BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
A member of Palo Alto’s Planning and Transportation Commission has been accused of using his city position to ask for special treatment after his daughter’s car was towed from a city parking garage, public records show.
Commissioner Forest Olaf Peterson allegedly identified himself as a planning commissioner repeatedly and requested a discount, a tow yard owner said in an email to City Manager Ed Shikada.
“When the requested discount was not granted, Mr. Peterson became rude and made statements suggesting that he could ‘change the rules’ in the future to benefit himself,” the tow yard owner said.
Peterson paid $494 at 4:56 p.m. on Jan. 6 to recover his daughter’s black 1994 Ford Mustang that was impounded by police two hours earlier from 350 Sherman Ave., according to a receipt. Peterson allegedly told the tow yard owner that he had friends within the Palo Alto Police Department who would agree with him about changing the rules.
“These remarks were troubling and gave the appearance of an abuse of position,” the tow yard owner said in his complaint to Shikada, in which he asked the city to investigate Peterson. The tow yard owner said he was worried about retaliation and asked Shikada to not use his name.
“Public officials are expected to uphold high ethical standards and to avoid actions or statements that could reasonably be perceived as leveraging official authority for personal benefit,” the tow yard owner said.
The tow yard owner forwarded the city a negative online review that Peterson left for his business.
“Unprofessional and incoherent not just to others but to themselves as well,” Peterson wrote. “Shop looked like a mess. I doubt they are real mechanics.” In the review, Peterson said the tow yard owner raised the fee for recovering his daughter’s car.
Shikada told Peterson on March 9 that the city hired attorney Madeline Buitelaar of Oppenheimer Investigations Group to investigate the complaint.
Buitelaar’s contract was for up to $50,000, records show.
“You are alleged to have referenced your position as a member of the Planning and Transportation Commission to influence the outcome of a private commercial matter in your favor,” Shikada said in an email, which the Post obtained using the California Public Records Act.
Peterson’s side
Peterson, 49, gave his side of the story: A tow yard employee suggested Peterson wanted a discount, so Peterson corrected him and said that wouldn’t be allowed under the city’s ethics rules.
Peterson said he requested his daughter’s cash payment be returned so he could pay by credit card and have a record of the transaction.
“I was not negotiating the bill,” he said in an email to Buitelaar.
Peterson sent Buitelaar his call log showing eight calls to Palo Alto police that day, his location history, an ethics training certificate and a letter of support Peterson said his daughter and tow yard employees could speak to what happened, and encouraged Buitelaar to get security camera footage from the tow yard.
On the day of the tow, Commissioner Allen Akin said he discussed parking garage policies with Peterson, including Peterson’s idea of allowing five-day permits for cars with pending DMV registration.
“Enforcement in the city garages seems to be un-even,” Akin said in an email to Peterson, recounting their conversation.
Burt invited him to explain
City officials kept the matter confidential. But Peterson applied for another term on the planning commission. So council interviewed him publicly along with other candidates for the commission. Councilman Pat Burt alluded to the investigation while publicly questioning Peterson on March 23.
“Forest, is there anything that you would like to share with us about events that might inform our decision on reappointing you?” Burt asked.
Peterson said he tries to experience and understand any topic that comes before the commission.
“Some people, they don’t like it,” Peterson said.
“But at the end of the day, I’ve come back more informed, and I bring that information to the commission. And I think that is a way of bringing truth better than necessarily sitting in an ivory tower and not listening.”
Burt said he wanted Peterson to speak to any personal events that would inform council about his ethics as a commissioner.
Peterson said he’s held to high ethical standards as a Stanford researcher and a labor standards investigator.
“For 20 years, I have had no deficits to my behavior,” he said.
Confidential report
Shikada sent Buitelaar’s report to council on April 7. He said her investigation was limited to gathering facts and didn’t determine whether Peterson violated any laws or city policies. The report is confidential because of attorney-client privilege, city spokeswoman Meghan Horrigan-Taylor said in an email yesterday.
Mayor Vicki Veenker, Vice Mayor Greer Stone, Councilman George Lu and Councilwoman Lythcott-Haims voted to appoint Peterson to a four-year term on April 13.
Councilmen Pat Burt, Ed Lauing and Keith Reckdahl voted for tech executive Tom Siegel instead.
Mayor’s thoughts
In an interview yesterday, Veenker said she couldn’t talk about what the investigation found.
“Personally, after reviewing the report, I did not believe there was a sufficient basis to conclude there had been an abuse of position. So I voted for the incumbents,” she said.
