Back in 2014, it looked like the city of Davis was finally going to break through on its long unrealized potential of economic development. It hired the well-respected Rob White as its Chief Innovation Officer, it put out RFEIs (Requests for Expressions of Interest), which garnered two peripheral innovation center proposals. A third proposal for a smaller center on the Nishi property was moving toward a vote of the people. But then it all fell apart.
Rob White was unceremoniously let go by City Manager Dirk Brazil. Right around the same time, the world class developers Hines pulled out of the Davis Innovation Center and the project eventually moved up to Woodland. Whether it was the loss of Rob White, the lack of housing in the proposal, the concerns about a Measure R vote – whatever the cause – the local developers moved the proposal to Woodland where they got housing included and a quick approval.
Meanwhile, Nishi lost a 2016 Measure R vote and MRIC (Mace Ranch Innovation Center) has been languishing between active and inactive.
In our view, the loss of momentum coincided with a city manager who simply did not believe in economic development. Thus it should be no surprise that the city’s economic development prospects have waned over the last several years.
But that is starting to change. Once again, we see signs of real momentum. Even before Barry Broome set foot in Davis, there were positive signs across the board. Success has come on fronts smaller than a 200-acre peripheral innovation center.
The investment by Fulcrum Property in the University Research Park was a big coup. They are now investing in a mixed-use project in hopes of bringing workforce housing into a vacant site within that park. Sierra Energy just announced a $30 million financing round to bring its waste-reducing and energy-producing technology to market.
The city has done well by adding two hotels that are in the process of construction, they are taking advantage of the legalization of recreational cannabis with a number of dispensaries, and that’s just for starters.
The big ticket item remains the possible return of MRIC.
Economic development is not an easy way to jobs creation and tax revenue. Public-private partnerships will spend tens of millions to take research developed in universities like UC Davis and 
develop it into products and technology that can be marketed on the private market.
Contrary to popular belief, economic development is not simply a matter of build it and they will come. But rather it is an endeavor that takes years of work. The city worked behind the scenes for several years to bring in Mori Seiki. That was a competitive process whereby the city of Davis won out over tough competition to bring the 100,000-square-foot facility in with over 200 jobs.
In order to make it work, cities like Davis need someone who could dedicate their time and energy to working to bring in companies, find space for them, and make it work. That is originally why the city of Davis brought in Rob White.
That is why the city of Vallejo, fresh from recovering from bankruptcy, have brought in Rob White themselves to run their planning department and help push their economic development prospects forward.
Now Davis is finally getting back on track to do something similar. For the first time in several years, the city manager and council seem lined to make this happen.
They aren’t just talking the talk. It was Mayor Brett Lee, who sits on the board of Greater Sacramento Economic Council, who brought in Barry Broome to articulate a strong message that squarely put Davis back on the board for economic development.
As I have noted earlier this week, there are two really key things he talked about. The first was the need for innovation to start close to where the research is occurring. That doesn’t mean you can’t do innovation in places like Woodland, West Sacramento and Sacramento. But it means that the first wave has to occur in close and branch out from there.
The second is that Davis needs to move forward with an economic development program that matches the values of the community.
But that is just talk and, frankly, we have seen talk before. A big change now is that City Manager Mike Webb brought in Ashley Feeney to run not only the planning department, but to oversee the 
economic development efforts.
At some point, if the city continues to progress, they will probably need to hire an individual who is dedicated solely to economic development. Someone who does nothing else but work to bring companies into Davis.
But in the short term, having someone like Ashley Feeney in charge of the effort is a tremendous step forward.
As City Manager Mike Webb stated in his press release this week: “Mr. Feeney will put his expertise to work to spearhead local economic development initiatives, including the honing and implementation of a City economic development strategy.”
Mr. Webb has restructured his personnel and structure to take better advantage of the situation.
Mr. Feeney will report directly to the City Manager and will partner with the Director of Business and Community Engagement, Diane Parro, who will focus on strategic communications and business relations.
The move better utilizes Diane Parro’s skills while sending the signal once again to the region that the city of Davis is serious about economic development.
Is this enough to get an innovation center approved and start bringing in high-tech businesses to Davis that can generate jobs and revenue and improve our sustainability? We’ll see. We have seen moments of great promise before, only to see them evaporate at the moment when it appeared success was before us.
