One of the most revealing aspects of the debate surrounding Village Farms has not been the project itself, but the reaction to it. With Village Farms now headed to the ballot, the familiar arguments have once again resurfaced—about planning quality, staff competence, council leadership, developer credibility, and voter judgment.
What has been far less examined is why these same critiques recur no matter who is in charge, which project is proposed, or how much the city’s leadership changes.
When patterns persist across decades, personnel changes, and political cycles, it becomes increasingly difficult to attribute outcomes to individual failure alone, and structural explanations deserve greater scrutiny than personal ones.
Several of the most thoughtful comments responding to the recent Village Farms commentary grappled with real problems in Davis’ planning outcomes.
But even those responses tended to locate causation in people rather than in the system that governs how decisions are made.
Taken together, these comments illuminate the limits of that approach—and why the same frustrations keep returning.
Eileen Samitz’s comments are particularly instructive because they are both consistent and deeply rooted.
For years, Eileen focused her criticism on former Planning Director Katherine Hess, arguing that flawed staff analysis and the way information was framed or buried in reports—rather than broader governance rules—were the primary reasons planning decisions went awry in Davis, a critique that was specific, forceful, and repeatedly advanced across multiple debates.
But Hess has been gone for years, and since then the planning director, the city manager, the City Council, and the projects themselves have all changed.
Yet from Eileen’s perspective, the same fundamental problems remain: inadequate planning, lack of transparency, insufficient accountability, and voter distrust. What has not changed is her explanatory framework.
The problem, she continues to argue, lies with leadership and execution rather than with structure.
At some point, that raises an unavoidable question: if different planners, different managers, and different councils all produce outcomes that provoke the same criticisms, is it plausible that the problem is still individual failure? Or is it more likely that the governing framework itself generates these results, regardless of who occupies the roles within it?
Eileen frames Measure J as a democratic safeguard, not a planning tool. From her perspective, repeated voter skepticism is not evidence of dysfunction but of democracy working exactly as intended. Voters are unconvinced, so they say no—or are poised to say no. In that framing, consistency is success.
That argument deserves to be taken seriously, but it also demands a follow-up question that is rarely confronted head-on.
If Measure J is functioning as an effective voter veto, it cannot simultaneously serve as housing policy, land-use planning, or a reliable mechanism for compliance with state housing law, and if no other institution is structured to perform those roles, then the resulting gap between democratic legitimacy and policy effectiveness is not accidental but structural.
Ron Glick’s contribution helps shift the conversation away from values and toward incentives by making a technical but consequential point: Measure J did not simply preserve voter choice, but altered the mechanics of decision-making by converting what had previously been referenda into ballot measures in which a single “no” vote blocks a project outright.
In a system where approval requires overcoming uncertainty, complexity, and competing narratives, rejection becomes the safer option—even for voters who are not ideologically opposed to growth.
The perceived cost of approving the wrong project feels permanent, while the cost of rejecting one feels temporary or reversible.
Under those conditions, repeated rejection does not necessarily reflect hostility to housing or planning failure by staff.
Instead, it reflects a structure that systematically biases outcomes toward “no,” while offering few viable pathways to reach “yes.”
That does not make voters irrational, nor does it render their concerns illegitimate.
It does mean that system design matters at least as much as intentions.
Tim Keller’s comments sharpen the structural critique further by highlighting the loss of planning legitimacy.
His comparison between Wildhorse and post–Measure J projects points to a crucial shift.
Wildhorse was embedded in a General Plan. Voters could reasonably believe that approval meant affirming an agreed-upon vision that had already been debated, negotiated, and adopted.
Since then, he argues at least implicitly that that anchoring function has largely eroded.
Instead of asking voters whether a project conforms to a shared plan, Davis increasingly asks them to adjudicate highly technical, multifaceted proposals at the end of a long and adversarial process.
Voters are no longer affirming planning; they are substituting for it.
That fundamentally changes what elections are doing.
Ballot campaigns are ill-suited to weighing tradeoffs among traffic models, fiscal projections, environmental mitigation, and housing need. They encourage simplification, messaging, and distrust rather than synthesis.
In effect, Measure J displaces planning upstream and reconstitutes it as a political campaign downstream. Or to put it more simply, it prioritizes politics over good planning.
Now it matters only who can shout the loudest and in places like Davis, criticism resonates over praise.
Richard McCann’s proposal to retain voter involvement but move it earlier in the process is an effort to repair that displacement.
