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To fulfill their duty to publicize news on city meetings and laws, Mountain View officials for years have run public notices in an obscure legal newspaper that few people have ever heard of, and even fewer actually read.
For the past 24 years, the San Jose Post Record has served as the city’s main print outlet for posting legally required notices on development projects and government affairs. On any given day, this hard-to-find newspaper publishes official announcements on upcoming Mountain View public works projects, planning commission meetings or proposed ordinances. Just this year, the city of Mountain View has published at least 118 government notices in the Post Record.
But anyone hoping to stay abreast of this news may have a hard time. It is nearly impossible to find a copy of the Post Record in Mountain View.
The publication isn’t available in newspaper racks or at stores, the only way to get a copy seems to be through a $49-a-year subscription. The Mountain View Library doesn’t have a single copy of the Post Record. When asked, two librarians said they had never heard of it. Most articles in the paper are focused on state or national legal affairs with little direct relevance to Mountain View residents.
And it’s not just Mountain View; the Post Record is hard to find anywhere in Santa Clara County because its total circulation is incredibly low — the newspaper has a total distribution of only 49 print copies, according to information submitted to the city in its bid.
To put that number in perspective, more people are killed in the U.S. each year by lightning strikes than subscribe to the newspaper. It’s equivalent to one Post Record copy for every three billionaires in Silicon Valley, or about one issue per 40,000 county residents.
Despite the paper’s scarcity, Mountain View officials say that the Post Record is the best option for disseminating news to city residents. In a July consent agenda vote, the City Council approved an $18,700 publishing contract with the newspaper, which it has been awarded each year since 1995.
The Mountain View Voice was disqualified from submitting bids for the same contract because it publishes only once a week. The Palo Alto Daily Post, which circulates a free six-day-a-week paper in Mountain View, was dismissed from contention by city staff who said it only prints legal ads once a week. In contrast, city officials say the Post Record publishes legal ads six days a week and is the lowest bidder that meets the city’s needs.
“It’s very simple: when we do this bidding for legal advertising, our city charter states we have to award it to the lowest responsible bidder,” said Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga. “We have to be mindful of taxpayer dollars.”
Her message was echoed by city Finance Director Jesse Takahashi, who joined the city earlier this year after a career at the city of Campbell. His department was in charge of selecting the newspaper contract.
Takahashi admitted he hadn’t heard of the Post Record prior to coming to Mountain View, but he expressed confidence that the newspaper and its government noticing were easily available to Mountain View residents. Initially, he gave assurances that the city performed its due diligence before selecting the paper, saying, “I can’t tell you how, but we verify circulation to see where it’s at.”
After being informed of the Post Record’s reported circulation of 49, Takahashi seemed surprised, but not shocked. It still meets the letter of the law, he said.
“I see where you’re coming from, and that’s a good thing to follow up on,” he said. “But since no one else publishes here, we have to default back to our legal requirements.”
David Houston, the editor of the San Jose Post Record, did not respond to the Voice’s request for comment on this story.
The history of civic leaders issuing public announcements is almost as old as civilization itself. Through much of history, this meant posting decrees in city squares or hiring town criers. These government pronouncements were a mainstay of the first modern-day newspapers in 17th century England, and that tradition was carried over to colonial America, according to the Public Notice Resource Center.
One of the first laws passed by the inaugural U.S. Congress was a requirement that any new government “law, order, resolution and vote” must be published in at least three public newspapers. It is no exaggeration to say public disclosure is one of the founding principles of the United States, said Richard Karpel, executive director of the Public Notice Resource Center.
“People take it for granted today, but the idea that the government has to tell you certain information, that’s a fabulous concept,” Karpel said. “There’s too much incentive for local officials to not publish certain information, or to forget about doing it, or to make it so no one can see it.”
Questions about putting Mountain View’s public notices in the Post Record have come up occasionally over the years, said Mike Kasperzak who served four terms on the City Council.
Kasperzak remembered one 2013 episode when the city put forward a poorly conceived animal control ordinance that would have required cats to get rabies shots and banned dogs from public parks. The ordinance was announced in the Post Record and the city’s website, but few saw it. The law passed the City Council on its first reading with barely a peep of public input.
Then one week later, a throng of pet owners “went berserk” after learning what the council had approved, Kasperzak said. It was a rare instance when the City Council decided to immediately reverse an earlier vote.
“I don’t think it was an issue of failure to notice, it was more that no one noticed the notice,” Kasperzak said.
When council members later asked about the Post Record, city attorneys described the newspaper as an advertising vehicle for industry professionals who track government bidding. It’s a newspaper in name only, and it was described as more of a classified publication for government contracts, Kasperzak said.