Davis residents seem more open to change than before – but, as we saw with other projects, it is never easy.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Great news for the first Sunday in December.
Renewed commitment by the Mayor and City Manager will be key if the City’s Economic Development efforts are to achieve their full potential. It would be another positive sign to see active involvement and support from our local School Board. And inviting back Ash Feeney to spearhead the efforts is a brilliant move.
Looking at Vanguard comments over the past few days leads me to wonder if it might help the process along if we were to ask of the University, the City and the School District to share the Top 10 program and community benefits they each aspire to achieve and how a local Economic Development initiative could help in realizing their goals. Through our Commissions, workshops and other public forums the Community will have plenty of opportunity to participate, but we don’t often hear from our largest employers for their perspectives on how economic development activities might contribute to better fulfilling their respective missions and in better serving the needs of the community.
John, I agree with you up to a point; however, I do not believe signals are enough.
As a person and as a professional I respect Ash Feeney. Davis could do a whole lot worse, and finding someone who is likely to be better would be an arduous process … with no guaranteed positive outcome. So I support this hire.
With that said, the hiring and any attendant “signaling” will not change the fundamental reality that our community faces. Back on September 11th Councilmember Will Arnold said the following at the public check-in of the General Plan update process, “My biggest question I think is the biggest question that remains for everyone – how do we get from here to there? That seems always to be the central question when we do these type of plans.”
That is not a question that will/can be answered by a single person or a single hire. Getting from here to there requires community engagement. If Ash Feeney can orchestrate that community engagement, then his hiring will have been a bargain.
Maybe we could recruit Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker to negotiate a public-private economic development partnership deal for us similar to the one he negotiated with Foxconn. According to Fox Business it will only take about 25 years for Wisconsin taxpayers to see a return on their $4.5 billion investment, and if it all falls through the taxpayers will still be on the hook for %40 of the public bonds used to finance the package. Since the state already has a low tax rate for manufacturers, much of the subsidy will be paid directly in cash rather than tax credits.
Bloomberg Business puts the Foxconn deal cost at $1,800/Wisconsin taxpayer. If all 13,000 jobs promised materialize, the cost per job created will be $346,000 per job, and the estimate of a break even point in the year 2043 is considered to be overly optimistic. The icing on the cake is that Foxconn is not even contractually obligated to deliver those 13,000 jobs and could ship them to China in 10 years or even close the factory. In fact they have already downgraded the type of manufacturing that will take place to a cheaper, less advanced manufacturing process.
Ha, ha, this guy BB is going to be the new Vanguard meme for economic development. These organizations such as Bay Area Council or Silicon Valley Leadership Group are evil incarnate, their main purpose to accrue corporate welfare on a multi-tens-to-hundreds-of-millions-dollar scale through lobbying of government for taxpayer dollars for projects that feed money back to the corporations they represent.
One may harken back a local example, the Yolo County Rail Relocation scam, and its boosters.
Barry Broome plays a role regionally, but the main thrust locally is the hiring of Ashley Feeney and possible further development of MRIC.
So, what do you know exactly, regarding MRIC? And, when did you find out, and who have you spoken to about it? What other communications are going on, between the developer and the city?
What details about the possible proposal do you know so far?
Rather than constantly trying to build a campaign for it, please (honestly and simply) share everything you know.
I don’t know much exactly. I suspect we’ll find out for sure by January.
But he does know much generally.
Alan, if I still read the Vanguard after A-Day it will only be to see you comments.
Barak Palin, you are the person on here besides me that has a properly functioning brain. I’m not sure I can take being the only intelligent life form in the Vanguard universe.
Thanks for the compliment, and back at you.
Alan,
Hilarious is on the word that comes to mind in reading your post.
Citing the epicenter of global economic development – along with the only functional public transportation system in the state – as evil incarnate along with their regional trade association is pretty heady stuff.
I’m guessing that most of David’s readers use Apple, Netflix, Facebook, Adobe (all major sponsors of these groups) or some combination of the four. If not, another group might also be stockholders, while another might have relatives who are employees in the area.
