Put on lots more coffee:
Election results likely will take weeks to finalize
Good call by the Pleasanton City Council to install longtime Danville town manager Joe Calabrigo as the interim city manager.
Calabrigo helmed Danville for 32 years, a remarkable tenure, through economic ups and downs. Notably, Danville always has had the lowest per capita revenue of any of the Tri-Valley cities because it has only one big sales tax generator (Costco on the city limit with San Ramon). The rest of the revenue stream comes from property taxes and lighting and landscaping districts and Danville doesn’t have any of the business centers that characterize the other communities and provide substantial property tax revenue.
That means tight budgets and a conservative approach—traits that will serve Pleasanton well as it both works it way out of its budget challenges and searches for a new city manager. The appointment establishes the captain of the ship and removes any urgency to make a hire. It will allow the council to establish what they want in a new staff leader as Gerry Beaudin departs back to Alameda this week.
Well, we had an election Tuesday, but it’s anyone’s guess when we will see certified official results. Thanks to the governor, the state was flooded with ballots because he mailed one to every registered voter. People could use that or go to a polling place (if they have one—our area has been permanent vote-by-mail for years). State law says ballots will be counted as long as they were postmarked Tuesday and arrive by next Tuesday. Registrars responsible for counting the votes are flying blind with the daily mail determining the counting load that day.
It wouldn’t take much for me to return to one election day where you show up to vote unless you are physically out-of-town.
California attracted national attention for both its formerly wide-open governors’ race and the surprising Los Angeles mayoral contest. It looks like the undistinguished career politician Xavier Becerra, thanks to Eric Swalwell and his publicized sex scandals, went from a non-factor likely qualifying for the November general election. Steve Hilton, President Donald Trump’s choice, is running first in the count to date and barring some remarkable shift in ballot trends that brings billionaire Tom Steyer back into the race, will face Becerra in November. In a two-thirds Democrat-dominated state, it’s hard to imagine anything but a Democrat governor, but maybe this is the year voters actually evaluate performance instead of simply voting for the D.
That’s got a real chance of happening in Los Angeles where reality tv star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the Palisades fire and expresses the frustration so many Angelenos feel, ran a strong second to incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. Her failures are plentiful, but it’s real difficult to imagine voters who back the third strong candidate who ran to the left of Bass, voting for Pratt.
Locally, the trend of routinely electing candidates with technical backgrounds held firm with engineer Jim Lehman and long-time incumbent Sarah Palmer topping the Zone 7 water board races. Alan Burnham, another technical background, ran third, while Sean Roberts took the fourth seat in the unofficial balloting.
It also was great to see that appointed District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson with a wide lead over the recalled Pamela Price and a third candidate. If she tops 50% there will not be a runoff in November.
Watching Gary Williams’ 5 Clubs broadcast on Golf Channel, I listened to an interview with Jack Nicklaus who is holding the 50th Memorial Tournament near Columbus, Oh this week. Leading up to his question about news, Gary assumed that Jack grew up watching his dad read the paper. Not so, Jack said. As the conversation went on, Jack said he appreciated the way newspapers used to be when there was “news” in them, not just opinion.
Amen—well said Mr. Nicklaus. Incidentally, the Memorial honors people each year for their contribution to golf as well as a journalist—that’s quite unusual outside of organizations of journalists.
