Second in a series
Re “Mr. Corlin’s Opinions Return”
[img]1988|right|Alan Corlin||no_popup[/img]Former Mayor Alan Corlin has known the Levins – ex-Mayor Sandi, would-be School Board member Dr. Steve, and Alan, his longtime business partner – since their pre-school days.
With the entry of the family’s rocket scientist into the Board race a few months ago, Mr. Corlin was asked to assess the brother and sister.
“Sandi is a little more outgoing,” he said. “Both are extremely bright, extremely empathic. They can understand. They actually listen to people’s problems.
“As a lawyer, as Sandi is, you have to be able to listen to make your case. As an astrophysicist, which Steve is, you have to listen to be able to get your billion-dollar project off the ground.
“So they used the similarities growing up together, having the same parents to their advantage, one in the law, the other in helping us promote humanity.
“And that is exactly what Steve is doing at JPL.
“By helping humanity I mean this: When you go out to the stars, we don’t know now, in a hundred years, what Steve’s Jupiter probe is going to mean to us.
“We don’t know now what the guys who sent Voyager out there…
“In a hundred years,” said Mr. Corlin, “we will know what those projects meant to us.
“They have immediate gains. But they also have long-term gains.
“This is where I think Steve is a great fit for the School Board. There are immediate gains when you have teachers who are happy and programs that are well-implemented.
“Then you have the long-term gains when these people grow up and become parts of society.
“The real problem I have – this is a little bit of an aside – is that I am done with having people on the School Board who have only short-term gains.
“I pushed hard for Measure EE,” said the ever-candid Mr. Corlin. “I hung my face out there, and people didn’t want a parcel tax. Scott Zeidman pushed it. Because of Scott’s efforts, and those by a lot of other people who helped in a small way, we were able to get that parcel tax through.
“I don’t really see that same gravitas now.
“We have people on the School Board who, last January, voted to spend $28,000 to hire consultants for a bond.
“For six months, they did nothing.
“Then they came back on July 1 and said, ‘I don’t have enough information.’
“If you don’t have enough information,” Mr. Corlin said, his voice rising, “you should not have voted to spend the 28 thousand bucks.”
(To be continued)
