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The Commission Subcommittee Song (Matchmaker Parody)

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Sung at Tuesday February 21st City Council meeting, to the Tune of 'Matchmaker' from 'Fiddler on the Roof':

Parody Live at City Council (time – 20:15): 

https://davis.granicus.com/player/clip/1665

Original Song: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8J5hNqELzI

In both the original song and the parody, there are three sections:

#1  The Dream (of what could be)

#2  The Reality Check (from those with power)

#3  The Acceptance & The Begging

Parody song slightly shortened to fit within two minutes.  Some lyrics may not appear entirely sensical as they were squashed into the cadence of the song.

Commission Subcommittee

(Sung to the Tune of 'Matchmaker' from Fiddler on the Roof)

Commission subcommittee, commissions you’ll merge.
Commissions you’ll end, commissions you’ll purge.

Whatever you do, make it your mission
To end several Davis commissions

For Finance, merge them with Utilities

BTSSC into Unitrans, we’ll do

For Trees, use our woke sensibilities
It’s Environmental Justice and Climate too!

Commission subcommittee, commissions you’ll merge
Commissions you’ll end, commissions you’ll purge
What is the end game this strategy will bring?
One commission for everything!

————————————————

Davis, oh Davis, have we got a merge for you
Cram historical!  Into Planning! We think it’s overdue!

But it’s a nice purge, a good merge – True? True!
I promise it’ll function, even as a mutt
There’s more to commissions than that . . . Don't ask me what!

Davis! We’ve got it! You’ll be a lucky city!
It's perfect. It’s functional! Actually it’s just a subcommittee
But nice purge, a good merge, Right? Right!
Planning says they can handle it.    They say they’re very shrewd

But only if they have time – so we’ve all screwed!

————————————————-

Commission subcommittee, this ain’t benign
We need more input. Please, take your time
Up to this last month, we’ve misunderstood
That we could be hosed for good

Dear Bapu, this all must be well planned
Dear Josh, you too are a Davisite
It's not that every idea’s damned
But this, all needs to be clarified!

Commission subcommittee, plan me no plans
We’ve in no rush. maybe we’ve learned
Playing with commissions a city can get burned
So merge us no merge, purge us no purge,
end us no end, blend us no blend
Unless you get our buy-in first!

Posted by

Alan C. Miller

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Comments

18 responses to “The Commission Subcommittee Song (Matchmaker Parody)”

  1. Ron O

    I’m going to need you to sing this at the next council meeting. Seeing it in writing ain’t doin’ it for me.
    And wear the donkey costume while singing it.

    Reply
  2. Roberta L. Millstein

    Video available at:
    https://davis.granicus.com/player/clip/1665?view_id=6&redirect=true
    Alan starts around 14:15. I heard lots of clapping at the end, to which I add:
    👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
    Well done, ACM.

    Reply
  3. Ron O

    Wow – I didn’t realize Alan M. actually “did it”.
    When Alan Hirsch followed-up with an immediate “apology”, I thought for a second he might be apologizing for what came before him. Or, apologizing for having the same first name.
    Not bad actually, though at this point I think I’m rooting for AI to take-over all life forms.

    Reply
  4. Keith

    I just watched the video.
    ACM, the writer and singer extraordinaire!

    Reply
  5. Colin Walsh

    The City COuncil should be required to respond in song.

    Reply
  6. Alan C. Miller

    Five part harmony, with a developer chorus, including a croaking solo by a human dressed in a frog suit

    Reply
  7. Ron O

    I believe that the council already/usually responds with the “same old song and dance”.

    Reply
  8. Ron O

    From today’s “guest article” in the Vanguard:
    “We believe that housing is the number one social determinant of health. We cannot treat our patients if they are not securely housed. Furthermore, in the same way that healthcare is a human right, housing most certainly is as well. The third leg on that stool is food, which has motivated AHF to create the Food for Health program, supplying nutritious food to poor people.”
    “We felt it important to answer the unstated question that is on people’s minds as to why we are so committed to the cause of affordable housing. It’s simple: Because housing is a necessity, and depriving people of a house is a moral outrage.”
    This is rather interesting, in that the AIDS HealthCare Foundation (AHF) is leading the charge for rent control, but is referring to the same concerns claimed by the YIMBYs – who generally align themselves with development/business interests, instead.
    It doesn’t take much imagination to see why the difference exists, when you look at who is funding the YIMBYs.
    https://www.davisvanguard.org/2024/02/guest-commentary-why-is-the-aids-healthcare-foundation-leading-the-rent-control-movement/

