The Campaign for Senior Housing at Covell Village Continues

Given the election last week and slew of issues surrounding the election that came up, the Vanguard is just now getting around to what turned out to be a very interesting and important meeting on Wednesday night.

Three years ago this month, a proposed development at Covell Village was defeated by a massive grassroots effort. The overwhelming defeat of Measure X by nearly a 60-40 margin has not slowed efforts to develop the property that is bordered by Pole Line and Covell Blvd.

Instead, the would-be developers of the property have changed tactics and changed the form of the would-be development. Now they are looking at a senior development.

Slowly and methodically, they are building toward a community consensus on the need for senior housing. They have done this by meeting with key stakeholders in the community and also senior groups, selling the case that the community of Davis is in need of more senior housing and that their property offers the ideal location for that development.

Earlier this year, we got a window into their tactics when an email sent to various prospective supporters was leaked to the Vanguard. The email contained instructions on how to raise the profile of Covell Village at the Housing Element Steering Committee's (HESC) workshop. They laid out in that email, very specific instructions for both demonstrating the need for senior housing as a priority as well as showing support for expanding city boundaries. However, the leak of that email to the Vanguard and the general public, thwarted efforts at that point to change the HESC's assessment of the feasibility and need for housing at Covell Village.

What is clear however is that while opponents of Covell Village sleep, the developers remain hard at work. We flash forward to Wednesday night, where a well organized group of seniors came forward to speak at city council during a discussion of the HESC's report and the next steps that the council would take with that report.

From this meeting, the group was clearly well-coached. They laid out the need for senior housing. This was done with two key points that were made. Seniors generally do not need large homes which are too bid for them to care for and inefficient in terms of energy usage--heating, electricity, and cooling. Second, that seniors wish to remain in the community but sometimes cannot due to lack of senior housing options in the community. They made these points and yet there was never one mention of Covell Village--the obvious focal point of this strategy.

At a certain and critical level, the seniors are correct on these two issues. Allowing seniors to downsize would free up larger housing for new home owners. And many Davis residents would like to stay in Davis, and the community ought to accommodate them.

However, from my experience not as a senior but talking to many seniors, the questions that need to asked and discussed are not whether we need more housing options for our seniors, but how best to provide them.

Here is where consensus breaks down. One idea is the senior-based community that would provide housing for seniors in a close-knit and segregated community. However, many seniors do not want to live in a seniors-only community. They enjoy a more mixed community where families with children and even students also live.

Second, it is the fear of many if we build a large senior-development that we would end up accommodating large numbers of people from across the region. There is nothing wrong with doing that, but if our goal is to provide for our current housing needs for local demand, building a large development may not serve that need very well. Even a somewhat smaller Eleanor Roosevelt Circle ended up serving more people from outside the city than from inside the city.

Third, the question is what type of housing would work best for seniors. Some have suggested instead of facility like an Eleanor Roosevelt Circle, a series of smaller condominiums and townhouses may be the best fit. An added advantage there might be that we could build a small amount over time which would serve the senior population.

The big issue here is that we are again facing the prospect of developer driven development. It is clear that the Covell Village partners are driving the discussion here and in so doing, we are not getting perhaps a clear picture of what seniors in this community actually want.

Thus my first suggestion would be to find out what seniors actually want. How many people are looking to downsize from their current homes? How many people would like to live in a Senior-only community? How many people would be willing to trade for a smaller existing home with another resident?

This type of inquiry should occur not at the behest of a developer, but rather with leadership from groups like the Senior Citizen's Commission. Let us determine what the internal housing demand really is for seniors, what seniors really want, the numbers that we are really talking about, and the time frame that we are really looking at.

My fear is that if we were to say build a senior housing facility in the next five years, it would get filled up largely with people from outside of the area. I am not against people from outside of the area moving in, but there is a problem with that happening if our purpose is to first provide for our local senior housing needs.

To put it in concrete terms, Janice Bridge, the former school board member and proponent of Measure X, got up on Wednesday evening to suggest that she will be looking for senior housing in the next 10 to 15 years. Let us say we build Covell in the next five years. It fills up with people from outside the community since she is not quite ready to move in there. Where is she going to live?

These are some of the reasons that the community needs to figure out its housing needs independently of a developer driven campaign to create the impression that senior housing in this form is a critical need. Again, I am not suggesting that we do not need senior housing, what I am suggesting is that we need to find out what the real need is and we need to figure that out from a more independent source.

In the meantime, opponents of Covell Village better be aware that as they sleep at night, the Covell Partners are hard at work fostering strong community consensus behind their latest project. They have learned from past mistakes and are slowly and methodically bringing stakeholders into line. By the time Measure Y gets on the ballot, it might be too late to change things.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

What Should Happen with the Lewis-Cannery Property?

The Cannery Park property and how it should be developed is one of the biggest looming questions before the city in the next few years. Some have suggested it needs to remain zone light industrial in order to attract new cutting edge high tech business. Others have pointed out that this is not a viable use for the land and have favored either a residential development or a mixed-use that combines a business park with residential workforce housing.

The city commissioned a viability study that was discussed earlier this week at a joint BEDC-City Council Meeting.

According to the study:

"The Cannery Park site includes 66 acres of the remaining 138.9 acre vacant land supply currently designated for business and industrial park development in the City of Davis 2010 General Plan, or about half the total supply. It also represents the largest infill parcel considered by the 2013 General Plan Housing Element Update Steering Committee and Davis Planning Commission for housing possibilities."

In terms of feasibility the reported offered the following:

"Although the Cannery Park site is a viable and competitive location for business and park development, feasibility of development at the site will be driven in large part by the specific definition of entitlements for this property. This definition is policy driven and requires consideration of the types of uses, intensity of development, and development controls that the City of Davis will permit at the Cannery Park site."

"Currently, the Cannery Park site is partially entitled and it is unclear to what extent the site’s current “Planned Development #01-00 (Industrial)” zoning classification adopted in 2000 can accommodate the business park market opportunities identified in this report."

"Entitlements with highly restrictive, discretionary, and unclear regulatory controls will limit the site’s capture/absorption of business park market opportunities and will negatively impact project feasibility."

This is a key point that the report makes, because apparently the zoning for this site is unclear and incomplete and that may be contributing to some of the problems that they have had finding businesses to come in.

