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Category: Politics

  • Deceptive map for the West Davis Active Adult Community (WDAAC) Project

    CourtesymapAny complex project will have its pros and cons, so voters need accurate information in order to be able to properly assess them.  The “courtesy map” included in an article about the project in today’s Davis Enterprise, presumably provided by WDAAC project proponents, works against this purpose.  It is extremely misleading.

    Looking at the map provided, you’d think it would be just a short hop from the WDAAC to the Marketplace shopping center, where there is a supermarket, a drug store, restaurants, and other useful businesses.  Of course, this would be desirable if it were true.  But it isn’t true.

    The Google satellite map shows the real story.  Highway 113, just a thin line on the courtesy map, is a wide freeway, together with on-ramps and off-ramps (not shown on the courtesy map at all) on either side.  Pedestrians will have to cross the distance of the highway and the on- and off- ramps. 

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  • WDAAC Is a Sprawling Urban Planning Disaster

    Westdavisby Alan Pryor and Pam Nieberg

    Forward –

    The Davis City Council has approved a sprawling senior housing development project located in West Davis along Covell. Voters will have a chance to approve or reject the project in this year’s November election. The project is called West Davis Active Adult Community (WDAAC).

    On Tuesday, 8/28, an article by the author was published in the Davisite that discussed the massive reductions in Development Fees given away by the City to the Developer.

    On Thursday, 8/30 another article was published that discussed the erroneous financial assumptions used by the City to project a positive annual financial benefit to the City. That article also discussed how the Development Agreement and Baseline Features for the project are so vague so as to make them functionally  unenforceable

    This current article focuses on the gross deficiencies in general land use and planning for the project and how it fails to meet objective City guidelines for senior housing nor regional sustainable urban planning standards.

    1. The Far Edge of Town is Exactly the Wrong Location for a Senior Development and This Project has Exceedingly Poor Connectivity for Seniors.

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  • How will – and should – the recent Monsanto Roundup decision affect Davis?

    PesticideapplicationA few weeks ago, a jury awarded $289 million in damages to a California school groundskeeper, finding that his cancer was caused by on-the-job exposure to Monsanto’s pesticide Roundup, the main active ingredient of which is glyphosate.  How will this affect Davis?  How should it?

    Recall that, in a rather messy and prolonged process, the Davis City Council voted to “phase out” the use of glyphosate.  But where is the City in that process?  Do we even have an IPM specialist to replace Martin Guerena (who stepped down many months ago after being ill-treated by the City), i.e., someone who could oversee this phase out and report on it?  

    And does the phase out need to be accelerated?  Or should it occur immediately?

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  • West Davis Active Adult Community (Wdaac) Includes Massive Developer Give-Aways, Part 2

    WestdavisMay Actually Cost the City Money on an Annual Basis, and The Development Agreement Is Non-Binding and Weak

    by Alan Pryor and Nancy Price

    Part 2

    Forward: The Davis City Council has approved a sprawling senior housing development project located in West Davis along Covell. Voters will have a chance to approve or reject the project in this year’s November election. The project is called West Davis Active Adult Community (WDAAC).

    On Tuesday, 8/28, Part 1 of this article was published in the Davisite, which discussed the massive reductions in Development Fees given away by the City to the Developer. This is Part 2 of the article.

    _______________________________________________________________

    1. The City Projects a Positive Annual Return to City Coffers as a Result of Build-Out of this Project. However, this Estimate is Based on Accounting Methods that Assume Unsubstantiated Reduced Costs on a Per Resident Basis for Providing Basic City Services such as Public Safety and Transportation.

    The City’s Finance and Budget Commission analyzed the potential financial impacts to the City and made a number of projections about the project’s financial viability with respect to income or loss to the City. Their report to the City Council on February 12, 2018 can be found at www.cityofdavis.org/home/showdocument?id=9199:

    The conclusions reached by 4 of the Commissioners (with two dissenting votes) made the following observations (with emphasis added):

    1. At the time of this analysis, the commission did not have available to it a development agreement with the city for the project. Therefore, any conclusions we have reached should be considered preliminary and subject to change….
    2. We recommend that the commission, or if necessary an FBC subcommittee, be provided a timely opportunity to review and comment on the fiscal provisions of the proposed development agreement before its presentation to City Council for approval. “

    Surprisingly, the Finance and Budget Commission never did again review the Development Agreement before it went to Council.  But nevertheless, City Staff assumed when otherwise calculating the project’s positive return to City coffers that the City’s average cost for providing services to the residents of WDAAC were only going to be 75% of the City's otherwise calculated average costs. Staff made this assumption without any quantitative explanation as to how they derived that 75% figure.

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  • West Davis Active Adult Community (Wdaac) Includes Massive Developer Give-Aways

    May Actually Cost the City Money on an Annual Basis, and The Development Agreement Is Non-Binding and Weak

    by Alan Pryor and Pam Nieberg

    Part 1. The City has Granted the Developer Massive Giveaways and Subsidies by, among other things, Reducing Project Impact Fees by over $3.4 Million Compared to Fees Normally Charged to New Developments.

    The Davis City Council has approved a sprawling senior housing development project located in West Davis along Covell. Voters will have a chance to approve or reject the project in this year's November ballot. The project is called the West Davis Active Adult Community (WDAAC).

