By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – Last week, I argued in my column that Measure J campaigns are inevitably going to be expensive. I stand by that argument largely because, by definition, a Measure J campaign can’t go on the cheap.
So you are going to have consultant costs, you can’t just print out cheap one-pagers on your home computer, and you have to pay for your canvassers. The reality is that is going to add up quickly.
In a response, Roberta Millstein argued that “nothing forced the Yes on Measure H campaign, led by ‘Honorary Chair’ Councilmember Dan Carson, to outspend the No on Measure H campaign by more than 14-1.”
But that’s exactly the problem. In a way, a Measure J campaign is not running against the opponents, they are attempting to convince voters to vote for a project. That’s hard to do. It’s only happened twice in 22 years.
A few years ago I saw some polling that showed at the start of one of the Measure J campaigns, there was already nearly 40 percent of the voters who opposed the project. That means in order to win, somehow the campaign has to convince about 30 to 40 percent of persuadable voters to support the project, while the opposition only needs to move about 10 percent into opposition.
It’s not an even playing field to start with and it turns out, in Davis, it’s far easier to scare voters into opposition as opposed to convincing them to support the project.
That said, I don’t disagree that the campaign was mismanaged.
Millstein argues that the developers should have “talked to voters to find out what, in their eyes, would make for a project that was better for Davis and modified the project accordingly.”
Instead, she argued, “they polled Davisites to find out what would ‘sell’ to voters and rushed a virtually unchanged project to voters (just cut in half) only a year and a half later.”
In hindsight, it’s easy to criticize a failed strategy. But there was a certain logic to it. The project narrowly failed. People were most concerned with traffic and size. Shrinking the size of the project while being able to run a field campaign felt like the best way to move forward—particularly if they didn’t want to do a whole new EIR.
So why did the measure go down overwhelmingly this time when a larger project in 2020 narrowly failed? The most obvious answer was the lawsuit.
Millstein writes, “That includes over $200,000 on a heavy-handed free-speech-squelching developer-funded lawsuit, which, bizarrely, Greenwald says is not a campaign expenditure issue.”
In fact, I never said that. At the time, I didn’t have a particular problem with filing the suit, which I think has largely been mischaracterized. It was disastrous to have Dan Carson do it and probably the icing on the cake was then to seek attorney fees. It just looked awful.
For all intents and purposes, they lost the campaign right there and never recovered.
But I think the campaign failed to recover in part because it failed to capture the imagination of the voters. Why do we need an innovation center? I think there is a great and compelling story there—but one that was largely untold.
That’s not a campaign finance issue, that’s a messaging issue.
My argument was somewhat mischaracterized by Millstein. I wrote that the No campaign could afford to operate on the cheap, use “volunteer precinct walkers and canvassers” and “do their own in-house mailers or drop pieces, they can print off their home computer and copy it at Copyland or FedEx office and get away with it.”
She writes, “let me get this straight. Not having money is a huge campaign advantage. Got it.”
That’s not what I was saying. What I was saying is that the No campaign was able to be effective running a cheap grassroots campaign, whereas if the Yes side tried that, they would just look “cheap.”
Millstein adds that “nothing is stopping developer-led campaigns from having unpaid volunteers (these need not be students, as Greenwald suggests) who are willing to dedicate their time and skills to crafting a message, walking precincts, talking with folks at the Farmers Market, spreading the word on social media, etc. Nothing.”
Perhaps true. But you can’t run the type of ground campaign that the Yes on H campaign was running only using volunteers. To do it right, you have to pay people. That’s just the nature of how these things work.
Certainly they could have saved money along the edges and certainly they didn’t run a good campaign, but I would argue that they were always going to run an expensive campaign and, for the most part, we will not see a Measure J campaign run for less than hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What sank it was a bad decision and poor messaging.
You’ve repeated this a bunch of times, without disclosing the percentage of voters who automatically support all (or almost all) development proposals (which could also be in the 30-40% range).
Some of whom seem to congregate on the Vanguard.
For example, you’ve acknowledged supporting all development proposals with the exception of Covell Village. (Which nowadays, you’d probably also support.)
By the way, I’ve never actually met anyone who opposes ALL proposals, and I know most of the politically-active “slow-growthers”.
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The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the project came out of the application consideration process with unanswered questions. A well-planned project should be presenting those answers (regardless of whether those answers are prepared by consultants or the developer) to staff and the commissions during the process … so that those answers are part of the public record. Council should be engaging and highlighting those questions and answers during its deliberation process. Conducting a series of public education workshops focusing on those questions and answers should be part of normal public engagement.