Thus the report suggests:

"Business park development at Cannery Park can be best facilitated by clear rules of development that accommodate business and tenant needs while providing economic incentives for the development to occur."

The study looks at five different scenarios of which we will look at three.

"Scenario 1 -Basic Business Park/No Residential. This scenario assumes that Cannery Park is developed as an 862,000 square foot basic business park that is similar in form, character, and tenanting to the overall Davis business park market. This scenario assumes that the site is entitled to compete for 100 percent of the demand for Davis business park space by permitting occupancy by all types of firms currently in office and flex space in Davis. It would have a 16 year projected buildout and assumes a 55,000 square foot annual absorption rate inclusive of ancillary support uses."

"Scenario 4 -High Tech Business Park/No Residential. This scenario assumes that Cannery Park is entirely developed as an 862,000 square foot high tech business park. This scenario assumes that the site is entitled to compete for about 40 percent of the market demand for Davis business park space by permitting occupancy by high tech uses while not allowing most other uses. This scenario is considered infeasible given its projected 39 year build out period and a 22,000 square foot annual absorption rate (inclusive of ancillary support uses)."

"Proposed Lewis Planned Communities Plan. This scenario summarizes the proposed Lewis plan for Cannery Park as provided by Lewis Planned Communities to ESG. This Plan assumes 225,000 square feet of business park space and 610 residential units. It is unknown to what extent the business park space includes (or does not include) ancillary support uses. This scenario assumes that the site is entitled to compete for 100 percent of market demand. Lewis estimates that this scenario would have 5 to 8 year buildout based on a 28,000 to 49,000 square feet annual absorption rate."

The report goes on to suggest the following impacts of those scenarios.

"Scenario 1 would generate the most jobs (2,586) and business activity with 862,000 square feet of building area and no residential. Annual business revenues are estimated at $301,700,000."

"In contrast, the proposed Lewis Planned Communities plan with 225,000 square feet of building area and 610 residential units would generate the least jobs and business activity of these scenarios. Its annual business revenues are estimated at $78,750,000."

"Scenario 4, the high tech business park with no residential, is excluded from this discussion because it is considered infeasible."

"Scenario 1 would generate fiscal surpluses because fiscal costs to service business park development are typically a fraction of fiscal revenues since employees generally utilize a smaller percentage of governmental services than residents."

"The fiscal impacts of Scenario 3, which would generate 1,034 jobs and business activity in combination with 500 residential units, and the proposed Lewis Planned Communities plan, which would generate 600 to 850 jobs and business activity in combination with 610 residential units, cannot be evaluated at this point because they both would include significant residential development."

Discussion and Commentary

The meeting on Monday generated no action, but there was a clear consensus from the BEDC Commission that the mixed-use model was the most appropriate model to move forward with. Indeed there is much to lend itself to Lewis' plan for the property. The goal is to provide workforce housing in the affordable range. This would be accomplished through a mix of smaller units, larger amounts of open space and shared space, and then about 20 percent of the property being used for a business park.

The breakdown of 80-20 is interesting because they suggest they would generate on the low end about 600 jobs in combination with about 610 residential units, roughly a one-to-one ratio. While there would likely not be overlap between the jobs and the residents, in theory it would make it feasible for less commute and therefore make the project more environmentally sustainable.

The other finding of interest here is that they found that the high tech business park with no residential to be infeasible. The study projects that it would require a roughly 40 year build out period that does not fit in with the goals of the community. Large users, in addition, according to staff want distance from residential and community uses.

The question now as the council decided to bring back the item before the council on a future Tuesday night is what the council will want to do and how quickly they want to go forward with this project.

The community still needs to assess whether they think a plan with 610 residential units and a corresponding number of jobs in the business park is the optimal use for the property.

The other key factor is the 800 pound gorilla in the room, the adjacent Covell Village. There are some on the council that believe that the two sites need to be planned concurrently. However, the people at Lewis do not necessarily concur with that assessment. They believe that there are separate issues on each site that make them very different planning challenges. Lewis is within the city limits, it is paved over and thus the issue of agricultural land and the issue of flood abatement are not there. There is no Measure J requirement for Lewis.

That said, obstacles remain. A plan that would include 600 new residences and 600 jobs will have a huge impact on traffic on Covell Blvd that must be dealt with. From their standpoint, the two sites can be dealt with separately, their plan calls for a community open space park to border the Lewis property on the East. Should a future development go there, the park could be expanded and adapted to accommodate increased needs, but it would not necessitate such a development. The goal seems to be to neither preclude nor require future development.

Nevertheless the future of Lewis seems very uncertain at this moment. The process has not moved forward very rapidly. The council called for a future discussion, but that future discussion may be in the distant rather than near future. In the meantime there has been no EIR planned and the project remains somewhat in flux.

We will see in the coming months what the future holds for the largest undeveloped parcel within the city limits.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

PG&E in local and statewide news

Two years ago, PG&E spent over $10 million in an effort to prevent Yolo County from approving a public power initiative. Now PG&E is back in the news at the local level as well as at the statewide level.

There has on this blog been a long debate over the viability of a proposed development on the PG&E Service Center Site located at 316 L Street. The site encompassed around 27 acres, extending from Fifth Street to Second Street.

Councilmember Sue Greenwald has long trumpeted the site as a largely relatively unused parcel that would be walking and biking distance to the downtown and even UC Davis.

Separated from adjacent neighborhoods it would be ideals for high density housing and condos.

However despite these advantages some have questioned its feasibility. One question that has arisen is whether PG&E even wants to sell the site.

Former Davis City Councilmember Mike Harrington, who also was a member of the HESC pointed out that there was a letter from PG&E to the City that indicated their interest in selling the property. (See the scan of the letter). As it turns out this was available all along on the city's website and in the HESC packet when the site came up for discussion on July 26, 2007.



The letter in part reads:

"As discussed during the June 7 meeting, the City's philosophy toward maximizing green, efficient and renewable technology and opportunities is consistent with that of PG&E. The company is sensitive toward the needs of the community and we are open to considering and exploring innovative alternative uses for the site."

