BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Mayor Vicki Veenker is touting her progress on addressing the city’s influx of RV dwellers as she runs for a second term.
“We’re finally getting to the point where we’re resolving it more fully,” Veenker said in an interview.
Council voted on Aug. 24 to ban RV dwellers from all residential streets and to permit 37 RVs on two roads at the edges of the city.
Veenker said she has a couple leads on more off-street parking where more RV dwellers could temporarily live, but she wasn’t ready to provide more details about where.
Veenker said it’s too soon to consider a citywide ban on RVs.
“Some people would likely end up in our parks or our parking garages if we just said, ‘Go away,’” she said. “So the idea is, why don’t we try harder to fix the problem?”
The city counted 133 RVs on the streets in May. Veenker said she wants to focus on helping RV dwellers who live or work in Palo Alto, and she’s hoping the city can find a way to verify their ties to the city. She wants larger employers like Stanford and Google to step up and provide parking for their employees living in RVs.
Veenker said critics of the city’s slow approach to RVs, including residents Bob Marinaro and Barry Katz, are encouraged by the city’s multi-pronged approach.
“I’ve had multiple conversations (about RVs) today already. It’s pretty much an everyday thing,” she said.
Veenker said she wants to improve Palo Alto’s reputation as a pro-housing city. She pointed to affordable housing projects council has approved downtown, on El Camino Real and in the Ventura neighborhood, along with the city’s new homeless shelter that opened in May at the end of San Antonio Road.
Veenker said the city needed a nudge from the state to build housing, but many state laws have gone too far in taking away local control.
“It makes my job on council easier because there’s not that much to decide,” she joked.
Veenker ran for state Assembly in 2016 but lost to Assemblyman Marc Berman, who is termed out in 2028. She was elected to council in 2022.
Veenker represents the city at the Bay Area Air District and Northern California Power Agency. She works as an attorney and mediator and has lived in Palo Alto for 34 years.
Veenker is endorsed by Congressman Sam Liccardo, former Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, state Sen. Josh Becker, former Supervisor Joe Simitian, Assemblyman Marc Berman, District Attorney Jeff Rosen, Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga, Vice Mayor Greer Stone, Councilman George Lu and nine former mayors.
“Finally getting to the point where we’re resolving it more fully.”
Then show the results.
How many RVs have actually been relocated? How many remain? How many of the promised 37 spaces are occupied? What has the city spent? What are the additional locations, and when will they be operational?
If roughly 130–140 RVs are part of the problem and the current plan addresses 37 spaces, celebrating “progress” before showing measurable results looks less like a solution and more like a victory lap over a fraction of the problem. Residents don’t need another progress claim. They need a scoreboard—and the numbers need to speak for themselves.
Why does Palo Alto owe housing to anyone who drives an RV into the city? Vicki Veenker claims credit for progress in remediating a purported housing need that the city has no reason to address. The council’s chosen strategy is to designate streets with few residences as sacrifice areas. Does the city have no responsibility to its businesses or to their customers, many of whom are also Palo Alto residents?
Umm the city didn’t count the rvs? It was the passion project of one very specific private individual, if memory serves me correctly, that then spurred the city into action because it was such an embarrassment that one man could do all this. What is the city even doing? I will not be voting for Vicki since it seems to me that she has been doing nothing, until election season when all of the sudden, she is more active. Nope.
Really??? Progress??? The only “accomplishment” you can hang your hat or is to further discriminate South Palo Alto tax paying residents. You have done nothing but perpetuate the problem. We have lost safety and property value, walkability, and a clean environment while you sit in your properly zoned neighborhood away from all of this.
Too soon to consider a citywide ban??? What progress?
Our RV population has doubled while the surrounding communities have taken action, thus making Palo Alto the regional RV haven.
Poor Ventura has suffered the most since the original “plan” designated them as RV parking sites at the same time their real estate took the biggest hit of all PA neighborhoods.
Maybe she should spend some time reading and — GASP — addressing the concerns being raised on the growing Robert Marinaro OSV email list reaching her, the rest of council, staff and 200+++ frustrated taxpaying businesses and residents.
When confronted, she takes pats herself on the back as she does in this article or when confronted with specifics shifts the blame to her political opponents or-offers us platitudes.
