To be clear, there is nothing unlawful about Legacy pitching whatever it wants to whomever it wants. Nor does a Council member taking a meeting mean a vote for approval has been secured. For example, Legacy spoke to me just prior to the Council action on the project’s environmental impact report, and I ended up voting against approval.

But it’s not the approach I would take, particularly if the outreach targeted Council members who voted for the EIR. Being as open and as transparent as possible strikes me as a much better strategy. After all,  the plan, whatever it is, has to be made public in the near future anyway. Sharing it broadly would help build trust between the project sponsors and the eastside residents most directly affected by the endeavor. While working behind the scenes will likely have the exact opposite effect.

After I made my comments I got a call from Legacy’s lobbyist offering to have them present the proposal to me. I thought about this, but declined, reiterating that Legacy would be better served by more openness. I was told the plans will be presented more broadly fairly soon, at a meeting for community leaders (I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it didn’t sound like it’ll be open to the public).

That’s a step in the right direction. But I worry it won’t be enough. Because, for a major project, even the appearance of  behind the scenes lobbying — particularly targeted lobbying — undermines the integrity of the public review process, and the Council.

Why would Council members stay silent? I can’t speak for my colleagues, but I’ll tell you why I did. Even though I’m rarely at a loss for words .

Over time, council members become familiar with each other’s positions. In this particular case, we had heard, and responded to, similar questions and arguments numerous times in the past when environmental ordinances and issues were discussed. Rehashing the same old arguments isn’t a good use of scarce Council time.

Most, if not all, of the new issues brought up by our colleague raised fundamentalist constitutional questions. It’s important to take the time to ponder issues from a constitutional perspective. But in doing so you have to be mindful of the “fundamentalist trap”: if issues could be decided by an individual reading a few pages of material our immense body of law and court decisions would not exist, nor would we staff federal, state and local courts. The fact we have such a system shows the Council shouldn’t consider such issues on the fly. Instead, it’s generally good practice to bring them up ahead of time with staff, or ask the Council to have staff research them. So far as I can tell neither was done in this case.

Not asking for research is a sign someone is raising rhetorical questions. In this instance the specific assertions being made reinforced this impression. When everyday experience directly contradicts something being said you can be pretty sure you’re hearing rhetoric, not inquiry.¹

That, in turn, implies a mind already made up, making discussion a poor use of time². Rather than engage in political theater, it’s better to cast your vote and move on.

But just as the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the absence of rebuttal does not mean one side’s arguments are valid, or unanswerable. It may very well mean the evidence, and the arguments, have already been weighed by each council member and two separate conclusions reached: what’s in the best interest of the community, and that further debate would be unproductive. I believe that’s what happened in this case. It’s certainly true for me.

We do, after all, have a community to support and enhance.

Today the Council met for one of its semi-annual strategic governance team meetings (governance team means the Council, the City Manager, and the City Attorney). It was the third one I’ve participated in, and I have to say it was the best one so far. In fact, it was also the first one where we defined initiatives which will address significant, long-standing issues and pursue some significant opportunities. They included (in no particular order):

• Improving access to and from Highway 101
• Studying the City’s housing stock to see if there are ways to expand and diversify it
• Identify community desires for improved/increased recreational assets and find ways to provide them
• Enhance our economic development efforts
• Review our general plan and fine-tune our ordinances and codes to support its goals and priorities

How these will be pursued will vary. In all cases there will be plenty of opportunity for community input. Several of the items will likely involve substantial public dialog so we can be sure the community’s needs and desires are thoroughly defined.

They won’t be done in the next few months. Or even in the next year or two.

But as someone who ran for the Council in order to see us engage on just these kinds of issues (you may recognize several of these as key topics of my campaign), I am very pleased we’re beginning to move.

We’ll always have challenges to address, events that we’ll have to react to. But you build the future by having a plan. And you create a plan by discussing, defining and prioritizing your dreams.

Today the Council committed itself to doing just that.

You can find more information here, and you can download a PDF submission form from here.

