Dear Council Members,

While I am sympathetic to the need for affordable housing I stand adamantly opposed to using our finite number of parks as solutions. This is not “not in my neighborhood” thought but rather a protection of the precious few parks we have in the city. West of the Alameda we have 1 park and to think the City is considering the site to solve their housing problem is wrong. It is a short sighted solution. Once they are gone or down sized there is no going back. They are gone. The city is changing and not for the better. Downtown is laughable and personal views /goals are currently extremely one-sided. I would prefer not to spend the money to put this on a ballot. I would prefer that the council re-exam and decide not to consider the use of our parks to solve the housing problem. However, if the council cannot come to a unanimous agreement to abandon the use of parks for development I whole hardly support Ray Mueller’s effort to put a park’s preservation measure on the ballot. This issue is reoccurring and deserves to be solved once and for all. The best way to do that is to let the residents decide. We all recognize the housing problem is very complicated and finding locations is an extremely hard task. However, aside from determining locations another part of the problem remains with the painfully long process to develop, costs and requirements the city mandates. Any housing built in Menlo Park (or anywhere in CA) can't truly be "affordable" because all the fees the city impose is passed along to buyers or renters in some form. The development fees the city is bring in with the recent projects is mind blowing. There was a missed opportunities with size and scale along the Caltrain corridor and with the Stanford development. There are several projects in front of the City or will be shortly that repurpose land without taking away our parks!! Please leverage those projects and work with the developers to see those reach their fullest potential.

Respectfully
Marci Coggins
2176 Sharon Road