DAVIS, Calif. — As Davis considers how and where the city could grow in coming decades, City Council members on Tuesday pressed staff and consultants to reconsider density, population and transportation assumptions underlying a preliminary planning analysis tied to potential peripheral development areas, including Village Farms and Willowgrove.
The discussion centered on a high-level transportation and land use framework prepared as part of the city’s General Plan update.
Council members emphasized repeatedly that the document was conceptual and not a draft plan. Still, several said the exercise revealed assumptions that could shape future decisions if left unexamined, particularly regarding low-density development at the city’s edge.
Council member Bapu Vaitla said the city must resolve fundamental questions before moving further along what he described as a peripheral land use planning path.
“The first question that I think needs to be answered, scenarios that need to be put on the table, is what is in fact our population target for 2050,” Vaitla said. He noted that the analysis relied on regional housing allocation numbers but said the city should explore multiple population scenarios and then determine what kind of housing mix and acreage would be required under each.
Vaitla said that work should be taken up by city commissions with technical expertise, including the Planning Commission and Transportation Commission. He argued that understanding population targets is inseparable from understanding how much land and infrastructure the city would commit to peripheral growth.
He also said the city must evaluate how much future housing demand could realistically be absorbed within existing city limits before determining how much growth must occur on the periphery. “Infill is really job number one,” Vaitla said, adding that assumptions about density and redevelopment pace would shape how much pressure is placed on outlying areas.
Mayor Donna Neville said she was surprised by what she saw when reviewing the conceptual land use map.
“One of my first surprises when I looked at the land use map was to see the extent of low density housing,” Neville said. “That really took me aback.”
Neville said she expected to see higher density closer to existing infrastructure rather than large areas of low-density development, even in a conceptual exercise. She said those assumptions matter because they influence transportation impacts, service provision and long-term fiscal outcomes.
Council member Gloria Partida also questioned the density assumptions embedded in the framework, saying they appeared inconsistent with recent policy discussions.
“We’ve been talking at length with all of the projects that are coming forward about how we are wanting to move away from lower density and we want to really concentrate on higher density,” Partida said. “I would’ve loved to have seen this at a much higher density.”
Partida said that bringing more jobs to Davis is essential to reducing vehicle miles traveled and that land use decisions must reflect that reality. “We need to bring more jobs here,” she said. “That is really what we need to do to address the vehicle miles traveled.”
Community Development Director Sherri Metzker said the presentation was intentionally high level and was not intended to prescribe specific outcomes.
“This plan, it’s colors on a map,” Metzker said. “It’s not our plan.”
Metzker said the work was prepared in response to council direction to front-load analysis of transportation and land use interactions, particularly in light of proposed peripheral developments. She said staff and consultants conducted the work without firm land use assumptions or finalized population projections.
Metzker also said that internal growth opportunities are limited following recent housing element updates. “We took up just about every vacant lot we had left in town in the last housing element update,” she said, noting that few undeveloped parcels remain.
She added that changes in state housing rules have narrowed what qualifies as a viable housing site. “What they considered a viable site was something that was buildable and ready to be built on, not something that required something to be torn down and then it would get built on,” Metzker said.
Council member Josh Chapman focused on transportation infrastructure and funding, asking why certain east-west circulation options north of Covell Boulevard were not included and raising concerns about long-term transit operations.
“One of the things that we focus on… is the duty to maintain it and then also to operate it,” Chapman said, referring to new transportation infrastructure. He warned that many transit agencies are struggling financially. “Right now, the vast majority of transit districts are on a fiscal cliff, don’t have money to operate even the level of service that we have now,” he said.
Chapman asked whether the city could explore developer in-lieu fees that generate ongoing operational funding rather than one-time capital investments. “Can we create some sort of system in place that can backfill the need for ongoing revenue on the backs of a developer in-lieu fee?” he asked.
Metzker said staff had already begun discussing those issues internally.
Several council members also questioned the cost and feasibility of proposed road and interchange improvements associated with peripheral growth, including potential impacts at Richards Boulevard, Mace Boulevard and Chiles Road. Staff said some grant funding has been secured for design work but acknowledged a substantial funding gap remains.
The geographic focus of the analysis prompted questions about why west Davis was not considered for future growth. Metzker said floodplain constraints were a major factor.
“The west side has significant floodplain issues,” she said. “By significant I mean worse than Village Farms.”
Metzker said addressing those conditions would require extensive earthwork, citing the volume of fill required for previous developments.
