We’re dispensing with the bouquets and brickbats and offering a ringmaster’s top hat to Board of Supervisors Chairman Paul Teixeira, who faces the daunting prospect of presiding over the circus that used to be known as public comment.

How bad is it? Well, we thought listening to those crazy anti-sewer manifestos every Tuesday was bad. Now, those seem almost quaint (OK, maybe that’s a stretch) compared with the ugly diatribes about the relationship between Supervisor Bruce Gibson and his legislative aide, Cherie Aispuro.

We’re talking, in particular, about the infamous comment of a couple of weeks ago from Tom Salmon, who posed the question, “Now did we hire this lady (Aispuro) as a prostitute or as a whore?”

He later tried to defend his indefensible speech by noting that those words “are used in movies and television all the time.”

Sorry, Tom, but TV and movies are not the standard for appropriate behavior. And as much as we champion free speech, we aren’t going to defend the “right” to spew venomous insults at specific individuals.

Apparently, Teixeira isn’t either. To his credit, he opened this week’s supervisors meeting by reminding speakers to keep it clean and respectful, and warning that he’ll call a recess or even clear the room if speakers don’t comply.

For that, we’ll toss Teixeira a boutonniere to go with his top hat.

Angry drivers, you aren’t helping

Memo to drivers in Los Osos who have been guilty of cussing out, flipping off or even spitting on construction workers who are installing pipe for the new sewer system: Consider yourselves brickbatted.

We understand what a drag it is to be stuck in traffic — and that’s happening on a regular basis in Los Osos — but construction workers are not the enemy, and behind-the-wheel tantrums will not move the project along any faster.

Congratulations to new councilman

We move to offer a congratulatory bouquet to newly appointed Grover Beach Councilman Glenn Marshall. He was unanimously chosen by the council this week to replace Phyllis Molnar, who resigned in January because she was relocating outside the city limits.

Marshall is a civil engineer with the county Public Works Department and a former Grover Beach planning commissioner — a combination that’s a good fit for a city that has some big capital improvements in its future, including street repairs to be financed by the recently approved sales tax increase.

The city of San Luis Obispo, meanwhile, has set the dates of a special mail-in election to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Andrew Carter, who’s leaving to become city manager of Guadalupe. Balloting takes place between May 20 and June 18; the filing period for candidates opens Monday.

We’ll be keeping bouquets on ice for those willing to undergo the rigors of what we hope will be a clean, cordial campaign.

Editorials are the opinion of The Tribune.