Menlo Park's Future

Possible Solutions.

Fellow Residents,

I have talked about the on-going growth of our City's employee costs including the pension and post-retirement healthcare benefits.

Our City has options, including, but not limited to those I propose below:

1.  Raise taxes.  The Utility Users Tax (UUT), that was passed by a slight majority of Menlo Park voters in November of 2006, can be fully implemented.  And, with the rise in energy and water bills, this tax will yield the City considerably more than projected, as well as cost the taxpayer more than projected.

2.  CutCity services, eliminate staff, and concentrate on core services such as infrastructure maintenance and construction as well as police services.  (Note: our fire protection is provided by the Menlo Park Fire Protection District which gets most of its funding from property taxes.)

3.  Contract out programs and functions run by the City, but maintain the services we now have.  Menlo Park had 231 employees in 2006, since then three have been added.  San Carlos, which is about the same size as Menlo Park, has 125 employees.  Both are full-service cities.  (A chart of cities, their size, and the number of employees is listed below.)

4.  Increase revenues from business by making Menlo Park much more business friendly.  A plan already exists to kick start this.  Yet, it takes a sea-change in attitude and community support, not just the hiring of City staff to accomplish this.

5.  Do a combination of all, or some subset, of the above.

As always, I would appreciate your thoughts on this:  [email protected]
Lee