This year the Council is looking at increasing rates by up to 12% overall. Rates for individual service categories and/or can sizes could go up more or less than that amount, but our total costs are expected to be about 12% higher in 2013 then they were in 2012, and have to be covered somehow.

In this post I’ll try to explain what’s causing this increase. Fair warning: this is a complex topic, so I’ve summarized or glossed over some details. And I’m still actively researching it, so things are subject to change (but hopefully not too much).

So, why are costs going up so much?

The Players, Some Terminology and Some History

Before we dive in, it’s important to understand who the players are. Recology is the service provider (I sometimes refer to them as the “operator”) under a contract with the City of San Carlos. Recology takes all the materials to a transfer station operated by the South Bayside Waste Management Authority (SBWMA). The transfer station happens to be located in San Carlos, east of US-101 and north of Holly Street.

SBWMA has several contracts for disposing of the trash, compostable materials and recyclables. The recycling operation produces some income, which is used to offset the costs of SBWMA’s operations. Our trash fees pay for our share of both Recology’s and SBWMA’s costs, net of income generated from the sale of recycled materials.

SBWMA is jointly owned and operated by a consortium of public agencies, including San Carlos. There’s a map showing the agencies on the SBWMA website.

In the trash business, the collected material falls into one of three categories:

• Solid: the stuff that goes in the black cans;
• Organics: the stuff that goes in the green cans; and,
• Recyclables: the stuff that goes in the blue cans.

Currently, the City only charges based on the number and size of black cans picked up. There is no charge for picking up blue or green cans. The cost of picking up the blue and green cans is factored into the cost of picking up the black cans.

The Service Provider Contract

San Carlos, along with all the other SBWMA member agencies, significantly changed the nature of its service provider contract back in 2009.  Previously, trash and recycling collection was paid for on a cost plus profit basis. This gave rise to some pretty significant rate increases, because there was little or no incentive for operators to hold down costs. In addition, operators would routinely pick up material from “customers” who lived in a community but were not on the operator’s customer rolls. These “invisible customers” created an issue after the changeover because they weren’t factored into the contract bids.

The new contract model defines an “allowable charge” for the service provider, which can only increase from year to year based on the contract terms. In general, the caps are defined by Federal inflation indices for the Bay area. The “allowable charge” creates an incentive for the operator to maximize efficiency. If they operate for less than the “allowable charge” they keep the difference. If they spend more, they eat it.

But up until 2013, when the current labor contract expires, the labor cost cap is defined by the last labor contract negotiated by Allied Waste, the previous operator. Because Allied already knew it had lost the trash hauling contract when those negotiations took place, they had no incentive to bargain well. The result was a labor contract which contained annual wage & benefit increases averaging 5.4% per year. It expires in October, 2013. At that point the labor cost cap will also be based on a Federal inflation index for the Bay area.

The Big Picture

Here’s how the 12% breaks down by cost driver:

The biggest single contributor is costs deferred from prior years. They’re 2.6 points of the increase, or just over one-fifth of the total. They have an interesting history.

Trash collection in the SBWMA arena isn’t a cash and carry business. Member agencies ultimately have to collect enough money from residents and businesses to pay the fees, but for years communities have been allowed to defer part of what they owe. The service operator extended credit to cover the difference, and charged interest on the amount of the loan.

When the prior operator, Allied Waste, lost the contract they naturally wanted those loans to be repaid. This led to some significant rate hikes in 2010 among the member agencies to fund the repayment. Communities had kept trash rates lower than they needed to be for years, and then had to make up the difference. Many agencies, including San Carlos, deferred a portion of that repayment again with the new operator, Recology. They figured on finishing the repayment when rate increases moderated. Only the surprise appearance of those “invisible customers” led to an unexpected cost increase under the new contract. That surprise offset almost all of the anticipated drop in rate increases.

The “repayment bubble” does seem to be winding down. Hopefully that means future rate increases will be smaller. But it’s important to remember surprises — “invisible customers”, war in the Middle East boosting fuel costs — can erase any such possibility. It’s best not to count your chickens before they hatch.

