Framing Atherton's Issues

Atherton residents have the chance to vote on four important issues—3 ballot measures dealing with proposed town projects and the future composition of the council.  Below is some guidance that should help those residents who are not familiar with these issues or the underlying disputes that frame the issues.

Ballot Measures

    1)  Ballpark - Measure M  This one is easy.  The local Little League is proposing to pay for and make needed improvements to the Little League Field and adjacent tennis courts, to be funded by Little League.  Exactly what will be done will still have to be vetted and approved by council. Very straightforward. 

    2)  Town Center Funding - Measure L   A confusing and confused ballot measure asking:  Should the Town "primarily use private donations to construct and design a new Town Center?"  Contrary to what some think, this does not ask voters to approve a decision to build a new town center. There is a fairly robust consensus that a Town Center needs to be built.  There is also no way that a Town Center could be built without private donations. This measure seeking voter approval to limit the town to private donations however is akin to the council saying, "Tell us we can't decide to use any of our existing tax revenues to help build the Town Center." Council dysfunction could not be clearer. 

     3)  Library in the Park - Measure F   Many will see this measure and wonder why there's suddenly discussion about building a new library.  There's no record of residents being unhappy with Atherton's library or its failure to meet our community needs.  It's not a stretch to say that the proposed library is not a solution to the community's problem with the town's library.  Rather, the new library is a solution to "fiscal" problems — namely, the library has too much town money and the park too little!

Whether or not to abandon the town's quaint facility in town and build a large new structure for the library where the Main House currently is sited is the matter over which community controversy has raged for a full year.  There are two clear camps and their views are very different.  One key area of dispute is over whether or not there has been adequate community process for us to have arrived at a solution that the community is happy with.  There's a big dispute on basic facts.  Those with control over the process, namely the Library Committee and their three council advocates say "Yes," dozens (do I hear hundreds) of meetings.  Those for whom the process was actually intended to make happy, ie residents, emphatically say "No."  If hundreds of residents are really unhappy with the process provided for making this important community decision, can they all really be considered sour grapes?  One can rightly question whether an objective council could view such a process as a success? 

Luckily, regarding government matters, facts relating to public meetings are a matter of public record. A review of the committee's claims for dozens of meetings, finds this claim quite specious. The difference is simply a failure to distinguish between the committee's own quite numerous working meetings (which are public meetings by law but which were uniformly not attended by the general public), and the very few organized community workshops, for which the committee made distinct if modest outreach efforts to inform residents to attend. These few publicized workshops the general public did attend and expressed active interest in the issue. The two most important of these workshops were noticed with a single, glossy mailed postcard and held in mid-summer, 2011.

Luckily, California's Brown Act provides protection from efforts to make important community decisions behind closed doors.  A very thorough review of the available minutes of the public meetings held simply does not support the Committee's claims. There were only 3 community workshops held in which the topic of location was addressed after initial presentations by the committee. The discussions that followed with the community reveal that there were more questions than answers, many objections and no consensus. Three similar meetings did not progress the discussion: these were clearly introductions to the issue, with no carry forward consideration of matters raised at prior meetings.  There was simply no session held for the community which evidence either a vetting process or the culmination of a dialectic process and arrival at a decision with community involvement.  All other meetings that the committee claims to have held were either not public (sub-committee meetings without an agenda), not reported (an early focus group held with a neighborhood association) or did not address the topic of location (the focus groups and four publicized workshops held after the council approved the location decision).

As troubling as these findings are, the real problem is the one resulting from the failure of such a process to adequately address important questions, all of which are still controversial and unanswered. Why, in an era of eBooks and iPads do we need a bigger library?  Can't we use funds to support Atherton's school libraries or implement digital solutions?  What will be the ongoing operating costs of the county library? If it turns out we need traffic lights on Watkins, who pays for those?  How well were increases in traffic from Facebook and the medical office at El Camino considered?  Why wouldn't we want our large "community meeting spaces" in our town center?  Will students even go to libraries in two years, in ten?  If we are bulldozing the Main House and the surrounding mature trees, why can't we put in a swimming pool or a soccer field?  How will the park support its other maintenance costs if we don't have the Main House to rent? How many extra cars are expected to be parked?  How much space will be left for recreational users? How will we address park safety and increased police costs due to vagrants in the park after park hours?  None of these questions have been adequately addressed and all of them have the potential to significantly impact what kind of library the community needs.  We don't really know if we have the right solution to the problem of having so much library tax money to spend. 