As you likewise know, all major universities, local governments, trade unions are likewise represented by and considered in the recommendations of these associations.
I’m still looking for that grand jury report about the multi-million dollar Yolo County Rail Relocation scheme – maybe you could post a link!
John D.
Look at the propaganda that groups like the Silicon Valley Leadership Group push in their quest for corporate welfare: https://svlg.org/u-s-corporate-tax-rate/
Here’s the reality: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/541797699/fact-check-does-the-u-s-have-the-highest-corporate-tax-rate-in-the-world
U.S. corporate taxation isn’t all that big compared with other countries’. As of 2014, U.S. corporate tax revenues were at around 2.2 percent of the GDP. The OECD average was 2.8 percent.
And this: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/actual-us-corporate-tax-rates-are-in-line-with-comparable-countries
“The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that in 2016, while the corporate income tax raised $300 billion in revenues, targeted subsidies delivered to companies through the corporate tax code cost about $270 billion. As a result of these subsidies and other tax avoidance measures, many large U.S. companies pay very low rates. For example, Pfizer paid a rate of about 7.5 percent on its $12 billion in worldwide pre-tax income in 2014. Studies generally also find that U.S. companies’ tax rates vary widely by industry and type of investment.”
And…
“Most of the benefit of corporate rate cuts flows to high-income investors rather than “trickling down” to workers in the form of higher wages, and the cuts are costly: Reducing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, as President Trump has proposed, would cost more than $2 trillion over ten years. Such a tax cut could hurt the majority of Americans if it permanently increased deficits (which can slow economic growth in the long run, according to the Congressional Budget Office) or its high cost is paid for with large cuts to investments that help working families.
Rather than slashing the corporate tax rate, true corporate tax reform that addressed inefficient corporate tax breaks, loopholes, and the tilt of the tax code towards debt and foreign profits would be more likely to foster growth. Such reform could help investments flow to where they are most productive. It could also raise revenues to reduce deficits and invest in national priorities like education and infrastructure, benefitting the economy and most Americans.”
Yup. And I’ll say it using my name.
Scam, not scheme. The grand jury is part of the system, MAN. And it’s multi-hundreds-of-millions, said scam.
Since this is something like the 5th bite at the apple this week alone, maybe it is time for the Vanguard to get “serious” about putting some numbers down to figure out the the degree to which proposed solutions might address the identified problem. It’s been nothing but vague platitudes so far.
As I pointed out in one of the other threads, the analysis by EPS on the fiscal impact of the Nishi 1.0 proposal that included R&D space as well as housing showed it would produce negative revenue for the City budget. So the more that similar projects would get built, the bigger the problem would become .
As another example, based on the 2010 report Final Business Park Land Strategy on the City of Davis’ Economic Development webpage: https://cityofdavis.org/city-hall/city-manager-s-office/economic-development we can estimate the number of business/research park jobs needed to net $8 million in annual City revenue. It turns out that at about $350 per job (see Table 9 on p. 29 of the report), we only need to create about 23,000 new jobs to get to that $8 million figure. Then to keep a jobs-housing balance, that would mean another 23,000 housing units (someone else can estimate the budget impact those would have; but residential development typically has negative return on public revenues), and at a rough estimate of 2.5 persons/household, that would mean another 56,500 people, or more than doubling the size of Davis. See: that wasn’t so difficult!
I’m not sure where you get a negative EPS report.
Here was our analysis from 2015: https://davisvanguard.org/2015/09/long-awaited-fiscal-impact-report-shows-mric-with-potential-2-2-million-in-revenue-at-build-out/
EPS was a pretty conservative analysis and I believe Finance and Budget upwardly revised the projections.
BTW, right above your cite, the report notes: “A new business park containing about 2,600 jobs in selected sectors (many of which are high value) could directly generate economic outcomes equaling nearly $445 million of output, $138 million of employee compensation, and $19 million of state and local tax revenue.”
David: yes it says that. But you ignored what the local tax revenue portion of that combined state/local figure is. Go ahead and tell us…
No, nothing was ignored, I was giving you a sense of the scale. Around 27.5 cents on the dollar is normally generated for local taxes, so that comes to $5.225 million. Probably have to give the county half that, so perhaps $2.6 million stays in Davis. That’s pretty close to what EPS estimated.
