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In an apparent effort to impress voters, the No on Measure P campaign boasts a bevy of politicians as supporters. Ironically, they all seem to be on the same bandwagon: that of top-down governmental control over the will of the people.
In fact, their list of endorsers reads like a “Who’s Who” of both state and local politicians — as well as appointed members of Menlo Park’s governmental apparatus — who got us into this quagmire in the first place.
Save Downtown Menlo’s initiative YES! on Measure P is the residents’ defense against a City Council intent on shoehorning housing into our downtown parking lots regardless of public pushback against their plan’s predictably devastating impacts on our businesses and community.
The powerful bandwagon is largely responsible for filling our suburbs with unsightly, high-density, multistory high-rises that make our cities look like something out of East Berlin under the Soviets.
In fact, state Sen. Scott Wiener — the very person who authored many of the bills forcing radical urbanization on our suburban communities — is listed as an endorser of the No on P campaign.
Here’s the shortlist of his bills: SB 35 (2017); SB 828 (2018); SB 10 (2021); SB 423 (2023); SB 4 (2023); SB 593 (2023); SB 886 (2023); SB 677 (2025); and his latest, SB 79, is currently wreaking havoc on our suburbs.
These bills have systematically reduced local control, upzoned what local zoning permits, and greatly increased housing target numbers.
This has essentially resulted in big money for developers, and gives the middle finger to our previously tranquil suburban neighborhoods and downtowns.
No wonder big developers donate abundantly to Wiener’s campaigns. But he has other friends as well: He’s benefitedfrom the broader coalitionof Big Tech founders, YIMBY Law, real estate interests, pro-housing advocacy PACs, and independent expenditure committees that have financed his elections and lobbied for his legislative platform from 2016 to 2026 to the tune of millions of dollars. According to official candidate filings on the FEC Database and state campaign finance tracking on OpenSecrets, real estate, tech, and pro-housing interests account for an estimated $3.5 million to $5.5 million of Senator Wiener’s total career fundraising.
The narrative that California has a “housing crisis” is misleading. We actually have a “legislation crisis” compounded by big tech and Yimby Law driving up rents and home prices, and Sacramento making things worse by forcing cities to overbuild disproportionate high-density eight-story “affordable housing” projects that turn our suburbs into crowded, urbanized compounds unrecognizable to the residents and business owners who built those cities and have supported and enjoyed them for decades.
Regarding the YES! on Measure P campaign: Why would anyone oppose a democratic vote to see whether the people of Menlo Park want to give up their commercial downtown in favor of subsidized high-density housing?
The reality is that high-rise, high-density housing is detrimental in certain locations — especially when it’s dramatically out-of-scale or proposed in a place where it will destroy businesses or neighborhoods.
The 30,000-foot view: We are witnessing Plan Bay Area’s top-down attempt to make our unique and cherished individual cities conform to a cookie-cutter sameness that looks increasingly like an urban dystopia to many residents.
There is no one-size-fits-all formula for reasonable growth for all the cities on the Peninsula and the greater Bay Area.
In our own case, standing against this bulwark of top-down governmental edicts and hefty public-private partnerships is the citizens’ grassroots initiative: Save Downtown Menlo’s Measure P is our “David” battling their “Goliath.”
Voting yes on Measure P is the only way Menlo Park residents can protect our unique, beloved businesses and preserve the viability and ambience of our downtown.
Cherie Zaslawsky has lived in downtown Menlo Park for over 30 years. Though she owns no property or business there, she has deep roots in the community.
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