Davis, CA – The upside of the November vote is that we will get maximum turnout for local elections—District 2 Council, Measure Q and Measure T. And while in concept that may sound like a good thing, the practical result is that the Presidential Election—even in a state where the contest has long since been a foregone conclusion—has literally sucked the oxygen out of the room.
While California may not be a battleground state, my social media feed is filled with people who have traveled the short drive to Reno where they get not just a presidential barnburner but also a critical Senate Race. The more adventurous have gone to more exotic places like Pennsylvania to make their stand.
From the start, the local City Council election, which is an open seat, has been upstaged locally by Measure Q.
I will focus my closing remarks then on this election with thoughts on Measure Q.
We are about to see how difficult it really is to defeat a tax measure in Davis. While I think the opponents of Measure Q have run the more robust campaign, they have several extreme handicaps.
First, this isn’t a two-thirds vote. It requires a mere simple majority. That makes this a pretty tough lift for any opposition.
In a town that has a heavy blue tilt, it was always going to be difficult to get the voters to oppose a tax measure that, quite frankly, no one will notice in their pocketbooks in any real sense.
Polling from November 2023—granted, outside of any campaign context—showed theoretical support for such a measure at 70 percent. Those numbers won’t hold, but that demonstrates the countervailing winds.
Finally, because this is a Presidential Election, and everyone will vote, the No side is going to have to get to infrequent voters and get them to care enough to vote no. That’s probably the hardest part of this lift.
This isn’t a land use measure where the default in Davis seems to be no—a tax measure runs the other direction.
At the end of day, the No on Q side has done enough to make this not a foregone conclusion, but I still don’t think Q will go down in defeat. If it does, it would be truly momentous and the city and council will have to seriously rethink things.
I think the true goal here of the opposition is to send a message to city hall—and I think on many levels, they have succeeded in doing that.
I have questions about how deep the discontentment goes, but the people who are unhappy are those who are paying attention and that should be cause for concern.
And, by the way, while I have attempted to stay out of this fight as a partisan, I am right there with the opposition on several points.
First, the handling of the commission issue was the absolute trigger for much of the opposition. Frankly, there is a huge difference between the usual anti-tax campaigns led by folks like Jose Granda and a campaign led by folks like Elaine Roberts Musser, Alan Pryor and Matt Williams (among others).
This was a needless and self-inflicted fight, even though most people in the community have no idea what happened—and wouldn’t care much if they knew.
Second, I am not happy because it has been obvious for at least a decade that the city is in need of more revenue and, for various reasons, several of the efforts have gone down at the polls for various reasons.
Third, I am not happy, because the council consciously chose the revenue measure over housing this election. They wanted to clear the runway for this measure and then they fumbled the ball by creating the needless commission issue that has given us the worst of all worlds.
I am particularly frustrated because to me the top issue is housing along with economic development, and this issue has distracted from both. It has squandered a high turnout election, pushed a contentious housing project off until a special election, and has failed to really move the ball forward—pass or fail.
If this ends up actually failing, there will have to be a pretty explicit “Come to Jesus” moment for the city and city council. If this ends up passing, there are a lot of questions that should be asked.
Given everything, this should have been an easy pass—given that it was not, hard questions need to be asked.
As I said, I still think this passes, but it is not the foregone conclusion it might have, and perhaps, should have been.
Third, I am not happy, because the council consciously chose the revenue measure over housing this election.
Think about it this way. You have to make some money before you choose to spend it (on expansion of services and infrastructure to support that housing). So use your political capital to get the money first. Next round focus on new projects that include both commercial and housing.
Think of it like a business. You have to go around and get funding/investors before starting the business (sales tax increase). Then you create the product/service (approve new commercial and housing projects) and it eventually (hopefully) yields revenues (new sales tax revenue from new commercial projects) and profits (housing, services and infrastructure).
