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Editions: Aug. 28 ·
Aug. 26 ·
Aug. 25 ·
Aug. 24 ·
Aug. 20 ·
August 17, 2026 ·
August 14, 2026 ·
August 12, 2026 ·
August 10, 2026 ·
August 9, 2026 ·
August 7, 2026 ·
August 4, 2026 ·
August 3, 2026 ·
August 1, 2026 ·
July 31, 2026 ·
July 29, 2026 ·
July 27, 2026 ·
July 24, 2026 ·
July 20, 2026 ·
July 17, 2026 ·
July 14, 2026
Friday, August 28, 2026
At a glance
- Report and Commentary The Library and the League. On Sept. 30 the Menlo Park Library hosts the ballot explainer, given by the League of Women Voters of South San Mateo County. The League opposes Measure P, and its president, Lucia Tedesco, is signer three on the county’s argument-against form, under the title President, League of Women Voters of South San Mateo County, dated July 27, 2026. Asked how an opponent of a measure gives the neutral explanation of it, Tedesco answered five questions promptly and in detail, and her reply is quoted at length: Voter Services prepares the material and “The Advocacy team is not involved in the write-up and review”; the materials carry the official supporters-and-opponents list, on which the League appears; presenters “will not comment on our opposition.” The board adopted the position on Aug. 19, 2025 and approved an expanded opposition summary on Aug. 11, 2026, grounded in a housing position adopted in 2003. The wall she describes is real and documented, and it also runs inside one organization. Answering two follow-up questions on Aug. 28, Tedesco said the League is “a 100% volunteer-run organization,” that presenters “are not evaluated by me,” and that the Director of Voter Services is one of several board directors “working alongside the rest of us rather than reporting up through a hierarchy.” That answer corrects this site’s earlier description of her as the officer above both teams, and the piece has been corrected and marked. The City’s billing, accurate about parties, still says nothing about where the presenter stands on this measure. The piece lays out both sides of that wall and leaves the judgment to the reader. Read the report.
Sources: Lucia Tedesco, president, League of Women Voters of South San Mateo County, written responses to five questions from this site, quoted verbatim; Primary Argument Signers Form accompanying the Argument Against Measure P, San Mateo County ACRE, received Aug. 10, 2026; League of Women Voters of South San Mateo County housing position, “Adopted May 2003”; the League’s own events calendar; City of Menlo Park Library and Community Services event listing, “Election 2026: Ballot Measure Pros & Cons,” Sept. 30, 2026
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
At a glance
- Editorial People will park. The plazas north and south of Santa Cruz Avenue were not bought with general tax dollars. More than fifty landowners gave up property, the Presbyterian Church borrowed against itself to pay the assessment, and the families who would not sell were condemned — under a 1955 resolution the Court of Appeal records as putting no part of the cost on the public generally. The downtown taxed itself to buy its own parking, then handed it to everyone else for free. This editorial argues that the promise those owners were paid with is the thing on the ballot, that the value of five acres is measured in thirty steps from car door to shop door, and that a council wanting the power to break that promise should have to ask first. Read the editorial.
Sources: City of Menlo Park v. Artino, 151 Cal. App. 2d 261, 263 (1st Dist., Div. 2, May 27, 1957); Downtown Parking Plazas RFP, Sept. 15, 2025, § 2.2 and Table 1; City Attorney’s impartial analysis under Elections Code § 9280, Aug. 17, 2026; City of Menlo Park 2023–2031 Housing Element, ch. 7 and program H4.G; Mayor Burgess & MP’s Big Yellow Taxi, drawn from City title reports obtained by public records request
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
At a glance
- Analysis / Opinion Six words in the black bar. The mark opposing Measure P carries one affirmative statement, set to vanish at browser-tab size: downtown needs people, people need homes. Read at full height, the last word is the one to check. All three developer filings use it — Alliant and Related/Alta use the campaign’s exact phrase, “affordable homes” — while every proposal is a ground lease of 55 or 99 years under which no resident owns anything and the buildings revert to the City. The proponents reach for the same word in their own filed rebuttal. Read the analysis.
