Gottschalks Potential Bankruptcy Concerns City

The headlines from a few days ago was that Gottschalks is likely to run out of money by the end of the month. Where does that leave Davis which has had a Gottschalks store in the University Mall since 1999? Well Gottschalks is currently the only department store in Davis. And with Mervyn's going bankrupt and liquidating its stores, it may be the end of the line for such mid-range stores that are stuck between the low-line big-box retail stores like Target and Wal-Mart but a step below the higher end stores like Nordstrom's or Macy's.

This would be particularly bad news for the County Fair Mall in Woodland. Target has moved from that Mall to the larger location off Road 102 by Costco. That move was planned, but now coincides with the loss of Mervyns and now it appears Gottschalks.

The impact for Davis is not good either, according to economic development director, Sarah Worley who told the Davis Enterprise yesterday:

"The city is gravely concerned about the difficulties the Gottschalks company is having and any possible closure of the Davis store. The store is a valuable community amenity as an important anchor for the University Mall shopping center, in meeting local shopping needs and for its generation of sales tax revenue. The city is seeking more information about the situation for the Davis store and will continue to monitor its status."

And yet that location, in a way hidden in the back of the Mall, in a very small store, has never been that great for Gottschalks.

Most interesting perhaps is the fact that one of the culprits in the downfall of stores like Gottschalks is the rise of big-box retail.

"The last few years have also been grueling for many regional mid-range retailers around the country, which have had trouble competing against national big-box discount stores like Wal-Mart and high-end department stores like Nordstrom's."

The irony is that the city laments the loss of a store but their policies paved the way for its demise. The fact of the matter is that even under better circumstances, Gottschalks was probably doomed in Davis the moment that Target was allowed to come in. When all things are even, a store like Gottschalks probably was going to have trouble competing against a Target. But things of course were not even.

Gottschalks was stuck in the back of a small location, with a small inventory. Target would be able to severely cut into their market in Davis. The end of Gottschalks is probably coming a bit faster because of the economic downturn, but it was probably inevitable.

Undoubtedly reactions to this will be mixed. For people like me, I get a good percentage of my clothing at Gottschalks--you can purchase decent but still affordable clothing at its locations. Its loss would leave Davis without a department store. To me, Target does not fill that void, although I suppose it does people a place to get cheap clothing.

In the end, the question will invariably be who else is going to become a culprit to Target. Are we going to lose a number of smaller chain stores? Are we going to lose a number of locally owned stores? Is Target coming to town going to reduce our shopping options rather than expand them? Is it going to force the city to bring in other big-box stores to compete if the city wants to have a variety of options rather than be a one-shop town?

These are all questions that have been pondered for quite some time, but given the economy, given the precarious nature in which a lot of merchants are living these days, the threat is becoming even more real right now. Target is about to pour their foundation and then we will see what the real cost of bringing in Target to Davis is. The timing probably couldn't be worse given the shape of the economy. Many places that might have survived in better economic times will probably see this as their death knell.

---David M. Greenwald reporting

Back to the Big Box Battle: Is New Ad Campaign Deceptive

One of these days, I am going to do a full blown comparison of prices of Wal Mart to other stores. According to much of the research on Big Box retail, is that big-box retail creates the impression of lower prices is by having a few goods that are quite cheap. Stacy Mitchell, who came to Davis last year, is the author of "Big-Box Swindle."

Mitchell argues that Big-Boxes have a number of select products that are essentially "loss leaders" that are used to create an impression of overall lower costs. For instance they may highlight a few items like DVDs and have them appear to be at very low prices, while most of their goods are around the same price you would get at a local business.

This came to mind a few weeks ago when I saw Wal-Mart's latest commercial in their new marketing campaign, "Save Money, Live Better."

The ad points out that the cost to a family of buying a take-out pizza is on average around $14. However, Wal Mart's take-and-bake pizzas are $8. If your family eats pizza once a week every year, that’s an annual cost savings of more than $300.

Sounds great, but the problem is that it is misleading. The ad compares apples (take out pizza) to oranges (take-and-bake pizza). As anyone who orders pizza on even a periodic basis knows, one pays far more for pizza that is already cooked than for pizza that you have to cook yourself.

In fact, a quick look at two comparable locations showed that Safeway in Davis had a 14 inch take out pizza for the same amount as Wal-Mart claimed their pizza cost. Costco had one for $9. Papa Murphy is the chain pizza place best known for take out pizza. Prices vary, but one can get a large take-and-bake pizza for less than $10 at Papa Murphy's and in some cases for as low as $7.00.

The point of this is that Wal-Mart's ad is at best deceptive. It makes a price comparison that is for two different things. By comparing the price of take-out pizza to take-and-bake pizza, Wal Mart distorts the price differential.

So where does that leave us? First, it leaves us with the thought that if you are trying to save money on your household budget do not order a pizza take-out because you can probably feed your family for far less money even if you go into the prepared food section which is generally far more expensive than making it yourself.

Second, the idea that Wal Mart has the lowest prices still remains questionable. I have no doubt that people can cite some examples. I would at some point really like to go down the list on a number of core items to see what the price comparison really is.

