Commentary: Mistakes Were Made…

House-Greg

Despite the number of issues facing the Davis community, the sheer volume of comments on recent articles indicates that land use issues still dominate the political scene – diminished only by the decreased number of true land use issues, as for a period, at least, the issue of peripheral growth was settled.

A few weeks ago it became clear that Davis’ goal for economic development was going to run smack into Davis’ goals for protection of agricultural land and open space.  Still, I think most of us were caught off guard that the issue came up this week and was planted in a consent agenda item.

City staff, the city manager and everyone involved understand that this was a colossal error.  They certainly recognized it when Greg House sounded the alarm last weekend.  And while they can take issue with Mr. House’s description of things, in most ways he did the community a service and the council a favor.

Give the city manager credit – recognizing the error, he immediately decided to pull the item off consent, called a special meeting, and increased the information in the staff report, including the description of the land swap, among other things.

The damage was done.  In fact, the damage should have been done.  The damage needed to be done.  The message needed to be sent that this was not acceptable.

The only way that could happen was for the land swap, and the staff recommendation to rescind the grant from NCRS, to fail.  That turned out to be a very very very close vote.

There are 3-2 votes where we know from the start they are 3-2 votes and the outcome is not in doubt.  In this case, 3-2 was a lot closer than the 3-2 might indicate.

While I still believe the errors here were not made from ill intentions, there are questions that still need to be asked.  I can understand the mistake of putting this as a consent item, but others are less excusable.

First, why did the initial staff report contain no reference to the land swap?  We only found out that this was not a straight vote down of the easement east of Mace late on Monday, when it was announced in a staff report that there was a proposal to swap that land for an easement on the Shriner’s property.

The Vanguard has learned that, while the land swap itself was the topic of discussion as early as a few months ago, Capitol Corridor Ventures did not secure rights to the Shriner’s property until late in the process.  Given its lateness in the process, it would have been better if the discussion – pushed up against barriers and deadlines – would have died, but for reasons that sources could not articulate, the issue was forced forward and probably to the detriment of the process.

The debate over the easement location was worthy of discussion – the problem is that there could be no true discussion under these conditions.  With all due respect to Matt Williams and two on the council, the issue of the location of the easement was made irrelevant by the way this process unfolded.

My second question is why was the Open Space Commission never informed that there would be a decision on whether to go ahead with the grant that the Yolo Land Trust had obtained?  Mitch Sears was reportedly not at that meeting and the staff person who was there never mentioned anything about the land swap.

CORRECTION: Mitch Sears was at the June 3 Open Space and Habitat Commission meeting, but he did not do the staff report or the presentation concerning the issue.  Ann Brunnete did the staff report.

This was on June 3.  That again is answered by the lateness by which the land swap arrived.

The staff report that came out on late Monday said, a few months ago, that a new Davis-based benefit corporation called Capitol Corridor Ventures “approached the City with an offer to essentially conduct a ‘swap’ of properties that would allow the City to gain a more robust conservation buffer along the northeastern edge of the City while acquiring a parcel that had a higher percentage (over 85%) of Prime Agricultural farmland.”

We learned that this was a topic of conversation in closed session by the council, but no one bothered to bring it to the public until right before the deadline.  Staff wants to defend itself that nothing could have been brought forward until there was a concrete offer on the table.  Again, this suggests that the deal should have simply been killed.

There was no public outreach, no discussion of a major shift in council and city policy from the one set forward back in 2010.

Some have questioned the propriety of holding some of these talks in closed session.  It would be interesting to see if justifications held up if pressed in a Brown Act complaint.

Former Councilmember Stephen Souza noted that he was part of the team that negotiated what he called “this highly leveraged best purchased open space in the city history.”

He said “I would not give up that bird in hand” and “that is something that isn’t going to come along, I don’t think again.”

Stephen Souza, who has made his share of missteps and errors in this realm, understood what too many on the council could not – swapping the easement on this parcel for one to the north is only one step in the process, and ultimately the voters were going to have to agree in a Measure R vote.

“If we are going to have a business park… we are not going to do it by beginning on this note, we need to do it in a concerted way with the community so that it will pass a Measure R vote, so that it doesn’t have a bad smell to it right from the beginning,” Stephen Souza argued.  “You don’t want that.  Believe me you don’t want that.  It’s something that I’ve gone through.”

Bob Schneider should have been another canary in the coal mine.  Yes, Mr. Schneider has tremendous environmental credentials, but he has also been a developer, as he acknowledged at the outset of his comments on Tuesday, and he has generally supported development.