- Design criticism Noon P. Burma-Shave got one second of a driver’s attention and built a method around it — six boards, a joke, no demand. The mark opposing Measure P works the other way: yellow and black at 14.17 to 1, the palette reserved for caution tape and, at sea, for infectious disease; NO as the first word and STOP as the call to action; and no mention of parking on a parking measure. Read at speed it says NOONP. Read the criticism.
- Worth watching The bookmark takes a side. Almanac blogger Dana Hendrickson, whose series this site flagged in July, posted Tuesday that Menlo Park does not need the downtown plaza project to keep its housing plan compliant. He argues from state law, from eight Peninsula cities he says missed their low-income allocations in the 2015–2023 cycle without losing certification or drawing the builder’s remedy, and from the City’s own July 2026 report claiming capacity in every income category through 2031. He calls the project “a discretionary political choice proposed by a Council that poorly represents voters.” A graphic at the head of the post goes further than its text: it urges readers to “support both Measure P” and council candidates opposing the plan. That is an endorsement, and it changes how the series should be read — he writes now as an advocate on the same side as this publication’s disclosed interest, not as a neutral second set of eyes. His argument runs alongside ground this site covered on July 27: a certified housing element can be amended, and Menlo Park has done it before. Read the post · our July piece, Worth Watching · Amending a Certified Housing Element.
Sources: campaign logo as served at homesformenlopark.com, retrieved Aug. 22, 2026; colour sampled at #F4D24C with contrast computed to the WCAG relative-luminance formula; Burma-Shave history via MNopedia and Legends of America; International Code of Signals, Brown’s Signalling, 1916; City Attorney’s impartial analysis · Six words in the black bar: Alliant Communities, Related California/Alta Housing and Presidio Bay Ventures RFP responses filed Dec. 15, 2025; Downtown Parking Plazas RFP, Sept. 15, 2025; Rebuttal to the Argument Against Measure P, filed Aug. 18, 2026 · The bookmark takes a side: Dana Hendrickson, “Exposing Major Flaw In Menlo Park Planning of Downtown Affordable Housing,” The Almanac, Aug. 25, 2026, including the graphics at the head of that post, which carry text not present in its body; California Department of Housing and Community Development RHNA production data and the City of Menlo Park staff report of July 14, 2026, each as presented in that post
Monday, August 24, 2026
At a glance
- Report The verdict before the hearing. All seven sitting members of the Menlo Park Planning Commission appear on the endorsements page of the organization opposing Measure P, listed with their City titles, and the commission’s chair signed the rebuttal. The same body reviews whatever the Council selects for Plazas 1, 2 and 3. Read the report.
Sources: Menlo Park Planning Commission approved minutes, May 18, 2026; City of Menlo Park Maddy Act local appointments list, June 24, 2026; annual advisory appointments report to the City Council, Apr. 28, 2026; homesformenlopark.com endorsements page, retrieved Aug. 20, 2026; Rebuttal to the Argument in Favor of Measure P signers form, Aug. 15, 2026; Staff Report #25-169-CC, Nov. 4, 2025
Thursday, August 20, 2026
At a glance
- Opinion This land is your land. Menlo Park assembled the eight downtown parking plazas in the mid-twentieth century through a downtown special assessment district and, where persuasion failed, condemnation, and dedicated them to public use. Seven decades on, a three-vote council majority could convey them to private developers and declare three of the plazas “exempt surplus property” to dispose of them in a streamlined, no-bid fashion. The editorial argues Measure P changes only who decides — extending to publicly owned land the same first position over property that Menlo Park voters twice insisted private owners should keep in 2014 and 2022. Read the editorial.
- Report New money after the argument was filed. The organization opposing Measure P has filed five Form 497 late-contribution reports since August 5, disclosing $15,070.99 from five donors and bringing disclosed contributions to $231,206.03. Two $5,000 gifts are dated August 10, the day the ballot argument was filed; neither donor signed it. None of the five appears on the April–June schedule. Five weeks of fundraising — July 1 through August 4, including the weeks the argument was drafted and signed — remain undisclosed until the pre-election Form 460 due September 24. Read the update.