The idea is straightforward: establish baseline development standards through voter input first, then allow projects that conform to those standards to proceed without a second, costly election.
In theory, this approach preserves democratic participation while restoring predictability and legitimacy to planning. It is a compelling middle ground, and it has much to recommend it.
I have advocated versions of this framework myself.
Increasingly, however, it is fair to question how realistic it is.
Front-loading voter decision-making requires a community willing to make binding commitments in advance and accept outcomes that follow from those commitments.
Davis’ track record suggests deep ambivalence about doing so.
Voters may be willing to say no repeatedly, but saying yes prospectively—under defined conditions that limit later veto power—is a much harder political lift.
Without that willingness, early votes risk becoming another mechanism for deferral rather than resolution. That may simply move the stalemate earlier without breaking it.
Matt Williams’ critique focuses less on mechanics and more on leadership. He argues that Davis suffers from a lack of vision, and that weak or inconsistent leadership has left the city reactive rather than directive.
There is truth in this observation: clear goals matter, leadership matters, and strategic coherence matters.
But leadership does not operate in a vacuum.
A governance system that defers hard choices to the end of the process, incentivizes caution and ambiguity, and turns planning into recurring electoral combat does not empower leaders to lead—it constrains them.
Measure J does not resolve the absence of vision; it institutionalizes it by making it rational for leaders to avoid committing to a clear growth strategy.
What unites these comments is that none of them are really about Village Farms alone.
They are about what Measure J is supposed to do, what it actually does, and whether those two things still align.
Is Measure J primarily a democratic safeguard, a planning mechanism, a growth control policy, or some uneasy combination of all three?
And can one tool credibly perform all of those roles simultaneously?
Village Farms may pass or fail, but whatever the outcome, it will not resolve the deeper issue, as another project will follow, another campaign will unfold, and the same critiques will reappear attached to different names and different proposals.
The choice facing Davis is not simply whether to approve or reject individual projects; it is whether to continue relying on a structure that consistently produces the same conflicts and frustrations while expecting different results.
When outcomes persist across personnel, projects, and political cycles, structure deserves scrutiny, and ignoring that reality does not preserve democracy—it merely ensures that the argument resets every few years, unchanged in substance but ever louder in tone.
What we are doing now is not working for anyone, and the task ahead is to develop a better process capable of addressing community needs in a rapidly changing ecosystem.
“Or is it more likely that the governing framework itself generates these results, regardless of who occupies the roles within it?”
When you say “framework”, are you referring to the fact that staff themselves are dependent upon a steady stream of proposals in order to keep their jobs?
If so, yes – I agree that’s a problem.
An inherent conflict of interest in support of sprawl. Not unlike the school district.
David Greenwald said … “ The problem, she continues to argue, lies with leadership and execution rather than with structure.”
David, I haven’t heard Eileen saying that. What I have heard her consistently saying is, “ The problem, she continues to argue, lies with leadership and execution AS WELL AS with our local government structure.”
David Greenwald said … “ If Measure J is functioning as an effective voter veto, it cannot simultaneously serve as housing policy, land-use planning, or a reliable mechanism for compliance with state housing law, and if no other institution is structured to perform those roles, then the resulting gap between democratic legitimacy and policy effectiveness is not accidental but structural.”
I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. The Davis governmental structure is a Weak Mayor -Weak City Manager structure. That structure requires an individual … like Robb Davis was and is … to rise above the disincentives inherent in that structure and provide leadership. That individual leadership can either be from the Council or from the City Manager.
Our history of City Managers has been that they were more political beasts than either administrative beasts or visionary leaders. They knew how to read the tea leaves and count to three noses.
The history of Robb’s four years in office is illustrative of the disincentives for an individual Council member to go above and beyond. In Robb’s very first Council meeting he arrived having read all the material on the issue, conducted additional research and arrived at the meeting with insightful questions to further (and collectively) understand the problem before advancing possible remedies. The reaction he got from his fellow four Council members was a combination of astonishment and anger that he didn’t know his place as the new member. That interpersonal reaction caused the derailing of any productive discussion of the issue.
Later in his four years the Ghandi statue issue surfaced, and once again Robb showed superb leadership in the steps he took to ensure all parties were heard. What he got for that was again a negative interpersonal reaction from a highly vocal portion of the community. The personal attacks on him were both overt and viscous.
So it takes very special people in either the Council or the City Manager or both to overcome the perverse negative incentives of our local government structure … and history. It is much easier to go along to get along. And the result like we have seen in the Village Homes process is a project that ticked all the process boxes, but is a serious step backward for the community.
