Archive for the 'City Council' Category

America’s next Colma mayor

If you want to be the next member of the Colma City Council, there’s still more than an hour to rush over to City Hall and fill out an application!

The town is looking for someone to fill out the remainder of Larry Formalejo’s term, which expires in November. Formalejo resigned March 13 after an investigation found that he committed several ethical breaches while in office.

The forms must be filled out and returned by 5 p.m. The council will interview potential replacements at a meeting Thursday.

Here’s a brief quiz to see if you have the right stuff to serve.

Your son is arrested for driving on a suspended license and allegedly violating his probation for a drunk-driving conviction. Should you:

a) Bail him out of jail and give him a stern lecture.

b) Continue reading to your other children from their favorite bedtime story: the Colma General Plan.

c) Call the police sergeant who supervised the arrest and ask if he can make some of the charges “go away.”

d) Contact a magician to see if he can literally make the record of the incident disappear.

If you chose “a” or “b,” you may be a strong candidate. If you chose “c” — as Formalejo did, according to Linda Tripoli, an attorney hired by the town to investigate the former mayor’s alleged improprieties — then you should probably take yourself out of the running.

If you picked “d,” please call former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who would like to know if you have any referrals.

Here’s another one. True or false: Lucky Chances Casino, the local card room, is an appropriate place to use your town-issued credit card.

Give up? Well, Formalejo chose “true,” according to Assistant City Manager Laura Allen, who recounted the incident to Tripoli. (The city went with “false.”)

The point here is that it wouldn’t be hard to do a better job on the council than Formalejo, from a civics standpoint, if Tripoli’s report is to be believed.

It’s hard to decide what aspect of the Formalejo affair was strangest. How about the fact that even before he quit, Formalejo’s colleagues on the council didn’t see fit to censure or punish him? Or that he still doesn’t think he did anything wrong? (He said he resigned for health reasons.)

But the richest part of all this may be that Formalejo’s philosophy regarding his town credit card was so out of kilter that his former colleague on the council, Phil Lum, allegedly had to rein him in.

Lum, you may recall, is currently serving an 18-month prison term for failing to report gifts he received from the owner of Lucky Chances. But when Formalejo allegedly tried to bail his son out of jail after that 2006 arrest using the town credit card, Lum had to step in and be the voice of reason, according to Tripoli’s report.

Tripoli could not determine whether that allegation is true, because Formalejo refused to speak to her. Lum was unavailable, she said, as he is sitting in a federal prison roughly 30 miles southwest of Bakersfield.

Posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008
Under: Aaron Kinney, City Council, Colma, San Mateo County | No Comments »

The life of a mayor

pam-frisella.jpg

Foster City Mayor Pam Frisella learned firsthand last week that you’ve got to pay the cost to be the boss.

Frisella got a number of emails from aggravated Foster City residents after the foghorn on the San Mateo Bridge malfunctioned once again.

Speaking from Sacramento, where she was attending a League of California Cities conference with City Councilwoman Linda Koelling and City Manager Jim Hardy, Frisella said last week that she’s already learned something about her new position: When you’re mayor, people take their comments directly to you, even when you can’t fix things.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008
Under: Aaron Kinney, City Council, Foster City | No Comments »

Philanthropy in the highest Digre

digre.jpg

Our sincerest apologies for the huge gap in postings. The Insider went off the rails following the San Diego wildfires and continuing through the elections. We’re now back to our regular schedule.

Speaking of San Diego, when the Insider tagged along with a special California Medical Assistance Team in late October on its mission to help thousands of residents who were turned out of their homes by wildfires, we encountered several members with Bay Area ties.

Among them was Erick Digre, 55, husband of none other than Sue Digre, a member of the Pacifica City Council. (Erick is pictured above with fellow Cal-MAT worker and San Rafael resident Crystal Wright, whose husband is a firefighter for the Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department.)

Erick Digre, who works as a ranger patrolling the Crystal Springs watershed, serves with Cal-MAT as a medic. He also volunteers with the Red Cross when he gets a chance.

Digre is highly self-effacing and doesn’t like to talk about his work helping others. Asked why he works for Cal-MAT, he said simply, “I don’t see me not doing this.”

But he was happy and proud to talk about his children. Erick and Sue have one son, a San Francisco firefighter, who’s been to Iraq twice with the Marine Reserves.

Their other son is training to be a combat medic with the U.S. special forces, while their daughter is an emergency room nurse. Oh, and Sue works with handicapped children.

The Insider feels insufficiently altruistic.

Posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
Under: Aaron Kinney, City Council, Pacifica | No Comments »