A voter’s guide, promised — and worth watching.

Dana Hendrickson published the opening entry in a new series on July 23, and it lands squarely on the question the community and this website keep asking: what are the facts surrounding the issue of converting downtown parking plazas into affordable housing projects, and who can voters trust to shoot straight about the facts as the November election approaches.^[1]

Hendrickson has tracked Menlo Park’s affordable-housing debate on his “Creating A More Vibrant Menlo Park” blog since early 2024. His new series opens under the title “A New Series To Help Menlo Park Voters Prepare For November 3, Local Elections (Episode 1),” with a blunt diagnosis: he argues the City’s affordable-housing plan leans so heavily on the three downtown plazas that it risks missing its 2023–2031 state housing mandate, particularly for the lowest income tiers. He frames November 3 as a “vote twice” election, arguing the citizens’ initiative on the parking plazas and the three open City Council seats are the same underlying decision seen from two angles.^[1]

What makes this worth bookmarking is what he’s promised for later installments. Hendrickson lists the initiative’s mechanics, the state of the City’s housing-mandate math, and fact-checks of Save Downtown Menlo, Menlo Together / Homes for Menlo Park, and the Council candidates themselves, starting in August. That’s a second, independent set of eyes on claims MonitorMenlo has been checking line by line — see our fact-checks and commentary — and a useful cross-reference for readers as future installments post.^[1]

Hendrickson’s timing lines up with a companion piece the Almanac ran in the same edition: a rundown of the four Peninsula council races on this fall’s ballot, including Menlo Park’s three open seats. District 4 — Mayor Betsy Nash’s seat, covering downtown — drew the most direct link to the plazas fight. Charlotte Reed has said she backs the 300-plus-unit downtown housing plan, while Laura Melahn, a co-founder of the Downtown Menlo Fund, hasn’t taken a position on the plazas specifically but supports more housing citywide. Neither the initiative vote nor the council races are happening in isolation this November, and Hendrickson’s series treats them that way from its first paragraph.^[2] Read the Almanac’s council-races roundup → MonitorMenlo laid out these candidate positions earlier — see our candidate guide, “A lot about a little.”

One thing worth flagging as Hendrickson’s series continues: he identifies himself as a Menlo Park community advocate writing an opinion blog, not a reporter, and Episode 1 already stakes out a position — that the City lacks the will to fix its housing shortfalls without voter intervention.^[3]

Bottom line: whichever side of the plazas debate you’re on, this is a series worth watching closely. It comes from a writer who digs deep into the primary sources and promises a fact check of both campaigns.