By David M. Greenwald
The last totals came in at 11:42 pm, but it looks like there are more precincts to report and we think there have to be a lot more votes because the vote total is extremely low. Countywide, the 
presidential race garnered 55,000 or so votes which was about 20,000 under those cast in 2016 and, given that in most places of the country the turnout was near record numbers, it is possible there are another 30,000 votes to be counted countywide, we have not gotten an official announcement on that yet.
Given what we saw back in March where the school parcel tax went from trailing to eventually passing, I am more likely to view these as preliminary results than I would have been in previous years.
City Council – District 2
Will Arnold texted, “It’s too early to be discussing outcomes. Our team ran a great race and I’m deeply honored by all of the incredible support.”
Most of the night, we saw the perils of relying on polling to predict outcomes nationally, but not having polling means you are reading tea leaves locally. We figured that it would be hard to defeat a sitting incumbent with deep roots in the community who had done little to anger voters.
We thought—along with a lot of people we talked to—that Colin Walsh was making inroads, although I could not see tangible signs of it other than a healthy dose of letters to the editor. Dillan Horton actually is running second and Walsh third. Together they received less than half the vote, which was one of the scenarios we thought might happen—incumbent versus challenger where the two challengers were competing for votes with each other and the incumbent ended up with a majority.
Again, since we don’t know how many votes remain, I would caution this as preliminary results and observations.
City Council – District 3
This was always going to be hard for Larry Guenther, and he definitely worked hard, but Lucas Frerichs really had few weaknesses—a solid record, a tireless public servant, and as expected it appears that he has nearly doubled over his opponent.
City Council – District 5
This is the one we got wrong locally—at least so far. It’s a 455 vote lead for Josh Chapman over Rochelle Swanson. That’s pretty sizable, given the low vote totals. Something to keep in mind is that is that the total number of votes was just 3449. So how many more are there? Still, it would probably take a huge reverse split to reverse the result here—but you never know.
Measure B – DISC
Right now this is going down by 850 votes. The difficult thing is to know how many more votes there are and, citywide, only 19,898 were cast. That seems low. In 2016, it was more like 32,000 votes cast.
Still, the votes ended up in the direction we sensed things were going—a narrow defeat for the measure. This was definitely not a repeat of 2005 and 2009 where the Measure J projects were blown out, but at this point at least, it is hard to imagine the project doing what Nishi did and coming back two years later. But maybe it does.
When I spoke to Dan Ramos last night, he felt there were a lot of votes to be counted and wasn’t ready to concede just yet.
Measure D – Measure J Renewal
We definitely called this one right—I didn’t think this would be close and consistently stated that I believed the measure would be renewed with more than 70 percent of the vote. As it turns out, it passed by an even larger margin, 83-17. It would have been nice to have had more discussion about the measure, but, in the end, the community has largely spoken on this and I don’t think it is that fruitful to bring it back in five years.
Yolo County Supervisor – District 5
Honestly, this one probably warrants a lot more analysis and discussion. The bottom line is that Jim Provenza wins easily in a race that in March looked anything but. What happened? First of all, when Linda Deos decided to run in this race I never thought that Jim Provenza was vulnerable. But when she and David Abramson ran against Provenza in the winter and spring, it was just a 10-point spread and Provenza was held under 50 percent.
So it looked like Deos would have a reasonable chance. But the political landscape seems to have shifted several times. When the world shut down, the county took on a much more prominent role and it played into Provenza’s strengths. However, the landscape shifted in May and June and it looked like social justice issues would prevail and that would play to Deos. However, that has seemingly died down and the landscape shifted back toward health issues like COVID.
I don’t know if COVID and the presidential race sucked all of the oxygen out of the room or not, but the supervisor’s race just seemed invisible. Jim Provenza remained active and vigil, but that played to his advantage as well. The result, if it holds up—which I see no reason why it wouldn’t—bears that out with a 15-point spread and a nearly 2000-vote advantage.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
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The vote count on Measure B rose by 1,622 votes in the wee hours of the morning with the third vote count update … approximately 10% of the previous count … with the split of No versus Yes being almost identical to all the prior votes. The lead for No crept up to 852 from 778 in the prior update and up from 689 in the first update.
The total votes cast on Measure B so far is 19,898. To put that into context, the total votes cast for WDAAC was 26,884, for Nishi 2018 was 19,210, and for Nishi 2016 was 23,909. So it is reasonable to believe there are some additional votes to come in.
