[The following message was shared with the Davisite for posting]
December 16, 2025
TO Mayor and City Council and Planning Commission
FR David J Thompson
RE Please Do Not Certify the Village Farms Application nor the Project Individualized Plan (PIP)
With so many unanswered questions still on the table and even newer projections which are still not sufficiently clarified I do not feel that the Village Farms proposal and its PIP are factual enough to deserve certification or approval at this time.
The newly released city staff report for Village Homes still includes a fourth fire station. It also adds a public safety center for police and EMS for good measure. It is estimated the fourth fire station alone would cost the city $3.5 million per year. God only knows how many more millions of dollars the addition of police and EMS at that spot would set the city back!
Where in the heck does city staff think the money for all this is going to come from? Last I looked there was no money tree in the back of City Hall. Nor do taxpayers have unlimited pockets. Many citizens are struggling just to make ends meet, as Mayor Vaitla has noted often enough, especially in light of what is going on at the federal and state level.
Additionally, City staff is trying to claim the city’s General Plan requires a fourth fire station, which is a patently false assertion. The general plan called for an analysis of fire facility needs, not construction of a 4th fire station.
The next fairy tale spun by city staff is that the Fire Department or the City Council itself already made the decision to build a 4th fire station. Where does staff get this tarradiddle from? First, the October 30, 2018 City Council minutes prove otherwise – the City Council just flat out didn’t make such a commitment. Second, the Fire Department has no authority to approve such an undertaking.
If the City Council wants this development project to pass a measure J/R/D vote, then any mention of a public safety center and 4th fire station should be completely removed. Any lame attempt to supposedly set aside a parcel for “public safety”, to disguise the real intent to build a fourth fire station, will not fool anyone.
You mentioned your need to curtail your exposure to politics and reading news as it often becomes too much.
I offer you an opportunity to recharge. Come down to the Saturday Davis Farmers Market between 8 and 1 and table with me as I pass out free “Love Your Neighbor” lawn signs.
As strangers walk by my booth I call out “Free lawn signs!” And “Make your neighborhood a friendlier place!” Like a carnival barker. Rudely, Intruding into their conversations, texting, or thoughts of their shopping lists.
In response I get not ignored, but smiles, hundreds of smiles. And people responding, “glad you’re here!” And “Thanks— I’ve got a sign.” “I wish I had a lawn- I live in an apartment” or “You inspire me.” Half the people respond somehow. And I get hugs from total strangers every Saturday.
About once a Saturday, someone, usually from Davis who has seen me before, will spontaneously offer a donation so someone else can have a sign, often as they live in an apartment or have a landlord that forbids signs. (Hey city council- this is social equity: why does Davis allow HOA or landlords to forbid signs, even in windows. It makes places impersonal, an abridgement of speech for renters.)
Today: an older homeless man pushing shopping cart came by. The cart was filled with empty soda cans and liquor bottles he was collecting presumably to recycle for cash. He stopped across from me in the market, slowly read my signs, and then came over to give me $1.17 in change as a donation.
I frequently have heartfelt conversations with strangers who reflect they struggling to maintain their equanimity in face of The Darkness. People from out-of-town express regret that the 18×24 lawn signs won’t fit in a suitcase. Thought my signs don’t flag they are political everyone “get it” that these values a refutation of Trumpism.
Today a visiting UCD alumna now living in “deep red” Iowa suggested I was needed there to table. Someone from rural Nevada told me about her neighbors…first demurring on a “Love Your neighbor” sign afraid it would upset them …then came back and took one.
These Saturday mornings’ experiences are like no other I have had in my entire life giving out my Love lawn signs. “Love is one thing you get more of when you give it away.”
A portion of the Village Farms DEIR (contained in the Utilities and Services chapter) is being recirculated because the City, as the “lead agency” in the EIR process, has received a last-minute report from Brown and Caldwell dated November 7. This report indicates that the City’s existing Wastewater Treatment Plant (“WWTP”) is perilously close to exceeding its maximum flow capacity and needs to be upgraded to meet the City’s wastewater treatment permit issued by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. This information was not known by the City when they prepared and circulated the current Village Farms DEIR for comment.
