Opposing the Nishi project Because of Costs & Lack of Integrity in the Process

By Matt Williams

Individuals have different reasons for opposing the Nishi project.  My personal reasons are as follows:

• Nishi 2.0 will cost Davis taxpayers between $350,000 and $750,000 per year.
• Nishi’s cash contribution to City has shrunk 90%  from $1.4 million down to $143,000.
• $650,000 per year of Community Services District revenues in Nishi 2016 have “vanished” in Nishi 2018.
• Nishi 2018 has no dollars for deferred maintenance of capital infrastructure.
• That is the same short-sighted, politically-driven thinking that created the current dilapidated state of our roads and the $8 million annual shortfall in the City Budget.

Guess who picks up the fiscal difference … Davis taxpayers

Further, the City’s planning process for this current Nishi project has been co-opted by politics and brinkmanship, and as a result suffers from a woeful lack of integrity:

• All 5 Council members have said in public testimony that the 2018 Nishi project is inferior to the 2016 Nishi project.
• Analyses presented to city Commissions have been rushed and incomplete.
• The Ballot Argument authors have made no effort to acknowledge, explain or correct the misleading overstatements, despite having been made aware of them.

The bottom-line for me is that the City needs to be honest and transparent with its citizens and taxpayers.