As Regional and State Growth Rates Fall, What Will Be the Impact on Davis?

The Sacramento Bee reported back on December 18, 2008 that the regional and state growth rates have fallen to its lowest levels in more than a decade.

In six counties surrounding Sacramento which include Yolo, Sutter, Yuba, Placer, El Dorado and Sacramento Counties, the growth rate from July 1, 2007 to July 1, 2008 was only 1.39%. Separately, Yolo County grew at 1.46 percent adding around 3,000 people. Placer was the fastest growing county in California at 2.6 percent. Sacramento grew at a rate below the statewide level at 1.11 percent.

Statewide the growth rate was actually lower at 1.16%.

More people moved out of California than moved into California during this time period.

What does all of this mean for Yolo County and Davis?



Davis has spent considerable time and energy focusing on the issue of growth. One of the arguments in recent years has been that Davis must take on its fair share of new growth. That was a more poignant argument in the early part of this decade was population growth was exploding and the housing market booming.

Regional governance groups like SACOG (Sacramento Area Council of Governments) and RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) have developed models for growth based on allocations of fair share. In other words, the basic model determines how much of the region's growth a given area should accommodate.

The problem is that this has become a moving target for local growth politics. Back during the Measure X debate, the argument used by proponents was the Davis would be penalized if it did not take on its supposed fair share of growth.

However, by 2007, RHNA had come out with new numbers suggesting that Davis needed to take on a much smaller share of growth--considerably less than the current projected growth rate of 1%. When it did however, the debate was shifted in Davis.

First, the 1% growth requirement became a growth cap. Now 1% is the target and the limit rather than the threshold that we need to meet.

Second, the debate in Davis is about internal housing needs rather than regional fair share growth allocations. Frankly this is what the debate always should have been about from the beginning.

In this sense, falling state and regional rates may relieve some pressure for Davis to grow. However, perceptions about the internal needs of Davis, which have thus far been more theoretic and less concrete, have continued to drive the debate.

Frankly, for everyone but the most ardent no-growther, the question is really about where, how, and how quickly we grow. I am not in the no-growth camp. I would also prefer not to put a number on our growth rate.

From my perspective one problem with housing in Davis is that UC Davis has taken on less than its share of student housing. UC Davis has the lowest percentage of on-campus housing in the UC system. There are several advantages for UC Davis to provide more housing. First, they can subsidize it, which lowers the costs to the students. Second, they have a large amount of available land. A good, dense, and environmentally friendly project on the UC campus would go a long way toward helping the city better assess its own needs.

A recent survey of apartments in Davis found that the vacancy rate in the city of Davis increased slightly this fall to .8 percent. However, the rental rates continued to rise by an average of 4.36 percent. Interestingly, though the vacancy rate was higher this year, the rate of increase was also higher than the previous year where a .7 percent vacancy yielded a 4.18 percent increase in rent. This despite the depressed housing market and economy.

In the comparable cities, Woodland saw a 4.1 percent vacancy rate but a 4.8 percent rent increase. On the other hand, West Sacramento nearly has 20% of its apartments vacant and the resultant rate only saw a .6 percent increase.

Clearly Davis needs more student housing. The argument again for UC Davis to provide on-campus housing is first that they have the land and can subsidize the property, but second that UC Davis' growth in recent years is a large culprit in the lack of student housing in Davis. By providing more housing, more single family units within the city could be freed up for people who work in Davis but have not been able to live here.

This is the strongest pressure driving the need for Davis to grow. Earlier this month, the Vanguard suggested one option, similar to what Cal Poly did, which is create a large and dense housing complex on campus. A facility of that sort, highly innovative and land conscious, could take a huge pressure off the city to have to expand its borders.

For all of the talk about internal housing needs, very few of the proposed projects in the Housing Element Steering Committee's top sites have a sizable student housing component. Almost all of them focus instead on single family residences with a few affordable and multifamily dwellings thrown in the mix.

In other words, with perhaps the exception of Nishi, which has other problems, there are no plans put forth to deal with the largest internal housing need we have.

The West Village will break ground this year and provide an additional 2000 units or so for student housing. That is a good start, but with UC Davis continuing to grow and not enough student housing at present, West Village is clearly not enough.