- Fact check Fool you once. The rebuttal to the argument in favor of Measure P, stamped received Aug. 17, says a Yes vote will not save downtown, improve parking, or create affordable housing. All three are true, and all three are equally true of a No vote. Its account of the ordinance’s legal-defense clause is incomplete if not misleading: Section 10 puts the defense with the City first and caps the proponents’ indemnity. It also tells voters the measure “risks losing local control city-wide,” a conclusion the City’s own $164,951 impact study says it is too soon to reach. The “three people who put it on the ballot” were preceded by 2,200 verified signatures and a unanimous Council vote on Dec. 2, 2025. Signed by Mayor Betsy Nash and Planning Commission Chair Ross Silverstein among five signers. Read the fact check.
Sources: San Mateo County NetFile public portal, five Form 497 late-contribution reports filed August 11 and August 17, 2026, retrieved August 18, 2026; City of Menlo Park downtown-parking-plazas RFP, Sept. 15, 2025 and the three developer responses filed Dec. 15, 2025; Staff Report #26-122-CC, July 14, 2026; certified San Mateo County results for Measure V, certified Dec. 8, 2022; Rebuttal to the Argument in Favor of Measure P and accompanying submission, authorization and signer forms, stamped received by the Menlo Park City Manager’s Office Aug. 17, 2026; Downtown Parking Plazas Ordinance § 10
Monday, August 17, 2026
At a glance
- Report Same song, different dance. One bullet in the argument against Measure P — all eight words of it — appeared in the 2022 argument against Measure V, an entirely different measure, unchanged but for a capital letter. A document comparison finds the two share an eight-beat structure, a five-slot cast of signers and a donor list. The Housing Leadership Council’s executive director claimed authorship of the 2022 version on the county form; the Council sponsored that campaign in its legal name and signs this one through its board chair. Read the report.
- Opinion Bluff, or blunder? On November 4, 2025 the Menlo Park City Council voted 4–1 to spend up to $164,951 on a consultant’s analysis of the ramifications of the parking plaza ballot measure. Mayor Betsy Nash was among those who voted yes. Nine months later she authored the voter’s guide opposition statement against the measure, doing so under the title of her office. Yet two of the opposition statement’s seven bullet points are contradicted by the consultant’s report or by the measure’s own operative text, and four more assert as settled what the consultants expressly declined to conclude. Read the opinion.
- Opinion The voter guide won’t tell you all you might want to know. Neither campaign’s 300-word statement informs on what the City is proposing, and the $164,951 consultant’s study answers the questions the Council chose rather than the ones a voter has. Measure P poses one question — who decides, and on what record — and the record shows a City that took three years and two grants without publishing a parking recommendation while moving from solicitation to three bids in seven months. Read the opinion.
Sources: San Mateo County ACRE primary argument filing packets for Measure P (received Aug. 10, 2026) and for Measure V (2022); FPPC Form 460 filings of the 2022 and 2026 opposition committees; City of Menlo Park 2025 Ballot Measure Impact Analysis (Elections Code § 9212), prepared by Metropolitan Planning Group, received by the Council Dec. 2, 2025; Council action of Nov. 4, 2025; San Mateo County randomized alphabet drawing, Aug. 13, 2026; City of Menlo Park downtown-parking-plazas RFP (Sept. 15, 2025) and Staff Report #25-126-CC, Attachment A; City Council minutes, April 28, 2026 (consent item G6); the City’s Downtown Parking Management Study project page. AI-assisted in compiling and cross-referencing; reviewed and edited by the site operator before publication.
Friday, August 14, 2026
At a glance
- Update Both sides have filed — and the mayor signed one of them. The City has posted the primary argument in favor and argument against the downtown parking measure on its election page. Rebuttals are not posted as of this edition. The county drew the randomized alphabet on August 13; the initiative is now Measure P. Mayor Betsy Nash signed the argument against as its author — signer 1 on the county Primary Argument Signers Form, author box checked, dated July 28, 2026 — and signed under the title Mayor, City of Menlo Park rather than as a private resident. Nash represents District 4, which includes downtown, and announced in March that she is not seeking reelection, so the case against putting housing on the plazas on future ballots goes to voters over the title of an officeholder who leaves in December. The argument in favor came in a day later, authored by former Planning Commission chair Henry L. Riggs and signed by two former Menlo Park mayors, Catherine Carlton and Robert McNamara, along with a downtown business owner. We have posted both complete filing packets: argument against · argument in favor. State law gives the rebuttal to the official proponents, not to us — our reply is below.