“No human being actually reads the San Jose Post Record,” Kasperzak said. “The only purpose this newspaper serves is legal noticing; it’s what all the major contractors subscribe to.”
In fact, government requests for bids from private contractors comprise only a fraction of the advertisements from the city of Mountain View in the Post Record. In 2019, city officials posted 15 requests for bids, but they also published more than 100 notices for public meetings, development proposals and other news that pertained to the public at large.
Mountain View also appears to be using the obscure newspaper more than other South Bay cities. About one out of seven government ads in the paper were placed by Mountain View.
Finding this information was not an easy task. The Voice was able to glean the newspaper’s ad history only by scraping data from its legal web portal. To scroll through that data is to revisit many of Mountain View’s hot-button issues of 2019. These legal notices, which likely went unseen by local residents, include announcements for the controversial apartment demolitions on Rock Street and Montecito Avenue, plans for a city safe-parking program for the homeless, as well as long-term efforts to create precise plans for the future development of the East Whisman, Terra Bella and downtown neighborhoods.
Mountain View city officials who were interviewed insist that they follow the spirit of public-notice law by advertising important meetings on the city’s website, through mailers to nearby residents or in other newspapers including the Voice.
Takahashi was emphatic that Mountain View officials do take public disclosure seriously. Only a cynical person would think that city staff would deliberately stifle public discourse, he said.
“That would go against the principles and mission that public servants stand for,” he said. “Everyone here has a high standard in doing the right thing. I would be horrified if that were found out to not be the case.”
City officials point out that newspaper readership is on the decline, and digital media is widely viewed as a more effective platform to disseminate information. Yet many laws for government notices still remain tied to print media, and municipal bodies have looser rules for public disclosure when it comes to digital outlets.
After the Voice’s print deadline Wednesday, city officials provided more information on the Post Record. The newspaper claims to have 20 subscribers in the city of Mountain View, and a total circulation of 77, according to the City Clerk Lisa Natusch. Over the 2018-2019 fiscal year that ended June 30, the city published just under 200 legal notices in the newspaper, she said.
For Mountain View, it remains unclear how city officials make the decision to post public notices in publications other than the San Jose Post Record. Takahashi could not provide information on this question in time for the Voice’s deadline.
While city officials say they do their best to inform the public, local activists can point to a handful of disruptive projects for which they say the city’s public noticing was insufficient. Earlier this year, dozens of families at a Shoreline West apartment complex said they did not receive any notice for a meeting on a linked development that could have resulted in their homes being demolished. The residents were alerted to the final meeting only because a housing advocate noticed it on the City Council agenda.
Notices for the meetings on the Shoreline West project were all published in the Post Record.
“There was zero chance for the residents to know about this,” said Alex Nunez, a Mountain View Housing Justice member. “It just seems problematic to me from the outset to be using an obscure newspaper for this job.”
Mary Hodder, who has closely followed downtown development for the group Livable Mountain View, said she was outraged that the city was posting notices in a paper that was essentially unavailable to residents. Her group has struggled over the years to closely track the progress on issues such as downtown housing, cannabis regulation and parking.
“This is utterly ridiculous. As a constituent of the city, this tells me that (they) don’t want you to know anything,” she said. “It’s like, ‘We’re going to stick these notices in a hole, and you’re going to have to dig it up.'”
The Post-Record has been use for many years for posting various notices. This article is ridiculous.
@Resident — that’s the problem. The article is not ridiculous. What’s ridiculous is that there are only 3 copies of this newspaper in circulation in MV and they are ALL in City Hall apparently
Print newspapers are dying. The laws around public notices need to be updated to reflect modern media.
MV Voice has a itsy-bitsy-teensie-weensie conflict of interest here. This should at least be explicitly mentioned and not just hinted in the article.
MV should at very least also have a copy of the paper in the library, and should add a complimentary subscription for the library as a condition for future contracts.
Legal notice laws should be updated. An independently archived version of the notices needs to exist somewhere, so publishing on city website alone isn’t enough.
The article doesn’t really mention that this newspaper is not the only way the word gets out. City council agendas are published on the website, emails are sent out, they’re on the bulletin board at the front door of city hall. I was at the animal ordinance meeting because I got the email.
Do you think that if the notices were buried in 9-point font in the classified section of the Mercury News that any more people would see them? The way real people find out about city issues is either via reading stories (not ads) in newspapers or via other means entirely.
This is just not right, to the point of being absurd.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy starts with the Vogons demolishing the Earth so that a hyperspace bypass could be built. Earthling Arthur Dent naturally objected.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
The Voice has been trying to raise money to fund it’s operation.
For many years, long time readers and residents know that the Voice is not a news source but an opinion paper who tries to push it’s political agenda on the residents of our city.
It constantly writes one sided hit pieces against one group of property owners in our city, yet it never writes a story from the other sides perspective. Really unfair.
If the Voice publishes a story what the Governor did in our state, and you point out he also pardoned a bunch of criminals in the same week, your post gets deleted.
The Voice has banned many readers from this site, for only disagreeing and pointing out the Hippocrates at the Voice.
They have lost many readers. Lots of people no longer wish to waste their time with the Voice and have picked up the Palo Alto Daily Post instead, which is what I also do. I only occasionally pop in here.
SP Phil, it’s a great tell that it’s one of our local cranks, he’s been posting here all this time and still can’t spell that word correctly. Doesn’t have the courage to use a consistent username, however.
The City of MV is violating the spirit if not the letter of the law that requires public notice. Publishing a notice in a newspaper with almost zero circulation is not an attempt to inform the public, it’s an attempt to keep the public in the dark. If MV wants to publish notices in this bogus newspaper that’s fine, they also need to mirror those notices in a format that’s accessible to the public, such as their website. Anything less is fraud. MV citizens should be outraged, this is nothing less than a takeover of democracy.
I run a newspaper called DevNull and I’ll charge the city only 1 cent to publish the notices in DevNull. My bid wins, I’m the lowest bidder. Come to me.
Yes you’re right. This paper is a politically motivated hit piece. Along with a few that never quite understood English 101.
@Hm – ah come on. We all know autocorrect changes words all the time. He probably misspelled hypocrite and he/she missed the change. Seems your comment is rather petty and not very relevant to the content of his message. Also, how do you know who made the comment? There are many, many of us who object to the left wing bias and constant censorship of this paper. He/she is right when stating that most articles are opinion pieces and objections to the editors opinions are deleted and topics shut down when they start to go in a direction with which the Voice disagrees.
A case in point is the Voice’s next article re Joe Biden. It’s a one sided pro Biden/ anti Trump article and the moderator shut down the conversation before it can even begin by requiring registration. They don’t want to give anybody the opportunity to comment on the bias.
Oh my goodness, they required registration to comment on an article? How could they stifle your free speech so horribly. Please file a lawsuit with the ACLU immediately!
Conservative victimhood complex is really a sight to behold.
@Hmm. – if the Voice required registration for all articles I would agree with you. But they don’t- they only require registration for SOME articles, those in which the right pushes back on the leftist bias and sometimes not until the right starts pushing back. The registration is clearly a tactic to limit the number of comments. No victimhood here, just an awareness that the Voice doesn’t practice journalism, they write op ed’s and have a political agenda. If you don’t see it then you’re not paying attention.
“No victimhood here,” you just find yourself, like the rest of the sad conservatives here, whining and complaining about how censored you are and how everyone is oppressing you. Maybe snowflakes like you should find yourselves safe spaces instead of impotently crying all the time about perceived slights.
Basically two kinds of people will read a story like this: Those acquainted/experienced with Legal-Notices rituals, and those who aren’t.
To the first group, and those of the 2nd who think or learn more about the subject, there’s no real news here — the existence of papers like the Post-Record makes total sense, and the first comment above (by Resident, of Jackson Park) summed things up. This Voice story caters to the second group, readers unfamiliar with the topic, apparently in a bid for sympathy.
Some newspapers specialize in Legal Notices. For business or estate matters requiring Legal Notices, your attorney or accountant knows about these outlets and will refer you. File certain common papers at your County Courthouse, and these newspapers spot the county record and send you offers to satisfy your Legal-Notice requirement at attractive prices. (I’ve never seen the MV Voice make such outreach, nor can I find “Legal Notices” solicited on its website.) So, such business goes to newspapers catering to it. The Legal Notice is a ritual. Many such Notices interest no one, and those who are interested know where to find them. Basically, everyone’s happy almost all the time.
The article did mention why publication frequency disqualifies some papers such as the Voice and PA Post from the City’s use for this purpose. And if “an ordinance was announced in the Post Record and the city’s website, but few saw it,” that really says less about the Post Record than about whether citizens care enough to pay attention to the City’s announcements on its website, which always covers more subjects than any newspaper anyway.
It feels like a very reasonable solution would be to still use the Post-Record but to also replicate the information on the City of Mountain View website. Easily accessible for all.
Hi folks,
I just wanted to chime in here to give a little background on this story. Other commenters have pointed out that Voice has a conflict of interest on this issue, and they’re absolutely right. There’s no two ways about it: We have a vested interest here, and I thought we made that clear in the article.