Many residents are not opposed to growth with good, environmentally friendly projects that continue to preserve the character of Davis. The problem is from many of our perspectives, the new subdivisions that we have seen in town could have been plopped down anywhere in the country. That's not the kind of large scale growth we would like to see.

Give me a housing project I can get behind and I will. I would like to focus on environmentally sustainable, smaller houses so that middle income people can afford them, a student housing component, a senior housing component, and a work force housing component.

The city of Davis has already approved housing for Verona, for Simmons, and for Grande. That's over 200 units right there. In addition, West Village will provide a large number of units over three phases. In addition, Lewis is proposing 600 units, on a property that would be better served with a business park. The Wild Horse Ranch will be proposing somewhere just under 200 units in the coming months for a project that would require a Measure J vote.

In this housing market, that is more than enough housing to last us the foreseeable future. I would like to see one additional project, and that would be a high density, UC Davis campus project that provides 3000 to 5000 beds on the UC Campus in an environmentally sustainable way. If we do that, I think we our needs for a while in terms of housing.

The external pressures have lessened and the housing market is in bad shape. That will give us time to work on making what we do have as carbon neutral as possible--a very worthwhile endeavor in the coming years.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Models Conflict on Whether Davis Needs Senior Housing

Elaine Roberts Musser had an excellent column this week in the Vanguard. If you did not read it, you should. I am following up on it but I will not do it justice.

I start at a midpoint in her article which I think is actually the starting point for any discussion not just on senior housing but on development overall. I think it too often gets over-shadowed in the whole housing debate. The question is one of internal need.

Elaine Roberts Musser writes:

"Necessary to the process will be for developers to consider “internal” community needs rather than “external” needs of those who live outside Davis. (This is not an elitist attitude, by the way, but a recognition that the efforts of the City Council need to be directed toward addressing community problems first and foremost, if at all possible. This is the charge of the City Council.)"

What is interesting about internal need is that regional housing boards like SACOG do not use internal housing need, instead they use what is called a Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) in order to figure out what the "fair share" of growth for a community is. Of course the problem is that at least in part those numbers are externally driven. SACOG like other "Councils of Goverments" is a pseudo-elected body made up of representatives from various governmental bodies. The very idea of a RHNA mandate for growth is a strict limit on local autonomy.

We started this week with a discussion on the reduction of sprawl at a state level. However, communities within that framework ought to have a good deal of say as to how, when, and how much they should grow. Some communities would like to grow quicker than others. I certainly believe that is something within their rights.

A true internal needs assessment for Davis is not surprisingly a matter of controversy. But there is quite a bit of locally driven demand from the university in the form of both faculty and staff as well as students. As I have mentioned at other points in time, the university could go a long way toward helping to alleviate the student housing crunch if they were willing to take up their own fair-share of proposed growths. According to statistics, UC Davis has among the lowest, if not the lowest, on-campus housing in the UC system.

Like any model, internal housing needs depends on the assumptions of the model. And here is where the article by Elaine Roberts Musser to me is so important.

The Housing Element Steering Committee (HESC) determined that there would be "an “internal need” for somewhere between 200 to 400 units of senior housing between now and the year 2013."

Ms. Roberts Musser goes on to argue:

"The members I talked with and a person on city staff are indicating there is very little justification for the numbers arrived at, ostensibly because it is a difficult figure to quantify."

But here is the key point that I think underscores the problematic nature of such projections.

"The notion that all seniors want to downsize is fallacious. An AARP survey indicates otherwise. Actually 83% of those 45 and older would prefer to stay in their existing home, and not downsize."

This is consistent with a number of seniors or soon-to-be seniors I have spoken with. The other key point that many miss, is that a lot of seniors also do not want to live in what they think of as segregated communities or "Senior Ghettos" to use a more pejorative term (remember the original meaning of ghetto was simply a segregated community rather than a dilapidated one. Here is one definition: "a ghetto is an area, usually within a city, in which members of a particular cultural, ethnic, religious or national group live in high concentration, whether by choice or by force.")

Ms. Roberts Musser then raises the key point: if we re-orient the model to use the 83% figure, we come up with strikingly different results.