That’s why I’m glad today’s Council is coming around to the notion we should avoid trying to smooth rate increases. I lobbied strongly for that approach during our discussion about trash rate increases back in October. It’s more important to manage costs than it is to smooth them out because you can never completely know what the future holds.

Route Hours

The next biggest contributor stems from San Carlos’ larger expected share of route hours in 2013 than 2012. A route hour is an hour a truck spends on the road, and is a measure of how much time Recology is spending picking up trash.

The good news is that Recology spent 7.5% fewer route hours in San Carlos during 2012 than in 2011 (the 2012 figure drives the 2013 rates, while the 2011 drove the 2012 rates). However, Recology spent 15.4% fewer hours collecting trash from the other SBWMA communities.

Why does what happens in other communities affect us? Because the operator’s billings are set by allocating an “allowable charge” among the participating communities. Using a bigger share of route hours, even if you’re using less than last year, means you have to pay more of the allowable charge. In 2013, consuming a bigger piece of pie adds 2.5 points to San Carlos’ rate increase, about a fifth of the total.

Why Are We Getting a Bigger Piece of Pie?

So what caused the allocation shift? There are a number of ways to explain it, but the one I think is most intuitive looks at what I call “excess route hours”. Here’s what that means.

Imagine the route hours in San Carlos changed by exactly the same percentage as in the average of all the other communities serviced by Recology. In that case there would be no allocation shift, because San Carlos’ portion of the allocation pool would be unchanged. The total number of hours might change, but our relative share, our ”slice of the pie” would be the same.

If we compare that calculated number of hours to the actual number of hours used in San Carlos we can see whether our community is using more or less hours than would be needed to keep our share unchanged. If we show an excess of hours we know we’re going to absorb a bigger share of the pie. With a shortfall or deficit we’d absorb less.

Let’s walk through this for 2012. Remember, changes from 2011 to 2012 drive the 2013 rates, which are what we’re analyzing:

This shows that San Carlos needed to use 1,771 fewer route hours in 2012 than it actually did in order to not pick up a bigger slice of the “allowable charge”.

What’s Driving Excess Route Hours?

Using the excess route hours concept we can analyze what caused the excess. Let’s first look at the three types of customers tracked by Recology:

As you can see, 78% of the excess came from the City’s operations (e.g., parks, sidewalks, offices, public events) and single family homes. We can dig deeper and see what types of trash pickup in each of the segments is driving the excess:

Three items — single family organics, multi-family & commercial recycling, and City venue & events — explain 1,540 (87%) of the excess route hours, and hence most of why our share of the “allowable charges” went up. What drove those excesses?

• San Carlos started weekly residential organics recycling in 2009 – two years before most of the other SBWMA member communities. Not surprisingly that has led to San Carlos diverting significantly more organic material than those other communities.
• San Carlos adopted an ordinance requiring commercial recycling. This was done in part as a result of community values, and in part because the State had made it clear they were moving to require every community in California to do so. However, at the last minute, Sacramento softened the regulations, allowing communities to opt out of requiring commercial recycling. Recology’s other customers have yet to adopt significant commercial recycling ordinances.

It’s unclear what’s driving the increase in our Venues & Events route hours. Apparently, SBWMA changed the way it allocated the hours spent collecting material from venues & events after complaints from another community. So some or all of the increase may be a “one time” adjustment. However, that begs the question about why the allocation was changed and, more importantly, why route hours are being allocated to an activity. Route hours are, as I understand them, tracked on a truck-by-truck basis as they go about their business. Which means there’s no reason to allocate anything; it should all be simply a matter of record. Staff is currently looking into this. I’ll update you on what is learned.

This chart tells us we could have significantly reduced next year’s rate increase if we had scaled back or abandoned residential composting and commercial recycling. But do we want to do that?

Personally, I don’t. I’m willing to pay the price — in terms of bigger rate increases than other communities — for keeping those programs. Your mileage may vary, of course. However, I do plan on asking staff to consider ways to make those programs more efficient, from a route hours perspective. There’s nothing wrong with striving for efficiency.

