Disclaimer: Opinions are those of the writer and do not reflect those of The Vanguard or its Editorial Staff. The Vanguard does not endorse political candidates and is committed to publishing all public opinions and maintaining an open forum subject to guidelines related to decency and tone, not content.
My bias: Davis needs a new type of voice on council– “change-makers” to establish trust and collaboration with the community.
I write this having attended more City Council and Commission meetings than all current council members, and all but a few community members.
For years now, I have seen city government fail to harness our community’s education and social capital wealth since the failure of the 2014 R&D Business Park initiative. The community has not leveraged its charmed geography—a unique rural area highly accessible via I-80 and rail service between the Bay Area & State Capitol. And proximity to UC Davis, a major research university that brings billions in grant dollars to our community. We are ideally located to incubate a wealth of startups and attract businesses. This should be giving us a robust tax base and providing a rich offering of city services.
Instead, we are failing. So, we now need to raise our sales taxes (Yes on Q) and we seem to have been forced to site new affordable housing next to the freeway, land that should have been used for new startups and businesses to build our city’s tax base. (I note council decided not to site housing on Russell at the redone Trader Joes Mall across from the University this year).
It used to be noted at council meetings that Davis’s greatest asset is its involved and educated residents. No longer. Instead, city staff and council, though their actions, indicate they don’t believe this anymore. It used to be residents could express their insight and expertise by being involved in an independent city commission. Full commissions used to bring up new ideas, and could even vote to disagree with the council, even over ballot measures. No more. People volunteering for commissions are told by staff that their role is to serve the current council’s policy, even though this contradicts the not-yet-updated official Commission Handbook that recalls the old way: “Commissions are independent.”
The gridlock preceded this, but the City has over the last two years reduced by over 25% the number of community members who participate through commissions…and now the city is proposing to restrict items commissioners can even talk about: any one member of council can slow or block a discussion item on a commission agenda. Staff has over the years sometimes subtly, but often through policy changes, used the Brown Open Meeting Act to make commission meetings more formal with fewer free-flowing discussions, especially constricting public engagement. Even the right of the public to hand out unreviewed material to commissioners has been challenged. Current new policy is that only developers can show PowerPoints to council and commissions at a public hearing.
The fact is I-80 was quietly advanced for years without any input from City’s Transportation Commission—or citizens that are world-class experts at UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies—is troubling. The same goes for failure to engage world-class arboriculture experts at the University or volunteers at Tree Davis in the city’s urban forestry program.
As I write this, I acknowledge that the city is hard to govern (see Councilman Will Arnold’s piece) because there are many involved and with often contradictory voices who advocate different visions—many have shifted first to skepticism and then cynicism after years of being ignored. But city hall response has not been to rethink the process to rebuild trust and find common ground and harmonize the diversity, but instead to push through plans—most of which meet failure if they are forced to be tested at the ballot box. Measure Q is the latest skirmish.
I am not accusing council or staff of corruption or ill-intention: I just note a shift in culture where city staff seems to view themselves as a service delivery organization, so concerned residents are reduced to “customers.” This metaphor transforms community involvement to a friction that slows staff from “getting things done.” Public involvement is often ignored until someone raises legal issues of transparency and public participation. As a defensive mechanism, the City’s process of community involvement seems to be reduce to legal minimum to minimize the public criticism. This is a death spiral of mistrust and nihilism toward any city initiative by some of most involved and concerned citizens.
One might think less public engagement is a reasonable trade off, but one can look at the opportunity cost of not allowing engagement of community expertise, especially university faculty—or the consequences of alienation of the most informed and civically engaged members of community. This might be linked to repeated failures to build consensus to pass J/R votes to increase our tax base and build housing.
The tree policy is a classic example. After Tree Davis identified that the tree ordinance was failing, over the last ten years the Tree Commission has three times drafted a revision of the Tree Ordinance, and three times the city staff failed to advance this draft for consideration to City Council. The council has finally responded—in last year—by disbanding the Tree Commission. Many other activists have similar stories of City Staff not supporting, or delaying for years community driven innovations and initiatives (e.g. The Housing Trust Fund) while council stood by.
