Trying to hide the referendum's goal behind claims of a "flawed process" seems pretty transparent to me. After hearing of the lawsuit and the claims, I believe the council just saw the past policy for what it was - a continuation of the racist exclusionary effort of the past. No other city in California has such a policy. Its partially a remnant of sour grapes. If Palo Alto believes this park is a burden, then they should turn it over to the county to operate it.

"We don't oppose people coming to our park, we just want transparency in letting people vote to chose to not allow people to come to our park"
The other classic phrase is "this is just a slippery slope to X", that one also always comes in handy.

In general, limiting city facilities and services to city residents makes sense. The argument in the lawsuit that the park would be a nice place to protest exclusion from the park is overrated. There are lots of places to protest. Is it not true that non-residents of the Palo Alto school district may not enroll in Palo Alto district public schools - except as specially permitted by the school district? Exclusionary? Yes. Discriminatory - yes, but not unlawfully.

Mountain View should limit the number of people from Palo Alto from using our parks and streets. If they need to go to Sunnyvale, they can take the Dumbarton Bridge to 880 to 237. Just don't come through Mountain View. All others are graciously welcome.

East Palo Alto has a school district called Ravenswood City School District. A few blocks away from EPA but in Palo Alto near University Avenue and 101 is an elementary school in the Palo Alto Unified School District named Ohlone. If I lived nearby in EPA with young children, I might prefer that they attend Ohlone instead of an EPA public school. Ohlone students do much better. So, maybe I could propose a protest on the grounds of Ohlone and every other public school in the City of Palo Alto. And maybe, when stopped, I could sue claiming I have a right to protest on school grounds on this issue - at least when school is not in session. Would the ACLU take my case and force Palo Alto public schools to let me protest or enroll students from EPA or from Mountain View or from Menlo Park or from anywhere and everywhere?

Dear @Gary - all you need to do (if you don't remember) is to look up the ACLU's previous win against the forces of segregation in Palo Alto history. The biggest BTW exactly involves the effects of residential/education segregation on the kids of East Palo Alto.

Look up the TINSLEY decision and settlement from 1983! Start at CA Court of Appeal, First District.

Problem with this park is that it's not in Palo Alto, it's in Los Altos Hills. But LAH residents aren't allowed. I grew up less than a mile from Foothills Park but was not allowed to use it. The park is reserved for people who live far away.

The liberals around here sure hate sharing with the less-wealthy and people of color. They'll come up with all kinds of pretexts to hide behind and assuage whatever paltry feelings of guilt they have but it's pretty obvious what's going on here. Racism and classism on full display.

It costs a lot of money to operate Foothill Park. With the fire problems we now have it costs the city of Palo a lot of money to have incorporated that whole area into the city. It's not just Foothill Park, but Palo Alto also encompasses parts of the Los Trancos Open Space Preserve, the Foothills Preserve and the Pearson Arastradero preserve. There is a lot of fire department cost in having the borders of the city wind out into the mountains like that. These area would otherwise be the responsibility of the county fire department and paid by residents of the county not within any city limits. Already the other preserves ARE open to any resident of any city, but Palo Alto picks up the fire protection costs. Midpeninsula ROS picks up the ranger costs for the other areas. Palo Alto is doing a service to the county by paying for the open space maintenance. It's not so easy to say that the city then has an obligation to encourage usage by others outside the city which then increase those costs.