I agree with Matt that leadership would help, but Im also not surprised that it is absent.
A single council-member taking a stand without backup from at least two more ends up just being an extremist with no impact.
In the meantime, the slow/no growthers are very well organized, very vocal, and they inflict very real punishment from online smearing, to dozens of angry public comments at meetings that get pushed late into the night.
I got to meet a member of woodland’s city council recently at an event who was in a conversation with one of our council-members and they were talking about how in woodland, this phenomenon of hours of public comment and council meetings going past 9pm just isnt a thing.
In a post a couple of weeks ago, Eileen mentioned how there were ~30isn negative comments against amending measure J… which was the same week where a DCAN event ( a fundamentally pro-growth crowd) had 80+ people showing up to discuss city planning issues at a local school. – but without leaving that room with anything to organize into action…. at least not in the way the anti-growth community does
That is why, from my perspective, the “leadership” vacuum that exists also has to come from the people… Council-members who MIGHT want to stand up and do whats right could use the vocal support of those of us in the community who ARE willing to grow – but that just isnt happening.
We can speculate as to why, and I’m not confident that my explanation is definitive, but its because I dont think the citizens have an alternative to organize around. The developer-led initiatives apparently arent it… and that is another whole branch of the problem.
I think Tim is right that developer-led initiatives aren’t a viable organizing vehicle for the community. But I also think we have to be honest about the constraint: housing doesn’t happen without developer and investor capital. The problem isn’t that developers are involved — it’s that, in the absence of a community-led framework, they end up defining the terms by default.
I mean… It COULD BE… if the developers actually did a good job of engaging the community… but that is rare.
I remember having a back-and-forth debate with a fairly vocal “no” activist on nextdoor during the DiSC debate, and she related to me that she had voted yes on Bretton woods, precisely because she felt that the developer did a good job of engaging with the community, listening to their needs and trying to respond.
But that path and instinct is rare amongst developers. Village farms has largely showed up to community outreach events as a form of marketing.. trying to convince US why their plan is good, defending, explaining. Not listening.
I’m going to end up sounding like Eileen, but it IS technically possible, that a developer might try to craft a proposal that the pro-housing groups in town really like and are willing to advocate for.
I’d be very interested in learning why they dont.
I have some guesses…
David,
Sorry, but rhis campaign you have of trying to discredit Measure J/R/D is just not resonating. Especially given the course of events of how badly this mess of a Village Farms “process” has gone (and previous projects which have been rejected by the voters), the need for Measure J/R/D has never been more evident.
For this incompletely planned Village Farms project with so many problems unresolved, deferred decisions, “if feasible” caveats, and a grossly inadequate EIR pushed through makes it clear why we need Measure J/R/D. The Council was making decisions on-the-fly at the last Council meeting to push this disastrous project through, prioritizing the wishes of the developer to get it on an early ballot, rather than addressing the many concerns of the community was hard to believe.
There was absolutely no reason for this project to be pushed through for a premature June 2026 ballot, yet the Council chose to accommodate the developer at the expense of the community. Plus, there is a much better “reduced footprint” alternative which should have, and needs to be analyzed that the public brought to the Council early in the EIR process. This was at the Council meeting on Dec. 12, 2023 when the alternatives were chosen by the Council, rather than by the planning consultants with the proper process of first analyzing the impacts. So, the Village Farms “process” was corrupted from the beginning.
The real problem is that the City continues to put terrible projects on the ballot, which get rejected by the voters and then some (like the Vanguard) turn around and tries to blame Measure J/R/D. But, at this point the public is on to this game.
The problem is not Measure J/R/D, it is the City continuing with bad planning and expecting the public to go along with that. So, thank heavens we have Measure J/R/D.
Eileen
The problem is that we aren’t giving developers direction on what we actually want. I agree that they have largely missed the mark, but how do we tell them what it is they we will accept before they move forward with a concrete proposal? And how do we give them an incentive to move forward on a path that is less arduous than what we have now? Using only sticks, as we’ve discovered in our criminal justice system, won’t get us very far. We need carrots too.
If you want to know which “structure” is actually failing, it’s the one that results in politicians (local, and beyond) who don’t represent their constituents.
Locally, this can be demonstrated by “empirical evidence” as David might say, if one were to compare how the local council members personally voted on each of the Measure J proposals for the past couple of decades (usually “5-0” in support of a proposal, I suspect) compared to the voters.
