Dear Council-Members, Mr. McClure, and Mr. Steffens,

Thank you for allowing us to voice our concerns after a long and challenging evening. If there will be a continuation of a pre-existing dialog between the city and MPCSD, we would like to participate.

While we appreciate your support for exploring the issues that both city Staff and adjacent neighbors have raised about the Oak Knoll Project, I am exceedingly pessimistic about how well polite entreaties without a policy punch will be received. Please allow me to elaborate:

1. MPCSD will tell you they approved "Scheme O". Since they started at "Scheme A", they will assert that this validates the process. They will, of course, fail to mention that the main difference between Scheme A and Scheme O is that the drop off lane is a) 40 feet shorter (because they initially forgot to account of a bus pick-up area, and b) Schema O spares 1 of the 8 trees slated for destruction. While I have previously congratulated them on their iteration through the alphabet, if one embarks on an iterative process and ends up full circle at the starting point, the process itself is questionable. Furthermore, regardless of the amount of time it took to get there, if the destination is undesirable and there are other options, the journey does not in and of itself mitigate the problems with the destination.
2. Oak Knoll is a challenging campus and MPCSD is facing some difficult demographic trends. Some optimization problems are so constrained that there are really only a couple of solutions at best. We understand this. For Oak Knoll, this means that the MPR can be placed in the front or in the back. MPCSD will maintain that we will only be happy with the MPR in back. However, we do not hold this position only because it is self-serving to a few of us -- it just happens to be the case. Due to issues of prevailing grade, construction cost, ability to utilize existing parking lots for MPR access, minimal change to the net quantity of impervious surface, and respect for neighborhood impact, it turns out that it is the most logical place to locate MPR. It is no coincidence that the original bond proposal located the building there.

As discussed, we have tried to engage MPCSD in meaningful dialog since March 2007, but the operating assumption has been that we are neighbors who, by definition, will be disgruntled and obstructionist. Some of us object to the values embodied in the project even though the project may not directly impact our wallets or families, while for others the impact on some is much more direct. Most object to the project on both fronts. While not all neighbors agree with our concerns, I can assure you that there are many more who do than those who attended last night. Ultimately, however, the value of our position is not in the numbers who support it, but the fundamental merits of the position itself.

I am sure many members of MPCSD, the Bond Oversight Committee, and the PTO would like a beautiful campus facade. I personally to do not feel that the front of the campus is particularly attractive so I understand and appreciate their aspirations as I look at the campus every day. But there are ways to achieve this beautification (i.e., tasteful and relatively inexpensive green-scape) without destroying an ancient Oak, paving large swaths of green space, and generally degrading the local environment.

We look forward to working with you in your dialog with MPCSD as our numerous attempts to engage them substantively have met with no success.

Regards,

Ram Duriseti Received on Wed Apr 2 08:53:19 2008