Dear Mayor Cohen and Members of the City Council,

I am writing to ask you to keep the Willows Traffic issue (project T4) off your priority project list.

The vocal proponents of the new Traffic Study seem to have an agenda that includes preventing East Palo Alto residents from having access to drive on Willows Neighborhood streets. This affects me, as I live on Donohoe Street, about eight houses from the Menlo Park border in East Palo Alto. I have lived at my current address since 1989, and I was actively involved in the past battles over this same issue. It was always a horrible and divisive experience, resulting in a waste of time, money and resources. I have been repeatedly reassured that there is no racial prejudice about traffic in the Willows. And, yet, I have always been told that it is not me that that is causing the problem... Who, then, is?

Menlo Park already has the NTMP in place. The people trying to change this make up a very small, but vocal group. One of their reasons behind this is to address crime, which has actually decreased over the past year!

Please keep the Willows neighborhood from engaging in another nasty, highly publicized war over who should or should not be allowed to access streets (usually on their way to generate sales tax revenue for Menlo Park!)

Thank you,

Heidi Sanel
275 Donohoe Street
East Palo Alto, CA 94303 Received on Tue Mar 11 10:49:08 2008