What time is it?

One spring day last year, I was sitting at the downtown San Mateo train station waiting to take a quick Caltrain trip with my daughter. She was learning to tell time, so I thought of using the clock tower to help her. But alas, it did not work. She said it best: “They should fix the clock.”

I alerted the city, in case no one knew, and thus began a multi-month saga in setting that clock straight.

Turns out, you can’t just bring such a clock to a repair shop. According to David Fink, the city’s facilities manager, and the man charged with the task to fix it, the clock always had some trouble around daylight saving time, and would be a few minutes off for a while. It typically would need a couple weeks of tweaking. This time, however, it was not complying.

The downtown train station opened in 1999 with much fanfare as it replaced what really looked like a bus stop on the side of the old Main Street Garage, torn down to make room for the 12-screen movie theater. It heralded a return of sorts to the idea of the city’s original train station — a public place and a welcoming center for those arriving to San Mateo’s downtown. The clock tower was part of that ideal, and was there to greet those arriving in town with a simple piece of information about their arrival.

There was one person on city staff trained on the clock’s mechanism, and Fink said he was at a loss after trying multiple fixes based on the knowledge he had and the fact that a rod had snapped and had to be custom made without drawings. Also problematic was the fact that the while the mechanism was in the upper floor, the controller was in the back of a closet in a restaurant that didn’t open until 5 p.m. and coordinating a work schedule was challenging, Fink said. The clock itself has mechanical parts that sync all three faces (on all sides except for south), and software that runs them. It was believed to be a software problem, but the maker had gone out of business. It was becoming clear that a new clock, or at least mechanism, was in order. Fink and his crew got on the horn to see who could help and were shocked at some of the price estimates — up to $30,000. Finally, and this is about a year later, Fink and his crew were able track replacement mechanisms and a modern controller that was programmable and could be operated remotely. With a little elbow grease and some help from an electrician, come June 20 it was operational, Fink said.

Quite a task since Fink and his crew are experts in facilities, HVAC and other building needs like day care carpeting or sinks, not clocks. And while there was a point in which Fink thought they might have to just remove the clock face and replace it with a mural, he muscled through and got it done.

So is it working for good?

“I hope that in my career here, I never have to work on that clock again,” he said. “But I can’t guarantee it.”

And while it’s easy to say it’s about time the clock was fixed, the effort shows that not every fix is easy — and it often takes creativity and determination. And for every complaint email sent to the city about something that is not working, there is often a person on the other end of it trying hard to figure out how to get it done. And for that, I say, job well done.

Thanks, too, to Councilwoman Diane Papan, who kept tabs on the last stages of the fix and who also gave Fink credit for getting it done.

Jon Mays is the editor in chief of the Daily Journal. He can be reached at jon@smdailyjournal.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @jonmays.