According to newspaper reports and to documents filed with the Local Area Formation Commission, Page Mill Properties has requested a Sphere of Influence change that would detach East Palo Alto’s West Side from the municipal control of the City. With shocking audacity, seemingly tone-deaf to the real work that went into the formation of East Palo Alto, Mr. Taran has applied his seemingly infinite legal resources to making the claim that he would run the city much better than the City itself.
Almost 5000 people live on the West side of East Palo Alto, and though they are undoubtedly in need of better services, Page Mill is certainly not the entity that will provide them. With a mismanagement record that has included the death of a worker due to failure to observe proper safety codes, to a string of ham-fisted rent-increases, to failures to provide basic services, Page Mill seems to have trouble providing proper services that they are being paid to provide. How are they going to take over running a City?
According to Page Mill, they have a plan which they call “The Page Mill Properties Plan”. They claim it is much better than the East Palo Alto Plan, which one can read online. Would you like to judge for yourself? Well, you can’t: Page Mill will not release this plan, even though they are asking for the most extraordinary judgment possible from LAFCo, the movement of a City border, based on the claims of this document. This is pretty darned ironic given that Page Mill has filed at least five (very dubious) lawsuits accusing the City of East Palo Alto of violating the open meetings act, also known as the Brown Act.
We can only assume that Tarantown is a town where your rights to know will be provided on a need-to-know basis. It’s really existing feudalism!