That should settle at least that portion of the debate. What remains unknown is the cost to the city that they would incur from purchasing the property. Although it would seem to me that a developer could do it and recoup the costs by developing the property and selling the units.

Still this would seem to be one of the more interesting sites that if available, it appears most Davis residents could get behind.

PG&E Gives $250,000 to defeat Proposition 8

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that PG&E announced it would give $250,000 to the No on Proposition 8 campaign.

According to the Times:

"Analysts said businesses may be more willing to get involved this time because they have more gay and lesbian employees who are out and in positions of power and because they believe the amendment could hurt business if passed, by giving the impression that California is not friendly to gay and lesbians."

Spokesperson Eilen Chiu said:

“We fought for immigration rights as well as for affirmative action. Gay marriage is the next initiative we felt is worthy to fight for. Every single employee and customer deserves the right to marry.”

The company is also calling for other California businesses to publicly endorse allowing gay couples to marry.

Not surprisingly the announcement was met by less enthusiasm by supports of the proposition, one of whom quipped that he couldn't call them up and tell them to turn off his power.

But then again, maybe such a move might generate good publicity.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Housing Element's Plan Looks Bleak But There is Some Hope for Consensus Building

A fascinating story this morning the Sacramento Bee by Hudson Sangree.

In it, there is a discussion of the Housing Element Steering Committee's (HESC) housing plan. From the onset there were 15 members, 3 appointed by each of the councilmembers. The assumption was that with a 3-2 split on council between those aligned with local developers and those favoring less growth, that there would be a 9-6 pro-growth majority.

However, according to Vice Chair Mark Siegler, a Sue Greenwald appointee, that's not what happened.

According to the article:

"It came as a surprise when a committee of 15 residents, appointed by council members to help shape the future of Davis, worked together for a year and reached agreement on an innovative housing plan.

It proposes modest growth within the city's current borders. Infill projects deemed beneficial to the city would get priority."

Mark Siegler is quoted saying:

"It was sort of an amazing outcome... I was ready to go in there and just do battle to the death."

Instead now the fear is that the plan that was meticulously worked on over the course many months would be undermined by the city council with very different agendas and ideas than the committee members.

"Over the course of several months, we came to much more of a middle ground... I wouldn't be surprised if members of the City Council are not happy with the outcome based on who they appointed... I hope they don't just dismiss this thing out of hand."

HESC Chairman Kevin Wolf said:

"We have the political consensus to force the City Council in a new direction."

However, if the meeting last week is any indication, this consensus is about to break down into the usual fighting.

For example, Councilmember Stephen Souza and Don Saylor want to push for developing the Nishi property which was ranked No.17 by the steering committee. Mayor Ruth Asmundson complained that some of the properties like the PG&E site and the school district headquarters are not feasible since no one determined if the current occupants would be willing to move or develop their properties.

On the other side of fence, Councilmember Lamar Heystek worried that the list would lead to an artificial means by which to induce growth. Councilmember Sue Greenwald argued vehemently last week the city does not need to grow given the weak market.

However, in my discussion with Lamar Heystek on KDRT Radio last week, he agreed that the city council had considerable room for consensus building. There are clear philosophical differences between the two sides over the rate of growth and the willingness to develop on Measure J sites, however, there is also significant agreement on other areas.

The reason the HESC was able to come to consensus is that they avoided the more contentious "how much issue" and went toward the "where" issue. And in the immediate future, almost everyone agreed that we ought to grow in infill sites near the city's core and move out.

The council majority of Souza, Saylor, and Asmundson have a choice. They certainly have the votes and the recent election results to push forward with any agenda they see fit to seek. On the other hand, strategically speaking, they may be better off tackling development projects where they have basic agreement on location first.

As the HESC report makes clear, there are more than enough of these infill projects to meet either the low end RHNA numbers for the next five years or even the high end, 1% growth cap numbers without looking to a single peripheral project.

However, there are still a lot of pitfalls along the way.

Covell Village: The return of Covell Village is one thing to look at. The group formerly known as the Covell Partners has repackaged the project splitting the development into three segments. The first segment which would be on the lower third is looking towards senior housing. Senior housing is probably the next huge hot potato in general. There is a divide within the community about the need for senior housing and the type of senior housing. Some have suggested that senior housing internal needs are small and any big project would pull from a more regional and even statewide basis, others suggest that residents in Davis ought to be able to move their senior parents into closer proximity.

The form of senior housing is another question. Some have suggested that ideally smaller condos are better suited for seniors than senior-only segregated communities. The argument here is that many seniors want to downsize, but not live in senior-only communities. Some seniors do not even want to downsize.

Nishe: If one looks to location alone this Measure J project would be ideal. But there is a huge hurdle--that is lack of road access. The only access right now would be the narrow Olive Drive leading to the congested Richard Blvd interchange. The road access is so prohibitive that developers have suggested having only campus access for cars and otherwise only direct access to the rest of the city via bicycle or pedestrian traffic. Sounds good in theory, but recognizing the need for special traffic provisions illustrates the pitfall of the development. One alternative might be to give it to the university and have the university use it to expand it's on-campus housing base.

Lewis Property: This is the property that divides the progressive community. On the one hand, many believe that Lewis is an ideal place to develop as means to accommodate growth demands while at the same time not paving over farm land. The fact that it's already paved over and has some of the infrastructure needs plays into that desire. Still, others worry about provisions that Lewis is developed with a mind toward its more controversial eastern neighbor, Covell. While Lewis is considerably smaller than Covell, some of the same concerns that plagued Covell, apply to Lewis. Others such as Councilmember Sue Greenwald have been steadfastly pressing for high tech industry, arguing that we have few high tech zoned sites, that this is the ideal way to bring in new industry, and that the site is not conducive to residential development. The current owners however are pressing hard for a residential development. This is not a Measure J site, and it seems like that the residential side will eventually win this fight much to the chagrin of a number of others.

Wildhorse Horse Ranch: This is another peripheral site that would trigger a Measure J vote. The property came up for consideration early this spring and the meeting was largely an unmitigated disaster as neighbors complained about the project and even council would-be supporters seemed close to pulling the plug on the deal. However, the project has been re-worked. Many of the neighbors are if not supportive of the project, at the very least had their criticism muted. This is likely the next Measure J project Davis will vote on. Probably sometime in 2009. How will it go? It's only 40 acres. The project is said to be extremely environmentally innovative on the cutting edge. If the neighbors are brought along it could pass. If the neighbors remained as outspoken as they were at the last meeting before Council, it is a different story.

