Davis Democrats United Around the Concept of Change

Last night the Davis Democratic Club came together for their annual Valentine's Day potluck. While they may not agree on who should be the Presidential nominee from the party as the close battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama moves on past Super Tuesday, what is clear is that the leaders of the local party are united around the concept of change from the current leadership under George W. Bush.

Assemblywoman Los Wolk told the crowd that she was

"incredibly excited that we were going to take back the White House."

She continued,

"Throughout the state, the number of Democrats that came out and voted exceeded the number of Republicans by three-to-one. There are just not enough voting machines, it is just unbelievable what is going on."

Assemblywoman Wolk told the crowd that in March she would formally kick her race to succeed Senator Mike Machado for the 5th Senate District of California. It will be a tough battle against right wing Republican Greg Aghazarian. She will be spending much of her time campaigning in San Joaquin County.

Davis Mayor Sue Greenwald acknowledged that the Presidential Primaries have been so exciting that it's been hard to concentrate on her own reelection campaign.

Supervisor Mariko Yamada, candidate for the 8th Assembly District joked,

"Today is the only day when red is my favorite color, the rest of the year blue is my favorite color."

She pointed out that there were 79 days until the June 3, 2008 election in which she would faced West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon.

The West Sacramento Mayor Cabaldon remarked,

"Watching over the last couple of months this election, I heard Bill Clinton say just the other day 'looking at the faces of young people,' well looking at the faces of people of all ages over the last several months about our Democratic Primary, for the last couple of years over our ability to actually do something about big problems like global warming, we're starting to believe in change and possibility again and young people are certainly the best example of that, but all of us are doing that. We can't blow this one. It's too easy to take that for granted. In November if we don't have that same sense of hope and possibility and energy and optimism, we will lose and we know what another four or eight years of a Republican in the White House will mean."

Jim Provenza, former Davis School Board President and current candidate for the 4th Supervisorial District remarked:

"I'm very excited about what's going on in the Presidential race as everyone else is, but one of the things that really moves me is that both candidates for President have really called on all of us to be part of change. It's not just electing someone, having them go to office, and then go back to what we do in our daily lives and expect everything to get better. Instead they are both talking about a movement that will involve all of us as agents of change on a national, state, and local level and that's really what essential because we elect our leaders to take us in that direction but it is all of us that will accomplish these things."

Mr. Provenza then hearkened back to John F. Kennedy's call to arms about public service asking the nation to sacrifice in order to accomplish collective goals.

Jim Provenza's opponent, John Ferrera who works in the State Senate for Senator Denise Ducheney.

"We share a lot of the same values. My wife Anna and I for instance grew up in families that were very active in their communities."

He remarked that Democrats in the legislature are united for the first time in many years.

"Something that is so different this year is that for the first time in many years... Assembly Democrats and Senate Democrats are actually on the same page, working together because we know, that beyond the competition between house, beyond the competition between Assemblymembers vying for the next Senate seat or Senate members vying for the next constitutional office what is absolutely critical this year is that Democrats stick together. Otherwise we will have a Governor's budget where we trick poor people into having to file for their health care often enough that the fall out of eligibility that just isn't how we save money. We will raise college fees again. We will cut off aid to children of working parents because they come up a percent short of a federal work requirement... That's not the kind of California that we want."

In the coming weeks and months many of the people in the room last night will be working against each other. Davis is largely a Democratic town. All of the candidates for non-partisan offices such as the County Supervisor and City Council will be Democrats. However on this night at least people saw beyond those battles to the big picture. The fight at the national level, the fight at the state level, and the fight at the local level for the kinds of Democratic, big D values that unite us in common purpose.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Freddie Oakley More Quietly Stands Up for the Right to Marry

It was a scene that was much different from that of a year ago when Yolo County Clerk Freddie Oakley made national headlines with her protest of California's Marriage Laws that prevent her from issuing Marriage Certificates to same sex partners. There were no protests outside. No angry demonstrators. No counter-demonstrators. It was just the County Clerk, two candidates for the Assembly, and a small number of same sex couples who came.

At noon, Freddie Oakley turned down a small number of couples and gave them a card that read:

"Thanking you for visiting the Yolo County Clerk today, February 14, 2008. I am so sorry that I am not legally authorized to issue a marriage license to you. Instead, with your permission, I will make a donation in your name to Marriage Equality USA. Please don't give up."

Both County Supervisor Mariko Yamada, a longtime support of marriage equity and her opponent for the 8th Assembly District Christopher Cabaldon, himself an openly gay male, were at the small ceremony.

Speaking to the Democratic event later in the evening, the West Sacramento Mayor made a few remarks on the subject.

"Just one personal note. This is the worst day of the year for me. It's Valentine's Day and I typically don't like to go out on Valentine's Day. Mariko and several of us today have gone around the region because later in the year there is a very good chance that there will be a constitutional amendment on the ballot to permanently ban same sex marriage. To permanently ensconce discrimination into the California Constitution because some people think that the Supreme Court might actually see the light in March and rule that marriage equality is something in California that's enshrined in our constitution. I hope you'll take the chance in the next couple of month if you believe that it should be okay, that as the Mayor I should be able to marry just like a convicted felon can. To take the chance and talk to your [family] and just have a quick conversation about the role of government in deciding who can love who. And what that means and whether we really want government to say you can't marry because you have three parking tickets. That's not the kind of society that we want. But that change will only happen if more of us have this personal heart-to-heart conversation..."

In March, the California Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the ban on same sex marriage. And it seems that many think there will be a good chance that that ban will be overturned. If that happens, opponents of same-sex marriage will likely try to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot. Once again, just ahead of a Presidential Election.

It is probably something that most people do not think about on Valentine's Day, when they go to bed at night with their spouse and realize how lucky they are to be able to be married to the person they love, to the person of their dreams. It is also probably not something we think about often enough how difficult it must be to not be able to marry the person that they wish.

