The cleanup crew is continuing its laborious work in the San Mateo Union High School District. A new administrative team, led by superintendent David Miller and his budget chief Liz McManus, and two new members of the board of trustees have embarked on what promises to be a long, tough exercise in bringing the district back to fiscal stability. It’s not going to be an easy task by any means. The legacy of the past continues to haunt them. Beginning with the stunning and unanticipated need to rebuild seismically-unsafe San Mateo High School at the beginning of the current decade, the district has been shocked by a series of fiscal challenges, many of them of its own confused making. In a nutshell, the district plunged into budgetary chaos during, and after, the administrations of former superintendents Tom Mohr and Sam Johnson. It is still recovering. And controversy persists. The latest flap involves a plan to increase fees significantly for the use of district facilities. For taxpayers who have watched the district stagger along blindly for years (even as they approved two big construction bond packages), this latest development has been seen as a slap in the face. It’s a public relations disaster. There is some talk that a formula can be found to ease the pain. That would be the prudent thing to do, especially when you consider what the long-suffering public has put up with since 2000.

Elections are coming fast furious this year in San Mateo County. We just had a presidential primary. We’ve got two more primaries coming in April and June. Then comes the big general election in November. There is no rest for those who operate the election process here on the Peninsula. But there is plenty of down time for another aspect of politics in these parts: Meaningful debate. Discussions about policy and practices are strictly one-way. The county is a bonafide one-trick political pony. That’s because the Republican Party has become about as relevant as the rotary telephone. The GOP has slipped so far out of favor with the local electorate that it’s a mere blip on the radar screen. According to statistics provided by Warren Slocum, the county’s chief election honcho, there are 180,531 registered Democrats in the county. That compares to only 83,619 people who classify themselves as members of the GOP. What’s more telling, 81,628 say they are undecided and don’t list any party affiliation at all. It won’t be long before the undeclared outnumber those from the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. It makes for a mighty boring time out there in the public square. It is a routine fact of life here that every key elected federal, state and local official is a Democrat. Republicans are strictly MIA. Simply put, in this barren idea desert, there is no meaningful back-and-forth whatsoever.