Dear Council Members,
There is good news to report from the largest neighborhood in Menlo Park, with over 6000 residents. An area that has generated significant revenues to Menlo Park’s General Fund for decades. Since the passing of Onetta Harris 40 years ago, much progress has taken place in Belle Haven, even though recently local media appears hesitant to mention it.
During the Onetta Harris era in Belle Haven, Raychem/Tyco dumped toxic chemicals into the ground, and vented pollution into the air blowing over Belle Haven for decades. After Onetta Harris, millions of dollars were spent by the current occupant to remove highly contaminated soil and groundwater from the site before it reached the Bay wetlands and created an ecological disaster for the region.
* https://dtsc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2017/11/TycoElectronics_FS_RFI_1103.pdf
While Onetta Harris was in Belle Haven, residents had to stand in the rain and hot sun to catch a bus. After Onetta Harris, Belle Haven has bus shelters, despite Samtrans initially refusing to install them unless they displayed liquor and cigarette ads. Without any help from the Onetta Harris group, the black women they criticize pushed back. There are now bus shelters in Belle Haven, including one next to the MPCC, with no advertisements.
* https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2018/01/09/menlo-park-the-story-behind-belle-havens-new-bus-shelters
After Onetta Harris, black women pushed for Menlo Park to make safety improvements along Chilco after a couple was killed by a drunk driver.
* https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2016/03/02/menlo-park-chilco-street-to-get-long-awaited-sidewalks
They were also successful in removing a pile of ballast rocks that released silica dust that was dumping on the kids at Beechwood Elementary.
* https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2015/04/07/menlo-park-caltrain-to-remove-ballast-rock-piles-by-october
The MPCC itself would not exist, if it weren’t for three black women who conceived of the idea, and pushed to make it a reality. Yet because they are humble people, throughout this entire naming process none of them has demanded their name be glorified over the whole project.
In sum, black history in Belle Haven did not end with Onetta Harris. Numerous black people have done many things in recent years to fight for this community that the Onetta Harris group is clueless about.
During the Onetta Harris era, there was a junkyard business, along with several other unsightly businesses, that created blight for a few blocks along Hamilton Avenue. After Onetta Harris, a redeveloped Hamilton Avenue has more housing, wide sidewalks, underground power lines, a park, and trees, that remain to this today.
* https://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/2001/2001_05_14.mpspeedy.html
* https://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/1999/1999_07_21.ahamilto.html
* https://www.menlopark.org/DocumentCenter/View/756/The-History-of-RDAs-in-California-and-in-Menlo-Park
November is Native American Heritage month. This council approved a proclamation honoring Native Americans just last week. An Ohlone Tribe burial ground went unnoticed for years during the Onetta Harris era. In recent times, however, this Native American cultural and historical site has been affirmed and respected.
* https://almanacnews.com/news/2022/04/14/metas-willow-village-project-aims-to-build-around-native-american-site
The Onetta Harris group wants us to forget all of this Belle Haven history, pretend as if nothing good has happened in Belle Haven, and as a consolation put their family name on the MPCC even though they had nothing to do with it, in a neighborhood that has been majority Hispanic for almost 25 years. At what point does any of this history get acknowledged? According to the Onetta Harris camp, never. At one point, they told the Library Commission that Onetta Harris built Menlo Park.
Their specious words are not about preserving local Black History. It’s about self-aggrandizement, while attempting to misrepresent and erase the family history, Belle Haven History, and reputation of anybody who is not part of their group. Not a single name on their list of candidates honors the Hispanic community. Not a single name honors Native Americans. Not a single name honors the Belle Haven residents who envisioned the building, and spent years pushing to make it a reality.
In fact, the Onetta Harris family would ask you to do something unprecedented in any of the cities where they currently live, like Cupertino, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and East Palo Alto. None of these cities has ever named a public building of this magnitude and expense after an individual who did nothing out of the ordinary, and who made no contributions to the project at any level. Tellingly, none of them have expressed any concern about that. Perversely, they would have you believe that the stories they tell about Onetta Harris were a rare thing in black communities during the 60s. In my personal experience, it was the opposite. And yet, we are expected to prima facia trust in 50 year old memories of the past, when they can’t properly recall my comments before this Council from this past August. For example,
* I was accused of talking about the Million Man March, led by Louis Farrakhan, in my remarks to the City Council on August 29, 2023.
