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WEEKEND | 29
GENERAL EXCELLENCE
California Newspaper Publishers Association
OCTOBER 14, 2016 VOLUME 24, NO. 38
www.MountainViewOnline.com
650.964.6300
MOVIES | 34
MV voters face dueling rental measures RIVAL CAMPS TOUT THEIR PROPOSAL AS LESS RISKY, EXPENSIVE By Mark Noack
P MICHELLE LE
Candidates’ signs pepper this area of Shoreline Boulevard near El Camino Real.
Council race finds city at a pivotal juncture HOUSING AND TRANSPORTATION TOP CANDIDATES’ PLATFORMS By Mark Noack
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ountain View stands at the proverbial crossroads in the coming days as voters choose four City Council candidates from a roster of eight. In essence, majority control is up for grabs as the council prepares for major decisions regarding proposals including
VOTER + GUIDE + 16 +2 0 dozens of gigantic office and residential projects already in the pipeline. If one thing defined the 2014 council race, it was an
Major fixes needed for high school buildings NEW REPORT SHOWS AGED CLASSROOMS AND FACILITIES NEED TO BE FIXED OR REPLACED By Kevin Forestieri
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ountain View and Los Altos high schools may look radically different in the coming years as the Mountain View-Los Altos High School District prepares for an onslaught of 500 additional
INSIDE
students at campuses already packed to the brim. But adding new classrooms is really just one piece of the puzzle: A new report shows some of the school buildings are decades past their prime, crumbling and badly in need of replacement. The 200-page facilities report
apparent mandate from voters to transform the city’s North Bayshore office park into Mountain View’s newest mixed-use neighborhood — a place where tech giants and their employees could share the same home. The new direction was seen as a significant and symbolic step, See COUNCIL RACE, page 16
from the firm Quattrocchi Kwok Architects revealed that although the district has done a good job maintaining school buildings dating back to the 1950s and 1970s, time has taken its toll. The small gym at Los Altos High School, for example, is plagued with problems — the walls are cracked, stained and water-damaged, the roof is falling apart, and there are signs that the structure has dry rot. In a roundabout way, the report suggests that district officials might need to tear down the gym. See BUILDINGS, page 7
VIEWPOINT 25 | GOINGS ON 35 | MARKETPLACE 36 | REAL ESTATE 38
erhaps the most consequential choice in this election cycle, Mountain View voters will decide between competing ballot initiatives that seek to curb the runaway rental market — or choose to reject them both. Backers of Measure V and those of Measure W claim that their proposed law offers the best plan for protecting tenants against baseless rent hikes and evictions. On the Measure W side is the City Council majority. They wrote and structured Measure W as an ordinance, giving the council flexibility to amend it in future years with a fivemember supermajority. Meanwhile, Measure V sponsors — who formed the Mountain View Tenants Coalition — argue that rent restrictions are too important to be trusted to the whims of elected leaders. Their initiative would be written into the city charter, making it amendable only through another popular vote in an election. The dueling proposals have a complicated back story. More than a year ago, a groundswell of hundreds of Mountain View tenants and advocates began making regular appearances at public meetings, demanding that the city address the rising rental costs that were displacing low-income tenants. They pointed to statistics showing that average rents in the city had increased by 80 percent
VOTER + GUIDE + 16 +2 0 since 2009. After months of discussions, council members in March presented what they called a palatable answer — a complex mediation program designed to settle disputes between landlords and tenants. But the council majority at the last moment gutted formal rent restrictions contained in the proposed ordinance, in effect making it entirely voluntary for landlords to lessen rent increases or address many other tenants’ concerns. In response, tenant advocates turned their energy toward raising support for a rentcontrol initiative, what later became Measure V. In a surprise to council members, the Tenants Coalition gathered some 7,300 signatures to force the measure onto the ballot. Fearing Measure V could pass and force the city into a plan they found unacceptable, council members called a special meeting in the final days before the deadline to submit items for the ballot. They discussed putting their own measure before voters as an alternative and in the end dusted off the binding arbitration system they had earlier rejected to include in their own ballot measure. See RENTAL MEASURES, page 22
LOCAL RESULTS View online Nov. 8 at mv-voice.com