Dec 10, 2007

Proposal surfaces to open preserve

Plan would let nonresident business owners visit park

By Jason Green / Daily News Staff Writer

A new proposal has surfaced to open Palo Alto's residents-only Foothills Park to outsiders.

Council members LaDoris Cordell, Judy Kleinberg and Dena Mossar want their colleagues to consider granting Palo Alto business owners who do not live in the city access to the park. According to a memo the council will discuss tonight, the city's Policy and Services Committee would develop a recommendation for the council to vote on sometime next year.

But like previous efforts to open up the preserve in the hills above the city, the proposal is expected to draw fire from the public and other council members who believe it should remain off-limits to outsiders.

Cordell says opening Foothills Park to tax-paying, nonresident business owners is a matter of equity.

"If you can't go to a park that your taxes support, that is unfair," said Cordell, one of the authors of a 2005 memo that proposed re-examining the residents-only restriction. "This (proposal) is about a select group of people who I feel have every right to use the park."

Council Member Bern Beecham, who helped send the earlier proposal to a 5-4 defeat, isn't interested in changing the rules.

"The park is reserved for Palo Altans, and I will continue to support that," Beecham said. "It's a very special resource, and it's the only one we restrict to ourselves. I think that is appropriate."

Palo Alto voters decided in 1959 to make the 1,400-acre preserve at 3300 Page Mill Road off-limits to nonresidents after neighboring municipalities declined to help the city acquire the land for $1.3 million. Since then, several requests to reconsider the rule have come and gone.

Resident Bob Moss said he is puzzled by the latest effort to relax the rules. In 2005, he argued passionately against opening up Foothills Park.

"I don't know why politicians want to create all this discord. In the end, nothing's really going to be done," he said. "I think this proposal is going to crash and burn like all the other past attempts."

If businesses paid greater taxes and more of them went into city coffers, instead of to the state, Moss indicated he might support the idea.

Discussions with the nonresident owners of Montoya's Jewelers on California Avenue inspired the current proposal. Cordell said it is unfair to deny the Montoyas access to the park -- which has already happened once -- when they have done business and paid taxes in the city for 20-plus years.

"I can't come up with the argument why it is fair," she said.

Provided the council tonight approves sending the matter to the Policy and Services Committee for a recommendation, neither Beecham nor Cordell will be around to vote on it when it returns. Four new council members will take the dais in January, replacing Beecham, Cordell, Kleinberg and Mossar.

"My hope is just to put this in motion and have it looked at," Cordell said.


E-mail Jason Green at jgreen@dailynewsgroup.com.



AT A GLANCE

What: Palo Alto City Council

When: 6 p.m. today

Where: City Hall, Council Chambers, 250 Hamilton Ave.

Why: The council will consider sending a proposal to the city's Policy and Services Committee that would open Foothills Park to non-resident city business owners.