Just another day at the Gossip Mill

My heavens. It was such a crushing blow that I had to take to my bed with fever and chills.

This occurred while the board was considering the procedure for ousting the sheriff, which was authorized by the voters in March.

Mazzucco was asserting that the board was in no position to sit in judgment of the sheriff.

“I just saw Saturday in the paper … a gossip columnist here, Mark Simon, said all but one member of the board have already said the sheriff has to go. You are recused, you can’t make this vote.” 

I know nothing about the legal issues at hand here, but this seems a dubious argument: Board members cannot oust the sheriff because they think the sheriff ought to be ousted. I am puzzled how this whole mishegoss could have been launched otherwise.

It does give a strong hint, however, to the entanglements we can expect as this mess drags on. Or, at least, of the kinds of assertions that will be pursued by Corpus’ team of legal eagles.

Why on Earth Mazzucco is quoting a gossip columnist to make a factual assertion is beyond my limited capacities. Or his, I suppose.

For the sake of the permanent record, the column runs not on Saturday, but on Thursday, which would be, you know, today. I offer this information for those of you who have forgotten what day it is. Perhaps it is unfair to expect Corpus’ attorney to be on top of this little detail.

Heck, maybe he meant it as a compliment. But I long have resisted the label of gossip columnist, mainly because most of you readers fail to do your fair share of the work in passing along gossip. Good gossip, that is. None of that bad gossip.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Every week, at the bottom of this column is a note that I worked as an executive at San Mateo County Transit District, which included SamTrans, Caltrain and the Transportation Authority. One part of my job was to talk with people who were unhappy, who might be unhappy, who wanted to be unhappy and who there was a good chance we might make unhappy. It was, um, interesting work.

The job was not to make them go away. The job was to listen to them. And to do so in a way that made people feel someone was listening to them. It didn’t always make them happy, but the courtesy of hearing those concerns and explaining what we were trying to do often helped to curb some of their anger.

This occurred to me as I hear growing frustration by the public and local officials at the lack of communication from Caltrain and the Transportation Authority.

San Mateo Councilmember Danielle Cwirko-Godycki, who has been office a less than a year, captured the essence of it in this quote from a story in the Daily Journal on additional express lanes on Highway 101: “Communication early and often is 50% of it. [The TA] has mentioned having office hours, but where are the office hours? I’ve gone out three times to these impacted areas, and I’m the only face they’re seeing. Give us a timeline and schedule of when communication is coming and when office hours are coming.”

As these same agencies prepare to ask voters to renew a major funding source, maybe they ought to place a priority on talking with local officials, and listening.

WELCOME TO SAN BRUNO: For as long as I can remember, San Bruno officials have struggled to make their downtown as vibrant and commercially viable as other Peninsula cities. So it seemed a bad idea, at a minimum, to install parking meters downtown when the main concern is attracting people. Now comes the report that the parking meter program is running at a deficit and it generated more money in parking tickets than in actual parking revenue. The losses are expected to continue. Good plan.

SONG SUNG BLUE: Last week’s item about the appropriate theme song for the sheriff brought this offering from Don “Doctor Bartenstein” Esse: “I Fought the Law.” … Doc also proposed that AI ought to stand for Artificial Imagination.

I am not sure. Does that last item seem a little too gossipy?

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He co-hosts a podcast/videocast that can be found at TheGamePeninsula.com, and he can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.