Community safety advocate announces run for Menlo Park council

Community safety is right. Traffic violence in this city is more dangerous than all other violence combined. We need to reign in all the reckless drivers, if not by education and enforcement, then by safer road design.

Who didn't see this coming?

Excited to have a safe routes action-oriented advocate for District 3.

Jen would be a great addition to our City Council.

She is smart, does her homework, focused on local issues and collaborative.

I've had the chance to work with Jen through her regular attendance and feedback to the Complete Streets Commission, and she is an absolute gem. She cares deeply about this community, and she lives her values — it's hard to miss her, riding her bike around town.

She's made a huge impact in Menlo Park already through her Safe Routes to School campaign, and Menlo would be incredibly lucky and well served to put her on city council. I look forward to her leadership and campaign — we need it!

I met Jen when she started coming to bike commission meetings four years ago. Almost no one came to bike commission meetings but she was there, most months, urging us to consider safer options and learning as much as she could about the city processes. And from bike commission she migrated to complete streets, to planning, to council, to regional task forces, founding Parents for Safe Routes and helping to start Menlo Together along the way.

It feels as though we've been on this journey together–-you start wanting to fix one thing, STAT, and looking for the right button or lever to get it done--but as you get more involved, the reality sinks in and you begin to comprehend the bigger picture, the tradeoffs, and the complexities of making policy. In the valley of move-fast-and-break-things-while-somehow-doing-no-evil, working with the public sector can seem painfully tedious and time-consuming. "Slap some paint on the ground already!" you think––and two, maybe three years later, after 60 letters to council, five public meetings, and a delicate stakeholder negotiation, in which everyone loses a bit and the perfect is sacrificed to the altar of the good-enough-for-now, you get a mile of bike lane or an enhanced crosswalk.

Many people would learn these things and give up––they'd get the one thing they agitated for, or fail in their attempt, and move on to more immediately gratifying pursuits. Not Jen. The more she learns about our city and its challenges, the harder and smarter she works. She is definitely detail-oriented (I can tell you that she's probably one of a handful of people who has not only read the entire transportation master plan, cover to cover, but also biked/walked the length and breadth of Menlo Park with the plan in hand, checking out each proposal and analyzing potential pitfalls)–but she also studies history and precedent and sees how interconnected our challenges are. And despite there being no quick, easy, obvious fixes, she's stepping up and embracing the hairiness and uncertainty of it all in her calm, positive, organized way. Her energy and enthusiasm rarely flag and motivate those around her to stay in the game even when it's a slog. I can only imagine how beneficial her voice would be on council and am so excited to support her.

She must promise that to not interfere with Facebook's plan for the area currently called "Menlo Park."

Jen is the real deal--she has spent a lot of time educating herself and learning about the inner workings of the city to get to this point. She shows up to all these meetings, and gets out and meets individually with lots of people so she will be better informed. And she sees how transportation, development, and housing policy are all closely connected. I've lived in Menlo Park for 20 years, and I'm looking forward to seeing how she can help the city improve and adapt to the future given all the challenges (including traffic congestion, lack of affordable housing, struggling downtown) that we face.