Month: October 2013

Last week at the city council meeting, about one dozen leaders of the Davis business and tech community came forward to ask the Davis City Council to reconsider the 3-2 vote on June 11, 2013, where the Davis City Council approved the resale of the Leland Ranch with a conservation easement (previously referred to as the Mace Curve property).

Following the meeting on October 1, the Davis City Council stopped short of calling for a reconsideration of the June 11 vote and, instead, requested a clarification on deadlines associated with the decision.

One of the most difficult tasks to master over the last seven years at the helm of the Davis Vanguard has been to differentiate between legitimate news and inside baseball gossip.  What would have seemed to me to have been a relatively benign post by Matt Williams in response to the Vanguard‘s Sunday commentary triggered a full-on avalanche of activity behind the scenes.

A slew of communications have been directed my way, some of which implicate me by name.

by Matt Williams

In the discussion last weekend about Davis’ Urban Boundary and Innovation Park Creation Strategy, two of the questions that arose were:

Will an Innovation Park succeed in Davis?

by Rob White

Over the last few week, there has been a fair amount of dialogue about conservation lands, urban boundaries, and technology business parks. Though the Vanguard community has spent many electrons discussing these topics, I was intrigued by a comment made by one poster that we should think “audaciously.”

Though the poster was relatively explicit in what they had in mind from that word, I pondered what that means to me. And how does that apply to my work, my life and my personal goals. Do I want to be audacious? And if so, what does that mean?

Two weeks ago, the Planning Commission listened to the comments of 62 members of the public, but made no recommendation to the city council.  Instead, they asked staff to provide answers to a long list of questions that the Planning Commissioners individually and collectively still have.   On Wednesday they will once again be asked to make a recommendation ahead of the October 22 Davis City Council Meeting.

Staff continues to propose that the Planning Commission recommend the City Council approve the applications for the Cannery.  Staff writes, “Although Commissioners expressed general support for the concept of a mixed-use development on the project site, individual Commissioners also expressed opinions on possible modifications or recommendations to the City Council.”

On Sunday, the Vanguard supported the Davis City Council re-examining whether putting a permanent Agricultural Easement on Mace 391 was the best use of the city-owned land asset.  While this was not support for putting a business park on the easement, the City’s Chief Innovation Officer reminded Vanguard readers that the idea of pausing the grant application process was originally floated at the June 11 meeting and that such a move would not be without consequences.

“I want to remind our own dialogue here on the Vanguard that the staff report (both original and modified) for the June 11th was to pause and take a harder look at more than just the one option for an easement,” Rob White wrote on Sunday.

When the proposal for Mace 391 first emerged, the process under which it came forward was so bad, so convoluted, that council needed to send a strong message and summarily reject it.  Essentially, a long and complicated process that had been worked on extensively behind closed doors was thrown at the public at the very last second.

Despite these problems, the proposal itself has merit.  The city of Davis is badly in need of business park space so that it can become a location that taps into the research innovation and energy at the university.  If the city fails to act and create business park space, not only will it lose the money and revenue from the Bayer/AgraQuests of the world, but many of the most innovative startups will go to West Sacramento, Sacramento, Natomas, or Solano County on the southwest side of the university.

by Matt Williams

As we discussed yesterday, the 2002 Davis Open Space Acquisition and Management Plan (the A&M Plan), which built on the 1989 Davis Greenway Plan, identified four types of open space categories for spending Measure O funds:

• Urban Fringe: Open space lands that help define the urban limits of Davis and provide an adequate buffer between urban and rural land uses.