By Dan Urazandi
I wrote this letter for other downtown businesses. When asked to reproduce it publicly I refused, as it involves an internal DavisDowntownBusinessAssociation issue and as only DDBA members can vote on it for matters both practical and tasteful I held it back. But since the DDBA establishment went on the Davis Enterprise to claim that there is no crime problem and they have taken care of it even as they claim it's not their business to deal with it, I think the side that is actually against crime should also be publicly aired, dirty laundry though it may be:
All of us know crime is increasing downtown and most of us have been hurt by it. Over the last 5 years my son and I have been victims of assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, and three burglaries let alone the felony vandalism and many other lesser but costly crimes, all because we operate a downtown business in a town that has given up on law enforcement. By comparison in 27 previous years of business, we suffered 2 felonies, both minor.
The problem is obvious and yet our city council and police force want to pretend it does not exist. So too, apparently, does the DavisDowntownBusinessAssociation. These so called representatives who are all paid by us must be made to do their job. Pressure must be brought.
When I witnessed my neighbor being pummeled into the ground by a 250 pound homeless man through the window that was broken just days before in a burglary, I went on TV to call out how the city and police were ignoring all complaints about crime in the alley beside my store. The day after that aired the deputy chief of DPD was in my shop. But this method of publicly shaming the city into action can only be used sparingly. If we bang the drum constantly about how dangerous downtown has become, we will scare away our customers.
So Heather Caswell of The Wardrobe has been working within the system and behind the scenes to address the crime emergency. She wants DDBA to take action, which could be a way of influencing the city to withdraw its pro-crime agenda. DDBA is notoriously close to city hall, so much so that the current DDBA head is the former mayor and until the position rotated a week ago the mayor was the former head of DDBA.
Also like city hall, DDBA is a closed system even as it claims to represent us all and lives off our taxes. Both feign democracy but control the system so incumbents run unopposed and status quo is maintained. In order to vote all us involuntary DDBA members have to physically show up or send a representative to the meeting Thursday Jan 23 at 5:30 at Natsoulas Gallery. Making votes secret and difficult is how a dozen people run a 500+ member organization. Most of us have no time for DDBA and their games but if we turn out this Thursday we can elect Heather Caswell and Ezra Beeman to the DDBA board. They have promised and proven themselves to be committed to downtown safety and will be replacing members of a board that has refused to take any position on crime. This will be a move in the right direction to fight back against the political mismanagement that is endangering us all.
Davisite 
Leave a reply to Alan C. Miller Cancel reply