Veenker said abuse of a public position is unacceptable, and that’s why the city went through a robust process with Peterson.
“It’s a reminder to all of us to do the best we can to avoid doing things that might give the misimpression of improper conduct,” Veenker said. “That’s hard, because people misunderstand each other all the time.
But as public officials, we have to be aware of that.”
Peterson declined a phone interview.
“The investigation is closed,” he said in an email.
“Its scope was limited to determining whether the alleged conduct occurred, and the report reached no conclusions of law or policy. On April 13, after receiving the investigator’s report, council reappointed me to the Planning and Transportation Commission. I consider the matter resolved.”
The City spent $50,000 of our taxpayer money on a secret investigation of possible misconduct by a PTC Commissioner. Now the City’s findings are also being kept secret?
Veenker’s statement is pathetic.
So much for the transparency and good governance in Palo Alto we expect. City council should vote to come clean and end this cover-up by releasing the information.
I remember some years ago when a member of the ARB had to step down from their position because she took a small terracotta pot off the front step of a house that was going to be demolished. The alleged argument and threats using one’s position of authority made to the tow company seem far more serious. And Council members voted to reappoint him ???!?! Incredible lack of judgement on the councils part. I think this behavior is deeply concerning and that the council should one, release the full report and two, reconsider this reappointment.
“Mayor Vicki Veenker, Vice Mayor Greer Stone, Councilman George Lu and Councilwoman Lythcott-Haims voted to appoint Peterson to a four-year term on April 13.”
Of course they did; they’d rather engage in their endless, meaningless virtue signalling while ignoring / defending concrete evidence of misconduct.
“Veenker said abuse of a public position is unacceptable,…”
Yet back in December, former Mayor Peter Dreckmeyer wrote a lengthy letter to the editor calling out City Council for that and stressing the need to restore public trust, something she pointedly ignored preferring abstract virtue-signalling to addressing real examples of abuse, dishonesty, lies, entitlement, personal attacks etc by council members.
We’re still waiting.
Meanwhile, the City wastes $50,000 on outside counsel for this while pleading poverty.
“For 20 years, I have had no deficits to my behavior,” Peterson said.
That’s not what I hear from people at Stanford, and that is not what I see when I watch PTC meetings. I am dumbfounded that four councilmembers reappointed him when there was a living, breathing alternative.
Remind me again Mayor Veenker what was robust about this process?
Secret hidden and not transparent is not robust!
Pat Burt’s questioning of Peterson was wise. The non-answer answers were telling.
This story shows that four council members are tolerant of corruption: Vicki Veenker, Greer Stone, George Lu and Lythcott-Haims. This story came to the surface. But I wonder how many dirty deals these four have made, thinking they could keep it secret?
…..And being tolerant of and promoting corruption is also corruption!
Having the City Council approve / blackball commissioners is Palo Alto’s very own equivalent of the Electoral College. Both PA and the US would be much better off with direct elections.
Remember the “mean girls” texting fiasco where Julie Lythcott-Haims blackballed someone who might want to examine the school’s role in the recent suicide because that someone supported also “those advanced math people” at a time when the state is so concerned about tanking math scores and the dumbing down of the curriculum in the name of “equity” that it’s bringing back testing and other measures to deal with the problem.
With Mayor Veenker’s backing, she also “misrepresented” the students’ petition as calling for the closure of Churchill when in REALLY called for the reinstatement of human guards, sent Staff scrambling to study the impact of closing ONLY Churchill while ignoring all evidence that South PA is the site of the most suicides and finally quietly mumbled a very short statement saying she might have misstated the petition and PA should ignore her demand to close only Churchill.
Did either Veenker or JLH ever issue an apology for wasting scarce staff resources proportionate to the amount of verbiage and virtue-signalling spent on their close Churchill charade that would have severely impacted thousands of residents east of the rr track??
Why would this guy ever mention he was a city official with a tow truck driver? It seems that his role on the Planning and Transportation Commission should never come up in the conversation. It all goes to prove that just because you took an ethics class it doesn’t mean you’re ethicsl. Shame on the four council members who reappointed him.
Peterson isn’t the only person involved who lacks ethics. I don’t think it was ethical for the city to conduct this investigation in secret, attempting to keep it from the citizens. Who do these people think they work for?
“These remarks were troubling and WAS an abuse of position,” There, I fixed the quote. I can’t decide who’s more corrupt, Peterson or the fools who reappointed him for 4 more years. On the plsu side, he’ll now have ample time for retaliation.