The booklets.

Beginning in the 1940s, Menlo Park city leaders built the eight existing downtown parking plazas through a visionary plan that acquired yards and gardens from families and taxed downtown property owners to pay for it. That plan took a span of three decades to develop and finish.

Time has proven that the effort was worth it — the plan worked at inception and still works today. Residents and visitors gather and shop along Santa Cruz Avenue in a convenient and charming atmosphere.

Now city leaders seek to give the plazas to developers to build high-density apartment structures towering over neighborhood shops and restaurants. Those towers of up to nine stories would diminish existing parking and irreversibly change the character of downtown. These plans have continued to progress despite overwhelming community opposition.

The commentary presented in "Big Yellow Taxi," published before residents requested a ballot initiative requiring voter approval of any conversion of plaza land, lays out the history and facts of how the community came to rely on this critical foundation of the downtown's infrastructure. Those facts make clear that City efforts to uproot that foundation represent a classic case of government trying to fix something that's not broken. The question must then be asked: Are City officials about to break something they cannot fix?

Guided by medical ethics and the Hippocratic Oath, physicians follow a principle of "First, do no harm." That ground rule inspires doctors to respect the wishes of those in their care, to make full disclosures that allow informed decision-making, to minimize risk, and, most of all, to avoid injury. Government would do well to act in the same way.

Still, when it comes to Menlo Park's anticipated giveaway of downtown lands, public officials hardly seem committed to openness or accountability, just as they must know that their selected path will do more harm than good.

By pursuing a course designed by staff members, Menlo Park's five elected City Council members are tracking toward taking heavily used parking plazas to the north of the Santa Cruz Avenue commercial district away from the public, only to give the land to sophisticated developers to build apartment towers overshadowing the neighborhood.

Under the plan, the City Council would declare that the parking plazas are "surplus property" despite their constant use and value. Even worse, the City would donate that land to the winner of an RFQ/Request for Proposals (RFP) beauty contest.

This commentary examines the intersection of money, power, and clout in Menlo Park. It focuses on a course the City Council is on that, if unchecked, will convert city-owned parking plazas used by many — including the author of this commentary — into affordable housing sites, despite considerable community objection.

Public records, tax filings, campaign-finance data, organizational websites, and local news reporting document the civic footprint and political influence of Karen Grove, The Grove Foundation, the Grove Action Fund, her Menlo Together advocacy group, and their interrelated groups and individuals. Those sources also inform the issues surrounding the upcoming Nov. 3, 2026 Menlo Park ballot measure that would require voter approval of any future decision to convert a downtown parking plaza to a use other than parking.

Without question, Menlo Park faces high state housing quotas. And pro-housing advocates like Karen Grove, a Menlo Park resident and Menlo Together co-founder, lobby for those with housing needs.

But Menlo Park's arguments that the parking plazas it owns downtown will provide the only suitable location to build the affordable housing needed to meet state quotas are unfounded. Instead, any decision to convert the plazas to housing sites represents a policy choice by those in power, and one that correlates to a local scion's well-funded advocacy network and pro-housing priority.