Posted by Wondering?, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Apr 25, 2012 at 8:57 pm

> Under the agreement with the fire district, Facebook would

> provide up to $300,000 toward improvements and enhancements

> that would support Facebook and the community.

Given how much money Facebook has, or will have, this $300K is a drop in the bucket for them, and will never be missed. But what's missing from this article, is why they are having to pay the Fire District anything?

Certainly adding several thousand people to the Menlo Park site increases the potential obligation for the District, but with appropriate sprinkler systems, and appropriate water feeds to the campus, and adding state-of-the-art fire detection to the campus, might reduce the likelihood of having any fires at all. Of course, there is always the possibility of acts of vandalism that get out of control, or acts of terrorism--but still, if the FB facilities people were to invest wisely, they could reduce the site's fire potential significantly.

The article suggests that signal controllers would be added that would all fire trucks to force traffic lights to switch so that the trucks could cross intersections more safely. OK, but this is the sort of basic infrastructure that one would have thought that a world-famous and so very well-managed fire district would have already put in place--at least in the high density areas, such as Menlo Park.

And what other "projects" have been negotiated? Are these projects secret?

A little more information about this arrangement would be of value to the community at large, and to other companies thinking about moving in to any of the cities serviced by this Fire District.

Posted by Mark, a resident of the University South neighborhood, on Apr 25, 2012 at 9:15 pm

Wondering, just to add a thought, the systems you mention - such as sprinklers and fire detection - may be rendered unusable if there is a large disaster (e.g. prolonged power outage, like the EPA aircraft crash) or earthquake. I wouldn't be surprised if the money helped fund a Community Emergency Response team or other disaster related initiatives.

Premeption devices for traffic lights aren't actually very common in all communities. Even in Palo Alto there are only a few traffic lights that will give emergency vehicles right of way.

Posted by Hmmm, a resident of East Palo Alto, on Apr 25, 2012 at 9:18 pm

It's not several thousand - it's close to 10 thousand people. Check out The Almanac recent archives for discussions. Peter Carpenter has done a tirelessly good job of outlining the issues facing Menlo Fire.