The same type of system that’s resulting in continous sprawl throughout the region, and the same system which ensures that the only “Democrat” on a ballot is Wiener, Newsom, or Bonta).
The same system which allowed Lagoon Valley to be developed, and is now “considering” (with the support of some local officials) “California Forever”.
Also the same system which ensures that politicians put homeless shelters in places that will create problems.
The same system that produces politicians who think that the desires of an oversized school district should be driving planning decisions for an entire city.
The same system which produces politicians (Democrats, in this case) who see “no connection” between sprawl and greenhouse gasses.
Fix THOSE things, and you wouldn’t even need Measure J.
It is also the system that has produced successors to the 20th Century Black Shirts in Italy and the brown-shirted Sturmabteilung in Germany with the masked agents of ICE.
David Greenwald said … “ Measure J did not simply preserve voter choice, but altered the mechanics of decision-making by converting what had previously been referenda into ballot measures in which a single “no” vote blocks a project outright.”
I respectfully disagree David. On Election Day a referendum is a single “no” vote situation just like a Measure is. Where they differ is in how they respectively get to Election Day.
The two questions they illuminate are, “Did our local government rightly earn/deserve the distrust of the residents?” and “Since Measure J was originally passed, has “Has our local government done anything to recapture the trust of the residents?”
The Katherine Hess stories you have recounted/referenced say the answer to the second question is, “No. If anything they have dug the distrust hole even deeper.”
Let me suggest another framing for why this process is broken.
Any growth initiative needs to get to 51% voter approval… so WHO do you need to convince in order to pass something?
My feeling for our voting populace here is as follows ( I forget who first described it to me this way, but I think they were generally correct).
– 40% “Automatic no”,
– 20% “Lean towards No but can be convinced”
– 20% “Lean towards yes, but can be picky”
– 20% “Automatic yes”
These are not accurate numbers of course, but even if they vary by 10 points the analysis holds: In order to get past 51% you need to get the middle voters, many of whom are highly skeptical, to vote for the measure. Getting the people who lean-yes isn’t enough, you also need to get at least half of the people who lean-no onto the team.
If you were to design a process that was optimized for winning over the skeptical middle voter in order to produce growth… what would THAT process look like? It would be a lot of engagement, a lot of discussion, a lot of proactive planning ( lots of time involved)… wow.. it would look a LOT like a general plan process!
But of course, measure J broke the general plan process. Our city’s planner said so much at a council meeting back at the beginning of the VF process: “When the council votes to put something on the ballot that IS our planning direction”. And given the outright hostility brought to any discussion of growth by the 30-40% vocal anti-growth constituencies here, I understand why the city council time and time again just kicks the planning can down the road. Doing ANYTHING pro-growth requires a level of political courage that is quite rare, (and likely career-limiting) if you are a councilmember. The path of least resistance is to do nothing and that is what we actually get.
That puts all of our options for growth into the hands of the developers who do NOT have any license (or capability) to be a substitute process for a general plan – so we get flawed projects that dont appeal to any of these middle voters.
The logic begins to get circular from here.. which is kinda the point… we need an intervention in this system if we want a different outcome. That is goign to take leadership.. and I think that in order to find leadership IN city hall, there needs to also be leadership from amongst the community to create the permission structure for our councilmembers to do what might be good for our community, but is sure to have the 40% no crowd pretty angry.
Tim Keller said … “ If you were to design a process that was optimized for winning over the skeptical middle voter in order to produce growth… what would THAT process look like? It would be a lot of engagement, a lot of discussion, a lot of proactive planning ( lots of time involved)… wow.. it would look a LOT like a general plan process!”
It does, and it also looks like the education process conducted by the City leading up to Measure I in 2013.
A General Plan starts with agreeing on a Vision of where we are going as a community. The current 20 year-old General Plan not only does not have such a Vision, it never has had a Viision. We have been wandering around in the wilderness for the last 20 years. With no community understanding of where we are going and/or want to be, there is absolutely no holistic, greater-good guidance that developers get from us.
Tim is correct this isn’t just a City Council leadership issue. It is a community-wide leadership issue. It is a business-community leadership issue. It is a School Board leadership issue. And arguably it is a UCD leadership issue, since UCD is overwhelmingly the community’s largest employer.
Regarding the General Plan Update and a Vision Statement, perhaps we should take a lesson from CEQA and its EIRs, which start with alternatives to discuss and analyze. Have any alternative Vision statements been discussed in the General Plan Update process thus far, or have we immediately dropped down into the weeds without understanding our direction?