What I see happening is an active push to get the City Council to be honest and candid about the financial mess the City is in. A simple explanation of how the City has accumulated over $450 million of unfunded liabilities is not too much to ask.
Being forthcoming with that kind of honesty will go a long way toward rebuilding trust. Coming forward with a plan for how to address the financial hole, as well as not digging it deeper would be refreshing.
The City closely holds its financial records. Getting a copy of the Independent Auditor’s annual report to the City is a path the City makes very difficult. The 2016 audit by CalPERs, which identifies many of the problems that have led to the over $250 million of unfunded employee retirement benefits should be prominently available on the City’s website … as should the steps the City has taken to address the dozen issues CalPERS raised in that audit.
The constituents can’t address the real problem if the real problem isn’t brought out into the light of day. Only the City can do that.
Matt I would support whatever initiative or movement that would force the city to become more transparent (aside from financially hamstringing the city with a No on Q vote). While I’m a proponent of not letting the unwashed masses get too DIRECTLY involved with long term city planning. The fiscal status about the city and it’s records is necessary for the voters to make informed decisions on how and what they want their leaders to do for them.
Too often it takes a real crisis to get the attention of those who have a stake in maintaining the status quo. We’re seeing that now with the MAGA vote. I wish we could get there in a reasonable, rationale way but there simply has been too much resistance within City government.
The No on Measure Q campaign has focused on being fiscally responsible … or if you will, not fiscally irresponsible. Wanting the City to have a plan is neither conservative or liberal. It is just practical.
Everyone who gets a City of Davis utility bill received this month, along with their bill a two-page pro-Measure Q flyer that was printed and mailed at taxpayer expense.
The biggest problem with the flyer is not what it says, but what it doesn’t say. Nowhere in it is there any explanation about how the City ran up over $450 million of unfunded liabilities … approximately $250 million in unfunded roads repairs plus buildings/infrastructure repairs, as well as over $200 million of unfunded employees retirements benefits.
Is transparency too much to ask for?
It’s an interesting prospect – can you effect political change without a viable threat to unseat incumbents?
Even if the city comes clean about it’s fiscal status and becomes transparent….and makes epic economic development plans. Davis is still going to need the sales tax revenue from Measure Q in the short and long term.
There’s also a more fundamental problem – the city/ council do not agree with the opponents of Measure Q on these issues, so even if they created some sort of transparency that Matt is calling for, without a credible political threat to incumbents, there is no change that is going to occur.
Well, the political threat would start with the city fiscal information being released and made known. Then credible political threats could be made by opponents to the incumbents based on that information released.
That’s assuming such information could be effectively weaponized.
David and Keith, you are treating this as a people problem. I disagree. I believe it is a culture problem. Tying in Keith’s earlier revenue point, the revenue problem is an iceberg, and Q will not even address the top of that iceberg. If a person is diagnosed with cancer and the doctors prescribe a plan of chemotherapy to address that cancer, does the patient tell them to go forward with eliminate two thirds of the planned treatments? In such a case, the doctors will share with the patient their plan, with an explanation of why they feel that plan will succeed. Where is the City’s plan for fixing its financial woes? They have come forward with (at best) one third of a plan … and no prospects for when (if ever) the other two-thirds will be presented to the public. That is the kind of culture transformation we need. The individuals currently on tha Council are capable of that. They jus need the WILL to do it.
In a “democracy” we generally change culture by changing people.
Changing people may not be the Council members. Sports teams don’t change owners when they aren’t succeeding.
I don’t think your analogy really works. Teams changes players and coaches when they aren’t succeeding.
Under normal circumstances I agree with you. However, the Davis city Council is not something that any rational person aspires to being on. The pay is horrendous. The working conditions are equally bad. The track record of getting anything done is abysmal. The five people on the Council want to be there, so let’s put them in a position where they have no other choice other than to change the culture.
Well, it appears all the work the No on Measure Q team put in actually increased the “Yes” vote. Congratulations to the Yes on Measure Q campaign team.