Those projects represent varying levels of political opposition. There are other projects within the city limits that would be slam dunks. I still believe one of the biggest mistakes of Covell Village was the timing. The council put all of their eggs into one basket on development and as a result, when Covell was voted down, there was nothing left in the queue. The result, few new housing permits the last three years of city council. The pro-growth majority, for a two-year stretch, a 4-1 pro-growth majority oversaw the period of the slowest growth in recent Davis history.

The question at this point is whether the council majority has learned a true lesson from Covell Village. The lesson is not that people do not want growth. However the lesson is also not that they did not explain the project or sell it well enough. The lesson is that the council tried to do too much, too quickly, with one project that was easy for people to understand the consequences of and easy for people to oppose. Moreover, it was polarizing. If the council can avoid polarizing future votes and issues, and instead form broader community consensus, much as the HESC was able to do, they will be successful. If they cannot, their majority will likely be lost.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Housing Element Workshop Brings Growth Debate and Complaints About Process

The city council held a short workshop on the Housing Element Steering Committee’s recommendations along with recommended modifications posed by the Planning Commission and agreed to by the planning staff for the city.

Unfortunately, the Mayor Ruth Asmundson, only scheduled a short period of time for the workshop. It went from 5:00 PM to 6:30, with only a fifteen minute time period for public input. By the time the staff presentation finished, the council had only about five to seven minutes each to speak.

One has to question the usefulness of such a brief discussion on such an important issue. Nevertheless, even the brief time, sharp policies differences erupted between members on the council over the amount and direction of growth.

Councilmember Sue Greenwald questioned why we need these specified new sites. “We have dramatically decreasing home prices right now.” Median home sales prices since 2005 between first quarter of 2006 and first quarter of 2008, we have a 26% decline in home prices according to the Sacramento Bee home sales database. According to the San Francisco Chronicle—“Bay Area home prices plunge 27% in the last year.” She said these numbers are consistent with Davis. “These are areas that are considered higher end and immune to decrease.” Furthermore, she continued with the argument that there is no correlation between new housing permits and housing prices in Davis. Other trends are what are driving the market. She believes that this trend will continue for the next few years. So given the fact that we have already completed our regional fair-share of growth, she does not see the need to grow before 2013.

Councilmember Greenwald also discussed senior housing briefly. “In terms of senior housing, I think we need to separate out housing that is desirable for seniors from senior only housing complexes.” She suggests that a condo-complex downtown would be much more appealing to seniors, than a senior-only complex on the periphery of town.

Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor on the other hand, argued that we need more growth.

“I think that we do have needs for housing.”

He continued,

“I think there is several categories of need, and when I see the page in the report that you’ve just shared with us, I am concerned that we are not providing virtually any supply or addition. However, you cut it, building 44 in one year and 14 the next year, doesn’t get at the need that I believe that our community has.”

“As we work through this process, from my perspective, I am interested in balancing how we address those community needs for additional housing supply with a careful respect for the character of the community as we change.”

Mayor Ruth Asmundson:

“I also agree with Don, we need to have some housing. We can’t stay at zero housing. There has to be some growth to stay healthy.”

She wants to determine what our housing needs are and she wants them to determine how we grow and how much.

“There has to be growth in Davis to keep us healthy. I always have an analogy you know it’s like a baby. The baby is so cute, so adorable, that you wish that this baby wouldn’t grow. But if this baby doesn’t grow, then this baby will become retarded. And so it’s the same thing with the city.”

Sue Greenwald briefly said that we do not need to grow to be healthy. She cited the example of Pittsburgh, PA, which has declined in population but is now thriving as a city more so than several decades ago. She said we have to be realistic about growth and sustainability. She argued that more growth does not lend itself to sustainability.

A number of members of the public came to speak. Due to the abbreviated speaking period, some only spoke for one minute. Others spoke for two minutes.

Matt Williams made some interesting observations during this time.

“I was taken Mayor Asmundson about your comment about nurturing a child. One of the things that we do when we nurture a child is that we feed it. But we also take it to the doctor and we rid it of parasites. We treat the things that are eating up the city from the inside. One of the biggest effects on our city is UCD—in both positive and negative ways. Growth can happen by adding additional houses. What I’m hearing from Councilman Saylor and you, is that what would seem to be the only way to growth would be to add houses. It would seem to me that if UCD steps up and does what it needs to do. If it helps us rid the city of the negative effect of the university, by skewing the supply and demand curve. Using up all the supply of rental housing for students. Instead accommodates the students on the campus, the way other UCD’s do, we would indeed be able to grow. We would grow with our existing amount of housing. And we would see the people who would be added to the city, be close to the core, contribute to the businesses downtown by being more demand for their services, and their products. And we would end up with a more vibrant Davis.”

A numbers members of the public then came up during the public session of the regularly scheduled meeting to complain both about the timing of the meeting and the very short length of the public comment period for such an important issue.

One of those people was Eileen Samitz who made the point:

“Also the scheduling of these issues… to have a controversial issue like the general plan update, which was affecting the entire community, to schedule it at 5:00, when people like myself have to take off from work to get here… This is not what our city is about. Davis is supposed to be a model of democracy.”

Mayor Ruth Asmundson responded to these complaints from the public.

“Let me just talk a little about the public comment… At first this was supposed to be just a workshop. But we decided to put 15 minutes for those to speak that couldn’t make it to public comment at the regular meeting. If there are needs to have more discussion we’ll have it at the end. What I’m trying to do here is trying to juggle conflicting demands. Some council members don’t want to have too long meetings. Some council members don’t want to have that many meetings. But we are trying to make sure that we are having a healthy public engagement. And we’re going to be looking into how we can do that. The fifteen minute rule, if we have to go on, we have business to take care of. The council met at five o’clock, we have other business to do. I wanted to make sure council had an opportunity to have dinner before too long. And so that’s why the fifteen minutes.”

Councilmember Lamar Heystek asked for a future meeting to discuss some of the operating procedures. He is concerned about council communications being so late in the hour under the new policies.