And where is the estimate for the City costs to provide services for the business park so we know what the next impact is on the City budget?
As a side note, it appears that the table shows that business park development is much less efficient than other types in terms of jobs/acre.
P.S. the negative City fiscal impact for Nishi 1.0 was discussed in the Vanguard in Matt Williams’ detailed breakdown in 2016.
I think EPS is the best source for that from 2015. I do think think their revenue estimates were conservative and they didn’t model for a CFD (one idea is a $2 per sf per year CFD which would have generated nearly $5 million by itself).
I see some real inconsistencies in the technical report. The implied tax revenues in Table 1 don’t match with those in Table 23, and the local share of state property and sales taxes (because I don’t see anything about corporate and personal taxes which would be a much bigger share) is much higher than shown there. I don’t think we can rely on that report unfortunately.
P.S. it looks like I had a math error in my previous calculations by about a factor of 2. Davis would only have to add ~22,500 population to go the business park path to erase that $8 million deficit while maintaining a jobs-housing balance (again, this is not accounting for the cost of service provision or negative fiscal impact of residential development).
I’m still not understanding the metric of jobs when the key variables are property tax, sales tax, and a possible CFD, none of which are directly attributable to added jobs.
For context. If we translate to jobs produced, then we can translate to housing units required to maintain a certain jobs-housing balance, and then have an idea of the acreage needed for the total development impact.
But it’s not clear to me that there is actually an incremental increase in revenue by jobs.
“But it’s not clear to me that there is actually an incremental increase in revenue by jobs.”
If we are not getting an increase in revenue by adding jobs, why are we discussing economic development as a primary way to reduce the City’s budget deficits in the first place?
Economic development provides revenue via taxes: property taxes on the land and property improvements, sales tax from retail, business-to-business sales tax, and transient occupancy taxes from hotels. Some fees to the city for business licenses, etc. The jobs are obviously a benefit as well, and provide multiplier effect revenues as the workers spend money locally.
So, there would likely be no retail or hotel on the site, but there could be some business-to-business sales tax generated. Which would only benefit Davis if those purchases were made in Davis.
Regarding property taxes, the city would receive some portion of that. But, commercial property taxes are also limited by Proposition 13.
And, there will be costs to the city to serve the site. With greater costs, if housing is included.
I believe that another commenter noted that property taxes are not intended to provide cities with a “profit”. (In fact, I think that’s illegal.)
Why do you say that?
We are talking about the assessed value of brand new development. The value of the property goes up every time the property sells. I see a couple of listings right now for business properties. Office site is going for $350/sq. ft. and a small retail unit is at about $450/sq. ft.
I just assumed that there’d be no hotel, since a brand-new Residence Inn is being built across the street from this proposal.
Yes, if/when property is sold, then it can be reassessed based upon market value at that time. (If the property is not sold, then increases are limited by Proposition 13.) I have heard of situations regarding commercial properties (in particular), where ownership is essentially manipulated to avoid reassessment.
But again, property taxes are not intended to provide cities with a “profit”. I believe that it would be illegal to attempt that.
I have no idea what you mean by this statement. They provide revenues.
Remember it’s not just land-value that is assessed as property tax, it’s also high end equipment. That’s why Mori Seiki for instance has an assessed property value of $55 million.
David: Is that equipment depreciated (as far as taxes are concerned), over time? (I assume that the $55 million assessment includes the real property, itself.)
Regarding high-end equipment, isn’t that (once again) counting chickens before they’re hatched? How would you know who the tenants might be, and what kind of equipment they would have?
Is it your understanding that commercial property taxes are intended to provide cities with a profit (over and above costs to serve a development)? (I doubt that’s the case.) However, if so – how might the impacts of Proposition 13 eat into those profits, over time?
Depends on how often the parcels turn over.
Don:
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/122214/what-difference-between-revenue-and-profit.asp
I’ll ask you and David again: Are property taxes intended to provide cities with a profit? And, why are you focusing on revenues at all?
I am aware of what profit is, Ron. I don’t know why you’re using the term profit with respect to city revenues. Because of Prop 13, property taxes don’t have any direct relationship to the services that they fund. Fees, if I recall, cannot be wildly out of proportion to the services they derive from.
