Twitter-Famous Pleasant Hill City Clerk Logs off

First, Horse_ebooks was revealed to have been nothing more than an elaborate grad school-style prank. Then, Sam Biddle of Valleywag threatened to dox @darth. (Confidential to SB: That's weak, bro.) It's been a bad year for Weird Twitter—and it's just gotten worse.

Local twitter hero (and horrible city official) @KimPHClerk has gone silent—and the account has cost its owner her job.

But Kim Lehmkuhl, the elected city clerk of the East Bay's Pleasant Hill, flamed out spectacularly, writing in her resignation email to the city's mayor: “This has been an atrocious, incredibly depressing and mind-numbingly inane experience I would not wish on anyone. I wish the city the best of luck in finding some schmuck eager to transcribe every last misogynistic joke, self-indulgent anecdote and pathetic pandering attempt by council, and every tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, racist aside, and NIMBY asshattery from the lovely council meeting frequent flyers, without which, surely our democracy could not flourish.”

There's no love lost on either side. For his part, Mayor Tim Flaherty told ABC 7: "I'm paraphrasing our former President Gerald Ford in saying 'Our long municipal nightmare is now over.' Our city clerk has resigned." Lehmkuhl, who was elected to the post in 2012, was the subject of a recall effort after it was discovered that she had failed to keep the city council meeting's minutes for up to a year, because, in part, she was too busy on Twitter.

Oh, and how busy she was. Lehmkuhl's since-deleted account was an addicting mix of profanity, progressivism, and small-town gossip. She was like a charming version of Chris Daly—and now she's gone. (The whole controversy puts us in mind of London Breed's spectacular Twitter meltdown.)

But, in Lehmkuhl's honor, we've excavated some of our favorites of her tweets:

"Cute hipster teacher from Vallejo worries we're "shortchanging the area culturally," makes a @DICKS joke as he drops the mic #PHmtg"

"Eek, as usual running out office door in Oakland last minute to hightail it to tonight's #PHmtg, agenda coming at you from BART momentarily"

"Whoa there's hella parking spots, color me surprised... #PHmtg"

"Guys I'm trying to be better abt taking proper minutes while tweeting and it's super challenging with this super slooow computer :-( #PHmtg"

"'In an apparent fit of exhaustion' ARC approved application 5-0; 'they were tired of the meetings, I'm tired of the meetings' #PHmtg"

"Councilmember Carlson invokes King Solomon. Should this be an entry for #PHmtg bingo?"

"Clerks are elected so councilmembers can't coerce us into writing up their predictably self-serving version of events #PHmtg"

"To be frank, most people who engage in public comment are, in the moment, upset about the topic at hand. Contented people don't show. #PHmtg"

"tweets are mine alone; no one at (#PHill) controls/uses... condones them They exist apart from any official recordkeeping"

"Men talking over you, taking credit for your ideas in meetings? Let's fill the room with more women."

Is the city of Pleasant Hill better off without her? Probably. Is Twitter? No way.

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