Category: Land use

Yolo County judge orders Councilmember Carson to pay the No on Measure H campaign $42,210 in legal fees

(From press release) In a 16-page opinion, Superior Court Judge Daniel Maguire found that Davis Councilmember Dan Carson, the honorary chairman of the Yes on H campaign, failed to prove the majority of claims he made in a lawsuit targeting the six Davis residents who signed and submitted the No on H ballot argument. The named defendants were the five No on Measure H ballot statement signers (Roberta Millstein, Juliette Beck, Michael Corbett, Stephen Wheeler, and Darell Dickey) and the No on Measure H Principal Officer and ballot statement co-author (Alan Pryor).

This is the first time in Davis that an elected city official led a developer's campaign seeking to annex farmland into the city for a subdivision. The act of bringing this lawsuit was previously condemned in a statement made by six former Davis mayors.

Those ballot-signers "achieved the greater share of success" in the lawsuit and should have most of their legal fees paid for by Carson, Judge Maguire wrote.

The No on H campaign’s defense of their ballot arguments in the face of Carson’s challenge both protected No on H’s right to free speech and the public interest in receiving the No on H argument against the DiSC development. Judge Maguire states in his order, “Our society has a deep commitment to free speech, especially in political matters, and by defending their right to make their argument in their words, the Real Parties in Interest have also enforced an important right affecting the public interest.”

"We thank Judge Maguire for his thoughtful consideration of the issues and are heartened that our grass roots campaign was vindicated and prevailed over deep-pocketed developers and politicians who tried to intimidate Davis residents with meritless litigation," said Alan Pryor, chair of the No on H campaign.

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June 2, 2022
It is all there in the Numbers … Traffic, Traffic, Traffic!!!

By Matt Williams

With apologies in advance to those people who find my articles and/or comments too detailed, I’m going to clearly show David Greenwald of the Davis Vanguard the numbers, so that he, and hopefully everyone, understands the traffic study contents.

For those of you who want to skip the detail and just read the summary, it appears at the bottom of the article alongside the very tall Google Earth image of Mace and its current lane configuration.

With the caveat that the readers of yesterday’s article don’t know what steps might have happened behind the scenes that weren’t described in the article, it appears that yesterday, David Greenwald forgot to follow his own advice. Several times in the recent past David has complained bitterly that one of the Vanguard’s guest writers published their article without taking the time to check with an information source prior to publishing an article that criticizes one or more aspects of our community’s decisions and/or decision processes. I believe, but could be wrong if there is information I don’t know about, David would have done well for himself and for the Yes On Measure H campaign team if he had checked with the information source he criticized in yesterday’s article. If he did do so, I’m sure he will clarify in a comment.

Traffic studies are arcane beasts. They follow a set of clearly set out rules that a lay person like David and me has to work hard to understand. It is easy for a lay person to make mistakes when trying to understand “WHY?” a traffic finding in the traffic study is what it is. In late 2020 when formally submitting questions about the traffic study in the Draft EIR, I learned that lesson the hard way. To their credit Fehr & Peers responded very clearly, logically, understandably, and professionally to my questions … pointing out where I had gone wrong in my calculations. They were good teachers. I thank them for that educational lesson.

So, when the updated traffic study for DiSC 2022 was published I was able to much better understand the data … and also carry forward the intersection by intersection graphics that had accompanied the 2020 traffic study. However, before I finalized any conclusions based on the new data, I reviewed those tentative conclusions with a retired City traffic engineer and two engineering professionals who have considerable experience dealing with traffic. Their collective and individual counsel was very valuable. Their advice would have been very helpful to David if he had sought that advice prior to publishing yesterday.

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May 26, 2022
Letter: DiSC 2022 is a Trojan horse

I strongly oppose the DiSC 2022 project and there are plenty of reasons why, including the plethora of false claims by the Ramos developers.

First, the project will add 12,000 car trips daily to Mace Blvd., so it will increase traffic, not decrease it as they claim.

Second, the fiscal analysis contains absurd assumptions and inflated projections, resulting in a fairy tale fiscal “benefit”.

Third, while we are experiencing a serious drought and Davis residents will have to cut back on water use to conserve what we can, a large commercial park would significantly draw on our limited water resources.

Fourth, the DiSC housing would be expensive and appealing to I-80 highway commuters. DiSC’s 460 housing units would not alleviate housing need but, instead would create more housing demand for the 2,500 DiSC employees and increase local housing costs. Further, DiSChas no mechanism to assure that any DiSC employee would live on-site, therefore creating even more traffic. The minimal number of “affordable units” will not all be located on-site. In fact, they may not materialize since the developer can opt to pay “in lieu” fees instead. Further, this housing is not geared for family housing. Who wants to raise their kids in a commercial/research park?