Because that is what funds city services. If we want to stabilize the city’s finances, we need to increase revenues, raise taxes, or lower expenses and cut services. Some combination of those things will reduce the city’s structural deficit.
So, you’re blindly/vaguely hoping that the property taxes collected will more than offset costs to serve the development? (In other words, generate a “profit” for the city?)
Revenues are meaningless, without knowing what the costs are for a given development.
In effect, you seem to be hoping that the revenues from property taxes exceed the costs to serve the development, generating a “profit” for the city. Which is probably illegal, if that’s the intent. (And, which hasn’t worked very well, so far.)
This is hopeless. Good night.
“In effect, you seem to be hoping that the revenues from property taxes exceed the costs to serve the development, generating a “profit” for the city. Which is probably illegal, if that’s the intent. (And, which hasn’t worked very well, so far.)”
Ron – you really need to stop this. What you wrote here is ridiculous on several levels. Property taxes is one of two main ways that cities general “revenue” not “profit.” There is nothing illegal about attempting to increase revenue through taxes. In fact, that’s the basic concept of a parcel tax – a tax on a parcel that generates local revenue. You need to do homework/ research prior to making such accusations.
Not to worry, Don – I won’t tell the authorities about your “illegal suggestion”. 🙂 Sleep well.
It does bring us full circle back to Rik’s question, though:
I think it’s important to understand that we are not discussing economic development as the primary way to reduce the City’s budget deficit…
This is from Saturday:
There is cost containment, there is taxes, and there is economic development. We’ve done a lot of taxes, a little bit of cost containment, but the biggest untapped piece is economic development because that’s the revenue generator that builds the community rather than makes the community more costly.
Ron –
Yes for income tax purposes but I don’t believe it has any impact on unsecured property taxes.
The tax is on all equipment, not just high-end, and there are ‘industry standards’ for estimating the value of that equipment on a per square foot basis. This is not rocket science.
Of course, that is how cities pay for services through the use of taxes on commercial development and activity. As Don has stated elsewhere, city fees, such as development fees, are limited to cover only the cost of service (in your vernacular, “no-profit”). Taxes are not limited in this manner, in fact, when a fee is determined to have covered more than the cost of service it is by definition a ‘tax.’
And you would be completely and totally wrong in your belief.
There is no ‘hoping’ involved here, just basic facts. City services are funded by taxes on commercial development and activity. Residential development is at best a break-even proposition from the perspective of the city. Davis has a revenue shortfall because we have failed to expand our commercial sector, a challenge we recognized in 1961 with the first Core Area Specific Plan and one that we have consistently failed to address primarily due to a loud and vocal contingent in town who apparently failed (or failed to take) basic economics when they were in school.
I believe I just answered that…
I concur with all the points Mark West has made in his thoughtful structured response to Ron’s questions.
Matt: Do you actually think this section of Mark’s response was “thoughtful”?
Also, what would the impacts be from Proposition 13 (enacted “after 1961”), especially since all acknowledge that it would take decades for an innovation center to be completed? (During that decades-long period, costs to the city can outpace the tax increase allowed under Proposition 13. Even more likely, if housing is included.)
Also, does anyone believe that planning and development (in general) was optimal during the late 1950s-1960s? Other than Mark, is that the model that some prefer to return to?
“Also, does anyone believe that planning and development (in general) was optimal during the late 1950s-1960s? ”
You’re misstating what he said. He was not praising the planning and development, he praised the 1961 Core Area Specific Plan (which is warranted) as is praising the 1972 General Plan. That doesn’t mean that the development that came out of those was wonderful, it just means the documents were visionary.
Yeap – a lesson in economics, from someone who attempted to interfere with the plans of a key business (Davis ACE) to maintain viability, downtown.
I still haven’t seen anyone address the impacts of Proposition 13, regarding the long-term “profit” expected from commercial property taxes. Which would be made worse, if housing is included.
In preparation for the 1961 Core Area Specific Plan, the City surveyed residents to identify their shopping preferences. What was learned at that time was that residents “only spend 54% of their retail dollar in Davis.” One of the underlying goals of the resulting CASP was to capture a greater percentage of those out-of-town purchases by improving the downtown and bringing new businesses to the core area. This same goal has in one way or another, been a part of every General Plan and CASP that we have approved since. So as the goals are still relevant, it is illuminating to take a quick look at some of the concerns or challenges listed back in ’61.
