Menlo Park is in great shape, but we will need to work hard in the next four years to keep it that way. My priorities include:
- Revitalizing our local economy. We have lost significant sales tax revenue in recent years. It's easy to blame the recession, but we need to improve the retention and attraction of revenue-producing businesses in both the industrial and retail areas of Menlo Park.
- Balancing our budget. We have cut costs, but the city still is experiencing a structural budget deficit. We need to continue to work with management and our labor unions to find ways to reduce spending without significantly affecting the delivery and quality of city services.
- Preventing High Speed Rail from splitting our beautiful city in two. We have created an effective partnership with other cities in the Peninsula Cities Consortium (PCC http://www.peninsularail.com/), but we now need to encourage more cities to join the consortium. In doing so, we'll become an even stronger voice in opposition to the HSRAs plans for an elevated or trenched, four track peninsula alignment.
- Improving opportunities for lower income residents. The city supports numerous programs to help low income youth, seniors, and other residents. We need to ensure that these programs are as effective and efficient as they can be. We also need more partnerships with other institutions that have similar interests and goals and better metrics to measure the effectiveness of our investments.
- Increasing the implementation of cost effective, "green" initiatives. In the past four years, we have created a greenhouse gas inventory and a climate action plan. We need to continue implementing the plan and take other steps to improve our local environment and reduce our carbon footprint. There are many opportunities to reduce our energy consumption and carbon footprint with modest investments that have relatively short payback times.
|
