By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – Most people I talked to this week around Davis seem to think the actual Measure H race is about a toss-up. Across the state, the ballot returns have been woefully bad—maybe even historically bad. By that measure, Davis has been a bit more robust.
The consensus seems to be low turnout will hurt Measure H but the breakdown on the return numbers so far isn’t wholly bad. One factor that has not been discussed nearly enough is that the measure lost narrowly in 2020 and there was no ground game because of the pandemic. This time, the campaign claims to have hit 30,000 households on the ground and 30,000 via the phone. That could be the x-factor.
The news this week on the awarding of $42K from Dan Carson to the No on H ballot signers was kind of a coup de grace for that little episode. While the internal campaign has put a brave face on it, others I spoke to on Friday were pointed and in some cases livid.
The prevailing sentiment is that if Measure H goes down, “it’s on Dan Carson.” Some of the messages were profanity-laced and cannot be repeated here.
“This was completely winnable,” one person told me. “Any random Davis voter should have been asked to front it, not a sitting elected official.”
I completely agree on that. As I wrote in Opening Thoughts yesterday, Carson and the campaign were a bit tone-deaf as to how the community would respond to litigating the ballot statements.
The point Dan Carson has made, and I think correctly, is if you actually read what Judge Maguire wrote, it was not overwhelmingly against Carson and the Yes on H campaign. As I said yesterday, the judge characterized it quantitatively as three for the respondents, one for the petitioner and one split, I see it more as 2-1-2 where the petitioner actually prevailed on two points, the respondents one, and on two points the judge kind of agreed with petitioner but the tie went to the respondents.
The political optics of this whole episode are an unmitigated disaster for the Yes on H campaign.
While I think Carson and the Yes side had a considerably stronger case than many have acknowledged, the political damage done seems to outweigh any benefit. Had it been a regular citizen filing the complaint, that probably would have produced much less in the way of backlash.
With all that said, when I saw the judgment of $42K in attorney fees and the press release from the No on H side, I was prepared to really unload on Carson, but after reading the decision by Judge Maguire I find myself completely torn on this issue.
I still think it’s a political disaster, but the ruling quite frankly might be wrong.
The judge acknowledges that he treated the same standard for determining “successful party” in which the courts have used the “any significant issue” standard as being equivalent for both the Real Parties and the petitioner, despite the fact there is no case law that clearly states this.
And when you look at his qualitative tally it becomes murky. By his count, “The quantitative tally is one victory for Petitioner, three for Real Parties in Interest, and one split decision.”
But is it? If you read through, it looks like the petitioner prevailed on two issues that were raised. Moreover, two issues were not clear victories for the Real Parties. On the issue of no binding commitments, Maguire writes, “While the truth of this statement is debatable, the Court let it stand for lack of ‘clear and convincing’ evidence of its falsity.”
On the issue of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions, Maguire writes, “The court found this heading ambiguous, and therefore let it stand.”
Given the standard that weighs so heavily for the Real Parties, Maguire correctly applied the concept of ties goes to the respondents, but then claimed clear victories on two such cases.
In short, the actual results are lot more murky than the headlines. Still, the headline is really what matters and that reads, Councilmember Carson will have to pay $42K, the Real Parties rightly are claiming victory and the political costs could be astronomical. There is really no defending the political fumble here.
That point is probably best underscored by the May letter from six former mayors that condemned Councilmember Carson’s court action.
They write, “Councilman Carson’s lawsuit did not produce any meaningful changes to the citizen’s ballot arguments. A judge changed one word and converted a troy measurement to a metric measurement. That’s it. The apparent purpose of the developer-funded lawsuit was to squelch the speech of the opponents to Measure H. Mr. Carson and his deep-pocketed backers probably assumed that the citizens would not be able to afford to litigate the ballot argument.”
They add later in a devastating line: “The problem with Carson’s conduct in the Measure H campaign is that he has blurred the line between his role as an elected representative of the people of Davis and his advocacy for a development project. This conflict of interest was on full display at the April 5 City Council meeting, when he took up a Measure H matter that was not on the agenda and gave a lengthy political speech. Even Mayor Gloria Partida admonished Carson this was improper.”
The good news for the Yes on H side is that the focus on Dan Carson as the boogeyman took a lot of the focus off the traffic issues.
While I think the Yes on H side has a better answer on traffic than they did two years ago, the cost was to displace one thorny issue with an issue that may ultimately be worse.
Despite all of this, I still think Measure H has a fighting chance come Tuesday. It’s a smaller project with a smaller impact than 2020, and 2020 was a very close race.
The next question will be to see if any opposition to Dan Carson emerges for November when he is up for reelection, for the first time in his own West Davis district.
Will Davis compete for the future of biotech and Ag industries or will it continue to be a retirement community for seniors who succor at the public pension trough through its’ proximity to government and education? That is the real question of the Measure H election. Ballot arguments are a meaningless sideshow. To paraphrase B. Travers, I don’t got to read no stinking ballot arguments.
I came across this article today about what NYC is doing to provide infrastructure in support of biotech and to grow its 150,000 biotech jobs. Will the Big Tomato step up or will we continue to fall behind places like the Big Apple? We will likely know next Wednesday.
https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2022/06/04/ceo-maria-gotsch-says-nyc-must-build-on-success.html?utm_source=sy&utm_medium=nsyp&utm_campaign=yh
From the article: “Everyone thinks of life science jobs as PhD researchers,” she said. “There’s also lab techs, marketers, finance and manufacturing jobs that are all built into this industry that has remained primarily stateside mostly due to intellectual property concerns.”
Jobs is good.
.
If Davis is going to have a Vision of competing for the future of biotech and Ag industries, you would think that the community’s leaders would be creating a robust public dialogue about that Vision … so that everyone in Davis clearly understands that that is what the future of Davis is intended to be. Unfortunately, our community leadership has made no effort to engage the public in such a dialogue.
For the last 25 years Davis has de facto become more and more a retirement community for seniors (and soon to be seniors) who succor at the public pension trough through its’ proximity to government and education. The evidence of that is seen when you look at the 2020 US Census numbers compared to the 2010 US Census numbers and the 2000 US Census numbers. In those 20 years the 55+ population in the City Limits grew from 7,256 to 11,475 to 14,695 (from 12.0% to 17.5% to 21.4%) Further, from 2010 to 2020 the 55+ population in Davis grew by 3,220 residents while the City as a whole grew by only 3,018 residents.
A very natural question to ask is how much do those residents who are 55+ care about economic development?
The community did have a robust public dialogue about a decade ago. I don’t suspect most people over the age of 60 or so are that concerned with economic development. They are also not that concerned about the housing crisis or the state of our schools. So we are where we are.
Profiling?
I strongly believe the %-ages are not that different, for those who are 60 + or 60 -… after all, many over 60 have kids and/or grandkids that are affected by those, and/or who just care…
Sounds like knee-jerk “profiling” to me… but of course you are against “profiling” and would never be guilty of that, yourself. Yeah… right…
Polling shows a pretty pronounced downward trend of support for housing and economic development by age group. It’s of course not one to one. So what you are saying is true, there are some people with grandchildren who care about such things, but the support for the parcel tax dips below 60 percent for example for people over the age of 65.
.
I don’t know how you can say that with a straight face David. Your assessment of that dialogue at the time and in the years that followed was that it was a public dialogue that included very, very few participants, and you openly expressed the fear that the lack of inclusion was going to come back and “bite” the process in the a$$. Not only were the number of participants very small, but they all came from the same segment of the Davis community … builders, contractors, developers, attorneys, landlords. You observed at the time that there was a noticeable lack of any attempt to get community buy in.
Now if you want an example of robust public dialogue in Davis you need go no further than 2012-2014’s handling of the water rates. I was personally no fan of Herb Niederberger, but Herb and Dianna Jensen and Bob Clarke and many other city staff members conducted a series of meetings in locations distributed throughout the City, with excellent outreach to produce a substantial and diverse group of participants. They were up front about both the cost to the ratepayers and the value being received for the rate increase. As a result of that well-executed process, Davis residents and businesses paid over $22.3 million for their water in 2020 as compared to $8.7 million in 2007.
I’m baffled. So you think that city staff should run a series of workshops about economic development? How well do you think that would be received?
You keep bringing up this idea of a “public dialogue” or some kind of process of building a public “vision” for Davis. This is simple, Matt: there is clearly no consensus about that and won’t be.
Our last few councils have clearly seen the fiscal situation the city faces. They have moved forward a process of economic development to help broaden the city’s tax base. They agree about the benefits of creating sites for expanding local businesses that want to move up in size. They have put the development proposals before the voters and actively advocated for them.
If the public doesn’t like the direction the council is taking on economic development, and feel that’s their most important voting criterion, then the voters should replace the council members. The planning you say isn’t happening is, in fact, happening.
.
If it is happening, and I have seen no evidence that it is, then it is happening within a small miniscule sliver of the Davis populace. For the typical Davis resident, it might as well be happening in a black box. Further, there is nothing holistic about the current planning process/method. It is all reactive and knee-jerk conducted under the umbrella of General Plan Exceptions.
With that said, I absolutely believe that city staff should run a series of workshops about economic development.That is what they did with respect to water. Are you saying that those water workshops were inappropriate?
How do you propose getting community buy in?
Matt is correct in his statements. In 2012-2014 there was discussion about business parks, but little discussion about what businesses and jobs would be in those parks (and the same problem exists for DiSC). There was little discussion about how these would connect with the community. There has been more discussion about the latter for DiSC this time around, but more in a reactive mode by the developers and staff, not with integrated forethought. The Downtown Specific Plan is a much better example of how a plan with a vision can be developed (even if that one is flawed).
And Matt is correct that the water rates development process was much more engaged with the community. I sat on the second water rates panel that modified the proposal (incorrectly in my view) in response to Matt’s naming PR gaff (sorry Matt–it should have been called the “Summertime Peaking Rate” and Bob Dunning would have had a much harder time making fun of it). There was significant community discussion in both rounds and it even generated a lawsuit (failed) by enough concerned citizens.
There is no planning process at the moment. Passively approving a development proposal knowing that they don’t really have the ultimate say is not “planning.” It’s passing the buck. The previous deputy city manager in charge of these issues believed fervently that all economic development decisions should be left to the private sector so he wasn’t much help. We now have an opportunity to solve that problem by bringing in the community.
(I also point out that Matt and I have opposite takes on Measure H, but we both respect each other’s viewpoint, and we have a common vision what the City should be doing going forward.)
.
David’s argument appears to suffer from bias. It also begs the question whether there is any caselaw that clearly states that the opposite is true.
Has a case like this one ever been adjudicated? If the answer is “no” then there is no precedent either way.
Who, exactly is “livid” – other than those who are part of the DiSC campaign which made the decision in the first place?
Who is pushing so hard for this proposal that they’d be “livid” – other than those closely associated with the campaign, itself?
Entirely predictable, that you’d start “going there”. I’m sure that the developer “appreciates” your help, at this point. 🙂
Yes – they “succeeded” in having the word “only” removed, and a change regarding the type of units used to measure the amount of greenhouse gasses. (Congratulations.)
No other changes were made to the ballot statement.
The “No” side did not even have an opportunity to challenge the “Yes” side ballot statement, as the DiSC developer’s unexpected challenge was not presented until right before the short deadline to do so.
The campaign is turning on its own people?
The DISC developer (and/or Spafford and Lincoln?) is now claiming that Dan Carson made this decision on his own?
Are these the people who are turning on Dan Carson?
While they simultaneously agreed to pay for his legal challenge on their behalf, up-front?
They’re scapegoating their own honorary chairperson of the campaign? It’s not Dan Carson’s “fault” that they lost.
Dan Carson’s mistake was getting involved in the first place, given his job as a council person.
Geez, Dan Carson has no friends, at this point. His developer friends should be sticking up for him, rain or shine. (This is not a good look for their entire team, really.)
Well, maybe council members won’t agree to something like this in the future, as a result.
Patently, blatantly untrue. No on H had EXACTLY the same opportunity, had they been timely. Exactly the same opportunity that Dan Carson, others, had… you assert a gross untruth… that No on H or others chose not to do so is on them, no others…
Next, if Yes prevails, you might claim the election was rigged, there was fraud, and No on H won in a ‘landslide’, right? I wonder… sounds like a borrowing of another ‘playbook’…
The rest of your post sure looks like ‘cheery-picking’ and a No on H campaign ploy… and/or sniping..
I’m content to wait and see how the vote goes. No need to attack or proselytize… many folk have already voted… no “do-overs”…
Ron make sure you vote, if eligible…
To further clarify, who has this much “stake” in the outcome (to be “livid”), and why would they single-out Dan Carson (given that it was not his decision alone)? The developer agreed to pay for his legal challenge, up-front.
It’s not Dan Carson’s “fault” that they lost. Dan Carson’s mistake was getting involved in the first place, given his job as a council member.
Who are these unnamed DiSC supporters who are “livid” at Dan Carson?
(In re-reading the Vanguard article, it appears that it is not the campaign team, itself.)
Again, the unexpected legal challenge from Carson and the DiSC developers was presented very close to the short deadline to submit a counter-challenge. This was already noted in my initial comment, and has been noted by others.
As it was, the opponents had difficulty finding an attorney just to defend themselves, on short notice (and with limited funds).
Had this unusual action been expected, it is likely that the opponents would have submitted their own challenge. (Of course, this would also increase their costs, and unlike the development team – they do not have deep pockets.)
Next time, perhaps you should think about what you claim before responding to a comment. Especially since all of this has been previously discussed on here, and not just by me.
Yeah, no doubt Carson and the YES Campaign acted politically ham fisted. I can mostly understand the initial case to force the changes desired on the voter docs. But then to go after legal fees? That was politically stupid. Just leave it alone and chalk it up to the cost of doing business.
By filing a cross complaint the Yes on H campaign saved thousands of dollars. I guess that is how this is done.
The sad part is that under Measure J elections for annexation everything becomes political even mundane determinations on attorney fees.
Five comment rule is in effect on this thread. Please monitor your own comment count. Comments that exceed five will remain in the moderation queue until tomorrow morning.