Now that the election is over, I am finally allowed to discuss my personal choice to support Measure Q.
I definitely agree with the opposition on a number of issues.
An important acknowledgement came from Matt Williams on Friday, when he noted, “The current Council.. was not solely responsible for the events that have resulted in (A) the over $450 million of unfunded liabilities, (B) the lack of a financial plan for addressing those unfunded liabilities, (C) the consistent and continual deterioration of the City’s streets and infrastructure, (D) the lack of any Economic Development Plan, (E) the fact that in the last 20 years the Davis job market has stagnated, (F) the fact that the current General Plan has been out of compliance with California State law for well over a decade.”
That point is certainly true. Particularly with the election of a new councilmember (right now likely Linda Deos), three of the five council members have been in office since 2022 or later and only Gloria Partida was on the council pre-pandemic.
Matt Williams also believes that the campaign accomplished “most” of “what it set out to do” in raising “the awareness of the voters of just how dire the City’s financial situation is.”
I don’t know to what extent I think Matt Williams is correct. To some extent all campaigns that do not achieve their primary goal (defeat of a given measure) have to tell themselves self-justifications. Again, I think the campaign team was aware that their efforts were a longshot and that they were hoping to raise issues as much as defeat the measure.
At some level, however, the Theodore Roosevelt quote from his defeat as a third party candidate in 2012 resonates here: “We have fought a good fight; we have kept the faith; we have gone down in disaster.” (And not exclusively in this campaign this year).
As I have stated all along, I agree with key points that the opposition has made—the failure to prioritize economic development, concern about the roads (a long-standing Vanguard issue), and concern about the lack of retail and other commercial development.
On the other hand, let’s say we agree with the opposition that the city has been fiscally irresponsible—does voting no on Q change anything?
The more I thought about it, the more I think it did not.
As I mentioned previously, if you believe the council has acted irresponsibly over the years, the answer is to vote in a new council that will act more responsibly. This whole notion that you can change the culture of city hall seems unrealistic to me absent turnover of councilmembers making the policy decisions.
With two of the three council raises having no competition, and the voters in District 2 voting in a candidate that seems to be more status quo than change oriented, it’s hard to see the case that the voters really wanted change—either by opposing Measure Q or voting in councilmembers that will rock the boat.
I never saw a real impetus from the voters that there was a burning need for change. Clearly, in a 62-38 split, there is a segment of the electorate that wanted some form of change, and you might argue that looking at the council election, some portion of the electorate wanted change there as well. But we clearly don’t seem the same message sent in Davis that we saw in other communities, even in California that voted out key leadership—for example, San Francisco defeated its incumbent mayor while Oakland recalled theirs.
For me, I am not particularly happy with this council. I have expressed this before—I want to see more leadership on issues like housing, homelessness, and economic development. Frankly, I agree that the city is in a huge fiscal crisis as much as it is in a housing affordability crisis.
But would voting against Measure Q have made things better?
That’s where I think I disagreed with the opposition to Measure Q.
First of all, doing the math, the impact on people’s pocketbooks from this measure was small. I doubt I spent $10,000 in Davis on taxable goods a year, but, if I did, Measure Q would increase my costs by a mere $100—spread across all of my purchases. You have to spent a whole lot of money to make it impact your pocketbook, and, by the time you do so, you’ve spent so much money that the extra money you do spend is still negligible.
On the other hand, for that minimal pocketbook hit, the city is getting $11 million—that’s a sizable benefit to the city.
In short, while you can certainly argue that the sales tax is a regressive tax, it’s a tax whose small increase isn’t going to be felt by much of anyone.
Finally, the clincher for me is what happens if Measure Q fails?
The city council would be spending much of the next six months cutting costs—programs, things like that.
As one former council member pointed out to me, are they going to cut the things that Matt Williams believes are wasteful? Probably not. They are going to cut the things that are easiest to cut politically.
I watched this play out in 2010. How did they balance the budget? They didn’t lay people off, they allowed the staff to be reduced by attrition. They simply didn’t replace employees that left or retired.
Moreover, when the roads tax went down in 2018 because it failed to gain the two-thirds necessary, did that trigger a new era of fiscal responsibility? No.
But one thing is very clear to me—if the community had voted down Measure Q, program cuts would be the focus for much of the next two years.
That’s not what I want the council to be focused on. I want them focused on housing and economic development. A no vote on Measure Q would have at the very least distracted the community from things like the general plan update, housing, and a possible Measure J amendment.
Think about the irony—Matt Williams and others wanted an economic development plan. The city finally hired an economic development director. Had Measure Q failed, one of the costs likely would have been that position, which had effectively been vacant for some time. Talk about irony.
I agree that Measure Q doesn’t fix the problems with the city—what I am hoping is that, now that it has passed, the city will have the flexibility to focus on the longer-term problems rather than the immediate cash shortfall.
I’m not sure I would say I am optimistic about the prospects of accomplishing that—but I was fairly certain that had Measure Q failed, my priorities for the city would have been on the backburner.
Your reasons for supporting Measure Q are the same ones that 62% of us shared. Cutting off the nose to spite the face just makes matters worse, common sense. What needs to happen, and this is squarely in the council’s court, is a more open discussion of our income issues and why Davis has a unique challenge. I believe it is unique because of our economic base dominated by UC (no property tax income from them) and low commercial and industrial development. Falling support for taxes and trust in government to respond to voters’ concerns is amplified by social media. Know nothings get equal time and weight with balanced analysis and context. I do blame the council. They are not taking the time and spending the energy to bring us all on board. It’s a crisis of leadership.