Councilmember Sue Greenwald also disagreed with the new policy limiting public comment to fifteen minutes.

“I share the concerns that a number of the members of the public had. For example, when you said that initially you were going to have a workshop without any public comment, we always, when we discuss any item, have always had public comment. It’s been understood that it is not something that is at the discretion of the mayor.”

She continued:

“I personally feel that limiting public comment is a huge mistake in terms of time. There’s been very few times when public comment really is very long. And when it does, it’s usually because there is a room full of young children who want to keep a hockey rink open or something. And you’re not going to want to cut them off. I guarantee you. And it’s going to look very bad when you let them talk for a half an hour but you haven’t let other citizens talk for over fifteen minutes. It will look arbitrary and capricious.”

It is unclear what will come of the discussion of process. From a personal standpoint, I have always had much more grave concerns about process issues than policy issues.

From a policy standpoint, there will be future discussion in September on the Housing Element. There is a clear disagreement in the direction that the city needs to go. I think there is some opportunity however, even within that disagreement for consensus building.

There seems to be a joint desire for development in the core. I think the ideas that Matt Williams brought up about the university taking a larger share of the responsibility to house students, faculty, and staff, make a lot of sense. This came up during the campaign. I do not see disagreement on that particularly issue by the council. Mayor Pro Tem Don Saylor, while suggesting that was not enough, did seem to support the idea of more housing on campus. If we begin where there is agreement, we can see a less rancorous council.

On the other hand, if we begin with some of the more controversial proposals, if we push Measure J projects like Covell and Nishe first, then we will see more discord on the council and a stronger divide between those who favor a more measured approach to growth taking into account current housing needs within the city, regional trends, and those who would like to see closer to the 1% growth cap.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Early Meeting Set for Housing Element Discussion

Covell Village II Big Issue on the Table

There will be a special workshop to open this week's council meeting from 5 pm to 6:30 pm. Then the council will begin its normal meeting with a full agenda including public comment at 6:30 or 6:45.

The question one might automatically ask, is why put the most important topic, that of the housing element discussion at 5 pm when people are not paying attention and many are just getting off from work?

One of the things that will happen during this meeting is that there will be modifications to the site rankings as laid out by the Housing Element Steering Committee.

A key change that will occur is that the Housing Element Steering Committee (HESC) rank ordered all the sites. They also divided the top 20 into "green light" sites where development would be given a priority and was expected to occur during this general plan cycle and "yellow" and "red" light sites where they saw develop occurring in future general plan cycles depending on the growth rate set by the city council.

Now the Planning Commission and city planning staff recommends removing the ranking numbers from the 20 "green light" sites.

According to the staff report:

"Development applications should be allowed for these highest ranked sites. Although the property owners of several of these sites are likely not ready to submit applications in the near term, development status will be monitored to ensure that the 1% growth cap resolution is not exceeded."

Other recommended changes:

• Move Oakshade Affordable Housing from #26 to green.
• Move Nugget Fields from #28 to Green.
• Keep Lewis Cannery at #21.
• Move Wildhorse Horse Ranch to #22 from #27.
• Willowbank Church: Move from green to yellow.

The rationale on Lewis Cannery and Wildhorse is:

"This site and the Wildhorse horse ranch site (below), with current development applications, are recommended for the top two rankings of the “alternate” sites because they are relatively large sites currently in the city not used for agriculture and can provide a mix of housing types to meet housing needs."

An additional reason might also be that both Lewis Cannery and Wildhorse Horse Ranch have been moving forward with actual development proposals while some other properties are in the more theoretical stage.

One of the groups hoping to move up as the result of this meeting are the Covell Village Developers. The Vanguard has received word that these developers have been working hard to mobilize a huge turnout of seniors who will advocate for the Covell Village Senior Project Proposal.

Having seen their large development that was proposed in 2005 voted down by a 60-40 margin, the Covell Village Developers have broken down their latest proposal into three phases. The first phase is to develop a senior housing facility on the southern portion of the 386 acre parcel.

Few of the seniors who have met with the Covell Village Developers have been told this is only the first part of their plan.

The Housing Element Steering Committee spent considerable time on the Covell Project. There are concerns about prime agricultural land in the bottom portion of the land, where the senior housing facility would be. And there are concerns that the upper two-thirds of the project rests in a flood plain that would represent considerable liability for the city both physically and financially. State legislation in recent years has placed the financial burden on cities who build in flood plains and will no longer bail out cities in the event of a flood.

In addition, the Covell Village developers have purchased additional land north of original property to act as their 2:1 Ag mitigation.

As a result, the Housing Element Steering Committee, composed of a number of very strong supporters of Covell Village including Chair Kevin Wolf, who was a huge advocate for the project in 2005, ranked Covell Village very low as a site. The developers who own the property have been working hard to change that ranking. And are expected to pack the chambers with seniors that they have worked with to bring on board.

Opinions by leaders in the Senior Community vary as to whether or not we actually need additional senior housing. Recent events at Covell Gardens have suggested the need for extreme scrutiny when building and opening senior care facilities. Many seniors have expressed an interest to not downsize and move into a senior community. Many like to live with the general population to begin with. The demand from the local senior population is unclear.

Personally, while I favor slower growth in an environmentally sustainable manner, if I am looking to add housing first, I would look to see infill projects on sites already incorporated within the city. As the HESC indicated, we have plenty of those type of sites and projects to meet our housing needs for the next general plan period.

Second, if we are to add housing I would look toward workforce housing, housing for UC Davis faculty, and student housing first. Those people who work in Davis but do not live in Davis should get the first priority for new housing. Concern has been expressed about the vacancy rate in Davis for apartments and student housing. This is where the priority should be.

It should be noted in the staff report, the only mention of Covell Village is the preference to plan for the Lewis Cannery site in consideration of the adjacent Covell Village site. This remains a chief concern of mine with regards to the Lewis Cannery site. Many have suggested that the site is better suited for high tech or light industrial use. I am circumspect on the type of development that needs to go there and for the most part agnostic. What I am bitterly opposed to would be the use of Lewis Cannery to facilitate development on the adjacent Covell Village site.

Any effort to get the property to move up is coming entirely from the developers and not from the HESC, the Planning Commission, the city planning department, or even the Davis City Council Majority.