For me, I respected the courageous stand that Freddie Oakley took last year in a very public way. But I also respect the stance she took yesterday in a much more low-key manner that was just as heartfelt and just as loving. Yolo County is lucky to have such a compassionate person serving the public as our Clerk Recorder.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Thursday Vanguard Stories

• Commentary: Looking Back At Rhetoric from Measure X
  
  
• Chancellor's Brown Bag Lunch Brings Renewed Calls for Justice For Sodexho Workers

Commentary: Looking Back At Rhetoric from Measure X

The discussion Tuesday night at Davis City Council about the meaning of the city's one percent growth guideline hearkens back to a discussion from September 2005 that occurred ahead of the vote on Covell Village.

Under the header "cap, guideline or goal?" the Davis Enterprise's Claire St. John cited then City Planning Director Bill Emlen (now City Manager) arguing the 1 percent growth "cap."

"the 1 percent growth cap actually gives the city more stability and predictability in terms of how fast it will grow and where.

A big project like Covell Village would make the planning process even more stable, Emlen said.

"If you're looking at a planned-growth scenario, it gives some certainty about where the city is going for the next 10 years, if it were approved," he said. "I would say it provides more order in terms of growth than if we were dealing with other projects that were coming in on the periphery that may not be part of what we think of as a compact city."

However, then Mayor Pro Tem Sue Greenwald had a different view of the 1 percent growth guideline and how much it actually amount to.

"The council majority has been very unclear about whether it's a target or a requirement or what," Greenwald said. "In fact, what they passed is 1 percent not counting affordable housing, or something they called 'exceptional infill opportunities,' which is a loophole you can drive a truck through.

"If it really is a cap, then let's stop treating it as a target and let's stop using it to justify approving projects," she said."

With affordable housing and certain infill projects, housing units per year can rise to about 325, Greenwald was told by Senior Planner Bob Wolcott.

Mike Harrington, by then a former City Councilmember:

"Harrington also voted against the 250-home parameter, saying it was tailor-made for Covell Village.

"By adopting the 1 percent growth requirement, then they built in this bureaucratic need for this project," Harrington said of the council majority. "The way they wrote it, it's like it specifically required Covell ."

The most telling piece of information actually comes from an Op-Ed published on October 23, 2005 and penned by Councilmembers Stephen Souza and Don Saylor.

In this op-ed they use the 1% growth guideline as an argument to approve Covell Village instilling fear of worse projects such as a Gidaro project forced upon Davis by the county as a fear mechanism.

They begin arguing that the 1% growth guideline is a goal:

"Measure X will decide how Davis will meet its 1 percent housing goals for the next decade, and which plan best meets those goals."

That argument is at least somewhat consistent with the argument that they are using right now. However, watch what they do here:

"Can't we just use Measure J to vote down proposals like Gidaro's?

Not necessarily. We are required by law to meet our regional housing requirements. That's one reason we passed a 1 percent growth policy. If we don't accept our fair share of growth , we can lose major transportation funding, and it invites developers like Gidaro to do an end run around the City Council — and the voters — to force development right on the edge of town."

What they have done here is very cleaver, they have used RHNA guidelines to argue that if we do not grow, we will have growth forced on us by the boogeyman, apparently Steve Gidaro--which is ironic since Stephen Souza likely would not have been elected without Gidaro's intervention into the 2004 election.

In this small argument, the 1% growth guideline becomes exactly what they told us it was not on Tuesday night--growth pressure and a requirement.

Even as they argued on Tuesday that the 1% growth guideline was not producing growth pressure, two years ago they explicitly used it to pressure the community into voting for Covell Village. If we did not pass Covell Village we would lose certain funding AND we would "be forced" to grow with other projects that would presumably be worse.

This was a poor argument on a number of fronts, most specifically because there was nothing to preclude them from offering a more preferred alternative to Covell Village from the outset. There was never a no need to approve and promote a project the voters do not like.

But they were also arguing that the law required us to grow--a marked change from Tuesday night when they suggested the 1 percent guideline was a cap not a mandate for growth.

This is a tricky argument on a number of fronts from their perspective. If we do not grow at that rate, it is not a "violation" of the law. It would simply mean that we would become ineligible for certain funding from the state. The voters then would have to weigh the costs of Covell compared to the costs of non-compliance--should SACOG decide to enforce those requirements.

Second, this argument no longer even applies to Davis since the RHNA numbers have shrunk at present to .25% growth or half what Covell alone would have imposed on us for the next decade. So why have we maintained the 1 percent growth level when we are not required to do so--if the RHNA numbers were the reason to set the growth at that level in the first place?

Missing from Tuesday's conversation is that the argument about mandated growth requirements should no longer be present if RHNA is not imposing it.

The councilmembers then pressed the argument back in 2005 that by passing Covell Village, we allow Davis to remain Davis. But that's the open question now guiding our thinking now. If we add 2300 units every seven years, how long before Davis is no longer Davis?

That is the point that was dodged on Tuesday night.

Don Saylor tried to finesse this point with the following argument:

“We live in Davis for a high quality of life and a sense of community. And when we think about what causes that, how many of us actually think it has to do with how many of us there are.”

But if Davis is 120,000 people is it still Davis? What makes Davis, Davis? What separates Davis from Woodland, Vacaville, and Fairfield? Mr. Saylor did not answer the question on Tuesday. Now did Mr. Saylor attempt to reconcile his beliefs about Covell Village versus those of the voters.

In 2005, Councilmembers Souza and Saylor argued that Covell village was "smart planning. With targeted housing, open space, bike paths, public safety enhancements and the rest."

But the voters saw it differently. They saw it as sprawl. They saw a huge number of units added into a location with existing traffic concerns and limited access.

Finally, Mr. Saylor on Tuesday night highlighted a litany of existing housing needs but he never defined or even described how those housing needs will fit into the city.

It bears repeating, 2300 every seven years equals 1.5 Mace Ranch sized developments. Think about where you are putting the next Mace Ranch. Now think about where you would put three of them over the next 14 years.

Their only defense was that four the last four years we have grown at .55 percent. That is true. But guess what, had we passed Covell Village, that would have doubled to 1% pretty quickly. And when he starts talking about student housing, senior housing, and single family housing, you know the plan for the next seven years is not .55 percent growth. Because .55 percent growth is not accommodating his vision.

