Facebook moved into the old Sun headquarters in Menlo Park and now pays taxes and $1.1 million in capital improvements to service the campus. East Palo Alto claims the Menlo Park roads will back up, sending people onto their roads, and threatens to sue. Atherton gets $350k for traffic mitigation, $15k for consulting work on bike lanes, and help "polishing the town's Facebook page."

Either my sense of Silicon Valley geography is messed up or this seems like a pretty slick move for Atherton to get in on this.

I think I read in the paper that basically it was a pure payoff to Atherton... basically to mitigate the threat of being sued.