If a project is attempting to use (and pay) consultants to develop those answers during the election campaign they are always going to be a day late and a dollar short (no matter how much they spend). An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
The two projects that passed actually followed that model. Nishi 2016 illuminated the important public questions, and Nishi 2018 proactively addressed those questions up front. As a result the opponents were playing defense. In both DiSC 2020 and DiSC 2022 the developer was playing defense.
Measure J was conceived and implemented as a way to ensure that well-thought-out and well-planned projects happened. Arguably, the projects that have lost their Measure J votes have not been well-planned, and in some cases not even well-thought-out … and throwing money around willy nilly did nothing to fix that glaring shortcoming.
“The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the project came out of the application consideration process with unanswered questions. ”
No, it assumes that citizens do not pay sufficient attention to local government – which we largely know is accurate. Even if there weren’t unanswered questions and there was a full process, the number of people informed and participating is going to be exceedingly low.
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If that is true, then why hasn’t the City improved the process so that the citizens have a reason to pay attention, participate, and be informed? Addressing that root-cause problem is the only way that the massive levels of distrust that exist in Davis will be dealt with. Arguably, the 40% you cite from the polls isn’t 40% who are against projects, but rather 40% who distrust their local government and its actions.
I think it goes way beyond the city’s ability. Davis is one of the more engaged communities, but even then, the number of people paying close attention is exceedingly low.
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You appear to be throwing your arms up in the air and giving up without even trying to address the issue you have raised.
At the forum at URC for discussion of the DiSC proposal, the quite large room was packed … standing room only. At the multiple community meetings for the Water Project held in school MPRs and fire stations each time the room was packed. The room was packed for all of the community meetings for the Mace Mess held at the East Davis Fire Station and Pioneer School. Davis Community Church’s large meeting room was packed for the LWV housing forum featuring Richard Rothstein. The Gatherings Initiative meeting less than 30 days after the November 2016 election packed the Senior Center. The Gatherings Initiative’s meeting on healthcare packed the auditorium at Vets Memorial.
The City does have the ability. What they don’t appear to have is the desire. As a result they get what they got in Measure H.
Einstein’s definition of Insanity is “Doing the same thing over and over and over again, and expecting a different outcome.”
I do think you’ve lost sight of the issue here. There is a reason why campaigns have to educate and inform voters. Could and should the city do better on this score? Of course, but that’s really not the issue here. (Even the Gatherings Initiative with a large audience is a small fraction of the voters in the community).
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If I have lost sight of the issue, then help me see. What is it that I should be seeing?
You have chosen just a portion of the meetings … the Gatherings Initiative ones … to make your point, but in doing so you are ignoring the very basic fact that The DiSC meeting at URC (100+ attendees) drew a very different audience from the Water Project meetings (approximately 100 for each of the multiple meeings), which was a very different audience from the Mace Mess meetings (100+ each), which in turn was a very different audience from the League of Women voters housing meeting (375+), which also was a very different audience than the Gatherings Initiative social justice meeting (365+), which was also different from the Gatherings Initiative healthcare initiative meeting (300+). Add all those up and you have a significant total (which obviously would have some inter-meeting redundancy at the individual attendee level), but those numbers do not count the subsequent community dialogue participants that the meetings generate.
Zoom makes participation even easier. In October 2021 the League of Women Voters had an education forum on social justice in healthcare “Opportunities for Reducing Inequity & Addressing Health Disparities” that had over 350 participants.
I believe you are giving up before even trying. Where would Steph Curry be if he never tried a 3 point shot? … never up, never in.
Even more to the point regarding the City, where would the NBA be if it hadn’t tried the 3-point shot experiment? … or where would MLB be if it hadn’t tried the Designated Hitter experiment?
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But they didn’t shrink the size of the project. The northern half of the project was never actually off the table, as the recent events of August 12th so clearly illustrated. (see Vanguard article HERE) The public/voters clearly understood that the north half was not off the table and that the full traffic addition was inevitable. Trying to make the “half sized project” came across as a lie, and opened the door to asking what other of the project’s assertions might be lies.
The only way to assure the public that the project truly was cut in half was to put the northern portion into an Ag Mitigation easement.
That’s not true. The DiSC project that the voters voted on was half the size of the original. Had the voters approved it, it would have taken another vote to approve development on the other part of the project.
