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Category: Politics

  • What the HEC is Going On?

    IMG_0744The Subversion of the Housing Element Committee (HEC) Deliberation Process by Hidden Development Interests

    Note: Several recent articles in the Davisite touch on the subject matter discussed here: For other comments on the Housing Element’s failure to address affordability and the proposals being pushed by development and real estate interests, see Davis Housing Element Fails Affordable Housing (5/27/2021). See also Comments on Draft Housing Element from Legal Services of Northern California (5/25/2021) For comments on problems with the City of Davis’s decision-making process see Good decision-making process involves staff and City Council too (6/3/2021)

    By Alan Pryor and Rik Keller

    The City of Davis’s Housing Element Committee (HEC), which is supposed to represent a “diversity of interests” in the community, was instead co-opted by development and real estate interests. Two weeks ago, there were a last-minute series of policy recommendations that were sprung on the Committee by these same real estate and development interests in violation of Brown Act open meeting laws. The HEC then further violated these laws in considering and voting to adopt the recommendations. Furthermore, the development and real estate interests on the Committee failed to adequately disclose conflicts of interest in terms of their investments and holdings in the City that would be impacted by the favorable recommendations approved by the HEC.

    This subverted process brings up important questions: Why has the City directed a process that has so little public input, especially from genuine affordable housing advocacy groups? How did the City staff allow so many violations of Brown Act laws regarding transparency and open government? Why did the City select HEC members with such a preponderance of real estate interests instead of appointing more representatives from the affordable housing community?

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  • Comments on Draft Housing Element from Legal Services of Northern California

    Screen Shot 2021-06-06 at 11.20.18 AMConcerns raised about lack of public participation from all economic segments of the community without adequate time to review, among many other concerns. Additional changes are needed to comply with the law and provide the most effective strategies to address the critical housing needs facing Davis residents with low incomes.

    Background: The City of Davis is preparing the 2021 – 2029 Housing Element to evaluate current and future housing conditions and identify housing sites to meet the community’s needs. Updating the Housing Element is a state requirement. The following letter commenting on the Draft Housing Element from Legal Services of Northern California was sent to the Davisite to post.

    May 25, 2021

    Jessica Lynch, Senior Planner
    Department of Community Development and Sustainability
    23 Russell Boulevard
    Davis, CA 95616

    Via email at jlynch@cityofdavis.org
    Re: Housing Element Update 2021-2029, draft submitted May 3, 2021

    Dear Ms. Lynch and City of Davis Staff,

    We are writing to provide comments on the Draft Housing Element released for public comment and submitted to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) on May 3, 2021.

    As you know, Legal Services of Northern California (“LSNC”) is a nonprofit civil legal aid organization providing legal assistance to low income individuals and families throughout Yolo County. LSNC’s mission is to provide quality legal services to empower the poor to identify and defeat the causes and effects of poverty within our community. LSNC has represented tenants in Yolo County since 1967. Last year, we handled more than 900 housing cases, including almost 200 cases for Davis households. Through our work, we gain insight into the struggles of low- income residents in Davis.

    We have prepared these comments in partnership with and on behalf of the Sacramento Housing Alliance, a nonprofit coalition that works to ensure that all people in the greater Sacramento region have safe, decent, accessible and affordable housing in healthy neighborhoods supported by equitable public policies and practices.

    The draft element adequately addresses many of the statutory requirements. Our comments cover areas where additional changes are needed to comply with the law and provide the most effective strategies to address the critical housing needs facing Davis residents with low incomes. We, along with SHA, are happy to discuss our comments and provide additional input as the City incorporates our suggestions and finalizes the draft.

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  • Good decision-making process involves staff and City Council too

    Screen Shot 2021-06-03 at 4.27.34 PM

    The following letter was emailed as a comment for tonight's special City Council Subcommittee on Commission Process meeting.

    Dear City Councilmembers and Commission Chairs,

    It is extremely difficult to comment on this item without knowing more about what will be discussed. However, one concern I have – and I will just have to see where things go today – is how this group became a “Subcommittee on Commissions.”

    The original letter that triggered this subcommittee, a letter that I co-signed, was titled “A Proposal for Improving City of Davis Decision Making.”  It included provisions regarding City Commissions, but it was not limited to that.  It also included provisions regarding “transparency, information, disclosure, and public engagement” as well as provisions “for developing and making decisions on Staff proposals submitted for City Council action.”  It was not just about how commissions operate.

    It would be a missed opportunity if this subcommittee were to narrow its concerns from the letter’s original scope.  Indeed, it would be a sad irony, given the letter was in part prompted by commissioners feeling that they were not being heard and seeing their communications to the city lost in translation.

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  • This sounds fishy!

    Sound-spikesBy Robert Canning

    At next week’s city council meeting, council will be asked to change the city’s sound ordnance. With little discussion or notice, city staff have added an item to the agenda that could have big implications for city planning and residential neighborhoods in Davis.