However, since the new information impacts the analysis of the Village Farms project’s impact on the City’s WWTP, the City determined that the portion of the Village Farms DEIR addressing Utilities and Services needs to be recirculated with the updated information for public comment prior to consideration of the revised FEIR for certification by the City.
Unfortunately, the City has done a poor job explaining this need to the public when they recirculated the portion of the DEIR needing additional comment. Two questions immediately come to mind that should have been answered by the City in more detail and explained better when the DEIR was recirculated.
1) What Information Came to Light that Necessitated the Recirculation of the Portion of the Village Farms Davis DEIR?, and
2) Is this Process Proper and Legally Compliant with CEQA and State Regulations Regarding Public Noticing and Subsequent Consideration by the Planning Commission and the City Council?
The following discussion addresses these questions.
Urge the Yolo County Board of Supervisors to postpone the Dec 9th vote on Cemex’s application to extend the Granite Capay Mining and Reclamation permit another 10 years. Send your comments to clerkoftheboard@yolocounty.org and Lucas.Frerichs@yolocounty.gov
Almost 30 years ago, I participated in the Cache Creek “gravel wars”. We believed the aggregate industry could mine gravel and reclaim mined areas. The County adopted the Cache Creek Area Plan (CCAP) which included reclamation requirements prioritizing reclamation of farmland, then secondarily habitat.
Well, after all these years the reclamation hasn’t worked out too good. Turns out it is very difficult to meet the “healthy soil” requirements of the Surface Mining Reclamation Ordinance. It takes a long time to accumulate enough soil to put back to recreate an ag field. And when the soil is stored so long it loses its mojo according to a soil assessment by consultants House & House. The assessment identified one reclaimed ag field produced only wheat but before it was mined it produced sunflower, corn, tomatoes and peppers.
Habitat reclamation is sad too. Deep pit mining was supposed to result in recreational lakes in a proposed Cache Creek Parkway. Turns out the stagnant water in the pits has high levels of methyl mercury that precludes recreational use—also not too good for fish and water fowl. The Cemex application adds two more, larger (204 acres) deep pits. Some of the pits are into the water table so ground water goes into the pits and evaporates from the surface further depleting ground water. Lakes were not the natural ecosystem of the Creek—riparian floodplain was.
(Sung to the tune of Rosie O’Donnell’s album holiday hit “Have a Rosie Christmas (Donna Summer’s lyrics).
By Scott Steward
Perhaps Rosie O’Donnell, the abrasive and enduring talented comedian/artist, who also has a famous feud with Trump (dating back to 2004), will accept the recalcitrant Marjorie Taylor Greene, should Trump make becoming an expat in Ireland all the more attractive for Greene, too. Mmmmm – except that Greene has been very mean about LGPTQ (and other people) until very recently.
O’Donnell and Greene are far apart, but share a talent for the spotlight, a caring for kids and families, and their persona non grata status with Trump. You decide if this tumultuous declaration of Greene’s reconciliation is a path toward common ground, and while you’re mulling it over, here are some other rebellious pre-holiday actions to consider.
Recent Google Earth photo of the 1,900 acre Cemex mining complex located one mile north of Madison and seven miles west of Woodland.
By Juliette Beck
In the early morning hours on July 4, 2025 as young campers were resting from their busy day at Camp Mystic, catastrophic floodwaters from Guadalupe Creek in the Texas Hill Country rose to a level that was deemed unimaginable. No parent would have ever knowingly put their children in harm’s way. They trusted their government — local planning departments – to do their jobs to protect public health and safety.
This week, the Yolo County Planning Commission is considering a plan to extend deep pit gravel mining across more than 500 acres of the floodplain along Cache Creek. The county has hitched Cache Creek’s future to a long-term plan that involves the exchange of permits to mine aggregate deep into the aquifer in exchange for net gain “gifts” of land for a proposed 14-mile recreational parkway. However, this stretch of Cache Creek is a FEMA -designated floodway – designated to carry floodwaters to protect downstream communities, including the town of Woodland. Is it prudent to knowingly put birders, dog walkers, and recreational visitors in harm’s way?
