For more than 10 years, Mark Church has overseen a wide-ranging office with several key departments. The most public-facing department is the Elections Office, and it has proven to be innovative, efficient and transparent. There have been a couple of mistakes in sending out small batches of ballots but they were quickly remedied and the office was up front and transparent throughout the process.
San Mateo County was the first to have an all-mail ballot to increase voter participation and conducted the elections smoothly and efficiently. The assessor’s office has friendly and helpful staff and provides a wealth of information to whomever is looking.
Church has had a long career in public service, which includes 10 years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors and service on the Millbrae City Council. He could retire, but proves every day he hasn’t lost a step in overseeing the departments.
There have been reports of bad morale at times, and there should be some attention paid to that since a happy workforce is better for everyone. However, overall, the offices appear to be running smoothly and efficiently and in need of no change at the top.
Challenger David Pollack provides some new ideas on outreach and information availability that are interesting but not fundamental to the job of the offices. Pollack wants to increase voter and candidate participation while also making property valuations more transparent. While there could be tweaks to presentation, most of this information is already available online. Still, we commend Pollack for running as doing so helps keep the current officeholder accountable.
Yet, the public will ultimately hold the officeholder accountable in ensuring that its job is being done well. While Pollack has some marketing and information accessibility ideas, he doesn’t have any suggestions on how the office itself could run better rather than hiring capable people, which is already the case.
Church has the experience running the office, and is communicative and responsive. As far as the general public is concerned, the office is running smoothly and efficiently. Church deserves another four years.
Serving as a non-partisan poll observer I was truly impressed by our last major election. I visited polling place after polling place and found that all were incredibly well organized, friendly, efficient, strictly obeyed the rules, and made sure that each person who came in to vote was able to vote. Our county has seen a significant uptick in voter participation with the processes that have been put in place and I agree that Mark Church has done a fantastic job for our county and should be reelected to continue that great work. Thank you Daily Journal editorial team for endorsing him.
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Serving as a non-partisan poll observer I was truly impressed by our last major election. I visited polling place after polling place and found that all were incredibly well organized, friendly, efficient, strictly obeyed the rules, and made sure that each person who came in to vote was able to vote. Our county has seen a significant uptick in voter participation with the processes that have been put in place and I agree that Mark Church has done a fantastic job for our county and should be reelected to continue that great work. Thank you Daily Journal editorial team for endorsing him.
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