Service Provider Costs

The next 4.8 points of the increase reflect cost increases in Recology’s operations. The three biggest items, making up 4.4 points, are labor costs (e.g. wages for drivers), fuel costs and a performance incentive payment. None of these strike me as unreasonable. I doubt the increased fuel cost piece (1.3 points) will come as a surprise to anyone who has bought gasoline in the last year.

The labor cost increase (2.3 points), while higher than what some people have experienced in terms of their own compensation and better than what we were able to give our own staff, isn’t wildly out of line. More importantly, that labor cost increase stems from a contract which was probably not as well negotiated, by the prior operator, as it should have been — and that contract is expiring next year. The indexed cost caps will then be in full force and effect. That is expected to hold down future cost increases, by creating an incentive for the operator to maximize efficiency.

The performance incentive payment (0.8 points) is a result of Recology exceeding performance metrics for things like handling customer service calls, making pickups on time, etc. Is the extra payment worth the better service we’ve gotten? That’s a fair question, but once we’ve defined the rules in the contract we need to abide by them. I know from talking to folks that while Recology isn’t perfect, they’re doing a much better job than their predecessor, Allied Waste. That’s worth something.

One Time Adjustments

These make up 1.9 points of the 12 point increase we’re facing. They include a change in the way SBWMA allocates its facility costs among the member agencies. Changing allocation rules is generally a pointless game (how much time have many of us wasted fighting interdepartmental expense allocations at our jobs when we should have been out making money for the company, and ourselves?). But they’re inevitable when you’re sharing costs between multiple public agencies. Everyone has a reasonable argument about why they should be charged less than they were! So these kinds of things happen from time to time. The key metric is that they shouldn’t happen very often.

The public school adjustment last year came about because the previous operator, Allied Waste, had been giving school districts a special reduced rate. The member agencies weren’t aware of this. When Recology asked whether the discount should be continued, the member agencies declined to do so. This resulted in a one-time recovery of previous discounts during 2011, which lowered the rate increase for 2012. Since it didn’t repeat in 2012, costs are going up, in our case by 0.7 points.

Looking Back

Let’s summarize these cost drivers in a different way, by “who was responsible” for them. If you do that you end up with a picture that looks like this:

Forty-three percent of the increase is the result of local decisions (i.e., we chose to keep rate increases below cost increases in the past, and we wanted to pursue certain programs more aggressively than our neighbors). Another sixteen percent is due to one-time adjustments. The remaining forty-one percent is due to costs going up at Recology. It’s all dollars out of our pockets, of course. But now we have a better grasp on what we would need to do to effect change. And, as I mentioned when talking about San Carlos’ excess route hours, in some situations we may simply want to accept the increase as the price of expressing our community values (e.g., more aggressive recycling and composting).

Subsidies

There’s one remaining issue to discuss that could impact next year’s rates. It has to do with our free recycling program.

To encourage recycling, many years ago we adopted a philosophy of charging less for picking up a small black can than it costs, and charging more for picking up a large black can than it costs. In and of itself there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s another value choice made by our community (State law also mandates increased recycling).

But because we don’t charge for picking up the blue or green cans, the less trash we put out and the more recycling we do, the less money we take in to pay the Recology bill. They, after all, incur costs for every can they pick up, regardless of whether or not we turn around and charge residents for the pickup.

The end result of all of this is an acceleration of the rates for picking up regular trash. Imagine a world where every household in San Carlos — with one exception (let’s make it my house) — managed to recycle everything they disposed of (e.g., by being very clever in what they bought, how it was packaged, etc). I’d be the only person in town paying a trash fee. And what a fee it would be!

At some point we need to revisit the basic model of encouraging recycling by not charging for it, and also subsidizing the smaller-sized black cans. The Council has asked staff to schedule exactly that discussion before we start the process for setting 2014′s rates.

For 2013, the Council may decide to begin phasing out the small black can subsidy. We can’t change the “no charge for blue or green cans” policy because that wasn’t contemplated in the rate increase notice circulated a few weeks ago. The issue will be that reducing the subsidy necessarily means the trash rate for small cans will go up by more than 12%. As you can imagine, that’s a sensitive subject.