David, the filing of the pre-ap for the northern half clearly shows that the DiSC 2022 project wasn’t half the size of DiSC 2020. “Half the size” was a smoke and mirrors argument. The project was simply broken apart into two separate phases. The only way the project would have been half the size would have been for the northern half to be permanently restricted form any future development.
The issue was traffic, and the sum total of the traffic of the two phases would have been the same as the traffic of the original project. Residents don’t care about how traffic is reported in paper reports. They care about traffic that shows up on the streets. The traffic from the northern half (when/if it was built) was real traffic volume, not imaginary traffic volume.
But the voters could vote for one but not the other – or neither.
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That answer looks at the political process, but ignores the traffic impacts.
Having two votes rather than one vote does not change the combined Fehr & Peers traffic projections of the two phases of the project. Fehr & Peers does not discount traffic volume numbers based on likelihood of ballot measure passage.
If “Half-DISC” had passed, the other half (“100% Residential DISC”) would have a much greater chance of passing. (And by all appearances, approval of both halves was the only way to get a grade-separated crossing for bicyclists and pedestrians.)
Since “Half-DISC” failed, “100% Residential DISC” would essentially be an isolated leap-frog development. (And probably one without a grade-separated crossing on its own.)
When someone like Dave Hart comes expresses those type of concerns (as he immediately did), you know that a budding proposal is in trouble.
It’s sort of like dominoes. When one parcel falls to development, others (nearby) do as well.
If Shriner’s (or even Palomino Ranch) is approved, this will also likely have a “domino” effect. Partly because the developments would then “depend upon each other” to pay for roadway expansions, etc.
(Similar to the bicycle/pedestrian crossing, which wasn’t going to be fully paid for by “half-DiSC”.)
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars = yes
But spending a million dollars is quite a bit more than “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” If they handle the approval process correctly, one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars should be all that is needed.
How much did Nishi 2018 spend? How much did WDAAC spend?
“But spending a million dollars is quite a bit more than “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” ”
Is there really a functional difference?
David, if you are offered $100,000 or $200,000 or even $300,000 will you consider that offer as functionally different than if you are offered $1 million?
I have reached my 5 comment limit for the day. I will refrain from commenting further. Time’s yours.
To answer that question, you’d probably need to compare that to what they expect to make, if a development is approved.
In the future, I suspect that they might not be initiating legal actions against opponents, so there should be some cost savings there.
And if they continue to try to subsequently change development agreements (such as at Bretton Woods), that would be more potential cost savings to be had – depending upon the council, of course.
Actually, it’s been ‘told’ many times, was repeatedly raised during both DISC campaigns, and has been the mainstay of the economic development plans of the last decade-plus in Davis. Evidently the voters don’t care. Bear in mind that the voting percentage of the population of Davis is much likelier to already have a home, already have a job or retirement income, and see little direct benefit from economic development. Many would probably prefer higher taxes to more traffic. I think we can dispense with the notion of selling Davis voters on the benefits of tech hubs or innovation centers or whatever you want to call them. Subsequent city councils are going to have to develop other strategies for balancing the city’s budget and creating long-term revenue sources.
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Very well said Don … especially the part that I have bolded. Even if economic development is successfully pursued (by any city council) the revenues are so slow in developing, that city council is going to have to develop other strategies for balancing the city’s budget. Further, the city’s inability to control costs growth will erode any initial net revenue margin until it becomes a deficit.
The city’s ability to control its costs is an out of control wildfire, but now that we have a second ladder truck in town, maybe the council members can climb up that ladder and douse the wildfire flames from above.
This article neglects the reality that between the two votes on Disc the traffic issues along Mace and on I-80 blew up into a major issue of discontent in the community. I know it made a huge difference for at least one voter who pays little attention to the inside baseball of Davis politics where this article and most of the comments dwells. He got caught in a traffic jam going to Target and subsequently voted no.
My takeaway for future annexation vote proponents is that the traffic issues must be fixed by the city before you can put your project before the voters.
Traffic bledw up as a major issue in 2018-19, the first DISC was 2020, the second was 2022.
I made my decision when it took me 20 minutes to drive south from the Mace Curve to Guadalajaras for a burrito.
Just like my friend who voted no after getting stuck trying to go to Target.
David you are probably right about the timeline but in the time between the elections the lack of solutions brought the issue to a boil with little more than promises from the City and the developer. Trust and credibility had been lost. Nothing short of actual fixes could have taken traffic off the table by June 2022.