A new General Plan won’t fix this alienation: the plan to hire an outside consultant won’t address a dysfunctional planning process that grows out of this culture. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” Peter Drucker famously said.
We need to heal and rebuild trust via a new culture of collaboration, one where city staff believes its job is to go beyond the bare minimum community engagement required by law.
MY BIAS for the council election therefore is selecting among candidates someone who will change the “go along/get along with staff” default of council. One who is not afraid of conflict, dissent or admitting mistakes.
I love Davis, and have, and will continue to endorse most tax measures and land annexation (growth) measures as this seems to be the best the process can do (Yes on Q). But the decline of Davis is clear for all to see.
Recommendation for Council Election
District 2: Central Davis west of Oak, North Davis
Dillon Horton is the candidate for change and clearly the most ready-to-go, day one. He knows the district, having been campaigning door-to-door and listening in Farmers Market for 3 years. Or maybe his listening began when he first ran for city council in 2020. He has attended probably over 150 council and commission meetings even as he holds a full-time job. He understands how the city works and has demonstrated he works hard. As chair of the Police Accountability Commission, he pushed through changes while collaborating with the police and city manager. Some folks might be misled by his relative youth, but he is by far the most serious and dedicated of the candidates. I think he is most likely to change the chemistry of the “go along/get along” city council culture that has reduced community engagement
Victor Lagunes. Victor has proven leadership as the past head of the Davis teachers’ union (DTA), and he has the (unofficial) support of the impressive DCAN group, which was inspired by the Bapu Vaitla candidacy. But he is a Junior High political science teacher who does not have subject expertise in the most important areas where council has key control (land use planning, policing, public works) and has no experience with city process, or staff and its culture, knowledge necessary to be effective. He has attended few, if any, council or commission meetings. I am hopeful he will grow into one of the change agents we need.
Linda Deos. This is the 3rd time Deos has run for local office. She is well known in the community and has an extensive volunteer resume. As former chair of the Yolo Democrat Central Committee she has the most establishment endorsements, as you will see when you get her mailers. I commend Deos for her promise of specific steps to improve the public engagement process, but we will see, if elected, whether she will be a change agent or take the easier path and be a conflict avoider, like the majority of the current council—i.e. rarely challenging staff recommendations that are often developed by without proactively engaging community input ahead of the council meeting.
Davis School District—2 seats are up for reelection but only one has a contest
Trustee Area 2. (Cannery, N Davis, central-“East Davis” by Slide Hill Park (Pole Line-Loyola/Monarch)
Lea Darrah4 (incumbent vs Elisabeth (Lizzy) Griffith (public policy researcher @ state)
Darrah has done a good job as Trustee as she gained her footing, having been unopposed in her first “election.” Griffith is new on the DJUSD scene and has no background in education as attendee/activist at board of trustee or school policy. Not hearing a reason to unseat Darrah, and Griffith’s inexperience leads me to conclude that Darrah is the choice, though Griffith has an impressive profession resume. DTA has endorsed Darrah.
Local Davis Tax Propositions
Davis Vanguard is best place to research with many op-ed pro/con articles: Davisvanguard.com> menu> >Archives>City of Davis
**** City Measure Q 1% Sales Tax YES4
This is the most controversial measure on your ballot.
If Q doesn’t pass, we will have deep cuts in services and programs. The opponents of Q argue the problem is that the city spends too much on salary increases and poor financial controls—and the city council did not have to appoint people so the Finance and Budget Commission was operating last year. I am more trusting…and find their arguments not credible. I believe the problem is on the long-term revenue side of the equation as we have not built a tax base. We have a city political culture that has not figured out how to build consensus, and so we have gridlock on solutions to build our tax base with a balance between housing and industrial. NET: I believe creating a crisis by not passing Q won’t fix this.
