Your joking right? Ask your developer friends, or do they not like to make it look that direct?

Please.. the reason only "relatively wealthy" people can get on the city council is because it takes money to get elected.

Once you're on the council the different between $600 and $1200 isn't going to make or break anyone.

How much did each council member spend to win their seat? That's the number we should be paying attention to.

Mountain View's City Council candidates have spent relatively small sums of money on their campaigns. Former members Tom Means and Greg Perry liked to talk about being elected on less than $5,000.

Yeah, let's put this one to vote, again.

...snipped...

"Renters make up the majority of the city's population (58 percent in 2010) but have not been reflected in the council's makeup for many years."


~~~~~ Uh, it's not like this current city council has done Mountain View home owners any favors.


~~~~~

"All of them are homeowners, relatively insulated from the effects of the current housing crisis and skyrocketing rents caused by an avalanche of job growth and limited housing growth, reflective of a land-use pattern that most of the members have supported."


~~~~~ "relatively insulated" is a very important term in the above sentence.

Homeowners (aka property tax payers) purchased their homes with certain zoning in place, and that zoning was a part of a contract (of sorts) with the city. The homeowners were willing to invest their life savings in an area that was zoned a particular way because, in part, the zoning in place provided a protection - of sorts - for the homeowners, the protection being that purchasing a home in an area zoned "X" meant the homeowner knew what anything built in that neighborhood would fall into parameters defined by the "X" zoning code. What's going on now (and has been going on for awhile now) is city council has been re-zoning and in many cases up-zoning areas which will result in a dramatic and most likely, negative, impact to homeowners in these re/up-zoned neighborhoods.

Homeowners have every right to be frustrated and/or angry, when their city council seems to have no problem violating the implicit (zoning) contract it has with current homeowners, breaching this contract in order to encourage high-density "infill" development in certain areas of the city. On top of that, when these frustrated homeowners - who have their life savings invested in their home - dare to speak up, speak out, or plead for restraint from our city council regarding these zoning changes...these residents are are often chastised and referred to as "selfish" and/or "nimbys", seemingly in an effort to get these righteously aggrieved homeowners to sit down, shut up and let the city council wantonly breach their implicit zoning contract with these homeowners..."for the greater good".

Yeah, it's all butterflies and rainbows until it's your life savings along with your quality of life that is being deliberately dismantled by city council, along with a big help from the city manager and city staff.

It's easy to get on the council. Here are the steps:

1. Run for city council once. Make sure your signs get put up with your name.
2. Do not appear crazy. (You know who I'm talking about.)
3. You will lose the first election, but don't fret.
4. Run again.
5. You will now have a subtle name recognition advantage over any first time candidates, so you will win.

Why does this work? Because few run...
a) Because it is not a coveted job.
b) Some people that may like to do it are too busy with the excitement of their careers (they already have way too much money to ever spend, but do not dare to get off the gerbil wheel).
c) Some people would like to do it, but cannot financially afford to. Especially on $600/mo!

It's also a very difficult job to be effective. The city staff will drown you in presentations, data and threaten you with potential legal action from residents and developers. If you don't share basic viewpoints with 2-3 other council members, then they will just vote against your position and nothing is accomplished.

I think if we bring compensation up to similar levels for bay area cities, then that will open up the candidate pool. More choice should give us higher quality.

The difference between $600 and $1200 is not significant enough to have any effect. If we want any noticeable change, we'd need to make the council position a full time job with real duties and a reasonable civil service wage. We could recoup the cost by replacing the city manager and some of his henchmen with the elected representatives.
The pattern Mr.(or Ms.)"notacandidate" has identified is spot on! City council elections are pretty much of a joke: run once, don't win. Run again, elected. But the position is pretty much honorary anyway... The nonelected city staff is bold enough to disregard council actions at will.

@MVRESIDENT67 -- You're points are spot on in my opinion!

@NOTACANDIDATE -- It's not as easy as you might think! If you are trying to really accomplish change, special interests and even some in the media will try to portray you as crazy, alarmist or out-of touch in order to maintain the status quo. One of the reasons that I am writing so many of my own articles in the online version of the voice is so that people can become familiar with my positions, decide whether or not they agree with me, and then vote accordingly based on first hand information. I also invite people who disagree with me to meet me face to face to discuss their concerns, but so far no one has taken me up on that offer. I put my chances of being elected this year at about 25% right now, but I am working very hard on my campaign in order to dramatically improve those odds.

I am not wealthy by any means. I rent, I own a car that is 14 years old, and I make less than $100,000 a year. After taxes it's less than $67,000/yr.

With all that said, I am opposed to the increase in salary for the City Council whether I am on it or not. If I am elected I will vote against any increases until I lose an election or am termed out. I think that serving as Mayor or a Council Member is just that, a service and that it should be done based on one's desire to serve the residents and businesses rather than to make money, otherwise you wind up with a situation such as the one that occurred in Bell, California.

I also do not understand why the Council is wasting time with this, when there are far more important issues facing the city.


Jim Neal
Candidate, Mountain View City Council
http://electneal.org (Campaign Website)
info@electneal.org

Mountain View is a far better managed then most cities and every city council has moments. City of Bell can be a case study on bad government, which I can say before the whole mess they leashed upon the world. Haven't ever heard of Bell, California, had to Google what amounts to a Southern California suburb.

Bell? Palo Alto is right next door and a good example of failed leadership. Like the old joke....

A. Send in the Clowns

Q. How does Palo Alto run a city council/school board meeting?

If a person is working two jobs to make ends meet, s/he would have to give up one of those jobs to serve adequately on the Council. If the Council pay is less than both jobs, it's not worth it.

To me that's the scenario that should be used to set the Council pay scale.

Cut Back On The Hours And Skip The Pay.

Paying A Salary Only Makes It A Political Job Latter For The Democratic Party's Select Few In Its Politicians-In-Training Program.

Don't they get the benefits otherwise reserved for full-time city employees? And they qualify to join other boards and commissions which pay money. But the biggest bonus is access to other jobs in the public sector or in the private sector.

It's funny that the same type of person that would rail against politicians for being paid for their work (Derp! City Council is all plush! Liberal college boys! Derp!") are the same types that rail against any attempt to curb CEO pay. ("Derp. We need the best CEO's so they need to be paid tens of millions of dollars...DERP!")

It seems that not providing a modicum of compensation to city council is limiting the type of candidates that can take the position. Not very democratic if you ask me...

@MVResident67 -
"Homeowners (aka property tax payers)..."

Hello? Renters are property taxpayers just like homeowners. Every rental property (with the exception of publicly-owned units, which are an extremely small share of the rental stock) is assessed property tax just like an owner-occupied residence. The owner of that property pays property taxes, and passes that cost along to the tenant, just like they pass along the cost of maintenance, the mortgage, or any other expense. It's a basic fact of real estate. If you don't believe that, you are either too ignorant or too blinded by your own wild opinions. Given the rest of your rant above, I'd guess the latter. And the fact that Jim Neal thinks your points are "spot on" is further confirmation of how far off you are.

I've got nothing against renters...the problem is that a lot of these rental units are sitting on land that has not been assessed to current market values for decades. Thank you prop 13! It was intended so that fixed income senior citizens wouldn't get kicked out of their houses with the increased tax burden. Unfortunately, this has been taken advantage of by commercial real estate holders (businesses, apartment buildings and even some single family homes!) These businesses discovered that if they retain legal title to the property and "lease" it out to a management company, they could get a lot more $ out of their property than simply selling it and moving on.
What is the problem? Well, we have a very high # of absentee landlords...that's not great for the community.

Worse, even though the property isn't really being operated by the same people that originally purchased it, the taxes collected are incredibly low compared to the *homeowners* who, for the most part, came in more recently and are paying taxes at a much higher assessed value.

It's not the renters fault, but the situation sucks.

Raising the councilpersons compensation to a higher level will help bring in people that cannot currently afford to take the position. I think we need those people to protect our city. The current crowd is just a little too comfortable....

Jim--if nobody is willing to meet with you to talk, do you really think you stand a chance of getting elected??? You might want to sit down and take a long think about *why* nobody is willing to meet with you and maybe make some changes in how you communicate with the community.

@Funny -- I said nobody who DISAGREES with me is willing to meet. Probably because they'd rather remain anonymous so they can use pseudonyms, insult me and attribute quotes to me that I never said.


Jim Neal
Candidate, Mountain View City Council
http://electneal.org (Campaign Website)
info@electneal.org

OMV Resident, a resident of Old Mountain View:



"Hello? Renters are property taxpayers just like homeowners."