Bob Schneider pressed the council to divulge who Capitol Corridor Ventures was.  Eventually, we found out it was run by David Morris and, currently, only run by David Morris.

“I can’t give a comment if I don’t have the information.  That’s secretive,” he said pointedly.  “That’s the part of the process that I get concerned about because a core value of Davis, a very core value is an open public process.  That’s the overriding consideration.  And that’s not happening here.”

The truth is, this whole process has lacked transparency.

As I stated earlier, the damage was done.  In fact, the damage should have been done.  The damage needed to be done.  The message needed to be sent that this was not acceptable.

Unfortunately, the Davis City Council is not blameless here.  They had this information presumably several months ago, perhaps as early as the Cap to Cap.  Yet we only found out about this just as the clock was about to strike midnight – and perhaps not at all without the emails of Greg House.

To those who believe that the process did not matter, I strongly disagree.  Councilmember Lucas Frerichs, in my estimation, voted against this only on the process matter.

While Rochelle Swanson and Dan Wolk expressed their trepidations with the process, both stuck with their inclinations on the issue.

Councilmember Swanson said, as noted,  “I would hate to see the bad process kill a good thing.”

She noted, “I really do feel that if this process would have come before us three weeks ago or two months ago, I think the community would have looked at more than just a bird in the hand.”

Ms Swanson added that she wanted conservation easements to the north and development along the freeway.  But she described that sentiment as “51-49,” implying it being a close call and the “process being frustrating.”

“I don’t like locking us into this because the process was bad,” Mayor Pro Tem Wolk stated.  “I just worry about the opportunities we might have should we go through with getting the easement.  It’s frustrating the process is bad.  I just feel like there’s an opportunity here for achieving both our goals of land preservation and economic development.”

Unfortunately, I think both Mr. Wolk and Ms. Swanson are mistaken here.  The process issues are not minor inconveniences – they prevented meaningful public discussion on a matter that was likely to be highly controversial.  That being the case and the fact that they had known about this for several months means that they had to – out of principle and principle alone – vote against this no matter how strong the merits.

Lucas Frerichs got it, but Dan Wolk and Rochelle Swanson, agonizing as they might have been, missed the mark on just how egregious the transparency issues were here.  They would have been rewarding bad behavior had they prevailed.

To those who believe that the process issue did not matter, Lucas Frerichs almost certainly would have voted for this had the process been open and transparent.  Brett Lee was intrigued by the deal as well, but could not vote for it with this kind of process.

City staffers now are in a quandary believing that this parcel was the key to a business park.  I have faith that they will find another way to avoid the innovation park going to the SW part of the UC Davis campus – in Solano County.

However, yesterday, the Vanguard was told that there is a Plan B and that is being formulated as we speak.

In closing, I think it is important for some on the council to remember that residents of Davis have a long history of rather shady and contentious land use deals that occur behind closed doors and which have produced over the years a great deal of distrust in the community.

It is also important to recognize that there is a good portion of the community very reluctant to cross Mace Blvd – as both a hard and symbolic barrier.

The business community and the burgeoning innovation community need to be mindful of public sentiments and concerns and take care not to get too far ahead of the public.

Deals like this are complex. They involve major paradigmatic shifts in public policy, and, as such, care must be taken to have full and open conversations.

Finally, David Morris, who heads up both techDavis and Capital Corridor Ventures, needs to be more careful in the future, as it appears that he personally has his hands in too many parts of this equation.  The city would be wise to reconsider options for funding the Chief Innovation Officer position held by Rob White, to avoid the appearance of a conflict here.

There are a lot of lessons that need to be learned here and hopefully staff and council can learn them and apply these lessons for the next time business and economic development run into long held, long used practices in the community.

—David M. Greenwald reporting

Editor’s Note: City Manager Steve Pinkerton and five councilmembers were presented with an early draft and invited to respond to this piece.  While the Vanguard spoke to Mr. Pinkerton and three councilmembers prior to publication, the Vanguard received no formal comments.  The piece does reflect a few changes in the understanding of the course of events that resulted from those conversations, but makes no formal use of them.

Update: The version corrects information that inaccurately reported that Mitch Sears was not at the Open Space Commission meeting.

Author

  • David Greenwald

    Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.

