By Stuart Soffer
E-mail Stuart Soffer
About this blog: Growing up in Brooklyn, NY I lived in high-density housing and experienced transit-oriented services first hand. During high school and college summers I worked in Manhattan drafting tenant floor plans for high-rise office buildi...
(More)About this blog: Growing up in Brooklyn, NY I lived in high-density housing and experienced transit-oriented services first hand. During high school and college summers I worked in Manhattan drafting tenant floor plans for high-rise office buildings. This could have been a career option, but my interest in computers - unusual at the time - led me to the computer science program at the University of Wisconsin. A programming job on Page Mill Road brought me to Palo Alto after college. Since 1993 I consult on bridging law and technology, and serve as an expert witness in Intellectual Property litigation. We moved to Menlo Park's Linfield Oaks neighborhood in 1994. Neighborhood traffic issues motivated my initial volunteering as a Menlo Park Planning Commissioner, followed by a stint as a Chamber of Commerce board member and most recently a finance/audit committee member. I advocate community volunteering for meeting people, the neighborhoods, and understanding the myriad issues that somehow arise. As hobbies I collect contemporary art and vintage cameras. And? fly helicopters, which offer rare views of the nooks and crannies of the Bay Area.
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Last week while in NYC I received a call from a council member asking me how I felt the local campaigns were going? asking about Measure M in particular.
I responded that at the outset of the campaign there wasn't enough support for M and that it would fail. I added that in the past few weeks, though, since the disclosure of the $200,000 backing from Greenheart to defeat M, that M was definitely gaining traction. It also started with seeing the spawning more Yes on M 'Lawn Signs' – at least in the neighborhoods bordering El Camino and the traffic paths to 101.
Instead of the arcane zoning issues and consequences, I offered that that one donation provided an alternative, easier framework for understanding the Specific Plan and Measure M. I also noted that the tenor of the arguments against M one reads online - strident and lacking empathy that there could be other opinions- was ironically winning converts to Yes on M.
This discussion went on for a while, and we were in agreement on the above dynamics.
I then turned the table and asked this council member, "Well, what do you think?"
Councilmember's immediate response was a diplomatic, "I think I'm going to lose one of my colleagues."
We'll see in a few hours. It's been a weird election cycle.