I am not one who believes that the 2005 Measure X forever precludes development on the Covell Village site. However, there are many places that should be developed before we even start considering this. It appears that the Covell Village developers will not take no for an answer here. And that at some point we will go through this process once again.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Housing Report Presented to Council and Planning Commission

Last night at a Joint Meeting between the City of Davis and the Planning Commission, the Housing Element Update Steering Committee (HESC) presented their final report to the joint body.

While the work of the body was universally praised in terms of the time commitment and overall work, the substance of it presents some mixed feelings at best. Part of me believes that the work done by the steering committee could have been performed by city staff over the course of a few months. On the other hand, some of things that emerged from this process have been interesting and somewhat unique, and those would not have occurred with a city staff run process. Nevertheless, throughout the meeting there seemed to be a push to expedite the development of the identified properties--the bigger issue of growth rate has been left unresolved by city council since they have anointed the 1% growth rate as a target rather than a mandate. That leaves a considerable gap between the RHNA numbers and the upper ceiling on growth.

In addition to rank ordering the sites, the HESC developed zones or groupings. The first grouping accounts for just over 500 projected units, these are the primary sites--they have existing zoning and are simply ready to go for development. The next group are the top 20 sites--number 1 to number 20, these are called the Secondary Sites and between the primary and secondary sites, the city would get very close to filling its growth capacity on even a 1% growth rate. Some of these properties include the DJUSD Headquarters (1), Grande School Site (3), Downtown Zoning changes (7), PG&E site (8), Nishi (17), etc.

The next group of sites are the alternate sites and they are sites numbers 21 to 33. These are potential sites for this period, but more likely for a future point in time. Some of these include Lewis Cannery (21), Signature (23), Nishi with Olive Drive access (25), Nugget Fields (28), and Covell Village (32). The last four sites are those not needed prior to 2013. These are Parlin sites near the Binning Tracts, Lin Boschken, the property West of Stonegate, and finally at No.37 Oeste Ranch (I wonder if the county is reading this).

Now one of the more innovative changes that this process may allow the city to make, is a change in the way development is done. Kevin Wolf, Chair of the HESC, told the council that they wanted to use the site rankings in the development processing. Right now interested developers go to the city, it goes through a process, and the city makes a determination. He wants this to change, so that only the sites that are given priority by this reporting would be eligible to go forward and they would go forward somewhat in the order in which they were prioritized by the HESC. So project number 1 would get the first opportunity, if the owner was not interested in developing the property at this time, they could move to the next property on the list. The interest of the property owner would still drive the process, but it would be given some structure along the way.

The current system,

"wastes planning commission time and it may not be a high priority at all, but you are stuck with a project going forward. This says, what we're hoping staff and council will say, your project is not on our priority list. We want to hear from the priority list first, if we don't hear from the ones that are in front of you, we'll hear from you. But right now, don't bring it forward because that other one is in front of you that we want to develop first based on our HESC recommendations."

There is a positive aspect to this concept that Kevin Wolf outlined--it sets a prioritization for development. In that respect this would be a positive change. However, I also think it adds the pressure to develop these top 20 sites. Council defended their decision to keep the 1% as the growth guideline based on the fact that we have not been growing at the 1% rate over the past few years, basically since Measure X was defeated. However, putting this into play, if the council uses the 1% growth number, there is a much more realistic chance that we growth at that rate.

1% of course sounds like a very small amount of growth, but we are talking about adding a property larger than Covell Village between now and 2013. Covell Village itself wasn't even suppose to occur that quickly, it was to be phased in over a ten year period of time. Watching the meeting last night, it was clear to me that this process, would expedite the development pace in Davis.

My overall thoughts here before I discuss a bit more specific observations from the council and the community is that in terms of the ranking of sites, there is not much to quibble about. The HESC did a fine job in this respect. The real questions and debate is just beginning however and it is the political one. The question is one about how much additional housing we need, how fast we should grow, and where will we put this housing.

The issue of density has come up over and over again. I think we need to eliminate that word from our land use planning vocabulary. It is a scary word, especially to residents living in adjacent areas that have sunk their hard earned money into their existing property. Kevin Wolf is one of the biggest proponents of making developments more and more dense to accommodate more people and keep the city fairly compact.

At a HESC meeting Mr. Wolf wanted to direct council to ignore or at least downplay the concerns of neighbors about density. I think we need to re-work this dialogue. What we need to talk about is not higher density, but rather a smaller size for units. Smaller units with good strong design that maintains open space and distances can be made acceptable for neighbors if we include them in the process from day one rather than thrust it on them halfway through. You might never get complete approval, but even a compromised process will lead to community and neighborhood buy-in.

Now some of my concerns. The first is site No.7 which is the downtown area. That's a pretty high priority site and what it looks like to me is completely changing the nature and character of downtown. They have a CGI of what that downtown might look like and frankly it is a bit alarming. We are talking about several story buildings lining the downtown with retail on the ground level and potentially housing on the upper levels. This is clearly a long way from going through at this point, but if it does, it completely changes the landscape, feel, and look of our downtown. In many ways, the downtown did not look like Davis, it looked like it could be in many other cities.

I was also concerned about the talk regarding the Lewis Cannery site.

The recommendation of the HESC:

"The Lewis site should be planned, at a minimum, with thoughtful consideration to circulation and land use compatibility with the adjacent Covell Village site, even though the Covell Village site may or may not be approved for future urban use."

Kevin Wolf was one of the chief proponents of Covell Village in 2005. He said point blank at this meeting that he thinks there needs to be access to Pole Line from the Lewis site and he believes that by 2050, there is no way that Covell Village will not be developed. Of course, the voters voted 60-40 against such a development. The Lewis site is ranked 21 versus 32 for the Covell Village site, but I will say this now, there is no way I can support Lewis if it becomes a means by which to expedite and facilitate the development at the adjacent Covell Village site. The intent of Kevin Wolf was very clear here despite the notion that the "planning for the Lewis Cannery site should be able to stand alone and not be delayed by a Measure J vote."

