• Where is our neighborliness?
After hearing the pleas of our neighbors in East Palo Alto and Menlo Park about the deleterious health effects of lead on their children (estimated to be as much as half of flint Michigan levels), the Palo Alto City Council this past Monday rallied around keeping the airport open and even allowing a runway extension of a hundred yards.
Tear up this runway, Mayor Greer! Let’s return 100 acres to the wetlands as modest reparations for our environmental depredation. Place our neighbors children’s health at a higher value than elite recreation.
• Save our Parks
All members of the city council voted to put measure 4 on the ballot to take .33 acres of El Camino Park from the park and pave it over. I will vote against it; I hope you do too.
• "I work in Palo Alto but I cant afford to live in Palo Alto"
Let’s build “University City” a high-rise complex of 10k homes, featuring living-working lofts, on the parking lots and garages of Stanford Shopping Center, over the next quarter century, eliminating the need for construction in existing neighborhoods. With Stanford contributing the land to a joint venture with the city of Palo Alto, affordability will be built into the DNA of this new community whose scale can also make possible amenities like Olympic sized pools, gymnasia, ice skating rink and clubhouse. Although the shopping center is still viable its economic base is being eaten away by Internet shopping that has already depleted other retail venues, it Is sensible to act in advance of inevitable trends that will leave in person retail as a niche feature of neighborhoods like the vinyl record section in Barnes and Noble.
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