From: [email protected]
To: Council, City
Cc: Clerk, City; Lait, Jonathan; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Lu, George; [email protected]; Reckdahl, Keith; [email protected] Subject: Regarding Jonathan Lait
Date: Thursday, June 12, 2025 9:13:33 PM
Attachments: Email_#_and_%_of_utility_poles_IN_ROW_within_Residential_Zoning_Districts_distance_to_bldg_structures_analysis.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Be cautious of opening attachments and clicking on links.
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Dear Mayor Lauing, Vice Mayor Veenker and Councilmembers Burt, Lu, Lythcott- Haims, Reckdahl, and Stone:
This coming Monday, you will be considering raises for City department heads.
I am writing to ask you to not only not approve a raise for Planning Director Jonathan Lait, but to consider whether Mr. Lait’s employment with the City of Palo Alto should be terminated. Why? Because in addressing you at Council meetings, he has repeatedly and unambiguously been untruthful.
Although you know me from the cell tower issue, this letter is not about cell towers. It is about a city employee who does not tell the truth when asked direct questions by Council. More specifically, Mr. Lait has over and over, on the public record, made false statements to City Council, to the Planning & Transportation Commission (PTC) and to the Architectural Review Board (ARB).
By “false statements,” I do not mean that Mr. Lait has misspoken about minor points.
I mean that he has been repeatedly untruthful when Council, the PTC or the ARB has asked him questions central to core issues, and in doing so given answers that completely misled the panel he was speaking to. I will give you three examples:
1. At the December 16, 2019, City Council meeting, Council asked Mr. Lait how many City poles were available for use as a cell tower at distances greater than the 20 feet from a residence City Staff recommended Council approve, but less than the 100 feet from a residence residents sought. (At issue was whether Council needed to allow cell towers be located as close as 20 feet to a residence in order to comply with the provisions of the 1996 Telecom Act.)
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In response, Mr. Lait said he only had information for the number of poles at 20 feet and 100 feet. This, to be direct, was a bold faced lie.
Attached is a memo obtained through a Public Records request. As you can see, the memo was sent to Mr. Lait by the Planning Department’s Roland Rivera and it includes data on a minimum 35-foot setback from residences—data that Mr. Lait specifically said he didn’t have, data that showed there were more than enough poles available at 35 feet to accommodate all cell tower applications.
As you can also see, the memo was sent at 5:34 on December 16, 2019— i.e., well before Council took up the cell tower issue later that evening.
As a result of Mr. Lait’s denying he had the data they sought, a frustrated Council voted to approve the 20-foot setback Staff recommended.
This is not be the only time Mr. Lait was asked, on the public record, for the same information, and not the only time he falsely asserted that the data he was hiding did not exist. Specifically he was asked for it:
On December 13, 2020, by the Planning & Transportation
Commission as it considered revisions to the wireless ordinance;
On November 21, 2021, by City Council, the Planning &
Transportation Commission, and the Architectural Review Board, meeting in a joint study session to consider revisions to the wireless ordinance; and
On January 12, 2022, by the Planning & Transportation
Commission, once again considering revisions to the wireless ordinance.
On each occasion, Mr. Lait falsely stated that he only had information for 20 feet and 100 feet.
In short, Mr. Lait has, over a period of years, looked you and other City officials in the eye and told you he didn’t have information he in fact did have, presumably to support an agenda of his own.
2. At the October 24, 2024, City Council meeting, Vice Mayor Vicki Veenker asked Mr. Lait if any standards for cell tower siting and design existed other than those expressed in the so-called “objective standards” Resolution passed on December 16
th, 2019. (At issue was whether, if Council were to
overturn the Resolution, Palo Alto would still have guidelines in place for cell towers.)
In response, Mr. Lait said “No.” That was unequivocally not true. And at your recent May 19th Council meeting, United Neighbors provided you with documentation that it was not true—documentation in the form of a Staff Report prepared for an ARB meeting prior to passage of the “objective standards” Resolution that included a written list of Palo Alto’s standards for cell towers.
3. At a February 4, 2019, City Council meeting, Director Lait told Council that he had bypassed the step of sending the University South cell tower application to the Architectural Review Board and approved it without consulting them because of “shot clock” pressure. (At issue was whether Mr. Lait had a good reason for ignoring the procedure called for by Palo Alto’s wireless ordinance when he eliminated ARB review and a public hearing for this application.)
What Mr. Lait said was not true. The telecom company’s lawyer who was in attendance when Mr. Lait made this assertion stood up and said Crown Castle wished to state, for the record, that Mr. Lait had refused their offer to stop the shot clock for 30 days in order to make time for an Architectural Review Board public hearing.
Because cell towers are the only issue I follow closely, I can only document Mr. Lait’s years-long pattern of deceiving City Council, the PTC and the ARB when it comes to this issue. But given his indifference to telling the truth, I hope you will consider investigating whether he has told you material falsehoods regarding other issues.
More importantly, I hope you will consider terminating Mr. Lait’s employment. His lies have wasted a great deal of everyone’s time and manipulated Council, the ARB and the PTC into making suboptimal decisions for Palo Alto.
If you do not terminate Jonathan Lait’s employment, please consider making him take an oath at the start of every Council meeting to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Sincerely,
Jeanne Fleming
Jeanne Fleming, PhD
[email protected]
650-325-5151
From: Rivera, Roland
To: Atkinson, Rebecca; Lait, Jonathan
Subject: # and % of utility poles IN ROW within Residential Zoning Districts distance to bldg structures analysis Date: Monday, December 16, 2019 5:34:49 PM
Here you go…
# of Utility Poles in ROW
within
Residential Districts that are
WITHIN
% of Utility Poles in ROWwithin
Residential Districts that are
WITHIN
20 ft of building structures 223 8%
35 ft of building structures 1,898 71%
100 ft of building structures 2,572 96%
Total # of Utility Poles IN ROW within Residential Districts 2,682 Let me know if you have any questions.
Roland