"If that statistic is applied to:

Tandem Properties’ alleged “internal need” of 800 units by year 2013, the “internal need” shrinks to 136 units;

HESC’s estimated “internal need” of 200-400 units by year 2013, the “internal need shrivels to between 34-68 units.

In fact, the current wait list for Shasta Point and Eleanor Roosevelt, both essentially low-income senior facilities, is virtually zero. As is the wait-list at Atria Covell Gardens, an assisted living facility for the elderly."

These assumptions are instructive however because they allow us to understand in concrete mathematical terms the nature of the debate and why I consistently hear from different individuals very different figures on the need for senior housing.

I want to bring up a second key point, one that was not raised in the Tuesday column, and that is about the nature of the Covell proposal.

Everyone knows the history of the original Covell Village proposal and the ensuing debate and campaign battle for Measure X. The Covell Partners, who I shall continue to reference as such, recognized some of the errors of their campaign and decided to scale-down their proposal.

Except that they really have not. What they have done is broken down the proposals by stages. The senior housing facility will only occupy the lower third of the property. Stages 2 and 3 would follow after successful approval of stage 1. They do not like to publicize this fact, but they have admitted it to various people that they have met with during the course of their outreach or focus group efforts.

In other words, if you were concerned about the Covell Village site because of the size and traffic impacts, then be mindful about how the big picture looks here.

From my perspective, it is going to take a long time to convince me that a senior facility at Covell Village really serves internal housing needs. In as much as I would be willing to support development, modest as that support would be, I would start with meeting internal needs for students and faculty through infill development. And I mean really infill development in properties that are already located within current city boundaries and that are already zoned residential. I do not see a need to develop Covell Village in the next general plan period. As the HESC showed us, we can meet our RHNA mandated growth by relying strictly on infill. I would suggest we bracket this discussion until after we have exhausted those possibilities.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

California On Verge of Re-Writing the Book on Land-Use--Links Growth Goals and Climate Issues

A bill sponsored by Sacramento's State Senator Darrell Steinberg would change the way California does land-use--fusing the issues of urban growth and global warming. The state would use roughly $12 billion per year in transportation funds as an incentive to steer communities toward land-use policies that contain sprawl.

But it is even more sweeping than that. As the California Progress Report cites broad negotiations between a variety of stakeholders.

"The triumph of this bill reflects months of intense negotiations between major environmental groups, the building industry, affordable housing advocates, and state and local governments. Senator Steinberg has been lauded for bringing these groups, often at war with each other in the past, together for this bill. SB 375 marks the first time major environmental organizations, local governments, major homebuilders and affordable housing advocates have agreed on a plan to account for California’s population growth and achieve AB 32 greenhouse gas emission reduction goals at the same time. In return for a quicker process to approve housing under California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), new development will have to consider transportation in planning."

Senator Steinberg said:

"If California is to fully implement AB 32, we must address how our communities grow. SB 375 will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks and improve Californians’ quality of life through smart, coordinated regional planning. I urge the Governor to sign SB 375.”

The Governor now has to sign the bill, he has not taken a position on it, but has championed some of its goals.

According to one analysis the bill would work like this:

"Under the measure, the state Air Resources Board would establish targets for 17 regions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as part of a broader campaign to curb global warming. It then would be up to local planning agencies, such as [SACOG] – to help cities and counties implement land-use policies that would meet those goals.

Regional agencies are expected to encourage more compact development, linking residents to transit, jobs and shopping."

The key to this bill though was Steinberg able to forge broad coalitions together.

"The legislation offers builders density concessions, relief from time-consuming and costly environmental reviews, stronger safeguards against litigation aimed at stopping projects, and assurances that proposals complying with general plans will not be arbitrarily derailed."

The California Progress Report quotes the heads of California League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council--both of whom sponsored the bill--along with the Chair of the California Building Industry Association with strong words of support.

One of the key provisions of the bill is taking RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Assessment) and adjusting it to become aligned with the land use plan in that region's Sustainable Communities Strategy which will account for greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The California Progress Report quotes Tom Adams, who is President of the CLVC. He put the bill into historical perspective. The key to this bill is that it puts housing into areas that will decrease drive times. It will create more compact and denser development rather than the continuation of sprawl.

