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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.

Author: davisite2

  • Davis Pride is ready to bring the rainbows and glitter back to the community

    The Davis PrideFest will include performances by local drag performers like Eva Changing. (Photo credit: Photos by Grey)

    (From press release) The 12th annual Davis Pride will bring a month of events to celebrate and support the local LGBTQ+ community, with Davis PrideFest, a fun run, trivia, and the annual comedy night.

    The month-long celebration will start with PrideFest, taking place at Civic Center Park, at 6th and B streets behind Davis City Hall, from 4:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 6. This family-friendly event features a music festival, community vendors, food trucks, drinks, and a drag revue.

    “At a time when nationwide we’re seeing attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and organizations turning their back on Pride events, we are proud to offer a community-driven event supported by local artists, businesses, and volunteers,” said Sandré Henriquez Nelson, Director of Pride Events for the Davis Phoenix Coalition.

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  • Proposals for city budget fall far short of what is needed to address severe funding gap

    [The following email from Dan Carson was shared with the Davisite for posting]

    Dear City Council and Fiscal Commissioners:

    Attached please find a city staff report authored by the City Manager and the Finance Department — dated May 19, 2026 and titled “Fiscal Year 2026/27 Mid-Cycle Budget Update” — that was recently provided to you for public hearings this week. Given the brief timeline available for public consideration of this report by the Council and the Commission, I am sharing these comments with you in the interests of ensuring that you obtain critical information needed to assess the proposed actions and their potential effect on our city’s fiscal stability and integrity.  

    Click to access 06-FY26-27-Mid-Cycle-Budget-Update.pdf

    As you know, I served as a fiscal advisor to the California Legislature for 17 years, concluding my state career as Deputy Legislative Analyst of the nonpartisan and independent Legislative Analyst’s Office before serving for nine years on the City of Davis Finance and Budget Commission and then the City Council.  

    In summary, my analyses indicates that the first steps to address the city’s budget shortfalls being proposed by city management are reasonable but will fall far short of what is needed to address a severe funding gap caused primarily by dramatic and excessive increases in employee pay and benefits approved by the Council in a series of recent multi-year labor contracts. The budget package also does not provide the level of funding needed to fix our roads and bike paths and other infrastructure and discloses that it “defers” more capital improvement projects it does not identify. I recommend the Commission and the Council take a series of actions described below to address these issues.

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  • Village Farms Flood Analysis Is Behind the Times

    Ponding at the Wildhorse Agricultural Buffer during winter storm.

    By Marjorie Longo

    Water doesn’t care about property lines—it flows wherever the land takes it. That’s why flood studies shouldn’t stop at property lines. However, the Village Farms flood analysis mostly focuses on the project itself and a few broader downstream areas (https://www.cityofdavis.org/city-hall/community-development/development-projects/village-farms-davis). It does not show detailed results for existing neighborhoods—the places where people actually live, drive, and may need emergency access. Where are the post-Village Farms flood maps for Wildhorse, North Davis, or the streets south of Covell?  A few extra inches of water during a storm can mean the difference between a dry home and a flooded one, or between a passable road and a blocked evacuation route.

    While the Village Farms flood analysis provides numbers for farmland and shows water pooling on the Wildhorse Golf Course and Wildhorse Agricultural Buffer, it doesn’t answer the key question residents have: what happens on my street?  When the next atmospheric river is dumping on Davis, runoff spreads broadly over our flat topography. And inches of extra flood water add thousands of dollars of damage to flooded homes and can mean the difference between muddy flood water in your home or not.

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  • Why a Cannery Mom is Voting Yes on Measure V: We Shouldn’t Pull Up the Drawbridge

    By Katharine Dooley-Hedrick

    Three years ago, my family moved to the Cannery, drawn by Davis’s reputation as the ideal place to raise kids. Our daughters were five and two, and the strength of Davis’s public schools was central to our decision. Shortly after moving to town, our oldest started Kindergarten and my husband left for a 6-month deployment with the US Navy. In those months as a solo mom to two young kids, I found what so many do in Davis: a community of friends and neighbors that welcomed and supported us. Davis’ commitment to community and neighborly engagement is not something easily found elsewhere.

    Today, I cherish the independence my children have found here—the freedom to bike to school and explore our neighborhoods with a sense of security that is increasingly rare. My support for Measure V is rooted in the desire to make this wonderful community more accessible and attainable for other families like ours.

    Over the past two years, I’ve spoken with countless community members while volunteering with the Village Farms project. It has been inspiring to hear the many reasons people are drawn here. For many, Davis attracted them as an ideal place to raise their family. Unfortunately, that dream is increasingly unattainable due to a lack of family-friendly homes.

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  • Village Farms Davis: Why I Differ With Councilmember Deos

    By Greg Rowe

    This article responds to the endorsement of the Village Farms project by Councilmember Linda Deos, published by The Davisite and the Davis Vanguard on May 9. Deos was appointed to the planning commission during my tenure as chair.  While dealing with many complex planning issues and projects, Linda impressed me as thoughtful, articulate and deeply caring about her community. It was therefore with pleasure that I subsequently endorsed her city council candidacy. 

    I continue to applaud Linda’s council performance, and share her concern that Davis must become a viable, vibrant home for new residents without losing its soul and core values. Along with Mayor Donna Neville, Deos had the demanding task of negotiating the development agreement (DA), ballot baseline project features, and other legal documents for the Village Farms Davis (VFD) project.

