Video: Supervisor’s legislative aide lowers the boom on MCC over letter to LAFCO

Yesterday, I wrote that San Mateo County Board of Supervisors won’t let our elected Midcoast Community Council speak for the unincorporated Midcoast.

For example, at the MCC’s Sept 24, 2008 meeting, the council considered a draft of a letter to the San Mateo County Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCo). LAFCo had just made some major recommendations about how the the Coastside should be governed—with limited participation from the public.  Responding to these recommendations is just the sort of situation where the MCC, and not the Board of Supervisors, should be speaking on behalf of the Midcoast community.

After a somewhat confused discussion of the draft letter by the Council, Supervisor Gordon’s Legislative Aide Andrew Berthelsen took the floor to tell our elected representatives that they could not address a letter to LAFCo.

This is followed by a fairly heated exchange in which MCC Chair Leonard Woren tells Berthelsen that a number of people, including Woren himself, are getting "more and more irritated with the way that you try to babysit this Council and tell us what to do."

We may need to get used to it.