50% Yes required.
Measure T Library Parcel Tax YES
To fund operating new south Davis Library to aid overcrowding in Main Davis Branch on 14th street. This is an investment in what makes Davis special—its payback is not just our kids and our ourselves, but our property values. 2/3 Yes votes required.
The author said, “If Q doesn’t pass, we will have deep cuts in services and programs” and “I believe creating a crisis by not passing Q…” That is a false alarmist claim repeatedly made by Measure Q’s supporters. But it makes no sense.
This is because Measure Q is NOT A RENEWAL of an existing sales tax for which a defeat would indeed reduce city revenues probably costing jobs and resulting in a decrease in services.
Instead, Measure Q is actually a NEW TAX for which the proponents themselves have claimed will provide “additional programs and services”. Defeating Q will not decrease city revenues from existing levels. It just means the city will have less NEW money of ours to waste
If the author hopes for credibility by sharing the benefit of his supposed wisdom, he should probably not just parrot what our civic leaders are crowing.
If you can’t see that city services have ALREADY BEEN REDUCED, you’re not paying attention.
Keith, I was the No on Measure Q presenter in a recent forum with both Yes and No represented. I was asked by the forum moderator to make the opening statement for No first, and I stepped through the history of City decisions that have led us to this current position where we have a choice between a bailout where “Nothing in this Sales Tax Increase Fixes What Is Broken” (see https://davisvanguard.org/2024/10/guest-commentary-nothing-in-this-sales-tax-increase-fixes-what-is-broken-vote-no-on-measure-q/) and an intervention. After I had finished, the presenter for the Yes side got up and said, “I do not disagree with a single example that Matt has described, but I do disagree with his conclusion.”
After some back and forth dialogue with the moderation panel, they asked me if I wanted to add anything. Rather than making an additional statement, I asked the Yes representative the following, “Your opening statement was very interesting. If you agree with all the examples I provided, why do you disagree with my conclusion?”
He smiled and said, “I will answer your question with a question. Do you trust this current City Council to make the decisions to direct the available budget money to preserving the existing services rather than directing the money to their pet projects/services?”
I really didn’t need to say more.
You can distrust the city government all you want. Extra tax revenue diverted to “pet projects” MIGHT happen. It probably will to some degree…that’s how these things get approved. But you know what? If the Tax Measure is not approved it’s 100% CERTAIN THAT NO NEW TAX REVENUE WILL FUND THE CITY’S (currently lacking) SERVICES.
The YES on Q presenter doesn’t sound intelligent enough to verbalize that distinction as the bottom line reply to all the NO talking points.
What’s the big deal? It’s a sales tax increase that most of the surrounding communities have implemented or are currently at or near that sales tax amount. So it’s not like it puts Davis at a competitive disadvantage with it’s surrounding neighbors. It’s not like it’s going to adversely effect little business that Davis has…what’s another penny on a student’s purchase of coffee or a burrito? It’s not like this is a Parcel Tax that directly costs the current residents of Davis.
The only thing I can guess as to the NO’s agenda is that their plan is to allow city services to be run into the ground until the electorate become so unhappy with city leaders that they’re voted out and the NO people get voted in.
Interesting reply Keith.
The Yes on Q presenter is a former member of City Council, and I have always thought he was intelligent … and I still do. He chose not to give a political answer … and instead gave an honest/candid answer.
The big deal has little to do with ourselves, and a whole lot to do with our children and grandchildren. Passing this tax is kicking the can down the road so that the next generation of residents are saddled with a wealth of financial obligations just because we couldn’t practice some fiscal self-discipline.
Of course it’s kicking the can down the road. But if you don’t pass the tax; that road is going to be riddled with (more) pot holes, increased traffic and less places to stop and enjoy along the way. Of course it has the tax has to do with ourselves. We’re paying the sales tax. We need the IMMEDIATE tax revenue to pay for city services. Roads suck right now, Traffic is getting worse, basic parks and rec maintenance is getting worse every year.
