|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Menlo Park will have a lot of important decisions to make in 2025 as the city continues to implement its housing element plans and deal with other proposed developments. New mayor Drew Combs says that his goal for the upcoming year is to ensure that residents have a forum to discuss those issues collegially and respectfully. The council chose Combs to be mayor for 2025, with Betsy Nash as vice mayor, on Dec. 10.
In an interview with The Almanac, Combs, who lives in the Willows neighborhood with his wife and two school-aged kids, said that his other priorities for the upcoming year include supporting small businesses within the city, encouraging residents to get involved with the city’s decision-making process and getting a revised use permit process for substandard lots in the city on the council’s agenda.
“In these roles, you very quickly realize that you are sort of a caretaker or custodian,” he said. “So my goal for my time as mayor is to hand things off a little further along toward our vision for Menlo Park than they were when I took things on.”
Combs, who represents the city’s District 2, was first elected in 2018 and again in 2022, after previously serving on the city’s planning commission and bicycle commission. He previously served as mayor in 2021, and at the time, the city was still in the midst of recovering from the many disruptions that the COVID-19 pandemic brought. Combs says he is looking forward to serving his second term as mayor under more “normal” conditions.
“Last time I was mayor, so much was about the city contracting, and figuring out ‘how do we get back to normal?’” he said. “Now it’s going to be back to being about ‘what’s our future vision for the city, and how do we help that come to fruition?’”
In 2025, the Menlo Park City Council will make decisions on the direction to take on several large developments that have been proposed for the city. One of those, the decision of whether or not to proceed with seeking proposals for affordable housing on downtown parking lots, will take place on Jan. 14, 2025, right at the beginning of Combs’ term as mayor.
The council also still needs to finalize a development agreement for the Parkline development at the site of the SRI headquarters. The so-called “builder’s remedy” proposal for the former Sunset Magazine site, which has been deemed complete by city planners and is now in the early stages of the environmental review process, is another big question mark that hangs over the council members’ heads.
Combs said that it will be important for the council to respond to those big projects and offer clarity to the public over the next year. He also said he knows the projects will generate “a lot of discussions and debates,” but that it’s important for the council to prioritize hearing public comment and to encourage residents to engage in civil and respectful discussion with one another.
“I think as a council, it’s important for us to … encourage discussion and debate, but also to provide a forum for it, and also to remind people that we are all committed to making Menlo Park better, though we might have different visions for what better looks like,” he said.
Combs said that staffing is another challenge that has been ongoing for the city. Though the hiring process is primarily driven by the city manager, he believes that the council can have a role in helping to fill key vacancies in City Hall.
In the 2024 general election, Menlo Park residents passed a transient occupancy tax (hotel tax) increase after the council put it on the ballot to add more money to the city’s coffers. The city had been struggling to balance its budget due to uncertain state funding and after it lost the right to collect the utility user tax following a lawsuit. The city’s final 2024-25 budget forecasts an $820,000 deficit. Combs said he thinks that the increased TOT will help the city stabilize its finances, but that the council still needs to carefully prioritize its limited budget.
He also hopes to return to the tradition of a “state of the city” address, which the city has not done for a couple of years. “Historically, those have been great community moments of both looking forward for the council … and then also for staff and residents,” he said.
Combs said that despite the complex issues the city is facing in the upcoming year, he looks forward to engaging with Menlo Park residents. Combs already holds weekly office hours from 9-10 a.m. at Cafe Zoe, at 1929 Menalto Ave., but says that he hopes residents know that he will have an “open door policy” as mayor. He also plans to expand his office hours to other locations in the city in 2025 to be more accessible to residents from other districts throughout his tenure as mayor.
“Those in-person, regular interactions with folks, and folks knowing that every Saturday at nine o’clock they know exactly where to find me … is great,” he said.
