Hi Karen, Thank you for your email. I appreciate you sharing your comments and take them in combination with your comments at the hearing last Tuesday. As a matter of record, I voted against adopting the General Plan. For Brown Act purposes, I will refrain from discussing what can be done in the future, but look forward to working on the subcommittee(s) addressing these issues. With kind regards, Ray Mueller (please excuse odd punctuation. my laptop does not always work well with the City's email system.) ________________________________________ From: Karen Grove Sent: Monday, June 17, 2019 3:10 PM To: _CCIN Subject: jobs, housing, and air quality Dear Mayor Mueller and Councilmembers, As you know, I?m on the Housing Commission, and as usual, I?m writing for myself. I?m glad to see that the council and community are talking about the impact of plans and projects on Menlo Park?s contribution to the region?s jobs/housing balance (and we should also be talking about job/housing affordability *fit*). I?m surprised and disappointed to realize how little attention we have paid to that important planning metric until now! As a result of that lack of focus, we now have large, dense office projects filled with new employees and more being built and proposed; while the planned-for housing has not kept pace. I certainly understand the desire to take a pause on adding any new office space?if only we had put jobs/housing phasing into Connect Menlo we might not be discussing moratoria. However, jobs/housing imbalance is not the only reason community members stated for supporting the proposed moratoria. They also described the disparate impact of development in Bayside as compared to the rest of Menlo Park. To that end, as I stated at the meeting, I encourage increased heights and density downtown, and a commitment to build not 100s but 1000s of new homes near our Caltrain station ? at all levels of affordability, from extremely low income through the missing middle, and up to market rate. We cannot change the past, but I hope that going forward, we will analyze the impact of every planning and zoning decision on: 1) its contribution to the jobs/housing balance and fit, and 2) balance of impacts (and the opportunity that comes with the impacts!) throughout the city. I was also shocked to realize that we have apparently never done localized air quality measurements in the Bayside neighborhood. Please find a way to get a baseline measurement of air quality in a few strategic locations in the Bayside community ? Kelly field would be an obvious location to test; Belle Haven School and the proposed outdoor activity on Jefferson Dr. might be two others. I?m happy to discuss any of this by phone. Don?t hesitate to call me at 650-868-2732. Regards, Karen Grove Received on Mon Jun 17 2019 - 19:18:06 PDT
