January 30, 2025
To: Menlo Park City Council
From: Dr. Rubye Cervelli, Menlo Park Resident for 30 years
RE: city of MP downtown-parking-plazas-rfq-final-v2.pdf
In the above referenced RFQ document you are giving away our parking lots for $1.00 per year for 55 years.
You call it a “lease,” but once the parking lots are built on we, the residents of the City of Menlo Park, can never recover this loss. The duplicity of this language is disturbing as it is actually a land give-away of city property.
Section 5.1, of the above referenced RFQ titled Land Disposition states:
"The City will transfer the site(s) to the selected developer through a long-term ground lease with anticipated terms of 55 years for base rent of $1.00 per year, plus additional rent arising from insurance and operational costs.”

As a Menlo Park tax payer, I would like to know how the City intends to cover increased costs of the following:

1) Increased traffic and lack of parking during and after any construction

2) Disruption or lack of consideration for our businesses

3) Increased danger to our children who ride their bicycles to and from school as well as for pleasure outside of school hours

4) Increased danger to seniors and other adults who ride our bicycles as part of our lifestyle for shopping, eating out, getting to work, etc.

5) Increased police protection for any increase in crime

6) Increased need for maintaining and cleaning our streets and sidewalks
Kindly respond to the planning for the increased costs and requirements of your residents in these areas of concern.