    Reply
  9. Alan C. Miller

    Quote: “The third leg on that stool is food . . . ”
    That’s ironic, because what I and my neighbors find in the “homeless” movement corridors through our neighborhood are indeed human stools.
    I stepped on one earlier this year while going through some discarded “homeless” garbage piles near my house that had paperwork that appeared to have been stolen from someone, attempting to get that back to their rightful owner.

    Reply
  10. Ron O

    From today’s Vanguard:
    “That should give people an idea of just how depressed the market is. But worse yet, whoever purchased that property did so in cash and that means the typical family who would benefit from a relatively low price of a home probably wasn’t the one who purchased the property. More likely it was an investor.”
    I hate to break it to David, but it’s just as likely that the purchaser was someone who sold their existing house (e.g., in the Bay Area) for far-more than the $600K that they paid for the house he’s describing and are looking to move into it.
    I don’t know in what universe David lives in, if he thinks that a $600K house is expensive.
    In general, it is not cost-effective for new investors in places like Davis. A simple calculation shows that the return on rent often does not justify the price (as an investment property). Investors determine the “cap rate”, which is calculated by dividing the net operating income by its property value. Generally, investors do so in places where housing prices are relatively low, where they can get a much better cap rate.
    It’s much more-difficult to get an acceptable “cap rate” in places like Davis, than it is in cheaper locales. One only has to look at the locales where corporate investors are focused, to see evidence of this.
    But since housing and rental prices are falling, investors are now looking to offload some of their properties. If they start doing so in mass, this will likely cause a housing crash at some point.
    https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/institutional-homebuyers-are-pulling-out-of-the-market-in-droves

    Reply
  11. Ron O

    One question I have (in regard to the latest Covell Village proposal) has to do with the “subsidy” that the developer claims to be providing to some prospective home buyers.
    Specifically, what’s to keep those home buyers from living in their houses for a couple of years, and THEN renting them out indefinitely (thereby profiting from the subsidy)? While also providing a “disincentive” to sell them later?

    Reply
  12. South of Davis

    Ron asks: “What’s to keep those home buyers from living in their houses for a couple of years, and THEN renting them out indefinitely (thereby profiting from the subsidy)?”
    I think a more important question to ask is “Why are taxpayers even thinking about giving massive (hundreds of thousands of dollars) housing subsidies to a few middle class people to “buy” homes rather than helping hundreds of poor people “rent” homes?
    The government does not have the resources to monitor all the affordable housing projects they sell (and Davis can’t even get around to renting the mostly vacant for over a decade affordable housing apartment they own on Drew Circle) and it is easy for a couple making $200K + to have one of them “quit” a job so they are “only” making $100K and “legally” qualify for a half price “affordable” home then after closing the person that quit can get a new job or the old job back and they can legally live in the home even after they are both making over $250K/year (i know some people in an “affordable” condo near the Marketplace Mall in South Davis that qualified years ago when only one of them was working and the other was in a UCD grad program today they make a ton of money and still own and live in the “affordable” condo unit).
    In the past (including some of the original “affordable” homes in Wildhorse) many “affordable” homes were quickly flipped for a big profit. Today most homes have better deed restrictions to stop that, but as Ron points out they can be rented at a profit (like many people do with rent control apartments in SF for a profit) and the real smart people figure out a way to refinance them and keep the cash forcing the cities to pay off the loans to keep the homes “affordable” (both Marin City and Menlo Park have lost missions to this scam).

