Foster City voters did the prudent thing

Citizens of Foster City took the prudent course of action last week when they overwhelmingly voted in favor of taxing themselves to improve the extensive levee system that protects that community, essentially an island created out of marshland in the 19th century, from the waters of San Francisco Bay.

Their decision won’t come cheap. Measure P permits the city to impose an increase in the property tax amounting to about $40 per $100,000 of assessed valuation.

On a single-family home assessed at $1 million, that new tax will amount to $400 annually. But there is surely something to be said for peace of mind, not to mention the ability to keep the federal government off the town’s back.

Without new levee protections, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had promised to declare the entirety of Foster City a flood zone, forcing property owners to pay for pricey flood insurance.

Foster City’s case may be a portent if projections of sea level rise come to pass. Other low-lying San Mateo County communities could find themselves in a somewhat similar situation at some point.

Bayside development from Brisbane to Menlo Park is routine and, in certain areas, quite extensive and expensive. Levees of one kind or another (some of which are clearly inadequate and in very poor shape, by the way) are a way of life along the Peninsula.

The good burghers of Foster City are simply getting the jump on many of the rest of us, albeit with a significant and not-so-subtle push from the FEMA folks.

Measure P now provides Foster City with as much as $90 million in bond funds for its levee project. The voters, in spite of a spirited campaign against it, agreed to back it by a whopping 80 percent at last count.

They probably didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Dumb, dumber

The longstanding assumption is that Silicon Valley and its highly creative environs are typically populated by a whole lot of big brains. But that’s not always the case. There is the occasional outlier.

Witness that guy in Redwood City recently. According to published police reports, a man sporting a purple wig was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting on a Saturday evening.

Fewer than 24 hours later, a man wearing a purple wig was picked up for shoplifting. We have to believe it was the same dimwit.

Who else would be dumb enough to call attention to himself by donning an outrageous purple hairpiece while trying to filch merchandise two days in a row?

Hey, deduction is one of our specialties.

Two departures

Two top administrators are leaving two San Mateo County Catholic high schools in June 2019. Lars Lund and Karen Hanrahan are departing from Serra and Mercy, respectively, a year from now.

The announcements were made earlier this month. Lund is Serra’s president and has been working at the San Mateo school in a variety of capacities since 1983.

Hanrahan is Mercy’s head of school and has served the all-girls institution in Burlingame for five years. She has more than 30 years of experience in Catholic school administrative capacities.

Replacements for both Lund and Hanrahan are being sought.