Dear Councilmembers,

I am a Willows resident and parent who lives around
the corner from the Chester Street location where the
shooting incident took place on May 12, 2007. I
second Mr. Wilson's comments below and ask that the
Council sponsor the meeting regarding traffic calming
and take all the steps it can to prioritize, address
and remedy this very important public safety issue.

Sincerely,

-Tom Burg

--- rswilson1@att.net wrote:

> To: CITY.COUNCIL@menlopark.org (MP COUNCIL)
> CC: willows_neighborhood@yahoogroups.com (Willows
> Yahoo Group)
> From: rswilson1@att.net
> Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 21:45:08 +0000
> Subject: [willows_neighborhood] MORE GUNSHOTS IN
> WILLOWS; NEIGHBORHOOD TRAFFIC
>
> Honorable Councilmembers,
>
> I learned today that there were four shots fired in
> the 300 block of Chester, in the Willows; broken
> glass was left, and tire squeals heard as the
> offenders made a getaway.
> Gunshots have been reported on Menalto; and the
> Willows neighborhood was treated to an actual
> drive-by shooting and injury on Laurel Avenue
> several months ago.
>
> Meanwhile, our neighborhood (I write as a Willows
> resident) is inundated with cut-through traffic, to
> which these incidents can be tied; prior
> citizen-City license-plate studies pegged
> cut-through at >36% on some of our neighborhood
> streets, including Chester and Woodland.
>
> These thoroughfares were not engineered for other
> than local-traffic use; they are narrow, and house
> setbacks are minimal.
>
> It’s time for the Council to sponsor the
> long-overdue all-neighborhood meeting which was
> promised several years ago as a follow-on to the
> plate-counting survey. The serious quality-of-life
> degradation in the Willows, which many of us then
> argued would attend the outsider traffic increases,
> is now coming to pass. Must further neighborhood
> deterioration or the death/injury of a Menlo Park
> Willows resident, occur before concerted measures to
> stem traffic are applied ?
>
> I trust that the current council majority, for which
> so many of us worked and voted, will make good on
> its campaign platform of protecting our
> neighborhoods.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ross Wilson
> Woodland Avenue, Menlo Park
Received on Sun May 13 21:23:43 2007