    The City Council has agreed to development-related fees in the Development Agreement for this project that, in all but the market rate non-age restricted housing units, are generally from 25% – 60% less than the current mandated fees normally required of other development proposals. This has resulted in essentially a give-away to the project proponent of approximately $3.4 million in fees which is a discount of more than 40% compared to fees that would otherwise normally be charged to a developer for a project with this number and size of units as shown in Appendix A.

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  • More on recent problems with the Davis Enterprise

    News-stock-photoBy Eileen Samitz

    I appreciate this Davisite article and completely agree with its response to the defensive Enterprise article by Tanya Perez. However, the problem with the Enterprise goes far beyond the few mentioned. The Enterprise needs to become more even-handed and print the comments and concerns of the wide variety of community members, instead of focusing on and reflecting personal opinions of its new editor Sebastian Oñate so often on its Forum page.

    Further, it is inexcusable that the Enterprise's publishers would tolerate the condescending comments posted by its new editor, Sebastian Oñate (on Twitter) ridiculing Davis community members and their submitted writings to the Enterprise. His predecessor, Debbie Davis, was a professional who respected all opinions, regardless of whether she agreed with them or not, and would never have behaved so unprofessionally and disrespectfully towards the community.

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  • A response to Tanya Perez on the purpose of the Davis Enterprise

    Perez-and-Beckett In Sunday’s paper, Tanya Perez writes a spirited and mostly reasonable defense of the Davis Enterprise, but she doesn’t quite get it.

    Lamenting the loss of eagle-eyed editor Debbie Davis, AP news stories, and the like, Perez writes:

    The Enterprise aims to give you the information you cannot get elsewhere. We know you have Google, so you can look up the recipe sections we no longer carry. You can Google comic strips you miss, or AP News stories or national headlines.

     We are trying to give you context for local issues. And we are working to tell you what people in our immediate area want to know. That is our core mission [emphasis added].

    Right on.  This is certainly why I subscribe to the Enterprise – why I subscribed as soon as I moved here and why I continue to subscribe.  I am always a little baffled when people say they don’t read the local paper.  I think it’s important to know what is going on around us, even more so than what is going in the state or nation.

    Where I think she misses one of the core missions of a local paper, however, is where she writes:

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  • Bad process leads to mediocre decision on pesticide use in Davis, and not without wasted time and effort from staff and citizens

    PesticideapplicationAt its November 7, 2017 meeting, the City Council voted to change its Integrated Pest Management (IPM) policy, as well as ban the use of neonicotinoids (implicated in colony collapse disorder in bees) and a phase-out of glyphosate (often sold as Roundup, listed by the State of California as a probable human carcinogen). The decision was a mixed bag, containing some good elements and some bad.  This article describes some of the events that led up to that decision.  I write now because, with a new Council just seated, I hope that some of the bad process chronicled here can be avoided for future decisions.

    This piece will of necessity be a bit lengthy.  And that is part of my point.  It took far too long for this issue to come to the City Council for a vote.  At every turn certain staff members[1] sought to delay and subvert the will of commissioners, of citizens, and even of City Council members.  As Jon Li says, sometimes one has to ask, “who is in charge in Davis?”

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  • Considerate Decision by Council Regarding Public Comment Process

    CityCouncilJul2018Last Tuesday, the subject of public comment procedures was on the City Council’s agenda. Incoming Mayor Brett Lee had proposed some potential changes such as limiting general public comment to 45 minutes, with remaining speakers coming back at the end of the meeting, and shortening individual public comment from three minutes to two and a half minutes.

    The intention of the changes was potentially to try to expedite the meetings in the spirit of greater efficiency. However, there were a number of citizens’ emails sent to Council objecting to the proposed changes and around a dozen citizens testified, urging the Council not to make these changes. It was clear that there was a Council majority who wanted to try alternative methods to the proposed changes to manage public comment. These alternative methods, including use of the 1-,2-,3- minute method for public comment when there are many speakers (that is, encouraging commenters to speak for only one or two minutes, instead of the full three allowed, and giving those speakers priority in the queue), served as a great relief to many people whom expressed concern about the original proposals.  But it was helpful for the issue to be discussed with the public, explaining the unintended consequences that would result from forcing people to return at the end of the Council meeting to testify, particularly when an item they wanted to comment on likely would have already been voted on.

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  • Preserve our right to be heard at City Council meetings

    GaggedIf you want to preserve your right to speak in general public comment at City Council meetings, come to the City Council meeting today (Tuesday, July 10) at 7:15 PM and express your concerns about the proposal to shunt some of general public comment to the very end of the meeting.  Maybe you’ve never spoken at a Council meeting.  Maybe you don’t think you would. But it’s exactly when our concerns are the greatest that we find ourselves doing things that we didn’t expect we’d do and when we most need to preserve our right to speak.

    Although I’ve spoken at Council meetings a number of times, I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken at general public comment at the beginning of the meeting (exception: my first time when I didn’t understand how things worked).  But I have heard others give general public comment.  They speak of issues that the Council might not yet know about or has yet to take up and place on the agenda.  Or they speak to items that are on the agenda, but for which they cannot stay to speak. They speak with passion and conviction.  Maybe the issues aren’t important to me.  But they are important to the speaker.  In a democracy, all voices should be heard, even those we disagree with or those who speak about things that we ourselves do not care about, because when it’s our turn, we will want to be heard.

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