Look we all want more affordable housing, we want the students to be able to reside in this community, we want seniors to be able to retire near their families. The question is how accommodate those goals. And one way we do not accomplish them is to remove a huge swath of student occupied units along 3rd and B and replace them with owner-occupied bungalows. One way we do not accomplish any of these is by producing housing units that average between $400,000 and $600,000 along the periphery.

There is a disconnect between the rhetoric of the council majority and the reality of the proposals that have been brought forward.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Chancellor's Brown Bag Lunch Brings Renewed Calls for Justice For Sodexho Workers

Yesterday UC Davis Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef had his "brown bag lunch" where he spoke before a group largely made up of his own assistants, provosts, vice-chancellors, and other upper administration.

He spoke at length about a number of his own concerns before turning it over to questions. The biggest concern at this point is a proposed across-the-board cut from the governor due to the budget crisis. A cut that will be as much as 10 percent.

The Chancellor stressed that all options were on the table. Among those options is a higher than the projected 7 percent tuition increase.

Another option is no enrollment growth. He said they were projecting 5000 new students given the enrollment numbers in high schools across the state. The problem with that approach is that for forty years the UC system has taken in the top 12.5 percent of graduating seniors and if they did not do that this year that would be a marked shift in their philosophy and he indicated not a shift they would be comfortable with.

He also put on the table cuts in services to students and cuts in health care coverage to employees. The latter would force employees to dig into their own resources in order to maintain their health coverage.

It is interesting that one item not mentioned as being on the table even though it would not generate a lot of savings would be a roll back of upper administrative salaries. Some may recall the near riots that took place when the UC Board of Regents announced huge tuition hikes while at the same time increased some of their top administrative salaries by $50,000 per year. Symbolic to be sure, but it would be similar to a CEO of a major corporation taking a huge salary increase while at the same they were laying off $10,000 rank and file employees.

Dominating the question and answer period were concerns about worker contracts including Sodexho workers but also university employees who are seeking new contracts amid talks of huge budget cuts.

Don Gibson, a UC Davis student who is VP of the Davis College Democrats and an elected member of the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee. He read from the resolution passed on January 7, 2008 that called for a university contract for food service employees.

The Chancellor asked Janet Gong to speak to this issue.

"In October, the end of the month, we signed what's called a memorandum of understanding between the university and Sodexho. Sodexho is the vendor that supplies contracted out food service for both our vendor halls as well as our retail operations such as you see in this building downstairs.

That MOU provides for increases in wages at classification levels for campus food service workers that are equal between what Sodexho is paying and what campus workers would be making on campus. The wages are identical in terms of the classification wages.

It also spoke to health insurance and we did find that there were disparities in health insurance between what benefits the university would provide employees and what the vendor was providing. So we arranged with Sodexho to go from a 60-40 employer-employee pay plan to an 80-20 plan. And we supplemented that with $100.10 per month as a stipend that could also go to employees for insurance.

Wages were increased in September, insurance increases were effective in January, since that time there has been a 47 percent increase in the number of Sodexho employees who are now receiving health insurance."

Ms. Gong further suggested that:

"We've agreed to undertake a process to look at all options... certainly the option of bringing food service employees in house is one of the options that we're looking at. To do that we are mining all kinds of operational and financial data."

The goal according to Janet Gong was to have preliminary recommendations by April as to whether they should bring food service employees in house. It seems obvious on two levels first that conditions for employees have improved since October both on the wages front and the health care front. However, it also seems obvious that the university would not continue its relationship with Sodexho unless there remained strong financial incentive to do so, which necessarily means that the workers are receiving less in terms of wages and benefits than they would under a university contract. And while the budget crunch is a concern, UC Davis has less excuse on this issue than on others since it is really the only UC outsourcing labor.

Max Alper of AFSCME 3299 disagreed with Janet Gong on some of the points that she raised.

"I just wanted to make sure that everybody saw that there was a report put out by a progressive faculty group for UC Davis that found many interesting things including that Sodexho wages are still even with these changes 5 to 9 percent below UC Davis wages that are paid at the UC Davis medical center. And more disturbing is that health care for families is still 41 percent more expensive including the 100 dollar stipend. And when you ask people to wait until April for preliminary results there are some workers right here who can tell you why they can't wait."

Janet Gong responded that food service workers at the UC Davis medical center are not comparable to the food service workers on campus.

"There are very distinct differences between those two which include things like at the medical center food service workers are dealing directly with patients, there is delivery of food to patients, there is compliance with charting restrictions, with regulations, there are different regulatory agencies, it is a 365, 7 day a week, 24 hour a day operation. Those kind of responsibilities in the job descriptions and classifications are very different than working in a campus food-based operation."

Tarone Bittner unit chair for UAW 2865 at Davis spoke passionately on the issue of outsourced workers and disputed notions by university staff and administration that they were working to bring UC pay inline with market wages.

"I have been here for three years, I have seen no movement on this. Yet we have you sitting here saying that you want to pay market wages. Well do it, what else needs to be done. The Sodexho issue is a sad issue in and of itself because we're talking about out-sourcing which is intolerable... It should be intolerable for every worker on this campus. Because what you're saying is that we're going to take the opportunity to exploit not only the workers that are unionized but the workers in our midst that work for Sodexho. So we're going to pay them even less.

And we all know where this concept comes from, right, outsourcing, downsizing, etc., that happens when a corporation wants to make more money by paying less in labor costs. It makes sense to a certain degree to do that nationally, but to do it in your community is particularly offense because what you're talking about is bringing down your standard of living for everyone in your own community. That doesn't make any sense to me.

There's a social cost here that seems to be missed. So let me reiterate, all of the workers at UC are paid a substandard wage. So let's start right there. Let's fix the thing with Sodexho, we're the last campus in the system that's outsourcing, so we're like the backwater of the UC system.

But we need to fix this so that we can get to the issue of bringing up the wages to market which you said your for. We could deal with that right now. I'm sure all the unions would be happy to meet tomorrow to bring up all the wages to market."

In the end, Sodexho workers Joe Moreno and Esther Juarez tried to talk with the Chancellor about their health situations and the impact of the university's policy on their lives. However, the Chancellor was quickly ushered out the back door and the workers were left frustrated at their lack of ability to express to the Chancellor the impact of the university's policies.

