While we were struggling along with this property trying to get it approved, we were approached and told that our development would go much smoother through the City if we had some Los Altos Hills Partners.  At the time, we did not understand what was meant by the phrase "Los Altos Hills Partner".  We told them that we want to develop this property by ourselves and did not want a partner.  Consequently our project was repeatedly turn down even though we were meeting every objection posed to us.  Finally we gave up.  We sold our property to Woolworth.  He was able to take the same subdivision which we could not get approved and get it approved.  The only change he made was to add one more lot to it.  The City wanted us to keep reducing the number of lots.  I am not saying that Woolworth had a "Los Altos Hills Partner, but he miraculous could accomplish what we could not.  But the story does not end here.  Several years latter, we were contacted by the FBI.  They wanted to know if we were approached about paying a bride to get our project approved.  We told them we were not but that we were approached about quick approval with a "Los Altos Hills Partner".  Now we finally knew what they meant by "Los Altos Hills Partner.  The past Mayor and one of the past City Council member was indicted by the FBI on bribery charges.

One of the harshest critics we had to developing our property was xxx xxxxx.  He was a well know author and activist.  He stated that we need to keep the foothills free from development.  What he really meant was that we needed to keep other peoples property free from development.  For while he was apprearing before the City Council to object to our subdivision, he subdivided his property into 5 parcels.  All of which were smaller than our proposed lots. 

Another interesting story about this property has to do this a gate.  There used to be a horse trail which ran across this property.  One day a lock gate appeared across the trail.  We found out that one of the neighbors had put up the gate.  Trying to be a good neighbor, we approached the neighbor and told them that they should have asked us before they installed a gate on our property.  We told them that since they had already done it we would not tear it down, but we would like a key to the gate.  We were informed by the owner that that was their gate and we could not have a key to it.