- Opinion Prepared to be neutralized. Alliant’s downtown-plaza bid says its community-engagement plan will “shape project messaging, educate voters and neutralize opposition” — and the outreach team it names is wired to the pro-housing coalition now organizing against the merchants’ ballot measure. A deeper dive into the advocacy team behind the bid: Teutschel, Murphy, and Kamangar. See Prepared to be neutralized..
The rebuttal we don’t get to file
Opinion · 246 words
Under Elections Code § 9285 the rebuttal to an argument against a city measure belongs to the authors of the argument in favor, and it is capped at 250 words. MonitorMenlo is not an author and files nothing. So our reply runs here instead, labeled what it is.
The measure does one thing. Before the City sells, leases, trades, or conveys a downtown parking plaza, the voters weigh in. It does not ban housing. It does not repeal the Housing Element. It leaves the Council every zoning, entitlement, height, and density tool it holds today. It withholds one power only: parting permanently with land the public already owns, without asking the public first.
What remains is arithmetic the City has not done in public. The RFP specified that developers finance and replace all 556 spaces without using City money. Not one of the three bids does that. Presidio Bay asks $15 million plus fee and tax waivers. Related/Alta has no privately funded parking plan and wants the City to bond a $63 million garage. Alliant asks for two separate City financing accommodations — a loan of the impact fees, repayable with interest, and a second loan covering the upfront fair market lease value. [Updated Aug. 17, 2026: this sentence originally named only the impact-fee loan; Alliant’s filing contains two distinct financing requests.] Meanwhile the City runs a structural deficit, with unassigned reserves projected gone by 2028.
An argument written by a sitting mayor, signed under the title of the office, carries the authority of that office. It should carry the office’s duty too: name the payee, the amount, and the date. Not one of the three is filled in.
Ask for the terms. Then vote.
Read the fuller case: Trust. →
Sources: San Mateo County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder & Elections, Ballot Measure Primary Argument Submission Form and Primary Argument Signers Forms, contest code M102, argument against, stamped received by the Menlo Park City Clerk Aug. 10, 2026 (Nash listed first, author box checked, title
Mayor, City of Menlo Park, signed July 28, 2026); the corresponding packet for the argument in favor, received Aug. 11, 2026 (Riggs author box checked; Carlton and McNamara signing as former mayors); both packets posted in full on our
Resources page; City of Menlo Park election page (primary arguments);
The Almanac, Mar. 24, 2026 (Nash not seeking reelection); Cal. Elec. Code §§ 9282, 9285. · Read the full piece:
Prepared to be neutralized →Wednesday, August 12, 2026
At a glance
- Update The Council said no, 5–0. On Aug. 11 the City Council approved Habitat for Humanity’s eight-home Laurel Landing subdivision in Belle Haven but denied the fee waiver Habitat requested, adopting the staff resolution without dissent. Vice Mayor Jennifer Wise cited the City’s financial condition and the General Fund backfill a waiver would require; Mayor Betsy Nash agreed the City could not afford that backfill. Our advance analysis traced what such a “no” would mean for the three downtown plaza bidders — that question is now open. See The vote this Tuesday.
Monday, August 10, 2026
At a glance
- Report Same Playbook, Same Players. The same donors who spent about $331,000 to defeat Menlo Park’s 2022 Measure V — the Sobrato family, Karen Grove, and Bob McGrew — and the same San Mateo County housing nonprofit are again the biggest money behind the Vote No campaign on the downtown measure. Four years apart, the names barely change. See Same Playbook, Same Players..
- Update The $3.84 million fee clears its first vote. On Aug. 5 the Housing Commission voted 7–0 to recommend approval — to the Planning Commission — of the Tarlton bayfront R&D project and its in-lieu affordable-housing fee. Our advance on what the fee does, and doesn’t, buy. See A $3.84 million fee, and the homes it defers..
Sunday, August 9, 2026
At a glance
- Analysis The vote that could quietly pick a downtown developer. A fee-waiver request from Habitat for Humanity is on Tuesday’s Council agenda. Deny it, as staff urges, and the affordability standard that “no” vote sets would — applied evenhandedly — knock two of the three downtown-plaza bidders out on their own filings. Even then, as the last bidder standing, Alliant’s viability may falter against the City’s own financial argument about the true costs of donating public lands. These possibilities are merely conditional; the Council has not acted and may vote to reject the staff recommendation. See The vote this Tuesday.
