The meeting was packed with folks, many of whom lined up to speak on the issue of the Mace 391/Leland Ranch Ag Easement. A large number of them came out in support of moving forward with the easement, though members of the business and tech community offered powerful counter arguments.
In the end, the handwriting was on the wall and despite people providing strong questions about the actual impact on the closing efficiency of the city and Yolo Land Trust, the council was simply unwilling to take that chance and voted 5-0 for option one – finalizing the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) conservation easement.
The option would allow for 27 acres of the parcel to be retained as a community farm.
“This is exactly the type of presentation that I wish we had a year ago,” Councilmember Brett Lee commented. “The June meeting was not a good meeting for a variety of reasons. I think the key one is that it felt very rushed. The information was flipped: we can go with the plan, but we don’t have any time to talk about it because we have to decide by Thursday.”
“That (process) didn’t do justice to our responsibility,” he said, either their fiscal responsibility or their responsibility to make good decisions for the community. He felt that the presentation that staff gave on Tuesday was what the council really needed.
For Rochelle Swanson this was an issue tied to the city’s fiscal health. “It’s heart breaking to tell 85 employees” that there had to be budget cuts as the council did when they made the decision earlier in the evening to impose the Last, Best, and Final offer on the Davis City Employees Association. “To see a gentleman with tears in his eyes because he thinks he’s going to lose his house over this,” she said. “That’s hard. We do have a fiscal responsibility and I think turning this into a black and white, us versus them – no matter which side you’re on is just wrong.”
“That’s not the Davis way, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be,” she added. “We have to look at these things at a wholistic level. We don’t have anything else but revenue to get us out.”
In the end it was the letter from NCRS that proved pivotal.
A letter dated November 12, 2013, from the US Department of Agriculture’s State Conservationist, Carlos Suarez, addressed to Mayor Joe Krovoza, indicates that the consequences would be serious and grave.
The letter notes that the NRCS has agreed to provide $1.125 million in grant funding to assist the Yolo Land Trust to purchase the conservation easement, and that the deadline to complete this transaction has been extended twice.
“If the City chooses to reconsider the merits of the Mace Curve project, it’s important to understand the potential consequences of returning the FRPP [Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program] grant funding,” Mr. Suarez writes. Should the City decide to no longer pursue the easement, NRCS would be required to return the $1.125 million back to the U.S. Treasury.”
“Unfortunately, this funding cannot be used for other NRCS conservation projects, nor can the funding be used for a modified conservation easement proposal under consideration now or in the future by the City or Yolo Land Trust,” he notes.
“Closing efficiency,” Mr. Suarez explains, “is a measure of a conservation partner’s ability to complete an easement in a timely manner. Closing efficiency can affect future fund allocations to California NRCS and its conservation partners.” He notes, “A good closing efficiency is also important for our conservation partners to remain competitive on future easement applications. Closing efficiency is one of several criteria considered by NRCS when ranking applications for funding.”
He continued, “If the City decides to not protect Mace Curve/Leland Ranch with a conservation easement at this time and FRPP funds are returned, both the City and the Yolo Land Trust will continue to be eligible to apply for future FRPP grants – although each entity’s closing efficiency will be affected based on the guidelines set forth in FRPP policy.”
The letter was backed up on Tuesday by comments from Michele Clark of the Yolo Land Trust and Lana Kieger of NRCS.
Michele Clark noted that the city of Davis and the Yolo Land Trust have over the years closed 17 conservation easements for nearly 3000 acres of land.
Ms. Clark explained that the NRCS Grant program “is a highly highly competitive program. Part of the reason we are successful in obtaining those funds is because the degree of trust that NRCS has with both the Yolo Land Trust and the city of Davis, that we can get the projects done.”
She noted that the YLT has closed all of the projects that they’ve done to date. She noted that the majority of their projects are not in the city of Davis. “The fear that we have is that if this money were returned to NRCS, if the council decided to abandon this three year process, and we had to actually return the funds that that could impact our ability not only for the projects within the city of Davis, but the projects that we have outside… where we don’t use the city money,” she said.
She added, “The allocation in 2011 (for Leland Ranch) was about 30% of the allocation for the whole state of California.”