But third, why go to misleading ads to sell your products? Wal Mart clearly has taken a hit in recent years for a number of their predatory business practices which has led communities to attempt to freeze them out, stores to close, and legislators to take action.

There are real questions about the damage done to local business by a Wal Mart. Money gets sucked out of the community and the local town pays a huge price for a modest tax revenue.

All of this leads back to Davis because Target is frankly just another version of Wal Mart. They have broken ground on Target finally. You probably saw the pictures of the pro-Target city councilmembers jumping for joy at Davis' version of big-box retail.

The city of Davis is of course claiming (perhaps hoping is the better word) that Target will lead to an increase of $600,000 in tax revenue. Money that the city desperately needs--but is probably a drop in the bucket compared to the increasing costs of the city's top employees and their pensions and benefits. Indeed, research suggests that big-box stores can become crime magnets which may lead to the need for additional police officers. That may eat into that $600,000. As would the loss of business from elsewhere in the city.

The city is getting its Target, the question is how much will cost us--not in terms of money but in terms of losses to our character and by diverting away people and money from our downtown which according to all the councilmembers who ran for election this past spring has never been better.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: "Food Miles" Cannot Be Discussed in Isolation From Land Use Policies

Recently in the Davis Enterprise, John Mott-Smith had a provocative piece on the importance of keeping down food miles.

From our perspective there are actually two issues that are important in food miles. First the distance that the food travels to stores. Second, the distance that we travel to stores to get the food.

In arguing for reduction in distance that food is transported, Mr. Mott-Smith writes:

"Generally, locally grown food purchased in season is fresher, more healthful and requires less energy to produce and transport to market, and we should encourage stores and restaurants to provide food that is produced locally."

Second he argued for neighborhood grocery stores:

"How we get to the market to buy the food is also important. One of the best things we can do is walk or bike to the store. Of course, whether we can walk or bike to a store depends on whether there is a food store near where we live.

Not too long ago, there was a food store within a half-mile of every resident in Davis. The trend to larger stores has been one cause of the closure of several of these "neighborhood stores." As the effects of climate change and "peak oil" make themselves felt in our economy and our daily lives, having essential services such as a grocery store accessible to each neighborhood will be an important element in reducing the number and distance of vehicle trips in the community."

Extending his argument out further, what he is really talking about, is having grocery stores that are locally owned and operated and also small and conveniently located within our neighborhoods.

As we have spent much time discussing this year, we have moved away from the neighborhood grocery store model and towards a centralized model with large supermarkets--the two Safeways and the Nugget on East Covell.

Davis Manor, West Lake, and University Mall no longer have their neighborhood grocery stores.

At the same time, a store like Safeway is particularly harmful for the environment and the economy of a place like Davis. They transport all of their food in--this requires large amounts of fossil fuel burning.

And as we have mentioned previously, they take in money from this community and then transport it back to Oakland. The profits go to Oakland. They sit in an Oakland bank. In other words, they suck money out of the community, give a small amount back to their employees, give a small amount back in tax dollars, most of the money leaks out.

This is the argument not only against large national supermarket chains, but against all national chains and big-box stores.

They sound alluring for the consumer offering a broad array of choices and at times better prices (if you catch their items on sale), but in terms of health to the local economy, that health is illusive at best.

Particularly bad, is a store like Target. The city projects a tax revenue of roughly $600,000 from Target. I actually think that's optimistic once you figure in lost revenue and stores going out of business in the core and the cost of public safety.

But the problem with a place like Target from both an environmental and an economic standpoint, is the habits that people will have to undertake to get there, to get merchandise there, to work there, and to purchase products there.

The economic benefits are actually quite limited. The majority of the products sold there will be imported from elsewhere. The money will be sent to their corporate offices. Their employees will largely be imported in from West Sacramento, Woodland, and Dixon. Thus they will use the majority of their money to purchase goods and services out of town. Why? Because they cannot afford to live in Davis on Target wages.

It is nice to have a revenue base in a city, but where business really helps is the multiplier effect. Here's an example. If I live in Davis and open up a business the revenue I make in Davis gets spent by me primarily in Davis. I hire employees, they live in Davis, the money that they earn is then spent on goods and services in Davis primarily. And the money that is spent on goods and services goes to other people who spent their earnings on the same and down the line. In other words, the more money spent in Davis that stays in Davis simply proliferates around the community.

On the other hand, if I spend money and it goes to Oakland or Minneapolis, that does not happen. It does not benefit Davis.

So from an economic perspective, local communities are best off having local business who buy their products locally. From an environmental perspective, we are the same.

This all sounds good but then consumers stick their noses into the argument at this point and tell us that they want to be able to choose from a broad selection and consume the products that they want at a cheap price.

The two responses to that point should be that if you believe we are facing an impending global warming crisis, then you need to change your consumption habits. We will not get the deep cuts in carbon and greenhouse gas emissions without changing our behavior.

Second, everyone talks about how much cheaper big-box stores are than other stores, for the most part that's actually not true. Studies have shown that what actually happens is that big-box stores cherry pick on a few products that are recognizable and charge less. They also have a tendency to charge less when they move into an area, drive out competition, and then adjust to market rate prices.

Everyone talks about how expensive Nugget is. The only difference between Nugget prices and Safeway prices are that Safeway has more frequent sales and they rotate their sales. So if you catch a product on sale, yes it is cheaper, but the base price of Safeway products are as expensive as Nugget. So what generally happens is that consumers will purchase some products on sale but for the most part will buy products that are not on sale and end up spending about the same.

The bottom line is that we have come to accept our market rather than to change it. Just because right now big-box and national chains appear to offer more products at a better price does not mean we are stuck with having to use those environmentally and economically harmful vendors.

At the local level we need to fight to make local business more competitive. That is something that a city council can do. Give local business incentives and benefits that will enable them to be competitive against the national chains.

In the end John Mott-Smith wrote an interesting piece about food miles, but he did not go far enough talking about policies in the city to encourage neighborhood grocery stores. He did not extend those discussion to beyond food. He did not get into the difficult political areas of discussion that will be needed to enact the type of changes he advocates.

In the coming weeks we'll be talking on the Vanguard about the impact of city driven-policies toward the reduction of carbon emissions and one of the areas that we need to focus on is the disconnect between the council's words on climate change and their actions and land use policies.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Interview with Assembly Candidate Christopher Cabaldon

The Vanguard on Thursday sat down with West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon who will face Yolo County Supervisor Mariko Yamada in the June California Primary for the Democratic nomination to the 8th Assembly District.

What do you consider the top issues facing the 8th Assembly District? Yolo County? Davis?

The biggest issues for the district are the big issues in California right now. Issues with the delta and policies around water supply, floods, environmental protection, what we value in California and really the big debate about what’s happening here in our district. So the delta is really, essentially ground zero for the future of environmental sustainability and growth and development and public policy around the future of the state. And that’s right here. The 8th Assembly District doesn’t represent the whole delta, but of all the parts of California, our district is really the stewards of that place.

Issues around growth and congestion and air quality and the quality of life, how much we’re willing to put up with and what development means is a statewide issue but it’s felt in very few places more strongly than it is across the 8th Assembly District from Benicia to West Sacramento all along the I-80 Corridor.

Probably the third big issue is education. We face a gigantic gap in skills of the emerging workforce compared both to what today’s employers need, but also the kind of careers and opportunities economic and educational that we want the next generation to have access to and we’re just not keeping up. That’s an issue again, statewide, but again we’re feeling particularly strongly in a lot of communities in this district from the poorest parts of the 8th Assembly District places like parts of West Sacramento to the communities that have traditionally been very successful like Davis. So in the district those are the key issues.

Davis feels all of those in some way or another, it is not insulated from the challenges of educational opportunity and success and particularly the gap between those students that have always done well and those that we’ve never figured out how to create a quality education for. The delta, although Davis is not legally in the delta, all of the issues around farmland preservation, habitat, who gets what water, those are issues that Davis has been a statewide leader on in terms of raising those from the beginning. How do we protect the things that make California a special place to live in? And then growth and development generally that is the hallmark issue here in Davis. Just as it is in many communities across the district and the state and the legislature is going to have a lot to say about growth and development issues.

Yesterday, I was driving from Davis to Sacramento. It took me 20 minutes on I-80 to get from the highway 113 on ramp to the very far east outskirts of Davis. This region is set to grow a large amount in the coming years. How do you plan to prevent the I-80 Capitol Corridor from becoming the Congestion Corridor?

You say the Capitol Corridor and that is a big part of that strategy. The approach to dealing with congestion, and it is the same approach for dealing with air quality issues, because that’s what’s driving air pollution and a lot of the greenhouse gas emissions in our region. So we shouldn’t think about it just as a “I don’t like sitting in traffic” question, but it is also about our long term health and the environment too. Part of it is infrastructure and that is creating the alternatives for people to get out of their cars whether that means at the very local scale good bicycle or sidewalk facilities for pedestrians and cyclists all the way to the Capitol Corridor train system itself as an alternative for commuters to be able to stay off of the highway. It’s also things like the Port of Sacramento that we’ve worked really hard to take from bankruptcy to being a successful economic engine. Every time we add a new ship we are taking hundreds of trucks off Interstate 80. Trucking is now one of the biggest drivers of congestion on that highway. But the most fundamental change and it is the only one that has the potential for solving this challenge over the long range is that we have to grow differently. If we continue to sprawl with no personality, low density, McMansion subdivisions all over the place, there is no transportation system, no matter how much money you spend, that can deliver congestion free and easy mobility. It just isn’t possible. We’ve tried, other regions have tried, you can’t do it. So we have to have land use policies that the state supports that encourage and provide real meaningful alternatives that are attractive for people to live on the land differently and to be much more efficient about how we use land in our impact on the infrastructure.

You are a board member of the California Center for Regional Leadership, which encourages regionalism and discourages local governments from competing for sales tax-generating commercial development. Yet West Sacramento has encouraged large retailers such as Ikea and Wal Mart. Do you support proposals that would reduce the competition among local governments for Big Box retailers? (Examples: swap property tax for sales tax; limit the size of retailers). What did you do as mayor of West Sacramento to encourage locally owned businesses?

First you have to take a look at the actual policy assumption in our county. There isn’t a lot of sales tax competition. The cities and the county up to this point have had a very good working agreement about who does what and where major retail establishments are. And between the cities there is not a lot of fights. I can tell you in the time I’ve been mayor, the number of retail establishments we’ve competed with Davis or Woodland over could probably be counted on one hand and you wouldn’t even need all of your fingers. In the Bay Area and Sacramento County you see a lot of these kinds of fights between local governments trying to bid and provide subsidies in order to encourage businesses to bring sales tax to their communities.

For us, developing retail like Ikea and Wal Mart and Target, was about providing land use balance, it wasn’t principally about the revenues. We had virtually no retail in our city. We didn’t have even the kind of walkable downtown that Davis has. Even the Main Street that Woodland has, it just didn’t exist in West Sacramento and so there was no local places to shop. It was important, probably the number one issue in our city elections for about a decade, was attracting significant retail to the community so that people didn’t have to get into their cars and drive halfway across the region in order to shop. Both because they wanted to be proud of where they lived but also because of the environmental consequences of all of that driving. So for us it was really about that.

Having said, I do think it is important, a lot of what the state policies are around revenues and land use do drive a lot of local government who may have lost sight of what the purpose of land use planning is, which is to figure out what kind of community you want to be and a lot of them have instead tried to figure out how to make the most money off of land use and that’s not good for the economy, that’s not good for the local communities, it doesn’t help the state either. So whether it’s changing the tax policy to provide a greater weighting to property taxes than to sales taxes or changes around land use policy, that make it more possible for housing to pay for itself, and for retail to not be seen as such a big boon, those kind of state legislative policies do make a difference and are part of the equation. It’s the purpose of that Center for Regional Leadership, but I was on the speaker’s commission on regionalism several years ago and that was our principal recommendation is that the state needs to take aggressive action to deal with its own incentives towards the fiscalization of land use.

One of the big problems facing virtually every local jurisdiction that I cover on a daily basis whether it be the schools, the city, the county, or special districts is a lack of flow of money from the state to local governments, a the same time a large burden has shifted toward those local jurisdictions to meet the service needs of their constituents, how can the state do a better job of helping local government meet the funding needs of local jurisdictions?

Given the constraints of Proposition 113 on the ability of local communities to raise revenues like they used to pre-1978, one of the most important things the state can do is get out of the way. It’s all of the state’s regulatory requirements and program requirements kind of the big brother at the state level. Some legislator in Orange County says every school board ought to do this and it sounds like a great idea. But when you add up thousands of requirements, it means a place like the Davis school district can’t set its own priorities. So it has limited amount of money in the first place and then it has to spend money on stuff that it knows is not the biggest bang for its buck for kids, but it has to do it to comply with some state law. So I think kind of the immediate change that the state can do for school districts, for counties, for cities, for mosquito districts, is to pull back all of the regulatory requirements and allow all of the communities to set their own priorities with the money that they do have.

We’re past the day when local communities are going to be able to raise lots of their own revenues, but I think Davis has provided a good example when communities and residents see the power of their investment, when I see if I vote for a parcel tax I get a better school, or I get a library that’s worth going to, or I get a decent parks system, they vote for it. And more and more local governments need to do that too, and not just blame the state but take some responsibility. We’ve done that in this county. West Sacramento was the first to pass a local sales tax to support a wide variety of service improvements and amenities, Woodland and Davis followed, now it’s a state law that allows that to happen. So it’s not just a question of saying, oh whoa is us, and the state needs to save us, it’s also getting the tools we need to be able to solve our problems locally.

Concerns about flooding in California’s Central Valley exploded following the destruction of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. And yet, we continue to develop areas that are flood prone and in flood plains—this includes the city of West Sacramento under your leadership. Do you believe that this is a wise planning practice and what steps do you believe are needed to ensure protection from flood given growing population pressures?

We’ve been at this for a long time. Those of us in cities that are in deep flood plains like West Sacramento, have been paying attention to this long before Katrina. Katrina kind of raised the specter of flooding for the rest of the county, and for other folks in our region in particular, but the question about flood risk and safety has been on our minds ever since the community started.

The entire city of West Sacramento is in a flood plain. So for us, it is not a question of if we build inside the flood plain or outside of the flood plain, the state requires us to grow by certain percentages every year, and that has to occur. It is legally required that that happens in the flood plain because don’t have any other land. And all of the land around us is either underwater or in the flood plain too. So for us it has always been the question of how do we maximize the safety and how do we make sure that we’re not putting new people at unnecessary risk. So one of the debates lately is about whether or not the city should expand. The city of West Sacramento as opposed to Davis, has never annexed any land in its history. I’ve come out against proposals that would annex land that’s in deep flood plains because we can’t yet assure protection for the folks that might be moving there.

The alternatives aren’t great either. If we say no building in any flood plain, that’s the vast majority of the Sacramento region where urbanization already exists. We’d be saying, you can’t build in downtown Sacramento, you can’t build in midtown, you can’t build in Natomas, and then you’re saying you can only build in Davis or in Citrus Heights. There’s not enough room to accommodate the growth there and we don’t want to encourage people to live in the wild fire prone areas of the foothills. We don’t want to put them on habitat lands on sensitive groundwater aquifers. This is all a question of what the right balance is, making sure that everybody that’s making housing and office choices know what the risks are that we’re making sure we’re taking the right steps to solve it.

How can the 8th Assembly District balance the need for housing and jobs on one hand to accommodate huge projected growth particularly in the western part of the district with need to preserve agricultural land and environmental protection? As Mayor of West Sacramento, what have you done to promote that ideal? How should California as a whole plan to deal with growth pressures in the coming decades?

For the whole state of California, what we are doing here regionally is the right model. I chaired the regions council of cities and counties, as we developed the blueprint for the future project, we talked about this before, but that articulates what the proper strategy is. It’s not about how much growth you want to have, most of us would prefer to keep the communities the way that we have them. Some places like West Sacramento over the last ten years, have needed additional investment in order to be good places to live. It’s about dealing with the growth that is coming, because we don’t prohibit our residents from having children or their kids coming back from college from out of state. We want families to be able to stay together. So it’s not about the growth itself and we don’t have policies that encourage people to come here so we can meet some growth target. It’s where the growth is happening that is really where the whole ballgame is.

And so I think the failure of the last generation was to allow so much growth and sprawl into areas where development didn’t belong on farmland, in areas that were next to sensitive habitat and species, or were destroying places for recreation or for great inspirational vistas, the kinds of things that make this a wonderful place, while at the same time, no one was making any investments on old factory sites and brown fields and parcels that have been empty and abandoned for a generation in poor neighborhoods. There’s lots of land available for infill development and while that can’t accommodate every projected housing unit that’s needed over the next 50 years, it can accommodate a heck of a lot of it, probably most of it and so really the strategy has to be, both at the local level, at the regional level, and statewide, to drive development to those areas where we’ve already got urbanization, we already have the infrastructure, and where we need an economic shot in the arm. So that green field development becomes at best a last resort. My own view is that we never have to get there in many cases.

Everyone is for health care reform. What approach do you most advocate and more importantly, how can you get it passed in the current climate or will you be looking toward 2011 with a Democratic Governor?

The governor isn’t the issue at this stage. It really is about putting together a package and we can’t wait and particularly children cannot wait for 2011 while we wait on what might be a better governor or what might be a worse governor for health care reform. I don’t pretend to have the comprehensive answer to everything on health care reform. But I do know that we’re spending more than anyone else on the planet to provide less care to fewer people. We’re operating an extraordinarily inefficient system.

Everyone who participates in it from patients to doctors, the insurance companies, and everyone else acknowledges that there’s a lot of money wasted that if it were put back into the system, could expand care to a lot more people and provide real high quality care and preventative care that make the system function a lot more effectively. So a lot of that is about prevention, it’s about better use of technology; it’s about a lot less paperwork and bureaucracy in order to make the system work. Whether that can provide the dollars necessary to do the whole thing, I don’t know. But that’s the first step is to deal with those issues. And I think it’s pretty clear, almost everyone has made a health care proposal except for legislative Republicans who have got their head in the sand, but almost everyone else has made a proposal, all of which have their flaws but I think point to the real possibility of a meaningful comprehensive solution starting with kids.

The original gang injunction was thrown out by the courts. How does the new gang injunction improve upon the original? How can we balance and where do you balance the concerns between public safety on the one hand and the rights of the accused to have a fair trial with court representation?

This is a challenging issue, particularly for folks who don’t live in West Sacramento, who for whom it’s just an abstract political philosophy question, for the folks on the street in the community, many of whom are already dealing with issues around poverty and immigration and the gang and its threat to their families is one more insult from a society that in many cases has left them behind. Tackling the challenge of the Broderick Boys, which is a documented, verified, court-sanctioned gang in our city, has been a big priority. I don’t think its any secret that there were substantial concerns after the district attorney sought and got the injunction from the court the first time around from my self and other city leaders about the injunction and its scope.

This time around its very different and that’s because of concerns and issues that were raised after the first one was put in place, we conducted a lot of community workshops, listened a lot to civil libertarians, to public defenders, to folks in the neighborhood, to community activists and made some significant changes to it. So that where the first injunction applied to hundreds and hundreds of people, this one applies only to those individuals who have recent and serious crimes that are gang related, which narrows the scope quite dramatically. It eliminates the issues around “what color are you wearing” or “what kind of tattoo do you have,” which for me is not a sufficient justification for the raw exercise of government power. The balancing that we’re trying to accomplish I think is very important that we not have a world that’s envisioned in the “Minority Report” film, where you try to pre-guess who might commit crimes and then arrest and punish them before they’ve had a chance to do it. And on the other hand we use similar kinds of tools at something like a DUI checkpoint, where we stop everybody, there’s no attorneys, we haven’t already convicted them of anything, everybody gets stopped in order to assure that folks on the streets are safe and protected from drunk drivers. So we are for those moments, for half an hour, for forty-five minutes, detaining someone who has committed no crime in order to do that. So it’s really a question of what the right balance is, when you try to draw them in black and white, you ignore the impact that the gang is having on the community or you ignore the significance of the liberty issues that we’ve been trying to address.

What accomplishment in West Sacramento are you most proud of?

The complete transformation of the city’s sense of itself and its future. It would be easy to say, Raley Field, or Ikea, or the Waterfront redevelopment, or the turn around of our local schools, but those are really the drivers of something much more powerful which is that a decade ago, there were folks in West Sacramento that wouldn’t put the city on their return address, they would write some neighborhood name like Southport, because they were ashamed of West Sacramento. If you asked them where they lived, they didn’t want to say, there was a sense of desperation about the place, that there had been so many promises for so long, like a century that never came to a fruition, so the sense that we’re a working class town with a lot of poverty and diversity and it can’t get any better and not in a good way. Today, that’s completely different, you go to the supermarket or the post office and people are proud to be in West Sacramento, they expect things to be better, so even if you just came out of the social security line or the unemployment line, you have expectations about what the future’s going to be in West Sac. And that’s important because it’s made folks who don’t normally have expectations around the political process or around government into high expectation voters and constituents. That’s what you need to sustain change over the long run. So it’s not a building or a development project, it is now a community that has a sense of purpose about it.

If you could accomplish one thing if elected to the Assembly, what would it be?

I think the biggest issue that I want to solve is around growth and development and moving towards the smart growth principles that I think are critical for preserving the quality of life and the unique character that the small towns and mid-size communities in our district have and clean up the air and protect habitat and make it so that we don’t spend the rest of our lives in traffic, those are the bread and butter issues of the 8th Assembly District and that’s what I want to tackle in the short time I hope to have there.

What politician do you kind of wish you were most like?

There’s no single politician that I emulate. One that I work with quite a bit that I admire greatly is Darryl Steinberg in the State Senate. He approaches the work of legislating with passion, he’s totally values based, very progressive, wants to change and transform the world for the better in a very powerful way, he’s not just sitting in the seat. But he’s all about getting results. It’s not just about the press releases, it’s not just about saying that I voted the right way, but it’s about delivering real and substantial change on issues of mental health, or sprawl or fiscalization of land use, or so many of the things he’s able to marry both very strong core values with a real record of accomplishment. I try to emulate that work.

Analysis: RAS Sued to Allow Trader Joe's to Come to University Mall

Davisites who agree on little else and who famously fight on most things, have in large numbers supported a Trader Joe's coming to town. Indeed, Trader Joe's is a small scale retail entity that transcends most of the typical problems in Davis associated with development. For one thing, its product of various wines, beers, organic and vegetarian foods, are right up the ally of Davis' sensibilities.

For those who care about such things, Trader Joe's, fits into the Costco-Starbucks model of employee treatment. They pay their workers well above market and even union wages. Furthermore, for those employees who work over 20 hours, they provide a good health insurance package. This type of socially responsible treatment of employees should be welcomed and encouraged in Davis. This is contrasted by the Wal Mart and Target anti-union, low wages, model, where upon low prices are balances by cut-throat, union-busting activities that deny good wages and good benefits to most of their entry-level workers.

It was for these reasons that last fall, the Davis City Council bent over backwards to throw out the welcome mat to Trader Joe's. They even went so far as to approve a zoning change at the University Mall to pave the way for their arrival. There was just one problem with this plan, the place designated for their arrival was already occupied with a business who had in 2002 signed a 14-year lease. The council at that time was assured that negotiations were underway and that they were occurring in good faith to bring about some sort of an amicable solution for all involved.

And here begins the problem. Even at that time, the move was threatening to doom local businesses in the Mall like Teriyaki Express and La Esperanza, who would have to move if RAS moved into the mall.

That problem has grown worse as last week, it was reported that the landlord of the University Mall is now suing that business, Radiological Associates of Sacramento (RAS). Apparently these negotiations have broken down. Based on reports in the Davis Enterprise last week, the suit caught RAS by surprised who believed they were in the middle of negotiations and that communication had been ongoing.

The Davis City Council has no authority over leases and thus little say in the private negotiations of these entities. However, one thing they did have control over was changing the zoning designation to allow the move. I would argue that perhaps the City Council jumped the gun by approving the zoning change. That they gave away whatever leverage they had over the negotiation process to ensure an amicable agreement between both parties and that RAS received the treatment that they deserved as a long-time and locally based business.

Mayor Sue Greenwald defended the council's decision saying that their top priority was to ensure that Trader Joe's, a business that everyone in Davis wants to come, would come to Davis rather than Dixon or Woodland. She said that the zoning change was unnecessary, rather they used it to signal to the company that they were committed to bring them to town. Moreover they did not foresee this type of situation occurring. Their concern was primary to demonstrate to Trader Joe's that they were serious about bringing their business to Davis given that Davis has a reputation of not being business friendly.

There are concerns about the viability of the Mall in its current composition. Gottschalks is said to be in trouble at that location. The Mall is badly in need of another anchor. There is the belief that an office such as RAS is inappropriate for that location. Given the proximity of the Mall to a large student population, I do not understand how supermarkets at that location have failed. The belief is that a Trader Joe's would be a perfect fit as a small store that is a tremendous draw to the local community.

The belief is that most people in Davis want a Trader Joe's to come here, period. However, the actions of both the company and the landlords who are based in Santa Monica, have begun to give me pause.

First of all, Trader Joe's has basically demanded access to the University Mall or they will not come. That location is a more centrally located location. However, it has some problems as well in addition to the fact that a business with a 14 year lease is already occupy their preferred site and that that business has already pumped in one million dollars worth of upgrades to the site. It would also cause disruption and hardship to a number of elderly clientèle.

Even without the problem facing the move with the lawsuit, there are questionable aspects of the University Mall. The Mall does not have a tremendous amount of parking to begin with and the expansion of the store without adding a facility, would seem to make that even more difficult. Overlap with events at the Graduate could produce catastrophic problems. In addition, the road capacity has to be in question. That is already one of the more congested portions of town from the Sycamore-Russell intersection to the Anderson-Russell intersection, where the mall lies, already has traffic congestion, now add in a major business that will draw traffic from all over town and perhaps from out of town, and you have a real mess at times.

That leads to the question why University Mall and not either Davis Manor or Westlake, both of which have room for a Trader Joe's? Let's face it, they could put their store in the middle of a field up in the Oeste Ranch and people would come. So why the need for a central location?

This gets me back to the Davis City Council approving the zoning changes prior to an agreement was reached. Again, I think the council erred in their decision--which was based on threats from Trader Joe's to give them what they want or go to Dixon or Woodland. It is my opinion that the City should not be blackmailed into making poor land use decisions by threats from companies to take their business elsewhere. If Trader Joe's believed that Davisites would drive to Dixon, why did they have such a problem with locating in West Davis?

The lawsuit has now threatens to undermine the chances of Trader Joe's moving to Davis. Unless RAS bows under pressure of the suit, which many deem unlikely given their financial stake and current legal resources, this will drag out the fight for a couple of years, delaying or even preventing a Davis Trader Joe's store. The council having already granted a zoning change, now has no power to act in this fight at all or to try to even broker an amicable agreement.

This entire episode is as unfortunate as it was unnecessary. I would have liked to have seen Trader Joe's come to town, but these events are changing my view on such things. I think it was unreasonable for them to demand University Mall, I think it was a mistake for the City Council to encourage that move at the expense of a successful existing business. I think it was a bigger mistake for them to cede whatever formal power they had in this entire process--limited as it was.

I like small and progressive businesses like Trader Joe's. I think that is the kind of retail that we need to encourage in Davis. What I do not like are the hardball tactics that they have displayed. There are many suitable locations in Davis, in my opinion, the issue of RAS aside, the University Mall is not. Davis Manor or Westlake are the places to go. Now we just need someone with the power and prestige who can make that happen.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

"Big-Box Swindle" Author Speaks To DIMA Audience on Evils of Big-Box Retail

The Davis Independent Merchants Association (DIMA) held their first public event last night in the basement of the Davis Teen Center. Author Stacy Mitchell who wrote the book "The Big-Box Swindle" spoke before a good sized crowd about the problems that communities face with the arrival and proliferation of big-box retail.

Organizer Don Shor was very pleased with both the number and diversity of the audience.

"I was pleased with the turnout (I did a head count near the end, came up with about 70). Particularly interested and pleased with the diversity of professions in the audience. A couple of developers, the mayor, city staff, a real estate broker who specializes in highway commercial properties, along with some community activists, chair of DDBA, etc. An unusual and interesting mix, I thought."

Mitchell, who resides in Portland, Maine, works for an organization known as the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. She went around the country as she wrote the book, interviewing some 200 independent businesses from across the country. What she found is that big-box retail did particular damage to the local community in a number of ways.

First, most money spent at a Wal Mart or another big-box store, leaves the local economy. As Don Shor said in his introduction, local dollars spent on local business will stay locally. However, money spent on Big-Boxes largely leaves the community. A huge percentage goes to the corporate office that then spends their profits on out of area suppliers. Moreover, because the corporate office is based regionally if not nationally, there is lack of a connection to a particular community.

The intention of Mitchell was to write a book that put a face on the trend of consolidation towards bigger, larger, and fewer locally owned businesses being replaced by national chains. This overall trend has contributed to the continued loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. since 1990. A lot of this loss can be attributed by the pressure put on suppliers by big-box to reduce their rates and cut overhead in an attempt to save money. These manufacturing jobs have been the pillar of the American middle class. And as these retailers rely more and more on cheaper out-sourced production, avenues to the middle class have been closed off to many Americans.

In many ways, Mitchell describes this as a sort of colonialism. "This doesn't look a lot like progress," she said, "What it really looks like is colonialism." A new colonialism that sucks money and jobs out of a community--big boxes enter a community and plunder its resources, rather than adding value and enhancing the local economy.

As the push comes from a local level to develop cleaner and greener policies in an attempt to mitigate the effects of global warming, it is important to note the impact that big-box retail has on the environment. And we must question our leaders' priorities in this manner--as they at one point promote big-box retail development while at the same time speaking of their concerns about global warming.

One of the key impacts that Mitchell describes on the environment is the contribution that Wal-Mart and other big boxes have made to the carbon footprint. Not merely in terms of production and consumption, but in the form of transportation to and from the store. Mitchell describes a 40 percent increase in driving for the purposes of shopping. Americans drive more than 100 billion miles for shopping. There has been three times the increase in miles driven for shopping than for all other purposes combined. And this directly relates to the size and scale of the operation that has necessitated a move away from neighborhoods and other nearby locations and towards larger and more consolidated locations with the roads, infrastructure and parking to accommodate the number of people who would frequent a big-box store.

As neighborhood stores leave, people are forced to drive further and further distances to do their shopping. In addition, there is a link between the scale and the type of transportation that people use. People are more likely to walk or bike to smaller and more locally owned stores but they are most likely to drive to big-box stores.

Another key aspect in the rise of the big box retail giant is the perception by the public that locally owned businesses are more expensive, and that big-box retailers are cheaper across the board. According to Mitchell that is not necessarily true. She cited a Consumer Reports study from a year and a half ago where they looked at electronic consumer goods. What they found is that the best prices were not at the giant national chains like Best Buy or Home Depot or others, rather they were at smaller and more locally based stores.

Part of the way that big-box retail creates the impression of lower prices is by having a few goods that are quite cheap. Mitchell described goods that are essentially "loss leaders" that are used to create an impression of overall lower costs. For instance they may highlight a few items like DVDs and have them appear to be at very low prices, while most of their goods are around the same price you would get at a local business.

Finally Mitchell described three ways that we can fight back. She noted a trend of a lot of communities saying no to Big-Box. Even in Davis, where Target eventually won the election, they had to fight hard to gain a foothold. The first change she described was a policy issue; and looking for ways to change the way in which small business is undermined by local policy. And, she said to look at size limitation and changes to zoning policies. A lot of communities automatically zone all new development commercial, which allows retail stores to come in on the outskirts, leapfrog and undermine existing business, rather than developing business in areas that will support existing business. She advocated keeping business in the center of cities and towns and then developing mixed use zoning laws to support these city centers.

Second, we need small business development programs that will help build and maintain a local business base.

Along similar lines, we need greater public awareness about big boxes and the importance of local business. The public needs to know the consequences of their choices to shop at big-boxes rather than putting their money into local business. There have increasingly been "buy local" campaigns aimed at encouraging people to spend their money at local businesses rather than big-box retail. Mitchell described the summer tourist months in Portland, ME where the visitors go to the more recognizable and familiar national chains rather than local business. A member of the audience described the student population as initially going to the more familiar chains rather than local business. The public needs to be educated on the advantages of local business not just from an economic standpoint, but from a consumer standpoint.

After the meeting, I asked organizer Don Shor about some of his thoughts on what we should take away from the meeting.

"I would be interested to look in more detail into her comments about big box not always having the lower prices. I've frankly avoided that argument because it is hard to verify, but perhaps she has seen research. I'm very familiar with their use of loss leaders, not to mention predatory pricing."

"There are some practical policy issues she reviewed (rather quickly) which can be encouraged at the local level: maintain the existing downtown+neighborhood shopping focus, retain the store size limitation, avoid peripheral retail sprawl. Those are zoning and development issues, so they can be done. I liked her comment that it was 'surprising' to come to a community which had store size limits already, and had made such a key change in them, while other communities across the country are just now embracing them."

What role can DIMA play in helping to support local business in Davis? Mitchell mentioned a "buy local" mentality? In what ways can Davis promote this type of mentality?

"The things we've talked about, in addition to educational events like this, involve the 'branding' idea she mentioned: creating a visible way for people to find and recognize the locally owned business. Coop advertising, promotions city-wide and of course. continuing to support local groups that need donations, volunteers, etc.: building relationships.

The city itself, including the commissions, can stop focusing on sales tax leakage and start focusing on providing strong neighborhood shopping centers, and continue to support the events that DDBA and others put on (city staff does a great job on that; I don't think there's anything to complain about on that front). If the commissioners and councilmembers who supported Target had spent half as much time trying to find healthy tenants for the struggling east and far west Davis shopping centers, the people who live there would have strong, healthy neighborhoods. They wouldn't have to drive across (or out of) town to shop. They could do it right in the existing centers they already have.

Abolishing BEDC would be another possibility. At the very least, changing its guidelines to exclude 'leakage' (it's in there) and include 'encourage existing locally owned businesses'."

Don Shor mentioned that Yolo County Supervisor Matt Rexroad sent in a number of questions, most of which were addressed by Stacy Mitchell indirectly during the course of her presentation. One that really struck me though was his first question:

"Where does individual consumer choice come in to play in her view? If we assume she is 100% right then why not allow the consumers to vote with their feet once they are informed?"

I think there are good reasons as to why the local community should not allow consumers to vote with their feet, but I think given that big-box retail now exists--it exists outside of Davis within a reasonable driving distance and soon it will exist in Davis. The key is to educate the public and make them informed, because ultimately if one can change consumer behavior and give people reasons to shop locally both in terms of economic vitality, environmental awareness, and also from the standpoint of the consumer--good prices, quality service, and good selection, then local communities can beat back big-box retail in the market place. Now the problem is that big-box retail has a lot of advantages of scale and can often use unfair tactics to undercut competition. But that is at least where I think we need to start in addition to maintaining our current zoning and peripheral development practices.

Overall Don Shor said Mitchell's presentation was,

"Very thorough, good detail. It provided a good overview, with some sound policy implications."

I agree and would encourage people interested in this issue to take a look at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance website which has links to a number of good articles and good information about big-box retail and what local communities can do about it.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting