Honorable Council Members,
Note: Rich Cline’s April 2 email to the city council titled “It is possible to tunnel” was just brought to my attention by another
Menlo Park resident.
I can only imagine you shared my surprise when reading former City Councilman Rich Cline’s response to the Palo Alto Weekly’s
clever April Fools’ Day story “Palo Alto’s tunnel plan gets a boost – from Elon Musk.”) That he believed the story is not
surprising. It was well crafted and likely stunned both supporters and opponents of a grade separation tunnel in Palo Alto and
Rich because he remains a strong advocate for building one in Menlo Park. What IS surprising? That he appeared so vindicated by
this upbeat fictional story that he unleashed strident and totally baseless personal attacks on me and several other residents he
accuses of “obstructing” efforts to build a tunnel in our city.That is NOT true. One only has to view our past comments at council
meetings, our communications to the city council, and my guest opinions and blog in The Almanac to understand our actual views and
recommendations. Sadly, Rich has grossly misrepresented our substantial efforts to help our city evaluate one particular grade
separation alternative Menlo Park has chosen NOT to study, the use of fully elevated grade separations.
Here are just a few samples of his mischaracterizations and misrepresentations:
“As you know, our community like most has a very vocal minority share of voices via motivated residents with time and money and
just enough information to form aradical offshoot of angry elevated rail advocates.I never understood why they have to be sobitter
and angry about transit conceptsbut whatever. “
“This group created a website and branded itself as some pseudo official Menlo Park downtown vibrancy specialist. It has recruited
many angry white men and rejects the idea of tunneling outright. The group tops it off by ridiculing any person and any
underground concept as nefariously impossible or uninformed.“
“Why do we let obstructionists like Dana Hendrickson or Henry Riggs or Steve Schmidt and their cronies of well-intentioned but
misinformed seemingly convince our community to keep its heads in the sand when it comes to underground transit ideas? Why don’t
we force obstructionists to disprove the bold idea as much as we do force idea (in this case tunnels) proponents to prove its
efficacy? It seems one sided and heavily favored against taking bold steps and resistant to leading from the front”.
I have had too much respect for Rich to respond in kind but do not want the current council to be misled by his claims. There are
two essential corrections.
First, I and the other residents mentioned by Rich, have NOT mounted any concerted effort to oppose a Menlo Park tunnel and would
support the evaluation of one IF a promising funding strategy was proposed. I personally feel it is unlikely, as Palo Alto has not
identified one after considerable effort (but appears not yet given up). And Menlo Park has had ample opportunity to conduct a
similar analysis but hasn’t.
Second, we do continue to encourage our city to fairly evaluate fully elevated grade separations, an alternative discounted by our
prior city council. We have spent hundreds of hours both evaluating this alternative and talking extensively with council members
– including Rich, Menlo Park residents and business owners about the need to study this solution. We have also repeatedly
expressed our reasons to the city council. All residents deserve opportunities to understand and evaluate this promising
alternative.
I imagine Rich was deeply disappointed to learn that the Palo Alto story was a joke but this should not have prompted his angry
erroneous claims and over-the-top” insulting behavior. I have met with Rich several times and welcomed him into my home. He has
never expressed his current criticisms directly to any of us.
I continue to hope our current city council will "do the right thing" and study fully elevated grade separation solutions, but
have not yet seen a good reason to be optimistic. Please provide the kind of leadership all Menlo Park residents deserve.
Best regards,
Dana Hendrickson
