I’d like to briefly address two claims the opposition has been circulating about the bicycle overcrossing planned from Northstar to Village Farms Davis – one about feasibility, one about financing. Both are wrong, and both are easily corrected.
On Feasibility
Measure V opponents have suggested that the Village Farms bicycle overcrossing will be impossible to build. As evidence, they point to Nishi – a student housing project that (some of) the same developers behind Village Farms are involved in – where they claim Union Pacific Railroad is holding up a grade-separated crossing.
I only wish they had asked us first.
We have had Union Pacific’s stamped approval on the Nishi overcrossing engineering plans for over three years. That crossing is a significantly larger structure than the one planned at Village Farms. If anything, what Nishi demonstrates is that we know exactly how to work with this railroad.
And here is what working with Union Pacific actually looks like: they are straightforward to deal with if you follow their guidelines precisely. Those guidelines are consistent, publicly available, and clear. Underpasses are no longer permitted. Overpasses that meet their specifications will be approved. There is no mystery, and no basis for the opposition’s assumption.
The Village Farms baseline features commit to the crossing explicitly. The relevant language, required by the City of Davis attorney, reads:
“Construction of a bicycle and pedestrian grade-separated crossing of F Street and the UPRR railroad near Anderson Road at F Street. An overpass in this location is consistent with current railroad policies and guidelines and will proceed subject to the railroad’s approval.”
That last phrase – “subject to the railroad’s approval” – was required by the City Attorney for liability reasons. It is standard legal language, not a hedge. She was not flexible on that point, and neither are we on our commitment to build it.
On Financing
Opponents have also suggested that taxpayers will bear the cost of these crossings, or at least split it. That is not accurate. Funding comes from two separate sources, but both are paid directly by the project – one through direct contribution, one through impact fees Village Farms is required to pay. No taxpayer burden. Not a dollar.
One More Thing, Since We’re Clearing the Air
Our student housing project at Nishi was the first ever Measure J project to pass at the Davis ballot. Only one other project has passed since – and that other developer subsequently returned to the City and changed the development agreement to make his project feasible.
Conversely, we have never asked to change a single word of our baseline features or our much longer development agreement. We remain committed to every one of our promises, and we will continue to work with UC Davis to find solutions that work for everyone.
Blanket suspicion of developers is understandable. But suspicion ought to be proportional to the record.
The path forward at Village Farms is clear. Let’s not wait another 40 years to complete the Davis Bike Loop – please vote Yes on Measure V!
Sandy Whitcombe, Project Co-Lead and member of one of the 7 famillies behind Village Farms Davis
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Both of the two sources of funding for the crossings are from the developer. One source comes from the project’s tens of millions of dollars in traffic impact fees paid by the developer to the City. On construction of the off-grade crossings, the City will pay back to the developer 80% of the cost of the cossings. Essentially the City is paying back the develpers own money for traffic mitigation. The other 20% of the costs are paid directly from the project’s pockets. No taxpayer funds of any type are otherwise used to pay for any aspect of the crossing.
I’d like to see someone with more knowledge than I have address your comment, but here’s what Eileen previously noted (to which you didn’t respond):
“You can see this for yourself you look at the Development Agreement the Village Farm developers could get away with paying as little as 6.70% of the cost of the 2 grade-separated crossings per Attachment L1 in the Development Agreement. That means that Davis residents would be paying for 93.3% of the cost of these 2 multi-million-dollar grade-separated crossings to subsidize the Village Farms development.”
In the meantime, you state that 80% of the cost would be coming from traffic impact fees. Since there are presumably more than one type of traffic impact that would require mitigation, how would those funds be divided out between grade-separated crossings, vs. other traffic “improvements” (aka, traffic impediments)? And when would there be sufficient funds collected to cover all of the traffic improvements? (Seems to me that grade-separated crossings have very little to do with traffic impacts, in general.)
Same type of question regarding the remaining 20% that would be funded by future property owners (which presumably would need to be accounted for in the sales price of the houses). That is, at what point would the full amount be collected in order to complete the grade-separated crossings, and what happens if the 20% plus the 80% described above aren’t sufficient to build the crossings at some point in the future?
Are both of the types of grade-separated crossings even fully planned, at this point? If so, are there architectural drawings, cost estimates, etc.?
In general, what enforcement mechanism (if any) does the city have to ensure that the development pays the full cost – as they continue to build houses?
I have no idea where she came up with that number. Read the Development Agreement yourself.
Alan P – Would you care to answer the questions I asked regarding your statements?
Alan, you need to take a course in Cash flow analysis.
To illustrate let me use an example from your own life. Imagine that you just received two tax refund checks totaling $10,000 from the Feds and California, and you deposit those checks in your bank account. Is that money in the bank yours to do anything you please with? Of course it is.
The traffic impact fees paid by the developer are just like the refund checks. When they are deposited in the City’s bank account, they belong to the taxpayers of the City, and can be used to do transportation maintenance of the transportation infrastructure built for and by the project developers … when repairs/replacement of that built transportation infrastructure needs repairs and/or replacement. Ideally those dollars should be put into a specific fund of the City’s General Ledger where they would be held until any repairs/replacement becomes needed.
