A plan for a better District 1
Every idea here comes back to one question: does it improve the quality of life for the people who live in District 1 today? And to one standard for getting it done — outcomes over process, not another study and another year of delay.
Homes families here can afford
Build more, and build the kind this neighborhood is short of.
Build more homes, near transit and jobs
Menlo Park built almost nothing for a generation while rents climbed, and scarcity is what makes a neighborhood unaffordable. I'll push to approve far more homes, especially affordable ones, and to zone for them where they belong — walkable to transit and to the jobs on the Bayfront. Here, 47% of renters already pay more than a third of their income in rent.
Prioritize family-sized homes
Sixteen percent of households here are overcrowded — more than one person per room, and two thirds of them renting. That is a different problem from cost, and building studios doesn't solve it. Residents told the City plainly that what they need is housing suitable for families, three or more bedrooms. Those are the units the market builds least, which is exactly why the city has to ask for them.
Make ADUs genuinely easy to build
Residents told the City they want to build accessory dwelling units, but that the process is long, complicated and expensive, and that utility connection fees put them off. That is a homeowner here trying to add a home and being worn down by the city's own paperwork. Shorter review with real deadlines, published fees that surprise nobody, and a hard look at those connection charges.
Put city land to work without giving it away
Land here is extraordinarily expensive, which is most of why affordable housing pencils badly. So the city shouldn't sell its land — it should lease it. Long-term ground leases, 55 or 99 years at a nominal dollar a year, to builders of affordable homes. The public keeps the asset and it reverts to us at the end of the term. In exchange, everything else gets standardized: predictable fees, objective standards set once, and a fast approval path.
Protect the homes and renters we already have
Building more takes pressure off the homes people already live in, but it isn't the whole job. Keeping an affordable home costs less than replacing it, so I'd preserve the affordable and naturally affordable housing the district still has, and enforce California's just-cause and anti-gouging law as a floor. I'd also go after the slumlord neglect that pushes families out through disrepair rather than rent.
Schools, youth and seniors
The city's programming thins out after elementary school, and again in retirement.
Back Belle Haven Elementary as it grows
The test-score numbers families see on Zillow or Redfin are backward-looking, and they tell prospective families the wrong story about Belle Haven Elementary — sending many to look elsewhere before they ever set foot on campus. With the campus renovations now complete, the city can deepen its partnership with the school and the Ravenswood district, and help more young families see everything it offers their kids.
Expand programs at the Belle Haven Community Center
The Community Center is one of the district's greatest assets and the most direct lever the city has for young residents. As chair of the Parks and Recreation Commission, I originated Menlo Park's Community Fun Run — a neighborhood 6K that starts and finishes at the Belle Haven Community Campus — so I don't just advocate for programming here, I've created it. I'll keep pushing to grow the Center's after-school, sports, and summer offerings.
Formalize a joint-use agreement with Ravenswood
The city and the school district serve the same families and own facilities a few hundred feet apart — fields, gyms, the Community Campus. Today access depends on goodwill and on who happens to hold the job. A written joint-use agreement makes it something families can count on instead of something renegotiated every year. I have the working relationships to get it done, and it costs the city no new buildings.
A college and career corner at the Belle Haven Library
At Menlo-Atherton, 92% of white graduates finish eligible to apply to a UC or CSU. Among Latino graduates it is 28%. Same building. Most of our kids graduate holding a diploma they cannot apply to a state university with, and families often learn what the a-g requirements are too late. The city runs the Belle Haven Library, which already has a teen lounge and tutoring rooms — I would put advising, financial-aid nights in Spanish, and application help in them.
M-A graduation and UC/CSU eligibility, class of 2025 (California Dept. of Education) ↗
Get an answer on the future of the TIDE Academy campus
Sequoia Union closed TIDE Academy in June, leaving a nearly new campus sitting empty on Jefferson Drive — inside District 1, built with bond money the public paid for. Nobody has said what becomes of it. Its students were promised their programs would carry on at Woodside, and weeks into the year families report the courses and support have not appeared. The same way I would press on Willow Village, I will press for a public answer rather than watch a neighborhood asset sit dark.
What happened to TIDE students after the closure (The Almanac) ↗
Bring back the senior Aqua Fit classes
The weekly aqua fitness and wellness classes finally came back when the pool reopened after construction — and have just been cut again. Work with seniors to understand which programs matter most to them before cutting them indiscriminately.
A commercial heart accessible to District 1
Bring in the shops, services, and revenue the district has gone without.
Recruit locally-serving commercial development
Other parts of Menlo Park have grown while District 1 was passed over. Residents have told the City exactly what is missing: a full-service grocery store, a pharmacy, a bank, and a health clinic serving families and seniors. Those are the everyday businesses that make a place somewhere you can live, not just drive through — and recruiting them is work the city can actually do.
Carry forward the vision Willow Village promised
Willow Village would have brought housing, jobs, and retail to Belle Haven before Meta paused it, leaving its future uncertain. The vision was right — and I'll push to get it, or a plan like it, back on track.
Reinvest the new tax revenue into services
Sales tax flows straight into the general fund that pays for parks, code enforcement, and youth programs — and Menlo Park collects far less of it than it should. Residents' retail spending leaks out of the city, leaving per-capita taxable sales at roughly half the regional average. More locally-serving business keeps that money here: a healthier fund, and a city that can finally afford to invest in its own neighborhoods.
