The City of Menlo Park has an unusual and unfair system of fines and fees for violations of city ordinances. For instance, a violation of the Noise Ordinance leads to a fine “not exceeding” $50 for the first infraction, $200 for the second, an $500 for the third". A violation of the Construction Ordinance has no definite fine.
We recently received a notice from the City stating that eight trees, all ‘Heritage Trees’ at 2400 Sand Hill Road were to be removed; the "Reason of [sic] Removal" was ‘Development”. The noice included the statement that if anyone wished to appeal the Removal of the trees, there would be an "appeal fee of $200"! In other words, simply trying to stop destruction of trees costs money The “Master Fee Schedule” states the fee for application to remove one heritage tree is $210 (and if more trees, each one costs the same or more). Stated simply, if my neighbor (or a developer) wants to remove one heritage tree, the City would charge him/her just $10 more than it would charge me to protest its removal.
This fee schedule makes it costly for the residents to plead for preservation of trees. The City of Menlo Park declares it is “Tree City USA” (see https://www.menlopark.org/1105/Trees) but the removal of trees to encourage development will have the long-term effect of changing the City for the worse. Already an idea of development with housing replacing parkland at Sharon Park was, fortunately, found to be untenable, indeed illegal. The fact that such an idea could gain any traction at all speaks to the unfortunate trend to make the City attractive more to developers and less to the residents.
