Each and every day will count in the race against time for the Mountain View Tenants Coalition to gather signatures for a ballot measure to cap the city's rent increases. But exactly how much time remains to collect these signatures remains up in the air due to a brewing disagreement between lawyers from the tenants' group and the city over how election rules should be interpreted.
The question could be crucial as tenant advocates hurry to collect the needed 4,761 signatures to put the proposed measure on the November ballot. As of this week, the group reported it had collected more than half that number, although it couldn't provide an exact figure.
City Attorney Jannie Quinn said she notified the tenant group's leaders several weeks ago that they would need to deliver the signatures by the week of June 6, giving the group just two more weeks to collect roughly 2,000 or more signatures. But tenants advocates are pushing back against this schedule: The state elections code, according to their reading of it, gives them until mid-June to submit the paperwork.
Officials at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters have reportedly informed cities that they will need no fewer than 30 business days to verify the petition signatures to ensure enough are valid. County elections officials have set Aug. 12 as the deadline for when cities must submit any local measures for the November ballot. But before that, the Mountain View City Council must certify the signatures at a public meeting, which would likely be on Aug. 9.
Doing the calendar math, supporters of the rent-control measure say going 30 days back should mean they have until the last or next-to-last week of June to submit their signatures. But Quinn says city officials will also need extra time to do a raw count of the signatures, prepare a staff report and perhaps do other processing work.
"What we've told them is your best chance of success is to get it in by the week of June 6," Quinn said. "Otherwise, I'm concerned that we may not be able to get the work done. We need a cushion with the county. We can't turn a staff report around in a day."
In any case, members of the tenant coalition are confident they will make the cut regardless of where on the calendar the deadline falls, said spokesman Evan Ortiz. But the uncertainty has created a renewed "sense of urgency" for the volunteers canvassing Mountain View to collect signatures, he admitted. Originally the group set a goal to collect 8,000 signatures for the ballot to provide a sizable cushion for any invalid names. Given the timing, that goal has now been notched down to 6,500 signatures, Ortiz said.
"I don't want to give the impression there's confusion; it's just that we're trying to work on firming up the deadline," Ortiz said. "We really earnestly are feeling good about everything -- we're getting a lot of positive response from the community."
Serving as an advisory attorney for the tenants' coalition, Juliet Brodie, director of the Stanford Law Clinic, said she would be meeting this week with Quinn in hopes of reaching a compromise on the ballot measure scheduling.
"Everyone's looking hard at just how far in advance of that Aug. 9 date the coalition needs to file its petition," she said. "We really don't want to create an environment (with the city) that is adversarial."
If placed on the ballot, the proposed measure from the tenants' coalition is certain to generate a charged debate in Mountain View. The measure -- titled the Community Stabilization and Fair Rent Charter Amendment -- comes in response to what many describe as a crisis in Mountain View's rental housing market.
In recent months, scores of renters have pleaded before the City Council for relief from large rent increases that they say would displace them from their homes. The tenants' coalition decided to draft a ballot measure after the majority of council members showed they would not support any hard price restrictions on the local rental market.
The coalition's proposed measure would create a system of rent control, restricting rent increases to a minimum of 2 percent and a maximum of 5 percent. For the most part, the measure would have annual rent increases adhere to the Consumer Price Index for the Bay Area. The measure would also put in place just-cause eviction protections and create a new rental-housing committee that would oversee rent-increases and other regulations.
The rules would apply on to Mountain View apartments and rental complexes of three or more units built before 1995 due to state restrictions. Single-family homes, condominiums, duplexes and granny units would be exempted from the measure.
The Mountain View Tenants Coalition is regularly collecting signatures at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesdays at Rengstorff Park near the tennis courts, as well as from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and 10:30 to 11 a.m. on Saturdays in the St. Joseph's Church parking lot at 582 Hope St.