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Signs for and against Measure V are reportedly being stolen from front yards across Menlo Park.
Mayor Betsy Nash said that both her No on V sign and her sign for her own City Council campaign were stolen from her yard, as well as other surrounding homes. She added that this type of thing happens every campaign season.
“We move on,” Nash said.
Signs for the Yes on V campaign were reported stolen from the entrance to Suburban Park.
According to Nicole Chessari, co-founder of the group that put Measure V on the ballot, the woman taking the signs was asked what she was doing. She replied that she was “cleaning up the neighborhood,” and that she was “tired of seeing (Yes on V) signs.”
The woman was captured on video taking the signs and driving away, and Chessari said she has submitted a police report for petty theft.
“It may not seem like a big deal to some people, but $10 for a sign when that’s the entirety of some people’s donations (matters),” Chessari said. “I would not be doing my job as one of the people running the campaign if I did not protect people’s donations, whether it’s $10 or $2.”
Chessari said that a construction paper sign made by children to support Yes on V was also torn down.
Resident Karen Dearing said her No on V sign was moved from her front yard, and it was replaced with a sign she had not requested supporting Peter Ohtaki, who is running against Nash for the City Council District 4 seat and who supports Measure V. Her No on V sign was shoved back into the bushes, she said.
While Dearing wasn’t home at the time, her neighbor got the incident on video. Dearing said she is not pressing charges.
“It definitely felt extraordinarily inappropriate,” Dearing said. “It seems quite brazen.”
Ohtaki said that one of his volunteers thought that they were adding the sign to the construction site beside the home, and that his campaign does not believe in moving people’s signs. He apologized to Dearing on NextDoor and reiterated his apologies in an interview with The Almanac.
Ohtaki added that he had also had multiple campaign signs stolen.
Both the No and Yes on Measure V campaigns have said they are not involved with any theft or disturbance of people’s signs.
While I deplore the practice of removing yard signs of opposing candidates or propositions, I’m not convinced that they make a big difference. If I lived on a street with Yes on V in every yard, I’d still vote NO. Perhaps opposing parties could agree on signs bearing the message “Inform yourself on Prop V and vote your conscience”
I think it’s an important addition to this article, that lawn signs have been added in many places without permission of the owners. The public utility land along Bay Rd. comes to mind here, but also city light poles and other places where campaign literature should not be posted are seemingly posted without repercussion, leaving campaigns that do follow the rules at a disadvantage. It would be nice if everyone followed the rules.
The only thing less effective than signs for candidates and measures, is people so petty that they would steal those lawn signs from other people’s lawns. How ‘excessively enthusiastic’ do you have to be to actually take time to do that? Especially with all the cctv-like devices people have on their property these days. It would be such an embarrassing illegal thing to get prosecuted for! And I have to agree, it won’t change how people vote. ????
I’m disappointed in the Ohtaki campaign for using this article to deflect the responsibility of his campaign supporter who stashed the resident’s No on V sign in the bushes, replacing it with the Ohtaki sign. We’ve all seen the very clear and multiple videos of this activity on NextDoor. There is zero chance that the woman who did this was trying to do so in front of the neighboring construction site, as Ohtaki tries to argue. The Ohtaki sign she posted unlawfully was many, many feet away from the construction site and clearly in front of the home whose owner is referenced. This is unambiguous. Also, this woman stashed the No on V sign in the bushes; she clearly had an agenda and knew what she was doing in that moment. Ohtaki campaign, take another look at the video, and please post an apology for mischaracterizing what we all know actually happened. We know you didn’t direct your supporter to engage in this behavior, but it’s not OK to deny that it happened intentionally.
The woman who is caught on the Nextdoor videos, stashing the No on V sign in the bushes and then posting an Ohtaki sign instead is clearly identifiable in those videos; there is a close up of her face, hair, body, and car. We know who she is, and we are dismayed that a local realtor who lives and works in West Menlo would engage in this kind of unlawful and disrespectful behavior. A few days after this incident, this same woman drove down my street, rolled down her window, and yelled out, “Yes on V!”, to an elderly man walking into his home (that has No on V signs out front) with two young children. Several members of my family were outside and witnessed this first hand. This local realtor (whose name I shall not mention here) needs to stop harassing her neighbors, especially in front of children. She is exacerbating a toxic, divisive political culture, and it’s not OK.
This happens every year around Halloween. Chill
Sign-stealing is annoying but also totally common. No campaign should condone or attempt to excuse it.
