Media Coverage: San Jose Spotlight - Silicon Valley city must pay after removing campaign signs
October 8, 2024
Cupertino election signs have been mysteriously disappearing, but it’s not the work of disgruntled residents or political opponents. It’s the city.
Maintenance workers in Cupertino’s public works department removed and threw out more than 15 election lawn signs last week for Cupertino City Council Candidates R “Ray” Wang and Councilmember Kitty Moore — signs placed legally along Bollinger Road with residents’ consent. City officials said the removal was the mistake of workers on a routine traffic safety sweep who were unfamiliar with the election code. Now, the city will have to reimburse at least more than $1,000o in total to the candidates to fix a violation of its own code.
Cupertino’s municipal code for political sign violations requires the city to either issue a two- business day verbal notice to correct or remove the signs or give the candidate an opportunity to pick up the signs up from city storage. Instead the signs were thrown out. But neither candidate violated the code.
Wang said the signs went missing twice after volunteers replaced them following the first removal, but the public works department said it only removed them once. The candidates inquired about the incident with the city on Oct. 2 and in an email chain obtained by San José Spotlight, City Manager Pamela Wu apologized for the error on Oct. 3 and promised to reimburse them for the loss.
Wang said the money and signs aren’t the issue, but rather the principle and exposure loss on the busy Cupertino thoroughfare.
“It’s not about the signs. It’s kind of systemic,” he told San José Spotlight. “It’s about what’s really going on because it’s almost like election interference.”
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Please vote number 1 (Kitty Moore) and number 5 (Ray Wang) on your ballot statements.
© 2024 R “Ray Wang For Cupertino City Council 2024