| Viewpoint - Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Letter: Time to end downtown visioning effort
A recent letter urged the Menlo Park City Council to "rethink" the visioning process.
This downtown visioning process needs much more than just a "rethink." The city needs to cut its losses and kill off the process. It is obvious, just like "Smart Growth" and "City Center Design," failed processes that preceded this, that this is a failed and very expensive failure at that.
The plan has become politically untenable as evidenced by delay of any further consideration until after the November 2010 election, using the lame excuse of needed extra work on the environmental impact report.
After Phase I, which had some semblance of true Menlo Park voter input, city staff members and the consultant transformed the plan, into what they wanted, not what voters want for Menlo Park.
The City Council should not continue down this road of tossing more funds down this failed process. Over $1 million has been wasted thus far and they want to spend more.
How can the council continue to consider this failed process, when the real stakeholders, the downtown merchants and property owners, are so opposed? See the full page notice paid for by the Menlo Park Downtown Alliance, published in the May 26 Almanac. Articles which appeared recently in other newspapers point to the truth about this process.
Morris Brown
Stone Pine Lane, Menlo Park
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