BY ALLISON LEVITSKY
Daily Post Staff Writer
Los Altos Mayor Jean Mordo apologized to the newly elected vice mayor yesterday after he was quoted in the Post commenting on her frequent contrarian votes.
Mordo said he called Lynette Lee Eng yesterday to say that he had not “disparaged” her, as his remarks were characterized in the article. “In what I thought was a statement in her defense, I said that, as a new council member, one often wants to establish clearly one’s position,” Mordo said in an email to council at 2:45 p.m. yesterday. “After some time on council, one gets to trade the benefit of clarity of position with the benefit of getting along with the colleagues.”
At a reception after he was elected mayor on Tuesday night, Mordo had answered a question about Eng’s frequent position as sole dissenter by saying that council members “should go with the flow, at least sometimes, and not make every vote an issue of principle.”
A major issue on which Eng has put her foot down has been the renovation of Hillview Community Center.
Some have accused Mordo, Councilwoman Mary Prochnow and City Manager Chris Jordan of giving private daycare Children’s Corner, which has leased space at Hillview since 1981, special treatment by negotiating the terms of a 20-year lease without comparing other options or seeking council approval of continuing to lease space to a daycare.
“Sorry, Lynette, I am sure that you could have stated your position better than I did,” Mordo wrote yesterday.
