Palo Alto Moves To Impose $6 Foothills Park Vehicle Fee: Report

PALO ALTO, CA — Palo Alto’s City Council on Tuesday moved to impose a $6 vehicle fee for visitors to Foothills Park, The Mercury News reports.

The park has seen a surge of visitors since overturning an exclusionary law last year limiting the park to Palo Alto residents., prompting the council to enact more onerous measures.

The council by a 6-1 margin voted in support of the fee along with setting an attendance cap of 400, the report said.

The measures will go before the council for a final vote on Feb. 1 and could go into effect as soon as Feb. 20 according to the report.

The city had initially lowered the attendance limit from 1,000 to 750 for the first 90 days of its Dec. 17 opening.

The city was in the crosshairs of an ACLU lawsuit when its councilmembers on Nov. 5 voted by a 5-2 margin to overturn a controversial ordinance that opened the park to the public.

The picturesque 1,400-acre preserve off Page Mill Road had been off-limits to outsiders since it was purchased by the city in 1959, a policy that racial justice advocates said was discriminatory.

The ACLU moved to compel the South Bay city to lift an exclusionary ordinance that's come under scrutiny in recent months in the aftermath of George Floyd's death in police custody.

The ACLU's Northern California affiliate filed a lawsuit September compelling Palo Alto to remove what it calls an "unconstitutional residents-only restriction at Foothills Park" that stands as "a legacy of the city's history of racial discrimination."

Foothills Park had been the state's only such "residents-only" park.

Read more in The Mercury News