“In my view, SB 375 is the most important land use bill in California since enactment of the Coast Act. It has taken 32 years since that bill was enacted to bring a coalition together who could make major land use change in California. Senator Steinberg has accomplished that in this bill and it is an amazing achievement on his part and we are tremendously grateful for his leadership.

“This is the equation for solving the problems that we face in terms of housing, getting shorter commute times for people. When you have shorter commutes, you reduce vehicle miles traveled. It’s also important to recognize that you reduce traffic congestion.

“What this bill will do is say that regional housing needs assessment and the strategies that will be adopted under the regional transportation planning process will be aligned. The housing distribution throughout the region will be put in locations that will help California achieve its strategic environmental goals of climate policy, air quality, and energy conservation.

“Finally, the bill amends the California Environmental Quality Act, the environmental quality act that is California’s premiere statute for protecting the environment….So that the procedures for environmental review of projects rewards projects that are consistent with strategies that achieve our climate goals, air quality and energy conservation and helps us promote the kinds of transit priority projects that are needed for the future of California.

“Each of these issue areas—land use, the regional housing needs allocation program, and the California Environmental Quality Act are regarded by many people as sacred cows. They certainly are, at a minimum, a minefield for anyone who want to amend them.

“I think to say that we would have just done land use would have been incredible. Or just to have done the housing program or just to have done CEQA. This bill is a trifecta of the impossible. Senator Steinberg has managed to pull together a bill that brings some of the most important and most difficult statutes in the state of California into alignment so that we can achieve housing that is needed, environmental quality, climate policy, air quality, reduced congestion, increased housing choices, and have a better transportation policy for California.”

What does this all mean?

It is difficult to assess what it means for communities like Davis. But I think overall it has several worthwhile goals.

First, we have to start looking toward the development of public and alternative transportation. One of the key hurdles to a good and unified public transportation system in California is our land-use policies that has continued to build out rather than up or create more density. The result is that public transportation is inefficient, it takes too long in many cases to take public transit from the suburbs into the cities. As that changes, we can begin to develop infrastructure that takes us out of our cars.

Second, by building more compactly, by placing precedence on locations that are closer to jobs, we begin to reduce drive times. Frankly, I think most of us would like to eliminate the need for commuting, and this is a good first step.

Third, some may raise eyebrows here, but I think it makes sense, in order to get the other side on board, they attempted to streamline the process of getting approval for projects through CEQA and the environmental review of projects. What this does is say that if projects are consistent with the goals of his project, approval is streamlined and hastened. The goals of the environmental review process are now aligned with achieving reduction of carbon emissions and energy conservations.

This is such a sweeping bill however, that the full consequences of its enactment may not be known for some time. Again, it is unclear how it will impact a place such as Davis. However, even in Davis, the move has been away from sprawl and towards higher density and more infill projects as a means not only to preserve farmland but also to reduce drive times.

One thing that is certainly true, we could not continue with our prior land-use polices of unmitigated sprawl development in the broader sense in California. Encroachment onto farmland not only puts farming at risk, but endangers the environment and increases our dependency on oil. This is a broad step that shows the political skill of Senator Steinberg.

---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

City Council: Status Quo or Change

I have been reading a number of letters to the editor in the past few days touting the experience of a given city councilmember. Yesterday in particular, a certain letter touted the three incumbents as having a proven record and being independent thinkers.

We all know there is a certain lady that I am kind of fond in this race. For those unclear, it is the one with the really long last name. But let us forget about this for a second. This is not about her, per se, right now. It is a more general question and a more general issue.

At the end of the day, everyone in this city has to make up their mind about whether they like the status quo on the city council or whether they want change.

And for the sake of argument the other woman, who is of no relation to me, but who shares my last name, and for those who do not know, also happens to be the mayor, she is the minority, she is not part of the status quo here. On the big issues, she and Lamar Heystek have lost each time for the most part.

So here is the question--does the current council majority represent your views on where the city should go. Or do you want change?

It is really that simple. Now you can pick a wide range of topic to evaluate the city council on.

For example, did you support Measure X? If you supported Measure X--i.e. Covell Village in 2005, then Stephen Souza and Don Saylor are probably your candidates on that issue. If you thought that Measure X was too large a development, if you believe that it would impact traffic flows on Covell Blvd., if you were concerned about protection of prime agricultural land, etc., then you might want to consider change on the city council to people who opposed such a large development.

