Agenda items include (Please note that only a handful of the many agenda items are featured below. For all items, please refer to the agenda.):
F1. Introduction: Menlo Park Fire Protection District Chief Mark Lorenzen.
The new Fire Chief in our area will be introduced to the community during this agenda item. Chief Mark Lorenzen recently took over the position on February 7th from retiring Chief Harold Schapelhouman, who served for decades. Chief Lorenzen comes from the Ventura County Fire Department where he served as Chief for a decade. Click here to learn more about the new Chief. Welcome Chief Lorenzen!
As a reminder, the Fire District is a completely separate entity from the City of Menlo Park. Known as a "Special District," the Fire District has its own Board (elected by the voters) and has its own jurisdictional boundaries. The Menlo Park Fire Protection District encompasses all of the City of Menlo Park, Atherton, East Palo Alto and parts of Unincorporated San Mateo County. To learn more about the Fire District, visit https://www.menlofire.org/about-the-fire-district. I look forward to getting to know the new Chief and working together with the Fire District on behalf of our shared constituents.
This is a presentation from the City’s economic development consultants, HdL, on a Downtown Market Study. The presentation will include information about consumer demand and market supply, sales and use tax generation and recommendations to consider. To review the presentation, click here.
With the nearing completion of Stanford's Middle Plaza at 500 El Camino Real, Staff is proposing various safety improvements along El Camino Real between Middle Avenue and the Palo Alto border. These include allowing space for a concrete median between travel directions that also enables a small pedestrian refuge for those crossing the busy street
For those of you who closely follow Council meetings (if you're readying this, you probably do!), this item may look familiar. At last week's Council meeting on March 1st, the Council discussed the same agenda item. Council members grappled with the complicated trade-offs involved with the project, asked questions of staff and requested information about possible alternatives. You can read about the Council discussion in this Almanac article.
The staff report for this coming Tuesday night's agenda item reviews the project objectives, last week's meeting and associated Council requests, and various options for the Council to consider. This item is returning to Council so quickly because the modifications are required as part of Stanford's condition of approval to provide signalized access at Middle Avenue to the Middle Plaza at 500 El Camino Real development project currently under construction.
Other Item of Interest
In this section of my newsletter I usually list a handful of events, activities and other notable items I think residents will be interested in. This week I encourage you to download and explore the City of Menlo Park's own information sharing tool, Simplicity. Let me know what you think!
Download Simplicity App to get Up to Date Information
Directly from the City of Menlo Park
The City of Menlo Park has a new app called Simplicity to help residents stay informed and on top of city news and events. Download the app, select your favorite news/event categories, turn on push notifications and receive instant updates. Not interested in receiving push notifications? You can still view events/news across all city departments without having to search through the website or wait for an email.
You can download the app on your smartphone by visiting the App Store or Google Play.