However, two factors may mean the added votes may be relatively small in number. The first factor is that in 40% of the City there was no City Council race, so many Davis voters may have skipped over the City votes after casting their Presidential vote. The second factor is the impact of COVID on UCD students’ residence numbers in the City of Davis. Many of those students are taking their courses virtually, and may have never actually moved from their hometown to a Davis residence. Additionally, Governor Newsom’s announcement that all voters would get a mail ballot, many students may have chosen to keep (or even move) their voter registration in their hometown rather than Davis, to be certain they would actually receive the mail-in ballot.
Given those two factors, it is not unreasonable to think that the 26,884 number from the June 2018 election is unlikely to be repeated.
I think the City and School District needs to re-address the move to District voting. I feel disconnected to the community outside my own district. I could only vote for one City Council member and one School Board member. I think it was a mistake to force us to change.
The legal situation is complicated. The court decision out of Santa Monica was depublished and has been appealed to the Supreme Court, so right now, the city doesn’t have a legal avenue to reconsider it.
Case status: The California Supreme Court granted the petition for review and ordered the parties to brief the following issue: “What must a plaintiff prove in order to establish vote dilution under the California Voting Rights Act?” The Supreme Court also ordered the Court of Appeal’s opinion depublished (meaning the opinion can’t be cited as legal precedent in other cases).
It certainly wouldn’t make sense to proceed on returning to at-large elections before getting Supreme Court guidance on the applicable standard under the CVRA.
With B going down and D insanely YES, it is clear Davis property owners are much more interested in selfishly maintaining their artificially high property values and border vistas than city economic development. No commercial developer will ever bet on Davis again. Economic development of any quantity besides an occasional spot-build or scrape-n-build in Davis is dead, dead, dead, dead, dead. So can we please just throw in the towel and stop talking about it? No money for nice things . . . bump along on decaying roads. It’s over.
Actually there’s an infill thing in the works. This was on last week’s Council Consent, somewhat stealthily. But good stealth. And my holy grail the PG&E yard is part of it, as is University Research Park, which was also approved at the same meeting. As I’ve mentioned to you before URP & Post-PG&E can be a kind of joint campus across I-80.
Alternatively, once President Biden disassembles the border wall we can reconstruct it in the UP ROW corridor heading up to Woodland, NOT in place of the railway tracks but next to it. Then it can be a linear museum about the wall as a symbol of Trump – and naturally an anti-symbol of Davis – and then also a big tourist attraction with most everyone arriving by train.
Hey cool, I’ll be in a green zone! Maybe SACOG will give me some free solar panels.
The holy grail is the right metaphor for the PG&E yard
Yeah, PG&E is looking at expanding operations there with a new building – this isn’t going anywhere for decades. As I’ve mentioned before, if they sell it, they will also have to deal with, and pay for, the toxic waste that hasn’t been studied yet.
Alan, Starting with your final sentence. I believe you are jumping to a conclusion a bit too fast. As both Richard McCann and I (and others) have been saying consistently and often, Davis doesn’t have a Vision of what it currently is, or what it wants to be. It also does not have an up-to-date General Plan that builds on that Vision. If/When Davis actually stops playing ostrich and undertakes a Visioning exercise and General Plan update, the citizens/residents/taxpayers/businesses of Davis will have to honestly wrestle with the challenges of the various alternative scenarios for the City.
The current facts on the ground are that Davis is a bedroom community with the majority of its residents with jobs commuting to places of work that are outside the City Limits. The Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) graphic below presented by Fehr & Peers to the Bicycle Transportation and Street Safety Commission does a good job of illustrating that a substantial proportion of East Davis commutes by car at a rate that is greater than 115% of the Regional Average VMT, and in some East Davis neighborhoods greater than 150% of the Regional Average VMT.
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Experience tells us that the jobs they are commuting to are largely at various State Government offices, as well as at the UCD Medical Center. The commutes to job locations outside the City Limits for North Davis, West Davis and Central Davis residents are considerably shorter because so many of those jobs are on the UCD campus.
Many would argue that we are not a bedroom community, but rather a University town, and that is a legitimate argument if you are talking about the community and not just the City.
Others would argue that more and more Davis is becoming a Retirement community … with the bulk of the retirees having some direct or indirect association with UCD.
Put those things together and Davis becomes a bedroom community with significant university-related and retirement components/influences. That is what we are, but is it our Vision?
