There is a proposal on the agenda of the Planning Commission this week that would remove the Davis Based Buyers Program from the Bretton Woods project. I am troubled by the city’s approach to this issue and fear it has the potential to undermine the voters’ willingness to trust developer promises in future projects.
In 2018, the issue of the Davis Based Buyers Program was among the most contentious in the consideration of the West Davis Active Adult Community (WDAAC) proposal. Opponents launched a lawsuit against it and I pushed back calling it a “Dangerous Game Playing the Race Card on the Buyers Program.”
Lost in the controversy was the fact that at the start I said the program was vulnerable on legal grounds—even though I thought it was probably broad enough to pass racial muster because it allowed for anyone associated with UC Davis to purchase a home there. UC Davis is far more diverse than the city of Davis.
This is what I wrote at the time: “The irony is that opponents of this project really didn’t need to use the race card to attack the Davis-Based Buyers Program. The opponents are correct, this program is central to the developers’ story and their theory of this project. It’s vulnerable enough on legal grounds.”
Thus I never believed that the DBBP would pass legal muster to begin with.
The history is this. The Davis Based Buyers Program was placed in the Development Agreement. In September of 2018, it was legally challenged with the belief it was “discriminatory and violated the Fair Housing Act.”
In our view the lawsuit was not ripe, and we questioned whether the plaintiff actually had standing—the lawsuit was then withdrawn without prejudice.
In late December 2019, “the applicant submitted a request for DA amendment to remove the DBBP from the Development Agreement. City staff and the applicant has been in negotiations since then and have recently come to an agreement.”
That would remove the provision: “Developer has elected to restrict ninety percent (90%) of the residential units within the Project, excluding the affordable housing and the specialized senior 
care, to initial purchasers with a preexisting connection to the City of Davis…”
They reached the agreement with the city, saying “staff and the applicant have come to an agreement on the proposed amendment that would remove the Davis Based Buyers Program in exchange for a requirement that that all residences be 100% electric with no gas infrastructure being provided to the residential portions of the project. The project would also be required to comply with City of Davis REACH codes. This helps further the City’s effort in meeting carbon neutrality goals.”
All of this is fine, but that has nothing to do with the original theory of the project which was to ensure that the new homebuyers were not simply transplants from the Bay Area like the Cannery has turned out to be.
While it is true that the Buyers Program was not part of the Baseline Project Features, it seems that it would behoove the city and the developer to ensure that the public has full trust in this process.
My strong suggestion would be to put the matter back on the ballot. In a way it is a freebie for the developer anyway. They already have approval of the voters for the project, they are simply gaining permission to make this change.
There are several other considerations here that I think need to be addressed.
In the staff report, staff writes, “The legality of the provision would be difficult to enforce.”
This is troubling. Neither staff nor the city’s legal counsel acknowledged this back in 2018 when the project was going to a vote. This was sold to the voters as a mechanism to ensure that the people purchasing the project would be from the community rather than Bay Area transplants.
I think we need to better understand what was known at the time of the approval of the project by the city and what was told to the voters.
Second, it is worth noting again that this provision was in the Development Agreement but not the project’s baseline features. That means that the city has the discretion to renegotiate the terms of the Development Agreement with the approval of council, but they are not required to put the matter on the ballot.
Staff has decided to trade the DBBP for the electric and reach agreement, even though the two address very different issues.
This again drives home the need tomorrow for the council to put all promises into the project baseline features in very explicit terms.
My third point is a warning. The Cannery has been strongly criticized, and I think rightly so for making agreements with the city and then having to change them after the fact. The issue of the CFD definitely looms large, but they have also had to restructure various aspects of the development itself.
Now we are seeing the same thing with Bretton Woods and I will wager a guess that we will see the same thing with Nishi.
Some of these changes could very well trigger new votes, given the requirements of baseline features. It is a reminder again that we have never tested whether Measure R is workable from the statement of allowing enough flexibility to actually build a project.
As we have seen with both Cannery and now Bretton Woods, that may prove a lot more difficult than we initially conceived.
I’m not saying this to let the city and developers off the hook, so to speak, but we should watch to see how practical these protections and necessary campaign promises actually prove in a real market as opposed to in theory.
Bottom line for now, however: removing the Davis Based Buyers Program is a major change that should necessitate a new vote to maintain voter trust.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
Vote no on Measure R renewal. Repeated votes and lawsuits forever. Nothing ever gets built.
People trust developer promises? Why? Frontal lobotomies that we forgot about, because we all had frontal loboties? With ARC or whatever it’s called today I am very skeptical as of this date. I support, but to say cautiously would be an understatement.
And yeah, nuke Measure R.
Putting this on a ‘Measure R-2.0’ vote is ludicrous, as are the pallid arguments so far made for doing so, in this case… opens the door for use of ‘Measure R-3.0. 4.0, etc.’ any time someone questions the interpretation of any portion of any ‘baseline feature’, and, as in this case, any ballot argument whether it was a clear baseline feature or not. A clear invitation for ‘mischief’… I can foresee a single project going thru multiple Measure R x. 0 votes, prompted by various individuals for various ‘compelling’ reasons. Death by multitude of small cuts, as it were.
If this does go to a vote, I hope it will be the death knell for Measure R/J, if not a clarion call for its repeal…
As David noted/alluded to, very recently, in a different context, there is always the referendum process…
Twenty years and not one house has been built as a result of Measure R.
Measure R is like the George Wallace of Davis politics :election today, election tomorrow, election forever.
Effective, as intended…
Yet, GW ‘found religion’, but it took an attempted assassination and reflection… they guy who shot him was not opposed to segregation… he just wanted to become famous…
I like your comparison to Wallace, though… common theme… ultimate paralysis (and not having useable ‘legs’)… fits with Measure R…
For what I am proposing probably none
I agree with you David. Measure J/R aside, the Buyers Program was a feature of the WDAAC and featured prominently in the development agreement and ballot arguments and was a explicit selling point of the project. At least with DISC the developer is now, ahead of any ballot, saying he can’t restrict housing to employees after stringing along the city and public for years with the promise he could. It makes council’s action on the baseline features of DISC tomorrow night all the more critical.
This is the standard in Davis; When it was approved by Council WDAAC received what’s more or less an exemption. They’re not really giving anything. (Perhaps in a similar way it’s been discussed that buildings at the proposed DISC will have to meet standards going forward; if due to future requirements Ramco et al offer to install developer-trust-inducing dedicated toaster pastry warmers or parking slabs that convert into magic flying carpets, gifts they will not be.)
Question: Is UCD far more diverse than the City considering only UCD-connected individuals who are age 55 and older?
Question: The DBBP, as noted in the Development Agreement, must comply with federal and State fair housing laws. If the developer and the City have now concluded that there is a strong likelihood that the program would be found not to comply, how can it, in good faith, be put to a public vote? At a minimum, it would likely mean the project would be tied up in litigation for years.
The Agreement itself specifies the process to be followed to address a Major Amendment, which does not include putting it to a public vote: A Major Amendment “shall require giving of notice and a public hearing before the Planning Commission and City Council.“ It seems that is the appropriate process to be followed here. If that’s not deemed sufficient, then Measure R should be amended when it comes up for renewal.
Also – of that group, how “diverse” are those with jobs at UCD, in regard to having sufficient compensation (to be able to purchase at WDAAC)?
How “diverse” (overall) is David claiming this to group to be? (Since he’s basing his entire disregard of the discriminatory impacts of WDAAC on this claim.)
And in this case, who is in the “people of color” category? For example, are Asians included, or excluded?
Excluded from what, “being” ‘white’ ?
Excluded from the “people of color” category, in terms of a connection to UCD. In other words, is David using Asians within the claim regarding “diversity”, in this case? Or, not?
Current profile of UC Davis is 27% Black and Hispanic, 32 Asian. I understand that the project would have taken people 55 or older, but that was going to be people graduating in the 90s by the time it opened. However you want to count diversity, the project was never going to hit 27 Black and Hispanic – DBBP or market.
Of course it won’t. The question is would the DBBP help or hinder diversity. Preferences for Davis senior residents, their senior relatives, and those seniors with connections to UCD 30 or more years ago means the development is likely to draw from a whiter pool than it otherwise would, given the demographics of the rest of the County, region, or state.
