@Miguel Sanchez,

The Palo Alto Daily News is my go to choice to get a more truthful, balanced story of the news.

The Voice has a political agenda that it pushes in their stories, they are not fair or provides both sides of a story, they just push their agenda.

In response to Jane you said:

“The Palo Alto Daily News is my go to choice to get a more truthful, balanced story of the news.”

I think we are going down the path of “fair and balanced” news marketing again. The fact is it is interesting that both are published by similar groups. You went on to say:

“The Voice has a political agenda that it pushes in their stories, they are not fair or provides both sides of a story, they just push their agenda.”

Again, you are trying to make news a political campaign. Lets then look at comparing and contrasting actions. The Palo Alto Daily did very little reporting on the landlord Reenu Saini. It is eclipsed regarding that coverage. The Palo Alto Daily only carried 1 story on this case, but most others write more than 3 in the area. This landlord is being prosecuted for violence and potential assault and battery. Let’s put this situation into perspective here.

The fact is that you are trying to have a hyper absolute point of view regarding Job Lopez’s conduct. You want to have it appear he is a violent criminal. He made a serious mistake, and he took responsibility for it. But you cannot destroy all of him based on one act that was in bad judgment, but never threatened the safety of anyone else.

Miguel Sanchez's comment doesn't mention that the Post also published opinion letters making similar points, or that he himself posted multiple comments to the memorial article he disliked in that paper.

Evidently Job Lopez's friends refuse to understand that regardless of any other activities, most of the public now know of Lopez for having criminally disrespected free speech. Those acts were widely publicized, and Lopez chose to do them, so he himself (not the newspapers that report it) determined how he's remembered. John Inks (whose campaign signs Lopez vandalized) also wrote a letter to the Post, January 21, calling Lopez a radical hoodlum, and noting that Lopez never regretted his actions to either Inks or property owners affected.

@Marilyn . . . The MANDATED seismic retrofitting of soft story apartment buildings in Mountain View is anything BUT "general upgrades". In most instances, the cost will easily exceed $10,000 per unit in the 100+ 60's era buildings identified by the city. The City Council issued a mandate and the landlords must comply. Measure D does little more than simplify and streamline the Rental Housing Committee process of passing the seismic upgrades along to those tenants who choose to live in a retrofitted building.

The alternative, simply put, is to tear the buildings down and replace them with row houses if the physical and economic obsolescence isn't addressed. Those directly benefiting from the landlord's capital expenditure (in most cases borrowed money) are the lucky tenants who put the city council in their seats. If tenants want a seismically safe building they have to pay for it--or move to one that already meets today's building standards. Either way their rent is going to go up.

In response to The Successful Businessman you said:

“@Marilyn . . . The MANDATED seismic retrofitting of soft story apartment buildings in Mountain View is anything BUT "general upgrades". In most instances, the cost will easily exceed $10,000 per unit in the 100+ 60's era buildings identified by the city. The City Council issued a mandate and the landlords must comply. Measure D does little more than simplify and streamline the Rental Housing Committee process of passing the seismic upgrades along to those tenants who choose to live in a retrofitted building.”

But the City Council members that are registered with the Democratic party are no prohibited to support Measure D. Another bizarre issue, I recently got a flyer from www.voteyesond.com, and earlier today I could access the website. But now it appears to be down. This website had 3 memebers of the City Council ENDORSING Measure D. Maybe it was forced to be taken down because Margaret Abe Koga and Chris Clark where listed on the site. It also appears to not be favoring well at this time. You went on to say:

“The alternative, simply put, is to tear the buildings down and replace them with row houses if the physical and economic obsolescence isn't addressed.”

SB330 will prohibit this action. You are not keeping up with the recent news, you can read the article found on the Mountain View Voice article “A little-noticed new law could upend a key argument against rent control”(Web Link Specifically it states:

“But for Mountain View, the most consequential section of SB 330 was buried deep in the bill. The new law also prohibits cities from approving new housing developments that would raze rent-controlled or affordable housing -- that is, unless an equal number of new units are rebuilt for tenants at the same price.

For tenant advocates, that requirement looks like a game-changer that could swiftly lead apartment owners to reconsider tearing down older units. Even in cases where apartments are being redeveloped into for-sale housing, developers will still be required to build new housing for all former tenants. Any displaced tenants must be given first rights to new housing units at the same price, said Nazanin Salehi, staff attorney with the Community Legal Services of East Palo Alto. These protections took effect at the start of January.”

Thus your “quick answer” to the issue doesn’t seem to be correct. You went on to say:

“Those directly benefiting from the landlord's capital expenditure (in most cases borrowed money) are the lucky tenants who put the city council in their seats.”

Not necessarily, because the state mandated the seismic refits. The structures may end up not being rentable if they are not performed. The landlords have a choice, lose all earnings by going out of business, or comply with the laws. You said:

“If tenants want a seismically safe building they have to pay for it--or move to one that already meets today's building standards. Either way their rent is going to go up.”

But you are in fact telling the current landlords, that they are either going to go out of business, or perform the refits. That sounds like your answer is not a good one in any case. I am sorry that the work simply must be done. The fact is without the work, the warranty of inhabitability would be violated, and the landlords will be closed down. That warranty requires all building codes to be satisfied.

I was on the fence about Measure D until today.

I genuinely was trying to consider the issue from both sides - renters certainly feel the pain of our already sky-high cost of living, but landlords also need to have the flexibility to make improvements to their investments, particularly if they're safety related.

After seeing the "Yes on D" mailer sent to everyone's home today, I can officially say my mind is made up. The language in the mailer is so intentionally deceptive that I can only assume it's greed, not investment, that's ultimately driving this measure.

Just take a look at the very first bullet point from the mailer: "Measure D lowers an annual rent increase to no more than 4 percent. Current law allows higher increases." If I didn't already know that the current increase is 3.5% (and the highest it's ever been is 3.6%), this language would have tricked me into thinking 4% is lower than the current increase. The authors carefully crafted their word-smithing so that while it's still "technically true", it's also easily confused with a message favorable to renters and low-information voters.

If you guys need to stoop to this level of trickery, I want no part of your campaign.

Lopez didn't vandalize one sign but pretty much every single sign belonging to Means. Under pressure, you see the true character of a person and Lopez showed his true colors. Lopez undermined our political process and will be know for that.

-- And the same instinct to suppress truths and free speech that you don't personally like remains alive and well (even though milder) in the efforts now by Lopez's friends to downplay his unrepentent political vandalism, subject of the previous couple of articles on him even here in the Voice. They are happier with the Voice's memorial story that barely mentioned those crimes. But his intended victim wrote elsewhere that Lopez himself earned the frank headline he got in the Post's memorial.

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

Wow

This discussion seems to be nothing but character assassination.

As far as Tom Means is concerned, he was a flagrant biased member of the RHC, and had a financial conflict of interest in his career. So that should deal with that

What is really going on here is that the current landlords in Mountain View are in big trouble because of the lack of support for both ballot measures.

They both are going down in flames.

On top of that there is AN1482 and SB330 which is tearing apart the property values of their business.

So they are taking it out on a dead man.