Portola Valley Neighbors United, incorporated in January 2020 "to help our local community preserve and enhance its small, rural open space character," and co-founded by council candidate Mary Hufty, has come out in opposition to the Stanford Wedge project, dubbed [Portola Terrace.
With state mandates that could require the town to build 200 to 300 new housing units in the next decade, the council has also been weighing the concept of adding housing while also preserving Portola Valley's treasured rural character and not creating more wildfire risk in the process. In November, council members Craig Hughes and John Richards penned a letter to the Association of Bay Area Governments following a council discussion on the state Regional Housing Needs Allocation process, stating that the town will remain highly susceptible to wildfires and that it would like to engage "on the sensibleness of significant numbers of new homes in high-fire danger areas." They also said that, as the smallest staffed city in San Mateo County, "it is improbable that there would be an ability to hire enough staff to ensure a transparent and equitable entitlement process for any future applicants" if the draft state methodology is implemented.