BY DAVE PRICE
Daily Post Editor
Well that was curious.
On Friday, the Post began working on a story about how Linda Henigin was getting a helping hand with her Palo Alto school board campaign from the school district itself.
The district had posted an ad on its Schoology website saying the Henigin campaign was looking for student interns (see above).
The ad was part of a slide deck under “innovation-agility/work-experience” and it was slide No. 19.
The ad had the headline, “Join Our School Board Campaign.” The ad said the hours would be flexible. The ad didn’t say what Henigin would be paying, but the minimum wage in Palo Alto is $18.70 an hour.
We started calling people on Friday to find out what was going on. Was the school district going to endorse Henigin? After all, she’s the candidate who seemed to be on the side of maintaining the status quo while her two opponents, John Craig and Avery Wang, are the reformers in the race.
Then, on Saturday, the ad disappeared from the website.
Maybe they figured out at 25 Churchill that it’s illegal for the school district to assist a school board candidate’s campaign. You may recall that in 2022, the vice chancellor of the San Mateo County Community College District, Jose Nunez, was arrested and later pleaded guilty to two felony counts for unlawfully using district computers and time to back a local board candidate and support bond measure.
Another ad had been removed from the Schoology site too. On Page 10 of the slide deck, there had been an ad seeking interns to work on the campaign pushing the Cubberley sales tax known as Measure J.
That ad also represented a conflict of interest for the district. If the sales tax is approved, the city would send $65.5 million of the money raised to the school district to buy seven acres of land at the Cubberley Community Center. So the school district certainly has a reason to help the measure’s campaign — more like 65 million reasons.
Both ads disappeared.
Very curious.
Where’s the appraisal?
Speaking of the Cubberley sales tax, the city still hasn’t released the real estate appraisal that city council used when it decided to pay the school district $65.5 million for the Cubberley land.
I don’t get the council’s thinking on this — why would they give the voters the impression that they’re hiding a key piece of information in this transaction? If the appraisal justifies the $65.5 million price, why not show the voters?
If council decides to keep the appraisal secret, people will assume that the city is overpaying for the property.
It’s now a police tax?
Another problem with Measure J is its title — the “Community Safety/Services Measure.” That makes it sound as if the city is raising the tax to improve community safety. In previous campaigns, the term “community safety” has meant police and firefighters.
Cubberley isn’t going to be a big police station — we just built one of those — or a fire station — there’s a new one under construction just up the street from Cubberley.
Using the term “community safety” is misleading. Maybe the city is saying that if they remove the sidewalks at Cubberley and replace them with ones that are even, it will be safer. Or maybe they’re saying that if they replace the buildings built in the 1950s, the place won’t be as a fire prone. But really, calling it a “community safety” measure is a stretch. Why should voters trust the city when they play silly tricks like this?
Editor Dave Price’s column appears on Mondays.
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