That brings me back to your statement, “No money for nice things . . . bump along on decaying roads. It’s over.” If we as a community and a City consciously choose that Vision, it comes with consequences … specifically that we have promised ourselves a level of service from both our City government and our Schools that has a price tag that exceeds (in both cases) the existing stream of revenues. Our revenues shortfall can be fixed, and the decay you have described can be reversed if we choose to tax ourselves at a higher rate (making Davis even less “affordable” than it is now). My back of the envelope calculations are that the decay of our City can be arrested if we add $500 per person per year to our City Taxes and an additional $1,000 per year to our DJUSD Parcel Taxes.
As we choose our Vision going forward, if we don’t want your “decay” we need to be honest with ourselves.
Sales tax is sort of assessed on a per person basis. Aren’t all the other city taxes per parcel? Absent a dramatic increase in retail sales, that would mean increasing city parcel taxes by over $1,000 a year, would it not?
Sort of… there is the ‘valuation’ of the property, on property taxes, and some of the CFD’s are based on the size of the parcel… and as you well know, ‘parcel’ is not equal to ‘lot’… so if I owned 8 SF lots, adjactent/abutting, I could ask the Assessor to make them one ‘parcel’… technically, saving me 7/8 of ‘parcel taxes’ (this is not a fiction or a theoretical… these exist)…
And, the “third rail” no one dares to touch, we could become a Charter City, and impose a City income tax, and/or property transfer tax (based on valuation)… both would be more “progressive”… and I advocate neither… parcel taxes tend to be ‘regressive’ as to ‘ability/resources’ to pay… and impact…
WM, that doesn’t mean that because we become a Charter City that would happen . . . I want that so we can implement choice voting – although Rexrod’s Folly may have pooched the any real value in that.
Davis may have a vision of being a bedroom community or a retirement community or something else. What Measure D and its prior incarnations have demonstrated, however, is that voters don’t have a vision of being a family-friendly community. Recent public Measure J/R votes approved a student-centric housing development and a senior housing development. The latter includes housing that is not merely suitable for seniors, but that, by intent and baseline features, excludes families with children. To paraphrase an old quote, under Measure J/R/D, you get the community you deserve.
One thing that is important to keep in mind with respect to Measure J – it was not challenged in a meaningful way that compelled the community to dialogue on the issue.
Considering it won by a 66 point spread, I don’t think that would have mattered.
In terms of winning and losing – probably not. In terms of moving forward a conversation, yes. With a debate and discussion, the final vote probably ends up being in the 60-40 range rather than the 66 point spread. It would lay groundwork for future discussion.
“future” being a decade.
Maybe. But not doing anything didn’t advance it at all.
RG and I complained a lot in the V comments section. That’s “doing something”, isn’t it?
Having a ballot statement in opposition, even a nominal campaign that would have forced a debate, would have been doing something. A few people stating their opposition in the community section, drowned out by a sea of supporters, was not going to move the needle – as you saw.
I was being sarcastic regarding the pathetic lack of effort – as you failed to saw.
See renewal of Measure JeRkeD
See renewal of Measure JeRkeD
Does that include people in ‘affordable’ (subsidized housing) that would then be less affordable, or should everyone else pay even more to make up for them?
See also, my comment to Jim F’s 11:37 post…
Alan… your 9:31 post: yep!
I went ‘counter stream’ on both… decided on B a day before I voted Sunday… always have opposed J/R/D on process and philosophical bases…
Either I’m a jinx, or I’ll be on the ‘winning side’ of some candidates, State propositions… looks strongly like locally, I’ll be ‘right’ on one… “at-large” DJUSD trustee… did not get to vote in the ‘district’ CC or DJUSD elections… thanks, Matt Rexroad!
[sidebar… had a # of folk wondering why they could not vote for Deos/Provenza… one, in particular, I asked her if she lived in’West Davis’… she said, “yes”… my initial thought was “Do you even have a clue?”, but expressed, “you are not in a district where there is a Supervisor race”… had to spend some time explaining ‘districts’… someone in their late 50’s, early 60’s… not sure she ‘got’ it… scary!]
You forgot to say “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
Jim…
Work the polls sometime… on the awareness of voters, how they are influenced by broadcast/internet/social media… 50-100 folk, did not want to turn in their VBM’s, because they wanted to “vote in person”… like submitting their VBM’s would be different than taking a ballot tp the VAC… some hadn’t even completed their ballot, and could have voted, in person, @ VAC… their ballots went with all the other ballots, to Co Elections, each night… some actually voted, ‘in person’, @ home, and could deliver in, ‘in person’ to the VAC… same ballot, same process, same delivery time to Co Elections… whatever…
To paraphrase a famous quote.. “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public”…
Is that the number of people, or the age group? Serious question.
“Vote in Person” – spread the virus!
And, (as I witnessesed) a ‘redneck’, red shirted guy, wearing a red t-shirt pro 2nd amendment logos (actually legal in a polling place, as there were no measures/candidates that would reasonably be affected, hence, not ‘electionering’), and driving a big truck with ‘TRUMP” flags flying, was asked if he had a mask… NO… may we offer you a mask? NO… (entitled to vote)… he was asked to stand 12 feet away (standard procedure of non-masked folk, per YC Elections, and common sense… ), and not only was he allowed to vote (and did), but he wanted the name of the poll-worker who ‘challenged’ him, so he could file a complaint… I witnessed this, and know the poll-worker pretty well… he (voter) was apparently seeking confrontation, then when gently confronted, took a very adversarial posture… as Alan M might say, an ‘arse’… only one we had over the course of 4 days… he is a denier, and cares not about others in regard to not wearing a mask, indoors, in proximity to a lot of others… a selfish troll, IMO…
I hate masks, but wear them out of respect for others when I am around others, outside the household. Not afraid, just respectful.
As to your main point, Alan M… yes, that was the number of folk I personally interacted with… for the polling place, figure 2-3 X that… ages ranged from 20’s – 60’s (guessing on appearance, and yes “profiling”)… one gave me the clue… (woman in late 60’s, early 70’s)… she told me, “the committee told me to surrender my ballot and vote in person”… so, we accommodated her…
VBM’s, delivered and/or filled out in a VAC, are exact same ballots, go in different recepticles, DO NOT go by USPS (longtime VBM/AV voter for ~ 30 years, and since college, always hand-delivered to a polling place), but drop your ballot off @ a VAC (highest security, just like any other vote), official dropboxes (good security, but not highest), USPS (just get it in weeks ahead, and pray) [medium security], or the informal dropboxes set up by the Republican Party (no ‘chain of custody’… only a fool would use that option for VBM).
All ballots received @ a VAC go to the same place, same time, as other ballots…
Did I answer your ? Alan? Knew it was fairly meant, and think I have responded, in kind…
What does that mean? Good you are respectful, but wearing a mask does you little good, so what does being afraid of have to do with it? What you should be afraid of is anyone not wearing a mask, so as the flaming f*ck you encountered. You actually stayed in the room and gave him 12-feet clearance? If those were the rules, I would have not worked. Being indoors, 12′ isn’t going to matter as if he has the virus the particles are going to start building up in the room, and if anyone is more likely to have the virus, it’s someone who doesn’t believe in it and goes around exposing himself to everyone.
LOL….You might think about rewording that.
So who were the winners of the DJUSD school board elections?
We won’t know until all the ballots are counted…
But, nice (not) jab @ David, and nice try supporting the Trumpian view than unleess it was counted by midnight, it doesn’t count… or the variation, if it was sent by 8:00 Tuesday (documented by postmark) via USPS (which has Trump’s “control”) and received by Elections after Nov 3, it either needs to be in abeyance, or cosidered invalid… until a SC decision (now ‘stacked’ 6-3 in favor of the President/Republicans/Conservatives (as you hve inversely pointed out, previously), so even if the popular vote, and implied Electoral College vote, say Trump ‘loses’, between lawsuits, lower case rulings, appellate rulings, and SC… Trump wins, no matter what… enjoy the glow… a very conservative, and/or Republican thing to do…
My prediction,
If Biden wins both popular and implied Electoral vote counts, the administration will find a way to overturn results, and Lord Trump will get a second term… he might actually honestly win it, but in any even, you got your “4 more years”… congrats… looking for property in Canada…
Jeez dude, relax. I don’t know who won and the article doesn’t mention the school board winners so I asked. Trump has nothing to do with the school board elections so quit your projecting. Your comment is totally off topic and exhibits your usual boorish behavior.
But the question was “So who were the winners of the DJUSD school board elections?”. WM, what question were you responding to?
Oh, and by the way, who won the school board elections?
Going by BM’s response I guess Trump didn’t.
Keith O’s question (David’s wife is a candidate)… question answered as to your 2:35 post…
As to Alan’s 2:49 question, already answered…
Asked, and answered.
