Featured - page 124

The San Mateo County Harbor District Commission, with five elected members, may be the most low-profile countywide governmental entity on the books.

Maybe that can explain the recent behavior by one of its commissioners, Sabrina Brennan, elected in 2012 on a platform of ending the decades-long “old boy network” that was running the harbor.

Faced with two time-critical issues at its June 20 meeting, Brennan walked out, leaving the commission without a quorum and unable to act.

Brennan was on hand at the beginning of the meeting when, due to vacations, only three of the five commissioners met in closed session to discuss the threat of litigation unless the harbor district moved from countywide elections to elections by district.

As soon as the closed session ended, she left, leaving Commission President Virginia Chang Kiraly and Vice President Robert Bernardo at the dais next to Brennan’s empty chair.

It wasn’t just any meeting. It was a special meeting specifically called because of two critical deadlines: The Commission had less than a week left to respond to letters threatening litigation if it didn’t begin the process of moving toward election by district. And the deadline for passing the Fiscal Year 2018-19 budget was only 10 days away.

Chang Kiraly, in Facebook posts, said Brennan “intentionally broke a quorum so that harbor district business could not get done” and that Brennan “shirked her duties as an elected official … so that we couldn’t pass our budget and other financial items.”

The commission met in another special session a week later, on June 27, passed the budget and voted to proceed to by-district elections for 2020, which is when Brennan happens to be up for re-election.

She wasn’t at that meeting either.

We left a message on her phone asking her to call for comment, but she has not responded.

The commission oversees the county’s two major public harbors – Pillar Point in Princeton by the Sea, north of Half Moon Bay, and Oyster Point Harbor in South San Francisco, the site of the county’s only ferry terminal.

It has an annual operating budget of $9.3 million and a capital budget of $10.4 million.

MALTBIE MOVES ON: San Mateo County Manager John Maltbie told county employees in an email last week that he will retire on Nov. 3, bringing an end to a career that spanned nearly 27 years leading the county government. Maltbie had announced last year that he would retire at the end of this year. He now has a firm date.

County sources say the Board will pick Maltbie’s replacement this week and they have narrowed the field of candidates to two, but the supervisors have done a good job of keeping close the names of the two finalists.

For Maltbie, the next three months will be spent finishing up the Fiscal Year 2018-19 budget and putting in place a couple of new programs, as well as providing any necessary transition assistance to his replacement.

Maltbie retired once before in 2008 and came back at the request of the Board of Supervisors in 2011.

He said he is “ready and excited” about retirement. He and his wife, Greta Helm, a longtime executive at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, will move to El Dorado Hills, east of Sacramento.

“Life is good,” Maltbie said.

FOR THE SAKE OF CLARITY: Math was never my strong suit, so I want to make sure I’m clear about some of the details in a recent column on Redwood City’s budget woes.

New state pension requirements are going to cost the city $12 million over the next five years. In anticipation of those costs, the city already has proposed $3.7 million in immediate cuts, many of them impacting public safety funding.

The City Council will consider a half-cent sales tax increase that would generate about $8 million a year. If it passes, the new revenue means the city, in the words of staff, “would avoid the cuts most impacting the community,” including reductions in library hours and filling vacant public safety positions.”

Contact Mark Simon at mark.simon24@yahoo.com.

*The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Climate Online.

Photo: San Mateo County Harbor District

The hesitancy felt by some candidates for office this election year is a reflection of how our local dialogue has been infected by a national discourse that is distasteful, uncivil, personal and harsh.

Certainly, negative and outlandish accusations frequently trump the more positive attempt to focus on facts and positive discussion, but there are local efforts underway to influence this election cycle to be fact-based and to have disagreements that are policy-driven.

Redwood City Forward was launched in 2015 as a Facebook page and has evolved into a small group of people best described as YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), who seek ways to advocate and influence policies. It is part of a loose network of such groups – there’s a Bay Area Forward and a Palo Alto Forward, to name a couple. You can find their web page here.

But in their advocacy and on their Facebook page, they are focused on the specifics of policies and are absent ad hominem attacks that descend into the personal or suspicious.

Started and led by Isabella Chu, an associate manager for the data center at the Stanford Center for Population Health Science, she described RWC Forward as an “organization that wants to advocate for evidence-based policies in Redwood City with an eye toward health, prosperity and reducing inequality.”

RWC Forward will not endorse candidates in the upcoming election, although its members are free to do so as individuals.

“We endorse policy, not politics. Good policy really bridges the political divide,” she said.

Good policy is defined by RWC Forward as building more and more dense housing that translates into a wider range of opportunities for a wider swath of the community and a healthier lifestyle centered around transit, biking and walking.

Chu, who relies on a bicycle for her commute, said she has been concerned for some time that Redwood City’s land use policies and, therefore, health and inequality, have been driven only by those who make the most noise.

“The only high-level engagement was a group of people very upset about the changes and seemed to want Redwood City to go back to 1978,” Chu said. “Restricting housing only helps the financial well-being for anyone over 50.”

On transportation, RWC Forward advocates for a city that is easier to use for pedestrians and cyclists, which means a city where high-density housing is close to a center city that is served by a vibrant, high-frequency system of transit options, and not dependent on the automobile or weighted down by parking.

On housing, RWC Forward advocates policies that encourage small developers, who are capable of building an 8- or 10-unit apartment complex.

“NIMBYs have made sure the only people who can develop are the big-time developers,” Chu said.

WE VOTE RWC: Chu was among those on hand at the kickoff last Thursday at the Club Fox of a nonpartisan, independent and grassroots voter registration drive named We Vote Redwood City and aimed at dramatically increasing voter participation in the November city election.

Mayor Ian Bain opened the event and serves as honorary co-chair.

“The City Council makes decisions every day that touch the lives of our residents. We want to hear from the public and the best way to hear from the public is at the ballot box,” Bain said.”

The event and the drive have been organized by civic activist Jason Galisatus, who said the voter registration effort is the starting point for the goal of voter turnout in the November election, where local races are likely to be overwhelmed by statewide campaigns and ballot measures, and citizen engagement beyond the election. The coalition in support includes Bay Area Forward, RWC Forward, Casa Circulo Cultural, the Redwood City Downtown Association, neighborhood associations from Woodside Plaza and Mt. Carmel.

“We couldn’t care less who people vote for,” Galisatus said, “but it’s important that they vote.”

An extensive outreach is planned, including setting up registration tables at public events and contacting people directly through social media.

Kickoff attendees represented a cross-section of the community, including Council members, John Seybert, Shelly Masur, Janet Borgens and competing Council candidates incumbent Councilman Jeff Gee, Diana Reddy, Giselle Hale and Christina Umhofer.

POSITIVE VOICE: When a discussion on a local Facebook page devolved into angry exchanges and unsupported accusations, Umhofer posted this message: “As a candidate for Redwood City City Council, I am asking that we, as residents of Redwood City, focus on the positives of the candidate/s that you support and not the negatives of the ones you do not support. Regardless of who wins, we are all still residents of Redwood City. We are in this together. Use this page for good.”

Well done.

Contact Mark Simon at mark@climaterwc.com

*The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Climate Online.

Photo credit: City of Redwood City