Ron – The buyer’s program would also apply to former UCD students, regardless of where they now live—even if they live in the dreaded Bay Area. That means lots of Bay Area folks could buy homes here even under the DBBP.
I don’t believe that the student body was very “diverse”, until fairly recently. Those former students who are old enough to purchase there (and have sufficient funds) are probably less diverse than those in many communities surrounding Davis, for example. (Who otherwise might not “qualify” for the Davis buyers’ program – due to no connection to Davis or UCD.)
Seems to me that it’s quite a quagmire, overall.
Claim = Non-peer-reviewed scientific hypothesis
“It seems that is the appropriate process to be followed here. If that’s not deemed sufficient, then Measure R should be amended when it comes up for renewal.”
Measure R is being put up for renewal and in doing so the City Council made no attempts to revisit any parts of Measure R, beyond a few technical changes, in an astounding dereliction of responsibility. People should vote no in the hope that the CC will revisit the language to see where, after 20 years Measures J/R need updating.
Thanks for the legal opinion Eric. It seems that David’s complaint is that the city needs to follow its own ordinance. An ordinance which under David’s logic is flawed.
Perhaps developers shouldn’t propose something that’s illegal in the first place, in hopes of garnering votes.
In any case:
Ron,
What specific amendments would you recommend for measured J/R?
For one, we should have revisited the affordable exemption since in 20 years no affordable exempted project has been proposed. Perhaps a mixed program where if X % amount of units is built the project is exempt. This way we could try to incentivize the construction of more Affordable housing then we are getting now.
We should have discussed redrawing the limit line for annexation by election thus allowing some land for growth but not allowing open season on all land in the county. As it stands now by using the city limit as the limit line the city hasn’t allowed adequate room for growth. One idea would be to extend the limit line to the Davis Planning Area.
Keeping the limit line so tight around the city has led to infill as the only option to rolling the dice on an election and driven up land prices in the city so astronomically that infill projects must be too massive in scale for the neighbors to accept. This has lead to horrible conflicts between developers and neighbors.
Of course where to set the line should have been a point of community discussion. The Davis Planning Area is used only as an example.
Today the issue of the procedure for changing a baseline feature has been raised. I haven’t thought much about it until today but perhaps this is another area that the CC should have looked at before advancing a vote for renewal.
Of course neither of these two issues nor the new one raised today were discussed because the city council didn’t want to forthrightly address this hot political potato.
RG, much agree.
(Not so much on affordable housing because I think it’s a scam and has unintended consequences – but I won’t get in to that potato as it’s not the point potato)
Can you provide a link to a map of the Davis Planning Area? I should familiarize myself with this border.
Sphere of Influence; if that’s what you’re after, this is from 2008: https://www.yolocounty.org/Home/ShowDocument?id=2878
I don’t know how recently it’s been updated. This may actually be current, which illustrates part of the planning problem in terms of providing actual affordable housing.
Thanks, DS
Well, that’s kind of interesting. The proposed site of DISC is not in the “sphere of influence”.
I’ll assume that Ron G (and some others) don’t support it, then.
Getting off topic here, but LAFCO did review MRIC in 2015
https://www.cityofdavis.org/city-hall/community-development-and-sustainability/development-projects/aggie-research-campus/mace-ranch-innovation-center/environmental-review
Click on letters 1-30. LAFCO input is letter #15, and staff replies follow.
If it was outside the line that would have been drawn if my idea had been implemented it would be subject to a vote.
I looked at letter #15, and it is from LAFCO. However, it only discusses their concern regarding the agricultural buffer not being nearly sufficient for a proposal of that size.
I’m not seeing anything discussed in that letter, regarding “sphere of influence”. Why did you even direct me to this, in response to my comment?
Note that you’re the one who brought up “sphere of influence” in the first place.
Short answer: Alan M asked about the Davis Planning Area. Davis Planning Area (Sphere of Influence is what I assumed he was curious about) is established by LAFCO. Cities submit to them for approval for changes to SOI.