People will look at the improvements and perhaps ask why the workers are continuing their struggle, but it is clear that the university has been forced since October to make concessions they did not want to make and they also are considering more changes. It is difficult to know what will happen in April and it therefore makes sense to continue to press their demands to become UC employees with better wages, better health insurance, and better working conditions.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

News and Commentary: Council Majority Votes To Maintain 1% Growth Guideline

It was a debate steeped in philosophy, maybe a little too much philosophy if one agrees with Councilmember Don Saylor. But at the core of the 1 percent growth guideline are fundamental concerns about what kind of community we want to live in now and in the future.

The lines of the debate were at the same time simple and blurred. The council majority argument was essentially to keep the 1% growth guideline policy in place while at the same time moving their rhetorical position slightly to suggest that the 1% guideline was a cap and not a mandate. This, as we have argued in previously blog entries, represents in itself a glacial movement of the council's stated position in 2005--when they, and specifically Stephen Souza, implored the community to pass Measure X in an effort to remain in compliance with our legal obligations to grow.

At the same time, members of the council majority argued for community support for faster growth rate.

Councilmember Stephen Souza:

“It has been a very slow and steady rate of growth, in fact some would argue too slow.”

However, community members such as Jean Jackman speaking during public comment spoke of a long list of community efforts to slow growth beginning with the Passage of Measure L in 1986 that indicates support for growth at the lowest permissible rate. There was also Measure O which was passed to tax the public in an effort to preserve open space. Measure J gave the public a vote on peripheral growth and finally Measure X put Measure J into action with a fundamentally resounding defeat of a large peripheral project.

To maintain the current levels of growth, the current council majority would seem to have to go against the grain of public opinion and against current trends in the housing market.

Councilmember Souza went on to argue that the system was to be a maximum number, and its goal was to smooth out the growth rate of the city to prevent years of zero growth (which implies it is indeed more than a cap) and a the same time to prevent years of huge growth (which would be more consistent with a cap argument).

It was always a guideline, he argued,

“nowhere does it say it’s a rate.”

And perhaps he is correct, but that was not what he and his colleagues argued in 2005. In fact, I would argue that their entire argument missed the key 800 pound gorilla of Covell Village. During the Covell Village and Measure X debate the argument was exactly what Mr. Souza now claims it is not--that we had to pass Covell Village to meet our 1% growth mandate. It was not treated as an option in 2005, it was not treated as a cap, it was argued that we would be out of compliance if we did not pass Covell Village. Now the tune has changed.

Mr. Souza then goes to a four-year exercise in showing the total numbers of housing permits by year. Why four years? One could argue because it seems likely that during the first portion of the General Plan cycle the majority of projects came through. And so, the half percent cited growth rate during the last four years masks the higher growth rate since 2001.

"I would think that for the vast majority of folks, the growth has not occurred.”

But there is more to this argument that is missing and again it comes down to Covell Village. Mr. Souza and his colleagues are consistently arguing that even with the growth goal of 1% we have not reached it over the last four years. This is an accurate, but misleading statement. If the council majority had had their druthers, their inclination, Covell Village would have passed in 2005. And Covell Village was stopped not by the council majority, but by the voters. So the council majority wants to take credit for the failure of a policy that they fought to the proverbial death to get passed.

Both Mr. Souza and Mr. Saylor argue that this low rate of growth suggests that this indicates that there is no pressure to grow.

Councilmember Saylor:

“Over the last four years, as Mr. Souza outlined, the city has issued 491 building permits, an average of 123 per year or less then a half a percent… If we’re concerned that this one percent growth parameter has resulted in increased pressure for growth in the city, it is difficult to understand why nothing has happened in terms of growth”

But there was pressure for growth in the city. The pressure came from the council majority and a group of developers in 2005. It was hard pressure. It took a long and concerted effort to turn back. It was pressure that was ultimately resisted by this community, but it was pressure nonetheless. Here again, Mr. Saylor rhetorically it seems, is using the fact that they lost the Measure X vote as an argument for there not being growth pressure as the result of their growth policies. There was pressure, the pressure came directly from the council, everyone in this city who was in town during this time, knows it. And, the only reason we did not grow by those 2000 units was that the people of Davis said no, not the council majority.

Councilmember Saylor then goes on to argue that we have increased housing needs--over and above those addressed in 2003, that led to the advocacy for Covell Village.

“In some ways the needs are more significant today than they were in 2003. We continue to have a low apartment vacancy rate for student rentals. It’s at one percent at this point, five percent is described by property managers as reasonable for friction—the frictional moving in and moving out that happens in a healthy economy. Seniors anecdotally are talking very actively—they’re interested in downsizing, but there is no place for them to downsize to. The result is that many continue to live in houses that are too large for their needs. And that means that house is not available to a family with children. We have more commuters now than we had in 2003. The social fabric that we live in, the community that we love, the quality of life that we enjoy here has begun to rand at different places.”

However, lost in this philosophical discussion of our housing needs, is that $10 million question--what happens if we build to accommodate these needs? Where do we put these new buildings? What farmland do we pave over to do so? What will this town look like when we are through? And the last point which is one that Mayor Greenwald raised--what assurances do we have that new housing is going to meet those needs.

It is instructive that the biggest project offered up by this council majority would have decidedly not met those very specific needs. Covell Village was not an affordable housing project. It was a housing project that primarily catered to the upper end--$600,000 homes. What needs would that have filled? Rhetoric is simple to use for the council majority, but at the core, their rhetoric does not meet with reality.

Finally the base of Councilmember Saylor's philosophy:

“We live in Davis for a high quality of life and a sense of community. And when we think about what causes that, how many of us actually think it has to do with how many of us there are.”

We may not explicitly verbalize our character and quality of life in terms of size of city, but would this city look the same with 120,000 people in it. Would we still have the same sense of community? Would we still be able to bike around our town? Would we still be able to walk in our core area of town? Would we still be safe in our homes? Would we still preserve our agricultural heritage?

At the end of the day, needs and affordability are alluring arguments, but we have not made concrete what our community would like. What would our community look like adding developments the size of 1.5 Mace Ranches every seven years. Is that the community we want? Because, that is the implication of the 1% growth rate. And the council says we will not grow at that rate, well that's because they were stopped by the people when they tried.