Your reasoning is like being indignant that your kid doesn’t have a good paying job. So you want them to have a plan to go back to school, get a degree and get that good job. Meanwhile your kid and they’re family have a mortgage payment, need to fix their roof, fix some leaky plumbing, make a car payment…buy food….but you don’t want your kid to borrow money to pay the immediate bills.
Keith, in his article Alan includes the following … “A new General Plan won’t fix this alienation: the plan to hire an outside consultant won’t address a dysfunctional planning process that grows out of this culture. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” Peter Drucker famously said.”
The problem in the Davis government isn’t the people, it is the culture. Josh Chapman is capable of doing the hard work that is required to change the culture. So are Bapu Vaitla, and Gloria Partida and Donna Neville. However, they are unlikely to undertake that task if we give them more money to play with.
John Meyer completede an assessment of the organizational structure of the City, and made a coherent, complete recommendation for eliminating waste. What he found were significant span of control issues, including numerous instances where a supervising employee was supervising as few as one single employee. But none of his recommendations were pursued. The City’s then CFO identified serious problems in the City’s purchasing practices that were costing the City huge amounts of money. More recently a subcommittee of the FBC completed a focused study of purchasing practices and audited a significant number of purchases and found that the City’s purchasing practices that were costing the City huge amounts of money. Both of the last two audits by the independent auditing firm called out the City’s purchasing actions as being in violation of the City’s purchasing policies where they existed, and that those policies were/are woefully deficient. That is a decade of inaction for a clearly defined, very costly problem. If we give the City more money to play with, that woeful history will just continue.
That is why I have characterized the No on Measure Q position as “an intervention” and Jeff Boone has characterized the Yes on Measure Q position as a bailout rewarding a legacy of bad management and bad fiscal decisions. If your child was stewarding his/her money the way the City has, would you give that child more money to squander?
Matt, why do you go on about this? NO ONE DISPUTES THAT THE CITY’S FISCAL HEALTH IS BECAUSE OF BAD POLICY (culture..etcc.). In fact few would debate the bureaucracy that exists in the city.
So you want to penalize the city with some tough love? That’s your answer? SO YOU HAVE NO PROBLEM HAMSTRINGING CITY SERVICES IN ORDER TO TEACH THE CITY LEADERS/STAFF/PEOPLE A LESSON???
Your approach is like telling a fat person with a history of poor eating and exercise habits that they shouldn’t have insulin and should just eat better and get more exercise. Does that person need to do that for their long term health? Yes. Is that the best immediate solution for that person? No. But…hey…you can feel good about your tough love approach.
Or another analogy: You live in a house with your adult kid. The house is falling apart. It’s your kid’s responsibility to have things fixed. You have a leaky roof, bad plumbing, mold, pests…etc..that all need to be taken care of. Your kid should be paying to take care of this stuff. But they’re not. So you tell them you’re not going to step in and pay for anything until your kid goes back to school and gets a better job and can pay for all the repairs. So meanwhile YOU have to live in a house with a leaky roof, bad plumbing, mold and pests. But hey…tough love you feel good about your situation.
I want diving boards on at Manor and Arroyo pools (they weren’t in service all summer). I want better streets; H Street to the Little League Fields…you need off road suspension to go down it. I want better pavement on the North Davis Greenbelt path (they started it a few years ago but stopped). This is the kind of stuff that gets cut from the budget when there isn’t enough money. They’re not paying for that stuff now; they certainly won’t be paying for it without a tax revenue increase.
You want to fix the city’s leadership decisions and policies? VOTE THEM OUT. RUN A CAMPAIGN WITH A CANDIDATE THE SUPPORTS THIS KIND OF REFORM. CONVICE THE PEOPLE. The problem of course is that the leaders are balancing what the people want with what they can do. NO ON Q IS BASICALLY GOING FULL TEA PARTY ON THE CITY BUDGET. Like I said, I’m all for fiscal and economic reform. But at the expense of the city’s standard of living.
