Greetings,
I trust the city council and the city planners will disregard any input or results from the Dec. 11th meeting about the housing on the parking lots, even though the city saw it as a successful outreach effort.
Many, if not most of us, had serious doubts about the validity of the meeting as it was run by a second party, not MP staff. That second party, the San Mateo County Chamber of Commerce, had already made their pro-parking lot development views known at the City Council meeting in November.
Their pro-development stance was clear in the questionnaires they put up on-screen, asking for a response within seconds. The questions were weighted to give them the responses they wanted. Never was it possible to check "none of the above." We were forced to either not respond or to choose one that was perhaps less distant from our views than the others. "None of the above" should have always been an option.
They also used a third-party app for some of their other questions, like "how would you describe the current downtown situation in one word." We had no way of knowing what the app was, who owns it, and what the app owners did with the personal information that they gleaned above and beyond our responses. While this might have been in line with city regulations on the use of such apps we had to wonder as it was sprung on us.
It was only in the comment section that attendees could actually express their views, which they did. The rest all felt bogus for the reasons stated above. So please do not give credence to the results of the on-screen questionnaires in the Dec.11th meeting that were so obviously weighted to elicit the responses the organizers wanted.
Thank you for your attention to the above.
Sincerely,
Lyn McMillan