To this date, people like Stephen Souza and Ruth Asmundson have publicly stated that the public just did not understand Measure X. Stephen Souza basically stated that the community did not understand Measure X at the first candidates debate. He said this was the first exercise of Measure J and that a project as big as Covell Village takes longer to explain to the community, that it has to come with its impacts mitigated, and that the affordable housing component has to be explainable to the public. Finally we have to totally be engaged in a process that we are expected to vote on. This is basically the Ruth Asmundson answer rehashed, Souza simply does not understand the opposition to Measure X and argues that the public did not properly understand it rather than take from the lesson that the public is not supportive of huge new develops on the Davis periphery.

Then you have the issue of housing and growth. The one percent growth guideline was supported by the council majority which included Stephen Souza and Don Saylor. Don Saylor has talked about filling our internal housing needs and used that as a justification for the one percent growth guideline. For Stephen Souza that means in addition infill development, we need to look at some new peripheral developments.

On the other hand, Sue Greenwald joined Lamar Heystek opposing the one percent growth guideline. She and others have pointed out that one percent growth sounds small but it amounts to a Mace Ranch level development over a period of three years. Sue Greenwald questions what the housing needs really means and wants to find ways to insure that when we develop we are filling our internal housing needs rather than external ones.

What is clear is the RHNA is not requiring a huge amount of new growth over the next six years, this gives council the discretion to determine its own rate of growth.

At a recent debate the two sides disagreed on this point as well.

Don Saylor argued that RHNA was only part of what we needed. He focused on the internal needs assessment and argued that we need to take a look at our own planning regardless of RHNA requirements.

Sue Greenwald on the other hand suggested that the numbers were not interesting to her. She was concerned that if Davis went beyond the SACOG allotment that this would lead to increased SACOG numbers in the future.

One of the biggest issues facing the council in the next two years will be the fate of Measure J--the iniative that allows the public to vote on zoning changes and peripheral development. Where do the candidates stand on Measure J? This will be a huge debate--will Measure J be rescinded in 2010, will it be altered in 2010, or will it be renwed as written. Sue Greenwald has already come out in support of Measure J in its current form. Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald in her literature states that she wants to make it permanent in its current forum. I have not heard the position of either Stephen Souza or Don Saylor on this issue. It will be interesting to see where they stand on Measure J which prevented Covell VIllage from being developed.

Sydney Vergis did come out in favor of Measure J in the debate, although she suggested some non-substantive changes. For the sake of clarity, she is most clearly supported and positioned with the council majority. Her treasurer is the daughter of Ruth Asmundson. Her campaign is largely run by Janice Bridge. Bridge was one of the more outspoken proponents of closing Valley Oak Elementary. She was also an ardent Yes on Covell Village supporter, appearing in their literature at the time. Other key yes on Covell luminaries supporting Vergis are Kevin Wolf and John Whitcombe just to name a few. Janice Bridge has been heard around town touting Sydney Vergis as a pro-development candidate.

Rob Roy on the other hand, steadfastly belongs on the progressive or opposition side of the fence. In a comment on the blog he said this about Covell Village:

"I was against Measure X because it wasn’t green enough. The design wasn’t revolutionary. It was just another huge subdivision (that happened to have some solar panels) sprawled out onto farmland. If the land-use design were more revolutionary, like Village Homes, (as a political strategist) I’ll say that maybe it would have passed. The difference between Stephen and I is that he voted for the project that went to the voters and he promoted it as well."

Thus if your issue is housing and growth there are clear differences between the current council majority and what a majority led by Lamar Heystek, Sue Greenwald, and Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald might bring.

The growth issue is but one example of the differences between the current council majority, i.e. the status quo, and what a new council majority might bring. At the end of the day, the public has to decide what growth policy best represents them. As the council race continues to progress, we will continue to draw out differences between the two candidates that will allow the public to make a determination as to whether they prefer the status quo or if it is time to change the direction of city council.

DISCLAIMER: Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald is a candidate for city council. Doug Paul Davis' real name is David Greenwald. They are married. David Greenwald and Sue Greenwald are not related. Neither is Stephen Souza and Don Saylor.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: Looking Back At Rhetoric from Measure X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mike Harrington, by then a former City Councilmember:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is the point that was dodged on Tuesday night.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

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.