He did. He came in 4th in a field of 4.
Don,
I know he did. HE FAILED TO CONVINCE THE PEOPLE. He ran on being fiscally responsible for the sake of being fiscally responsible. That rarely gets anyone elected anywhere. What he (and others) failed to do is to show a vision of Davis that was desirable to the electorate. That’s what you sell…the vision of a better place/tomorrow…. with the fiscal responsibility as the means for delivering that vision. You don’t sell a weight loss program by convincing people they need to lose weight for the sake of losing weight; hey, think of all the money you’ll save on food in the long run! No you sell them on the prospect of a new healthier and better looking body.
Keith, Don is correct that I came in 4th in a field of 4 . It was a strong field, and as you say I failed to convince enough voters to be in the top 3 in that election. You are 100% correct that a campaign built on being fiscally responsible for the sake of being fiscally responsible rarely gets anyone elected anywhere.
With that said it is worth noting that 7,157 voters did vote for fiscal responsibility, and that up through the 2016 election where I ran, of the top 25 City Council vote tallies 7, 157 came in 13th, with 10 candidates with lower vote totals than 7,157 all getting elected.
1 Elected (3) 2016 Lee
2 Elected (3) 2016 Frerichs
3 Elected (3) 2016 Arnold
4 Elected (3) 2012 Wolk
5 Elected (3) 2000 Boyd, S
6 Elected (2) 2010 Krovoza
7 Elected (2) 2002 Asmundson
8 Elected (2) 2002 Puntillo
9 Elected (3) 2004 Greenwald
10 Elected (3) 2008 Saylor
11 Elected (3) 2008 Souza
12 Elected (3) 2004 Saylor
13 Not Elected 2016 Williams
14 Elected (2) 2018 Partida
15 Elected (3) 2004 Souza
16 Elected (3) 2000 Harrington
17 Elected (3) 2012 Frerichs
18 Elected (2) 2006 Asmundson
19 Elected (2) 2006 Heystek
20 Elected (3) 2008 Greenwald
21 Elected (3) 2000 Greenwald
22 Elected (2) 2010 Swanson
23 Not Elected 2004 Forbes
24 Elected (3) 2012 Lee
25 Not Elected 2006 Levy
Keith, I agree 100% with your point about “a vision of a better placed/tomorrow … a vision of Davis that was desirable to the electorate.” I’m not sure whether you were here in 2016, but this is what the people who voted for me saw and heard. I’ll be interested to hear what you think of it.
Welcome to friends, neighbors, and those who are just curious:
My 17 years living in the Davis community have been the best years of my life. The high quality of life that I have experienced in Davis has made me passionate about both Davis’ present and its future.
I have been, and will continue to be, an Independent Voice for ALL Davis Citizens. If I am elected in June, I will be 75 days from my 69th birthday. Age 69 is way too late to start a political career, and as a result my campaign is not to be elected to political office, rather it is to become an elected public servant of the citizens and residents of Davis.
I will Fight for Sustainability . . . Economic Sustainability, Quality of Life Sustainability, Energy Sustainability and Environmental Sustainability. As good as the quality of life in Davis has been, there are significant threats to that quality of life. The cracks we all see each day in our streets are clear indications that we have not managed our finances prudently or responsibly. We have failed to do necessary maintenance to our bike paths, streets, sidewalks, park structures, pools, tennis courts, traffic signals, as well as our urban forest, playgrounds, irrigation systems, fire stations, and city building.
I am a voice for Fiscal Responsibility. Our annual City Budget has all too often been created with an “out of sight, out of mind” perspective. Our leaders have touted the level of our General Fund reserve, while at the same time not acknowledging the massive number of dollars that was accumulating outside the boundaries of the formal budget document. We simply have not been honest with ourselves.
Fiscal Responsibility starts by Paying Our Bills just like every Davis household does. We need to live within our means. We can’t hide our deferred maintenance costs off the books. Hiding from our financial obligations doesn’t work in our personal lives, and pretending it works in our city government is both foolish and wrong.
