Thank you Angela for this helpful reporting. Woodside Town Council has done good work on their housing plan. Tonight is the Portola Valley Town Council opportunity to make wise and hard choices, to remember that the environment, the animals both domestic and wild, and the land can not speak for themselves, and to practice respect for residents and employees, though it is may try everyone's patience, enjoy curiosity driven listening.

It is complicated but we can do this!

Mary

To Mary & others:
What does "we can do this" mean? What will Woodside & Portola Valley look like after this "Housing Element" & the next one & the next one? Will the every peninsula city look the same? Will the housing/office/retail sprawl along all of El Camino be duplicated along many more arteries? Where does it lead to?

The root problem is NOT the Town Council but rather the remote & distanced bureaucrats at California's HCD & our Regional ABAG that have taken away local control & are enforcing their view of how you should live. YOU are now the endangered species!

The only answer is to "educate" & hold our local State Representative (Marc Berman) & State Senator (Josh Becker) accountable for voting for & continuing to support this madness. We can only stop the destruction of our neighborhoods by changing our representatives (& Governor) in Sacramento! We should be "lecturing" them & not the beleaguered Town Council members.

We listened to the meeting on Zoom last night (the audio was terrible unless the speaker was up against the microphone). Whichever member of the council that blasted the state is right: how will California build 300K+ houses per year when the total production has never exceeded much more than 100K?
Insanity!

We can have both housing and wilderness, but I certainly agree we need to get new representation in order to achieve it. Both Berman and Becker are part of that Sacramento lazy way out. They prefer to turn the problem over to big business and hope for the best. That has not served anyone well.

Meg:

You are correct, but Berman & Becker have really turned over to "opportunity" to:
1) Big Donors
2) Big Real Estate Developers & Agents
&
3) Big Government

Our local communities will have no say in the decisions until we vote out those currently in power. Yet, the Almanac is silent about which November candidates have what positions on the "Housing Element" & SB-9.

Perhaps the Almanac could do the community the service of helping the residents (their subscribers) to understand the true positions on Berman, Becker & their November opponents!