Mayor Combs and City Council Members,I support more affordable housing in Menlo Park. In the right locations, it will strengthen our community.But our community is built around a shared downtown — and the downtown depends on the public parking plazas. Repurposing those plazas would be a once-in-a-generation decision with extreme consequences.On this decision, I trust the people of Menlo Park to do whats best for the town in which they live.I therefore urge you to adopt the Downtown Parking Plazas Ordinance, giving residents the right to vote on the future of their downtown.Thank you for your service in representing the people of Menlo Park.
The above is the "canned" message supplied by backers of the save downtown movement. I fully agree with their rationale for a vote and I go beyond that to express my opinion that doing away with the down town parking lots would be a disaster for Menlo Park and the merchants who count on available parking for their customers. I often have some difficulty now finding a parking place to visit a local business, we need all the parking spaces available and a renewed enforcement of parking hours allowed to discourage all day parking by car poolers and train commuters.