It is clear that the Atherton community is not just full of cry babies but actually has smart, thoughtful, concerned residents who care to help sort out these complex issues.  It is also apparent that they believe they have been (and there is no evidence that they haven't been) excluded from what was meant to be a community decision-making process.  When those enlisted to conduct a service on behalf of the public instead abbreviate and mask their process, and then publish deliberately misleading and self-serving information, whether or not you agree with the resulting outcome, the decision should not be validated.  The community deserves much better treatment before committing as much as $8,000,000 in town funds for a massively expensive development project (even though these were previously collected tax funds).  It has demanded a better process to resolve these questions and it is something of a travesty that only in the 11th hour, have residents even been granted only a thumbs-up or thumbs down vote.  Even in Atherton, a one person majority vote can deny a whole community that right! 


Council Composition

Library Politics Dominate.  The current council has pushed the library project through with the help of three openly pro-Library advocates who also believe council alone should decide this issue: McKeithen, Widmer and Dobbie.  Elizabeth Lewis and Jerry Carlson, the two minority council members, have advocated on behalf of having concerns expressed by residents fully aired and addressed by the council and both have declined to voice or assert their personal viewpoints.  This 3-2 division of the council has dominated politics in the last two years. One seat from each of these two groups is open.  Thus, residents have the option of electing new representatives that maintain the majority power in the hands of Pro-Library and Council-Control group or which re-balance the power of the council in support of residents' right to have their voices heard.

Vice Mayor Elizabeth Lewis, the only incumbent, has proven herself to be a staunch supporter of the concept of a representative council, and has spoken out on numerous occasions in council meetings on behalf of resident groups. Lewis has also worked against the tactics of the council majority to denigrade concerns expressed about the Library process by hundreds of residents.  A vote to re-elect Ms. Lewis would clearly create the "tie" vote between those pushing the library and those seeking to maintain a democratic and inclusive community process.  For those who want to do that, this candidate has the track record.

It is the second council choice that is difficult, as this one is the seat that tips the scale and choices are among those much less well-known candidates.  Only one of these candidates has any kind of Atherton record to look at.  This is Denise Kupperman, who is the Chair of the Library Committee and who many attribute to being one of the architects of the Library's choice of community process.  Ms. Kupperman has been the public face of the Library Committee, appearing and speaking at all council meetings on behalf of the Library Project and the voice of the committee, with frequent viewpoints published on the project in the Almanac.  She has endorsed "Yes on F" and is considered by many to be a protege to Council member McKeithen, with whom she has worked closely as leaders of the Library Committee.  Ms. Kupperman's record is equally clear and her election would be enough to tip the balance to the Pro-Library/CouncilControl majority on the council. (We note with dismay that Ms. Kupperman has downplayed her role as chair of the Library Committee throughout her campaign and appears to want to distance herself from personal responsibility for the polarizing actions of that committee.)

Two other candidates.  Two other candidates entered the race.  Cary Wiest, who ran for council in 2010 had a very strong showing but was edged out with a third place finish.  Greg Conlon has not run for a council seat in Atherton previously, although he recently ran for U.S Senate this past spring.  Denise Kupperman suggested that he run for Atherton council.  At the League of Women Voter Candidate Debate both Mr. Wiest and Mr. Conlon made the case that they were open-minded about the outcome of the Library project, which will be determined by Measure F.  Mr. Wiest has endorsed the "No on F" and also was endorsed by the Atherton Police Officers' Association (as was Ms. Lewis).

Other Important Town Issues.  Critical upcoming issues include: determining process for drawing up a town-wide Master Plan (if Measure F is defeated), leadership for raising funding for a new Town Center and renewal of the Parcel Tax for continued funding of Public Works and Police Services for Atherton.  (Surprisingly, some members of the council have recommended outsourcing police services to the county sheriff.  This issue is heating up, as negotiations begin this coming spring for a new police contract and decisions have to be made about whether space is in provided for the Police Department in the town center.) Additionally, Atherton has begun to explore whether to change form to become a Charter City and whether to leave the Library JPA, so as to have more control over town approved uses of the Library Tax revenues (now up to 10% of total town revenue and growing) which the Library JPA has recently moved to keep in full.  We also need to wrestle with High Speed Rail issues, improving bike safety on our streets and many other things.

Needless to say, all of these matters require that our council representatives care to hear our voices.