Final Thoughts… for Now

Among the items I’ve glossed over here are my reactions to the new service provider contract model adopted by SBWMA several years ago. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a significant improvement over the “cost plus” model previously used.

But my gut tells me there are other, even stronger, ways it could be structured to hold down costs, or at least make them more predictable. While inflation-indexed caps are better than no caps, few organizations today get to pass through inflation, automatically, to their customers. Perhaps it might be better for SBWMA members if the contract was put out to bid on a defined price basis: you pay $x per ton of material collected, perhaps differentiated by type (e.g., organics). Perhaps the rate is defined in the bid to escalate over time.

Such an approach would create an even stronger incentive for the operator to be efficient. It would also push the risk of managing things like higher fuel costs onto the operator, who is presumably better positioned to do that than cities like San Carlos.

It wouldn’t be a panacea, because the customers (e.g., San Carlos) ultimately have to pay both the costs and the cost of the operator managing the risk. But it might be a better deal overall, in terms of both the trash rate and the predictability/stability of the trash rate, than what we have today.

So stay tuned, there’s a lot more trash talking ahead of us.

People who work in organizations know the “no surprises” rule is key to running an effective operation. Surprises cause disruption and confusion, which is rarely a good thing. In the interest of avoiding surprise, I want to begin educating San Carlos about a big-ticket issue we need to address.

You know all those articles you’ve read about aging public infrastructure that needs to be replaced? It’s happening here…right under our feet. Our sanitary sewer system is in urgent need of repairs and upgrades.

This is the system that conveys waste water from our properties to the sewage treatment plant located on the eastern end of Redwood Shores. It’s one of two sewer systems serving us, the other one routing storm water directly into the Bay. The sanitary system is larger than you might think. During dry weather it handles 2.5 million gallons a day. Almost all of that — 79% — is from residential property. During the rainy season usage rises to 2.9 million gallons a day, due in large part to leaks and connections from gutters and property drains (which are illegal, by the way). Anticipated development projects are expected to add another 730,000 gallons a day over the next few years.

Why are repairs needed? Sewer systems aren’t sexy, so they don’t rank high on the list of places to spend money to improve a community. They’re also, literally, out of sight, tended by a group of hard-working and dedicated city employees whose goal is to ensure no one ever knows there are problems. They’ve done a great job over the years (give them a wave when you see them out and about). Nevertheless, there’s a limit to how long you can patch something.

Much of our sanitary sewer system is 60 to 70 years old, with parts closing in on the century mark. For clay pipe — the dominant form of construction — that’s a long time, particularly in an earthquake area also subject to ground movements. Joints between pipes get disconnected, cracks form, tree roots gain entry, etc., and the next thing you know  groundwater gets into what used to be a sealed system. That’s why the flow rate jumps 15% when it rains. Those failures also reduce the system’s throughput (e.g., roots and dislocated connections slow or block flow). When you add the growth that’s occurred since the bulk of the trunk lines were installed it’s not surprising we have a problem to address.

There’s a related situation developing, too. Sewage has to go somewhere. For us, that’s ultimately the Bay. But it has to be processed first, because otherwise we’d kill the Bay and create a serious health hazard. The cleaning job is handled by the Redwood Shores sewage treatment facility, which is jointly owned and operated by a number of communities, including San Carlos.

The existing facility was funded primarily with federal money in the 1980s, and was built much larger than it needed to be. As a result, there was little pressure to do long-term maintenance and incremental capacity expansions. Deferring that kind of work let communities hold down sewer rates for many years. This wasn’t good long-term thinking, but it’s a common problem in the public sector. Everyone hates paying more for public services, so there’s a perverse incentive for elected leaders to let things slide. Unfortunately, the bill for decades of cost-avoidance is coming due now, in the form of a major facility overhaul and expansion. That has to be paid for by the member communities, irrespective of the work they need to do on their own pipes and pumps.

The preliminary cost estimate for fixing our sanitary sewer system is roughly $130 million, spread over 20 years:

These are some pretty large numbers. On the other hand, they’re targeted at keeping sewage where it belongs for a community whose total assessed value is roughly $10 billion dollars.

