We have watched the battle for Measure Q with some interest. The one competitive council race has largely been sidelined from the public’s view.
It’s not just that District 2 only directly involves about 20 percent of the city’s voters. It’s not just that two of the three districts have no competition at all, allowing two incumbents to get a free pass.
In an at-large voting election, with an open seat and two incumbents, we probably would have seen five candidates—and maybe more step up to challenge the status quo.
District elections have taken a lot of steam out of the council elections—in ways probably not predicted when the city acquiesced to outside pressure and implemented districts rather than at-large voting.
Ironically, (and perhaps that’s not the word), it is still possible that district elections will end up expanding the representation on the council of people of color.
There are still advantages to smaller districts that are more easily walkable and cheaper to cover with flyers and perhaps mailers.
But it works both ways as we have seen. The Vanguard this week reported on flyers distributed by the Davis Firefighters, who have endorsed Linda Deos in District 2. The district elections have made it easier for such interests to influence these elections.
Dillan Horton, following the Vanguard’s article on Thursday highlighting the mail drop, questioned the process by which Deos received the endorsement.
“When 3494’s new leadership called the campaign to communicate their endorsement decision, they shared that union leadership already promised it to Linda in a “backroom deal” months prior,” a statement from Dillan Horton’s campaign said. “This undermined the endorsement process, which should be based on thorough evaluation.”
Horton’s campaign felt like their candidate had the union support credentials over the campaign that the firefighters ended up endorsing.
“How shocking!…How unprecedented!” said Alan Pryor, responding to the news. Pryor heads up the No on Measure Q campaign and pointed out in an earlier op-ed the reemerging influence of the firefighters. He added, “Well, maybe not so much unprecedented as they did the same thing for both Bapu Vaitla and Gloria Partida in 2022.”
In the meantime, all the focus on Measure Q has caused a reemergence of the issue of the City’s finances. That’s perhaps a good thing. The problem is the fight is actually over whether to pass a one percent sales tax increase—an increase the city says it needs and an increase that opponents have attacked as another means to allow for employee compensation increases.
In the meantime, people like me find ourselves a bit torn. On the one hand, I agree that the city has a considerable revenue problem. On the other hand, I view a sales tax increase as normally low hanging fruit (unless you make unnecessary commission changes that inflame the anger and passions of key stake-holding citizens), but overall a band aid.
What we need is to revitalize our retail base, starting with the downtown and continuing with economic development. That’s the long term revenue fix, but we haven’t touched that—although I do applaud the city’s hiring of an economic development director who can help put that issue back into the forefront.
At the same time, the council made a conscious decision to sideline the most consequential and also by far the most contentious issue—housing.
The point of my piece yesterday is that a huge driver of staffing cost increases is the housing crisis—because you have to compensate people enough to off-set the huge increases in the cost of housing. We can talk about things like inflation and cost of living adjustments, but those pale in comparison to the nearly 80 percent increase in the cost of housing just since 2020.
That cost of housing, if it is not addressed both locally and regionally, will continue to pressurize employee compensation costs.
But we have done very little to move the needle on housing in the last year and this election, while each candidate has prioritized housing, has done little to move forward that vital discussion.
We still have to address things like: two Measure J projects that have come forward, potential amendments to Measure J, the General Plan update, and how we are going to address housing needs going forward.
As I have written before, the council wanted to clear the lane for the sales tax increase—and then inflamed the opposition with their poor handling of the commissions.
There are those who have questioned why I keep bringing up the commission issue, but the fact is a considerable percentage of the No on Q leaders got involved because of the council’s handling of the commission issue.
Several recent councilmembers I have spoken to in the last week made this same point, and literally shook their heads. As they put it, it was not the changes to the commissions that drove the anger, it was how it was rolled out and the fact that they didn’t rethink their approach.
During a contentious time, it was unnecessary damage. The kind of damage they said they wanted to avoid by putting off the more pressing issue of housing.
The city has known for a long time that sales and other taxes are simply short-term band aids for the city’s fiscal woes. At some point they will reach the limits of tax increases. This campaign is a sign that that time might be sooner rather than later.