- Report/Opinion Putting pen to paper. Before the downtown measure reaches your mailbox, three short texts get written under strict state rules — the City Attorney’s “impartial” analysis, and the arguments for and against — on a fixed schedule, most of it this month. Who controls what, what they can’t, and when. See Putting pen to paper..
Friday, August 7, 2026
At a glance
- Report In for a dime, in for a dollar. A cross-reference of every itemized donor to Menlo Park’s two ballot-measure committees and its three funded council candidates finds only 17 gave to two — and none to three or more. The overlap clusters on one side, and many of those donors also publicly endorsed the Vote No campaign. See In for a dime, in for a dollar..
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
At a glance
- Opinion Good at making problems. How agile at solving them? The State has ordered Menlo Park to approve 80 Willow Road — a builder’s-remedy tower complex on the old Sunset Magazine site (665 homes, a hotel and offices, the tallest tower near 450 feet) — by Oct. 27, a week before the election, after the Attorney General’s office found the City broke state housing law. A Council closed session takes up the litigation this Wednesday, Aug. 5. It is a bad, out-of-scale project the City’s own missteps may leave it unable to stop without a costly, losing fight. See Good at making problems. How agile at solving them?
- Meanwhile A $3.84 million fee, and the homes it defers. In another meeting room the same night, the Housing Commission takes up a bayfront research campus that would pay a $3.84 million affordable-housing fee instead of building homes it cannot legally site there. Update: the Commission recommended approval, 7–0, on Aug. 5. See A $3.84 million fee, and the homes it defers..
- Opinion Jobs now, housing later. By the City’s own count, Menlo Park has permitted 59.4% of its market-rate housing target this cycle but just 18.5% of its very-low-income goal — and when Meta paused Willow Village’s 1,730 bayfront homes, the affordable-housing burden shifted toward the downtown parking plazas. A look at how a jobs-rich district’s deferred housing duty becomes an in-lieu check. See Jobs now, housing later..
Monday, August 3, 2026
At a glance
- Opinion Two ledgers, one street. A companion to the payback
interactive, from the taxpayers’ side: the garage the developers price near $63 million and would
ask the City to bond, set against a budget the Council balanced for FY2026-27 only with one-time state
help and a structural deficit it concedes will keep widening — with the City’s own independent
financial review not due until September, and the vote on November 3. See Two ledgers, one street.
- Opinion Truths and concessions. What the City’s own $164,951 report on the ballot measure concedes: that the downtown housing would likely cost the General Fund more than it returns, that the measure would “not necessarily” make development impossible, and that it is “too soon” to say whether it threatens state housing compliance. See Truths and concessions..
- Report Follow the money. Vamsi Velagapudi’s recent Form 460, cross-checked against the “Vote No” campaign’s endorsement list, shows a cluster of sitting Menlo Park commissioners — the Planning Commission’s chair and vice-chair among them — and a sitting councilmember, all of whom both endorsed the effort to defeat the downtown parking-plaza measure and wrote checks to the campaign to unseat Drew Combs. See Follow the money.
Saturday, August 1, 2026
At a glance
- Report Money on the books: the July filings. The July 31 semi-annual campaign-finance deadline shows the money in Menlo Park’s fall election concentrated in the two campaigns fighting over the downtown parking-plazas measure — the Vote No campaign ($126,125 raised, $130,731 in cash) and the Vote Yes campaign, Save Downtown Menlo ($74,449 and $86,407) — while the council races run an order of magnitude smaller (Reed $14,339; Velagapudi $8,051; Combs $5,445). Every figure verified against the filed Form 460s. See Money on the books.
Friday, July 31, 2026
At a glance
- The money trail An integrated extension of the staff. The
outside firm that has served as Menlo Park’s on-call planning department since 2013 — and
describes itself as “an integrated extension of [the City’s] staff” — was the
consultant on the Housing Element that put the downtown plazas in play, and, on a 4–1 vote, was
paid up to $164,951 to write the City’s own report on the initiative that would slow it down. By
the public record, the Housing Element contract alone tops $1.6 million. See
An Integrated Extension of the Staff.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
At a glance
- Interactive An interactive you can argue with.