    Reply
  13. Roberta L. Millstein

    Elaine Roberts Musser has an on-point rebuttal to Councilmember Vaitla’s recent Davis Enterprise commentary concerning the commission mergers: https://www.davisvanguard.org/2024/02/guest-commentary-analysis-of-vaitlas-statements-in-davis-enterprise-article-on-merging-commissions/
    All I would add is:
    * The petition now has 152 signatures. Sign here: https://chng.it/Q4Q42tmYLv
    * Councilmember Vaitla justifies the merger in part because public participation “doesn’t mean having 14 committees of people who are privileged and already have power and voice.” What he is missing is that the REASON they have power and voice is that they have gained knowledge about City operations from their time serving on commissions. I venture to say that most citizens are not well known when they are first appointed to a commission (that was certainly true in my case). So what Councilmember Vaitla is really saying is that he doesn’t like so many citizens having power or voice about city affairs. (As for being “privileged,” the Council is the one who selects people to serve on commissions, so….)

    Reply
  14. Ron O

    153 signatures, now – just added mine.
    As far as “privilege” is concerned, I’ve been told that this only applies to white people. (Of which Davis does have a lot of.)
    Regardless, I suspect that the actions that Bapu is taking will help sink the peripheral proposals. So, there is that benefit.

    Reply
  15. Roberta L. Millstein

    I just remembered another comment I had wanted to add to ERM’s. Councilmember Vaitla suggests that some commissions are “outside their scope of work.” But is this really such a problem? It seems to me that citizens who have the expertise and experience in the relevant area might well be the best ones to see that there is a related issue that needs City attention. Isn’t it good, not bad, if they work on such issues? And if the City Council really doesn’t want them to work on a particular issue, then they should say so — but that should be a public conversation.
    So again, it all just looks like Councilmember Vaitla really doesn’t want citizens to have any significant “power and voice.” Let’s remember that the commissions are only advisory in the first place, so the City Council can (and too often does) simply ignore what the commissions say. So then apparently any sort of potential disagreement is seen as a problematic challenge. This is not democracy in action.

    Reply
  16. Ron O

    It’s not that folks like Bapu are against “citizen input”. It’s just that he’d like to only hear from the “right ones”.
    On a broader scale, this is all part of the war that some social activists have declared on cities. This is also the reason that they “teamed up” with developer-funded YIMBY groups, and normalized terms like “NIMBY”.
    (Though it seems that they’ve given up on defunding the police.)
    So yeah, Davis – keep electing those that dislike you, and view you as “privileged”. This is also how terms like “Karen” arose, which (ironically) makes an assumption regarding gender.
    Bapu will be coming after Measure J, next. Can’t have a bunch of privileged people making those type of decisions.
    🙂

    Reply
  17. Roberta L. Millstein

    Ron O writes, “It’s just that he’d like to only hear from the “right ones”.”
    That may be true, but in this case, it’s everyone, regardless of political belief or background, who is affected. The commissioners and former commissioners who have signed the petition are all over the map politically and in some cases, they have been at direct loggerheads with one another in various campaigns. But we all agree on the importance of citizen input via city commissions.
    I guess what I am saying is, please don’t make this an “us vs. them,” because it isn’t. This is a rare moment of consensus and that should not be undermined. It really is about a Council who doesn’t want to take any citizen input unless it is tightly controlled.

    Reply
  18. Ron O

    Roberta: You know more about this than I do, but someone like Bapu probably views both you and Elaine Roberts Musser as “privileged”.
    Also, Bapu is apparently not proposing any merger with the Social Services Commission – which is an indication of his priorities.
    It does seem that in Davis (and other “progressive” towns associated with universities), rather-extreme social progressives are the ones who run for office and get elected. Inevitably leading to conflicts between those officials vs. the populace on issues such as development, the war in Gaza, the role of police, the transgender issue, etc. (Though it surprised me that Davis voters supported the removal of a former school board member, based at least partly on having the wrong skin color.)
    Then again, San Francisco (which has a more “progressive” reputation than Davis) recalled three extreme school board members (one of whom stated that Asians were using “white supremacy” to get ahead), as well as a DA that was viewed as coddling criminals. The odd thing about that one school board member is that she was actually correct, using progressive logic.
    But it does seem that once these folks get in there, they’re usually extremely difficult to remove (e.g., Scott Wiener, Cecilia Aguiar-Curry – who doesn’t even have a challenger).
    But think how different and more peaceful Davis could be, if it elected more moderate, slow-growth candidates in the first place. You know, someone who is “privileged”. 🙂

    Reply

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