Mountainside meditation sessions. Videotape of the local ballet. Measure K slush fund is ending.

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors have dropped a fund they’ve used for things like videotaping local ballet, mountainside meditation sessions and funding two struggling newspapers on the coast.

The fund, which costs taxpayers $500,000 a year, is from the Measure K sales tax, which was sold to voters in 2016 as a way of funding housing and emergency services. Instead, each of the five supervisors gave themselves the right to dole out money without a lot of strings attached.

For instance, the Measure K ballot measure didn’t say anything about giving $30,000 to the conservation nonprofit Green Foothills for a meditation program called Healing in Nature. At a public hearing, one resident pointed out that the grant allowed Supervisor Ray Mueller to pay back a Green Foothills’ legislative advocate for a campaign endorsement.

Carole Groom, when she was on the board of supervisors, championed a $114,000 grant to the Peninsula Ballet Theatre in 2016 that was mainly used for videotaping performances.

Half Moon Bay Review and Pacifica Tribune got $40,000 in Measure K money in 2024. 

Mueller said the papers’ owner, Coastside News Group Inc., asked his office for the grant to help them recover from the financial impacts of the pandemic. Nonetheless, soon after receiving the grant, both papers stopped printing and today only provide online editions.

The board approved the request, but with a “no” vote from then-Supervisor Warren Slocum and an abstention from Supervisor Noelia Corzo, who wondered if the publications could remain unbiased after receiving the money. 

The Measure K handouts came at a time of record housing shortages in the county. The supervisors seemed oblivious to the concerns of their constituents.

The county is doing away with the fund because the state is expected to reduce $125 million in funding to the county from the car tax adjustment.