Week in review

The San Mateo County Elections Office checked all of the petition’s 5,708 signatures during the past week. The petition needed 4,661 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. Only 4,525 were found to be those of registered San Mateo voters. Of the 1,183 insufficient signatures, 88 belonged to people who mailed postcards to City Hall requesting their names be removed from the petition. A total of 529 of those cards were actually mailed to City Hall, according to a statement released Wednesday by San Mateo City Clerk Norma Gomez.

Residents still have about a year to voice their opinions while the Planning Commission reviews specific designs for the mixed-use development.

The Bay Meadows Land Company plans to replace the aging 83.5-acre race track on Delaware Street near Hillsdale Boulevard with 1,250 residential units, 1.25 million square feet of office space and 150,000 square feet of retail space. It is touted as a transit-oriented development, but opponents  believe it will create traffic problems and destroy a 75-year-old San Mateo landmark.

The proposed project is twice the size of Bay Meadows Phase I which was completed in 2000.

Not guilty plea in Christmas hate crime case

A 58-year-old man threatened a Safeway employee with racial slurs on Christmas afternoon because the worker refused to let him into the closed grocery store and sell him beer, according to prosecutors.

Vicenz Cornelius Schultz was charged Tuesday with making felony threats to both a civilian and a police officer. He pleaded not guilty and returns to court Jan. 9 with his appointed attorney for a preliminary hearing on the evidence.

Schultz approached the closed doors of Safeway in San Mateo at 4 p.m. Sunday and demanded to be let in and sold alcohol.

Schultz reportedly threatened to "kick his a—” and called the employee racial epithets.

Elections official warns of costly voting problems

San Mateo County officials are worried delays in the certification of new voting system equipment will leave them hosting a June election with 15-year-old gear and leasing at least one pricey machine to meet federal compliance requirements.

The county’s 15-year-old equipment was initially decertified last year but grandfathered in for use prior to the election. Theoretically, the county could still use it come June but would need to lease one compliant machine or buy it at a cost of roughly $3.5 million and move it from precinct to precinct, said Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum.

San Mateo County — and every state and county in the United States — has until the first federal election in June to comply with the Help America Vote Act. The 2002 act emerged from the contentious 2000 presidential election and requires local jurisdictions to replace antiquated machines and guarantees the privacy of disabled voters. It requires all counties have at least one voting device accessible to disabled voters in every precinct. Proposition 41 allocated modernization money to offset the cost of buying new equipment but only if it is certified as meeting certain standards.

Last week, Bruce McPherson refused to approve thousands of the electronic machines made by Diebold Election Systems because of questions over their memory cards. San Mateo County is not among the 17 counties that use the touch-screen and optical-scan machines but are no closer to compliance, Slocum said.

In a best-case scenario, the earliest certification might happen in February or March. In the worst, certification won’t be until late March or April.

Man lives after three-story fall from public library

Emergency officials shuttled a worker who fell three stories at the San Mateo library construction project to Central Park yesterday, where he was quickly loaded on a Life Flight helicopter to the Stanford Hospital major trauma center.

He is expected to live.

"One guy, for whatever reason, tried to jump,” said San Mateo Battalion Chief John Healy. "The last we heard he was conscious and talking.”

At about 2:50 p.m., the man was attempting to jump from a freestanding elevator to the third story of the library when he fell. The man missed the third floor of the library and fell to the dirt ground below. The construction crew also claims the elevator door got stuck, the construction worker flipped over and fell, said San Mateo police Lt. Robert Ross.

Firefighters and paramedics stabilized the man before using a ladder to help the other man exit the metal caged elevator. The accident and rescue happened amid a steady downfall of light rain.

Five years ago this week, December 2000

Cook found guilty

Jurors took a mere five hours to find Carleton Cook guilty of murdering Jesus Benuelos and hiding his body in the Hollywood Hotel in 1997.

Benuelos was a postal worker in San Francisco and sold drugs on the side to Cook. Several days after Benuelos was missing, residents and staff at the Hollywood Motel — who have been called in as witnesses at future proceedings — noticed a strong smell of decomposition coming from Cook’s room. At this time, Cook was reportedly staying at another hotel in San Francisco.

Hillsdale Inn tenants evicted

San Mateo officials found the Hillsdale Inn honeymoon tower, in the shape of a airport control tower, to be unsafe and served eviction notices to tenants of the inn near the tower on Dec. 28, 2000.

The tower was later demolished.

FasTrak on track on San Mateo Bridge

With much fanfare, Caltrans implemented a new FasTrak system for drivers to prepay tolls and avoid handing bills to toll takers on Dec. 27, 2000.

At first, FasTrak users had to share lanes with other drivers but eventually got their own dedicated lane.

Businesses fear eviction

Owners of F&F Plumbing feared the city would force their eviction from their Delaware Street location so the city could build a police station there in December 2000.

The city soon decided to look elsewhere and eventually chose to build the new station at Saratoga Drive and Hillsdale Boulevard. The current station is dilapidated and cramped.