Hello City Council,
I am unable to attend the CC meeting tonight, but I wanted to voice my
strong support for the Slow Streets Program that Staff is presenting to you
tonight.
For several years, its been clear that the serious flaws in the design of
the NTMP have stalled progress to evaluate and act on residents requests
for safety improvements to their streets.
I commend Azalea Mitch for making it a priority to address this
longstanding problem after she became the Citys Public Works Director.
I think Azalea and her staff have done a great job designing a new Slow
Streets Program for Menlo Park, to replace the NTMP. For example, they have
designed a program that is more fair and equitable by removing the onerous
requirement that residents gather signatures to submit a request.
And, the new Slow Streets Program will empower staff to evaluate and
implement improvements in a much more timely manner by using a data-driven
approach and by enabling staff to "batch process" requests. Staff also did
a very solid and thoughtful job defining the scoring criteria for
evaluating residents requests.
I strongly support the new Slow Streets Program proposed by Staff. Its
such a vast improvement in terms of fairness and equity, responsiveness to
residents, and transparency into the Citys evaluation process. Its going
to be like night and day from the NTMP! Thank you to Staff for prioritizing
this work.
Sally Cole
Vice Chair, Complete Streets Commission
- such as a burdensome requirement for residents to gather signatures when
they submitted a request to the city