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May 25, 2022
Misrepresentations of the Yes on H/Yes on DiSC campaign

By Colin Walsh

The Vanguard published a guest commentary by Jackson Mills, “Debunking Deceptive Descriptions of DiSC in No on H Campaign Messaging,” on Tuesday morning. But it’s the commentary itself that is deceptive.

Ironically Mr. Mills himself chooses to mislead people in his selection of an outdated illustration to lead the article. It is notable that the illustration used with this article is from the previous DISC proposal and is certainly not an accurate picture of the current DiSC proposal. The water feature in this picture is an idealized version of the drainage ditch that ran through the middle of the previous project (it also shows far more water than there ever would have been). The drainage ditch does not run through the project in the current iteration. And the drainage ditch certainly doesn’t support paddle boarding as depicted on the Yes on H mailers.

The Vanguard has done nothing to address the Misrepresentations of the Yes on H campaign. Those claims have included such outrageous exaggerations and misinformation such as:

Measure H “helps our community fight the housing crisis” – DiSC will have over 2,400 employees, and by the City’s own documents only 187 will live in the onsite housing. That adds over 2,200 additional people looking for housing in Davis, adding pressure to our already incredibly tight Davis housing market.

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May 24, 2022
Davis LWV offers Pros and Cons on Measure H

This is the developer's provided "Land Plan," downloaded from the City's website here.

(From press release) One side sees new jobs, housing, and city revenue. The other sees traffic gridlock, growing demand for housing, and exaggerated economic benefits.

Davis voters will decide on June 7 whether to annex agricultural land for the Davis Innovation and Sustainability Center (DiSC 2022). This is a scaled-down version of a project defeated by Davis voters two years ago.

To help voters decide for themselves how to vote on the new proposal, the League of Women Voters Davis Area has prepared a nonpartisan Pros and Cons on Measure H.

In table form, the document provides a summary of the pro-and-con arguments on important issues: impact on city and school revenue, the environment, housing, jobs, traffic and impact on the downtown. An overview and history of the project also are provided.

The document can be viewed at bit.ly/MeasureHProCon.

More information about the Davis League — and a copy of the document — are available on the organization’s website at: lwvdavisarea.org.

May 23, 2022
Affordable Housing Expert argues that Affordable Housing at DiSC does not Comply with City of Davis Municipal Code

Site map showing the Residential Area of DiSC adjacent to the Advanced Manufacturing Area. Most of the residential units will be market rate, not Affordable.

By Matt Williams

Each morning for the next two weeks I will provide Davisite readers and Davis voters with an article on one of the dozen issues that I covered in my presentation on Thursday at University Retirement Community which had Dan Carson presenting for Yes On Measure H. For everyone’s reference, at the end of this article I have listed those dozen issues that argue strongly for a “No” vote on Measure H.

What is the most important reason to vote “No” on Measure H?

On Tuesday I got a telephone call from David Thompson, the president of he Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation and co-principal of Neighborhood Partners LLC, which has developed and has in development over 1,400 units of low-income integrated nonprofit housing valued at over $200 million. His Affordable Housing projects in Davis include:

Creekside
Eleanor Roosevelt Circle
Cesar Chavez Plaza
Tremont Green
Moore Village
Twin Pines
Owendale
Dos Pinos

David has forgotten more about Affordable Housing than I will ever know. So when he asked me if I was interested in understanding how there is considerably less Affordable Housing in the DiSC project than is required by the City of Davis Affordable Housing Ordinance, I was quick to listen.

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May 15, 2022

Fact Checking Matt Williams’s Affordable Housing article

By Matt Williams

This table provides fact checking for the article Affordable Housing Expert argues that Affordable Housing at DiSC does not Comply with City of Davis Municipal Code

