For the last several weeks we have heard from people in the community complaining—rightly that the city and council circumvented the public process on BrightNight. Before that we heard loud complaints that the city was rushing through the ARC (Aggie Research Campus).
Most of those voices are likely to be quiet when it comes to the renewal of Measure J/Measure R. I don’t believe there has been any commission discussion of Davis’ seminal land use ordinance. And while I have been calling for discussion for over a year, it is put on the agenda when there is only two months remaining before it is required to be placed on the ballot.
Let us dispense with the formalities here. I support the renewal of Measure J/R. By and large, in a city like Davis, I think it is better to have an engaged process than have the uncertainty of people getting ballot signatures every time a peripheral development is approved by council.
Moreover, given the two projects that overwhelmingly passed in 2018, I believe that the vote will be 5-0 by the council to put Measure J on the ballot for renewal with only technical changes, and 
that the community will support the measure by about a 70-30 vote, maybe wider.
With all of that said, I think the issue of Measure J renewal has been mishandled by council and staff. They have assumed that there would be limited appetite for discussion. They have made it so there cannot be real discussion and I think there are real issues that we have not addressed with respect to Measure J.
One thing we have not looked at in any real way is what the impact is of Measure J. Oh we can list the projects, the first three failed (two by very wide margins) and the second two passed by wide margins. But that’s just a superficial impact.
We have had no study on the impact on home prices, the deterrent effect for new projects, the loss of affordable housing—none. People in this community call for commissions to review projects and policies, they call for evidence-based policy decisions, and yet, we have the cone of silence surrounding perhaps the one policy that has the biggest impact on a host of community-based effects, from home prices to lack of sales tax to the $10 million deficit.
When you start the process two months before it is due, there is a limit to how much you can find out.
Beyond this issue, my other chief problem here is that we have no idea if the policies that Measure R puts into place actually are workable.
The problem here is somewhat different. From 2000 to 2018, we had the one big question about Measure J/Measure R—would the community ever pass a project? That was answered and answered resoundingly in 2018 with two project passages by wide margins.
But that means that for the first 18 years of the policy, we basically didn’t have any evidence that the other provisions of Measure J/R were workable. By those I mean the project baseline features.
Under the current policy, a project is required to put key features of the project into project baseline features. I am very supportive of the idea that we need to put as much as possible into those features. The reason for that is it reassures the public that what they are being promised when they vote will be adhered to.
That makes a ton of political sense. But as we know from watching projects actually be developed over the years, things change. The markets change, the financing becomes a challenge, 
unanticipated costs and issues arise.
Project baseline features is a good political tool for community but also for the developer—but it could prove to be disastrous for a builder. The problem is, it is completely untested. We don’t know if this is workable.
Look at how many times Cannery had to come back to council, requesting changes to the development project—changes that if it had been a Measure R project would go to the voters. Many have used that as evidence of either duplicity or missteps by the developer, but it could be a factor that policies made for the purposes of gaining a 3-2 vote for the Cannery proved to be infeasible from the standpoint of actually building a project.
What if we are putting stuff into baseline features that actually in the real world needs more flexibility and the project ends up either having to go back to the voters a number of times or not being built? Shouldn’t we know this as we are about to renew a policy for another 10 years?
We are 18 years into an ordinance that has never actually had to be used other than the initial step of a vote.
There is a lot of unknown here. We don’t know the full impact of the policy and we don’t even know if the policy is workable for a project that gets passed by the voters.
In the end, this is going to get passed by the voters. But at some point here, we may well find that some of the secondary provisions are unworkable and they may gain legal challenge because a builder gets put into a bind.
Had Nishi failed in 2018, we might have seen a legal challenge at that time, challenging whether Measure J/Measure R is constitutional. Now we will see if the rest of the ordinance is workable.
It would have been good for the council to have evaluated some of these issues and held a full public discussion prior to this point. But I think the council still views Measure R as the third rail, and they don’t want to mess with it.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
You certainly think you know a lot of things here that you present no evidence to support. You are predicting what the community vote percentage will be and what the council thinks when in reality you might be projecting your own biases.
The one place we agree is that there hasn’t been an appropriate discussion of whether there should be changes made. You would think that after 20 years there would at least be a thorough vetting before renewal of the most consequential land use ordinance in the city before placing it before the voters.
Sadly, while you do raise the issue of the likelihood of the people who have called for the City to not take up non-emergency business to remain silent about taking up renewal, you fail to offer any alternative to renewal for a short period until a vigorous election debate can be held. If your prediction of a repeat of the lopsided vote for renewal were true there should be no opposition to a shortened term until after the current emergency has passed and the opposition arguments can be thoroughly vetted.
“You certainly think you know a lot of things here that you present no evidence to support. You are predicting what the community vote percentage will be and what the council thinks when in reality you might be projecting your own biases.
I’m making an early guess on this – I don’t claim to know. Measure J passed with 54 percent in 2000, Measure R with about 75 percent in 2010. I think about 70 is reasonable – I don’t see widespread calls for removing Measure R at this point.
Even in a non-emergency situation, I don’t think two months is enough time for a full discussion with a consultant report. I do think the commission meetings and council meetings as structured now are adequate if we had the proper time.
What consultant report has been released on the matter for a Measure J/R decision? [the topic at hand]
Conflation?
I can see some supporters of ARC approving a renewal/amendment vote… I can see some opponents of the ARC proposal opposing a renewal/amendment of J/R. There is no one-to-one correlation guaranteed.
That’s my point I raise from the article – there is no analysis of the impacts of Measure J/ R from the city.
That is a very strange speculation. Care to expand on why you believe that?
The usual anti-growth suspects were clamoring against any non-coved emergency issues being taken on during the pandemic. Conveniently this would have foreclosed ARC from being placed on the ballot for November and a likely two year delay. These same people are likely to be the strongest advocates for a ten year renewal of Measure R without amendment. The projected inconsistency in the actions they believe the CC should undertake would prove consistent in the outcome of the no growth they desire. Of course an ends justifies the means political position shouldn’t surprise anyone who ever read “The Prince.”
Just as our pandemic response hasn’t changed much since the time of the Black Plague little in our political behavior has changed since Machiavelli described it so cynically in “civilized society” for the Medicis.
I believe what you are describing above is illustrative of a poor developer doing inadequate planning. And your solution appears to be that our City government should anticipate that inadequate planning by the developer, and simply let the developer off the hook with no consequences. Is that a correct description of what you meant to say?
How do you proactively evaluate the likelihood of a poor developer doing inadequate planning?
How
I don’t offer a solution – I simply point out a few potential problems that as of yet, we have not had to face.
Developers aren’t stupid, they do their homework. They know what they can build and how much it’s going to cost. They also understand risk, and in the case of the Cannery they judged the risk of being held to the terms of the development agreement absent a CFD was acceptable. We may never know if there were off-the-record assurances made by CC members that the CFD would be approved later, but in any case New Home decided that the odds of getting the CFD were sufficiently favorable that the development agreement made financial sense.
Clearly, the City Council is part of the Coronavirus world conspiracy, and they were waiting for the pandemic to hit before Measure J or ARC came up, allowing them to manipulate these issues while the public wasn’t looking because they were dealing the virus and unable to engage fully or in person, while showing fake ‘zoom’ meetings on the internet to make it look like citizens were still involved in their government. Remember 9-11 !!!
The correct interim solution is to extend J/R for two years to the next general election and then plunge into the types of analyses that David outlines here.
Unfortunately, with the BrightNight debacle, I’ve lost confidence that enough members of the City Council are willing to make sensible decisions….
Similarly, as an interim solution, we should extend Trump’s presidency for another two years and then plunge into a campaign when everyone isn’t so concerned about the virus.
Is “willingness” to make sensible decisions really the issue here?
As to the first part… any extension of Measure J/R requires a vote… it would require an amendment to the Constitution, passed by a divided Congress, ratified by 75% of the States (which even the ERA [not ERAF]) has not attained, after many years) as to the presidential part…
The US Constitution (not the USS Constitution) does not provide for a 2-year extension, vote or otherwise, for the
idiot in chiefpresident being voted in for a two year term. Local ordinance, and California Constitution does permit something less than a 10-20-30 -40 year extension of Measure J/R, however… with this opinion/post of yours, I will commit to doing anything I legally can, to oppose any renewal/amendment of J/R… I was leaning that way, but you have convinced me to vote NO, but still open to a two year extension (limited time offer), which you seem to oppose, so I’ll oppose an extension of even one day… thank you for clarifying how I should vote. Appreciate that!Here, Alan, you overstretched… said as someone who respects you, but does not always agree…
For clarification…
is what would require the Constitutional amendment…
My tongue clearly overstretched my cheek on this one 😉
“…we should extend Trump’s presidency for another two years…”
But would you extend him for ten more years?