Mayor Sue Greenwald showed statistical analysis that demonstrated that Davis' housing growth rate had no impact on the cost of housing. The economists argue supply and demand. The problem with housing is that city supply does not necessarily curb demand, because demand is not a closed system that ends in Davis, it's a regional demand. Any increase in housing would be a mere pinprick in a vast system of demand that extends to millions and even tens of millions of people. The charts presented by the Mayor showed that housing demand is inelastic, it is not abated by increased supply. Housing prices went up continuously and show no apparent reaction to the yearly ups and downs of new housing provided by Davis.

I would argue that we bring down the cost of housing in Davis only by making Davis a less desirable place to raise one's family and to live. I have no desire to see that happen.

As Ruth Asmundson argued, affordable housing necessarily means growth. The only way to supply more affordable housing is to build more housing overall. We cannot simply build 100% affordable.

The tough questions were disappointingly not undertaken at this point in time.

However, Councilmember Lamar Heystek laid out from my perspective the crux of the argument:

“When I first ran for the City Council, I knew that this was the bread and butter of our business here at City Hall. I am glad to be here on the council to be part of this discussion twenty-two years after Measure L has been passed. And so I think we have a unique opportunity to reflect in a meaningful fashion the will of the people of Davis when they voted that the growth of Davis be as slow as it is legally permissible. And that the future growth of Davis be concentrated on lands already incorporated into the city with future annexations to be discouraged. There was a small discussion of economics 101, as a renter I can attest to the fact that we live in a community where the vacancy rate can go up, as will rents. And that has always puzzled me. If our solution to market rate affordability is compounded growth, I believe that strategy will fail miserably.”

He then cites language from the resolution that

“the number of units allowable based on the 1% guideline shall increase based on city growth. Built into the current policy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We currently have a resolution that said that the guideline will call for more units of growth as the city continues to growth. That is, I believe, irresponsible. I believe that the city, in adopting this policy, I respectfully disagree with Councilmember Souza and former Councilmember Puntillo. But I do say that this policy has created artificial pressure on the community. It is incumbent upon us to relieve that pressure if we receive that opportunity—and that opportunity is tonight. I do implore my colleagues to identify the fact that there is a gross disparity—gross relative to our standards—between the SACOG Regional Housing Needs Assessment Allocation as well as our 1% growth guideline as it is currently phrased. To have a policy that calls for more growth than we are otherwise being asked or requested to accommodate, is I think, hypocritical and antithetical to our philosophy as a slow growth community.”

Commenting after the meeting was Eileen Samitz, a member of the HESC who also spoke during the meeting as a member of the public.

She writes to the Vanguard:

"The Council majority's (Saylor, Souza, and Asmundson) action of merely adding a "cap" tonight fell far short of what was needed to protect Davis from accelerated growth. Although it was requested, language that was not added to the Council majority's growth ordinance that also should have been added was: "Davis' growth should not exceed any RHNA number for housing units requested by SACOG".

For instance, our current RHNA number for housing units is only 498 units yet no language change happened tonight to avoid 2,300 units from being built by 2013 which is almost five times more than SACOG's request of Davis. (Note: 2,300 units is 1.5 Mace Ranch developments every 7 years.) In turn, building 2,300 units would motivate SACOG to assign Davis a higher RHNA number for housing units into the future. Clearly, the concept of growing 325 units per year is terribly flawed and is in direct conflict with the citizen-based Measure L "to grow as slow as legally permissible".

The Council majority of Saylor, Souza and Asmundson who voted for the inadequate language change to merely substituted the word "cap" for "guideline, all ran on slow-growth platforms during their Council campaigns. Apparently, they are to be trying to redefine the term "slow-growth". The Council majority-based 1% growth ordinance may sound slow, but is not slow growth. Furthermore, there was never a fiscal study, nor an environmental impact analysis done for this new ordinance, ands most importantly the citizens of Davis never got to vote on this Council majority-generated growth ordinance. This new 1% growth ordinance conflicts directly with our citizen-based 2001 General Plan. Tonight was the night to correct the problems with this growth ordinance, not later."

At the end of the day, I think that the council majority made some good arguments. I am not one that believes we need zero growth. I am also one that recognizes that we need to do a better job of providing housing that people, that families, that students, that faculty can afford. Where I think their arguments fall short is on how we accomplish that. Covell Village would not have accomplished that. The council majority's arguments use that failure ironically to argue that the growth guideline is merely a cap not a goal and not a requirement. This is a marked change from 2005 and it becomes a convenient pressure-valve for them to suggest that we are not growing at 1%--when the fact remains the only reason we are not growing at 1% is that the public said no, not the council.

Finally, particularly Councilmember Saylor argued for some very specific housing needs while Councilmember Souza suggested that we were growing too slowly. What they did not say is where we would put these new student housing units, these new senior housing units, these new family housing units. Are we talking about a new Covell Village? Are we talking about the I-80 corridor? Are we talking about the Northwest Quadrant? Are we talking about Nishi? And if so, what are the impacts of these new developments? Both Councilmember Saylor and Souza opposed county proposals in three of these areas, do they not owe it to the public to be more forthright about where they intend to put all of this new housing that will meet our needs?

In the coming weeks the HESC will come forth with their site proposals, it is my hope that the council majority will then show us where all of this new housing will go as it relates to these sites. It is my guess that that particular discussion will not happen for some time.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Guest Commentary: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Council

by Matt Williams

For me, tonight’s Council Meeting is extremely important, and it has long-reaching consequences with respect to our Quality of Life in Davis. As a result I have sent the following e-mail to all five members of the Council. The sentiments I express in the e-mail arise from two key principles: The first is well expressed in the materials referenced in the e-mail:

• We need housing to take care of the people we add to Davis who work here.

The second is the Principle that the Public voted most important at the 1/24 Housing Element Steering Committee Community Workshop:

• Preserves prime farmland and minimizes farmland conversion

I don’t expect everyone to agree with those two, but for me they are the two principles that are at the core of my definition of Smart Growth in Davis.

