Read my parallel comment — that wasn’t the reason for excluding non-residents from that one park. It was about the selfish argument made by Los Altos city council.
The segregation argument was a good one, but not for the reason you cite. Because of prior segregation, the population of PA is still lopsided, and that meant a resident-only park had an unfair bias.
After a bit of a rush when the restriction was dropped, it settled back to its normal quiet state. In reality there was de facto no restriction: the entry gate was rarely staffed and you could always enter through Arastradero Park which, like all the other parks in Palo Alto, has no restrictions at all.
Do you have any basis for saying this law was racist or had segregationist goals?
It’s not like the neighboring cities (Mt View and Menlo Park) have many black people.
My understanding is that the local resident restrictions were based on some local politics around purchasing the park a long time ago, and then transformed into a Palo Alto NIMBY policy. In 2008 Los Altos Hills tried to buy access to Foothill Park.
"The lawsuit also stated that the city's ban on nonresidents "traces its roots to an era when racial discrimination in and around the City was open and notorious" and cites mid-20th century policies such as redlining and "block busting" that prevented Black people from buying homes in Palo Alto."
I'd prefer to point people to the text of the article rather than trying to relay a point made there to here and back again.
Mountain View blocks non-residents from some parks? Palo Alto was sued because only residents could use Foothills Park. Hmm..
(When Palo Alto got the right to buy the property that became foothill park, PA asked the towns adjacent to the property if they wanted to split the bill. They declined, figuring they could use it anyway if they didn’t help pay for it. So PA locked them out, and spent 50 years paying off the bond they raised for the purchase.)
Thankfully my bicycle doesn't have license plates so I can still get away from the crime of entering Foothills Park (where bicycles are allowed) from Arastradero Preserve (where bicycles are ALSO allowed) by crossing through Gate D (an imaginary place in the world through which bicycles Definitely May Not Travel).
Best to just ride up Page Mill Road, I'm sure that annoys nobody at all.