A new reader-controlled model lets you test, on your own assumptions, how many years downtown’s
merchants would need to be “made whole” if the City builds affordable housing on Parking
Plazas 1, 2, and 3 — 556 public spaces in all. Move the sliders for the uncertainty period,
the construction dip, and the resident-demand lift, and watch the payback clock. Illustrative, not a
forecast. See Payback Modeling.
Monday, July 27, 2026
At a glance
- Report Amending a certified Housing Element — Menlo Park even knows how.
A verified, dated roster of California cities changing course on their certified state housing plans — site
swaps, rezoning cures under HCD enforcement, and one litigation settlement — and how the amendment process
works. See Amending a Certified Housing Element.
- Opinion Requirements, priorities, and the feasibility question.
Menlo Park softened its downtown-housing RFP from “requirements” to “priorities” at the
August 26, 2025 meeting. This publication and other critics question whether the downtown plazas are feasible
housing sites at all; the City maintains they are. The opinion also flags a twist: if the ballot measure passes,
any future conversion would need a fresh citywide vote — most likely at the next general election, on
November 7, 2028 — and that delay could itself give the City grounds to amend those sites out of its
Housing Element. See
Requirements, Priorities, and Infeasibility.
Friday, July 24, 2026
At a glance
- Worth watching A voter’s guide is coming. Almanac
blogger Dana Hendrickson has launched a series promising to fact-check both campaigns in the downtown
parking-plaza fight, with the initiative mechanics, the City’s housing-mandate math, and the
council candidates due starting in August. It’s a second, independent set of eyes on claims
MonitorMenlo has been checking line by line — worth a bookmark. See
Worth Watching. [Update, Aug. 26, 2026: this item described the series as a second, independent set of eyes. In his Aug. 25 installment Hendrickson urges voters to support Measure P and council candidates opposing the downtown plan. The reading recommendation stands; the description of him as independent does not.]
Monday, July 20, 2026
At a glance
- Election Check your calendars. A new report maps every
statutory deadline between now and Menlo Park’s next City Council: candidate papers due at
5 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7; ballots mailed to every registered voter beginning Oct. 5, when voting opens; Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 3; certification by Dec. 3; and the
December date a voter-approved parking ordinance would take effect. Each milestone carries its
Elections Code citation. See Check your calendars.
- Ballot The ballot’s shape is now fixed. Three Council
seats — one each in Districts 1, 2, and 4 — plus the citizens’ initiative
that would bar the City from selling, leasing, or redeveloping the downtown parking plazas without a
vote of the people. No measure letter had been assigned as of this edition. [Update, Aug. 13, 2026: the county assigned the initiative the letter P. It is Measure P.]
- Watch One contingency worth marking. If a sitting Council
member does not re-file by Aug. 7, filing in that district reopens to other candidates through
Aug. 12 — a five-day window that can reshape a race after the deadline appears to have
closed.
Friday, July 17, 2026
At a glance
- Election A first look at the November field. A new
Reports/Opinion piece, A Lot about a Little, profiles the six
declared candidates for the three council seats on the Nov. 3 ballot (Districts 1, 2,
and 4) and maps where each stands on building affordable housing on the downtown parking plazas
— from “wait for the vote” to full support. Notably, of the six, only Vamsi Velagapudi has taken a position on the ballot measure itself
— his name now appears among the endorsers on the “Vote No” campaign’s site (homesformenlopark.com)
— and no Save Downtown Menlo–affiliated candidate has filed.
[Updated July 31, 2026: this item originally said none of the six candidates had taken a position on the
ballot measure; it was revised after homesformenlopark.com, the “Vote No” campaign, listed candidate
Vamsi Velagapudi among its endorsers.]
- Sidebar Shades of Blue. An accompanying opinion sidebar
notes the close resemblance between candidate Vamsi Velagapudi’s royal-blue-and-gold campaign
signs and the Save Downtown Menlo initiative materials — while making clear he is not
affiliated with the group and takes the opposite position on downtown housing.
Tuesday, July 14, 2026
At a glance
- Opinion Racing the ballot. The City’s own downtown-plaza timeline runs an independent financial review of the three proposals from July to September and aims to pick a development team before the November 3 vote — a schedule that looks built to beat the ballot. See Racing the ballot.