----------------------E-mail sent 2/11/2008----------------------

Subject: Comments re: Agenda Item 6 -- Discussion and Clarification of One Percent Growth Guideline Resolution No. 05-27

TO: Greenwald, Saylor, Asmundson, Heystek, Souza

CC: Roberts

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Council,

Your time is valuable, and there isn’t any way I can do justice to Agenda Item 6 in 2 minutes of Public Comment on Tuesday, so please accept this e-mail as a more thorough study of that Agenda Item.

Summary

Clarifying the Cap vs. Target wording of the One Percent Growth Guideline Resolution (hereinafter referred to as “the Guideline Resolution”) is the easy part of what Council needs to do Tuesday. I believe the Council in 2005 was wise enough to recognize that the 1% Guideline may need a mid-course correction, and mandated that such a correction should take place no later than 2010. I would argue that such a mid-course correction is needed now. Why do I feel that way?

• Numbers like 325 homes, or 260 homes or 1% growth don’t help address Council’s 3/8/05 discussion of, “We need housing to take care of the people we add to Davis who work here.”
  
  
• The assumptions that are the foundation of the 2/19/2003 Bay Area Economics Internal Housing Needs Analysis (which was the basis for recommendations in the 3/12/2003 Planning Department Staff Report), either have been superceded, or were flawed to begin with.
  
  
• Bay Area Economics’ assumptions were based on a SACOG allocation that was 4 times larger than the current final SACOG fair-share number. If SACOG has assigned growth allocations correctly, wouldn’t it be appropriate to consider converting the 1% Growth Guideline into a 0.25% Growth Guideline?

If we make a mid-course correction now, when we do add new residences to Davis we will be in a much better position to achieve the ideal scenario where the person buying each of those new residences is going to work in Davis. That truly will be a major step toward accomplishing, “We need housing to take care of the people we add to Davis who work here.”

We can never truly control the infinite regional demand for Davis housing. However, we can do our best to ensure that the housing built here is more attractive to the members of the Davis workforce than it is to the person who wants to get in their car each morning and contribute to Davis traffic and the Davis carbon footprint, while they commute to their job in Sacramento.

Logic Behind the Position Taken in the Summary

The 2/12/2008 Planning Department Staff Report (hereinafter referred to as the “Hess/Wolcott Report”) prepared by Katherine Hess and Bob Wolcott for your upcoming discussion and clarification of the Guideline Resolution does a good job of:

1) Outlining the background/history behind the Guideline,

2) Identifying steps that should have (and may have) happened since the Guideline Resolution was passed, and

3) Framing the questions, you will be discussing on 2/12/08.

Looking at those three points.

With respect to point 1,

The “Evolution of the current resolution” section of the Hess/Wolcott Report needs some expansion because the evolution of the issues leading up to the passage of the Guideline Resolution began well before March 12, 2003. Council first agendized this issue on July 31, 2002, and discussion of it began well before that. In a 2/24/03 Staff Report (hereinafter referred to as “the Emlen Report”) prepared for the 7/31/02 Council meeting, the author of the report, Bill Emlen, got to the heart of the matter when he wrote,

“It would be premature at this point to imply that the current housing market is beginning to challenge the assumptions contained in the recently adopted [May 2001]General Plan update. Nonetheless, the markets do appear to be responding to local and regional demand, which remains quite high while new housing production, particularly single-family housing, continues to drop in the city.”

Four words in those two sentences jump out from the others … “local and regional demand” Those four words beg the question, “What is regional demand for Davis housing?” The Emlen Report does a good job of answering that question when it says:

“While staff in no way would suggest that we can ever grow to meet what seems to be an insatiable demand, it would be prudent to consider if some long term adjustments should be considered to avoid a bubble of pent up demand that could ultimately burst in poorly planned growth.”

The only way the demand for Davis housing can be insatiable is if one takes into consideration both internal and external demand for that housing. Given Davis’ population, and the historical job growth in Davis and at UCD, any insatiability of housing demand is almost entirely attributable to people from outside Davis who want to move to Davis and then commute to their jobs in cities other than Davis. To address this reality of insatiable demand, Emlen goes on to say,

“Proactive planning will be a key element of this effort. Finding ways to change, while maintaining the city’s vision and values will be critical.”

“Compliance with State fair-share requirements is also a critical factor in balancing the immediate demands for housing with the community’s longer term objectives. The Council should be aware that if the City takes an overly aggressive approach to infill and develops most of all of the infill sites prior to 2007, there may be few sites remaining to accommodate the fair-share requirements [of the future].”

The bottom-line of Emlen’s words is that regional demand for housing in Davis was (and continues to be) insatiable. Thankfully in the months following the Emlen Report Council took the steps outlined in the Hess/Wolcott Report, culminating with the passage of the Guideline Resolution.

Moving on to point 2,

The Puntillo/Souza Council subcommittee (hereinafter referred to as “the Subcommittee”) recommendations sections of the Hess/Wolcott Report note that:

“Council previously selected a growth amount … after accepting half of the needs based on natural growth and UCD research park growth.”

“The Subcommittee also recommended that growth be managed by the following tools to ensure that peripheral and infill development decisions are consistent with growth guidelines: … create a new development status monitoring and reporting system; use reports in decisions on projects on their timing; provide annual report and adopt annual resolution to direct prospective developers and staff where the city will consider growth and development …”

“Davis is in a unique position of having a great deal of control of the approval of new developments through general plan amendments and/or zonings. The city can make informed decisions on new projects and control their timing.”

The City Council discussion section of the Hess/Wolcott Report notes:

“We need housing to take care of the people we add and work here.”

“Go to year 2010 and then decide if it is working or if changes are needed.”

“The City Council also added that the growth guideline would be tied to the 2010 General Plan and would not extend to year 2015 as recommended by the Subcommittee.”

Regarding point 3, which is the meat of the matter,

The clarifications suggested in the Hess/Wolcott Report are a good start, but so much has happened since 3/8/05, that Council’s decision to give the Guideline Resolution limited life and “decide if the Guideline is working or if changes are needed” was very wise.

What are some of those key “happenings”?