Your statement that the MRIC site is/was not in the Sphere of Influence is accurate, per the 2008 document I linked. Evidently LAFCO did review the project in 2015, at least sufficiently to put forth the letter I linked. Part of the EIR process is “Sphere of Influence (SOI) Amendment” with LAFCO.
So with respect to your comment that
… the process of bringing it into the SOI is within the project review process. For all I know, it may already have been done. I didn’t find anything further in that regard.
In my opinion, Davis needs to expand its Sphere of Influence. That can be for the purpose of developing OR conserving land. I have long advocated for an urban limit line, and the SOI would be part of establishing that. What would be conserved, what could be developed, the pace and density of those developments, and the strategic purchase of lands and/or conservation easements on the perimeter could all be part of that process as well. WDAAC is the first housing development in the northwest quadrant, which is a likely area for additional housing over a generational timeframe. I think it would be better to map and plan that area in advance and set the basic planning principles, rather than just fight over one project after another. But Measure R kind of blocks those kinds of planning processes from occurring, unfortunately.
Again, not seeing where that letter (that you referred me to) addresses this.
The only thing I see is their concern regarding the agricultural buffer (for MRIC) not being large enough.
Can you quote something from that letter which supports what you’re claiming?
“Neither staff nor the city’s legal counsel acknowledged this back in 2018 when the project was going to a vote. This was sold to the voters as a mechanism to ensure that the people purchasing the project would be from the community rather than Bay Area transplants.”
Most commenters so far are pro-development without qualification. The implication is Davis will be improved by growth regardless of project details. Time after time the staff, commissions, and council are presented with what amount to glossy sales pitches for developer desired, not necessarily community greatest needs projects. This might be a reasonable approach if they were presented as such. But they never seem to be. What developer has ever stood before an audience of decision-makers and said ” These are the likely advantages of this project, these are the likely disadvantages for the city, and the main reason I am proposing it is for my personal profit.”? On the contrary, most developers tell us only what we want to hear about the wonderful benefits for the community.
This approach is misleading at best and duplicitous at worst. I would suggest that it doesn’t have to be this way. Most of my career was spent exclusively in the Kaiser Permanente medical system. For 10 of those years, I worked on our administrative team often designing and implementing new projects. The expectation was that for each project I would fully outline the pros and cons of that project as they would impact both our department and other departments as well as our patients. Projects were accepted or rejected based on their overall merits as anticipated to affect the entire group based on a complete, not biased, interpretation of the facts And it was a given that the presentation would include how I anticipated it would benefit me or my group or department if it was at a cost to others.
I
Yeah, same with the ‘pro-development army’ that calls in to public comments at the CC meeting. You’d think that every project was anointed by God Almighty.
Tia
The pros and cons is what the staff is supposed to produce, but that hasn’t been happening, which is very problematic. Too often the planning staff has relied on what the project proponent (not just building developers) has said without conducting due diligence. Most recently that’s exactly what happened with both DISC and BrightNight.
I agree that sending WDAAC/Bretton Woods back for another Measure R vote isn’t appropriate, but I think the city should require a substantive benefit in exchange for dropping what was a major selling point of this project. The all-electric offer is clearly of little value under the circumstances, and not anywhere near the value of the original DBBP. If staff doesn’t have the spine to do better, I hope the City Council does.
In principle, I agree it should be a quid pro quo… but not a disproportionate one… another consideration… depending on the language in the DA, the City could have legal/cost exposure if the modification/amendment is NOT made… the suit was dismissed without prejudice… it can always be re-filed… and, if DBBP left in, I’d give that ~ 55% likelihood (low-balling) of happening.
I agree. The developers shouldn’t profit from the change. Whatever form that takes should be open to the decision makers. They could add more Affordable or increase conservation or provide additional public amenities.
Can it be quantified? Maybe an in lieu fee can be created that goes into a city fund for affordable housing and homelessness?
Two good questions… I know not the answers to either…
“Most commenters so far are pro-development without qualification.”
I’d like to take exception to this point and make a qualification. I’ve said little about the Ramosland business park over the long term besides a few years ago when I supported the city not making the owners do an entirely new EIR. I’m not supportive of development without reservation as the term “pro-development” would convey.