Wow, her statements are actually not truthful! We are NOT “are encouraged by the city’s multi-pronged approach”. A LOT of us are dismayed at the lack of real response. I didn’t expect the gas-lighting coming from our elected officials.
I imagine that a serious high school student would have been professional and truthful compared to the mayor’s vapid responses. “Finally getting to the point where we are resolving it more fully,” is the mayor’s stance on the status of what the city is doing regarding OSVs. Wow, how can she say Bob Marinaro and Barry Katz are encouraged by the city’s multi-pronged approach.” Really? The language is false as these fellows are not at all encouraged mayor Veenker. This posturing is unfair to residents and all who have worked to get the city’s attention especially these dedicated men.
I also do not understand how mayor Veenker can assert that state laws have gone too far regarding housing in taking away local control yet relished leading with Greer Stone, JLH and George Lu to permit the fifteen-day window under SB79 for Builders Remedy projects to slide through saying there will only be two. Now there are nine of these incompatible projects in the docket. The four voted to take away local control. Palo Alto Forward lobbied you and the three other council members hard.
You want those campaign donations for your run for assembly.
Your choice of language is weak and false. The interview is patronizing and frankly insults the intelligence of residents.
Vote for true public servants Ed Lauing and Bryna Chang for city council.
Simply stunned by Veenker’s comment on the RV situation! I attended the most recent city council meeting on the RV issue and I was simply appalled by how incompetent the city council members are. To be honest, one does not even need to be educated to do a better job.
Now let’s wind back. Let me relive one of the snapshot of that meeting…
The city assembled a group of workforce to investigate people living in the RVs on their employment status, where they are from, etc. In almost half year’s investigation, the hired group, has returned with ZERO data! They were not able to get in contact with a single RV dweller!
And this is not the most hilarious. The council’s meeting agenda is fully based on their imaginary data. They have no reality how much damage those people are causing our community!
And this is yet still not the most hilarious part. Towards the end of the meeting, a RV dweller stood up and complained about other RV dwellers and called them “meth heads”. Excuse me?! Meth heads? Where is our city management, law enforcement? And where is the workforce who failed to contact the RV dwellers when there was one right in front of them? OMG there are just so many levels of stupidity in that room that is beyond anyone’s imagination!!!
So, if Veenker says that “We’re finally getting to the point where we’re resolving it more fully”, I mean what kind of solution is this? Are you going to waste another several millions of tax payer money on this?
One word for Veenker, go home, lock yourself up, don’t come out and harm our city!
“Too soon to consider a city wide ban” Lets get real here! We here in south Palo Alto have been fighting this issue with increased intensity for the past year ever since Bob Marinaro started documenting the conditions and number of OSVs on our streets. Why does the community need exert their energy to make the city do what is right?
We will hand it to you that the numbers have come down since last October, but are still hovering around 150. That is 150 OSVs that are parked in front of residents and businesses blocking driveways, dumping garbage, stealing electricity, decreasing property values, impeding commercial property leasing, and causing major safety concerns to name a few.
What don’t you understand here? You were elected to serve the residents and businesses of Palo Alto. The residents and businesses that pay the taxes that the city uses to provide services to them, not anyone that just chooses to park on our streets and free-load our services. RVs are mean to be parked in RV parks not on city streets!
As someone said earlier in an e-mail exchange it is “Shameful” what the city has and continues to allow!
Three City Council seats are up for grabs in Palo Alto. You’d think three open seats might mean a chance for fresh leadership, new ideas, and—dare we say—actual solutions. Instead, fate has a cruel sense of humor: voters are left with familiar faces and the same old approaches to problems that have gone unresolved for years.
And then there is Mayor Vicki Veenker. Her handling of the OSV issue has become, in my view, a troubling example of failed leadership. It raises a fundamental question: who is actually holding the city manager accountable? The council hired him, the council oversees him, and the council has the authority to act when performance falls short.
Enough with the excuses. Show some backbone. Review the contract, demand accountability, and if the city manager isn’t delivering, make a change. Palo Alto taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to keep funding an executive structure that isn’t delivering the results the city needs. Accountability isn’t optional—it’s the council’s job.
To claim progress on this is absurd. To reelect someone who claims that in light of all the evidence to the contrary, would also be absurd. Our mayor needs to dismount her high horse and take a walk with Robert Marinaro.