Special to the Vanguard
Davis, CA – Francesca Wright has declared her bid for the District Three Davis City Council seat vacated by Lucas Frerichs. She steps into the race to represent the people and neighborhoods of District Three in a challenging period of climate crisis and housing shortage. “As a collaborative leader I intend to harness the vast intellectual and creative resources within our community to tackle tough problems. I listen. I organize. I stand up for neighbors and the greater good.”
Wright pledges to work to right-size city staffing. She will prioritize filling vacancies in Community Development to ensure robust community involvement in our pending 
general plan update and to clear the backlog of building permits as households seek to electrify, build accessory dwelling units, and make other improvements. She wants a grant writer in the new Department of Housing and Social Services so that department can draw down state and federal funding, provide renter assistance, and manage affordable housing programs. She looks forward to working with community groups to form community land trusts as a solution for long term housing affordability.
Wright has frequented public meetings over the past five years as co-founder of Yolo People Power, a network dedicated to envision and advocate for a community safety model which ensures human dignity, access to fundamental needs, and harm reduction. Under her leadership volunteers have researched public safety models for commissions and council members. In collaboration with other community groups her efforts have resulted in the expanded role of the independent police auditor, the creation of the Police Accountability Commission and the new Department of Housing and Social Services.
Wright is a retired small business owner who worked with First 5 Commissions throughout California as program evaluator in the area of child and family services. Her undergraduate degree is in Early Childhood Education and she earned a Masters in Public Administration from University of Southern California. In 2021 she received the Thong Hy Huynh award for civil rights advocacy. She lives in Davis with her husband, Lee Bartholomew, a retired real estate appraiser. Learn more about her campaign at www.WrightforDavis.org
Her platform looks all nice, warm and cozy. It’s got the feel good doing stuff for the “housing shortage” crowd. It says all the nice inclusivity, collaboration and community words. It says she will listen to the community as most candidates will say….though I’d really like to see someone say; I have a vision and here are the reasons it’s the best solution…get on board (that boys and girls is called “leadership”). Hey, I give her props for mentioning the parks, rec programs, street repair..etc… I’m always bring those things up as my personal wants in the community. But the biggest thing is that I see no economic development plan, economic growth guidelines or economic philosophy. YOU GOTTA BE ABLE TO PAY FOR ALL THAT STUFF YOU WANT THE CITY TO PROVIDE. You can’t just look for grant funding for everything. You gotta have a plan that creates a fertile environment for businesses in Davis. Those businesses generate tax revenue that pays for stuff for the city. So far, pretty much everything in Ms. Wright’s platform is a cost to the city….or try to squeeze developers …which of course will delay and impede future development.
Look I get that you have to walk a fine line with economic growth plans in Davis. You have to deal with the irrational No Growth crowd and NIMBYs who believe in the magic of infill and the mystical eldritch wisdom of the General Plan/Downtown Plan. So you can’t go around saying the “G”(rowth) word very easily. But econmic growth is reality that the city is going to have face if it wants to maintain it’s standard of living and meet it’s housing requirements/needs. All that housing that some say is a “shortage” that requires new housing is going to cost the city money to maintain. So the city better have a plan to increase their income to pay for it.
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Keith, what tax revenues do the businesses you have in mind generate? The preponderance of businesses in Davis are either provide services, (and services do not qualify for sales taxes) or research and development businesses, and the creation of intellectual property all does not qualify for sales taxes. Davis does have some businesses that create taxable things (e.g. DMG Mori) but those businesses are few and far between.
Now if the City could collaborate with UCD to identify emerging ideas coming out of research on the campus that would result in the production of “things” that are taxable when they are sold, then that would provide the kind of new revenues you describe. However, UCD has shown no interest in that kind of collaboration with the City of Davis.
Matt, I don’t think that the city has made a serious effort to collaborate since the 1990s. Keith’s point about an economic vision, which you and I have discussed as well, needs to be the starting point of making a serious sell. Clearly Sacramento was able to do this.
I agree Richard, the history is one that is devoid of any serious effort to collaborate on economic development by either party … the City or UCD. I strongly support mutual collaboration between UCD and the City as a starting point.
The property where those businesses occupy pay generate property tax revenue….the kind of property tax revenue that is generally a positive to cities….unlike new residential development.
Businesses also spend locally which also generates tax revenue.
It’s been my experience (at one time…long, long ago…. I was tasked with finding seed stage investment opportunities at schools, entrepreneur/funding organizations…I even visited Xerox PARC on a couple occasions) that most businesses that come out of Universities aren’t directly connected to the University….they have no official tie to the school. So while an official business development relationship between the city of Davis and UCD would be nice…it’s not detrimental to moving things forward. Now my experience wasn’t in bio-tech, ag and life sciences…..it was I.T. and software (the kind layered on top of a relational database). At any rate, Davis needs to focus on retaining the start up companies it has by planning (and facilitating the development of) for commercial and industrial growth. Those more mature startups (the ones expanding) tend to spend more (in general and locally). More of this kind of spending, leads to more retail which leads to more sales tax revenue for the city.