1) The final RHNA allocation from SACOG for the 2006-2013 period came in at 498 residential units rather than the 1,932 units projected in the Subcommittee report.

2) The first Measure J vote was completed.

3) UC Davis announced its plans for West Village

4) The Subprime Mortgage crisis has significantly reduced housing demand

5) I am not aware of the existence of any of the annual development status monitoring reports or annual resolutions discussed in the Hess/Wolcott report, which are included in subsection (2) of the Growth management system concepts section of the Guideline Resolution.

6) I am unable to find the “amendments to the growth management and housing sections of the General Plan and the Phased Housing Allocation Ordinance” called for in Section 2.a. of the Guideline Resolution.

Those last two apparent “non-happenings” make me wonder whether Davis really is in the “a unique position of having a great deal of control of the approval of new developments.” However, those concerns are overwhelmed by the fact that the first four “happenings” make it clear that the initial assumptions that went into the 2/19/2003 Bay Area Economics Internal Housing Needs Analysis have either been superceded, or were flawed to begin with.
Conclusion

As I said at the beginning of this e-mail, clarifying the Cap vs. Target wording is the easy part of what Council needs to do Tuesday, however, it would be wrong to stop there.

• We do not need numbers like 325, or 260 or 1%. We need housing to take care of the people we add to Davis who work here.

• Bay Area Economics assumption that Davis’ needs are based on natural growth and UCD research park growth, doesn’t take into consideration that construction in UCD research park ended years ago, and therefore no longer adds an annual increment of new jobs to Davis. Why doesn’t the incremental housing growth stop when the jobs growth stopped.
  
  
• West Village now provides all the housing needed by UCD research park employees … and then some. Shouldn’t that be figured into the housing equation?
  
  
• Bay Area Economics’ assumptions were also based on a SACOG allocation that was 4 times larger than the current final SACOG fair-share number. As I said before, if SACOG is right, wouldn’t it be appropriate to consider converting the 1% Growth Guideline into a 0.25% Growth Guideline?

It bears repeating, that the Council in 2005 recognized that the 1% Guideline may need a mid-course correction, and mandated that that correction take place no later than 2010. The events outlined above clearly demonstrate that such a mid-course correction is needed now.

Because of the larger economic issues facing our country and our state, this is an ideal time to step back and assess where we are, and where we are going. If we do that now when the housing markets are in a pause, then when we do add new residences to Davis we will be in a much better position to achieve the ideal scenario where the housing built in Davis is more attractive to the members of the Davis workforce than it is to the person who wants to get in their car each morning and contribute to Davis traffic and the Davis carbon footprint, while they commute to their job in Sacramento.

Thank you again for your time and your consideration.

Matt Williams, Jr.
(530) 297-6237

Monday Vanguard Stories

• Confusion and Misunderstanding at Root of Thursday's School Board Meeting Complaints
  
  
• Local Leaders Join in Solidarity of Sodexho Workers

Confusion and Misunderstanding at Root of Thursday's School Board Meeting Complaints

Many proponents of the Valley Oak Charter school were stunned last Thursday, when a group of Spanish-speaking families spoke before public comment at the Davis school board meeting and leveled criticism at the proponents of the proposed charter school perceiving that they had misrepresented and twisted their intentions.

Maria Cabrera, who works at Valley Oak, spoke on behalf of many of the Spanish-speaking families and accused charter proponents of twisting their words for political reasons.

The Vanguard has looked into the allegations by Maria Cabrera and now has an understanding where these complaints come from. However, there is little evidence that the Valley Oak charter proponents made any attempt whatsoever to intentionally deceive Spanish-speaking families. It is our belief that there was miscommunication along the way that fed into this problem, but also at the core an overreaction.

At the core of the complaint was a letter that was sent to the district a few weeks ago. It was a letter that complained that they felt left out of the Valley Oak closure process from the beginning starting with the "Best Use of Schools Task Force." This letter was picked up by newly elected school board member Richard Harris, who criticized it, suggesting at the time that no one had respected the community more than new Superintendent James Hammond. But Harris missed the point of the letter.

However, so did apparently Charter Proponents, who it seems felt that the letter was a pro-charter letter. However, it seems it was more basic than that. Asking for the chance to speak directly for themselves, they want choice of placement for their families and they want to be respected.

They became angry when the letter was tied to the charter issue since it was not. Maria Cabrera suggested that they were being used as political pawns by the Charter Proponents and that just because they spoke Spanish, did not mean they were stupid.

To me, I can understand some frustration here on the part of the families, but the level of response seems more than a bit disproportionate to the offense.

Adding to this incident was the leaflet sent out by the charter proponents to invite members of the community to a meeting a week ago Saturday in support of the charter but also to give out information in English and Spanish about the Charter.

Apparently Maria Cabrera and some of the families felt the leaflet was misleading. The translation from English to Spanish was admittedly not perfect. There is no perfect translation of "Charter" that conveys the actual meaning in English into "Spanish." So if the English version said "support the charter" and the Spanish translation said "Support the community school" there might have been some confusion.

However, reading the full leaflet in Spanish, it mentions "Charter" repeatedly even if it does not in the "headline." From our perspective anyone who read the Spanish version would see the word "charter" in italics used over and over again. If there was confusion it would seem reasonable to approach the proponents and explain the problem instead of criticizing and blasting them in front of the school board. It is clear from reading the two versions, which readers can see by clicking the link below that there is no clear intent to deceive.

To see the leaflet, click here (my apologies I was only given a blue version)

In my conversations with both charter proponents and district staff alike including board member Sheila Allen and Pam Mari, that is really at the core of my concern--why simple misunderstandings were blown into some sort of large and angry conflict such as the one that arose on Thursday. This remains a point of concern for me.

The suggestion was that there was some kind of history here between the two sides, I do not know what that is exactly.

Finally I am concerned by reports from some of the organizers for the charter school that families were under the impression that a charter school was not a public school and would require tuition. And this was not an isolated belief. Someone had to be spreading that rumor around, I do not know who did though.

The bottom line here is that emotions and tensions were very high on Thursday and I'm not exactly sure even now why that was the case. I see no evidence that the charter proponents were intentionally attempting to mislead Spanish-speaking families, in fact all I have seen is evidence of respect for these families with Spanish-translations and a bilingual presentation on Saturday night. All of this appears to be a misunderstanding blown out of proportions.