For years, this conflict has kept our news team from pushing the city on this issue, because we didn’t want to conflate our editorial and business departments.
What changed for us is when we finally saw the abysmal circulation numbers of the SJ Post Record. I don’t think anyone can argue in good faith that Mountain View residents will be informed about their local government from a newspaper that circulates <50 print copies.
At the Voice, we had some robust arguments on whether we should pursue this story, and we decided the public interest outweighed our conflict. Trust me, it was a decision we didn’t make lightly.
Ok, I’ve said my piece. Please carry on!
I’m impressed to see a mention of the Greek physician Hippocrates in a comment in the MV Voice. It’s probably the first time Hippocrates (born 2,600 years ago) has been mentioned in the Voice.
I think at the very least, we should follow up on the implied suggestion that our own public library purchase a subscription to the paper used as our city’s journal of record.
In reference to the public notice lawsthis writing might be worth considering from (https://www.capublicnotice.com/Public-Notice-Law.aspx):
“Public Notice Law
Public notices inform citizens of the everyday activities of government. From government spending to developing new policies, it is important for people to be informed of actions taken by public officials that affect citizens’ everyday lives. Public Notices are essential to a democracy and an informed citizenry. Without public notices, citizens cannot properly and adequately make informed decisions.
While the Internet is a great resource for information, public notices have been and remain most effective in newspapers. Newspapers of general circulation provide daily and weekly news about the community that people seek out. People pay to receive newspapers that are dependably made available at set intervals in homes, at offices, stores, street corners and every local coffee shop. People seek out newspapers to obtain the news about crime, justice, sports, politics, weather, social events, food and entertainment, comics, crossword puzzles and other games. They look for advertisements for all kinds of products and services. Included in this tightly edited and limited package of daily and weekly information are public notice advertisements.
Public notice advertisements published in newspapers that alert citizens of important events in their community are “pushed” into millions of California households. These published public notices inform not just the political insiders who might occasionally visit a government website or sign up for mailed alerts, or even those with a direct stake in the matter, but the entire community.
Newspapers are the watchdogs of their local communities and can most effectively monitor the actions of their respective local governments. Public notices don’t just keep local residents informed. They also hold public officials and agencies accountable. Additionally, public notices in newspapers are permanent records that cannot be altered or deleted. Published public notices provide actual notice to the public about government actions like tax and fee increases, land use and environmental decisions, delinquent taxpayer notices that can lead to a government seizure and sale of someone’s home and the expenditure of public funds. To be effective, public notices must have these attributes:
• PUBLICATION IS IN A FORUM INDEPENDENT OF THE GOVERNMENT.
• THE PUBLISHED NOTICE IS A PRESERVED AND SECURE TANGIBLE RECORD THAT IS ARCHIVED.
• THE NOTICE IS CONVENIENTLY ACCESSIBLE BY ALL SEGMENTS OF SOCIETY.
• PUBLICATION IS VERIFIABLE (BY WAY OF AN AFFIDAVIT OF PUBLICATION).
This website is designed to provide increased value to the public by providing a snapshot of public notices published throughout California in a convenient and searchable format and at no cost to the taxpayer.”
The key part:
• “THE NOTICE IS CONVENIENTLY ACCESSIBLE BY ALL SEGMENTS OF SOCIETY.”
It looks like this news report indicated a serious problem with the City of Mountain View.
Given that this obscure document the San Jose Post Record is NOT CONVENIENTLY ACCESSIBLE BY ALL SEGMENTS OF SOCIETY.
Thus the city may in fact be in violation of these standards.
In response to Oh geez you said:
“@Hmm. – if the Voice required registration for all articles I would agree with you. But they don’t- they only require registration for SOME articles, those in which the right pushes back on the leftist bias and sometimes not until the right starts pushing back. The registration is clearly a tactic to limit the number of comments.”
Registration DOES NOT limit freedom of expression where registration is free and simply requires explicit consent to the terms and conditions regarding a writers conduct, not to personally ridicule, intimidate, or threaten others when posting. In fact if you look at those who are not registered, they tend to make off comments and not discuss the topic at all.
You said:
“No victimhood here, just an awareness that the Voice doesn’t practice journalism, they write op ed’s and have a political agenda. If you don’t see it then you’re not paying attention.”
The fact that you are free to make such blanket criticism regarding your opinion of the “practice” of journalism is proof that your claim is simply untrue. But that is your right to express.
For the record, if we suddenly restrict an otherwise perfectly respectful Town Square discussion thread to registered users, it’s to stop bots from posting spam. Once a spambot finds its way onto a thread, restricting posters is the only tool we have to stop the attack.