Davis Growth Discussions To Continue Tonight

Tonight at 7 PM at the school district conference room the General Plan Housing Element Steering Committee will meet in part to discuss the results from the workshop two weeks ago.

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. It seems that there were only nine ranking changes on six different sites that were suggested by 15 or more people. Three of these dealt with Covell Village and two Nishi.

Only two of the suggestions were to raise the ranking. That included the Lewis Cannery project which was recommended from Medium to High. And the full Covell Village property which was also recommended from Medium to High.

(see all eight summary charts of the workshop).

A few quick thoughts on these changes and then some more general comments.

First, the recommended move of PG&E makes some sense. I know it is a convenient area to consider since it is infill and not all that useful at this point in time. However, from what I understand the city would have to pay the moving costs for PG&E to relocate their property and that would run around $60 million. I know the Mayor has been a strong advocate for this project and location, and perhaps there is some aspect of this I am missing, however right now I tend to agree with the comment: "Not realistic for development."

Two of the Nishi proposals were lowered one from high to low and one from medium to low. I agree with that. Access is a huge concern. Right now realistically it looks like you would only have access from Olive Drive by car. That is a highly congested area as it is and adding more vehicle traffic would just be problematic. The bicycle access plans are a good idea, but this is just not realistic until you fix the traffic.

Many suggested that Signature be reduced from medium to low. In general, sprawl is opposed by the public. This is really something that our city leaders need to take into consideration. I do not believe that the sports park development is a sufficient reason to develop inside the Mace Curve at this time.

Then the 800 pound gorilla--Covell Village. There were significant recommendations moving the development in both directions. The traffic congestion issue is the big one that led voters to reject it in the first place but a close second would be the sprawl factor, the agricultural land factor and the very fact that the voters just rejected this a little over two years ago.

On the plus side, you have people citing it as a unique infill location (it is not infill), a great location for senior community, and close to shopping and schools.

The bottom line, is that you can argue that it is close to downtown relatively speaking, but overall it is a bad place to grow the way that Davis is currently configured. You simply lack the infrastructure and access to put more people in that location. There is no freeway access. All traffic would have to dump onto Covell, and Woodland is developing down Road 102, which means that traffic is going to be going from Davis to Woodland.

At the end of the day, I'm not completely unhappy with the way the HESC process has played out. But there are a number of concerns that I will go into briefly.

First, if Covell is the 800 gorilla, the 1% growth rate is the brontosaurus. Everything that was done by this committee now depends upon how much we should grow. At the last council meeting, the council majority, specifically Councilmember Don Saylor and Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Asmundson, talked about the need for housing. I just couldn't disagree more at this point in time given the housing market, given the strains on city budget and infrastructure. People think of housing as a means to raise city revenue but you basically get a modest one-time development fee, and we do not get enough for that to begin with, but that is far trumped by the cost for service.

Bottom line here is there seems little or no need to surpass RHNA guidelines which adds just under 500 units in the next six years.

Second, I think we need to take a more holistic approach here. And I'll divide these comments two-fold.

The council has recently heard from the Simmons property folks and the Horse Ranch development. These two projects are moving along at this time along with the Lewis Property. That's three developments that are moving forward outside somewhat of the confines of the HESC. That does not make a lot of sense from the perspective of the work done by this committee and planning for the future.

Along the same lines we have multiple factors moving at the same time. We just spoke about the sphere of influence from LAFCO which will be discussed in February and March. The council is discussing the 1% growth rate next week. You have new RHNA numbers about growth allocation and fair share of growth. You still have the Yolo County general plan with the fact that those study areas are apparently not dead. Along with that you have the pass-through agreement. You have the HESC. None of this is being discussed in totem. How do all of these factors contribute to the overall growth picture?

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?

By the end of March we should have a good idea of the answers to some of those things--but on April first will our leaders be able to tell us what the future of Davis looks like?

Add one more point--is the council majority going to continue to support Measure J as we currently know it? A lot of these decisions are being made suggesting that Measure J will protect us from growth. It permeates each issue. But will they keep it in place in the current form?

These next few weeks of discussions should tell us a tale. We'll have to find out where we stand after that.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting