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Davisite Banner. Left side the bicycle obelisk at 3rd and University. Right side the trellis at the entrance to the Arboretum.

Month: January 2020

  • Downward spiral of Davis discourse

    Misrepresenting the facts

    Note: The following letter was sent to the Davis Enterprise on December 20, 2019, but so far they have chosen not to publish it.

    Prt_220x220_1389426708By Roberta Millstein

    After my previous letter to the editor concerning unprofessional and rude behavior at the City Council was published, I had hoped to say nothing further about the matter, especially after seeing Anne Ternus-Bellamy’s excellent December 6 summary of events. Unfortunately, Brian Horsfield responded by mispresenting what had happened and accusing me of lying. Eric Gudz likewise misrepresented the facts and accused me of “smearing” Councilmember Will Arnold.

    So, I feel the facts need to be set straight. I refer the reader to Ternus-Bellamy’s article, but to reiterate: On three separate occasions, several Davisites and I took our personal evening time to go to Council meetings, pointing out vague and conflicting project descriptions, the absence of information on City websites, the dearth of opportunity for citizen input into projects, and more. (See, e.g., here and here).

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  • Wiener’s housing deregulation bill is back!

    It's an unfunded mandate for an unproven assumption about affordable housing

    48hillsyimbywiener

    Sen. Scott Wiener, shown here with Yimby leader Laura Foote Clark, says he thinks people who fear displacement from market-rate housing are “quacks.” Photo credit: 48hills

    By Tim Redmond

    State Sen. Scott Wiener will hold a press conference and rally in Oakland Tuesday/7 to announce that he’s re-introducing a new version of his housing deregulation bill, SB 50. It will need to get through committee and off the Senate floor this month.

    Yes, SB 50 is back– with some amendments, and the current opposition of the San Francisco Board of Supes (which means the city’s official position on the bill is Oppose).

    The East Bay Times calls it a Zoning Reform Bill, but it’s much more than that. It’s a measure that, in essence, would force California cities to rely even more on the private sector to address the housing crisis.

    It does not offer a penny of state money for affordable housing. It doesn’t do anything to mandate that cities limit office development until they have adequate housing for the workforce. It starts and ends with the assumption – unproven and by some accounts just wrong– that greater density will lead to lower housing prices.

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  • ARC Affordable Housing Questions Increase

    Affordable HousingBusiness Park Developer makes late offsite affordable housing disclosure.

    This is a letter sent to the City of Davis on January 6, 2020 regarding the the developers disclosure at the Social Services Commission that affordable housing will likely be built at another location separate from the ARC project. This disclosure could mean the project could actually build 1,000 to 1,308 new housing units, not the 850 units in the ARC project description. The difficulty is where the several hundred affordable housing units will be built is yet to be disclosed, and their likely off-site construction has not been accounted for in the Environmental Impact Report.

     

    January 6, 2020

    Dear Ms. Metzker, City of Davis Principal Planner,

    I am writing regarding new information about the developer’s plans for the ARC business park that came to light during the City of Davis Social Services Commission meeting the evening of December 16th. This new information was not provided to the public until after the 5PM December 16th deadline for ARC EIR scoping comments, but the information is directly relevant to the supplemental EIR process and needs to be considered in the new environmental evaluation of the site. Since the developer was late in providing this new information, it is incumbent upon the City to include this new information in the SEIR process.

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  • 20 most-viewed Davisite articles from 2019

    In case you missed them

    Davisite-2020In honor of the new year, the Davisite looks back on its top 20 most viewed articles from 2019, in reverse order, ending with the most viewed article for 2019. 

    Note that the articles are written by a variety of different authors, reflecting the Davisite’s nature as a community blog, written by and for the Davis community.

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