Does any of this sound familiar? Back in ’61 roughly half of the retail purchases were made outside of town due to a lack of shopping options and today, nearly sixty years later our per capita sales tax revenues remain at roughly half of what is seen in most of the surrounding communities for the exact same reason. In ’61 we recognized the problems caused by parking minimums in our zoning regulations and the inefficiency of the many “small, unattractive parking lots” yet many of those parking minimums remain on the books and quite recently the City approved yet another small private lot downtown.
The reason I keep referring back to this plan is not that I believe that planning and development were optimal then, but because the challenges that our community members recognized and the consensus plan they reached to address those challenges are just as applicable and relevant today as they were sixty years ago. If you look at our history over those sixty years, what we see time and again is that we as a community are very good at creating a vision and agreeing on a plan. Where we fail, repeatedly, is in the implementation of those plans, and that failure is largely due to our allowing the ‘second-guessers’ and ‘naysayers’ to control the conversation. As has been said many times, “perfection is the enemy of progress.”
Our efforts to create a viable and sustainable city have been stymied by those opposed to change. We see this in the efforts of those who repeatedly claim we need ‘a better vision’ and ‘more discussion,’ by those who question the efficacy and value of economic development and an expanding business sector (despite decades of evidence to the contrary), by those who imply that Davis is somehow so unique that the precepts of economics do not function here as they do everywhere else, and by those who work to undermine and call into question the results of our planning processes using false, misleading and disingenuous statements to create confusion and engender distrust.
It is time for us as a community to stop listening to this ‘noise’ and to stop being obstructed by these ‘noisemakers’ and instead focus on moving forward addressing the critical needs in our community, implementing the plans we create, and have created, through our ongoing visioning and planning processes.
Mark: This is actually a sensible post from you, overall. Your first citation notes this (from 1961):
I would agree that small lots are generally not very efficient, create curb cuts (that eliminate street parking), and are generally not attractive.
However, someone has to pay for adequate parking (somewhere nearby), if businesses are to survive. I’d suggest not discouraging businesses who are willing to “step up to the plate”, to do so. Especially a key hardware store, where customers are transporting items that may not be easily carried to an off-site location.
In 1961, I suspect that planners expected “the usual” sprawling development patterns to continue. Since we’ve moved beyond that way of thinking, downtown is even more important now, than it was then. (And yet, some want to “residentialize” the downtown commercial core. And, that effort is not originating from the same people that you blame for the problems that you envision, in Davis.)
Since this is getting off-topic, I’d suggest ending this conversation here.
To clarify, some want to “residentialize” downtown (and not require adequate parking for businesses or residences), while shifting commercial activity, additional residences, and parking to the periphery, where it can be easily accessed from the freeway.
(In other words, “sprawl”, under another name.)
None of that is true. You keep repeating it, but it has no basis.
Increasing the height of a building to add commercial and residential space to an existing building site does not “residentialize downtown.” It increases the uses of a particular site, but does not decrease the commercial usage. It generally increases it overall. This is basic ‘smart growth’ urban planning. Plenty of blogs and discussion forums you can visit to see what it’s all about.
This does not shift commercial activity to the periphery. The discussion of the peripheral business (‘innovation’) parks has not focused on the types of commercial uses you find in the downtown. They would not be primarily retail.
Don: There is no reason that downtown must remain primarily retail. San Francisco’s downtown certainly isn’t. Neither is Sacramento’s.
How about some actual commercial redevelopment, downtown? Including some of the businesses that somehow must devour prime farmland (and result in additional residences) on the periphery?
Or, on some of the inventory of other commercial sites, which are projected to be sufficient for the next 40-65 years – according to EPS?
Locating residences above businesses can create problems regarding co-existence. (Unless one wants to live above a nightclub.) So does a lack of parking.
Maybe someone can live above a plant nursery, since it’s relatively quiet. But, still need room for delivery trucks, parking, etc.
You mean the same hardware store that has been surrounded by city-owned and free parking lots for decades and has an underutilized (and also free) lot available directly across the street to the north? The same one that could have easily designed a pick-up zone opening on to the existing alleyway (instead of a private parking lot opening on to the street) to accommodate customers that needed to pick up bulky items? How long do you propose that the community continue to subsidize and provide special benefits to this company before we can expect it to become sustainable on its own? Another 100 years?
Rather than creating yet another unsupported supposition, why don’t you try reading the plan? It will likely take you no more than 20-30 minutes and it may even be illuminating. I have posted the citation before; Google is your friend.
Ron:
When you talk about residentializing the downtown while putting commercial on the periphery, are you misunderstanding what people want or are you intentially misrepresenting it?
Not to mention traffic, caused by residentialization downtown.
Really, does the city want to make it even more difficult, to drive to, park near, and patronize businesses downtown?
Development activists seem to be very good at conjuring up and describing “problems” (to be solved by – you guessed it – development), except when it comes to the problems that their goals create.
Hopefully, it will continue to remain sustainable as long as some development activists don’t continue to interfere with Davis ACE’s private investments to ensure viability. (As a side note, this particular parking lot is attractive, and includes solar panels – providing shade and energy.)
Based on these assumptions, we should’t have jobs in Davis, and no one should live here because it’s all a fiscal money loser… Given that doesn’t make sense since we’re largely fiscally solvent and the City hasn’t gone under in the last century, I’m having trouble swallowing the implications of the report (and I know the firm that did this one.)
Regarding me “needing to stop this”, all you needed to do was to state that commercial property taxes can legally and intentionally provide cities with a “profit”, as Mark claims. Something that I hadn’t realized. I’ll take his word for it, even though he hasn’t provided any reference to back up that claim.
I believe that another commenter previously (and repeatedly) noted that developments are not intended to provide cities with a profit (but no one corrected him).
Of course, Mark and others have neglected to note that this profit can dissipate over time, due to Proposition 13 (which also impacts commercial properties).
And, no one here seems to know if property taxes on equipment changes over time, due to depreciation.
Just curious – how are property taxes on equipment applied and collected, when the equipment belongs to a commercial tenant (and not the owner of the building)?
And, how does it work if equipment is leased, instead of purchased?
When I opened my business in town, we were required to submit an initial inventory and cost of the equipment the company owned to the County and any changes to that inventory each subsequent year. The County issued a property tax assessment based on that inventory which the company was required to pay. This ‘bill’ was completely separate from the property tax assessment sent to the building’s owner.
I don’t agree that all I needed to say was that commercial developments can legally provide cities with revenue (profit is a misused term here). Suggesting something is illegal without cause is not responsible. And before you say it’s just a blog, thousands of people read this site each day.
David: If you look at the thread, you’ll see that it started out as an honest question, which neither you nor Don addressed in your responses. I then made a teasing/joke out of it, with the understanding that no one would actually assume that a purposefully illegal suggestion was being made. Hence the use of quotation marks, and a smiley face. (I’ve really got to start using some other emojis.)
I’ve stated my preference. I’m happy to engage here, but I think we need to be mindful that there is a huge audience reading but not commenting. This was raised to me by someone – so it’s not an academic point.
Thank you, for this acknowledgement.
But I do see it as an important tool. But to illustrate the problem here – if we grow the costs too quickly, it’s going to completely outstrip any benefit from economic development. I also continue to see taxes as the best short-term solution combined with cost containment.
The city is getting serious about economic development and some think that’s a bad thing evidently.
Are we really trying to argue that economic development doesn’t generate tax revenue? Jobs are bad? No to prosperity?
David Greenwald said it is “important to understand that we are not discussing economic development as the primary way to reduce the City’s budget deficit…”
ok, but you haven’t devoted a six-part series (or whatever this has been) to discuss other ways to reduce the budget deficit.
And you haven’t discussed reasonable estimates for the impact the economic development could have on the budget deficit in, say, the next 5-10 years. And how much land would be required to do that. There have just been a series of vague platitudes and suggestions.
Finally, as Ron points out, it seems like you are primarily interested in discussing economic development to campaign for a specific project.
You might find the archive search function useful.
https://davisvanguard.org/category/davis/budget-fiscal/