Editor:

The age old conundrum: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? New conundrum: Do we elect dumb people to office or do they get dumb after we elect them?

Case in point: The Brentwood City Council ignores the recommendations of its own Land Use Subcommittee and Planning Commission to allow smaller lot size owners to have three hens. Instead it sides with the uninformed opinion of one local resident that hens are bad news. Goodbye hens, goodbye agrarian roots of our small town, and hello dumb City Council. Oh well, they are politicians.

And elected officials are not the only ones. The parents chosen to chaperone the dance at Excelsior Middle School stopped the eighth-graders from “grinding” at a school dance. Instead of thanking them for their diligence, the school principal chastised the parents for being “too tough” on the students.

This principal is obviously in training to become a school superintendent. The most overpaid job in the entire educational system. Obviously we citizens need to be more diligent about who we elect to office.

And maybe it is time to look at combining the numerous school districts out here into one administrative unit. The poor teacher pay is a disgrace that we all need to remedy and the high-priced district superintendents need to be ashamed of themselves for their greed.

Bill Sumner, Discovery Bay