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Way back in 1998, on a very rainy February day, San Francisquito Creek’s waters started rising, higher and higher. Soon the waters spilled onto the yards of nearby homes, and flooded adjacent streets. Residents’ basements were flooded, living rooms were ankle-deep in muddy waters. Some 1,700 properties were damaged.
The next day I saw the damage — the creek was filled with debris — big chunks of wood, tree limbs, bottles, cans and old tires — all were cluttered in waters around the Pope-Chaucer Street bridge. The creek was a mess.
That stream of water divides Menlo Park and Palo Alto, and alarmed residents quickly demanded action from city officials. True to form, they decided a committee was needed to solve the problem. The result was the creation of the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority (JPA), a group composed of a city council member from each city, a supervisor from the San Mateo Board of Supervisors, and a member of the Santa Clara County Water District.
Getting organized took time; they debated for months on end. Their decision, as I recall, was that the Pope-Chaucer bridge needed to be replaced, and the creek had to be cleaned up. Amazing — so brilliant!
An executive director, who was a landscape architect, was hired. She, in turn, hired her nephew (who recently was asked to resign after 26 years as a staffer). The Army Corps of Engineers was called in to help, and they determined the entire length of the creek, from the hills above Stanford down through Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, needed improvements — before repairing the little bridge.
Arguments arose, the corps came and went and came again and then left, lawsuits were filed, neighbors complained, and the years went on. My memory of events may be faulty in spots, but all those years of delays cannot be disputed.
The JPA is still at work, two-and-a-half decades later. A few months ago, a creek authority engineer said plans for the bridge were faulty, so they are being changed, which will result in more delays. Sigh.
I can only imagine the worries the residents in that creek area must have each winter as rainy weather again approaches.
Why has this taken so long? Is this the fault of one agency or should the state have come in taken more control over the project? Or should both counties have met and together worked to get the creek and bridge fixed?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know it shouldn’t take 26 years. By the way, Golden Gate bridge was completed in four years, four-and-a-half months.
• • • • • •
Palo Altans have for years dilly-dallied about what to do with the 35-acre Cubberley School site at 4000 Middlefield Road in south Palo Alto. The high school was closed back in the 1980s because of low enrollments — there were fewer kids in town. Since then, classroom space has been rented to small nonprofit organizations serving community needs.
What to do with these 35 acres — 27 of which are owned by the school district and eight by the city — has been debated for years. We’ve had committees discuss its future use, consultants hired to draw up plans, which soon were shelved. One consulting firm, Concordia, went through an exercise that involved hundreds of residents that resulted in the creation of a master plan recommending complete Cubberley redevelopment.
I remember that well. Wonder what happened to that plan? Little progress since until a new committee was formed. There were more plans, e consultants and community meetings, and then things seemed to stop. The city and school district are once again, negotiating something; no decision has been reached.
I do know that the current facility is worn down and shabby. There are cracks on the stucco walls. There are leaks. The paint is peeling; a once-grassy area is now just weeds and dirt. One gym that was recently renovated took ages to be completed. The bathrooms are cold, and only have running cold water. The place is an embarrassment.
Should the land become a campus for health-related organizations? Should a gym and athletic facilities be added so that it becomes a sports park? Or should the area be turned into a playground or anew kind of community center? What about housing on this site? The school district wonders if it would ever be needed again for a new high school. The city wanted to trade city land by Terman School for more city-owned acreage at Cubberley. Neighbors objected; the idea was quashed.
Will anything magical happen in the next five years? Ten years? Why do these school and city planners tolerate these delays? All I know is thousands of hours have been spent by community members trying to figure out what to do and no solution has been reached.
It’s a shame that such a big parcel of land with great potential should stay so shabby.
What to do about this? Guess it’s up to people (yes, us) to pressure the council and the district to act — I mean really do something.
Why, oh why, does that seem so impossible?
It’s because we have a do-nothing City Council and a City Manager who once boasted that [Palo Alto’s] process is its most important product. And the blog didn’t even mention grade crossings. Unconscionable.
@D Smith makes good points about the PA Process, City Manager, City Council and the grade crossings.
Ms Diamond does her usual excellent job of calling out the absurdities of the long delays and the nephew who remained a city staffer for 26 years. At a salary of. say, $150,00; that equals $3,900,000 — before his lifetime pension.
The examples cited were complicated. The city can’t even handle SIMPLE tasks like changing the Cal Ave barriers and adding a few TURN HERE signs in a reasonable amount of time AND, of course, retaining retail consultants to study the woes of the current Cal Ave retail environment.
(This after they poor retailers had to live through YEARS of delays with the costly Jaime Rodriguez glass bejeweled sidewalk fiasco.)