What is the most important reason to vote “No” on Measure H?	A header
On Tuesday I got a telephone call from David Thompson, the president of the Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation and co-principal of Neighborhood Partners LLC, which has developed and has in development over 1,400 units of low-income integrated nonprofit housing valued at over $200 million. His Affordable Housing projects in Davis include: Creekside Eleanor Roosevelt Circle Cesar Chavez Plaza Tremont Green Moore Village Twin Pines Owendale Dos Pinos	Factually correct
David has forgotten more about Affordable Housing than I will ever know. So when he asked me if I was interested in understanding how there is considerably less Affordable Housing in the DiSC project than is required by the City of Davis Affordable Housing Ordinance, I was quick to listen.	Factually correct
David started our discussion by asking me whether I had received the recent promotion piece for Yes on Measure H, which says, “Measure H enhances and advances more of what we love about Davis by creating affordable housing.”	Factually correct … confirmable on the Yes on DiSC website
After I told him that I had indeed seen that statement, he replied “That statement by DiSC is simply not true!” DISC is purposefully choosing to provide less affordable housing as a percentage of the total than any previously proposed site that has come up for a citizen vote.	Factually correct. He absolutely shared that opinion with me.
The reason is both simple and straightforward. Prior to 2018 all citizen vote proposals provided at least 25-35% of the housing units as permanently affordable under the provisions of Article 18.05 of the City of Davis Municipal Code … the City of Davis Affordable Housing Ordinance … which states.	Factually correct.
To the maximum extent feasible, each developer must meet the ownership affordable unit requirement as it pertains to the project, as set forth below: (a) Standard ownership affordable housing requirements. Any development that is comprised in whole or in part of ownership units shall comply with the following requirements, which shall be included in the development’s affordable housing plan. (1) Affordable Housing Requirements, by Residential Product Type. (A) For projects comprised of market rate single-family detached ownership units on lots larger than five thousand square feet in area, the developer must provide for a number of affordable housing units equivalent to twenty-five percent of the total units being developed, including the affordable units, by means of one of the methods set forth in this section. […] General plan implementing policies also require that, to the extent feasible and subject to existing law, rental housing developments with five to nineteen units shall provide fifteen percent of the units to low income households and ten percent to very low income households; and in rental housing developments with twenty or more units that twenty-five percent of the units be affordable to low income households and ten percent of the units be affordable to very low income households. General plan policies also require that affordable rental units remain affordable in perpetuity. (Ord. 2418 § 1, 2013)	Factually correct. Every word is copied verbatim and pasted directly from the Municipal Code
David went on to explain that DISC is applying under the “Interim Affordable Housing Ordinance” which substantially reduced the requirement to 15%.	Factually correct
The interim Affordable Housing Ordinance was passed by City Council in February 2018 with the stated plan that it would sunset on December 31, 2018. That sunset never happened, and its interim policy is still in effect.	Factually correct. The Vanguard has published that very information in past articles.
However, that interim policy with its lowered 15% was written specifically to apply to land already in the city, and was/is based on the December 11, 2015 Economic Report prepared for the City by A Plescia & Co entitled Preliminary Project Economic Analysis For City of Davis Affordable Housing Ordinance. That Plescia report begins as follows:	Factually correct.
The primary purpose of this summary report is to present preliminary information related to the projected economic implications of potential affordable housing ordinance requirements on certain urban scale residential ownership and rental development prototypes. The project economic analysis summarized in this report addresses the estimated financial feasibility (including profitability) information for certain identified residential ownership and rental development prototypes.	Factually correct. Every word is copied verbatim and pasted directly from the Plesia Report document
The preliminary project economic information presented in this report can be used by the City of Davis to inform the process being undertaken by the City of Davis in regard to its consideration of amending its existing Affordable Housing Ordinance as it relates to the identified residential ownership and rental development prototypes addressed in this memorandum. […] For purposes of this preliminary project economic analysis, the identified residential and mixed-use prototype alternatives are assumed to each be developed on a hypothetical 2.0 acre infill development site within the current urbanized area of the City of Davis.	Factually correct. Every word is copied verbatim and pasted directly from the Plesia Report document
Why within the current urbanized area of the City?	Header
Because land costs in the City had risen to the level of hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre.	There probably were a number of reasons, but this is the root cause reason. So this statement can be characterized as an opinion rather than a fact.
Land that is outside the urbanized area, like the DISC site, does not suffer from high land costs. It resides on agricultural land outside the City Limits that was purchased for considerably less than $10,000 per acre … NOT hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre.	Factually correct
That economic reality, and the clear words of the Plescia report mean the affordable housing requirement for DiSC should remain at the 25-35% threshold contained in Article 18.05 of the Municipal Code	Opinion / Conclusion / Position
In November 2019 hundreds of Davis residents applauded Richard Rothstein’s talk on the “Color of Law,” which critiqued the role of government in reducing housing for people of color. Many of us want a future Davis to be more inclusive and expansive of housing for low income residents and racial minorities.	Factually correct
DISC does the opposite by providing considerably less housing for low income residents and racial minorities.	Opinion / Conclusion / Position
David is unequivocal in his opinion that the interim Affordable Housing Ordinance simply does not apply to DiSC, and until and unless the DiSC project changes its Affordable Housing Plan to comply with the provisions Article 18.05 of the City of Davis Municipal Code, the only choice is to vote “NO” on Measure H. David Thompson has clearly stated that it is the most important reason to vote “No.” None of us should want to live in a Davis that accepts fewer homes for those most in need and people of color.	Opinion / Conclusion / Position plus a recommendation for solving the problem identified.
As noted at the beginning of this article, each morning for the next two weeks I will provide Vanguard readers and Davis voters with an article on one of the dozen issues listed below that I covered in my presentation on Thursday at University Retirement Community. Reasons to Vote “NO” on Measure H • Massive Traffic Problems • No Firm Plans to Mitigate Traffic • Unmitigated Greenhouse Gas Emissions • DISC will Cannibalize Existing Downtown and Local Businesses in Davis that are Still Hurting from the Pandemic • Projected Financial Projections to the City are Questionable or Misleading • We Cannot Trust our City Staff and Council to Protect Us from Rapacious and Predatory Developers • Critical Farmland, Habitat, and our Last Views of the Sierra and Sacramento Skyline will be Lost Forever • A Yes Vote Gives the Developer Lucrative Entitlements with No Guaranteed Baseline Features in Many Critical Areas • The Project Will Exacerbate the Housing Shortage in the Davis Area • The Scale of the DiSC Business Park is Much Too Large for a Small College Town Like Davis • An industrial-research development while we are in a serious drought?	N/A

