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Publication Date: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 LETTERS: More on pros, cons of child care center
LETTERS: More on pros, cons of child care center
(March 16, 2005)
Task force members agreed not to talk
Editor:
The Menlo Park City Council appears to be committed to a cheap and lesser child care facility as recommended by the Child Care Task Force led by City Council member Lee Duboc.
While the final vote may be assured, the council should be reminded of and the residents need to know the background on this decision:
** The Brown Act was violated during the six-month life of the task force. This should have invalidated any recommendations by them regarding the issue.
** Ms. Duboc extracted an agreement from the task force members not to discuss any aspect of the proceedings with the public or the press. Would this have occurred if the public had been present?
** The staff absorbed the blame for the Brown Act violations. So what? Who is accountable? The voters can't fire the city attorney or the city manager.
** The council resists the obvious: the conclusions of the task force likely would have been different if the public had been involved in the task force activities. A new process should be started.
This debacle at the very least should remind this and future councils that task forces, like city commissions, should be chosen by the city council. If this practice had been in place, at least there would have been an open selection process in which Ms. Duboc's minions who ended up on the task force would have had to compete for their seats at the table with other residents.
Steve Schmidt,Central Avenue, Menlo Park
Council has lost sense of community
Editor:
As a former Burgess after-school parent, I have followed the long saga of the Child Care Building since the beginning.
I was watching the City Council meeting on television when it was confirmed that a new bid would be obtained for a new Child Care Center building as part of the Child Care Task Force findings. This was never done.
Another fact that must be factored in and not forgotten is the $800,000 of taxpayer's money previously spent for design of the new center.
An objective look at the goal and the funding points away from a remodel of a 45-year old building for this use. Why has the council lost its sense of community? Children benefit from the social and recreational aspects that after school and recreational programs can provide.
The City Council wants to abandon such programs. As a single working parent, it is tiresome to constantly confront the elitist attitude that mothers should all be in the position to stay at home with their children.
Tina Melendez,Willow Road, Menlo Park
Public berating of staff won't solve problem
Editor:
During the child care center discussion at last week's City Council meeting, council member Kelly Fergusson implied that the Brown Act violation was the fault of the current City Council majority.
In reality, the violation was a result of failure of the city staff to post a notice of the child care task force meeting on the bulletin board outside the City Council chambers. This human error was readily acknowledged by the staff and apologies were tendered to the council and to the citizens of the city.
Ms. Fergusson continued to berate the council majority and blame them for the Brown Act violation and twice proposed that the city hire a consultant to "correct the process so that we will never have to face this problem again." (How a consultant and his or her attendant fees will solve the problem of human error remains a mystery.)
After berating the City Council Ms. Fergusson turned her wrath on the city staff and publicly reprimanded them for the error that they had already admitted and for which they had already apologized. While such action may be interpreted as a sign of "toughness," all my managerial training taught me that public reprimand is not an effective way to "build a well-functioning process," which demands solid cooperation between the council and the city staff.
I urge Ms. Fergusson to do less grandstanding in the future and to work with the other members of the council and with the city staff by concentrating on real issues that are important to all the citizens of Menlo Park.
Stephen C. Luder
Live Oak Avenue, Menlo Park
(The writer is a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission.)
Child care center should be privatized
Editor:
The Menlo Park child care center should be privatized. In every single city in San Mateo County having child care centers, all are privatized except for one.
I recently met with Corrine Centeno, the director of Parks, Recreation and Community Services for Redwood City, who explained how her city successfully privatized child care. Redwood City leases the land to a developer for $1,000 a year. In turn the developer builds and maintains the child care center and provides for all environmental and geotechnical remediation on the site.
The city maintains title to the land and the developer owns the leasehold improvements for 50 years, at which time title to the center transfers to the city. The Redwood City Council unanimously approved this child care privatization.
Menlo Park should follow Redwood City's lead. Our City Council has a fiduciary obligation to provide maintenance and services to its residents with the lowest lifecycle costs. Privatization is far more economical than having a city-built and run child care service. The city also has other obligations to its residents, such as remodeling the Burgess gym, which serves over 10 times the children.
It is fiscally irresponsible to needlessly provide excess funding to a child care center when less expensive alternatives are available. To do so deprives many other deserving programs of their funding. Our city has a finite budget. No program should be unjustly enriched at the expense of other well deserving programs.
Hank Lawrence, Sharon Oaks Drive, Menlo Park
Do child care recipients really need the help?
Editor:
I see the same suspects are trying to hamstring the city, once again, about whether to build a "Taj Mahal" child care center or remodel the vacant police station at a much lower cost to the taxpayers. That is the question.
The backers of the "Taj Mahal" concept scream, "you promised, you promised." Where is the question of need in all of this?
Not the question of need for mortgage relief for these "Westside Mommas," who live in million dollar homes, but real financial need?