Menlo Park’s retail sales, about half the regional average ↗
Explore Bohannon Office Park as a mixed-use destination
Just across Highway 101 from District 1 sits Bohannon Office Park — one of Menlo Park's largest sites — and its owner has already asked the city to allow housing on the parcels it controls, describing a “multi-family village.” A short walk over the freeway could finally mean somewhere to sit down for dinner. I'll push the city to study repurposing part of it as a mixed-use destination — housing, retail, and jobs on the district's doorstep — weighed honestly against the traffic it would add.
Streets, parks and the basics
The basics — parks, streets, and services that work.
Renovate Belle Haven parks
Neighborhood parks are one of the simplest quality-of-life investments a city can make, and Belle Haven's are overdue — playgrounds, fields, and the everyday upkeep that makes a park somewhere families actually want to spend a Saturday. As a Parks & Recreation commissioner, I'm already advocating for these renovations and will prioritize the funding to get them done.
Parks & Recreation Commission presentation on Karl E. Clark Park (video) ↗
Move street cleaning to overnight hours
Today the sweepers run during the day, when cars are legally parked at the curb — so they can't reach it, and the debris never gets cleared. That debris clogs the storm drains — exactly what flooded the intersection of Hamilton Avenue and Willow Road this past year. The fix is simple: run cleaning overnight, when street parking isn't allowed and the curb is clear.
Open the Dumbarton corridor for biking and buses to Caltrain
Getting from Belle Haven to Caltrain means a car or a long detour. The Dumbarton rail corridor runs right through Menlo Park and has sat empty for decades — SamTrans is studying it now for zero-emission buses and a protected bike path to the Redwood City Caltrain hub. The design is chosen this fall, and I’ll push hard to see it built sooner rather than later: a bus we can finish now, with room for rail later.
Address the cut-through traffic on our streets
Residents told the City that cut-through traffic on Hamilton Avenue, Newbridge Street and Chilco Street makes it hard to get in and out of their own driveways at busy times, and that speeding and freeway noise are constant. Those are city streets, which means this is one of the few traffic problems here the Council can actually fix — calming, timing, and enforcement, rather than waiting on anyone else.
Close the tree-canopy gap north of Highway 101
There is a visible difference in tree cover, and in tree care, between the neighborhoods north and south of the freeway, and residents have raised it with the City more than once. Shade is not decoration here — it cools streets that get hot, it cleans air in a neighborhood with a real asthma problem, and canopy helps manage the stormwater that floods us. Planting and maintenance both have to be part of it.
Tackle blight with proactive code enforcement
Illegal dumping, derelict lots, broken-down vehicles, and long-neglected properties drag down an entire block and signal that no one is paying attention. District 1 deserves the same proactive enforcement — not just complaint-driven cleanup — that keeps Belle Haven looking cared for.
A city hall that answers to District 1
Government should be judged by what it delivers, not the process it runs. I'll cut the red tape between residents and the results they actually want.
Modernize permitting with real deadlines
Slow, paper-based permitting stalls small businesses and home projects. Online permitting with real-time tracking and hard review deadlines — so a complete, code-compliant application is approved automatically if the city blows its own deadline — treats residents' time as something that matters.
Sunset outdated rules and ordinances that only add delay
Cities add rules far more easily than they remove them, and over decades the code itself becomes the obstacle. Ordinances the city no longer enforces are the place to start — a rule that isn't applied protects no one; it just clutters the books and invites selective enforcement. I'll push a systematic review to sunset what's obsolete, duplicative, or unenforced, so the rules that remain are ones the city actually stands behind.
Put AI to work cutting government busywork
Menlo Park sits at the heart of the AI industry, yet its own operations still run on manual busywork — city surveys are a telling case, where staff read every open-ended response by hand. AI can group thousands of responses by theme in minutes — not to cut a single job or make the decisions, but to free staff from tabulating so they can act on what residents actually said. The tools this region sends out into the world should help run the city that hosts them.
Build an everything app for Menlo Park
One app to register for a class, pay the water bill, and report a pothole. City services should be as easy to reach as everything else on your phone. Right now the city pays for a fragmented web of services that don't talk to each other and duplicate efforts, and the overall quality and experience with the existing tools aren't good, either. Consolidating them is more achievable now than it has ever been.
A place to gather
Quality of life isn't only the basics — it's having somewhere to go.
Green the Ivy Drive median into a neighborhood greenway
Ivy Drive is split around a wide median that today is neglected, mostly bare grass — a ready-made green space running through the heart of the neighborhood. I'll work to turn it into somewhere people actually want to be: native flowers, a walking path, benches, and community garden plots where neighbors can gather and meet the folks a few doors down. It sits on San Francisco's Hetch Hetchy water right-of-way, so greening it means partnering with the SFPUC — the same partnership Sunnyvale and Palo Alto already struck to build greenways on this very water line.
Turn vacant lots into a night market
District 1 is dotted with stalled and idle lots — including the paused Willow Village site — while residents have nowhere to gather. A recurring night market on those lots, set up temporarily with the owners' cooperation, would turn idle space into food, music, and local crafts at almost no cost. It gives the neighborhood's own cooks and makers somewhere to sell this year rather than in a decade.
Carve out affordable live/work housing for artists
A commercial district comes alive when the people who make it interesting can afford to live there. On the Council I'll push for affordable live/work housing set aside for musicians, artists, and performers — the draw that keeps shops and restaurants busy after dark. And it's on solid legal footing: a 2023 state law lets California cities reserve a share of their affordable housing for artists in and around a designated cultural district.