A key point that was raised had to do with West Village and the fact that if it is annexed, it would count for the growth guideline. That is 1500 units, which would be a large portion of even a pure 1% growth rate. If it is not annexed, then it would not count for the 1% growth rate, but in essence, our area could grow by 4000 units by 2013 if West Village is developed, not annexed, and we grow out the full 1% over the next five years. Both Councilmember Lamar Heystek, speaking through a poor connection from a conference in Arkansas and Mayor Sue Greenwald raised this point.

Sue Greenwald raised an additional point:

"I have another concern, that's that this entire process seems to be numbers driven... One thing that concerns me about this whole process is that it seems to be numbers driven and that there's no vision component and that de facto decisions are being made about the visions for the future because we didn't start with the vision discussion."

George Phillips threw an interesting curveball into the mix. Mr. Phillips spoke on behalf of Steve Gidaro one of the owners of the Shriner's Property--the property that Councilmember Stephen Souza had tried to negotiate to get the city to purchase for the purposes of an athletics complex last summer. Mr. Phillips requested that the council place the Shriner's property back into consideration for development.

"The owners of the property... did not express interest at the time [the HESC selection process was occurring] and there is a reason for that there were discussions going on with the city relative to the potential acquisition of the Shriner's property for park purposes, to be considered as a potential site for the major sports park that the city is considering bringing a building out on the Howlett Property."

According to Mr. Phillips, there was agreement that this would be a straight acquisition, not connected to any kind development proposals or any kind of "quid pro quo." They were encouraged to make an offer to the city.

"We received a response back that the price and terms for that acquisition, the city did not have the funds at this point in time to make that acquisition, and that it probably isn't going to come together in spite of good faith efforts by all involved."

He wants to be added the list and the ranking process. He was told by council that he needs to speak to staff about this.

Eileen Samitz, who served on the committee, spoke as well.

"Another problem addressed was the need for a fourth fire station [was addressed as well] and a significant number of us on the committee felt strongly that we don't need a fourth fire station. Instead we need an emergency medical service. One of the astonishing facts is that only 10 percent of the calls for the fire department are for fires, over 50 percent are for medical. We don't need a fire engine to start someone's heart, we need an emergency medical service and basically a restructuring of our fire services is what we should be looking at."

Finally Councilmember Heystek expressed some of his concerns.

"I also wanted to express some of my concerns. Some of those concerns have already been expressed by some of the speakers during public comment on the dais."

He continued that if we were to look at Measure J projects, before we bless this document with those projects for inclusion, that

"we know exactly what our approach to Measure J is. That we are committed to bringing to the voters some renewal of Measure J. If not one that strengthens Measure J, one that at least renews it in its current form."

He also had a problem with the concept of a "green light project." This is a reference to the color scheme where the top projects are green (1-20), the next projects are yellow (21-33), and then red are (34-37).

"And when we say the projects are green light, I think that sends the message that we support the project before we know what the citizens rights with regards to that project are. We have to be very careful about Measure J projects."

He further was concerned how this list helps us determine the kinds of housing that will help fill our needs. We have the sites, but we do not necessarily know what these projects will look like.

My final comment is that I think we need to have a discussion of Measure J before we go forward with this project. While I commend the HESC for their work, there are a lot of issues that they did not deal with, Measure J being one. Another is that they looked at sites rather than housing, but I think we need a fuller picture like Councilmember Heystek said of what these houses will look like. To use Mayor Greenwald's point, we need to know the vision rather than simply the numbers. And finally, we need to know how much we will grow. If we pass 20 green light projects, does that mean that we grow at 1%? It seems to mean that even though the council's previous discussion seemed to downplay that as even a possibility.

Finally, people may not agree with me on any of these three points in terms of direction. I do not have a problem with that, I would just like to see the cards laid on the table before the election a month and a half from now and allow the voters to decide who they want to lead us. The issues of Measure J, housing needs, and growth rate should all be key discussions during the coming election.

---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

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

Commentary: On Public Involvement in the HESC Process

On Thursday, the Davis Enterprise ran a front page story on the Housing Element Steering Committee's weighing of public opinion on how Davis should grow over the course of the next six years until 2013.

Kevin Wolf, the chair of the HESC suggested that two email campaigns could have affected the results.

"Days before the workshop, an e-mail went out to senior citizens on a mailing list advising them to write that a site known as Covell Village should be ranked high on the list.

Another e-mail, sent by a housing committee member, also focused on Covell Village but encouraged people to nudge it down the list of possible sites for development."

First of all, I do not agree that these two efforts were synonymous as Mr. Wolf treats them. The first was sent out by a representative for a developer, it specifically recommended that the Covell Village site be ranked more highly. However, included in there, were specific instructions on just how to do that. It included a step by step form to instruct people how to fill out the form, what items to select in order to maximize the Covell Village site.

The other email simply told people to come to the meeting and vote against Covell Village. If the representatives from Covell Village had done that, no one would have raised a big stink about it. It was only the method that drew the ire of people.

But there is more to what Mr. Wolf said.

"'Our committee talked about the problem a workshop has in that it won't provide us with a representative sample of what the Davis community thinks, but more the activist community,' Wolf wrote in an e-mail to The Davis Enterprise. 'From my perspective, the lobbying to bring people to the workshop dramatically lowers the usefulness of the results.' "

I very strongly disagree with Mr. Wolf here and for one simple reason: who was he expecting to come to the workshop under any conditions?

There is simply no condition under which the activist community--those for slower growth and those representing the developer community would not be the vast majority of individuals who attended the workshop.

Those are the people who pay the most attention. Those are the 10% of the population engaged in the issue. There is no way that this format would have generated attendance commensurate with the rest of the population.

So if that is Mr. Wolf's concern, then this format was never going to produce anything other than that kind of breakdown regardless of attempts by both sides to mobilize their specific group.

Tomorrow, I will talk more about the issue of density that came up at the City Council meetings, at the HESC meetings, and the paper.

Overall my thoughts on the HESC are of two minds. On the one hand, I am appreciative of the HESC for working very hard to achieve some measure of consensus, which is not easy with a diverse group. And also to take seriously the charge they were tasked with.

However at the end of the day, I really do not see the need for this kind of effort. I understand the desire to evaluate each area for potential growth and perhaps this document or report that they produce will have value beyond 2013. But as things stand right now, I'm not sure this effort was needed.