I’m intrigued, however, to learn that Peter’s volunteer was allegedly attempting to put up a Peter Ohtaki sign at the construction site next door to Karen Dearing. That site appears to be owned by TJ Homes (a company that buys and flips single-family housing). Did TJ Homes request a Peter Ohtaki sign? Are they supporting his campaign? Or is Peter’s campaign putting signs up on other people’s property without permission, gambling that they won’t get taken down? (https://tjh.com/build-on-our-homesite/740-olive-street/)
Also, yowza – that’s quite a mark-up from the sale price of $4 million, which is quite a difference from the pre-sale taxable value of $221,138. https://www.zillow.com/homes/740-Olive-St-Menlo-Park_rb/15595554_zpid/
Given the skewed incentives associated with Prop 13 it’s no wonder that SB9 hasn’t taken off in Menlo Park. Aside from Signgate Episode IX, the other nothingburger in this campaign season has been Peter’s insistence that SB 9 is going to ruin our neighborhoods. Seems unlikely.
Menlo Park Citizen:
if the person is clearly identifiable, identify her. Her neighbors deserve to know what type of person they have as a neighbor. Stealing signs, while not uncommon, is still childish and, dare I say, un-American. You are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine. No one has the right to mess with my stuff because they disagree with me.
Katie,
I’m not sure how familiar you are with TJ Homes but they do not just buy and flip homes. They also offer the service of building a new house on property owned by an individual. In this regard they act as a construction company and not a developer. I don’t know the situation in the article specifically but it’s possible that the owner of the property had approved the sign being placed there. I suppose you could look up the ownership of that address and see if it’s TJ homes and if it’s not contact the property owner to find out if they had approved the sign on their property. Personally I think that that’s something that maybe the author of the article should have done.
Menlo Park Citizen,
I’m wondering if we actually read the same article. Peter apologized more than once for the incident that he was not personally involved in and he related one line about the intentions of what happened. You seem to be making a bigger deal of this than even the article did. Taking signs down before the election is not right and should not be condemned. I’m happy that Peter apologized for it. Time to move on.
Caitlin Darke needs to apologize for her behavior. You can be sure I will never call upon her to sell my property. I prefer to work with people with integrity.
Menlo Voter, you and I are aligned on voting No on Measure V, and we both condemn the stealing of signs and the harassment of neighbors in this context. However, my very much unsolicited advice is that it’s not appropriate to name the individual who did it in this kind of public setting. It takes it too far. Please delete her name here. Thank you.
Menlo Park Citizen:
She did it. If she didn’t want to be identified in a public forum having done something wrong, she shouldn’t have done it in the first place. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t delete it. Once it’s posted, after the initial opportunity to edit, the post can be modified. By me anyway. I suggest if you want it removed you ask the editor to do so.
Not to bring up bad memories but isn’t this the same kind of a situation that led to a long expensive legal fight in the Willows some years back?
Brian:
yes, but IIRC the other case was based on circumstantial evidence. There is video in this case.
Early on the Measure V campaign, I saw a prominent (and, yes, Suburban Park-based) principal of the “Yes on V” campaign positively crowing that, as she drove all around town including along Alameda de Las Pulgas, she saw what she considered a glorious display of Yes on V campaign posters along the public light poles. This seemed pretty cheeky, so I responded, directly to her, with two points:
1. The Alameda de las Pulgas locations she had in mind (for which I provided photos and exact locations) are here in _my_ area, unincorporated West Menlo, _not_ in her city. West Menlo is the area that made a particular point of opting out of being annexed, back when Menlo Park grabbed the Sharon Estate, because my parents and other locals wanted no part of that city. So, I said, it was particularly galling to have her crow about, essentially, littering West Menlo with the detritus of her political squabble.
2. All such light poles are owned by San Mateo County Public Works, and attaching flyers to them is illegal without permits (which the county doesn’t grant).
Given those facts, I politely asked the Yes on V campaign to promptly remove such posters from (at least) West Menlo’s public utility poles, and asked her to confirm that this would be done. I added that if they were unremoved after a day, I would remove them. My polite request was ignored. So, a day later, I made a point of walking around West Menlo and Sharon Heights taking down all illegal signage on utility poles.
I am disapointed at having to clean up Yes on V’s abuse of public property, particularly non-Menlo Park public property. However, I am not surprised.
Rick, the election is over.
Hopefully, civility can return to the comments section.
“MP Resident”, I care a _whole_ lot less whether “civility returns to the comment section” than whether illegal and socially problematic behaviour from City of Menlo Park political partisans continues to spill over onto us of unincorporated San Mateo County who _specifically_ opted out of being part of your perennially dysfunctional city.
Although the behaviour of Meno Park figures, including three members of MPFPD who ought to have known better, was frankly disgraceful during this election cycle, I personally as a non-MP voter and taxpayer would not have given a tinker’s anathematisation, if it had not kept spilling inappropriately _and illegally_ onto us of the county lands.
Please get clear on this: We are outside Menlo Park because we explicitly rejected your city. Please stop (literally) littering our neighbourhoods with your squabbles. And if you keep the squalid advocacy-wrestling somehow inside the city limits, that would be appreciated, too. Tusen takk.