The Menlo Park City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to pay a consultant $15,000 to evaluate the soundness of her $150,000 analysis of a proposal to redo the city’s downtown growth plan.
The city earlier this year hired Lisa Wise Consulting Inc. of San Luis Obispo to conduct an impartial analysis of the proposal, which since has turned into a November ballot initiative — Measure M — pushed by a group of city residents called Save Menlo.
Measure M seeks to change the El Camino Real/Downtown Specific Plan by limiting office space and requiring voter approval of any changes to its development guidelines.
The Wise report, presented at a council meeting July 15, raised the hackles of Save Menlo members who alleged it glossed over the initiative’s benefits and included 44 errors. On July 31, Save Menlo wrote a letter that also criticized the report for omitting large projects proposed by Greenheart Land Co. and by Stanford University land developer John Arrillaga.
In response, the council voted to pay the consultant an additional $15,000 to evaluate Save Menlo’s allegations and present its finding at the Aug. 26 council meeting.
But former mayor and initiative backer Heyward Robinson wasn’t pleased.
“If information comes back from Lisa Wise and your own staff saying that, ‘Oh, there were errors, there were problems,’ are you going to correct the report?” he asked. “Are you going to make changes? … If not, I’m wondering why we’re spending this money if there’s no chance of change, of correction. One has to ask the question, I mean, is this political? Is this going to give council a chance to … sit up here on the dais … and bash the initiative again …?”
Robinson also noted that the city’s newsletter, Menlo Focus, has been brought to the attention of California Attorney General Kamala Harris because it’s “propaganda” that defends office buildings.
“Unfortunately, of course, you can’t unpop the balloon and I would like the council to consider that the city, using my tax dollars [and] fellow residents’ tax dollars, is now taking a side in this election,” Robinson remarked. “The city should be erring on the side of no trace of any kind of bias in this election and, unfortunately, this doesn’t meet the standard.”
Mayor Ray Mueller said he was confused by objections to having Lisa Wise Consulting do a further evaluation.
“It was my understanding that for weeks now we’ve had people … requesting that we look at those issues,” he said. “We already had people look at those issues, now we’re just simply putting together the enactment of the money to pay for the fact that that work’s been performed. So it’s beyond me now why we’re in a situation where we’re being told, ‘Well, how dare you pay to have those issues looked at,’ when for the last two weeks we’ve been told how dare us not have looked at them already. It’s totally incongruent to me that that issue, that argument was made tonight.”
Email Rhea Mahbubani at rmahbubani@dailynewsgroup.com or follow her at twitter.com/RMahbubani.