Priorities for 2018

Like the Palo Alto City Council, we strive to be more effective by focusing our efforts. Therefore, for 2016,
we developed key areas of concentration based on input from Midtown residents. They include:

Traffic/Bicycle friendliness
    -- New Bicycle Paths

Midtown Center Improvements
    -- Signage / sandwich boards
    -- Retaining Ground Floor Retail

Community Building
    -- Neighborhood Preparedness
    -- September Ice Cream Social

Additional areas include keeping neighbors informed – via enews, the newsletter and our website, the History of Midtown, and Art in Midtown.

Neighborhood Preparedness
(Chair: Annette Ashton)

Our focus on Safety and Community Building encourages Midtown residents to attend PA-CERT and Red Cross training, become Block Preparedness Coordinators, and be aware of potential crime activity in their block.

Traffic
(Chair, Sheri Furman)

Areas of focus include the shopping areas, traffic on Oregon and in the neighborhoods, traffic impacts from new development, VTA bus routes and pedestrian and bicycle safety.

Building Community

The Midtown Residents Association is focusing on "building community" and communicating with residents. Many of the standing committees will emphasize aspects of building community -- Membership, Welcome New Residents, the Midtown History Book, and the School Liaison committees. MRA will work to connect everyone to Midtown who wants to participate, at whatever their level of interest. We will expand our electronic coverage of the neighborhood in both enews and on the MRA website, and further build our communication on key city issues and emergency preparation.

Midtown Center

(Chair, Louise Furutsuki)

Our focus will be to see that all Midtown shopping areas and Middlefield businesses conform to the MRA Goals of Neighborhood Serving Retail which are: Local Scale, Pedestrian/Bicycle/Vehicle Safety, and Retail Variety/Convenience.

History of Midtown
(Chair, Sheri Furman)

Places are just dots on the map, spots down the street, until we connect them with people who bring them to life and give them significance. In our series on notable people in the MRA News, we connect these people to the places we pass every day and show how our neighborhood has evolved.

See Midtown History.

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