Veteran School Board Member Announces Retirement

Veteran Jefferson Union High School District School Board Member Jean Brink announced that she would not seek a sixth term this November at the board’s May 6, 2008 meeting.

The JUHSD is comprised of the communities of Daly City, Pacifica, Brisbane, Colma and the unincorporated community of Broadmoor. Brink has served on the board since 1988 and is one of three members of the five-member board who hail from the City of Pacifica. This is despite the fact that Daly City is the largest community within the district. Brink’s retirement from the board may offer a would-be Daly City candidate an opportunity to seek a rare vacancy on the board.

County Loses Out on State Funding for New Jail

San Mateo County has lost out on approximately $100 million in state funding to expand the county’s Maguire Correctional facility and women’s jail facility in Redwood City, according to an article in the San Mateo Daily Journal.

The funds, authorized under Assembly Bill 900 in 2007 via a state bond, were made available to local jurisdictions under a competitive proposal process. But San Mateo County’s unwillingness house State prisoners in so-called re-entry wards may have torpedoed the county’s chances, a decision made by the Board of Supervisors.

The total estimated cost for the reconstruction of the jail is approximately $140 million. Without the state dollars, the county must now seek alternative sources or pay the entire cost itself.

But San Mateo County Times columnist John Horgan recently offered another theory, namely that the recent media coverage of the Sheriff’s detainment at a Las Vegas brothel last year may have played a role.

Horgan offers the possibility that State officials may have little confidence in a sheriff who, according to the sheriff’s own statements, accidentally ended up a seedy residential brothel by mistake just in time for a raid by federal and local law enforcement agencies.

Horgan states: “If they are telling the truth in this matter, they come across as two fellows completely out of their element, a pair of country bumpkins loose in the big city and unable, apparently, to tell the difference between a room full of hookers and a Tupperware party.”

Although it is unlikely that such a nexus between the Sheriff’s Las Vegas trouble and the jail funding could ever be established, gun shy political leaders in Sacramento are known to avoid potential political land mines. The Sheriff’s scandal may have qualified in this instance.