Anyone else disgusted that our utility rates keep rising to subsidize the General Fund since our highly paid staff can’t even fix signage themselves without their growing gravy train of consultants?
Where was the staff oversight of the nephew for the last 26 years? Where’s the fiscal responsibility? Where were the city council members who could have demanded accountability instead of threatening us with the loss of emergency dispatch services etc if we didn’t vote for the Utility Transfer measure siphoning our inflated payments into the General Fund forever,
I’m sure the City Manager’s huge “Communications” staff will be along eventually to clarify all this.
Diana lists only the proverbial tip of the iceberg with regard to a city government that cannot get things done. For the examples Diana cites the city will tell you these are complex issues or involve too many parties or some other excuse they dream up.
But the story is the same for what should be a straightforward projects: construct the dog parks fairly distributed throughout Palo Alto promised in 2017. What are they doing instead of fulfilling the commitments of the Parks Master Plan? They will spend approximately $200k this year to expand the Mitchell Dog Park and build a new dog park at Boulware – both in south Palo Alto where we already have 3 dog parks compared with 1 in north Palo Alto, and the one is at the southern edge of north Palo Alto.
What is their excuse? It has been difficult and complicated to get consensus on dog parks. Tasks like this are assigned to government precisely because they present challenges that we elect you to manage. A boy-scout in Monterey recently got a dog park built in less than a year for $6k. Let’s see if he is willing to show our city council how to deliver results!
Cubberley performing arts theater: Try being a senior citizen and walking the long walk to bathrooms during an intermission in the dark. Good luck getting back to your seat in time for curtain call.
Shikada’s highly paid trail of civic neglect and fiscal damage is long and wide. He truly follows the money — little work, with lots of top dog salary raises.
Why can’t city managers run for an open position instead of being hand picked by city council? The power & prestige the so called job wields should be the choice of the voters. I suppose the city charter would have to be amended.
Speaking of the Mitchell Park dog park, one of the reasons it’s so expensive is that for the last few DECADES every year they close it for a few weeks to plant new grass during the winter so the rain irrigates it.
Guess what happens then — the new grass dies without irrigation.
We’ve written letters and, most irritatingly, tried to talk to the workers who tell us their supervisors forbid them from talking to residents directly and thus won’t listen to any of our messages.
Every time there is a new council, they decide to ignore all the work that is done in the past and get new surveys, consultants, experts, at more expense. Then they decide to not rush into anything and of course it is time for the next new council and the same happens all over again.
#metoo!
Thanks for all these comments! I appreciated them. I did know about the delays on Cal Avenue – the ugly barriers at the El Camino entrance and near the tracks have still not been removed after nearly two years, and consultants have failed put up the promised potted greenery at theEl Camino end of that street. The barriers are a blight. Can’t City Manager Ed Shikada even get the pricey consultants to complete a project?
I am sure some of you have additional delays that you are aware of. Let me know through this block. Thanks.
Thanks, Diana. Here’s my latest example.
Both papers papers have recently covered the debate proposed project at University and Middlefield as it moves through the various committees, Both articles reference allude to a Middlefield bike lane. One says its tentative while the other treats it as a fait accompli.
Yet again there has been no outreach to Middlefield residents. I learned about the first attempt decades ago to sneak one through only because my neighbor learned about it through her work at the city and she asked me to edit her letter because she was worried about her elderly friends using walkers having to walk 2 blocks to her home when a parking ban was snuck through. Evidently the image of people on walkers, cleaners and gardeners lugging their equipment for blocks killed it.
The second time Josh Mello failed to notify us of his plans but an alert neighbor found out and HUNDREDS of us showed up to protest and note the inaccuracy of his costly 3D model and other egregious errors. Furious that we’d derailed his sneaky plans, he complained about lack of respect for HIM.
He refused to respond to complaints that the new bollards, bus stops, etc. near the Oregon and Embarcadero intersections often left cars stuck in the middle of the intersections because the lane reductions prevented cars from going around turning traffic, the buses etc.
Now here we are again. The City Manager has a huge and costly “Communications” staff that yet again has done NO outreach, has failed to get our input on existing problems that make Middlefield one of the most dangerous roads for cars and pedestrians NOW but somehow would miraculously become safe for bikes.
So tired of this Groundhog Day charade every decade!
(apologies for the bad editing above)
All our entitled complaining is why nothing gets done. See comment above……
How does our “entitled complaining” matter if no one in any authority pays attention?
Serious question – what is one thing that we could do to change this? Are there specific city rules or processes that create these challenges? How do we change them? (I personally think that there should be a ban on hiring consultants, but how would that be done?)