Posted by DC McGlynn, a resident of the Menlo Park: Linfield Oaks neighborhood, on Aug 16, 2012 at 11:50 am

Before USGS empties out and rents their buildings, they should ask themselves why is their neighbor office building on Linfield (at roundabout) vacant for over 12 months since a major upgrade. Also the new office building at Willow and Middlefield .. why is this still vacant ? Are the rents that high ?

DC McGlynn

PS. I hope the USGS library is untouched .

Posted by Eric Richards, a resident of the Menlo Park: other neighborhood, on Aug 16, 2012 at 10:56 pm

To present this as a 'savings' seems misleading. The 'savings' is only a paper savings. The federal government owns this property, yet the General Service Administration charges rent and I heard the rent is going up regardless of the vacant space noted above. So the savings is really only a savings compared to what USGS would paying for the same amount of space.

To me the real news here is that the federal government charges itself outrageous rent and it has real effects on government service. GSA is at the center of this and it might be that only congress can turn things around. USGS or not, this effects all of us. Write your congressional representative.

Posted by concerned, a resident of another community, on Aug 17, 2012 at 4:44 pm

The office building on Linfield is being rented by GSA (of expensive conference fame), not the USGS. They are the 'landlord' of government buildings, and a pretty bad one at that. Why anyone would want to rent from them when they ignore leaking roofs and malfunctioning heating/cooling systems, is beyond me, though maybe they treat their non-governmental tenants better than the government ones.