What each campaign told The Almanac when asked the same five questions, side by side.
In June 2025, The Almanac asked Save Downtown Menlo and Menlo Together to each submit short, 200-word answers to the same five questions about the ballot measure. Both campaigns responded, and the paper ran the exchange side by side. What follows is a summary of what each side argued — paraphrased here rather than reproduced at length, since the original is the more complete and authoritative version. The full exchange is linked at the bottom of this page.
Save Downtown Menlo argued yes: the downtown parking plazas are central to the city's identity, and a change of this scale — one it called irreversible — deserves direct voter approval rather than a council vote alone.
Menlo Together argued no, framing the measure as a way to block affordable housing that Menlo Park needs, and warning that it would replace an informed planning process with a cycle of costly political campaigns.
Save Downtown Menlo's answer was direct: "The people should decide," arguing that council composition changes over time while the community and its public land endure, and that a decision this permanent shouldn't rest with whichever three-member majority happens to hold office.
Menlo Together countered that the city's elected council was chosen to make exactly these kinds of tradeoffs, with the benefit of staff expertise and legal counsel, and that ballot-box decision-making shifts power toward whoever can fund a campaign rather than toward the public process already in place.
Save Downtown Menlo said no — its position is that public land shouldn't change use without a vote, regardless of what someone thinks about the housing plan itself, and that the measure doesn't restrict downtown housing generally, only these specific parking lots.
Menlo Together also said no, but for the opposite reason: it argued the measure is a bad idea "regardless of one's opinion" on the housing plan, because it cuts off the hearings and impact studies the normal process would otherwise provide.
Save Downtown Menlo pointed to downtown's dependence on convenient parking for the businesses and foot traffic that sustain it, and said it isn't opposed to downtown housing generally — just to removing the parking infrastructure it says makes downtown viable.
Menlo Together said it wants a downtown that's accessible to people across income levels, framing the measure as a tool that could let a small, organized group delay or block future development indefinitely, with a further risk that state law could eventually strip the City of local control altogether if it falls short of its housing targets.
Save Downtown Menlo said that if the measure reaches the ballot, it would apply retroactively to protect the plazas while voters decide; if it fails to qualify, the City could move ahead with declaring the land surplus and available to developers regardless of the opposition it has drawn.
Menlo Together said qualifying the measure means the City spends taxpayer money defending and running an election no matter the outcome, while cautioning that delay carries its own risk: state housing law doesn't pause for a local ballot fight, and "ballot measures are blunt instruments" that are hard to undo even if better options emerge later.
The Almanac lightly edited both sides' answers for length and identified Save Downtown Menlo as the ballot measure's proponent and Menlo Together as its opponent — the same alignment reflected in the Ayes and Nays organizational tally elsewhere on this site.