    In a nutshell, the amendment would, as one person has put it, allow someone to stand in front of your house and blow an air horn for a minute or two every hour without violating the sound ordinance. This would be allowed because city staff have decided it is better to measure sound by averaging it over an hour, rather than use a simple measure like the maximum allowed sound, how the current ordinance works. A quick check on the web shows that two other college towns – Chico and San Luis Obispo – have existing sound ordinances that use the “maximum” sound standard. Others have found that most cities use the maximum allowed sound rather than an average.

    And this makes sense. Using maximum allowable sounds – particularly during quiet periods like nighttime – eliminates repetitive loud noises like, to use an extreme example, pile drivers and other such concussive noises as the Chico ordinance notes. San Luis Obispo has sound levels for daytime hours that are meant to limit loud noises such as leaf blowers and the like.

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  • Letter from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation concerning the Cannabis Land Use Ordinance

    The following letter was sent to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors on May 4 and shared with the Davisite for publication.

    Dear Chairman Provenza and Board of Supervisors:

    On behalf of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, I write to voice our continued strong concerns about the manner by which the County of Yolo is proceeding with regard to its Cannabis Land Use Ordinance ("CLUO"). Our concerns are far-reaching and fundamental. We continue to believe the Environmental Impact Report the County commissioned is deficient under the California Environmental Quality Act ("CEQA"), for all of the reasons stated in our prior correspondence and which we hereby incorporate by reference.  For reasons we cannot fathom, the County continues on a myopic course, refusing to supplement or expand an analysis to one that measures the actual environmental impacts of an industry the County unleashed four years ago as an admitted experiment, and without any CEQA analysis whatsoever.  On a matter of such great import, involving a land use policy affecting so many people's lives, we fail to understand why the County is unwilling to take the time needed to get it right, or meaningfully consider reasonable alternatives to  protect people and their property. Instead, the County seems dedicated to moving forward against this deficient record, and recommending final action on an ordinance that will establish legal rights for a problematic industry.

    We implore the Board to step back and review the record. The comments from long­ time Capay Valley farmers and residents are generally consistent. Furthermore, County responses to people's grievances are revealing, as they are largely dismissive and conclusory, and protective of the cannabis industry generally. By this correspondence, we ask the Board to take corrective action and slow this process down to ensure CEQA is satisfied and that the best land use policy is developed. At the same time, we ask the Board to grant the Tribe's and our neighbors' request to protect the Capay Valley region, and in particular to, carve cannabis grows out of the rural residential communities west of Interstate-505 along State Route 16, which are simply not suitable to cannabis cultivation. As noted, the Tribe would help mitigate the impacts to growers who invested in the Capay Valley, by helping finance their relocation.

    Our Efforts to Reach A Resolution That Would Protect Much of the Greater Capay Valley Region from Cannabis Cultivation.

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  • Capay Valley is Being Overrun by a Disproportionate Share of Yolo County Cannabis Farms

    The Overwhelming Majority of the Owners of these Cannabis Farms are NOT Capay Valley Residents

    by Alan Pryor

    According to records provided by residents of Capay Valley opposed to the proliferation of cannabis farms in that rural and semi-rural area, there are 54 licensed pot farms in Yolo County with identified APN parcel numbers. Of these 54 farms, 27 (50%) are located in or near the unincorporated towns of Guinda, Rumsey,  Capay, and Esparto in the geographically short and narrow Capay Valley. The remaining 27 farms are located in other widely dispersed unincorporated areas of Yolo County. Based on land area alone, this is obviously a hugely disproportionate concentration of cannabis farms in this generally less wealthy area of the County.

    Capay Valley Cannabis Farms

    It is further noteworthy that of the 27 cannabis farms in the Capay Valley, only 7 (26%) have a person or business owner with an actual identified mailing address in the valley itself – everyone else is from somewhere else.. (Note: County records are incomplete or inaccurate so some property/business owner information was not released or otherwise unobtainable. As a result, not all information is currently available for all cannabis farms licensees).

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  • Should Davis spend millions of dollars on a ladder fire truck?

    UC Davis Ladder Fire Truck no 34

    UC Davis's Ladder Fire Truck – Truck 34

    By Roberta Millstein

    Is now the time for the City of Davis to be spending millions of dollars on a ladder fire truck when it currently only needs this type of truck approximately once per month at most, when it can currently borrow UC Davis’s ladder truck for free?

    What information do we need to answer this question?  What do we know and what do we need to know?

    According to the Davis Enterprise, on March 16 the Davis City Council “expressed unanimous support for acquiring a ladder truck for the Davis Fire Department and directed staff to move forward both on securing a detailed cost estimate for a truck as well as developing plans to modify the downtown fire station to accommodate it.”