I am running for City Council because of my belief that “If you are going to complain, you have to be willing to contribute.” I want to contribute to the quality of life in Davis by being your elected public servant.
Election Day is Tuesday, June 7, 2016. Your early endorsement and a contribution of any amount will help share our message.
Thank you for your support and encouragement. I am ready to run because “We’ve got work to do!”
I was here in 2016. I don’t even remember who I voted for back then. I read that and I get fiscal responsibility and let’s get basic maintenance done. I like basic maintenance but it’s not sexy and it’s not going to get you many votes. You gotta give concrete examples and NEW STUFF. More parks and rec services like swim lessons SUMMER CAMPS. Express lane stop lights (timed during certain times of day)….so people can more easily get to and from work…. an economic plan that attracts new stores to shop at, restaurants to eat at. You get to these great things by paying your bills and having a plan for the city to make more money with less (or no) new taxes! I want to give you a better Davis for your hard earned tax dollars!
You always talk about the need for an economic development plan….well propose one and sell us on it and it’s benefits for the community (again not just fixing pot holes and basic stuff….sell a better tomorrow). Seriously, meet with business leaders and other interested parties (maybe Tim Keller, Don Shor…etc…)…talk to those businesses that moved to Woodland…. put together the outline for an economic development plan for Davis and promote it…either directly or through candidates that come close to supporting parts of your plan.
Keith, I agree it isn’t sexy. It never was intended to be sexy. There is a difference between being a politician and being a public servant. When I announced my candidacy it was because the Council foolishly and irresponsibly approved the Cannery CFD, which took $21 million out of the pockets of Davis taxpayers and gave it to an outside party and got zero value for the community. I was asked, “How does it feel to be a politician?” My naive response was, “I’m not a politician. I’m a public servant.” However, I found out that you can’t get elected unless you are a politician.
Regarding your admonition “You gotta give concrete examples and NEW STUFF.” We already have too much stuff. We need less stuff, not more stuff … except in one key area, economic development. On that subject, it is important to recognize our limitations.
Davis is not a regional hub like Chico and Woodland and even Dixon. It isn’t a magnet that draws people in for supplies that they can not get in their location in the rural surrounds of the regional hub. Davis is a suburb. What Davis has as an asset is UCD, but it squanders that day after day after day.
The nature of the University is that it is an institution. It doesn’t respond to individuals. It responds to other institutions. So if the private sector wants to build on (make the most of) the asset that is UCD, it needs to work through another institution … in our case our City government. I have been involved over the years in a half dozen efforts by the private sector to work with the City in exploring economic development opportunities and every time the City has quashed the private sector initiative. In addition private sector experts brought two years of work on establishing municipal fiber throughout the city to the City and the City insisted on taking over the process and starting it again from scratch, discarding all the work that the private sector experts had done. That is the reality of our situation.
Add to that that our local business community is about as passive as a local business community could be. Because we aren’t a regional magnet for business from outlying communities, and we have no natural visitor attractions other than UCD, local businesses are struggling to survive, and their owners don’t have time to ether think about or promote community vision.
Tim Keller and I have met dozens of times and we are in much more alignment than conflict. I have met with Katie Yancey within the last three weeks to help wherever I can. But, because of the inherent characteristics of our community, we have to work through the City, and the City seems to be allergic to planning. So we are a ship out on the ocean without a rudder, going wherever the seas take us.
Matt,
You missed the point about NEW STUFF. If you’re not offering something new; then you’re offering at best the status quo. NEW STUFF = BETTER FUTURE. You complain about wasteful spending…that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean you can’t spend on stuff that is for stuff the people want and need.
I’m not sure what your comment about Davis being a hub. A hub of what? It’s a sleepy bedroom community next to a university. It’s the place where the University puts it’s over half of it’s students. The University is a hub with the majority of it happening in Sacramento.
I’m not sure why you’re explaining business development out of a University to me. I used to work in seed stage private equity. I had the director of the Haas Business school incubator (whatever it was called back in 2001) invite me over to check out their companies because we belonged to the same angel investor group. I toured Xerox PARC and got to look at their technologies (I had fantasies of stealing the next GUI/Windows like Steve Jobs). I met with many other early stage venture capital firms. My favorite was Intel; their corporate VC arm was called In-Q-Tel because it was named after the James Bond character Q who invented cool spy gadgets. They were interested in a storage company I represented. It was my job to find seed stage companies to invest in and I frequented a handful of incubators in the bay area in an effort to find companies. (20+ years ago there was a Panasonic incubator, a women’s incubator…sort of in the same space near if I recall, TEN incubator, the UC Berkeley incubator…then there was the Keiretsu Forum, Band of Angels…etc…). My point is that I’ve seen a lot when it comes to start ups and the start up environment and business culture.
But here’s the thing for Davis. The majority of start ups FAIL. (the VC investment term is “the hockey stick” a the line of investments that fail and then one pops for a big one). They’re early stage and they don’t make much (if any) money. So for Davis anything out of these companies you’re going to need a constant inflow of capital to keep funding these companies. Davis doesn’t have a Sand Hill Road. You also need these UCD backed companies to be located in Davis…actually in the city limits and not on UC grounds. AND you need to figure out a way to get away from the UCD backed TAX EXCEMPT companies. So not only does the city need properly developed companies like D round at least to be viable but they have to no longer university companies. What helps is luring big companies in the same biz/technology space as the start ups. In fact often times these bigger companies partner with or create their own start ups. I mean it would be great if the city could partner with UCD and create it’s own public incubator. But it’s a very long term play. That may not yield anything. You know how to get it to yield benefits for the city? RETAIL AND HOUSING for the professionals that work at those start ups. You need housing to get them to live here and retail to capture their spending for sales tax revenue. But that would mean the city would have to expand in ways that many in this community don’t want or will accept.
Eh, if you want to be a destination place; most of it comes from the WILL to make it happen (“will” meaning greedy: developers, business people, city officials) . Take it from me, a guy that worked for a family that built some of the largest destination malls (at the time) in the world. Heck, right now a giant surf park is being planned to be built in Sacramento. The Great Wolf Lodge (giant indoor water park) was built 4-5 years ago in Manteca…I mean…that’s out the middle of nowhere. IMO Davis doesn’t even have a viable movie theater…I go to Woodland and Vacaville for movies now. Btw. Like UCD, Stanford is not in Palo Alto’s city limits. But you know what is in Palo Alto’s city limits? Stanford Shopping Center.
Yeah, I get that the city of Davis is screwed up from a political and cultural stand point as far as growth and development go. But I think that’s changing as more and more people have moved to Davis to be part of the growing Sacramento region and do not share the regressive small quaint college town vision from the 1960s (and was still written into the General Plan in the 80’s). But the key to leadership and change is to sell the people on a better vision for tomorrow.
Keith, thank you for the thoughtful response. I believe a lot of what you and I say to each other is “going over old ground” for the two of us, but is new and/or useful information for other vanguard readers. I do know and appreciate/respect your background. That is why I encourage community leaders to seek you out. Some of your leadership qualities may rub off on, or synergize with, them.
For me the most important point in your comment is the last sentence, “But the key to leadership and change is to sell the people on a better vision for tomorrow.” Not only has our City Council not done anything to sell the people on a vision, they haven’t even articulated a vision. That needs to change, and only the City Council can make that change.
I also agree with your point about the WILL to make anything happen. Our current situation regarding WILL is remarkably similar to our situation regarding vision. The Council has not shown any more WILL than their constituents have.
Regarding WILL, if the Council really wanted to see this sales tax increase pass they would have planned ahead and conducted community education meetings to illuminate (your word “sell”) the community on what the actual financial situation is, how we got to this point, and what their plan is for the way forward.
What forum was this? Is it available to view on line?