Yolo County staff are already in the hot seat — under investigation — for their lax code enforcement that led to the deadly July 2 fireworks explosion in Esparto. The staff report recommending approval of the permit application filed by CEMEX – an $18 billion global cement company – is full of assurances, Yet are these plans really climate proof?
[The following letter was shared with the Davisite for posting]
November 1, 2025
To the members of the: Davis City Council Davis Planning Commission Davis Social Services Commission
From David Thompson, Davis Citizen and Affordable Housing, Advocate, Co-Founder National Cooperative Bank and Inducted into the US Cooperative Hall of Fame
Noto this flimsy, sketchy, ill-prepared and financially dangerous to co-op members Limited Equity Housing Cooperative (LEHC) proposed by Village Farms
My first major point is that the path of an LEHC(laid out below) takes many steps and requires much over $2 million dollars of an entity’s money prior to even starting construction, The path to a LEHC if travelled, will take about five years from inception to occupancy. The member’s own investment of $50,000 each ($3.5 million overall) is likely at risk during the latter two years of construction. Dos Pinos took close to 3 years of active one on one marketing to get to 85% occupancy. At Dos Pinos, no one lives on top of anyone else. At 15 townhome units per acre it is an attractive community. Each owner member has a separate front door on the ground floor with a front and back patio. A four floor apartment building with no patios at 30 units per acre is not an attractive home ownership model.
Much as I love LEHC’s, the Village Farms LEHC proposal is impossible to develop under present circumstances. To be fair to the City and to the citizens this proposal should be removed immediately or else it will be a huge waste of the City’s time and the citizen’s resources or it will be a major housing proposal seen as an ill-prepared developer’s red herring that should have been eliminated. Village Farms does a disservice to the City by presenting a thin dream without details to back up the Co-op.
The City should immediately reject the Village Farm LEHC as being infeasible.
[Note: This letter to the Planning Commission was sent by the author for posting. PIP = Project Individualized Plan]
October 20th, 2025
To Planning Commission for Meeting of October 22nd, 2025
FR. David J Thompson, Affordable Housing Advocate
Vote No on the VF PIP. My Arguments Against the PIP proposed by Village Farms
After reviewing the Village Farms PIP I do not see how what is being proposed meets the requirements of Section18.05.050 that is equal to or better than what the city would get under standard affordability requirements.
I urge the Planning Commission to vote no on the PIP before you.
For example,
Under Section 18.05.050 18 acres would be set aside to meet the standard affordable housing requirements. However VF intends to remove 50% of that required land and asks the city to accept 9 acres of land. Removing 9 acres of land for the use of affordable housing is more acres than any affordable housing project has received in the history of Davis’ affordable housing that began about 1980.
It does not seem equal to the PIP requirements that 18 acres is culled down to nine.
Or that, the number of affordable units required are stuffed into 9 acres (31 units per acre) rather than 18 acres (15 units per acre). The city requirement is for a project to host 15 units per acre.
It does not seem equal to the PIP requirements that the density of affordable units goes up from 15 to 31 units per acre.
The cities for sale units single family ownership units are usually about 5 + units per acre
No single family affordable homes meeting the city’s requirements are being provided.
I am trying to keep an open mind about Village Farms, a new housing development proposal for northeast Davis. But try as I might, there are a couple of new concerns that have surfaced which really bother me.
I am disturbed at two of the features being suggested for Village Farms: to wit, a fourth fire station and a city run down payment program. Our municipality is in so much financial trouble, that it is short more than $2 million a year just for pavement management alone. The estate of a deceased Davis citizen was just awarded a whopping $24.2 million because of the city’s negligence in not properly maintaining its trees. We face similar financial risks because of our neglect of other city infrastructure.
The harsh reality is the city cannot afford a $3.4 million annual hit to its budget to pay for operating another fire station. Nor can it afford the cost of construction of a new fire station, potentially in the tens of millions of dollars. Similarly, the city cannot bear the expense of running a down payment program for housing, and who knows at what expense?
Davisite 