These facts and figures led Matt Williams during public comment to compare the closing efficiency to a batting average. He noted that Ms. Clark set the number of Davis projects at 17 and that Davis was less than the majority.
Based on that, he noted that their batting average might fall from 100% to 97% which he felt would still be a strong closing efficiency.
Ms. Kieger of the NRCS said that she could specifically address how this might impact the YLT since it would be on the next application, and it would be based on overall rank. “If there were 15 applications and this drops them one point below where they were, it could make a difference or it could make no difference,” she said. “It is in comparison to the others that bid.”
“The closing efficiency,” she explained “is did it cost us extra money to close? Did it cost us extra time and expense to the government? Did it fail to close completely?” Those are all things that are factored in to their consideration.
While some would argue that the actual impact on the YLT was uncertain and perhaps remote, it was clearly a risk that even the most ardent supporters of economic development on council were not willing to take.
Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk said that the issue of economic development in our community “has reached a tipping point” and all sides in this contentious debate recognize that “we do have a need for economic development in our community.”
“The difficulty is that… this council has already made commitments back to 2010 to walk down the path of committing to conserving this property,” he continued, “and as I said the last council, the fact that our decision in rejecting that grant or rejecting this easement… could affect the very lifeblood of the Yolo Land Trust (or) permanently hurt the Yolo Land Trust is something that I just cannot do.”
“The Yolo Land Trust is that critical to me, it’s that critical to our community,” he added.
Lucas Frerichs made the motion to support Option 1. The motion was seconded by Joe Krovoza.
Councilmember Frerichs argued that this was not an environmental versus business issue, “I am very much in favor of economic development in this community.”
He lamented the fact that he has consistently called for much more public outreach in this process and we did not do that – at least not in June.
Councilmember Frerichs noted that he does support one of the sites that the Innovation Parks Task Force analyzed and noted that, just to the west of the Mace 391 and to the east of the curve lie two parcels, one the Bruner Trust and the Ramos-Oates tract. These would both require Measure J/Measure R votes and he also noted that Mace 391 would provide a nice ag buffer to those sites.
Mayor Joe Krovoza, who was the only member of council to even oppose having this discussion, noted in his comments that he also supports the Innovation Parks Task Force Report.
The council’s decision was ultimately 5-0 to go forward with the agricultural easement, and those supporters of a business park could take solace in the general support from the community for a business park option – at least in the abstract.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
[i] the council was simply unwilling to take that chance and voted 5-0 for option one – finalizing the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) conservation easement.[/i]
I am going to do some more digging to confirm what I think I know about the actual RSCS impacts to the Yolo Land Trust that would have resulted from the grant going unused. I think the impact would have been de minimis at most, but inconsequential in their quest to keep adding to their list of accomplishments. At this point my opinion of the people running the Yolo Land Trust has dropped precipitously considering they exploited a false emotive to get their way. And I will publish what I find out because, if I am correct and the grant-ranking process is such that one failure on closing efficiency due to a city action has little to no statistical influence in grant awards for a requester, the Yolo Land Trust and RSCS people need to be held accountable for their embellishments.
If they thought they would be harmed by a council decision to bypass the easement and move forward with a fiscally-prudent decisions to leverage the value of our asset to solve our mounting fiscal problems, then consider how they will be harmed by a tarnishment of their otherwise pristine reputation for honesty.
And for every additional city employee impact and service impact, I will be sure to remind everyone how the actions of the Yolo Land Trust caused them REAL harm.
In the end, the city just spent $90 million dollars in opportunity cost just to prevent the Yolo Land Trust from a miniscule risk of harm… a risk that most likely does not even exist.
Ironic that that move was the same night that the council lamented that city workers had to face cuts due to a lack of revenue coming in. I guess these poorer city workers can find solace in knowing that Davis will be surrounded in a farmland moat.
Just shaking my head in amazement that even the smart people of this city are incapable of fiscal prudence. I fully expect Davis to file for bankruptcy in 5-10 years.
But again, we will have that farmland moat as an asset to gloat about.
Seems to me you could put that energy into organizing the business and tech communities to work on developing one of the ITF-identified sites, identifying the hurdles, and working together with the community to move it forward.
The Yolo Land Trust just identified themselves as one of the hurdles that needs to be re-calibrated.
ITF caved on Mace-319 because of them.