* 1:00:30 mark at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh_dQJLig1g
* Below is the video of my actual comments about Martin Luther King and the March on Washington to the City Council at that meeting:
* 0:18:00 mark at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hcoa7_UOEw&t=1092s
* The March on Washington happened in August of 1963, 60 years before that Council meeting. The Million Man March took place in October of 1995. Clearly, I was not talking about the Million Man March, which happened when I was 32 years old, and 27 years after MLK was dead.
Yet they want you to make a naming decision based almost entirely on hearsay, with scant citations or receipts to support their claims.
I am a two-term planning commissioner, former board member of the Menlo Park Chamber of Commerce, and member of the former GPAC. It was the GPAC that negotiated updates to the General Plan that unlocked commercial development around Belle Haven, such as the Tarlton Life Science buildings, the Willow Village project and many others, in exchange for community benefits for Belle Haven, paving the way for the MPCC and other benefits such as a consistent revenue stream for the City’s budget.
Imagine a situation where the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center were torn down, the Menlo Park Police Headquarters building torn down, the City Council chambers torn down, the Administration building torn down, and the Burgess Pool torn down. And once the rubble was taken away, a brand new multi-purpose facility was constructed that incorporated all of the functions of all those demolished buildings, and more, under one roof. Do you seriously think that our commissions and city council would rubber stamp the whole project being called the Arrillaga Family Community Campus? The historic reasons behind the naming of the old, single-use, family recreation center wouldn’t matter. Especially if the vast majority of the supporters of the name change were Arrillaga family and friends who don’t live in Menlo Park.
Or imagine returning to the hometown of your grandmother from 40 years ago, and demanding her name be placed on a newly constructed public building nobody in your family had anything to do with, while not once acknowledging the local residents who were instrumental in bringing it to pass, in the name of preserving history.
The MPCC is the largest single investment in public services Belle Haven has ever received. It replaces an antiquated, single-use community center with a combination of public services that never had the Onetta Harris name on them, including an Aquatics Center, the Youth Center, and a Senior Center, and public services that were never even onsite of the property, including an Adult Library, a Children’s Library, and a Red Cross Emergency Shelter. During the Onetta Harris era and until the MPCC was announced, the Onetta Harris group never said a word about being disrespected by the names on those buildings.
After spending years as absentees, these largely out-of-towners have now returned, bringing toxicity with them, calling a City Council member racist, cursing at our volunteer Commissioners, and disrespecting the central figures who conceived of, and advocated for making the MPCC a reality, saying things such as “you have one foot in the grave”, and many other disrespectful things. Is this the “spirit of Onetta Harris” they were talking about at the last Library Commission meeting?
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXpjp00KoFM
* At the 1:06:30 mark
* At the 1:10:40 mark
This new level of toxicity has already managed to poison the goodwill created from the good news that has happened in Belle Haven. It is only a matter of time for the money flow to follow.
We should remember that our brand new, all-in-one community building already has a name: the MPCC, and it’s been that way for years. I recommend that we not change the name to honor any single individual or company. The MPCC name has been on all of the city documentation since the conception of the project. Given the constantly changing demographics of Belle Haven, we need this building to be affirming to every ethnicity among the residents of Belle Haven.
Doing so would allow programming at the MPCC to honor not only the Onetta Harris family history, but the more recent local history, and future local history of all of Belle Haven as well. That way we can end the debate over whose family name or personal friend’s name should be honored on what, and focus on innovative programming in the building that the multiple generations who live in Belle Haven can collectively enjoy under one roof. Such programming should preserve and pass on Black History, Hispanic History, Native American history, and more in the historically inclusive tradition of the civil rights movement, without bullying, disrespecting or ignoring the residents who live here.
Thank you,
Harry Bims