Council members also discussed how state housing allocations are determined and whether those figures reflect local priorities. Neville questioned whether regional numbers meaningfully account for a city’s efforts to maximize infill or pursue different land use strategies.
Metzker said allocations originate with the state Department of Finance and are distributed through regional agencies. “They look at it at a much, much grander, higher level than any one particular city,” she said, adding that reducing one city’s allocation shifts the obligation elsewhere in the region.
Late in the discussion, a senior staff member acknowledged that the item had been improperly agendized, contributing to public confusion.
“It was an oversight on my part,” the staff member said. “I think that this item would have more appropriately been agendized as a workshop item.”
Neville thanked staff for the clarification and said she heard broad agreement among council members on the need to revisit assumptions before advancing peripheral planning.
“I haven’t heard anything here tonight for my colleagues that I disagree with,” she said.
Council members ultimately supported sending the transportation framework to the Transportation Commission for preliminary feedback while directing the Planning Commission to begin work on population scenarios and citywide zoning assumptions.
Vaitla said those steps are necessary before debating where growth should occur. “I don’t think it needs to be necessarily in context of a northeast, all of the growth is coming from northeast,” he said. “But I do think they need to chew on those other issues.”
Metzker said staff is preparing information for commission review and emphasized that transportation and land use decisions cannot be separated. “They are definitely joined at the hip and you can’t do one without the other,” she said.
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“Partida said that bringing more jobs to Davis is essential to reducing vehicle miles traveled and that land use decisions must reflect that reality. “We need to bring more jobs here,” she said. “That is really what we need to do to address the vehicle miles traveled.”
How is it that this crazy, self-contradictory argument continues to surface?
Jobs are what CREATE demand for housing in a given locale. And yet, Ms. Partida wants to increase demand – while simultaneously claiming there’s already a “housing shortage”?
In what universe does that make any sense whatsoever?
Ron O
I will implicitly agree to a certain extent because we already have 17,000 workers commuting into Davis and we first need to house them. That’s equal to about 10 Village Farms! We need to plan to increase our population to accommodate those workers which would be about 40,000 more people. We already projected that Davis should plan to grow to more than 100,000 (and 120,000 including UCD) over the next 40 years. That’s roughly on par with other college towns with similar sized universities.
That said, we should be adding more businesses and jobs that target UCD technology spin offs. That will be a relatively small number of total jobs however and much smaller than the 17,000 already commuting here.
Richard: That’s a flat-out untruth, regarding a net 17,000 workers commuting to Davis.
They’re also not commuting to Davis in the first place. Those living in Davis (and outside of Davis) are primarily commuting to UCD (and/or Sacramento) – if they’re even working at all.
Matt is basically correct – Davis is a bedroom community – a suburb of both UCD and Sacramento. And it is increasingly a retirement community, where permanent residents are no longer commuting at all.
As for finances, I’d look at how actual retirement communities survive.
1.6 kids per woman – nationwide.
Truth be told, some of the people opposed to Village Farms look more like “fossils” than either of us.
I see this as significant progress, people moving in the right direction. But this consultant report really lowered my confidence in the the quality of what we might see from the city’s formal process.
They can call it an thought experiment, or “just colors on a map” all they want, but the fact they even released something this tone-deaf is a red flag.
One thing that I feel morally obligated to object to every single time I see it is this:
“Right now, the vast majority of transit districts are on a fiscal cliff, don’t have money to operate even the level of service that we have now,” he said.
1) The vast majority of transit districts are transit laid over low-density sprawl. These are systems trying to make transit work on top of two generation of land use decisions optimized for the automobile. Most transit districts were always a lipstick solution.
2) Our ROAD NETWORK is also on the fiscal cliff.. (maybe its over it given that we have deferred maintenance on our roads).
Everyone has no problem providing free parking, highways, and road networks for everyone driving a car, and then complains that transit needs to pay for itself?
Thats one of the baseline premises behind transit-oriented design in the first place: We KNOW that automotive infrastructure doesn’t scale, requires massive subsidy, and creates multiple other costs we just don’t have compared to transit. We also know that transit CAN be much more cost effective IF it is designed well.
If we have to choose between a car network that requires subsidy versus a transit network that requires subsidy, our dollars are always better spent on well integrated transit…
MUNI, in one of the densest cities in the country – is on a fiscal cliff.