I think of myself as more pro-housing instead of pro-development. With so many people living in poverty, homeless, doubling or tripling up in rooms, paying exorbitant rents that keep them from rising or just plain giving up and leaving, I believe that adding supply will help alleviate the current conditions where so many are mired in debt and poverty. Its a humanitarian issue. The same is why I favor more jobs. More jobs and more housing in my mind means better living standards and a healthier society but I’m not pro-development per se. In fact I spoke out against the size of Trackside because I thought it was too big for the neighborhood.
I’d also stack my qualifications at being pro-development with anyone else as I’ve actually worked in the business and personally developed property.
However, despite my background I am not pro-housing. I am pro-development of the city. Or in other words, I am pro-development for what it bring in benefits for the city. Generally I am pro-new business and retail so that it can fund things in the city like parks, schools infrastructure as well. I am only pro-housing if it supports these funding efforts (housing built out of necessity to lure new business/jobs to Davis).
I believe the solutions to homelessness and sky rocketing rents and affordable home ownership for some segments of society (I’m thinking of teachers, police officers, fire fighters etc…) are not found in new development. In fact pushing for affordable housing in new development only makes the problem worse (though it can be used for short term solutions for specific reasons). I believe these issues require a more direct solution by the community.
I go a step farther… I suspect the commenter who wrote that includes me in that assessment… I do not just take exception, I take umbrage! And developers who worked with me would be ROTHLAO!
I was rigorous about fairness, process, and rules/regulations.
I was/am, neither pro- nor anti- development… each on its own merits. And I was/am analytical, not an advocate for anything other than “fairness, process, and rules/regulations” in my career… I consider myself a professional.
The truly linked issue is the $6,000 in energy efficiency retrofits for Davis residents buying at Bretton Woods. Based on the original 90% threshold, that’s worth $2M that should be provided as direct investment to be used and disbursed by the City for this purpose locally.
Interesting, but unclear how that works… but, interested…
Everyone needs to look at the addendum to the EIR. The project has expanded by 30 acres onto county land well outside the scope approved in the annexation. No surveys for sensitive species have been done. This project needs to return to the planning commission, city council, and voters.
from the addendum:
The additional offsite detention basin and adjoining overflow area will consist of approximately 30 acres total, with approximately 5 acres for the basin and 25 acres for the overflow area. The 5- acre basin will have a maximum water depth of 17 feet. The 25-acre overflow area will serve as secondary drainage during a 100-year storm event. It will be excavated in depths from approximately four to eight feet depending on land slope. The overflow area then will be backfilled with native topsoil to a depth of approximately four inches up to one foot throughout, depending on topography. The originally proposed agricultural buffer will be expanded by approximately 2 acres (from just under 11 acres as originally proposed to approximately 13 acres) and connect the onsite storm drainage system to the additional offsite detention basin and adjoining overflow area. It also will continue to connect the onsite storage drainage system to the originally proposed offsite detention basin, which will be expanded by approximately 3 acres (from under 2 acres as originally proposed to almost 5 acres) and will adjoin the existing City detention basin.
Construction of this expanded offsite detention basin will require demolition of an existing service road used to access the West Davis Water Tank, located on an adjoining parcel, and an underlying domestic water main (see Figure 2-1). As a result, the Applicant/Developer will construct a new service access road that will extend north from the Risling Court—a road proposed for construction on the eastern side of development as part of the Project (see DEIR, Figures 2.0-6 to -07, p. 3.0-25, -27; see also DEIR, p. 2.0-11). The existing water main connects the West Davis Water Tank to the City’s domestic water pipeline service (see DEIR, pp. 3.9-9, 3.15-19). The water main will be relocated just south of the existing City basin, to be constructed and funded by the Applicant/Developer and inspected and approved by the City. Prior to decommission of the existing water main, the new water main will be fully operational and connected by the City to ensure negligible disruption to City water services.
“Binning Ranch, I hardly knew ye.” From 20-acre upscale ranchettes to catching the runoff from an old-folks subdivision in a mere 16 years. How the mighty have fallen!