Tim said “… which was the same week where a DCAN event ( a fundamentally pro-growth crowd) had 80+ people showing up to discuss city planning issues at a local school.”
But that crowd is shooting themselves in the foot if they oppose Village Farms because a no vote gets them nothing.
My understanding (based on the arguments put forth on the Vanguard) is that everyone who doesn’t like Measure J should vote “no” on Village Farms, so that the state subsequently eliminates Measure J.
So I assume you’ll be voting “no” on Village Farms.
(Truth be told, I think that this is already what some are already hoping for – that Village Farms loses, and loses for that reason.)
Vote “no” on Village Farms, so that Measure J is eliminated. (Makes sense from that perspective, at least.)
Or at least, it’s “Plan B” (if Plan A fails – with “A” standing for “Approve everything”.)
Of course, the school district already claims that both will need to pass to avoid any closures, and that there would then be redistricting regarding school district boundaries, regardless.
That’s a (bad) argument. Instead of supposing why don’t you cite people taking such a position?
Plan B isn’t openly discussed, though David implies it on a daily basis. Pretty sure that some on the council also support Plan B.
For sure, Plan B will come out into the open even more, if Village Farms loses. (Even before Shriner’s appears.)
But I think the real fear of the Plan B proponents is that it (also) won’t work.
And there isn’t a Plan C so far, other than perhaps to finally acknowledge that there isn’t a housing shortage. (Obviously, the least-appealing option for those who claim there is one.)
Nonsense
I have to agree with Ron G on this one. Few people are voting no on VF to undermine the entire process. (Except maybe Ron G!) As usual, Ron O as an outsider from Woodland with no real stakes in Davis misunderstands and mischaracterizes the situation.
I’ve never come close to saying I want VF to fail to undermine Measure J. But Richard you have wondered whether the VF owners wanted to fail and now intimate you know what I’m doing in the sanctity of the voting booth. All I can say is its pretty weird for you to keep pointing fingers that have no logical basis or are completely unsupported by any record anywhere.
“Front-loading voter decision-making requires a community willing to make binding commitments in advance and accept outcomes that follow from those commitments. ”
This article, while inciteful, proceeds to shoot down every proposal for fixing the situation created by Measure J/R/D. The current situation forces voters to weigh in on issues for which they are not equipped, but voters still demand to have input into the decision so that can’t be eliminated. Developers are driving the decision making, but providing development guidelines that take control for the community isn’t feasible. Setting down development guidelines solves the planning process but voters are unwilling to commit to standing by those conditions.
The apparent cynicism leaves us with just throwing up our hands at an impossible Gordian knot.
We had a much different experience at the DCAN meeting in December. There was a fairly strong consensus about how to move forward. One person told me “why is this so difficult? Don’t we all largely agree on what we want?” And she was right that there was a broad agreement on what sort of things we prefer from a group that had not previously coalesced on the topic. I got a similar sense attending the general plan workshop in the fall, which was overwhelmingly attended. The direction we want to move is not highly divisive.
I believe if we set standards in a general way not tied to a specific project we can come to a good enough agreement that sets standards for accepts proposals. But we also need to offer the developers an incentive for choosing that path over just plowing ahead yet again on a ballot measure. If not avoiding an election, maybe it’s modeled on the Prop 218 vote on utility rate increases in which at least two-thirds of the voters must reject the proposal if it meets the preset requirements.
Richard said … “This article, while inciteful, proceeds to shoot down every proposal for fixing the situation created by Measure J/R/D. The current situation forces voters to weigh in on issues for which they are not equipped.”
Who is equipped? None of our City Council has land use planning training/ credentials. They are all learning on the job.
Further, the way that the City of Davis annual Budget is constructed, City Planning staff is paid from the fees generated by their activities, so they have a perverse incentive to encourage as high a volume as possible of those paid activities to protect their job security.
By the way, I think you meant insightful rather than inciteful. ICE has cornered the market on inciteful behavior and actions.
This gets back to the point I made in this article, that the planning situation in Davis is not working and Measure J is not fixing it, and if anything is making it worse.
David, how is Measure J making it worse. If it weren’t for Measure J there would be zero accountability in the planning process. Look no further than The Cannery to see what no accountability produces.
So I repeat my question, how is Measure J making the planning worse?
I guess if you are against building housing you won’t think that Measure J makes planning worse because it has stopped thousands of units from being built.
But let’s assume you are being genuine in your question. Under Measure J what drives planning is not what is the best plan but instead what has the best chance of passing. As an example most people agree that Nishi 2 was worse than Nishi 1. Further Nishi hasn’t yet been built because to get it passed they gave up access to Richards Blvd.
Another example would be Cannery and VF. The area should have been master planned but wasn’t because one property was subjected to a Measure J votes while the other wasn’t.
Third, there should have been a master plan for the entire Covell corridor complete with a transportation plan. Instead we have this piecemeal approach.
Matt
Measure J has made planning worse by destroying coordination across projects. VF and WG have no incentive to coordinate on a viable transportation plan down Covell because they are in electoral competition. If they weren’t they would be on the same ballot. As Tim has pointed out, Measure J gives no signal to developers as to what we will say “yes” to. It has become a game of “go find me a rock, oh, not that rock, find me another.” That has frozen the development process, and we are really worse off than we were in 2005. That’s why we are having this discussion. Measure J has yet to produce a truly “better” project. If it had, Nishi I, which so many of us recognize as a far better option, would have passed and we would all be better off.
That said, yes we need accountability, so there needs to be some sort of electoral backstop. Putting requirements in writing in baseline features that are voted on and need to be voted on to be modified delivers this accountability, as does allowing a standard vote if a developer chooses not to go the easy path.
(And yes, “insightful”… ;^S)
Richard, Measure J didn’t destroy coordination across projects. That coordination was already non-existent (something can’t be destroyed if it never existed). In order to have coordination across projects you have to have an overarching holistic framework and direction for that coordination to exist in. Davis has no such holistic framework. The existing General Plan provides no such holistic direction. And then to make matters even worse, by state law the City must process each development application all by its lonesome. The reason is that Davis has allowed its General Plan to fall out of compliance with Stste law and the remedy for that, imposed by the State, is the singular, siloed, non-coordinated mess we currently have. Council and staff could have brought the General Plan back into compliance fairly easily, but instead while Council fiddled Davis burned.
By the way, rock hunting goes much better if you have (and can share) a plan for why the rocks are important in the broader context of a plan. A plan that says this is the kind of community we are and this is where we want to be and this is how we will pay for it..
Vote “no” on Village Farms (and Shriner’s), in order to subsequently eliminate Measure J.
(That’s exactly the argument you’ve repeatedly presented, and I support you in this endeavor. Teach these entitled NIMBYs a lesson, so to speak.)
Its true, David is the one pushing that narrative, and, right or wrong, I don’t think it resonates with anyone. What is even sillier is the projection of naysayers like Ron O. and McCann trying to claim, without any evidence, that people other than David are hoping that VF fails to take down Measure J.
It shows the depths that opponents will go to defeat VF and its only January. With four months to go until election day we can only expect this campaign to become more nasty and shrill. The demagoguery is only beginning.
Ron G
Please point to where I encouraged voting on no on VF to eventually overturn Measure J/R/D? If you can’t find, please withdraw your false assertion.
I am advocating for a no vote on VF as a means to save our local planning process without just handing over all decision making to developers. That’s the path that led to Measure J initially. (You will have to admit that other than Wildhorse, I was correct that the other 1990s developments I listed steamrolled through the planning process and ended up with unwanted sprawl that voters rebelled against.)
There was that post where you wondered if the VF farms developers wanted to lose so they could, what was it , get the builders remedy or was it have the state move against Measure J. BTW, Both Eileen and I called you on it and now you make some joke about how I would vote against VF to get the same outcome. So that is twice. And both are pretty unrealistic and I think reveal more about the kind of nonsense we can expect more of until the election in June.
” . . . and I think reveal more about the kind of nonsense we can expect more of until the election in June.”
I certainly hope so.
Though truth be told, I’m becoming more impressed with what others post on here. (Not a joke – I’m starting to believe that people believe in what they’re stating – folks like McCann, Keller, you, etc.)
Of course, “I” have always been honest, though I’m starting to take myself less seriously as I realize I have no control – not even a single vote.
Though I will say that I don’t actually understand why some support sprawl, especially when there’s no “shortage” of it around here. I don’t think much of the school district argument, and that’s where I see some “dishonesty” that’s also not resonating (except for a relative handful of people who might be temporarily affected – or might eventually have to work in their OWN school district).
If it wasn’t for the “senior exemption”, it seems likely that the recently-approved parcel taxes would not have been approved by voters. Especially when the entire town is ageing (as well as California as a whole).
1.6 kids – my favorite statistic (nationwide).