The no-growth, NIMBY, stacists will come out in force to block any and all ITF-identified sites, and calling them and their collaborators on dishonest tactics has to be a key part of the effort to get anything done.
But the loss of a $90-million dollar asset is a separate issue from ongoing economic development. That was a very expensive decision by the council for very dubious and suspect reasons at a time when we absolutely could not afford it. I think it will come back to bite the city like all other fiscally-unsound decision making by previous council.
Think about it… we keep mounting up acres of preservation while we are mounting up our unsustainable financial circumstances. The two are completely linked. So, at this point, those pushing a continuing crusade of open space and farmland preservation are enemies of those defending the city from heading to future bankruptcy. With respect to our city’s future, one is absolutely more selfish and destructive than the other.
When you get over your tantrum, let us know. There’s work to be done.
after listening to the comments and the response from clark and also the nrcs, i’m not convinced that frankly is wrong. i think there was an over abundance of caution. if the ylt really has a 17 for 17 track record and a 33 for 33 record in the county, you’re going to tell me that one grant that the city sent back for good cause would kill them? even the nrcs rep couldn’t say that was the case.
If I was a member of the Yolo Land Trust, and I lived in Davis, and I knew the extent of the fiscal problems facing the city, and I could see the help that this one-time, unique-situation, property-acquisition, opportunity would provide the city, I would have altered my course to help the city while looking for other parcels to protect.
Given that about 630,000 acres of Yolo County’s 660,000 acres are still undeveloped and there is about 20,000 outstanding acres currently wanting agriculture easements.
But then again, I am more prone to working for our kids and future generations than padding my own list of accomplishments at their expense.
[quote]In the end, the city just spent $90 million dollars in opportunity cost just to prevent the Yolo Land Trust from a miniscule risk of harm… a risk that most likely does not even exist. [/quote]
If that 90 million was a even close to a sure thing I’d be more sympathetic to your argument, but at this point it’s highly speculative. I think Lucas made a good point, what developer was going to want to sink any time, energy, money, into potentially developing that land when they knew an ugly Measure R vote stood in their way.
One of the options was for the city to develop the business park. Of course the city would need to hire the designer and developer. That way we would design it so that the residents got everything they wanted. And we would include that 200% of open space that Measure J/R requires.
I think it would have easily passed a Measure R vote given all the goodies it could have provided.
Again, because we own it, we could have controlled it.
I think the NIMBYs knew this and were afraid of it for this reason and worked extra hard to make sure it would not happen.
If that’s all true, then the city should by the Ramos/Bruner properties and develop them. Should be worth about $45 million based on the numbers above. So I’m sure those property owners will be happy to sell for a reasonable price.
The Leland Ranch situation was unique because it was a foreclosure sale. If the city wants to purchase and develop the Ramos/Bruner property, how much do you think the owners would be willing to sell it for?
Of course that is a rhetorical question, because you know it would be only offered at a premium if the owners had any idea that the city wanted it for a business park.
The point is that we had a unique, probably once in a lifetime, opportunity with the Leland Ranch purchase that was just squandered.
We had a unique, once in a lifetime opportunity to protect some great farmland. There are other sites for business parks.
[quote]how much do you think the owners would be willing to sell it for? [/quote]
I don’t know. Why don’t you ask them? If the situation is so urgent, and the tech businesses are so anxious for a place to stay, I seriously hope that meetings are already underway with the owners of some of those alternate sites.
[i]We had a unique, once in a lifetime opportunity to protect some great farmland. [/i]
That is an untruth.
[quote]Yolo County has the most acres in production and rangeland at 486,321 in the Sacramento region. Yolo County has 653,549 acres with 32,325 making up the four cities. Of those remaining 596,354 unincorporated acres, 96 percent are designated for farmland and open space in the 2030 General Plan, according to Senior Deputy County Counsel Phil Pogledich. Fewer than 5,000 acres are designated for new urban development.
Michele Clark, Yolo Land Trust executive director, said 9,727 acres are in conservation easements, which are contracts that permanently restricts use of land to agriculture. More than 75 landowners with land amounting to about 22,000 acres have contacted the land trust about conservation easements but the funding is not available, Clark said. “Most landowners want some sort of financial incentive,” she said. [/quote]