Council Members-

I urge you to continue the El Camino Real Visioning Process. As a committee member, I have seen the beginning of a community process that should result in a Menlo Park residents feeling that they have a voice in how their community will look for the next 50 years. It would be a mistake to truncate the process now. Staff and consultant have gotten ideas of what could happen along El Camino and downtown but there has been no real discussion of those ideas or any comparison of alternative visions. If we stop now, residents will feel un-empowered and the resulting vision is likely to be so contentious that the process fails.

Here are my thoughts on the next stage for the ECR Visioning project:

• Empower a condensed version of the current oversight committee to work with the consultants and staff
• Allow this condensed committee to give the consultants more direction
• Condense the committee by eliminating non-Menlo Park residents and Menlo Park Commission appointees-these members have had an opportunity to presents their ideas and that the process now belongs to the residents of the city.
• Let people think big as well as small in the next phase-the consultants have not been capable of thinking or acting out of the box
• The work output of the next phase should be 2-3 concepts with varying densities where the costs, impacts and the benefits are thoughtfully laid out and not just dismissed as "too this" or "not enough that".
• This next phase should not take more that 60-120 days.

Thank you for initiating this process. Please continue it to completion.    

J.Michael Gullard   Received on Tue Jun 10 15:20:59 2008