There are a lot of ways to finance this. In fact, we’ve already begun paying for it by virtue of the 6% sewer rate increase the Council approved last July. But if we were to issue bonds to pay for our share of the sewage treatment facility upgrade and repay them through higher sewer charges, the future rate increases might look like this:

That’s another year with a 6% increase, like this year, and then increases just under 3% per year for five more years. The overall impact relative to today would be to raise sewer rates about 21% from where they are now over the next six years. That would let us pay for the needed repairs to our local pipes and pumps, and service bonds issued to pay for our share of the sewage treatment facility upgrade.

Remember, this is my analysis, based on staff cost estimates and what is known about the state of our sanitary sewer system today. Our staff experts are busily doing their own analysis, which I’m sure will be more complete and accurate than mine. My goal here is to share the general picture with you, and avoid surprises down the road. Staff will present their more detailed work and suggestions on funding to the Council over the coming months. Make sure you stay apprised of those discussions, and get your questions answered.

I don’t know what the Council’s ultimate decision on this matter will be. But the problem was kicked down the road at least once a few years ago. Since then, problems and costs have continued to grow. I think it’d be wiser for us address the problem, rather than put off what will be a more expensive day of reckoning. It is, after all, not usually a good idea to stick your head in the sand…particularly where there are leaky sanitary sewer pipes nearby.

The “final” environmental impact report for the proposed Transit Village in San Carlos is under review by the Planning Commission. It’s a step along the way to whatever the ultimate outcome for the project will be. But it also marks a missed opportunity. And that’s too bad.

California’s EIR process identifies a project’s environmental impacts and aims to give decision-makers as much objective information as possible on their nature and magnitude. It isn’t a go/no go document, because a city council can approve projects with significant negative impacts. That happened with the San Carlos grade separation project. But by painting a more complete picture of a project’s environmental footprint, EIRs hopefully lead to better projects and better decisions.

But there’s another type of valuable information which the EIR process surfaces that has nothing to do with what ends up in the report. That’s the reaction of the residents and businesses that will be affected by the project. The EIR process, by design, involves a lot of public participation. Even when feedback isn’t about an environmental issue, it can still be important.

The Transit Village project provoked, and continues to provoke, a tremendous outpouring of concern by our east side residents. At the recent Planning Commission meeting on the EIR, the council chamber was filled with red-shirted opponents. On a beautiful summer evening in the middle of the vacation season.

One would think the project’s sponsors would want to address this negative energy quickly and decisively. Yet so far as I can tell there has been little if any significant dialog with the residents. Yes, there have been meetings, mostly a while ago. Yes, everyone wants to try and find a solution. Yes, there are reasons why more hasn’t been done.

But in the end that’s all irrelevant. Residents’ concerns need to be addressed by the project’s sponsors. That could be through education, adjustments to the project, neighborhood improvements not directly associated with the project, or something else. While some of this has happened, most of what has occurred has taken place “off stage”, and not been pitched to the residents through community meetings. Consequently, it hasn’t altered their overall reaction to any significant degree.

What’s particularly odd about this situation is that it isn’t the first big contentious project in San Carlos, or even the first one that significantly concerns east side residents. The Hacienda and Palo Alto Medical Foundation projects showed the importance of focused dialog between developers and residents. It isn’t clear to me why those lessons aren’t being applied to the Transit Village.

No one’s interest is served when tensions around a project ratchet upwards unchecked. Let’s hope a change of approach occurs soon.

Take this Monday’s meeting. Specifically, whether or not to approve a contract to have our streets swept.

That would seem pretty straightforward…until my colleague Matt Grocott pointed out the contract was funded as part of the garbage collection fees the City charges homeowners and business owners.

Depending on how you look at it that may be either reasonable or unreasonable. Garbage collection directly serves each resident or business by picking up their trash. Street sweeping, on the other hand, doesn’t directly serve individuals or businesses. Instead, it benefits them indirectly, by reducing the amount of trash on our streets. Even then, not all the streets in San Carlos are swept. Some are too steep, or narrow, or winding. In addition, the street sweeping effort also cleans up various public spaces, so part of what people are paying goes to take care of facilities “owned” by the City.