I am single with no kids and I need mortgage relief. Can I apply to the city for help? Don't be fooled by the rhetoric. Remodel the police station and let this tragic comedy be over.
Pat White, Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park
The Monster Child
Editor:
Tuesday's council meeting was another predictable political melodrama orchestrated to slander the City Council majority and staff on a Brown Act technicality.
Heywood Robinson and Kelly Fergussen want to halt the remodel and addition of the old police station into the new child care center because staff didn't post a public hearing notice on the bulletin board. They favor resurrecting a plan for a large, new building.
But what is the real makeup of the building they are so impassioned about? A five-minute review of the documents reveals a project that spun out of control. It is a sprawling jumble of rooms that gobbles up the open space between the library and the historic gatehouse along Ravenswood Avenue. Style is a word that doesn't apply to its confusing gable roofs capped off by five, tacked-on 30-foot-high "light monitor" towers. Mosaic tile, stucco, brick and vertical wood siding compete in a vain attempt to adorn this clunker.
Yes they threw in everything but the kitchen sink on the outside of this one, but not to worry: the building has 40 sinks, seven of them kitchen sinks in six kitchens. With furnishings and site improvements, including a play sculpture garden entry, this self-centered child will easily cost $8 million.
Menlo Park has a long tradition of residential scale municipal buildings. Low slope roofs, deep eaves, and brown wood siding are the standard vocabulary. Although it's a little dull, the $3 million remodel and addition conforms. It matches the library and won't offend anyone in that prominent location.
Now Kelly Fergusson got herself elected by campaigning against monster houses and selfish builders. Well, if this isn't a monster, I don't know what is. The design committee of child care advocates and child care professionals really ran amok in their private meetings.
If Ms. Fergusson and Mr. Robinson want to hang their political sunbonnets on this monster child they picked the wrong baby. In these tough economic times the remodel and addition is the responsible project to approve.
Sam Sinnott, architect, Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park
Council member's children use child care center
Editor:
I wonder why Councilwoman Kelly Fergusson has not recused herself from voting on the child care issue since her own children are using the city's child care program. Something doesn't smell right here.
For some reason, this appearance of impropriety does not phase Ms. Fergusson. She continues to champion her children's child care program in spite of the fact that it may preclude her from making objective decisions that should benefit the interests of the city. As a newly elected official, shouldn't Ms. Fergusson be making an effort to act above the letter of the law herself?
Mary Gilles, Hermosa Way, Menlo Park
Duboc challenged to a one-on-one debate
Editor:
At last week's City Council meeting I was an eye witness as Lee Duboc once again distorted facts and history related to Measure T and the children's center.
In the spirit of full disclosure and clearing the air for the residents of Menlo Park, I am requesting an open, civil and public discussion of the facts related to this matter. As a resident, I am allowed only three minutes during the public comment portion of council meetings to present facts and recommendations.
In contrast, council members have an open-ended bully pulpit when it comes to presenting their version of the issue at hand. Ms. Duboc took full advantage, haranguing those present with a diatribe of misstatements and distortions. She is counting on the public to think, "Some of this must be true." But is any of it? As my husband stated, "The lady doth protest too much." After all, with a confirmed Brown Act violation, she had a lot to defend.
My proposal, presented to the public via the Almanac, is that Ms. Duboc and I engage in a public discussion, at the March 15 City Council meeting, to come to agreement on the facts as they relate to the police station remodel versus construction of a new center.
We can use her "five pages of single-spaced notes" as a starting point. I feel the community would benefit from a full and public discussion of these matters as opposed to the letters and brief snippets of public comment, which are no longer very helpful.
If Ms. Duboc is so sure of her facts, then she should be as prepared to present and defend them in public as I am to present mine. With equal time I am confident that I can show that the Menlo Children's Center has been wildly distorted and the new center is entirely defensible as a better, and more fiscally responsible, alternative to remodeling the 45-year-old police station and adding a side modular building. Will Ms. Duboc accept the challenge?
Irene Searles, Oakdell Drive, Menlo Park
Menlo Park's black hole
Editor:
Menlo Park's current political storm involves a future day care center, and whether we should spend approximately $3 million or at least $6 million on a more elaborate project.
All the fuss about the city staff's failure to post a notice about a meeting where the same arguments would be repeated by both sides again and again is an obvious ruse, which may be politically clever, but is otherwise delaying a community project and consuming city resources. I appeal to the City Council, especially Kelly Fergusson and Andy Cohen, to show some restraint with our funds, and provide for the interests of a broader base of our community.
Approximately 50 percent of the city's current budget for "community services" is for day care, while approximately 5 percent is for youth sports. The proposed day care center, which would serve a few hundred children per year, is to be funded by Measure T proceeds, which also were to provide for a new or at least renovated 30-year-old Burgess Gym, which serves thousands per year.
The "Taj Mahal" day care center would leave nothing for a gym. Let's serve more than a sliver or our community.
Peter Suhr, Sharon Park Drive, Menlo Park
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