In speaking with several of the families on Thursday in Spanish, my wife Cecilia and I, were told that they want to send their children to Valley Oak and to the Charter School. In fact, many of the families who spoke out on Thursday were actually wearing Valley Oak Charter buttons. For their perspective they want to be heard, they want to be respected, and they want to choose where they send their children to school. Who can argue with that.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Local Leaders Join in Solidarity of Sodexho Workers

The Sodexho Workers' continuing fight for fair wages, affordable health care, and better working conditions has generating considerable community support.

Last month, the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee supported a resolution that called on the chancellor to grant the Sodexho workers university employee status.

At that time, many of the Democratic leaders from Yolo County including both Assembly candidates Mariko Yamada and Christopher Cabaldon, both Supervisor Candidates Jim Provenza and John Ferraro, all stepped forward with strong support for the Sodexho workers.

Not included in the original article was a statement by Davis City Councilmember Lamar Heystek:

"Coming from a background of organized labor and having served as a shop steward, I have not only sympathized with Sodexho employees who seek to improve their working conditions and compensation, I have stood with them and will remain by their side. You see, Sodexho workers are not merely members of the university community – they are members of the greater Davis community. And as the University continues to deny Sodexho employees parity with their UC-employed counterparts, these workers continue to lack the economic security to live comfortably in Davis. It perpetuates the unfair notion that poorly compensated workers pose a “burden” on the community when they need health care and social services. And whose fault is that? Certainly not theirs."

Also West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon has appeared on the behalf of the Sodexho Workers at numerous public rallies including the one last Thursday.

The Vanguard videotaped the bulk of his comments from Thursday and placed it on you tube.

Please click on the video below to watch the Mayor's brief but eloquent comments on the Sodexho workers and the need for them to become university employees.



---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Densification Does Not Mean Ignoring Neighbors

It was an interesting experience on Thursday going to the last portion of the Housing Element Steering Committee meeting and listening to Chair Keven Wolf railing about the need for densification and demanding that the HESC include in its report language that instructs the council to ignore the pleas of neighbors for less densification and preserving neighborhood character.

Then I went home and read Bob Dunning who was whipping the neighbors of the Horse Ranch development proposal who live on Caravaggio, at least I think that's what we was doing, because suddenly almost in midstream he turned the whip on the City Council for packing the development like sardines.

Do we ignore the pleas of neighbors as shear NIMBYISM? Do we drive for denser and denser because that means we will be more compact and less sprawled? Or is there some middle ground here?

I understand and even appreciate some of the logic behind Kevin Wolf's densification drive. The idea here is that we protect the periphery of Davis, preserve the farmlands, and yet we still need to grow, at least in Kevin Wolf's world (which I don't mean derisively, just to say it's his world view, as opposed to say my own. On the other hand, I am about to use Mr. Wolf as a convenient foil here.).

The problem with Mr. Wolf's vision is that it is flawed and contradictory. He was a leading proponent of Covell Village. Covell Village was perhaps the antithesis of this vision. Whether or not we need to grow, and whether or not we need densification, Covell Village encroaches onto farm land, builds a large number of big homes, which means less density, and oh yeah, creates traffic problems at the corner of Poleline and Covell that leads to more, not less, emissions. In short, if carbon neutral is what you are going for, Covell is not the way to go.

But back to the densification issue at this point. I understand both Mr. Wolf and Mr. Dunning's concerns about density. I also understand their concern that the neighbors out of NIMBYISM are often going to oppose all new development on their own borders, adjacent to their neighborhood. That they will attempt to get the smallest and least dense project they can get for a variety of reasons.

At the same time, why the hell should they not? It is not like most of these people are wealthy people developing lots haphazardly. Most people who live in Davis have put their life's savings into buying their home, living in a nice community with a good quality of life. Why should they not fight to protect them?

And maybe we do not grant them veto power over projects, but the idea that they get no say, as Kevin Wolf suggests, that we instruct the City Council to ignore the pleas of neighbors, is shear arrogance on our part. They have the right to weigh in and be heard. The city council has the duty to take their views seriously as they are just as much a part of this city as anyone.

If we are concerned about the character of this city, don't they have the right to be concerned about the character of their neighborhood?

I do not see this as a Manichean struggle for good and evil. I do not think this needs to be a zero-sum game where someone wins and someone loses.

As someone else pointed out on Thursday, look we can have a dense project in a high rise but as long as we surround it with open space it is not going to be a problem.

That gets me to the next point. We need to talk about densification. We need to listen to the neighbors. But at the end of the day, there is no reason why we cannot build highly dense developments that maintain the nature and character of the adjacent neighborhood. At the end of the day, the neighborhood should fit like a zig saw puzzle, interlocking into the existing landscape, while at the same time looking to maximize both density, open space, greenbelts, etc.

And those are not antithetical views. They are not in contradiction to each other. The problem is that we have allowed our planning to become complacent and lazy. And we also need to understand that we do not fix densification issues by jamming people together into the new developments. That doesn't fix the issues of sprawl. If we do this, we will be looking like little Manhattan.

Finally the biggest question we need to answer is not how dense we are to become, it is not how dense we should make it, but rather how much we ought to grow and how fast. Everyone talks about fair share growth. A city of Davis' size should not be forced to become a city of 100,000 or 120,000 people. That's not fair share of growth, that's allowing certain interests to turn this city into something it is not. There many other cities with the infrastructure and the drive to take on more growth than we do.

However, that point aside, at the end of the day we cannot simply ignore the cries of neighbors. They have bought into a promise of this city. They invested in the fact that we have safe streets. They invested in the fact that we have good schools. They invested in the character and the quality of life in Davis. In fact, they overpaid -most likely- for those features. So if we are about to pull the rug out from under them and change the landscape of their investment, do we not at least owe it to them to hear them out?

When I hear it said that we ought to direct the council to ignore complaints of neighbors it makes me very nervous, because as soon as we become arrogant enough to ignore one group of people, we begin to ignore all. And then, we cease to be a democracy.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting