by David Taormino
Alan Pryor’s greatest nightmare is that Bretton Woods will be built as proposed and the promises to the voters faithfully kept. Get ready for sleepless nights, Alan!
Wading through the ranting, he raises three concerns, none of which were the topics that the City Council was being asked to address on Tuesday evening.
First: Bretton Woods’ Developer’s alleged violation of the following Baseline Feature:
“provide an approximately three-acre parcel for either the expansion of URC for the benefit of its residents, or for use by another specialized senior care facility.”
Alan then quotes from the original application of August 2016 sited in Tuesday’s Staff Report, for reasons I can’t explain, which was used for the EIR, primarily for traffic analysis purposes. It was changed in 2018 as correctly quoted above, and was part of the ballot measure and numerous election related 
presentations I made.
I intend to honor that promise and all the others stated in the Baseline Features. That was the “deal” between me and the voters.
Yes, there is litigation. The past president of URC’s parent company, Pacific Retirement Systems (PRS), a multi-state corporation and Bretton Woods, LLC had differences which resulted in litigation and arbitration. These differences were quietly resolved with PRS’s new president in late fall of 2021.
Even before that point, PRS (URC) on my request submitted URC’s basic site design criteria for a multi-story building to the Planning Commission which was approved in mid-2021. When an actual building with specific uses is submitted by URC, it will first go before the Senior Citizens Commission for their input then returned to the Planning Commission for further review. I specifically set up the review process so that residents of URC would have input, including the meeting to be held at URC.
Having mutually resolved our issues, PRS and Bretton Woods LLC are jointly reviewing what we hope to be the final Purchase and Sales Contract. Expectations are for a close of escrow in the near future once infrastructure construction commences.
Was all this information available to Alan? Absolutely! He just had to ask:
- Me
- Local URC management or PRS management
- Any of the 7 local members of the URC Board of Directors all of whom are listed on the URC website; or
- Any of the attorneys listed on the litigation documents he obtained.
Alan didn’t ask. Why? Likely, the actual facts weren’t important for an angry, fictional story about greedy, dishonest, despicable, lying developers.
Second issue raised by Alan citing Baseline conditions:
“Establish a foundation and seed funds for the initial planting and ongoing maintenance for the Oak Tree forested area in association with the HOA and principal.”
My response: Alan again misleads the reader. Here is what our approved construction drawings, CC&R’s and other supporting documents approved by City provide:
- Landscape plans: Includes elaborate descriptions that show Bretton Woods, LLC planting a minimum of 350 oak trees at its expense separate from the endowment along with irrigation systems to support the oaks.
- The Developer shall deposit into a segregated restricted account with the HOA a sum of $150,000 as an endowment to support and enhance the oak forest over time, including providing locational maps, interpretive signage, and miscellaneous display boards. The entire list of the use of the restricted funds is incorporated into HOA documents and may also be obtained from the city.
- Regular, ongoing maintenance and care of the oak forest shall be the obligation of the HOA along with it’s other landscaping obligations as detailed in the CC&Rs, conditions of approval, and related written documents. The endowment as explained in the campaign is not to be used by the HOA for regular oak tree maintenance.
- A detailed Bretton Woods Landscape Maintenance Manual has been prepared by our landscape architect and engineers, reviewed and approved by numerous city staff and departments.
Once again, Alan has created a non-existing controversy to impugn my integrity and the integrity of city officials. None of his assertions have ANY factual basis whatsoever.
Alan could have verified his claims by asking:
- Public Works staff: City Engineers Dianna Jensen or Kevin Fong
- Tracie Reynolds: Leases and Open Space Manager
- Sherri Metzker, Community Development Director
- Maricela Marroquin, Assistant City Attorney, or
- Me
But he didn’t bother to get the facts. Why not, Vanguard readers should ask.
Thirdly, the explanation for returning 80 buyers’ initial deposits.
Yes, we did return deposits after 18 months in escrow. Here’s what we said in our Newsletter informing potential buyers of the reasons. The entire newsletter is available upon request.
Thank you for you support of Bretton Woods and for the confidence that you’ve shown us through the payment of a deposit for a lot or home. We are continuing to make progress on the subdivision and look forward to delivering homes to buyers as soon as possible. However, as you know, we have not yet been able to secure a master builder to construct the homes. As a result, we are unable to provide you with a definitive start date or assurance that your home will be available within the near term. Under the circumstances, my partners and I feel uncomfortable keeping your deposit in escrow with so much uncertainty. Therefore, we are electing to have the title company return your deposit starting early next week…
Information on your priority number, lot selection and home size will be maintained and delivered to the eventual builder when appropriate…
Rest assured, my partners and I are fully committed to bringing our Bretton Woods Neighborhood to Davis as soon as we can. The additional, unanticipated, challenges since the election have been wearing on all of us. We also recognize the impact that these delays have had on your new home planning.
Finally, whose responsibility is it to verify Alan’s assertions before publishing his inflammatory allegations? Certainly, Alan should be held to some degree of integrity which he avoided as the verifiable facts show.
What about the Vanguard? Shouldn’t the Vanguard staff insist the writer of such an accusatory commentary provide evidence before publishing an inflammatory article? Should not some support documentation from the writer be requested along with a statement that he or she has expended a reasonable effort to verify his claims? Shouldn’t the Vanguard request some minimal evidence to support the writers claim? If not, then at least the Vanguard should provide an introductory disclaimer that the validity of the writer’s claims has not been independently verified, and that the writer has not voluntarily provided to the Vanguard evidence of validation.
Ha, I’ll just leave this alone.
Well for now, anyway.
I want to thank Dave Taormino for putting together and publishing this response. It is very helpful for the voters and residents of Davis. The response does raise several questions, which I will pose here as well as send to Dave directly by e-mail. In the interests of transparency, I hope he provides his responses tho the questions here.
First, your response to the first of the three concerns states “Even before that point, PRS (URC) on my request submitted URC’s basic site design criteria for a multi-story building to the Planning Commission which was approved in mid-2021. When an actual building with specific uses is submitted by URC, it will first go before the Senior Citizens Commission for their input then returned to the Planning Commission for further review. I specifically set up the review process so that residents of URC would have input, including the meeting to be held at URC.”
However, in Thursday’s article the Vanguard reported, “During public comment, Rik Keller charged, “The project developer wrote in November 2018 ‘if Measure L fails, we will miss the opportunity for the university retirement community to expand and build a memory care facility for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia.’ And what happened to these promises? Now they’ve been replaced with 30 detached housing units on the face of it this is not what Davis was promised.”
Colin Walsh said, “I’m even more disappointed now, as I see the item for the consent calendar, that makes it clear, the required baseline feature for a senior care facility is quietly being switched to 30 detached senior houses.”
The disconnect between your statement today and the quoted public comments needs to be clarified. A “multi-story building” and “30 detached housing units” are very different. Can you please provide a clarification regarding this disconnect?
———
Second, your response to the third of the three concerns states, “Yes, we did return deposits after 18 months in escrow.” What isn’t clear in the information you provided is whether the return of deposits was a unilateral action on your part, or was done in concert with input from the collective group of people who put their deposits into escrow? Also, were all the deposits returned, or only some of the deposits? Finally, were there any depositors who indicated that they wanted to continue the escrow, and if so, how many?
——–
Thank you for your consideration of these clarifying questions.
Matt Williams
If you ask the wrong question it doesn’t matter what the answer is.
My question is will the people who had deposits returned be able to repurchase at the same price when construction begins? If not why not?
Good question.
I strongly suspect that the answer is “no”.
I’d actually ask the same type of question regarding URC’s option, as well.
The lawsuit against URC is ongoing. The developer has claimed (in that lawsuit) that the option has been terminated, and that they want to keep the option deposit.
I also would like to know if the developer believes that the “Davis-based” buyer’s program is legal, and the reason that he believes so.
Rather than speculate why not wait for an answer from the developer.
The answer seems obvious, but o.k. – let’s see what he says.
I added my own questions above, as well.
This was my question as well.
I’m confused Ron, what speculation are you referring to?
Poor David. The excuses given in his morning email are pretty pathetic:
“I honestly don’t want to be in a position where I am the gatekeeper, because at some point there is a difference between something that is objectively false versus something I merely disagree with.”
If you don’t want to be a gatekeeper than hire one. Is the responsibility for the integrity of the articles you publish too much for you to handle? Or do you want to hide behind a legal exemption like Facebook?
Then David goes on:
“In fairness to the Vanguard, we were put in a tough position to start with. The article came in it at 1 am with no prior notice. I got up at 2:30 and had a very limited time to make a quick call before I had to head to San Francisco for most of the day. The item was time sensitive – coming before council that night. So I decided to run it and figured things would sort themselves out.”
What about in fairness to Dave Taormino?
Oh, I’m all for taking jabs at David for fun. But let’s be reasonable. The Vanguard has been skirting between bona fide journalism and it’s blog roots for a while now. David’s “staff” is mostly made up of college interns and fairly fresh grads (I think). My point being is that there doesn’t appear to be a hardcore old school news paper editor on the staff. For all of the Vanguard’s expansion it’s still mostly a blog with people writing opinion based interpretation of the facts in articles.
Dave got his opportunity to reply; his comment was published.
I hope David and the Council take this incident as a learning experience. Just because the developer is in compliance with the Council’s interpretation of the the development agreement…doesn’t mean that the people (particularly the activist fringe) understand and agree. So it would be in their best interest to jointly provide more transparent updates and interpretation of the steps in the agreement for the public instead of just assuming everything is cool with the public because the council is cool with how the project is progressing. Or in other words be more proactive to preemptively address the public’s concerns.
I’ve increasingly noticed this regarding so-called “old school” newspapers, as well.
I remember when this wasn’t the case. The change seems to have started right-around the time that you no longer had to pay for a hardcopy to be delivered to your door.
Nowadays, one can get all the news you want for free, even if it’s increasingly-biased. Even the paywalls aren’t applied evenly.
Much of it has essentially devolved into entertainment – to be believed, or not. (Why am I now thinking of the term “fake news”?)
Yeah, you have cable news that is mostly opinion outlets masquerading as pure news. So a blog that’s trying to be legitimate news is going to go through some growing pains. I suppose in this day and age you can’t escape bias opinions about anything. I’m guessing the Vanguard is going the route of the Huffington Post…a blog turned new site that is obviously and upfront about their bias.
As for the Vanguard and the recent articles, to be fair the articles clearly state GUEST COMMENTARY. So you’d think that would be enough to alert people that there’s been no fact checking of the content. But maybe David and the Vanguard need provide more upfront notices of the opinionated content being published.
In addition to Mr. Williams points he raised, there are quite a few other unanswred questions raised about the veracity of Mr. Taormino’s rant.
Mr. Taormino reports the Baseline features in the 2018 election which approved the project to read,
“Establish a foundation and seed funds for the initial planting and ongoing maintenance for the Oak Tree forested area in association with the HOA and principal.” (emphasis added)
The copy of the Baseline features that I reviewed instead stated the following,
“Establish a foundation and seed funds for the initial planting and ongoing maintenance of the oak forested area in association with the HOA and appropriate local organizations“. (Emphasis added)
In one case, the trees are to be planted in association with the HOA and Taomino himself. In the other case, as I previously reported, they are to be planted in association with ” a local organization“. During the election we were told that the Developer that they were planning on establishing the “Foundation” with Tree Davis, a very respectable local non-profit “local organization” that provides excellent care for the Davis urban forest.
I was told that they apparently submitteed a proposal after the election to Taormino to establish such a Foundation including detailed cost estimentes but that this offer was summarily rejected by Taomino without any further discussions. Perhaps if Mr. Greenwald is so worried about factual reporting as he states in his preamble to this article (“Opening Thoughts”), he would be willing to fact check this and report back to his readers.
Perhaps Mr. Taormino will also explain the details of the Foundation he is otherwise planning to establish and the amount of funding with which he is planning on seeding that Foundation and provide to us a copy of the funding proposal otherwise presented to him by Tree Davis. I expect the monetary contributions required to establish his own Foundation compared to that otherwise requested by Tree Davis are very different indeed.
Indeed, it would also be most interesting to view the bylaws of the Foundation to be established by Mr. Taormino with the HOA to determine if there is really a sufficient endowment to the Foundation to provide the planting of the Oak trees and their long term maintenance as promised to voters.
Mr. Taormino also states above that he has returned 80 deposit checks to prospective buyers. It is unclear if this is the total of all deposit checks he received or whether there are still other deposit checks he has kept and is planning on honoring by delivering a home at a guaranteed purchase price in the future to those other depositers. It is an interesting question because in an article published in the Davis Enterprise (https://www.davisenterprise.com/news/business/developer-ready-to-break-ground-on-measure-l-project/) on January 28, 2020, Mr Taormino is quoted saying,
“Building homes in Davis is quite arduous and slow, but the city’s Planning Department staff is working towards enacting a more efficient process that is intended to move projects like Bretton Woods more expeditiously,” Taormino said. “All this happens before shovels hit the ground and homes available to nearly 300 individuals and couples already committed to purchasing a home.” (Emphasis added)
“80” is a different number than “300”. Perhaps Mr. Taomino would be willing to explain how many deposits he still retains and whether those deposits are for a fixed price purchase as I believe is the case for the deposit checks he returned.
And the 800-lb gorilla ignored in the room is the status of the “Davis-Based Buyers Program“. This program was to be a cornerstone of the project as presented to voters and, as represnted, was to reserve 90% of the homes in the Bretton Woods development to people with a defined pre-existing connection to Davis. Although language about this program was not in the Baseline Features, it was otherwise very prominantly mentioned in the ballot statements and campaign materials presented to voters.
Numerous hearings before the Planning Commission and Council were subsequently held in which the terms of this promised program were being attempted to be watered down rendering it non-functional compared to how it as originally presented to voters – see David Taormino and Bretton Woods Are Attempting a ‘Bait-and-Switch’ with the Davis-Based Buyers Program). The City Attorney subsequently stated that the Developer cannot be bound to that agreement. Perhaps Mr Taormino will clarify whether he intends to honor his pledge that 90% of the homes will be so sold to Davis-connected voters.
Finally I read with interest Mr. Taormino’s rambling musings stating,
Actually, I provided substantial references, quotations, links, and documentation in my earlier article (see https://davisvanguard.org/2022/03/guest-commentary-how-ongoing-complacency-by-the-davis-city-council-allowed-the-bretton-woods-developer-to-renege-on-election-commitments/) against which Mr. Taomino is raging here today. Readers can read for themselves exactly what I wrote and the extensive documentation I provided.
In contrast, there is virtually no documentation whatsoever in Mr. Taomino’s disjointed article above. Nor does he document the suppossed misstatements of facts I have made (and which, I note, were not independently verified by Mr. Greenwald either – what’s with that?). Instead, Mr. Taormino simply provides his opinions of what transpired and we are left to just accept Mr. Taomino’s word for such things.
Indeed, the entire theme of Mr. Taomino’s article is a somehwat Kafkaesque series of allegations that I somehow did not provide any verification to my claims but he himself provides no verification for any of his claims. A little saying about pots calling kettles names comes to mind.
Further, Mr. Greenwald seems to take great pleaseure in in his preamble to this article (“Opening Thoughts”) in alleging that I have have been was “discredited” by the Council proceedings on Tueday night in which my allegations and claims were discussed. Well, this observation on his part just proves that alternate universes do indeed exist because in the universe in which I reside, nothing of that sort occurred.
Instead what I saw was a quite comical effort in which Council did a remarkable little two-step to avoid addressing the specific claims I made but instead made a convoluted attempt to avoid asking any detailed and specific questions that ascertained the facts.
Instead, they avoided discussing any details about how the Bretton Woods project morphed from what was “promised” at Bretton Woods to the wonderful project that is now being provided while completely ignoring the disconnection between the two. This was functionally akin to ducking behind the water trough. But then the discussion became quite interesting as it switched to a full throated defense of the the DiSC project soon to be before the voters.
Further, in his allegations made in his “Opening Thoughts”, Mr Greenwald also stated, ”
But I am left wondering that if factual verification is such a great concern of of the Vanguard, why did Mr. Greenwald not require any statements from any of these five City employees (as if being a City employee somehow confers a stamp of objectivity and integrity) or why did Mr. Greenwald not interview them and juxtopose their statements against the documentation I otherwise provided in my article. So I guess one could accuse Mr. Taomino and Mr. Greenwald of simlarly making unfounded and unverified statements…or exactly the same behavior as I am accussed.
Also in his “Opening Thoughts”, Mr. Greenwald states that I previously submitted a “piece that we ended up not running because it was not only false but inflammatory“. But I note that Mr. Greenwald never even responded to my inqueries asking specifically where that article was factually false and how the article was inflammatory. Instead he just delights in repeatedly that allegation over and over to impugn my integrity but never ever bothers to justify his opinions – or exactly what he accuses me of doing..
And finally, if Mr. Greenwald is concerned about inflammatory articles, I would also suggest the personal attacks undertaken by Mr. Taormino in this article and similar personal attacks made by Mr. Greenwald in his “Opening Thoughts” , would certainly be construed to be inflammatory by any reasonable definition.
I’m not sure what Alan wants? Copies of legal documents? Copies of legal contracts? It reminds me of an exchange on Twitter I once saw.
Would you care to explain this? It sounds like the project that is “promised” in the development agreement is the one that is being delivered. What was “promised” to the voters? And it’s substantially different than what’s in the development agreement; that’s on the Council.
I’d also suggest that you might get closer to the truth if you initially assume a less adversarial approach to all of this. I suggest calling up Mr. Taormino and offer to buy him a beer or a cup of coffee and chat about your questions and concerns. There’s definitely a grey area between voter expectations, council interpretations, the development agreement and developer execution.
🙂
(Actually, for all of the questions in the comment section.)
I have one more, as well:
Whatever happened to the city’s lawsuit against Binning Ranch (the same development team as Bretton Woods), for an alleged failure to pay approximately $700,000 in city costs for the failed Davis Innovation Center proposal?
Wow that sounds like a good time. I’d buy a $50 front row seat for that event 😐
What is this ‘preamble’ “Opening Thoughts” that you speak of? I don’t see any preamble.
This opinion piece, DG’s ‘thoughts’, RG’s comments, y’all digust me. DT is being heard, AP is being heard. Would y’all zip it about shutting down conversation unless it’s ‘fact checked’ ? Do you all not understand by know ‘fact checking’ is a fallacy? C’mon, official voter guides tell two different realities based on the political or world views of the writers. Then they each give a rebuttal, essentially a fact check of the other side, and completely contradict each other. Let everyone be heard, but one thing I note, AP didn’t call for anyone to be silenced or question if something should have been published. So far, everyone is being heard, and that is how it should be.
I suggest that the Vanguard not publish articles that are submitted at 1:00 am for publication first thing in the morning and don’t allow for any opportunity to do any fact checking – not even a phone call or two.
If the Vanguard started fact-checking before publishing, there’d be no articles – including any from David. Though most of what David writes is either straight-out opinion, or “partial” facts – which don’t provide the complete picture.
I still don’t see exactly what Alan Pryor got “wrong”.
Seems to me that there’d have to be a side-by-side comparison, which would also include what was stated during the campaign.
no comments from a long list of regulars who post opinions and speculations as if they were facts
“Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c
Often times it’s the commenters who have corrected false claims or have added the other side of the story to Vanguard articles. I feel the commenters perform a service.
From Alan’s earlier article:
Seems to me that (on the face of it), these are two different things (within that paragraph).
How did that wording get into the staff report?
Other than this, I see nothing even questionable regarding Alan’s article, in regard to facts.
But it would be interesting if Mr. Taormino responded to some of the (other) questions raised in the comment section. I suspect that the cancellation of the deposits is probably the “biggest” issue, for some – especially since the proposal was approved.
(Given that the deposits were referred to as evidence of local interest and commitment, during the campaign. In other words, it was advertised as meeting an “internal need”, though I don’t recall the exact wording.)
If David was actually interested in providing a more-complete picture, he might want to seek out and interview some of those who had their deposits returned, to see what they think of the situation. They’re the ones who are directly affected.
Personally, I don’t care if the development is filled by those from the Bay Area, willing to pay a higher price. (At least, until I hear from someone who actually suffers as a result.)
The Vanguard is a Blog. It’s a public opinion option to conventional journalism (if that still exists) where deliberately provocative stories are posted with the intent to posture, incite, or just “have fun.”
The hope and intent with practically every posting are that it will elicit responses. That’s how success is measured, “clickbait” and facts, data, or evidence are options, not requirements.
Don’t berate Vanguard staff for failure to research and fact-check. They have no dedicated staff to do this, again the intent is to give opinions.
Fact-checking is more yours if you want to rebut anything said. But please don’t reference another blog as a source of facts and data. And also please refrain from “the data suggests,” “many,” which is often two, and attendance claims of great numbers when it is usually a dozen or less.
For all Vanguard readers, wherever they stand on any public issue, there is value with this means of communication. The most valuable is each reader can become more skilled in finding and dismissing anything lacking credibility and process what remains. Sometimes, there is a sentence or two. More often, “There is no there, there.”
And yet David compares the Vanguard to the New York Times and its decision to publish a controversial piece by Senator Tom Cotton.
From his Premium Newsletter today:
“These aren’t easy questions and in fairness, traditional outlets wrestle with them.”
“For example in 2020, the NY Times published an opinion piece by Republican Senator Tom Cotton advocating for deploying the military against protesters and rioters in the wake of George Floyd’s death.”
All I can say is laugh out loud.
To clarify, this appears to be two different uses for the same (approximately) 3-acre parcel. Which causes me to believe that everything Alan P. said was factually correct, as the above statement was apparently at the root of the controversy.
One might ask how this got into the staff report.
To clarify, this appears to be two different uses for the same (approximately) 3-acre parcel. Which causes me to believe that everything Alan P. said was factually correct, as the above statement was apparently at the root of the controversy.
I’m not sure I get what you’re saying. “for the benefit of its residents or for use by another specialized medical care facility” site as required by the Baseline Features and approved by voters.
I’m not sure where Alan got that from. Is that statement part of the baseline features? Was there something dropped between the initial vote of baseline features, the EIR and the development agreement? Also, it sounds like the developer is still in the process of negotiating with the URC for the creation of a Memory Care Facility.
I would ask at what point the “30 assisted living, age-restricted detached units” was introduced, since it apparently wasn’t in the baseline features. My impression of a “specialized medical care facility” (or even a “senior care facility”) doesn’t correspond with this.
Is that what URC had in mind, as well?