Measure C would prevent ‘downtown nightmare’

When my neighbor stopped by my house this spring and asked me to sign the citizens’ parklands initiative – now Measure C – I did not understand the need for it. Were public parks and public lands really under threat of development? I didn’t think so.

  Now I have read all the ridiculous plans the city has for our tree-lined public parking plazas – and now I get it. The entire Downtown Vision is a crony developer’s dream – public housing, higher and denser building and (instead of trees and easy parking) so-called programmed spaces. It certainly is a recipe for making Los Altos look like downtown Redwood City.

People have spoken on Downtown Vision

In his letter to the Town Crier, Roger Heyder declares that the Los Altos City Council should “wait for the will of the people to be known (in November’s election) before committing to the Downtown Vision,” among other projects (“‘Watershed’ LA election should dictate direction,” Aug. 15).

As part of the extensive outreach achieved for the Downtown Vision, a community survey of over 1,500 residents indicates more than 80 percent favor a livelier downtown. The will of the people is already known.

Measure C blocks future leaders

The authors of Measure C are clearly angry and fear the future. They ignore a 66-year tradition of wise community improvements by past city councils. Instead, they urge us to “Vote for Chaos!” And please, Los Altos taxpayers, pay the $50,000 bill for this experiment.

They propose that we voters take responsibility for managing city lands away from our elected representatives. Surely, they say, we voters can study complex land management issues in our spare time and make better decisions once every two years than can our elected representatives. In fact, after simplifying the job, we no longer would need to elect good leaders to be powerless bureaucrats.

I was 22 when I broke my first world record. It started with an abrupt tap on my shoulder at 10:30 a.m. on a Monday in the heart of corporate America – if corporate America even has a heart.

When I was growing up in Los Altos, smog was the norm. Many a morning as I walked to school, the air was so full of dirt that the foothills were invisible – I might as well have been living on a prairie.

The first summer we moved out west from Chicago, long before we were parents, we were introduced to a Bay Area gem of a day. Our in-the-know friends invited us to accompany them to the Mountain Play up in Marin. Everything about it appealed to us.