Dear Mayor Nash and Council Members,
I’ve read the comments that were submitted to you and am offering you a condensed version, to be followed by my own recommendations.
It makes no sense to prioritize Climate Change when neighborhoods in West Menlo are literally unsafe. Dozens of residents from Sharon Heights sent in comments about their homes being burglarized, and they’re pleading for daily police presences.
1. As the stewards of our community, making sure our residents are safe in their homes and their property is safe from burglary should be your top priority. Until reading these comments, I had no idea this situation was occurring in our city.
Make that your number one.
2A. Next: Everyone wants downtown vibrancy. What matters is how we define that and how we achieve it.
Vibrancy doesn’t come about through throngs of people. It isn’t about crowding. Calcutta doesn’t come to mind when we speak of vibrancy. The high-end shopping districts, upscale restaurants and Broadway theatre district of New York may come to mind.
But as a small suburb, neither of those extremes are in the cards for us. Instead, we need to start by taking care of our downtown by resurfacing our sidewalks, streets and parking lots, keeping the downtown clean, and beautifying it with planters filled with seasonal flowers, etc.
After assigning police protection to Sharon Heights and adjacent West Menlo neighborhoods and giving our downtown a much-needed facelift, here’s an easy, time-tested way to support vibrancy downtown: Spruce up Fremont Park!
2B. Our one and only green space downtown has been sadly and inexcusably neglected for some years now, since the Council ripped the grass out of half the park and replaced it with unsightly tanbark. No one sits on tanbark. Kids don’t play on tanbark. Tanbark isn’t soothing to the eye or to the soul the way green grass is. And it would be a quick, inexpensive and easy fix to simply have grass sod replace that tanbark. In two weeks it will have put down shallow roots, and within a month it should be stable. Of course you have to make sure the sprinkler system works properly as well.
If you do this by early April we’ll have a beautiful grass lawn everyone will love by the beginning of May.
Then you can move on to the next quick and easy vibrancy creator: Replace our heavy duty professional quality outdoor stage that the city threw away, with another one just like it—a stage with a backdrop and shell cover and steps leading up to the performance platform, big enough to hold a band—even a Big Band, as we’ve had in the past. And purchase a high-quality outdoor sound system, so we won’t be stuck with over-amplified low-quality sound when bands come to entertain us.
You want vibrancy and you want community and you want things for the kids and the whole family? Outdoor concerts all summer long!
And bring back our summer arts & crafts fairs—the Connoisseur’s Marketplace/Summerfest. That’s a huge draw both for residents and for people all over the Bay Area.
The Menlo Park Chamber of Commerce used to host it, in conjunction with Miramar Events, Team Pro Event and Pacific Fine Arts Festivals, so with a simple tweak, by either having the city host it, or perhaps the Lion’s Club, or some other organization—maybe even the San Mateo Chamber of Commerce, and we’re off and running!
3. In addition, since you’ve let the 600 block just sit there for the past 10 months instead of turning it into a vibrant community resource—which doesn’t mean hopscotch—and meanwhile it takes up 10 parking spaces or more, and creates an obstacle course people need to navigate to get back to El Camino, open the street back up. That will also provide more space for the Summerfest street vendors when they come to our city this July—if you play your cards right, Council!
Sincerely,
Cherie Zaslawsky
