be taken anyway and comments appear to be generally ignored, and not further discussed or subsequently dealt with. If on a subject on the agenda, and occasionally if not, common practice is to take notes, and then, as Keith traditionally does, question accommodating staff on them at great length, wasting considerable meeting time with meaningless leading questions to attempt to add makeweight for a councilmember’s position contrary to the public comment. During this lengthy process there is no opportunity for public cross-examination or interjection.

Hopefully the Consultant can help this process to facilitate meaningful substantive communication and communications with interested parties on current matters, in addition to obtaining fair disclosures of contacts and relationships by council members and staff with interested parties and their attorneys and agents.