A strange (or maybe not so strange) backlash had been building out there. You may have heard or read about it. Tom Brady is not universally admired. Certainly not in venues like New York and New Jersey, which had a vested interest in seeing the San Matean and his New England teammates falter and flop in the Feb. 3 Super Bowl in Arizona. They got half a wish _ the Patriots were upset by the New York Giants, 17-14, but Brady, true to form, wasn’t the reason. In fact, he led a last-minute drive that produced a 14-10 New England lead. But the Giants, behind their own clutch quarterback Eli Manning, came right back and won the game with under a minute remaining. Those who long to see Brady fall must be gloating today. For these unhappy souls, Brady is simply a bit too much _ too attractive, too happy, too celebrated, too wealthy, too victorious way too often. It’s probably simple human nature. There are those among us who simply hate to see success of such scope and scale. It would be akin to hoping that Warren Buffett goes bankrupt and winds up on food stamps or Oprah Winfrey puts on 250 extra pounds and expands her waistline right off the TV screen. Brady, with just a few exceptions, had been pretty close to perfect for some time. His New England team was 18-0 heading into the Super Bowl. That can be hard to handle if you have chinks in your own personal armor. Fans of former San Francisco quarterback Joe Montana who can’t abide what Brady has accomplished and see it as a threat to St. Joe’s sterling legacy here are certainly in that category. They’d like to see Brady brought down to size. But at least they have a fairly logical reason for their disdain for the NFL star. Montana has been their storied guy for the better part of a quarter-century. The irony is that, as a boy growing up in San Mateo County, Brady idolized none other than, you guessed it, Joe Montana. Go figure. Hey, you can’t please everyone. So why bother to even try?

For years, nearly a dozen San Mateo County public school districts basked in the financial glow of steadily escalating property values, combined with robust real estate sales, both residential and commercial. The net effect for those fortunate so-called “basic aid” districts was a seemingly unending increase in locally-generated tax revenues. The supply of fresh dollars was a big-time bonanza, especially for their well-paid, unionzied public employees. Other districts, which depend on enrollment increases for new money, could only watch and wonder what might have been. But those days of healthy budgetary boosts are probably ending. The current collapse of the credit markets has put a chill in Peninsula property sales. That means less dough for the basic aid brigade. The idea of belt-tightening by the Dandy Dozen is alien in these parts. In places like Hillsborough, Woodside, Atherton, Menlo Park and Portola Valley, the cascade of local lucre has been a happy given for so long that the notion of a plugged spigot will be something of a sea change. Let’s see how they react.