Month: October 2013

Staff Gets an Earful on the Breakdown of Transparency Back in June – The agenda item may have said informational, but the decision that the council would make on Tuesday night was critical to the future of the possibility of a business park at Mace 391, or at least the discussion of its possibility.

The council would open that door by a 4-1 vote, with Mayor Joe Krovoza vehemently dissenting, on a motion made by Councilmember Rochelle Swanson.  Her motion moved to direct staff to bring back on November 12 an item “with a full range of options for the Mace 391/Leland Ranch properties.”

The Davis Enterprise is now the latest entity lending its voice to re-examining Mace 391, arguing that “conservation” and “business interests can both be satisfied.”  This follows similar calls from the Vanguard, tech and business leaders and the Davis Chamber of Commerce.

“In a perfect world, there would be time for all competing interests to fully discuss important civic issues before nagging realities like deadlines set in,” the paper’s editorial writes.  “In the real world, however, decisions sometimes must be made in haste, with far-reaching and unpleasant consequences.”

By Gregg Herrington, Rose Cholewinski, Jeremy Brooks, Dennis Lindsay, Chuck Roe, Dick Luna, Jeff Adamski, Michael Bisch and Kemble Pope

The City of Davis owns several hundred acres of land on I-80 at Mace Blvd. This land, north of I-80 and east of Mace Blvd, is arguably the most valuable asset in our City’s portfolio. Yet, in this time of extended economic uncertainty, it would probably surprise most Davis residents that this asset has not been subjected to a wide ranging community discussion and has gone virtually unexamined for the highest and best community benefit.

To be fair, two City commissions have discussed Howatt Ranch as a sports park and Leland Ranch as an open space preserve. City staff has also processed a federal grant application with our long time partners in open space preservation, the Yolo Land Trust, on the 391-acre Leland Ranch.

Yesterday we laid out for the public, in the Vanguard‘s Sunday Commentary, the notion that Davis’ most important discussion is its economic development picture.

At that time, we closed by writing, if we want to preserve the great things about this community, if we want the community to thrive, not just survive, then we need to have this full discussion and we need to have it soon.

For the last several months, Davis has been having a debate over the Cannery Property.  Make no mistake, there are a number of critical questions which will not be resolved this week and may not be resolved in a month when the council makes a final decision.

I’m not going to pretend like these are not critical questions in the community – do we need housing?  What kind of housing do we need?  Should we put housing at the Cannery site which has a number of serious limitations?  And then there are the project-specific concerns such as connectivity.

There will be no decision made on Cannery on Tuesday.  According to the staff report, “The purpose of the October 22 workshop is to introduce the project and applications to the City Council and the public. Although many of the materials will be available in advance of the meeting, Councilmembers are not expected to have fully absorbed the materials by the time of the October 22nd workshop.”

The city council has assigned a subcommittee of Mayor Joe Krovoza and Councilmember Lucas Frerichs, oddly both of whom are either opposed to or skeptical of the project, to work with staff to develop the Project Development Agreement. “As those discussions are ongoing, a Draft Development Agreement is expected to be presented for City Council consideration prior to the November 12th public hearing,” staff reports.