    The estimated costs discussed thus far are as follows (with the City possibly being able to obtain some grants to offset some of these costs):

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  • Residents United to Demand a Cannabis Exclusion for Greater Capay Valley

    The following group-written letter was sent to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, several of whom also shared the letter with the Davisite and suggested that other people concerned about this issue can contact the Board at: "Oscar Villegas, 1st" <oscar.villegas@yolocounty.org> "Don Saylor, Chair, 2nd" <don.saylor@yolocounty.org>, "Gary Sandy, 3rd" <gary.sandy@yolocounty.org>, "Jim Provenza, 4th" <jim.provenza@yolocounty.org>, "Angel Barajas, 5th" <angel.barajas@yolocounty.org>, "Patrick S. Blacklock, Co Admin’r" <patrick.blacklock@yolocounty.org>

    [Updated to add signatories].

    Dear Supervisors: 

    We are residents of the rural communities along Highway 16 west of the 505 in Yolo County, with most of us living and some of us farming in and around Madison, Esparto, Capay, Brooks, Guinda and/or Rumsey. This area is a special one, renowned for the quality of its produce and sustainable farming, and variously called the “Capay Valley” or “greater Capay Valley.” We submit this letter to express our strong and united opposition to the cannabis industry in our communities.  

    Since the County first began experimenting with the cannabis industry four years ago, and authorized cannabis cultivation without any prior analysis or environmental review, the greater Capay Valley quickly became overwhelmed with cannabis grows. As you stand ready to approve an Ordinance that will bring some permanence to this industry, we ask you to hear us.  While we recognize the County wants this industry because of the revenues it will generate, the Board needs to consider the real costs this industry poses to our way of life.  

    Many of our families have lived in this region for generations. We have personally witnessed – and experienced – the harmful impacts of this industry. We want to make it clear to you, the elected Board of Supervisors, including our District 5 Supervisor Angel Barrajas, that we want the cannabis industry out of the greater Capay Valley, which needs to be protected from cannabis cultivation and related uses with an express exclusion or ban.

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  • Letter: Don’t turn Capay Valley into a Sacrifice Zone

    The following letter was sent to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors and shared with the Davisite

    Hello Yolo County Supervisors,

    Allow me to be frank. Although each county supervisor is elected by the voters of their district, you represent all the residents (whether they voted for you or not) of the entire county.

    That means your unspoken eagerness for pot revenue needs to be balanced against how the carpet-bagging influx of most pot grows being located mostly in District Five could undermine what was already here and growing.

    “The “California Travel Impacts” report, prepared for Visit California by Dean Runyan Associates, shows visitor spending reached $454.3 million and supported 5,219 jobs in Yolo County in 2019.”

    While our county’s three large cities get the credit, recreation in Capay Valley is also a significant factor, with river rafting, Almond Festival tourism, lavender farms and wine tasting, the Yocha Dehe Golf Club, Cache Creek Casino Resort, Séka Hills Olive Mill, Mother’s Day garden tours, and 3 decades of Full Belly Farm’s Hoes Down events drawing considerable crowds. The county took in $15 million in local tax revenue in 2019 from visitors.  https://www.dailydemocrat.com/2020/05/16/new-economic-report-highlights-importance-of-tourism-to-yolo-county/

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  • Irregularity infests Commission appointment process

    Staff Report ManipulationThe following public comment by Matt Williams was delivered last night to the City Council regarding the Commission Appointments agenda item.

    Madam Mayor, members of Council and City Staff, it has come to my attention from multiple disparate sources that the published Report for Item 7 on tonight's agenda was tampered with so that it does not reflect the actual results of the Subcommittee deliberations by Mayor Partida and Councilmember Carson. It is not clear from the information I have received whether the tampering was malicious or not, but it is crystal clear that Mayor Partida's views on the appointments were edited out of the document and Council member Carson's views were provided instead.

    The Commission appointment process is supposed to be non-partisan, and free of personal political agenda. Unfortunately, all three of the Commission appointment processes since Dan Carson has been involved have been anything but non-partisan and have consistently advanced his own personal political agenda and higher office ambitions.

    Some will say that Carson's actions in each of the last two appointment cycles was simply political infighting, but tampering with an Item Report, as has been done this evening, is much more sinister, and dare I say immoral. Council should insist on Councilmember Carson recusing himself from tonight's vote on Item 7, and the tampering should be openly and publicly investigated.

    In case anyone might think that I am personally butt-hurt by Dan's conspiring to not have me reappointed to the Utilities Commission last cycle, he actually did me a huge favor by doing so, because today I began a 12-week course of hormone and radiation therapy treatment for cancer, Not having the responsibility of Utilities Commission duties has made my life simpler as I move forward with that course of treatment. Sometimes less is more. Thank you, Dan for making my life easier in that currently very important way.

    In closing, the decision not to appoint Kelsey Fortune to the Utilities Commission needs to be addressed. Kelsey's credentials are a PhD in the Economics of Electric Energy. Those are skills and experience that perfectly matches what Davis needs on its Utilities Commission. Please take the wise step of appointing Kelsey to the Utilities Commission tonight.