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Categories:

Land Use/Open Space

125 comments

  1. David Greenwald said . . .

    [i]”The debate over the easement location was worthy of discussion – the problem is that there could be no true discussion under these conditions. With all due respect to Matt Williams and two on the council, the issue of the location of the easement was made irrelevant by the way this process unfolded.”[/i]

    I don’t disagree with this statement even for a millisecond. If staff had brought the concept of an easement location swap forward earlier, even if the specifics associated with the Shriners property weren’t available, then the community could have weighed in without a pistol pointed at its temple because of a time crunch. I would have loved to see the Open Space Commission discuss the merits of having the land in Davis’ control rise from 391 acres to 625 acres. I would have loved to hear the discussion of a community garden on the Shriners property across Covell Blvd from Harper Junior High School. I would have loved to hear the descriptions of the disgorging of community farmers by both Unitrans and YoloBus each day. I would have loved to hear the discussions about how organic farming methods mean that there aren’t any pesticide sprays wafting over into the neighborhoods to the west and south of the community garden.

    You are absolutely right. The issue of the location of the easement was made irrelevant by the way this process unfolded. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t acknowledge the community dialogue benefits that would have come to pass if we had managed the process better.

  2. Exactly davisite, instead of swapping one for the other the Measure O funds should be used to purchase both parcels for open space ag buffers.

  3. Yes the City can indeed attempt to buy the Shriners property, but in order to do so they will have to come up with the incremental #3 million to $4 million to do so. Although we don’t know the details of what was proposed, it appears that In the swap scenario that incremental $3 million to $4 million wasn’t necessary.

  4. [quote]In addition GI, the current owner of the Shriners property has to be willing to sell the property.[/quote]

    Are you saying that the current owner of the Shriners property is only willing to sell if there is an “innovation park” involved?

  5. Perhaps the owner of the Shriners property, Steve Gidaro, as disclosed by LLC search Sec. of State, really wants to trade a property with no chance for development for land set up for development by CCV, who is obviously linked with the landowner is some fashion. That may explain the wierd price incentive.

  6. yeahmyam:
    [quote]Perhaps the owner of the Shriners property, Steve Gidaro, as disclosed by LLC search Sec. of State, really wants to trade a property with no chance for development for land set up for development by CCV, who is obviously linked with the landowner is some fashion.[/quote]

    Vewy vewy interesting………………….

  7. [quote]problem with that theory is that the city owns the mace curve land and would not relinquish that ownership. [/quote]

    Wasn’t that the trade that was just proposed?
    What am I missing here?

  8. Growth Izzue said . . .

    [i]”I think a great local for an Innovation Park would be right up close to El Macero. What do you think Matt?”[/i]

    Actually GI that is exactly what we have right now. Drive south down Mace from El Macero and you have the Sierra Sod property followed by the Harris Seed breeding innovation center and the Campbells Soups seed breeding innovation center (recently purchased by Harris). One of the possible locations being considered by Seed Central was adjacent to Harris and Campbells, and you didn’t hear a peep of protest from a single El Macero resident.

  9. Growth Izzue said . . .

    [i]”Wasn’t that the trade that was just proposed? What am I missing here?”[/i]

    One of the deal terms being kicked around (but no deal terms had been agreed to, as was well discussed from the dias and in public comment), was that the City would have retained control of the 234 acres adjacent to I-80 where the Innovation Park might have gone. If, after a certain period of time, no employer with jobs came forward as an identified tenant of the prospective Innovation Park, then the ownership of the 234 acres would have reverted wholly to the City.

    That has every appearance of a win-win situation. If a tenant with a critical mass of new jobs for Davis is identified, then the community wins. If no such jobs materialize the land reverts to City owned farming . . . and the community wins.

  10. Growth Izzue said . . .

    [i]”Good Matt, sounds like you have room for more buildout.”[/i]

    If that buildout produces jobs and economic growth for Davis, absolutely. The creation of new innovation-centric jobs will improve the jobs/housing balance of the community, the sustainability of our economy and the fiscal health of our regional governments.

  11. For the record, Ann Brunette did mention the land-swap to the OSH Commission on June 3. However, she noted that she had just been briefed on it that morning, and had no details to offer the Commission, except that someone who had an “option” on (note: not ownership of) the Shriner piece was proposing the swap of Shriner for the south 234 acres of the 390-Mace Curve property. After her presentation, OSH voted unanimously to affirm its 2010 recommendation for the 390, to wit, put the conservation easement on it and resell it as permanent farmland.

  12. Matt:
    [quote]One of the deal terms being kicked around (but no deal terms had been agreed to, as was well discussed from the dias and in public comment), was that the City would have retained control of the 234 acres adjacent to I-80 where the Innovation Park might have gone. If, after a certain period of time, no employer with jobs came forward as an identified tenant of the prospective Innovation Park, then the ownership of the 234 acres would have reverted wholly to the City.
    [/quote]

    So, if a tenant stepped forward then the owner of the Shriner’s property would’ve prospered? Is that right Matt?