With Election Day three weeks away, Palo Alto City Council will hold a special meeting Tuesday to possibly release the secret appraisal it used to decide to buy a portion of the Cubberley Community Center for $65.5 million.
Voters will decide in the upcoming election whether to approve Measure J, a half-cent sales tax increase, the proceeds of which would be used to pay the Palo Alto Unified School District for the Cubberley property. Ballots have already been mailed out for the election.
Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled for 5 p.m. in the council chambers at 250 Hamilton Ave. and significantly it is not a closed-door session. Previous council meetings about the appraisal have been held behind closed doors.
The Post has been seeking the appraisal since July. A California Public Record Act request was denied by City Manager Ed Shikada, saying the council and school board needed to approve its release.
The Post argued that state law says that once a government agency had reached an agreement to purchase property, the appraisal must be released. However, the city ignored that argument.
On Oct. 5, the city once again refused to release the appraisal and instead issued a press release saying the appraiser, who wasn’t identified, said the property was worth between $43.6 to $60.2 million. The city emphasized that the appraisal was done in 2024, and with inflation the top price would will increase to $65.5 million when the deal would close.
Nobody on council or in the city administration has explained why the appraisal needed to be kept secret. Sometimes government agencies withhold documents that contain personnel information, medical records or details about a law enforcement investigation, but it would seem unlikely that such information would be included in a document about the value of a piece of real estate.
In the upcoming election, not only will voters decide Measure J, but they will also decide whether to return incumbents Vicki Veenker and Ed Lauing to council for another four years.
Council doesn’t understand that they need to show all their cards before they ask us for the money. The “trust us” era is over in Palo Alto. That ended when Miriam Green’s lawyers discovered the city had ripped off its natural gas customers to the tune of $17 million. When the city got caught, they agreed to settle. But the fraud would have continued if she hadn’t sued. That’s when I stopped trusting the city. It looks like Measure J is another ripoff. If the city wants my money, they need to earn my trust.
The only reason Veenker and Lauing will get reelected is that the other candidates are ding dongs.