One can argue, as Matt did, that (a) street sweeping is not garbage collection, and hence shouldn’t be part of the garbage assessment; (b) it’s unfair to charge those whose streets are not swept; and (c) the City ought to pay to clean public spaces out of its general fund.

On the other hand, garbage and trash are not just unsightly, they’re potentially harmful. It’s worth collecting and disposing of both. While not every street may be swept, everyone benefits from reducing the amount of garbage and trash lying around the City. A similar argument can be made for keeping our public spaces clean, too.

Where one comes down on this, I suspect, is a function of whether one takes a narrow view or a broad view of garbage and garbage collection. If you take a narrow view you probably conclude including street sweeping under “garbage collection” is wrong. If you take a broader view you probably think it’s okay to handle things the way the City does.

I lean towards the broader view, not only for the reasons mentioned earlier, but also because of the size of the financial impact. The $83,277.24 street sweeping contract — $8,300 lower than last year — is roughly 1% of the total garbage assessment. That’s a pretty small “surcharge” to improve the aesthetics and public health of San Carlos. So while I respect the thinking of those who take a narrower view, my pragmatism reinforces my broader take on the issue.

The logic behind either perspective can be argued. But, as is the case in many public decisions, a not so clean sweep is a workable solution. Given everything else we have to do, workable solutions are generally fine by me.

I was impressed with how articulate Karen was in presenting her candidacy, and with the thoroughness with which she had considered both the appointment and the consequences of her being chosen. She even came prepared with a plan for helping the Planning Commission work through what will be an immediate 60% turnover (two other commissioners recently finished their terms, with the Council appointing two new individuals to replace them).

One statement Karen made resonated particularly strongly with me. In response to a question about how to foster/accelerate economic development in San Carlos while still preserving the community she spoke about the need to focus more on action and less on advising/studying. In my private sector experience virtually every corporate mission statement I ever saw or helped write included the statement that “we have a bias for action”. Any organization can benefit from that kind of forward-oriented energy, and the City is no exception.

All the candidates (see the following list) were qualified and devoted residents who want to help make our community a better place to live, learn work and play. As I mentioned after the interviews were over, I commend each and every one of them for putting their hat in the ring. It’s not an easy thing to do, so if you see them around town take a moment to thank them.

I wish Karen the best of luck in joining us, and I look forward to both working with her and getting to know her better.

Candidates:

• John Hoffman
• Inge Tiegel-Doherty
• Farrokh Albuyeh
• Karen Clapper
• Ricardo Garcia-Pacheco
• Steven San Filippo

Sally Mitchell, who was on the interview list published earlier by the City, withdrew her name today, citing the potential for an appearance of a conflict of interest as regards her renting office space from Aaronsen, Dickerson, Cohn and Lanzone, the law firm which represents the City.

Karen is currently the chair of the Planning Commission. Her appointment will create a vacancy on the Commission which the Council will have to fill. Anyone interested in serving on the Planning Commission should get an application from the City and submit it. If you have any questions about what the Commission does and what serving on it entails I’d be happy to get together with you to talk.

Under the proposal, there will be no special election in November, 2012. Instead, the regularly scheduled November, 2013 election will govern. However, candidates who applied to fill the opening between now and then by appointment will be asked to promise not to run in November, 2013. That isn’t a legally enforceable commitment. But it is a politically enforceable one, in that someone breaking the pledge would have to convince voters reneging on their promise was justified.

This isn’t my preferred outcome. I believe we should appoint someone to serve until November, 2012, and then call a special election to let the voters decide.

But it’s important we put this issue behind us so we can address the important topics facing our community. A compromise lets us do that. Which is why I support it.

My thanks to my colleagues for coming up with something that we could all agree on, albeit grudgingly. That’s okay. Because politics, in addition to being the art of compromise, frequently involves forging equalities of dissatisfaction.

I for one will be glad to get back to moving San Carlos forward!