We have not discussed Dixon Downs Race Track much here. For one thing, there have been more than enough Davis issues that have simply kept us occupied. For another, I sense the last thing that the good folks opposing the Dixon Downs Racetrack wanted was the sense that the liberal freaks in Davis were somehow pulling the strings.
That said, we must say something about this nice victory for the little guy over the big corporation. After all, the big back race track folks who angered just about everyone down in Dixon including other folks who are often big and bad in their own right like Campbell's Soup, spent over $500,000 to win the passage of the track. And let's face it, $500,000 in Dixon dollars is probably more like $2 million or more Davis dollars.
Let us not forget just how this started--a 4-1 vote by the City Council approved the race track. Not deterred, the grassroots folks down in Dixon started collecting signatures and forced the issue onto the ballot. And then they defeated it by a wide margin. This is Dixon's Covell Village vote. A great victory, as I said for the small guy.
At the end of the day, this gets me thinking about what all of this means exactly. Since November of 2005, we have seen three major votes on big development projects--two in Davis and one in Dixon. Target very narrowly passed and both Dixon Downs and Covell Village were handily defeated.
Why did Target pass and the other two get defeated? All three represented fundamental and large disruptions to life and we know it in their respective communities. The most interesting thing I have found is that even among those who supported Covell Village, there were concerns about size and infrastructure. Moreover, many of the people who opposed Covell Village were not what we might call knee-jerk zero growthers. Instead the fundamental belief is that that area could not support a massive influx of residents. Covell Blvd. had no easy access to the freeway and not easy way to expand to support another 6,000 residents and their accompanying traffic.
However, I think there is another factor at work in Covell Village, that helps us understand both the Target Vote and the Dixon Vote. The upside for Covell Village did not positively affect the average Davis resident. What does the average Davis resident gain from 2,000 or so housing units? If you live here, affordable housing is probably not a huge inducement. So for most who supported Covell Village there had to be some sort of business decision or philosophical decision that led to that support. There was no direct benefit to the average voter. So you had a calculation where most of the negatives of passing the development project--traffic congestion and other infrastructure problems outweighed any benefit.
Target passed by the skin of its teeth precisely because unlike Covell Village, a larger percentage of people could see an actual and direct benefit that could for enough of them offset the negatives. People wanted a large store where they could do a large amount of affordable shopping in town. People wanted a place (or at least enough) that they could purchase bulk amounts of cheap consumer goods. I am not saying that passage was inevitable, because I think Target could have been defeated under some circumstances, but Target at least presented a possibility of passage.
That leads us to Dixon Downs Racetrack. The people I have spoken to on this issue are of two minds. Some are strongly opposed to it because of environmental, traffic, noise, and congestion concerns (see the Covell Village arguments). Others (and these are primarily Davis people) simply do not really care. Either they moderately support it as a revenue generator or they do not care at all. I have not met a person who actually wants the track because they will attend horse races. And herein lies the point. The vast majority of people in Dixon were voting to approve or deny a project that provided a good that they would not consume and that many had no interest in consuming.
At the end of the day, the Dixon Downs vote came down to how much weight you gave economic development or how much you personally had to gain from such a project. For the average Dixon voter, like the average Covell Voter in Davis, the positives from this project without the personal appeal, just did not justify the disruption and the project failed. We are talking about a project failing in a town with many big box stores and no qualms about growth and development.
The lesson that we learn is that projects of this magnitude need to have a broader appeal to the residents other than--it is good for the economy. Because if that is all they have going for them, the measures will not pass. The easiest vote in politics is the status quo vote--embodied by a no vote on a referendum or initiative. You must convince voters to vote yes because their default is to vote no. To pass, they must entice voters with actual goods and services that the average person has a desire to consume. Dixon Downs failed much like Covell Village because the average person in Dixon probably had little desire to go to the race tracks.
The Woodland Daily Democrat is already suggesting Woodland as a location for the race track. Not sure that is as appealing a location to have it off of I-5 as it was on the I-80 corridor.
As they write:
That said, we must say something about this nice victory for the little guy over the big corporation. After all, the big back race track folks who angered just about everyone down in Dixon including other folks who are often big and bad in their own right like Campbell's Soup, spent over $500,000 to win the passage of the track. And let's face it, $500,000 in Dixon dollars is probably more like $2 million or more Davis dollars.
Let us not forget just how this started--a 4-1 vote by the City Council approved the race track. Not deterred, the grassroots folks down in Dixon started collecting signatures and forced the issue onto the ballot. And then they defeated it by a wide margin. This is Dixon's Covell Village vote. A great victory, as I said for the small guy.
At the end of the day, this gets me thinking about what all of this means exactly. Since November of 2005, we have seen three major votes on big development projects--two in Davis and one in Dixon. Target very narrowly passed and both Dixon Downs and Covell Village were handily defeated.
Why did Target pass and the other two get defeated? All three represented fundamental and large disruptions to life and we know it in their respective communities. The most interesting thing I have found is that even among those who supported Covell Village, there were concerns about size and infrastructure. Moreover, many of the people who opposed Covell Village were not what we might call knee-jerk zero growthers. Instead the fundamental belief is that that area could not support a massive influx of residents. Covell Blvd. had no easy access to the freeway and not easy way to expand to support another 6,000 residents and their accompanying traffic.
However, I think there is another factor at work in Covell Village, that helps us understand both the Target Vote and the Dixon Vote. The upside for Covell Village did not positively affect the average Davis resident. What does the average Davis resident gain from 2,000 or so housing units? If you live here, affordable housing is probably not a huge inducement. So for most who supported Covell Village there had to be some sort of business decision or philosophical decision that led to that support. There was no direct benefit to the average voter. So you had a calculation where most of the negatives of passing the development project--traffic congestion and other infrastructure problems outweighed any benefit.
Target passed by the skin of its teeth precisely because unlike Covell Village, a larger percentage of people could see an actual and direct benefit that could for enough of them offset the negatives. People wanted a large store where they could do a large amount of affordable shopping in town. People wanted a place (or at least enough) that they could purchase bulk amounts of cheap consumer goods. I am not saying that passage was inevitable, because I think Target could have been defeated under some circumstances, but Target at least presented a possibility of passage.
That leads us to Dixon Downs Racetrack. The people I have spoken to on this issue are of two minds. Some are strongly opposed to it because of environmental, traffic, noise, and congestion concerns (see the Covell Village arguments). Others (and these are primarily Davis people) simply do not really care. Either they moderately support it as a revenue generator or they do not care at all. I have not met a person who actually wants the track because they will attend horse races. And herein lies the point. The vast majority of people in Dixon were voting to approve or deny a project that provided a good that they would not consume and that many had no interest in consuming.
At the end of the day, the Dixon Downs vote came down to how much weight you gave economic development or how much you personally had to gain from such a project. For the average Dixon voter, like the average Covell Voter in Davis, the positives from this project without the personal appeal, just did not justify the disruption and the project failed. We are talking about a project failing in a town with many big box stores and no qualms about growth and development.
The lesson that we learn is that projects of this magnitude need to have a broader appeal to the residents other than--it is good for the economy. Because if that is all they have going for them, the measures will not pass. The easiest vote in politics is the status quo vote--embodied by a no vote on a referendum or initiative. You must convince voters to vote yes because their default is to vote no. To pass, they must entice voters with actual goods and services that the average person has a desire to consume. Dixon Downs failed much like Covell Village because the average person in Dixon probably had little desire to go to the race tracks.
The Woodland Daily Democrat is already suggesting Woodland as a location for the race track. Not sure that is as appealing a location to have it off of I-5 as it was on the I-80 corridor.
As they write:
