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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.

Category: Land use

  • Prophets of the Finite: Remembering Paul Ehrlich, Ronny Davis, and Wendell Berry

    From L to R: Ann Ehrlich, Amory Lovins, Dr. Paul Ehrlich, and David Kupfer, having lunch in Palo Alto in 2022

    By David Kupfer

    The summer of 2026 has witnessed the quiet, heavy closing of an era. With the recent passings of population biologist Paul R. Ehrlich, radical theater pioneer R.G. “Ronny” Davis, and most recently, the visionary agrarian writer Wendell Berry on August 31, we have lost a singular trinity of American defiance. Operating in vastly different arenas—the university laboratory, the public park, and the rural hillside—these three men were bound by a shared, ferocious commitment to shaking humanity out of its industrial complacency. To have known them as friends and mentors over the decades was to witness the rare alchemy of brilliant intellect wedded to an uncompromising moral compass. Now, as the dust settles on their long lives, their final, intimate moments reveal the heavy burden borne by those who dare to speak truth to a civilization bent on its own consumption.

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  • In CA04, which Eric Jones do you get?

    Wrong Seat, Wrong Moment – Part V

    By Judy Tipple

    Yesterday in Marysville, Eric Jones stood in front of 250 farmers at the Yuba-Sutter Farm Bureau forum and said this:

    “Let me make a simple statement: no more data centers in California.”

    He called for a national moratorium. He said members of Congress who don’t understand the technology shouldn’t be in the room for these decisions (Patch, Sept. 2, 2026).

    Strong stuff. The kind of line that gets applause in a room full of people watching data centers drink their water and eat their farmland, and farmland all over the country.

    Here’s the problem. It’s not what his campaign has been telling voters for months.

    Go to ericjones.us right now. His official AI platform page said something very different, until 2 days ago:

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  • Why an Unubstructed Delta Breeze Is Critical for California

    And how the proposed California Forever project threatens livability in Davis and other parts of the Central Valley

    By Dr. Glen Holstein

    Covering 18,000 square miles, California’s Central Valley is the largest nearly flat valley on earth.  It is almost entirely surrounded by mountains and consequently prone to very high temperatures since winds blowing downhill from mountains compress and heat air.  That is why Death Valley, completely surrounded by mountains, has average July temperatures higher than those of any month anywhere else on earth.  Its mean July temperature is 100.9 degrees F while the mean July temperature of Aswan deep in the Sahara Desert but not surrounded by mountains is 91.8 degrees F.  Death Valley even set the all-time scientifically accepted high temperature record of 134 degrees F in 1913.

    But the Central Valley is not entirely surrounded by mountains.  They open up at the Golden Gate to permit a cooling air flow from the Pacific Ocean called the Delta Breeze to significantly lower summer temperatures in the center of the Central Valley but much less so in its northern part called the Sacramento Valley and its southern part called the San Joaquin Valley. 

    The Delta Breeze’s origin is the cold California Current flowing southward from Alaska.  Disturbance where it encounters obstructions like Point Reyes and the Monterey Peninsula causes upwelling from depths that cool coastal water even more.  

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  • Sierra Club and Tuleyome summer potluck & presentation on Wed, July 22, 7 PM

    The Future of Cache Creek Gravel Mining Restoration – A New Pathway Forward

    (From press release) What-When-Where – The Sierra Club Yolano Group and Tuleyome are sponsoring an in-person potluck dinner and conversation on Wednesday, July 22 from 7 to 9 pm in the Blanchard Room at the Yolo County Library, 314 E. 14th Street in Davis. (Doors open at 6:45 pm). Unfortunately, a Zoom option will not be available.

    Cache Creek looking west into the Capay Valley in the 1970s
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  • Eileen’s Update

    No on Measure V Campaign Gratitude

    The No on Measure V campaign would like to express our sincere gratitude to the many Davis voters who voted to reject the Village Farms proposal for the many reasons we explained in our articles, literature, and online at our NoOnMeasureV.org website.

    It is unfortunate that this project divided the community, but ultimately, the majority of voters understood that the project was unacceptable due to its many impacts, including toxics, flooding potential, massive traffic, enormous infrastructure costs, habitat destruction along Channel A, as well as endangerment of the vernal pools and the endangered species of Vernal Pool Tadpole Shrimp, and especially due to the unaffordable market-rate housing and the seriously inadequate affordable housing plan. The housing proposed would have been unaffordable to parents of young kids and would not have yielded hundreds of kids, and the and the long timeline of at least 15+ years did not coincide with the School District timeline, so it would not have helped the schools.

    This issue is now behind us, and hopefully we can come together as a community and work on solutions instead of school closures. This process needs to start now, and the School Board needs to move forward and approve the formation of a parent-based subcommittee, as recommended by California Best Practices, to work on solutions with the School District to avoid school closures without delay.

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  • Where are we? Where are we going? 

    By Matt Williams

    Davis has a history of building only large footprint, rich amenities homes on large lots.  As a result, as a community we have excluded the vast majority of the Davis workforce (a workforce that educates our children and provides us with the suite of services that provides us our high quality of life) from the opportunity for home ownership.

    The numbers tell the story.  Since 2004, Davis added 1,261 units of high-priced, detached, single-family homes on large lots for the economic elite, and at the same time has built zero (or close to zero) small-footprint, low-priced, owner-occupied homes for its citizens with modest economic/financial resources. 

    We are all to blame for this classist approach to owner-occupied housing, and it calls into question the motto on so many lawns that Davis Is For Everyone. 

    There has been very little leadership from either the citizens or our elected leaders illuminating our classist pattern of (A) catering to the elite while (B) throwing our workforce under the bus, and (C) providing no proactive guidance to developers on project concepts that could be providing “Missing Middle” housing designed and priced for the members of the workforce, rather than the elite.

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  • Village Farms: Too Big, Too Many Impacts, Costs and Unaffordable Housing

    By Eileen M. Samitz

    The Village Farms project, with 1,800 housing units on 498 acres at Covell Blvd. and Pole Line Road, is the largest residential project ever proposed in Davis with the worst impacts. It would take at least 15 years for the buildout, meaning many years of added congestion from construction traffic.

    An earlier version was proposed in 2005 as Covell Village, and Davis voters wisely rejected it because of toxics, the 200-acre floodplain, massive traffic, enormous infrastructure costs, and unaffordable housing. Twenty years later, Village Farms has all the same problems and more.

    The site is seriously handicapped. That is why the current developer, John Whitcombe, and partners including Tandem Properties, acquired the original 386-acre parcel at a bankruptcy auction for a mere $3.2 million. The original Crossroads developers abandoned it because of toxics, floodplain, and unmitigable traffic. Yet, the current developer is again trying to push it through despite the health, welfare, and safety issues, and unaffordable housing.

    Massive traffic and other impacts

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  • Mutual Housing needed $8.4 million from the City of Davis to build 69 affordable units, yet claims that Village Farms can do 360 affordable units with just $6 million from the developer

    The math destroys their own claim

    By David J. Thompson

    Mutual Housing needed an $8.4 million subsidy from the city to get a 69 unit project built in South Davis. The same format applied to the 360 units affordable units at Village Farms would need a city subsidy of $44,005,518.25.  And the developer is putting in $6 million and Mutual Housing affirms that it will work. Can it, do the math?

    On May 29, 2026, Mutual Housing of California wrote an OpEd in favor of the Affordable Housing at Village Farms entitled “We Know What it Takes”. They do, but it is their reality that is the opposite of what they say is in their OpEd.

    Mutual Housing claims they have developed 6 projects in Davis when they have done only 2.

    On the first of the two (New Harmony) Mutual Housing needed a subsidy of $8,434,391 from the City of Davis to get 69 units built in South Davis. That was $122,237 subsidy per each of 69 units.  Without that subsidy, New Harmony would never have been built.

    The same format applied to the 360 units affordable units at Village Farms would need a city subsidy of $44,005,518.25.

    Mutual Housing should be telling the citizens of Davis that $6 million from the developer will not be enough.

    Memo to Davis City Council from City staff:

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  • Clarifying Affordable Housing commitments (or lack thereof) in Village Farms

    By David J. Thompson

    Almost every day a Village Farms supporter (like Alan Pryor) makes unsubstantiated boasts about VF’s affordability features.

    However, in particular only the words in the Baseline Project Features have legal standing. Those listed components are only changeable by the city or the developer except by a citywide vote. The Development Agreement between the City and the developer can be changed without having to go to a citywide vote.

    As to Section 4 Affordable Housing there are only 9 lines in Section 4 of this 9-page legal agreement. There are no guarantees as to the pricing of any affordable for sale units nor any mention of them at all. 

    The false claims by VF supporters might win votes for the project but they are an empty promise of 1,000 homes starting at $400,000 to $500,000. If we had a commitment from the developer or the city of how many units will be in this sales price range that would be useful, but we do not. So the boasts of VF supporters are not substantiated but the reader is fooled. 

    That wording is nowhere to be found in either the Baseline Features or the Development Agreement.

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  • Response to Alan Pryor concerning Mutual Housing’s support of Measure V

    By David J. Thompson

    In today’s Vanguard (May 29,2026), there is an OpEd by Mutual Housing in support of the Village Farms project: “We Should Know: Village Farms Gives Affordable Housing Its Best Chance,” by Craig Adelman, CEO of Mutual Housing.

    Early this morning Alan Pryor, a frequent poster on behalf of Village Farms supported the OpEd stating among other items that:

    “Mutual Housing is the largest and most respected affordable housing developer in Northern California – and in Davis.”

    Both facts promoted by Alan Pryor in this statement are simply not true. I say that as over 40 years an advocate, funder and co-developer of affordable housing in not only Davis but throughout California and five other western states.

    Here is the remainder of my response to Mr. Pryor in today’s Vanguard:

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