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This reserve is California State Owned. If it was owned by the city, restricting access would be different. ^^^^Appears incorrect. It’s city owned! Thanks for

This reserve is California State Owned. If it was owned by the city, restricting access would be different. ^^^^Appears incorrect. It’s city owned! Thanks for digging!!

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Ah. I had posted that we have the same issue in NY, but those are town or community parks. If it's state property, then that's different.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  I'm not so sure it is different. California has a unitary form of government. An incorporated city isn't a separate entity. It's a subdivision of the county which is a subdivision of the state. They're allowed to make local ordinances (which they've done here), but, in what seems to me to be a very real sense, if something is owned by a city in California, it is owned by the state. Legally I have no idea how that plays out.
jeffbee 6y ago
Are you sure? According to Wikipedia, this land was purchased by the city from a private individual in the 1960s.
ggreer 6y ago
Where'd you find that information? It's not mentioned anywhere in the article, and Wikipedia says it was purchased by the city from a private owner[1]: > Most of the land for the park was bought from Russel V. Lee, a founder of the Palo Alto Medical Clinic (now Palo Alto Medical Foundation), who offered, in 1958, 1,294 acres of his land at $1,000 an acre ($1.3 million total) to the city to preserve as open space.[9] The total cost was high so Palo Alto put it to a citywide vote in 1959 which passed with 62% of the voters supporting buying the land. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foothills_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foothills_Park
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Even this complaint confirms this. """In 1959—at a time when the discriminatory practices described above were occurring—the City acquired the land comprising the Park from prominent Palo Alto residents Dr. Russel Lee and Mrs. Dorothy Lee for $1.3 million."""
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  This dispute is ostensibly about a rights issue. But am I wrong, isn’t this really about preventing homeless and other itinerant people from entering the park? And as a side effect, Palo Alto harasses visible minorities trying to enter the park? It’s interesting, the main way many parks in San Francisco avoid the former problem is by simply being inhospitable - the tops of hills, slopes, the cold, the lack of facilities. In Pacific Heights and the Presidio the parks are hard to use with dignity because of their geography, climate, etc, not necessarily by design. But it goes a long way obviating the need to deploy the law to keep homeless and crunchy people out. Compare to the Mission, which is a very habitable, sunny and flat part of town, with most services accessible by short walks, that has many small parks that itinerant people use, sometimes pretty intensively. If it could, would residents in the Mission restrict its parks? I don’t know if it’s possible to restrict public access to things, have a positive experience of gentrification as a net seller of homes / existing resident, and not harass visible minorities all at the same time. Palo Alto residents are so confident in their belief they will never someday be harassed, that the demographics of their town will not change. And maybe when it does change there will be both homeless people and a visible minority family, unmolested, in the park. In this sense the confusion about, who owns the park - it doesn’t really matter. If Palo Alto wants to prevent itinerant people from using the park, and if it doesn’t care that that also means every black and Hispanic person is asked if they are residents and white and Asian people are not, they will get their way. The solution is through hearts and minds - through empathy and selflessness really. If the ACLU could get people to see that anyone’s family member could be homeless, anyone could have mental illness, that those very same East and South Asian immigrants almost certainly had relatives who were beggars, you could maybe move the needle.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
chmod600 6y ago
Where does it say it's state owned? I read the article and didn't see that fact.
stellar678 6y ago
Cities only operate under authority delegated to them by their state anyway. So seems pretty reasonable to think of it as state owned/controlled, even if the municipality is the legal entity that owns the land.
etrautmann 6y ago
All of this is interesting from a legal perspective, though it's worth noting that it's trivial to get into the park through Arastradero or down from skyline and bypass the "gate"

This reserve is California State Owned. If it was owned by the city, restricting access would be different. ^^^^Appears incorrect. It’s city owned! Thanks for digging!!

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Ah. I had posted that we have the same issue in NY, but those are town or community parks. If it's state property, then that's different.

cgriswald 6y ago
I'm not so sure it is different. California has a unitary form of government. An incorporated city isn't a separate entity. It's a subdivision of the county which is a subdivision of the state. They're allowed to make local ordinances (which they've done here), but, in what seems to me to be a very real sense, if something is owned by a city in California, it is owned by the state. Legally I have no idea how that plays out.

jeffbee 6y ago

Are you sure? According to Wikipedia, this land was purchased by the city from a private individual in the 1960s.

ggreer 6y ago

Where'd you find that information? It's not mentioned anywhere in the article, and Wikipedia says it was purchased by the city from a private owner[1]: > Most of the land for the park was bought from Russel V. Lee, a founder of the Palo Alto Medical Clinic (now Palo Alto Medical Foundation), who offered, in 1958, 1,294 acres of his land at $1,000 an acre ($1.3 million total) to the city to preserve as open space.[9] The total cost was high so Palo Alto put it to a citywide vote in 1959 which passed with 62% of the voters supporting buying the land. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foothills_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foothills_Park

jeffbee 6y ago
Even this complaint confirms this. """In 1959—at a time when the discriminatory practices described above were occurring—the City acquired the land comprising the Park from prominent Palo Alto residents Dr. Russel Lee and Mrs. Dorothy Lee for $1.3 million."""
an_opabinia 6y ago
This dispute is ostensibly about a rights issue. But am I wrong, isn’t this really about preventing homeless and other itinerant people from entering the park? And as a side effect, Palo Alto harasses visible minorities trying to enter the park? It’s interesting, the main way many parks in San Francisco avoid the former problem is by simply being inhospitable - the tops of hills, slopes, the cold, the lack of facilities. In Pacific Heights and the Presidio the parks are hard to use with dignity because of their geography, climate, etc, not necessarily by design. But it goes a long way obviating the need to deploy the law to keep homeless and crunchy people out. Compare to the Mission, which is a very habitable, sunny and flat part of town, with most services accessible by short walks, that has many small parks that itinerant people use, sometimes pretty intensively. If it could, would residents in the Mission restrict its parks? I don’t know if it’s possible to restrict public access to things, have a positive experience of gentrification as a net seller of homes / existing resident, and not harass visible minorities all at the same time. Palo Alto residents are so confident in their belief they will never someday be harassed, that the demographics of their town will not change. And maybe when it does change there will be both homeless people and a visible minority family, unmolested, in the park. In this sense the confusion about, who owns the park - it doesn’t really matter. If Palo Alto wants to prevent itinerant people from using the park, and if it doesn’t care that that also means every black and Hispanic person is asked if they are residents and white and Asian people are not, they will get their way. The solution is through hearts and minds - through empathy and selflessness really. If the ACLU could get people to see that anyone’s family member could be homeless, anyone could have mental illness, that those very same East and South Asian immigrants almost certainly had relatives who were beggars, you could maybe move the needle.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

chmod600 6y ago

Where does it say it's state owned? I read the article and didn't see that fact.

stellar678 6y ago

Cities only operate under authority delegated to them by their state anyway. So seems pretty reasonable to think of it as state owned/controlled, even if the municipality is the legal entity that owns the land.

etrautmann 6y ago

All of this is interesting from a legal perspective, though it's worth noting that it's trivial to get into the park through Arastradero or down from skyline and bypass the "gate"