They’re seeking a parcel tax to keep it afloat.
https://sfstandard.com/2026/01/06/san-francisco-muni-parcel-tax-finalized/
If one wants to encourage ridership (assuming that telecommuting is not an option), the way to do that is to “punish” parking at worksites, and implement employer subsidies of public transit (as the state does for its employees who work in downtown Sacramento). Ultimately, neither of those methods have anything to do with residential density – they’re financial incentives.
At the downtown Sacramento office I worked in, I’d estimate that less than 1/3 of them drove to work (from sprawling cities throughout the region, where their homes were located).
Yes — Muni clearly needs funding. I said “more cost effective” not “revenue generator”
The larger point is that car infrastructure already consumes far more public money than transit, and those dollars deliver much lower returns per acre and per trip.
We routinely accept massive, ongoing subsidies for roads and parking (and their external costs), while holding transit to a much higher standard — even though well-used transit investments are consistently more fiscally efficient for cities than expanding auto infrastructure.
The oft-cited total costs framework give us this:
🚶♀️If walking costs you $1, we all pay $0.01
🚲 If biking costs you $1, we all pay $0.08
🚌 If bussing costs you $1, we all pay $1.50
🚙 If driving costs you $1, we all pay $9.20
Ron O
First, SF MUNI is struggling because everything is struggling in SF; it’s not unique to the transit system. There are other transit systems across the country that are now being to rebound and thrive.
Further, as Alan Miller will point out, car travel is subsidized via are tax dollars for local road ways. (40 years ago, auto taxes were roughly in balance with road spending–I did a study on that. That’s no longer true.) So we should be subsidizing transit to the same level.
And its obvious that density increases transit ridership. Incentives do work well, as shown by the NYC toll. But your anecdotal observation about Sac is not borne about the statistics that show 97% of Sac VMT is by car. https://gettingaroundsac.blog/2023/03/25/a-graphic-for-transportation-mode-share/
I’m specifically referring to those who work downtown and are subsidized to take public transit.
It was a “no brainer” for me (free public transit, vs. the cost of using and parking my own vehicle). I’m way, way too cheap to pass up that opportunity.
Haven’t looked at your citation, but does it address that specific use (downtown workers who have employer-provided transit subsidies)?
There are/were lots of bus lines coming from throughout the region, dropping off workers in downtown Sacramento for work.
There are/were lots of parking lots, as well. Perhaps they don’t charge enough.
Don’t know what impact telecommuting is having, these days.
Ron O
The proportion of commuters who drive is not consistent with your personal experience. It’s not possible that only one-third of downtown Sac workers ride transit, who are a large share of the total regional workforce, and 97% driving. If you dispute that you can go look into SACOG’s transportation analysis here: https://www.sacog.org/planning/data-resource-center/transportation-analysis-modeling
That the Council was blind-sided by this report is a red flag. Where was the communication between staff and Council members? Where was the communication with the relevant commissions?
It looks like Metzger poorly interpreted the directive from the Council. Further, she seems to be trapped in a short term vision that cannot see how the internal arterials of the city can be transformed and densified by changing the zoning from SF only. We wrote about the possible earlier as we referenced yesterday in this article: https://davisvanguard.org/2026/02/consultant-report-sprawl-analysis/
“Community Development Director Sherri Metzker said the presentation was intentionally high level and was not intended to prescribe specific outcomes. “This plan, it’s colors on a map,” Metzker said. “It’s not our plan.””
Having been in many regulatory proceedings and planning processes, what is initially put forth, no matter the intention, become the baseline of the narrative going forward. It’s naive to believe otherwise and an experienced planner should understand this. Now we have this extreme low density sprawl proposal that says we either will unleash developer greed or set up a strawman for the anti-growth groups to oppose any new development–neither being a desirable outcome.
Wow, perhaps Metzker saw the support for the I-80 fattening – from all except Vaitla – and figured that that could be slightly justified with a lot of sprawl!
But hey, what about this huge consultancy Fehr & Peers? Shouldn’t they know better? Did they get some clarification that this kind of nonsense should be advanced?
This reminds me of my misinterpreted request for a birthday gift over 50 years ago: something related to the Detroit Tigers! What I got was Tigger! Seems like Winnie is not the only one caught with their pants down.
Truth be told, dense housing (or any housing) in the areas northeast of Davis’ city boundaries are going to house those who work in Sacramento, not in Davis.
So if you’re talking about “public transit” in conjunction with some development there, you should be talking about increasing the frequency of the already-existing bus lines (including the existing express bus line) to/from Sacramento) – not simply within Davis, and not necessarily to/from UCD.