The other thing Davis should consider is a plan to create destination retail/entertainment. It blows me away that there isn’t a dive bar and live music venue(s) in a college town. I’ve said before that while I’m no fan of the student population in the city proper, I’m all for planning and creating a student quarter that focuses on student services and entertainment that draws in others in the same target demographics from out of town.
Keith, I’d love to meet with you and build on your ideas. francesca.wright@gmail.com.
Keith, in concept what you describe is good. My concern is how much it applies to Davis. That pessimism on my part stems from a number of factors. Regarding property tax, if new buildings are built, I agree, but most of the businesses that have come out of UCD in Davis have ended up occupying existing space, and the amount of incremental property tax revenue in those cases is negligible. If the companies coming out of UCD were to change from that historical pattern, then some added property tax may come, and that is why collaboration with UCD is so important … to have a basic understanding of the technology transfer pipeline.
Regarding retail sales tax revenues from the added businesses, what existing Davis businesses would those companies purchase from? Our local retail economy is moribund, to say the least, and the likelihood that it will get worse rather than better in the coming years is a good bet.
Your observations in your final paragraph are spot on in my opinion. Here too mutual collaboration with UCD is essential because the only “draw” that Davis has as a destination is the University … and it is a huge draw that is almost completely untapped.
I strongly support your taking Francesca up on her invitation.
Yeah, let’s get the ” Davis Civic Intelligentsia” together to chat. You (Matt), me, Richard, Don, Bill…etc…)…..now what did Groucho Marx say about clubs?
So yeah…this kind of fall into some of my previous background in working with start up companies and early stage start up investment. In venture capital, it’s expected that at least 9 out 10 start up that a VC will invest in will companies will fail. So that’s a bunch of companies that have been reviewed and vetted for future success that will likely fail. And yes most of those companies do not have tangible revenue or any revenue at all (so not tax revenue generators). What VCs hope for is one home run (a company to blow up big)….I mean sure they’ll take a double or triple (early acquisition) but the goal is to hit it big. So the same should go for the city supporting the companies that come out of UCD. We hope they’ll all make it big. But we know most of them won’t. What we want is that at least one of the start ups to make it big, expand and plant roots in Davis. Also, while all those start ups that are planted and growing, they create a higher concentration of specialized workers/knowledge which can attract outside companies that want to connect with the companies and products being created in Davis. All that creates more activity and tax revenue for the city if it’s also paired with entertainment/retail growth plans.
Growth begets growth. So yeah…at first the most sales tax generated will be by a few stores like Target, Office Max…maybe Ace Hardware. But commercial real estate developers and their tenants keep an eye on what’s growing and will become a new market. So more retail offerings will pop up as more industrial businesses (and housing) continue to grow.
Now as you know, I’m not a Pro Growth guy for the sake of growth. I’m not an advocate for more market rate housing unless there’s a compelling economic reason for it (and there isn’t). I’m the first to complain about how busy traffic is on Covell, that I have a harder and harder time finding convenient parking downtown and that I like having open farm fields surrounding Davis. But I think there needs to be a balance between economic growth and the maintenance if not improvement of the quality of life in Davis.
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Bill will have a hard time attending. He resides in the great beyond now. With that said, I think Francesca would benefit most from your insight and experience if you meet one to one.
Marx was a guy who played the angles, so I’m not inclined to view what he says as manifesto.
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The challenge this community faces is that UCD as a predominantly agricultural university really doesn’t produce industry. There clearly are exceptions, but if you look at the annual press releases that UCD publishes with the year’s 16-20 startups, none are industrial, and 90% of them are human medical advances coming from the Sacramento medical campus, and wanting to locate in proximity to that medical campus.
Now it is possible that there are industrial startups that fly under the radar that we don’t know about, but until UCD decides to open the kimono, those companies will continue to be invisible.
Mars/M&M and BASF are industrial companies that have established presence(s) here, but the “output” from those respective locations is intellectual capital, which is not taxable. I suspect the lion’s share of their purchases are office supplies, and I suspect those purchases go through their corporate purchasing, which generates no local tax.
As a community we are hard on the shoals of a conundrum.
BTW, on a separate subject I have gathered the $ per square foot data for Davis, and it confirms the argument that you have made and I have seconded about the addition of new housing making existing housing less affordable rather than more affordable.
We have two excellent candidates in District 3. It will be an interesting race.