    Among Linda’s reasons for endorsing VFD are the grade-separated bicycle and pedestrian crossings of F Street and Pole Line Road, and preservation of the 47-acre alkali playa wetland habitat.  As explained below, these project components are not due to any benevolence or authentic community commitment on the part of the developer (North Davis Land Company, LLC).  These requirements were, in fact, imposed on the developer as a condition of placing the project on the June ballot. In the case of the alkali playa wetland habitat, specimens collected in the 1950s by UC Davis faculty and historical aerial photography clearly demonstrate that the existence of this rare habitat should have been known to the developer.

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  • Would Village Farms affect water quality in the rest of Davis?

    By Matt Williams

    Regarding Measure V, one of the issues the Village Farms development brings to the forefront is the availability of water.  

    The water right of the Woodland Davis Clean Water Agency (WDCWA), which serves Davis, is a “junior” permit not a “senior” permit.  In “perfect” years (years without drought or low snowpack impacts) the permit authorizes WDCWA to utilize UP TO 45,000 acre feet of water per year. 

    The words “up to” are wiggle words, just like the wiggle words “may” and “if” in the Baseline Features of Measure V.

    However, 45,000 almost never happens because very few years are absent any drought impacts. As a result, WDCWA’s surface water diversions have been consistently and significantly limited during summer months and other dry periods. 

    During these times, to backfill what it isn’t allowed to divert, WDCWA utilizes up to 10,000 acre feet of water under a “senior” water right purchased from the Conaway Preservation Group. 

    However the 10,000 acre feet are significantly less than the number of acre feet that are not allowed to be diverted under the terms of WDCWA’s “junior water right.”

    How does that affect Davis water users … humans and plants alike?

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  • The Future of Davis is Rooted in Community: Why I Support Village Farms

    By Linda Deos

    As a member of the Davis City Council, my primary responsibility is to look toward the horizon. I am constantly asking: How do we preserve the soul of the city we love while ensuring it remains a viable, vibrant home for the next generation? Since the initial planning application for Village Farms was submitted in April 2023, I have engaged deeply with the details, the data, and—most importantly—the residents.

    Over the last three years, this project has undergone rigorous public scrutiny, environmental review, and repeated refinement. After witnessing this collaborative process and reviewing the robust commitments secured in the project’s Baseline Features, I am proud to support Measure V. Village Farms Davis is not just another housing development; it is a meticulously planned extension of our community values.

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  • Lack of transparency in the relationship between DJUSD and Village Farms developer

    Screenshot

    By Elizabeth Coolbrith

    I am a parent with two children in DJUSD schools, and I’m sharing this focused update because Davis voters deserve to see some specific information that hasn’t been laid out clearly in one place. This goes to the heart of transparency and illuminates an aspect of the relationship between DJUSD leadership and the Village Farms developer. Now that these documents are public, I feel a responsibility to share them.

    Two pieces stand out:

    First, there is long‑term developer funding of DJUSD entities tied to Village Farms developer John Whitcombe and Tandem Properties, who have been major funders of DJUSD through the Tandem Foundation. Public records show roughly $40,000 a year in donations to Davis schools for over 20 years, totaling close to $500,000 as of 2023. These generous donations are legal. But they can create the appearance of a very close, ongoing financial relationship between this developer and the district.

    Second, newly released public records include an email from the Village Farms development team asking DJUSD to keep Measure V communications off email.

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  • Measure V is a Very Bad Idea

    By Glen Holstein

    The Environmental Impact Report provided by the Village Farms consortium includes the following: “groundwater beneath the project site…appears to have been impacted by the former landfill…Eight contaminants were found to exceed the Maximum Contaminant Level…detected …PFAS…compounds and manganese appear to originate from the Old Davis Landfill.  Three PFAS compounds exceeded their…USEPA water quality standards…Anomalously high…groundwater elevations were reported…for…dry seasons…the depth to water…was reported as 9.93 feet on September…elevations…not typical of dry-season conditions.”

    Despite their own EIR’s abundant evidence Village Farms consortium plans to invite home buyers to live just a few feet above toxic groundwater, which it has consistently either ignored or minimized.  The resulting potential outcome is no mystery.  A New York state school district  first built schools in such a place. and then arranged for homes to be built there as well so families would fill the schools.  The only problem was that when the toxic groundwater rose in elevation, as it often does, kids and their parents living there ended up in hospitals instead of classrooms.

    This Love Canal disaster of the 1970’s was so notorious it led to Superfund legislation, but those who made it happen could at least honestly claim nothing like it had ever happened before.  Those who fast tracked Village Farms in Davis, however, have no such excuse.

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  • Two issues about Willowgrove Project need to be addressed

    [The following email by Dan Carson and Elaine Roberts Musser was sent to the Davis City Council today and is posted to the Davisite at the request of the authors]

    Dear City Councilmembers,

    As you move toward final action on Tuesday on the Willowgrove project, which could provide new housing our community needs, we urge you to address two significant issues (both referenced in your new city staff report) that we strongly believe will undermine its chances of winning voter approval this November.  

    Fourth City Fire Station

    Last month, at a Planning Commission hearing on the Willowgrove project, a city planning staff member suggested the city has decided to build a fourth city fire station. For weeks city staff has since declined to answer specific questions posed to them about the city’s intentions. We believe this is an important matter for you to consider, given the findings of a city consultant in a 2018 study, that our community does not need an expensive fourth fire station the city cannot afford. 

    Additionally your new city staff report contains a strong hint city staff are still pursuing a four-fire station plan. Notably, it cites a fiscal analysis by BAE Urban Economics that analyzes the projected net operating costs to the city from just such a new fourth city fire station. Staff selectively cites a version of the BAE fiscal analysis that assumes the 15 year fiscal impact of such a  project “would be slightly negative at $190,422”. This is based on the assumption that other city residents gained from future new development projects would shoulder most of the costs of the operation of a fourth new fire station. 

    Why is this matter relevant to your consideration of Willowgrove?

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