May 15, 2022

Letter: 2 reasons for voting No on H: Muzzling citizens & exclusionary housing

Dear Davis Citizens:

Two reasons for voting No on H.

Council Member Carson tried to silence six voices opposed to Measure H. The six Davis citizens incurred a $71,000 bill to defend themselves, and now Carson is suing them for his legal costs of $76,358. Those volunteer voices are potentially paying $147,000+ from their personal savings.

On the other hand Carson has incurred no personal costs because his attempt to muzzle citizen voices opposed to Measure H was financed by the DISC developer.

That has prompted me to raise my own citizen voice … Council member Carson’s developer-funded stealth tactic should not be rewarded!  That alone is reason enough to vote No on Measure H.

However, there is a second reason to vote No on H. There’s Less Affordable Housing than the norm!

I received a Measure H piece, stating,

Measure H enhances and advances more of what we love about Davis, Affordable Housing.

Simply not true. DISC is providing less affordable housing as a % than any site set for a citizen vote.

Prior to 2018 all citizen vote proposals provided at least 25-35% of the housing units as permanently affordable. DISC is applying under the “Interim Affordable Housing Ordinance” which substantially reduced the requirement to 15%.

However, the interim policy with its lowered 15% was written specifically to apply to land already in the city.  Why?  Because land costs in the City are hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre.

The DISC site does not suffer from high land costs.  It resides on agricultural land outside of the city that was purchased for likely less than $10,000 per acre.  Therefore, the affordable housing requirement should remain at 25-35%.

In November 2019 hundreds of Davis residents applauded Richard Rothstein’s talk on the “Color of Law,” which critiqued the role of government in reducing housing for people of color. Many of us want a future Davis to be more inclusive and expansive of housing for low income residents and racial minorities.

DISC does the opposite by providing considerably less housing for low income residents and racial minorities.

Please join me in voting No on H.

David J Thompson
Davis

May 14, 2022
No on DiSC’s statement on vandalized Yes on H signs

The No on DiSC/No on H campaign denounces the recently discovered vandalism of a large Yes on Measure H sign posted on Covell Blvd at Risling Ct., possibly in the public right of way. Although we have been frustrated by the misrepresentations of the Yes on DISC campaign (including the signs themselves which give no indication of the true nature of the DiSC project) this type of petty property crime is not an appropriate means of advocacy.

The No on H campaign has also been experiencing rampant sign theft. Large numbers of the signature orange “No on H” traffic jam signs have been stolen across the city. Most notably, on 2 separate occasions more than 10 signs were removed from multiple homes in 2 different neighborhoods.

If your sign has been stolen or damaged, or if you would like a “No on Measure H” lawn sign, please contact the campaign through the website https://www.VoteNoOnDisc.com/

May 13, 2022
Letter: Who wants DiSC?

Who wants 12,000 more daily car trips on Mace Blvd?

Who wants to annex and pave over 102 acres of prime farmland and environmental habitat OUTSIDE the City of Davis boundary?

Who wants to violate every principle of effective city planning by developing 80,000 square feet of retail businesses beyond the city’s downtown?

Who wants an additional 460 housing units that would deplete scarce water resources and distress our already fragile infrastructure, including roads, schools and downtown parking?

Who wants a project that may violate air quality standards and add a 4.5 percent increase to Davis’s carbon footprint?

Who wants a project that proponents say will “Combat Climate Change”? (Been to Mar-a-Lago lately guys?)

Who wants a project that will develop 1.34 million square feet of office space when most businesses are transitioning to remote work-at-home employees? (Seen those massive empty development projects in China?)

Vote “NO” on H.

Here’s what Joni Mitchell said:

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go that
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

David L. Johnson
Davis

May 12, 2022