It’s not that they wanted to put off the housing issue it’s that they didn’t want a contentious Measure J election. Or to paraphrase James Carville it’s measure J stupid.
Re: problem with Commission Reform
The idea the process not the change in the issue with commission reform is incorrect.— and insulting in away. Seems to imply the opponent of changed object ans it an ego thing — the were disrespected by not being consulted, and just are conservative opposed to changes in the old ways.
Community activists have – as I have written about — lobbied for commission reform. They has issues with substance of change beyond process.
And the evidence the changes were poorly thought thru is pretty obvious: the secrete council subcommittee proposed change thought merging civic arts and human relations commission was a good idea!!!
. That the secrete subcommittee is made up of most junior members of council- who have little history..
The substance of the changes- not just the process- is source of ire.
The republicans run Davis (small r)
If there had been a different inclusive process the changes would have been VERY different changes. But this council – I think driven by staff—has following a theme moves over years to reduce citizen engagement- as wrote about in my “Heal Davis” piece.
David Greenwald said … “What we need is to revitalize our retail base, starting with the downtown and continuing with economic development.”
The reason the Davis retail economy is as anemic as it is a very simple lack of demand for retail. As Keith Echols said on Tursday … and I completely agree him … “re Davis being a [regional economic] 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.” For the most part, other than at the beginning of the school year when they are moving into a new apartment, students are below average retail shoppers. Similarly, seniors are below average retail shoppers … they are at the stage of life where they are getting rid of "things" rather than acquiring "things." Further, if you look at the retail businesses that have gone away, most of them did soi because they were more and more competing with online alternatives that local retail consumers find more convenient.
If Davis wants to revitalize retail, it will need to do it with "other people's money" … supplementing the dwindling local demand for retail with demand from visitors to Davis. Other than people visiting UCD and/or UCD students, Davis really doesn't have any reason for people to come visit here. Here to Keith Echols words from Thursday resonate, “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.”
“The reason the Davis retail economy is as anemic as it is a very simple lack of demand for retail.”
That statement is absurd.
The 1961 Core Area Specific Plan called for Davis to be a retail hub for the region. The reason that Davis’ retail economy is anemic now is because the City chose in the late 60’s/early 70’s to ignore that earlier community plan and instead acted to protect the owners of the few downtown retail properties from competition. We did this first by restricting retail outside of the downtown core, and subsequently, by limiting retail expansion to only a few small neighborhood centers, placing size limitations on stores within those regional centers, and adding extreme limits on what types of stores were allowed (including nothing that directly competed with an existing downtown establishment). Many of those restriction remain in force today through both zoning rules and Municipal Code. Many others have only been changed in the past few years.
By ‘protecting’ the downtown, we prevented the retail expansion throughout the town that was more commonly seen in neighboring cities. In short, Davis is a retail desert because the City decided back in the ’70’s to subsidize a few millionaire property owners at the expense of the citizens (and City’s revenues). As far as I can tell, we still haven’t addressed this problem in any meaningful way, fifty plus years later.
Ancient History Mark. It is also history I agree with.
With that said the litany of events you describe/lament has produced a Davis retail economy that is as anemic in large part because of a lack of demand.
“Ancient History Mark.”
Not ancient, current. The extreme restrictions on location, size and types of retail continue to exist in our zoning and municipal codes. It is not a lack of demand at fault (that would mean that no one in town is buying anything from anywhere, which is absurd), the problem is a lack of opportunity. The stores simply are not here, and the reason for that are largely due to the restrictions on location, size and types of retail that are allowed.
I agree with that assessment. The current lack of opportunity is the result of those ancient actions, with the current situation being the egg that that chicken laid.
In response many businesses implemented the everywhere but Davis strategy. Businesses didn’t want to subject themselves to voter approval just to be in Davis when surrounding communities welcomed them with open arms.
Davis obstructionism and protectionism at their finest!
There are some who foresaw the difficulty in challenging incumbents under the district election system. I personally called for term limits at the time.