One thing not yet mentioned here is that the 'exclusion' ordinance was drafted after the neighboring towns of Portola Valley and Los Altos Hills refused to chip-in when Palo Alto purchased the land.
This park is in the hills, literally across the street from Los Altos Hills, and a windy drive or strenuous bike ride up the hill from most of Palo Alto.
The exclusionary ordinance is really aimed at these neighbors, rather than at the e.g. East Palo Alto residents who live ten miles away.
There's definitely a nasty history of racism in California, the Bay Area, and Palo Alto, but it's not quite accurate to attribute this particular ordinance on racist exclusionary policy. Los Altos Hills and Portola Valley are even more affluent and white than Palo Alto is...
It's probably a factor but to be the only factor you'd have to believe that right around the time Palo Alto was constructing itself a literal 'wrong side of the tracks' minorities ghetto, it also put together an exclusionary 'public' park but that exclusionary intent was really just aimed at other affluent white people.
That is a possible non-racist motivation. Who knows what the actual motivation was? It doesn't matter. The ordinance is racially exclusionary and has stayed in place for many years. It needs to stop.
California has a shameful past of adding racist restrictions into real estate through title documents and other means (ex. "no person of any race other than the Caucasian or white race" may use or occupy the property, with the exception of "domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant."). This meant as neighborhoods built up and out, people were excluded from them on the basis of race. Home values go up, and the wealth of those allowed to purchase property goes up along with it.
After some time, those restrictions became legally unenforceable, and then over more time more and more of those restrictions have eased and now things are a lot more egalitarian on the surface, but the racial discrimination of the past has already done its harm and contributed to white wealth and black and brown poverty and now these neighborhoods maintain their racial disparities without having to have it encoded in law. So, having residents-only restrictions on parks are, intentionally or unintentionally or accidentally on purpose, a way of keeping people out of the park based on race, and thus, unconstitutional.
You can argue that historical actions have caused unequal outcomes, but that doesn't mean that today this decision [to make access to a park based on residence] is racist. That doesn't logically follow.
I dislike this restriction, but it's hard to see how it's unconstitutional. Cities often exclude non-residents from many resources. It's quite common for parking permits, libraries, and schools to be exclusively for residents. The main reason for this is that residents pay taxes and non-residents don't. If you give non-residents the same privileges as residents, it incentivizes free riding. People would be encouraged to live in a place with lower taxes while taking advantage of the resources and services of a nearby city.
It's unconstitutional because disparate impact is the new commerce clause. Any democratic outcome you don't like, just run a calculation which will as a law of nature show that it disparately impacts some protected class, and file a lawsuit.
Private property rights have a disparate impact, and the endgame is to come after that. Take Harvard's going after final clubs; this is what they want for America.
As far as I'm aware, you can certainly enter a library outside of your city of residence and read the books there. You just can't borrow them out, presumably because if you then stole said book, they wouldn't be able to fine you.
> it's common for parking permits, libraries, and schools to be exclusively for residents
It's absolutely not common for libraries or schools to restrict _access_ to non-residents. Public libraries don't check ID at the door. School grounds have visitor access protocols these days, but those protocols have nothing to do with residency of the visitor. School _studentship_, library _borrowing_, and roadside parking are constrained finite resources and therefore extremely different from walking across a threshold, which is neither finite nor constrained.
Really, this is a case of the residents of Palo Alto free riding on the surrounding cities. All other public parks in the region (including those maintained by Mountain View,
Redwood City, San Francisco, etc.) are open to all, while Palo Alto restricts this park. And this is ignoring the racist history of the restriction.
If the park is routinely used for presentations and events, there's case law that says that residents-only restrictions infringe the First Amendment. Public parks are one of the archetypical "public fora" considered in constitutional law.
I think the key difference in all these examples you can still access all these services as a non-resident through a higher price. This effectively blocks out non-residents. The other question is can they prove that they never used state or federal funds for upkeep or the salary of that ranger?
I fail to see how this would apply to a public park. Certainly it would cost much more money to enforce the "resident only" rules, with security guards, cameras, identification check-points on the roads.
Hard to imagine how "free riding" a public park would work
For those asking abstract questions about how this is different from access restrictions on various other kinds of public facilities - it's probably worth reading up on a bit of Bay Area history for context with 'East Palo Alto' and 'blockbusting' being two good initial search terms. There's a long history of, to put it very mildly, efforts to keep the wrong sorts of people out, all across the Bay Area.
There are tons of public facilities, parks, etc. that have restrictions for non-residents that have never been seen as an issue. The argument being that local taxpayers are the ones paying for the facilities and maintenance, etc.
For example, for my wedding reception we rented a barn in a park that's often used for weddings and other events. Since my sister is a resident of the city she was able to rent the barn at a discount, while non-residents would have had to pay significantly more. Never crossed my mind that such a thing might be "discriminatory" or "unconstitutional." I've seen plenty of similar things with public pools, out of state hunting licenses, library cards, and much more.
