What level of change is appropriate in the California Avenue Focus Area?

Low
Elaborate and describe your vision for the focus area. Consider land uses, urban design, transportation, social equity, and any other aspects that are important to you.

I’d like to see a park, if Fry’s vacates. Not housing. I use Greer Park as precedent.

I just posted* above at Our Palo Alto website, run by Peak Democracy. Apparently I am the 56th person to even see the site and the first to post there (it requires a registration process).

As disturbing is the way Elena Lee uses the term, in her staff report “the civic engagement process” as a substitute for actually working for the people or being a civil servant. She speaks as she is inoculating us, or herself, against criticism that staff is pushing thru an agenda.

edit to add, 12 minutes later: I found another page that said there are 123 visitors so far, with a week left to contribute. I took the cue and offered to publish or upload a photo from my file; it shows a man walking up the tunnel at Cali Ave.

I spent about 45 seconds (after it took a long time, maybe a minute or two, seems longer, to figure out how the widget widges) doing their task: I put “leadership” ahead of “infrastructure” and more.

I hope to add a graph or a sentence about “Peak Democracy” see also George Packer on “Change The World“, which I just found and sent a link to a planning commish.

I took this photo, of Cali Ave bike pedestrian tunnel, in 2009; I hope this man is ok.

In terms of reading Lee (42931) I am only on page 3, although beyond this I have another page of internal notes — maybe I will just paste them in here, after about two hours. I like Elena, and appreciated working with her, sitting next to her even, at the June 24 meeting, but do feel that citizens have the right to demand excellence for our tax dollars. And, as the Grand Jury Report evidences (on 6/6/14) there is a certain amount of rot at 250 Hamilton so it would behoove various players to separate themselves from such where they can.

We need a good whistle blower somewhere up there.

Here are my notes (part of this reiterates what I just posted):

What is “scoping”?

How is this not “let’s run this up a flagpole and see who salutes it”? I.e. a page from the industry playbook, and not a government tactic, in good faith, to get input.

The title of her document is also a bad sign; I was always taught that if you write a paper and cannot give it a good title, you probably have not said anything.

In terms of “Fry’s” —when did that site itself enter the discussion? Is she confusing “Ventura-California Plan” with her term “Fry’s/California”?

Is or isn’t Fry’s on the housing element inventory?

Is or isn’t 27 Uni on the housing element inventory?

What is the distinction between being “ABAG compliant” and having a working Comp Plan?

Wouldn’t we be better off dealing with these two issues separately and not creating an initiative that combines and muddles the two?

What is the overlap between the people who pressure leadership to allow more housing and the people who pressure leadership for more office space?

When Elena Lee writes “the community engagement process”

it gives me the creeps because it sounds like a perfunctory course of action, like the proper notice of a meeting. This is a Democracy. Either we are listening to the people or we are not. And people think leadership only listens to the developers. Just as Lytton Plaza is not a free speech area, there is not a community engagement process. She makes it sound like an inoculation.

* I don’t think it lets you post. It just takes in your input and promises to someday spit it back out, or spout it like a fountain. So it is probably not true that I am the first to post there. Maybe all 123 of us cosmonauts have done so. And I am wrong about this new type of Democracy. (it’s funny, to me at least, I had the opposite problem on Eric Filseth’s website: I thought by “Contact” I was sending a private message to he or it, but instead it posts like a “Comment” board)

weird edit to add: there is a mother and two young kids next to me, at Coupa. They are drinking coffee, eating fruit cup and coloring — felt pens on white paper. All three of them, or the two kids with mom adding some genius bar flourish, are drawing the same thing: the Apple logo. Not an apple. Not one of the 100,000,000 objects found in nature. But a corporate logo. I presume she is not Naomi Klein. She has a German accent. Maybe it’s Mrs. Juergen Klinsman. I was tempted but thought better 0f — ok, I admit, she finished, and her bangs no longer blocked her view of me — snapping her photo with my Not Stupid But Not Leading Brand phone. I guess I could ask them to pose. Too many pictures of people under 10 even with parental consent can undermine the cred of a blogger; I met my self-imposed quota a whiles back with the young rockers at Lytton Plaza.

Somewhere in here, if a reader actually reads all 188 posts on Democracy or 800 posts overall, at Plastic Alto, it should state that I am unconvinced on the value of the proliferation of computer technology; I think we are over-subscribed to computers; I also detest what I call “corporate creep.”

Peak Democracy, also known as Open Town Hall, is Berkeley based app with, by their count 1,551 forums 208,592 constituents. I awkwardly cannot find a wikipedia page on Open Town Hall Peak Democracy but a code for commons america page claims that Palo Alto uploaded the format on May 12, 2012. Meanwhile something is moving my fingers and I find them fondling Ellen Ullman, in New York Times, May, 2013 reviewing as “Big Data is Watching You” Evgeny Morozov “To Solve Everything Click Here” also cited by Packer in above.