Month: July 2009

Very quietly on Tuesday’s meeting, the Davis City Council voted for a consent agenda item that would allow for the delay of initiation of the work by the Senior Housing Strategy Committee.  This was the committee created at the behest of Councilmember Stephen Souza that would study the issue of senior housing that was pushed forward this spring by the lobbying efforts of the Covell Partners as they seek to bring back Covell Village.

This is another example of Councilmember Stephen Souza coming up with a clever idea during the council meeting but not having throught through the implementation of the process.  The form and structure of the committee changed drastically throughout the process, but the goal was for the committee to make a recommendation to the City Council by the end of 2009.  To do that, it was scheduled to meet nine times between July 30 and November 19.

In a long and meandering meeting that began at 5 pm with a joint discussion with Woodland City Council on water, ended just before 2 am with a 3-2 vote to deliver the Wildhorse Ranch Project for a Measure J vote in November 2009.

Councilmembers Sue Greenwald and Stephen Souza repeatedly attempted to delay this discussion, in part based on the lateness of the hour and in part based on not only the complexity of the issues but also problems that they had with the project.

On Tuesday, the Davis City Council will decide whether or not to approve the 191 unit, 25.8 acre Wildhorse Ranch project and forward it to the voters for an election per Measure J requirements.

Staff recommends full approval of the project in each of its component parts. The request is to change the land use designations for the site from agriculture, where the property currently contains a horse farm, to residential.

After a lengthy period of outreach by the developers to the Wildhorse Each Neighborhood Association and other adjacent neighborhoods as well as the community at large, and working with city staff, the neighborhood association opted to oppose the project. Nevertheless, city staff believes that “this site plan configuration is acceptable, and addresses most of staff concerns expressed about previous plans.”

At Tuesday’s City Council Meeting, the Davis City Council approved by a 4-0 vote a grant to the Rancho Yolo Association for 43,900 dollars.  This follows a grant of 50,000 that was approved in April.  Councilmember Sue Greenwald abstained from this vote.

The motion approved by council was made by Councilmember Lamar Heystek and represented a compromise over the original staff recommendation which would require 10,000 dollars for a third party review of the process but come outside of the grant money.  This would come from the 43,000 but reduce the cost of the third party review to 5,000.

If the June vote by the Business and Economic Development Commission was not a strong enough message to Councilmember Stephen Souza’s proposal for a business park exemption to Measure J, the voter approved measure that gives the voters of Davis the ability to vote on proposed land use designation changes that would pave the way for development, on Wednesday, the Planning Commission unanimously voted against placing any exemptions before the Davis voters.

During the course of discussion there seemed to be no great sense to exempt a specific property for a business park proposal.  There was some concern that it would lead to an overly complicated process and a member of the public, Pam Nieberg, pointed out from the original legal advice that any exemption for a specific property could lead to a lawsuit unless all properties were considered for exemption.

Here is how the scam works.  When a homeowner tries to tender a check to pay for their monthly assessment to the homeowners association through its hired management company, the check is either not accepted or not posted to the homeowner’s account in a timely manner.  The result is a determination by management the payment is now suddenly “overdue”.  This triggers the collections process, with the homeowners “delinquency” immediately sent to collections.  Here, the money meter begins to run, racking up huge collections costs and late fees.  If the total debt owed, including all collections costs and late fees, is not paid posthaste and in toto, the homeowner’s house is held hostage with a threatened foreclosure.   The collections process is tantamount to a train rolling downhill on the tracks – almost impossible to stop once begun.

It was nearly a month ago that the Business and Economic Development Commission (BEDC) considered whether Measure J should have a business park exemption during their vote to place a renewal on the ballot that would sunset in 2020.  At that time, the BEDC did not feel comfortable with the vague lack of direction that the council provided them.  They would vote by a 7 to 1 vote to recommend no exemption at this point in time.  The one dissenting vote actually wanted the qualifier “at this point in time” removed.

The BEDC was reluctant to permanently recommend against this consideration based on the notion that they are in the midst of receiving a staff report on the city’s business park land needs.  Depending on the outcome of that study, they might wish to revisit the issue should the study show the definitive and immediate need for a business park.