Last night at the first City Council Meeting of the year, Yiaway Yeh was elected mayor of Palo Alto for 2012. Greg Scharff was elected Vice Mayor. Meeting over? Not by a long shot!
The tradition of thanking the outgoing mayor after the election of a new mayor took an interesting turn as hundreds turned out to fill the City Hall chambers and dozens spoke in praise of Sidney A. Espinosa's unparalleled contributions to civic life during his one year tenure as mayor. Among the "polliterati" speaking during the public comment of the meeting were were Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss, former Palo Alto Mayor Gary Fazzino, California State Assembly Rich Gordon and California State Senator Joe Simitian.
Media Center Executive Director Annie Folger and this writer Programming Manager Becky Sanders had their turn at the podium. They thanked Mayor Espinosa for raising the visibility of the Media Center in the community. By partnering to produce videos for use in his official e-newsletters and social networking outreach and by attending events sponsored by the Media Center, Mayor Sid made our volunteers know how much he appreciated their efforts and was their champion. Annie Folger summed up the comment with naming Sid "the poster child for community media."
The Media Center was hardly the only non-profit, business, civic organization, cause et cetera and so forth to benefit from Sid's amazing embrace of community. It was unanimous: Sid was "everywhere" in 2011. He did everything from cutting ribbons to making speeches to touring constructions sites to digging holes to pulling weeds, to reading to children, to camping out at Quakeville, to biking everywhere -- oh we could go on and on!
But you can watch the entire program! It is available Video on Demand.
Herein we include a few links to just a few select video clips: Councilmember Larry Klein and then Mayor Yeh's summing up and Sid's gracious acknowledgement of the evening's festivities.
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