BY ELAINE GOODMAN
Daily Post Correspondent
As the city of Menlo Park faces a possible ballot initiative that would force the city to get voter approval before building housing on downtown parking lots, the city is poised to rehire a communications firm that has crisis management experience.
City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday (June 10) on a $210,000 contract with Tripepi Smith, a firm that provides marketing, communications and public affairs services, including crisis support. The item is on the council’s consent calendar, in which several items are voted on at the same time without discussion.
Menlo Park has worked with Tripepi Smith since the Southern California firm designed the city’s fiscal year 2022-23 budget book. The consultant has helped the city with newsletters, social media and recruitment videos. It provided graphic design services for the city to promote its holiday Light Up the Season event at Fremont Park.
“Once the city hired a public engagement manager in January 2024, communication and outreach to Menlo Park residents increased,” the city said in renewing the contract last year.
For fiscal year 2023-24, council approved paying Tripepi Smith up to $225,000. In the current 2024-25 fiscal year, the contract amount was up to $250,000.
Crisis communications
In the new fiscal year, which begins July 1, Tripepi Smith will do similar work and also will be “on standby” to provide additional services — such as crisis-communications support — upon city request. Tripepi Smith has worked with numerous cities and agencies across California, including the cities of Cupertino and Livermore and the Santa Clara County Fire Department.
On its website, the consultant spotlighted its work with two clients, the city of Rolling Hills Estates and the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority, after pro golfer Tiger Woods was seriously injured in a rollover car crash in the Los Angeles area in February 2021.
Identifying misinformation
The incident grabbed headlines across the U.S. and internationally, and Tripepi Smith worked to track news coverage for its clients and identify “questions and misinformation” on issues such as the safety of the stretch of road where Woods crashed.
Menlo Park is now in the midst of its own controversy, involving its plan to build housing on parking lots downtown.
A group called Save Downtown Menlo is collecting signatures to put a measure on the ballot that would require the city to get voter approval before taking certain actions on downtown parking lots. That would include selling, leasing or donating the lots or declaring them surplus property. The initiative also covers building anything on the downtown lots that “permanently diminishes the availability, access, or convenience of public parking for downtown customers, workers, and visitors.” Changes that enhance or expand parking would not require a vote.
If the group collects enough valid signatures — more than 2,000 are required — council would have the option to approve the initiative or place it on the ballot. A report to council on renewing the Tripepi Smith contract doesn’t mention working on the downtown housing issue.
City got PR help previously
But the city has found itself in hot water previously when it comes to communication consultants and ballot measures. Questions were raised on whether the city government misused tax funds to help opponents of Measure M, an initiative to limit office space that failed in November 2014. Then-City Manager Alex McIntyre hired consultant Malcolm Smith to write letters to the editor and opinion pieces that the city could use during the campaign.
District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe investigated the matter, announcing in February 2015 that the city had not broken the law in its use of the consultant.
Wagstaffe said state law doesn’t prohibit the use of public resources for providing information to the public about the possible effects of a ballot measure.
But council members were unhappy that McIntyre had hired Smith without their knowledge. They asked the city attorney to draw up a policy requiring McIntyre to make a public announcement anytime he hired a PR consultant. McIntyre left his job with Menlo Park in 2018.
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