There is no evidence (as in “none”) that those who would move to a development in that area would seek employment in Davis or at UCD.
Ron O
Again, there are 17,000 workers who commute into Davis who already work here. They don’t live here because we’ve priced them out. Denser housing will be less expensive for those workers who could then live here instead of out of town. This shared wall 3/2 house sold in the Cannery for just $600k which is affordable to these workers: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1084-Cherry-Punch-Ter-Davis-CA-95616/201608440_zpid/
“The first question that I think needs to be answered, scenarios that need to be put on the table, is what is in fact our population target for 2050,” Vaitla said. He noted that the analysis relied on regional housing allocation numbers but said the city should explore multiple population scenarios and then determine what kind of housing mix and acreage would be required under each.”
That is the beginning of a long overdue discussion of a Vision for Davis. However, there is a fatal flaw contained in Bapu’s statement. Specifically, housing by itself is a fiscal loser for the City … a loser that has an annual compound loss growth rate of over 2% each and every year. So looking ONLY at population is a fool’s errand. The conversation needs to start with a discussion of jobs … what kind of jobs Davis targets for addition to the city’s economy … and once that component of Vision has been agreed upon, then the housing needed to support those jobs will be a necessary part of the discussion.
It is certainly possible that the rsidents of Davis don’t want to add jobs to our local economy, and want to continue to be what we have become over the last 25 years, a bedroom community for retirees and people who commute to jobs outside the City Limits. If that is the chosen Vision, then the cost of that Vision needs to be openly discussed … specifically where to find the revenues need to maintain the roads and greenbelts and capital infrastructure, as well as provide services to the residents and businesses. Currently, the City starts each year with between a $15 million and $20 million shortfall of revenues needed to cover needed/necessary costs. With an approximate population of 70,000, that amounts to between $215 and $285 per person per year … every student renting in Davis, every spouse, every child, every retiree. If we don’t deal with that revenue shortfall as part of a commitment to being a bedroom community, our streets will continue to crumble around us.
“The first question that I think needs to be answered, scenarios that need to be put on the table, is what is in fact our population target for 2050,” Vaitla said.
Using the Measure H maximum of 1% growth per year, by 2050 the maximum population of Davis would be 82,500. That would add about 600 – 700 population per year.
Don, if I remember correctly the 1% had some significant exclusions … I’m pretty sure Capital-A Affordables didn’t count toward the 1%. I’ll do some digging to verify that my memory is correct.
Here is what AI says “ Exemptions: The growth cap policy exempts specific types of housing, including affordable housing projects, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), and certain units in mixed-use buildings.”
I haven’t found the actual language, but have found a reference to cooperative housing like Dos Pinos being excluded as well.
Here is a link to past Vanguard article on the 1% Growth “Guideline”
https://davisvanguard.org/2008/02/news-and-commentary-council-majority-votes-to-maintain-1-growth-guideline/
That pointed me to the Minutes of the February 12, 2008 Council meeting (available at http://documents.cityofdavis.org/Media/Default/Documents/PDF/CityCouncil/CouncilMeetings/Minutes/Archive/Minutes-2008-02-12-City-Council-Meeting.pdf) which state the following:
Discussion and Clarification of One Percent Growth Guideline Resolution No. 05-27, Adopted by City Council on March 8, 2005
Main motion by L. Heystek, second by S. Greenwald to direct staff to return with a revised resolution to include the language “as low as legally possible” which was contained in 1986 Ballot Measure L that passed.
Substitute motion by S. Souza, second by R. Asmundson to approve staff recommendation of Resolution 08-019, which supersedes Resolution 05-27, to clarify that the one percent growth guideline is:
• A cap not to be exceeded, except for units that are specifically exempted and allowed by City Council as an infill project with extraordinary circumstances and community benefits.
• To provide for identified housing needs without compromising City standards for development quality.
The substitute motion passed by the following votes:
AYES: Asmundson, Saylor, Souza
NOES: Heystek, Greenwald
Looking at the Minutes of the March 8, 2005 Council meeting they state the following:
Following discussion, T. Puntillo moved, seconded by S. Souza, approval of Resolution No. 05-27 – Resolution by the City Council of the City of Davis to Amend Direction to Staff to Implement an Annual City Growth Parameter, Prepare Amendments to the General Plan and Phased Housing Allocation Ordinance, and Prepare a Joint Housing Strategy with U.C. Davis.
A copy of Resolution No. 05-27 will need to be requested in order to see the specific language.