CHA Squanders Chance To Be More than an Astroturf Group for Covell Village Part Deux

However, as their movement and membership has presumably grown, they have opportunities to become something more than that.  They sponsored a city council candidates forum.  They packed the senior center.  A number of their members including Don Villarejo and Mary Jo Bryan among others are well respected members of the community.  This was their chance to show that they were more than just an astroturf group, that they could be a broader senior advocacy group that spoke for thousands of Davis residents on a variety of key issues.  They could have erased the perception that they were merely fronting for a developer (development?), a synthetic group developed by a powerful interest to create the impression of a mass movement, aka an astroturf group.

Jon Li did not even wait for the bell to stop ringing before he came out swinging.  “Tonight is about building political pressure to force the next Davis City Council to waste another few years and a Measure J vote on Covell Village.  Covell Village is SPONSORING this event.”

He continued, “No matter what, any proposal in our lifetimes will be rejected by the Davis voters, 40-60, because of John Whitcombe.  Since 2003, Whitcombe has owned a majority of the Davis City Council, and they have done his beck and call at the expense of the rest of the citizens of Davis.  Whitcombe decides something, the council majority announces it, and the city staff suffers whiplash.  For seven years, the Davis City Council has only done what Whitcombe wants.  So the council has accomplished nothing.”

He did not stop that night.  The next night he reminded everyone again, “Last night we had a forum that was supposed to be about seniors but it was run by Covell Village.  So the answer to every question was Covell Village.”

You think he is exaggerating on this point?  Look at the questions.  Everyone of them pushes the candidate to support seggregated, large scale senior housing on the Davis periphery.

First question, “because Seniors are defined in many different ways, age 65 for medicare and as young as fifty for many of the services offered by the American Association for Retired Persons, how would you as a city councilmember define seniors in planning for future housing needs?”

They are trying to get the candidates to support separate senior housing.  The candidates did not bite though and talked about addressing housing by needs rather than by age and talking about, broader services.

Here are the next rest of the official CHA questions:

“The US census shows that Davis senior households have twice the income of seniors nationwide and many also own a home with a large equity.  In light of these facts, how do you think, Senior Housing options in Davis should differ from those in typical US cities?”

“Do you think that it is important that the city of Davis to allow new qualified senior housing projects that are large enough to offer comprehensive services for maintaining health and healthy social lifestyles…?”

“If Measure R passes, how will it affect the ability to initiate innovative housing projects in Davis?”

“Do you think that current housing options for Davis Seniors are adequate in light of the dramatic increases in the proportion of the population age 55 and older in Davis?  Please explain if you don’t think it’s adequate what is needed.”

“Would you be an advocate for senior ownership housing projects within your term if you were elected?”

Jon Li finally said, “The problem I have with the series of questions which I think is apparent to all of you is you started with an answer and then you ask us a bunch of questions where the answer that you want to hear is given.”  

How many different ways can you ask the same question?  The irony is that while CHA was only interested in senior housing developments, the attendees of the forum actually asked a number of better questions than CHA.

I understand that people are unhappy with the focus Jon Li is getting in light of his foolish comments regarding a sitting member of the city council, but unfortunately he is the only one here willing to call a spade a spade with regards to CHA.  Everyone else was more than happy to grit their teeth and avoid the bait.

The good news is that CHA does not have a lot of allies on this group.  Even Sydney Vergis, likely the most pro-growth candidate on the ballot, said it was time to take a deep breath and think rather than merely propose housing.

But CHA needs to recognize that the voters are not going to be approving a Covell Village development in the next ten years.  Joseph Whitcombe recognizing that reality has sought to oppose Measure R but that’s futile for two reasons.  First, the voters overwhelmingly support it and he has not put the argument or the resources together to change their minds.  Second, even if somehow R did not get approved, which won’t happen, any proposal for Covell Village will draw enough heat that voters will get it on the ballot one way or another, just as they did with the original Wildhorse.

The winners of this forum were actually the candidates who did not take the bait and the voters.  The clear loser this night was CHA itself who blew the chance to become more than just a stalking-horse for the Covell Village developers.  They should have broadened and diversified their issues to become an advocate for senior issues.  That would have made them more formidable and less easy to dismiss.

As it stands now, it is clear that when they are talking about senior housing, they are talking about Covell Village, period, end of story.

Actually I was wrong a moment ago, the voters may have won because CHA did not prevail its viewpoints on the candidates, but the voters lost because we did not have a real discussion of senior issues.

So here are some questions, that I put together with the help of my senior advisers, that perhaps the candidates might consider answering that would address a broader array of senior issues.  There were no questions about transportation, the public asked questions about universal design not the CHA board, no questions about water and sewer rates which will be a huge burden on people with fixed incomes, nothing on protection from elder abuse, or general inclusion in the community.  In short, there is a whole array of issues that seniors deal with outside of whether the city of Davis should be a segregated retirement community.

Here are some questions that I think the candidates should be asked.

• What are your ideas on how to address the problem of astronomical increases in water and sewer rates in Davis that seniors on fixed incomes will be facing in the coming years?
• What is your position on instituting some kind of mandatory Universal Design Ordinance in Davis, that would allow seniors to age in place in their own home?
• What sort of senior housing would you like to see developed, and how much do you think is needed over the next 30 years?
• How would you begin to address the problem of a lack of appropriate/manageable public transportation for frail seniors who can no longer drive?
• What are your suggestions on solving the problem of overutilization of Davis Community Transit (Paratransit), which is so currently overwhelmed, it will only take those frail seniors who are disabled to their destinations via trips that can be quite lengthy?
• What can the city proactively do to better protect seniors from financial elder abuse?
• How can the city institute policies that would go a long way to make seniors feel more included in their community rather than segregated/warehoused out of sight?
• In what ways will the current budget decisions made by the City Council impact seniors on fixed incomes, and how will you address that impact in the future?
• When taxes and fees increase in Davis, seniors on fixed incomes are hit particularly hard, because they often have no way of earning more income.  How would you address this problem?
• How can senior citizens be more included in the political process, in light of the fact that many have difficulty getting to City Council or commission meetings to express their concerns?  How can the city better reach out to this constituency?

I wonder if the CHA board even knows much about most of these issues.  I wonder why they did not think these were issues worthy of asking rather than seven different versions of why we need Covell Village.  Perhaps some day, we will get an answer to that question, until then there will be much staff time and energy wasted on a project that the voters will simply not approve in the next ten years.

In the meantime, CHA has made my job easy.  I did not need to do extensive sleuth work on this.  I did not have to go to great pains to show them to be a fraudulent group.  They did it all by themselves. 

—David M. Greenwald reporting