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Menlo Park’s Measure P moved closer to defeat as votes continued to be counted from the Nov. 3 election. The latest results, released late on Friday afternoon, Nov. 6, showed 4,237 votes (46.2%), in favor of the measure to 4,939 (53.8%) opposed, widening the gap seen in earlier returns.
The measure would require the city to seek voter approval before making significant changes to any of the eight city-owned parking lots downtown. The citizen’s initiative was put forward by Save Downtown Menlo, a group of businesses and residents opposed to the city’s plan to build affordable housing on three of the lots.
“Nearly half the votes so far are yes, even though the bulk of the political establishment was telling people to vote no,” Measure P proponent Alex Beltramo said in a statement. “Regardless of the final outcome, the message is clear: We need a better plan for downtown.”
With Measure P heading toward likely failure, the city’s affordable housing plan is still facing stiff headwinds: namely, how to pay for it.
While the city originally hoped that offering a 55-year lease for $1 annually would be valuable enough to developers to offset building 345 below market rate units and replacement parking, all three proposals currently on the table would require a multi-million-dollar city subsidy.
Save Downtown Menlo has already sued the city over the housing plan, but withdrew the lawsuit while the ballot measure went before voters — while still maintaining its ability to refile the lawsuit.
If Measure P is defeated once all the votes are counted, it will mark the third time Menlo Park voters have rejected a citizen’s initiative aimed at stopping development. The previous measures both failed by wide margins. In 2022, 61.8% of voters rejected Measure V, which would have required a citywide vote before the city could rezone single-family areas. Eight years earlier, 61.3% rejected Measure M, which sought to restrict development under the El Camino Real and Downtown Specific Plan.
Karen Grove, who helped lead efforts to defeat both Measure P and Measure V, said she is excited about the future of Menlo Park.
“We are looking forward to hearing from all the voters and moving forward as a community,” she said in a statement.
The effort to defeat P was expensive, with both camps spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.
While citywide voters appear to have rejected Measure P, District 4 residents chose Laura Melahn over Charlotte Reed by a decisive margin for Menlo Park City Council, according to the most recent numbers. Throughout the race, Melahn declined to state her position on Measure P but said the city’s proposed downtown affordable housing development was not financially viable and put forth an alternate plan. She instead proposed subsidizing more deeply affordable units at other developments already in the pipeline, rather than building on the parking lots.
Reed said she supports building affordable housing on the downtown lots and publicly opposed Measure P.
