More More More! Spectacular Showdown as Village Farms Developer’s Line-in-the-Sand Clashes with Mayor’s Baseline Brick Wall

by Alan C. Miller — Illustrations by Art E. Fishalint-Elligence

Council Meeting (Dec. 16) link, (item starts at 38:00):

https://davis.granicus.com/player/clip/1902

I don’t care about housing and I don’t care whether Village Farms is built or not. Because I am a bad person. In your eyes.

What I do care about is transportation. And if more of you understood and cared about transportation, housing would not be the issue that it is and always will be. And you would be good people. In my eyes.

But what I really crave is a live soap opera unfolding before my eyes in City Chambers. A train wreck, if you will, to extend the transportation topic completely off the rails 🤦. And last Tuesday night in Council Chambers was the greatest episode in the long TV series “Davis City Council Meeting”, which is usually as exciting as the proverbial drying paint. Yes, this one may be runner up to 2010’s Greenwald vs. Asmundson for sheer dray-ma, but without a white-knighted local blogger galloping in to the lobby to ‘break it up’.

During Council discussions on Village Farms, three members of the development team came to the dais to ‘answer questions’. This progressively broke down into heated exchanges between the mayor and the development team. The core issue seemed to be whether ‘affordable’ housing units would be included in the baseline (Bapu’s alternative motion) for the developer to build, with a trigger, in order to ‘guarantee’ those be built, or whether to go with the new staff recommendation of the developer’s offer of more land and infrastructure. (If I got any of that wrong, people who care please clarify in comments)

I’ll highlight two statements, not because they are the best quotes to help readers understand the issue, but because they were the most dramatic and entertaining, the point of this article. The first is from Bapu in a back and forth with Doug Buzbee of the development team. This starts in the minute after 3:00:00 on the video:

“I’ll fight you every step of the way. Because that city code, what that city code says is build the units or . . . hold on, hold on, I’m gonna finish here . . . it says build the units. Or it says, give us in lieu fees and we set the in lieu fees — and by the way the level that we set the in lieu fees if they were multiplied by 280 they’re gonna come out to about $60 million which is the financing gap that we have. Or it says in language, and I pulled it up so I can read it, it says: “accommodate the land dedication requirement for the project in its entirety. The land dedicated would be of sufficient size to make the development of the required affordable units economically feasible”.

Now, do you think that City Council intended to provide an option that said either build the units, provide enough money in in-lieu fees or give us about 5% of the project value in land. Do you think that’s what City Council intended? Because I don’t. And if you want to come back with that offer, if that’s your interpretation, then I’ll fight you every step of the way.”

The second, rather jaw-dropping statement is from Sandy Whitcombe of the development team and can be found at 3:13:00 (and is the basis for the top-most political cartoon):

“I want to be clear that 16 acres of land is worth tens of millions of dollars once we’ve put all of the infrastructure in. That’s incredibly costly. This extra four acres and the six million is maybe a $30 million contribution. Just want that to be very clear.

Nobody has ever in this town done anything close. Nothing even close! And nobody will. You’ll see that very soon. Nobody will. We are talking so for over what anyone has done. And so, it is incredibly disappointing to have ‘people’ come back and ask for more more more !

Bapu! We talked. I wanted to make you happy. I had something that we discussed, and you know what it is, and that’s our line in the sand. We are not willing to go into the baseline features because we are already donating so much to get these 360 units done, that we are not willing to confuse voters and say: ‘oh, we’re going to do a hundred’. That makes no sense, and we are not willing to kill our election because of your fancy.

Basically we are willing to work in the development agreement and put in a provision that I worked on. There cannot be timing: ‘Oh in ten years if we don’t have it done we have to build it’. You’ll have another family of homeless people and that will be me — if you do that — my family. We have no ability to come up with $50 million dollars. I’m sorry.

So you can’t put timing in. You’ll have to — we, I told you what we would do, and that is our line in the sand. We’ve already said we will accept your dissent. And we will. We will accept your dissent. If we can get three of you, that’s fine. If we can’t, that’s fine.

You have to understand, this is an incredibly generous offer to the city. And I don’t think many other developers are going to come back with something like this. I really don’t. So that’s it. If you want to do the motion to include a conversation about the development agreement, we’re all in.”

Bapu’s alternate motion then failed 1-4, and the motion to pass the staff proposal then pased 4-1, with Bapu the “1” in both. I talked to two people I respect after the meeting — one said Bapu was ‘right’, one said the development team were ‘right’. So . . .

For context and to make up your own mind, set aside a few hours and watch the whole dang thang. It’s better than a terrible movie!

***Note: Pardon that the A.I. chose a white-male-appearing person with a suit and tie as mayor in the illustrations. I simply described the situation and used the first illustration it gave me. I did not try to describe character features, lest that get me in more trouble . . . . or lest we end up with an A.I. Bapu like what the Vanguard came up with several weeks ago 😳.