"Public" doesn't mean "free access for all," and that's independent of any alleged racial discrimination claims the ACLU is making.
That's a pretty different scenario. To recap: Palo Alto excludes anyone who isn't a resident (or guest of a resident) from using Foothill. At all. For any amount of money.
There's literally a gate with a guardhouse (with a guard) at the park entrance on Page Mill Road. They don't let you in without proof that you live in PA. You could, of course, hop the fence further up on Page Mill...
As for a wedding: you're paying for semi-exclusive access to the park because a large wedding or other event may be depriving other park users access and/or may cause excess litter which needs to be removed at taxpayer expense. That residents receive a discount on special event fees just means that they have already partially payed the fees via taxes.
It looks like this one is different in the sense that you cannot enter even by paying a fee if you are not a resident, unlike e.g. the SF botanical garden (free for residents, but costs money for non-residents).
Outdoor public spaces typically are treated differently from a legal perspective. Preventing non-residents from using public roads or sidewalks isn't done anywhere that I'm aware of, for instance. My town on the east coast does this with local parks, and I'm fairly certain the motivation is (historically and currently) to prevent residents of the neighboring (less-rich/white) towns from entering, and for giving police a pretext to hassle them. I'm not aware of any non-affluent towns that have such policies and many affluent ones that do.
Public literally means "of or concerning the people as a whole".
California doesn't charge out of state tourists extra to visit their state park system. That would be absurd, as it's a public park for public use. Not to mention that all public lands in the Bay Area are funded in part through state and federal funds.
That's probably because none of the things you mentioned are "discriminatory" - anyone can rent them for a fee. The article is clearly talking about quite literal discriminatory action, that and group can and one group cannot.
While I agree with the idea that parks shouldn't be restricted in spirit, what's the difference (other than scale) between this park and other resources such as libraries or pools that require you to be a member of the jurisdiction that pays for them?
I lived in PA for a bit. A local who worked for the city told me about this park. I couldn’t believe it was residents only. Sure enough they won’t let you in when you walk up unless you can prove you live there. I was blown away because I felt that wasn’t really possible in this area. This was 2009. Long time coming I guess.
I got in with my hotel key card when I was staying for a week or two.
There's an argument about limiting the number of people who visit in order to preserve the natural environment, and residents who pay for it should have first priority, but an outright ban probably isn't best.
I'm surprised that the state doesn't just buy it off the town.
One compromise is, like many public botanical gardens and parks do, is to enforce operational hours and make entry free for residents with proof of residency in the zipcode/city/county. My example would be the SF botanical garden which is free to residents with id and/or utilities mail with your sf address. No visitors after operating hours.
It would be a sad day if SF allows encampments in the gardens, welcoming urban decay into an urban escape.
Presumably Palo Alto could charge some reasonable fee, connected in a way they could justify to a judge to the expenses of keeping the park up, and then offer residents a discount. But there's no "gotcha" where they can recapitulate the current policy of outright restricting nonresidents with absurdly high fees; the law doesn't work like a computer program, and a human judge will shut you down if you try to treat it like one.
What they do in Shanghai is have the park inside the apartment complex. (小区, a small walled residential district containing usually several buildings as well as other amenities like bicycle parking and, perhaps, parks for little kids. Amenities vary with the ritziness of the complex.)
Charging a nominal usage or parking fee and discounting for residents seems fine. Whatever the moral weight of the original purchase price only being born by Palo Alto was, it's long since expired.
Palo Alto is very racist. One other thing they do: they have "below market rate" housing, but it has to be for the "right kind" of poor people. They build special BMR housing for teachers and firefighters. Wouldn't want dishwashers, janitors, or home-health workers living nearby.
A reasonable fee for maintenance and security seems reasonable. Perhaps only allowing reservations of certain facilities to residents. But an outright ban of every non-resident is, well, mean.
The only logical remedy is to card everyone going into any other city park in California. If they are a Palo Alto resident, no entry. If they are from anywhere else, come on in.
There's a park near me in Southern California that is 400 acres and was recently converted to be de facto residents only. Technically anyone can get in, but all of the parking spots are "residents only" except for legally mandated handicapped spots. The street parking was also converted to "residents only", allegedly to reduce COVID risk which IMO is total bullshit. Hopefully there's more of these lawsuits in the future!
Curious what this means for public facilities (like libraries, universities, schools) that are either only available to city/state residents, or offer preferential pricing for residents.
[+] [-] samcheng|5 years ago|reply
This park is in the hills, literally across the street from Los Altos Hills, and a windy drive or strenuous bike ride up the hill from most of Palo Alto.
The exclusionary ordinance is really aimed at these neighbors, rather than at the e.g. East Palo Alto residents who live ten miles away.
There's definitely a nasty history of racism in California, the Bay Area, and Palo Alto, but it's not quite accurate to attribute this particular ordinance on racist exclusionary policy. Los Altos Hills and Portola Valley are even more affluent and white than Palo Alto is...
[+] [-] pvg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mleonhard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seasoup|5 years ago|reply
After some time, those restrictions became legally unenforceable, and then over more time more and more of those restrictions have eased and now things are a lot more egalitarian on the surface, but the racial discrimination of the past has already done its harm and contributed to white wealth and black and brown poverty and now these neighborhoods maintain their racial disparities without having to have it encoded in law. So, having residents-only restrictions on parks are, intentionally or unintentionally or accidentally on purpose, a way of keeping people out of the park based on race, and thus, unconstitutional.
[+] [-] squidlogic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atomi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggreer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamReidHughes|5 years ago|reply
Private property rights have a disparate impact, and the endgame is to come after that. Take Harvard's going after final clubs; this is what they want for America.
[+] [-] lhorie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ebg13|5 years ago|reply
It's absolutely not common for libraries or schools to restrict _access_ to non-residents. Public libraries don't check ID at the door. School grounds have visitor access protocols these days, but those protocols have nothing to do with residency of the visitor. School _studentship_, library _borrowing_, and roadside parking are constrained finite resources and therefore extremely different from walking across a threshold, which is neither finite nor constrained.
[+] [-] necubi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tannedNerd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GaryNumanVevo|5 years ago|reply
Hard to imagine how "free riding" a public park would work
[+] [-] pvg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HideousKojima|5 years ago|reply
For example, for my wedding reception we rented a barn in a park that's often used for weddings and other events. Since my sister is a resident of the city she was able to rent the barn at a discount, while non-residents would have had to pay significantly more. Never crossed my mind that such a thing might be "discriminatory" or "unconstitutional." I've seen plenty of similar things with public pools, out of state hunting licenses, library cards, and much more.
"Public" doesn't mean "free access for all," and that's independent of any alleged racial discrimination claims the ACLU is making.
[+] [-] labcomputer|5 years ago|reply
There's literally a gate with a guardhouse (with a guard) at the park entrance on Page Mill Road. They don't let you in without proof that you live in PA. You could, of course, hop the fence further up on Page Mill...
As for a wedding: you're paying for semi-exclusive access to the park because a large wedding or other event may be depriving other park users access and/or may cause excess litter which needs to be removed at taxpayer expense. That residents receive a discount on special event fees just means that they have already partially payed the fees via taxes.
[+] [-] dbt00|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quesera|5 years ago|reply
Which is not to say that Palo Alto is being reasonable here, just that there is a lot of precedent and I'm not clear on the distinction.
[+] [-] lhorie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mechagodzilla|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GaryNumanVevo|5 years ago|reply
California doesn't charge out of state tourists extra to visit their state park system. That would be absurd, as it's a public park for public use. Not to mention that all public lands in the Bay Area are funded in part through state and federal funds.
[+] [-] stefan_|5 years ago|reply
What on earth do you think public means?
[+] [-] sedatk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swashboon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sieabahlpark|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] antoncohen|5 years ago|reply
Palo Alto[1]: 60.6% White, 27.0% Asian, 6.2% Latino, 1.8% Black, 0.2% Pacific Islander
East Palo Alto[2]: 64.5% Latino, 15.8% Black, 7.4% Pacific Islander, 6.2% White, 3.6% Asian
It comes across as a law that prevents Latino, Black, Pacific Islander people living in the area from visiting their local park.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Alto,_California#Demograp...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palo_Alto,_California#Dem...
[+] [-] noahmbarr|5 years ago|reply
If it was owned by the city, restricting access would be different.
^^^^Appears incorrect. It’s city owned! Thanks for digging!!
[+] [-] Arainach|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] someonehere|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gbronner|5 years ago|reply
There's an argument about limiting the number of people who visit in order to preserve the natural environment, and residents who pay for it should have first priority, but an outright ban probably isn't best.
I'm surprised that the state doesn't just buy it off the town.
[+] [-] sedatk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mchanson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mc32|5 years ago|reply
What Palo Alto might do is what other cities do and it’s charge some ridiculous entrance fee. There are a few of these in the Bay Area.
[+] [-] thirtyseven|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genericone|5 years ago|reply
It would be a sad day if SF allows encampments in the gardens, welcoming urban decay into an urban escape.
[+] [-] tptacek|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everybodyknows|5 years ago|reply
Beach access is a right, actively defended by surfrider.org, who can use your support.
[+] [-] bickfordb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbt00|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fortran77|5 years ago|reply
https://lahstalon.org/affordable-teacher-housing-to-be-built...
[+] [-] chmod600|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmod600|5 years ago|reply
The only logical remedy is to card everyone going into any other city park in California. If they are a Palo Alto resident, no entry. If they are from anywhere else, come on in.
[+] [-] beepboopbeep|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhupy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhickey|5 years ago|reply