The RHNA guidelines mandate only about 500 additional units between now and 2013. That would be just a small number of projects and fankly if the council is going to approve Lewis, Simmons, and the Horse Ranch, they are essentially done.

That leads to another question as to why, as I have asked several times, they have the HESC process if they are moving on outside of that process.

Finally, the key issue is one that the council will decide and that is the 1% growth now guideline rather than mandate, apparently. The council meeting on Tuesday will see the debate over that issue.

The council's decision on growth rate will determine just how many of these recommendations are actually acted upon.

Getting back to the original point of this piece, I understand the desire to get public input on this process, but it seems clear to me and anyone else that a workshop, is going to bring out the people who are already engaged regardless of the outreach to include others. And, the engaged are much more extreme and polarized in their views on growth than the public as a whole. As the result of that, I do not see a way that we can avoid the type of outcome that Kevin Wolf laments. The attendance is never going to be representative of anything other than the activist community. There is just no avoiding that.

So, if the HESC wanted to get broader public input, they might have considered a different approach.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Guest Commentary: Home on the Range

by Matt Williams

DPD began yesterday’s column by stating, “It is not altogether clear what the results of the workshop were and how much they will affect the final decisions made by the panel.” Thanks to some superb work by Planning Department Staff in producing several Summary documents, the Housing Element Steering Committee was able to quickly decide that Community Workshop #2 essentially ratified the decisions the Committee had made in the 12 months leading up to the Workshop.

One of the Summaries the Committee reviewed, listed the nine ranking changes on six different sites that were suggested by 15 or more people at Station 4 of the Workshop. Although it was clear by the Covell Village comments numbers that any attempt to “hijack” the workshop had failed (and failed badly), the only meaningful takeaway from the ranking change suggestions was that the Public had a hard time understanding how the Committee could be looking at “unrealistic” sites like PG&E. “Come on guys and ladies, get real. I know you think this exercise is hypothetical, but believe me there are people (even in Davis) that believe everything they read – including rankings of future housing development sites.”

Any person who is interested in Housing in Davis should consider the Additional Summaries of Comments at Workshop #2 a must read. It was handed out in paper-copy draft form to the Committee last night. Hopefully, Staff will get the finalized electronic version of this Summary on the HESC website soon, so everyone has access to it. For those who could not be at the meeting, in the draft paper copy, Staff grouped the 285 Comments they received at Station 5 of the Workshop into the following categories. Each category included the text of all the comments in that category.

• Housing Density and Intensity near Downtown and Neighborhood Nodes

Supportive of Higher Densities (11 comments)
Concerns about Density (6 comments)
Infill and Sprawl (4 comments)
Affordable Housing (1 comment)
Location (5 comments)
Other (3 comments)

• Housing Development Within the City as Compared to Peripheral Sites

Infill (16 comments)
Conditions for Development on the Periphery (14 comments)
Neighborhood Design (2 comments)
Agriculture Related (5 comments)
Other (4 comments)

• Variety of Housing Types

Affordable Housing (10 comments)
Moderate Housing (2 comments)
Compact Housing (11 comments)
Student Housing (2 comments)
Senior Housing (24 comments)
Mix of Housing Types (3 comments)
Other (4 comments)

• General Comments (159 comments in total)

Growth (46 of the 159)
*** Opposed to 1% Guideline and/or No Growth (38 of the 46)
*** Neither Pro nor Con the 1% Guideline (3 of the 46)
*** Conditional Pro Growth (5 of the 46)
Supportive of Son of Covell Village (5 of the 159)
Opposed to Son of Covell Village (9 of the 159)
Comments About Other Sites (8 of the 159)
Site Development Feasibility (1 of the 159)
Lewis Cannery Site Timing (3 of the 159)
Agriculture (1 of the 159)
Infill (4 of the 159)
Housing Needs and Groups (7 of the 159)
Affordable Housing (2 of the 159)
Housing Mix, Types, Densities, Sizes and Prices (1 of the 159)
Downtown and Neighborhood Centers (1 of the 159)
Mixed Use (3 of the 159)
Business, Industry and Jobs (5 of the 159)
Sustainability (6 of the 159)
Taxes, Revenues and Fiscal Impacts (9 of the 159)
Community Design (4 of the 159)
Infrastructure (1 of the 159)
Transportation and Parking (5 of the 159)
Neighborhood Impacts (6 of the 159)
Preserve Community Character (8 of the 159)
Miscellaneous Comments (8 of the 159)
Other Comments Too Risque to Print (2 of the 159)

In yesterday’s column DPD raised a very interesting point, “In some ways I feel that this process is almost ad hoc. And that decisions are being made on each of these steps independently. There are different maps and different processes. And the result will be what exactly? Does the public or even our leaders on council know?” What I heard and read last night was that the Davis community took this Workshop seriously, and has given the Committee, the Planning Department Staff, and most especially the Council well-thought-out feedback on possible approaches to Housing in the coming days, months and years. Hopefully, that message will be carried to all the individual processes that deal with Housing. The reality is that unless we the people make that happen, it won’t happen. I guarantee that the comments on the 1% Growth Guideline will be used at Tuesday’s Council meeting when they discuss the 1% Guideline.

Now that I have covered the factual content of last night’s Committee meeting, let me turn to the theatrical parts of the evening’s activities. City Finance Director, Paul Navazio got out his top hat, cane and Capezios for his dance around the question of how (and whether) Housing Development “pencils out” in Davis. Paul shared some very interesting material, and the words of his bottom-line answer to the question were “It depends.” I didn’t hear it that way. I heard, “Most of the time the answer is No, but in some special circumstances the answer may be Yes.” The problem for me is that those special circumstances revolve around building more “Million Dollar Houses” (Paul’s words), and that is the one housing type that this City does not need more of.

For me, Paul’s presentation and comments make Tuesday’s City Council discussion about the 1% Guideline all the more important. Mark Siegler advocated “a pause” in the coming months (and possibly years), so that we can really understand what kind of housing will make the most sense in Davis. Workforce housing and affordable housing do not “pencil out” in a financial analysis, but they do contribute to the vibrancy and sustainability of our City. Single-family, detached homes over $500,000 do “pencil out,” but they will make Davis even more of a bedroom community. Is that what we want? I for one hope not.