The developer giving the money conditionally to the City predicated on the City paying for the BUILDING of infrastructure is very much like the Feds and California saying to you that you are getting your tax refund but only on the condition that you donate the money back to pay for the I-80 lane expansion project.
Thank you Sandy for coming on and posting this helpful and illuminating information.
When you say, ”We have had Union Pacific’s stamped approval on the Nishi overcrossing engineering plans for over three years” it begs the question, What is actually causing the three year delay since UP gave its stamp of approval?
Sandy, as important as who pays for the overpasses is, much more important is the well documented fact (by as many as 10 official financial analyses done for the City including the one done by BAE on Village Farms) that housing by itself produces less revenues for the City than it produces in costs for services and maintenance/repair/replacement of capital infrastructure.
Further, those same studies report that the City’s costs rise each year by over 4% while its revenues only rise by between 2.0% and 2.5%. That means what starts out as a loss becomes a bigger and bigger and bigger loss each year that goes by.
The City’s financial reports show that those losses have added up over the past 25 years to the point where the city has well over $200 million of unfunded liabilities for streets and greenbelts and buildings repairs.
Also, the City just reported that its Revenues for this current year are going to be $95.6 million and its Expenses are going to be $102.4 million … a $6.8 million deficit.
But it is worse than that. If the City included a proportional amortization of the streets repairs unfunded liability, that $102.4 million would go up to approximately $115 million, making the deficit over $19 million.
And it gets even worse when you factor in the fact that during the past six months the City’s General Fund Reserve decreased from 11.5% to 8.9%.
And all that happened in a year where the voters passed a $12 million increase in Sales Tax. Can you imagine how bad the deficit would have been without all of us ponying up all of that additional sales tax?
Bottom-line, this isn’t just about overpasses. It is about the horrendous across-the-board financial status of the City. Asking the City to pay for the bulk of the costs of the overpasses is just adding insult to injury.
Matt, you are moving the goal posts from overpasses to some other of your nonsense about funding infrastructure.
Ron, I’m not moving the goalposts at all. That would be “either/or” thinking, and you have the inside track on that kind of thinking. The realities of City of Davis finances are “both/and”. In fact they are both/and/and/and/and”. It is hard to describe how bad those finances are. One Fiscsl Commissioner at the last meeting used the words catastrophe/disaster to describe them.
Matt is repeating what is cleanly summed up as the lesson of “strong towns”. Its founder Chuck Marohn spoke here in davis 10 years ago:
https://www.cooldavis.org/2016/01/20/growing-cities-for-financial-and-neighborhood-sustainability/
I guess we didnt listen.
We also had joe Minicozzi come and teach us similar lesson:
https://dctv.davismedia.org/content/davis-futures-forum-presents-joe-minicozzi-how-good-urban-design-makes-city-richer
I guess we didn’t listen there either?
Single family developments are like economic strip-mining. Its a resource extraction exercise with significant environmental impact not paid by the mining company
Turning farmland into housing creates large amounts of value, but there are also maintenance liabilities. Developers develop, they harvest that value, and then turn the maintenance liability, over to us. They do not pay for the externalities, effects on the road networks, on our wastewater plants, on carbon emisions form the energy-inefficient houses etc etc. They pay to put in the resource, collect their profits and hand everything over to us. Its a BAD deal for us economically. We know this, we have known this for DECADES, we have had the people who are experts on thse topics come and speak here.
WHY are we making this mistake?
There are other ways we can build housing, there are better ways we could be developing THIS exact site. Its important to build this site in general – but not like this. This is a mistake we cant un-do.
That Minicozzi guy came to town and we listened and we did the downtown plan and nothing got built. He was so pre-big box and Amazon. His ideas were good for the 20th century.
Since we’re riffing on Shakespeare here, “Much ado about crossings” Sandy Whitcombe, Davis Vanguard, May 16. I’d have to rebut with “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” . No promise of a separated grade crossing over Covell (so no means maybe?) and crossing to F st is per the approval of the railroad (maybe means yes?)
The price of Yes on Measure V’s protestations is near $780,000 while The No on V “war chest” Stands at $40,000 from mostly small, non corporate donors. That’s approximately $20 per registered City of Davis voter for the Village Farms proposal. I’d prefer the developers simply give me a signed 20 dollar bill instead of paid phone banking, canvassers , giant signs, TV adds and an ankle deep pile of slick fliers with AI generated houses and frolicking children.
BOY! The lady really doth protest too much.
Keeping with the chosen theme “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” …. Um unless that rose was near a retired city dump I suppose.
No on V. The Citizens of Davis, present and future, deserve a truly affordable development that fits the character of our Fair City.
And as always: Vote 🗳️ No on V!
If you are a No on Village Farms voter, please go to noonmeasurev.org and order a lawn sign. We will deliver.