At the July 13 special meeting, did the landlord-endorsed city council majority move ahead with devising its own ballot measure designed to draw votes away from the rent control initiative headed for the November ballot?

Another newspaper reports this morning that the same pro-landlord GANG OF FOUR (Showater, Kasperzak, Clark and McAlister) that previously voted for non-binding rent mediation with no protection against pre-emptive eviction last night directed the City Attorney to prepare for the August 9 City Council meeting a competing ballot measure providing for binding arbitration. The devil will be in the details. If there is a loophole allowing pre-emptive eviction, the competing measure will be an utter FRAUD UPON THE PUBLIC.

Shocking! The Voice agitates once again for the exceptionally flawed rental control measure pushed by its own former employee (which is once again not mentioned in this article).

The editorial (strangely timed, appearing publicly only after the Council decided in favor of preparing the alternative ballot measure) asks rhetorically if this is "a logical, well-intentioned move, or is it an act of bad faith?"

That's a strange, polemical position (in spirit, not unlike the first comments that appeared above, and will predictably continue to appear), presupposing that the rent-control measure already on the ballot is fine and can't be improved on. The reality has been explained by Pat Showalter already for weeks: the existing ballot measure is structured to be much harder to change EVEN if it proves to have disastrous side effects (as have so many rent-control laws in other cities; I've personally seen that, as a renter).

Dogmatic or desperate advocates for their idea of social-engineered renter relief (manifested in the first ballot measure) clearly don't CARE about effects of the measure, as long as it limits their rents. Just as they relentlessly mischaracterize Council members as "pro-landlord," and all opposition to their measure as coming from "landlords" (reality: every resident I've talked to about it opposes the existing measure -- because they know about or have even experienced the downsides of rent control; not one of us is a landlord).

The rental crisis and its human costs are real, and have causes in the economy. Rent-control laws are a fictive solution, they create a different set of problems and they do NOTHING AT ALL to address the problem's root causes.

The Voice should recuse itself from ever discussing this issue as it has been a pure advocate of this rent control.

They have not run one story on where the $4 per signature came from. Or stated all the outside groups that are involved with this.

Has not run one story from the business side of the apartment owners and the expenses that they have.

Has not mentioned the lawsuit that will follow if this passes like the story that the Daily Post wrote, and that the city will have to pay the legal bills.

Has not mentioned that this new tenant controlled rent board with the power to make and change law can open the city to more lawsuits, again with tax payers to pay the legal bills against these lawsuits. The residents and council can not vote to them out our change these new laws.

The Voice has done a great disservice to all of Mountain View.

The Voice hits newsstands on Thursday (usually midday) but goes online after midnight (into Friday). All six council members who showed up for the special meeting Thursday night surely had read this editorial. But the GANG OF FOUR councilmembers do not work for the Voice. They seem to work for landlords or other real estate profiteers who helped get them elected and will help them in the future.

FYI,

The job of the city council is to represent all residents fairly and equally. To take away rights from a person to give to another person is fundamentally and morally wrong.

You have the same rights as any one else to purchase an apartment building and let everyone live in it for free if you choose.

If you still think that the only thing that matters is numbers being on your side and you will dictate your own terms, then I would hope you do not meet 3 people in a dark alley some night when you are a lone. Majority rules, remember!