Good showing for the Bay Trail

I'd like to thank the SVBC members who attended Liz Kniss' press event this morning, where she officially announced a proposal to invest $5 million in the Adobe Creek Bicycle/Pedestrian Bridge over Highway 101 in Palo Alto and $3 million in the Dumbarton link to the Bay Trail in East Palo Alto (a project SVBC advocates have been working on in conjunction with our Facebook campaign).

The funding will come from a County fund for recreational facilities near Stanford, and the proposal will be voted on next Tuesday, May 22, by the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors. If you can show up, I urge you to support this proposal at the meeting. If you can't show up, please email or call your Santa Clara County Supervisor this week to urge them to support Kniss' proposal for the Stanford funds.

The funds would come from a nearly $10.4 million chunk that Stanford paid to the County to mitigate the loss of recreational opportunities caused by new development on the University's core campus. It's been nearly 11 years since Stanford received its general use permit to develop, but the full mitigation for loss of recreational opportunities has not been realized, due, in part, to San Mateo County's recent decision not to accept the funds to improve the Lower Alpine side path.

Speakers at the press conference included Santa Clara Supervisor Liz Kniss, Santa Clara Supervisor Dave Cortese, San Mateo County Supervisor Carole Groom, the Vice Mayor of Palo Alto Greg Scharff, Palo Alto Deputy City Manager Steve Emslie, MidPen Regional Open Space District Directors Nonette Hanko and Yoriko Kishimoto, Lennie Roberts and Alice Kaufman from the Committee for Green Foothills, and yours truly. There were many interested attendees, including many SVBC members and Laura Thompson of the Bay Trail Project.