~~~~~~~~~~

Doh! My Bad.

Uh huh.

How about paying city council members a minimum wage? They can vote in council on what they feel they and other hardworking Mountain View residents and workers deserve.

Candidates for council that come across as abrasive or arrogant, even if only a bit and even if they truly are not, have very little appeal to voters. The "what you see is what you get" approach, while admirable and honest, is not necessarily the best. You have to be a politician...weird, eh?

Good luck with that. This is one voter who will vote NO to a pay raise.

I'm very surprised at the current pay of council members. I consider this a simple matter of respect. I would never expect someone to work on my behalf for free (or near free). I would strongly support a raise to $1500 a month! It is still no more than a stipend and would not make a difference in many peoples decision to run, but the council should be compensated for the time they put into the job. I'm also very surprised that an editorial would come out against such a small raise, especially in comparison to other city employees and the budget of the city. Count me as a "YES" vote!

I'd be shocked if that passed.

Council members put in about 30 hrs/week, so this "raise" might just bring them up to minimum wage!

Funny how some people think $5000 is a small amount of money.

$5000 for a single election. One I'm told I should expect to lose the first time around, possibly the second.

That's $5000 times 2 or 3. I am positive a majority of the city's residents don't have a spare $10-$15K laying around to spend on getting elected to the city council.

This will not expand the candidates pool.

MV City Council members should definitely get a big pay raise for two good reasons:
1) It would allow them to work less elsewhere in order to earn a living (if they must), thereby giving them more adequate amounts of time to very thoroughly study and consider everything brought before them.
2) With enough pay, anyone could be a city council member. Then we might actually get a real working class stiff in there for a change, instead of only those that are wealthy or supported by other than a job they are doing.

And, very important: The number of construction project brought before the council needs to be reduced or at least spread out more over time. Then each council member could spend more time on each project and do things much more carefully. And the big plus would be that the public could take more part.

Let's end all these afternoon council meetings and study sessions that working people cannot much attend. Let's hold the number of study sessions and council meetings for one of each per month. That would help to keep the officials from out pacing our ability to keep up with our own town!

pay them hourly, clock in clock out, let's see if they really put in 30hrs. a week. If they work hard give em a suitable wage.