Original post made on May 27, 2022

The land use issues in this initiative should go through the planning commission and city council first. That is why we have them. Running a city by 'mandate' with voters is cumbersome, inefficient, and fraught with misinformation and discord. An initiative like this should be a 'last ditch' effort following a failed public process.

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@Long Time Resident, Absolutely concur that we need to leverage the planning commission and city council first, before trying to tinker via the unwieldily and costly ballot initiative process. I have seen far too many of these knee-jerk citizen initiatives have unintended and mostly negative consequences over both the short term and the long term.

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A couple of weeks ago, a woman approached my partner and me at the Downtown Menlo Park Farmers Market. She claimed that certain Council member was in support of this ballot measure. Her pitch about this petition was false and misleading at best. I also know that the same group falsely mentioned other "supportive" council members in a different neighborhood. Is it coincidentally or calculated that the canvassers pick and choose the so-called "supportive" council member (or public official) based on who they think a particular neighborhood supports? Further, Yaeger does not just have a background in real estate development. Yaeger (born and raised in Atherton), according to his Linkedin profile, is a Residential Real Estate expert focused on building and selling custom homes on the San Francisco Peninsula and manages three distinct companies in the home building space: Graben, Inc. - excavation and grading contractor; Yaeger Construction, Inc. - custom home builder; and Yaeger Residential Brokerage - real estate broker. This ballot measure opening with the "existing pattern of land use in Menlo Park … is highly desirable by the community" has been used since the Jim Crow to make the neighborhoods more exclusive because developers could charge more for single-family homes than they could for duplexes or cottage apartments. Menlo Park already suffers from inequitable housing practices without tying the Council's hand regarding rezoning. For example, the language in Menlo Park's Specific Plan Guiding Principles includes dog whistle language: "Sustain Menlo Park's Village Character." A recent 2020 study from UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute found that 83% of residential land in the Bay Area is devoted to single-family zoning. That means that on only 17% of the land, it's legal to build apartments, condos, duplexes, or triplexes. And that's not unusual. A New York Times analysis found that about 75% of the residential land in major cities across the country

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Continue from above: A recent 2020 study from UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute found that 83% of residential land in the Bay Area is devoted to single-family zoning. That means that on only 17% of the land, it's legal to build apartments, condos, duplexes, or triplexes. And that's not unusual. A New York Times analysis found that about 75% of the residential land in major cities across the country is devoted exclusively to single-family homes. The same Othering & Belonging Institute study found that increasing the percentage of single-family zoning in a city increases the percentage of white residents. Part of that is because renting an apartment or duplex is less expensive than renting or buying a home. It's also a legacy of racist housing policies, like redlining, that barred Black families from receiving federally-backed loans following the Great Depression and from the GI Bill after WWII. Add to exclusionary zoning other laws such as Proposition 13 (a 1978 California law that limits how much governments can tax property to 1% of its assessed value), which offers bigger tax breaks to homeowners in wealthy, white neighborhoods. Menlo Park needs more housing throughout the City (and not just in the already-congested District 1, which has been bearing the brunt of numerous hotels and commercial buildings) ... not more laws to restrict it.

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Menlo Park is such a joke. These people, who are actively seeking to make it harder for young people and people of color to live in this community, probably even have "All immigrants welcome here" signs in their yard. I hope Menlo residents see through this thinly veiled attempt to scare people about a threat that, frankly, doesn't exist. Otherwise, Menlo will just continue to morph into the ultrawealthy retirement community it's becoming. Your children can't afford this place anymore, and you wonder why?

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A long time resident and homeowner in Menlo Park, I oppose the Menlo Balance initiative and am saddened to see an exclusionary effort like this one in our community. In my view, Menlo Balance is using misleading tactics to recruit signatures by telling folks that single family zoning could be changed to accommodate big box stores. This isn't the case, this isn't up for consideration at City Council, and it's not within the scope of city discussions, hard stop. Rather, this is a scare tactic to lead folks into signing before folks can realize what this is actually about. At its core, Menlo Balance's initiative would block an affordable housing project as designed for Ravenswood School District teachers. This is a district whose teachers are paid much less than the teachers at MPCSD (30% less, in fact). This is the difference between a teacher at MPCSD making on the order of $100K a year, and a Ravenswood teacher making $70K a year. The Ravenswood School District deserves to be able to recruit and keep its public school teachers, and ample affordable housing will help greatly with this effort. Ravenswood students benefit greatly when their school district can successfully recruit and keep its teachers. Menlo Balance seems to be using "icky" tactics (including sending some volunteers to canvas at the MPCSD Fun Run festival, without approval from the school district and despite not being an MPCSD initiative). Don't be fooled -- this is about keeping Menlo Park white and wealthy. It's about exclusion. It's about keeping their own property values high while hurting another district's ability to recruit and house its teachers. I'm sorely disappointed to see something so unwelcoming and unkind in our otherwise fine city. We can do better than this. We can treat our neighbors with kindness, not exclusion. You can write to the City Clerk in Menlo Park to ask that your name be removed from the petition if you wish to do so -- it's not too late.

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