Remember, until the telegraph, telephone were invented, wires strung, votes, in say Georgia, could would be relayed to Philly (later, DC), by courier… took days, weeks, depending on weather, etc. (no paved roads)… note that elections were held in early November, inauguration in late March…
Folk are looking for instant results, instant ‘gratification’… they can do that by ‘self’…
Am content to wait until all votes are counted… frankly (although I’m not) the ‘American’ way…
Statement posted on Facebook from Rochelle Swanson:
A sincere thank you to everyone who took the time to vote, regardless of your candidate, ballot measure choice or proposition support. It is heartening to see such a wave of participation in our democracy.
To my supporters, volunteers, campaign team and cheerleaders near and far – THANK YOU. Please know I am genuinely at peace with the outcome of the race regardless of the tally of the pending votes. I answered the call to bring my experience and long standing commitment to Davis back to the dais. I feel good about the campaign we ran utilizing every avenue of voter connection within the limitations of COVID recommendations. I especially appreciate everyone honoring my commitment to a positive campaign.
I genuinely wish Josh Chapman well in navigating through the challenges and helping District 5 have the voice so many want to see on and off the dais. I hope that people remain involved post election to make sure he has the support he needs.
I am so very excited to channel my energies I would invested into City Council into making big strides in bridging the digital divide in my day job, as well as into my passion projects via my global non-profit endeavors to support cervical cancer prevention around the globe and more sustainable agriculture systems that ensure all people have access to the food they need while respecting Mother Earth. More time focusing on fun with friends is also an endeavor I embrace starting today
May we all turn away from negativity and find inspiration in ourselves and those working to make the world a better place.
Blessings,
Rochelle
Classy statement from Rochelle. Sounds like she’s half relieved she didn’t win!
All Council candidates ran a fairly positive campaign. It will be interesting when the first cut-throat Davis district election occurs.
I agree, very classy of Rochelle. I predicted she would win, but I was wrong.
Yes it does, for the life of me I don’t understand why anyone would want that position.
Wow!
Am agreeing wholeheartedly with Alan M and Keith at the same time! sign of the end of the world…
but also, Rochelle, thank you for your past and perhaps future service to the community, no matter what role…
and in response to Alan M., I will reiterate Matt’s point–we need to come to a collective vision of what the City should look like in the future. We (and most other cities) have just muddled along, in our case riding along the coattails of UCD. Our relationship has changed with UCD and we don’t seem to be getting the spin off benefits that we use to get.
As part of that vision, we need to develop a set of acceptable baseline features for new projects, and then vote on that single list. Projects that comply with the list could bypass the election vote. We can replace D/R/J with this new measure.
It wasn’t worth having a discussion about D until something like this framework is better developed. The Council never really questioned this measure and they didn’t have creative ideas for solving the problem. Just eliminating the vote without a viable workable alternative is a complete non starter for any discussion, so why bother.
I agree with most of what you said, but not the above, as some items are site specific, and the need for others will change over time.
There’s little or no chance of repealing or amending Measure D before it’s due to sunset. But what can be addressed, without touching Measure D itself, are the criteria the Council must apply before approving a development for a Measure D vote. That would mean, for example, updating the General Plan and then requiring that Council make findings as to how a proposed development furthers the Plan.
The city council sets the baseline features, and I feel that the voters just weighed in on their support for how the council majority’s been doing in that regard — while the voters reserve for themselves the right to reject any peripheral project or land use zoning change. I see no reason to add another layer to this process. If there was general dissatisfaction about the course of recent development projects, I suspect the incumbents would not have been returned to office by such substantial margins.
There is, if I recall, no legal need to update the General Plan, except for the housing element. That is underway. Baseline features are too project-specific to allow any meaningful template to be established in advance. All I see this doing is creating another layer of delay.
Visioning and General Plan updates take lots of money and energy. Every million dollars spent on consultants and staff time for this is a million dollars that could have fixed a road or bike path. This community is not going to come to some consensus about “what Davis should look like in the future.” More likely, we’d get an expensive, consultant-driven, activist-dominated process that would yield a contentious document which would either get ignored or, worse, used repeatedly to obstruct actual developments.
The voters have spoken pretty clearly about how they want to go about letting Davis grow. Ramos might tweak the project and make another run at it, but it would face all the same objections with or without housing. The vote was narrow enough that they might prevail with a greener-seeming version. Other than that, good luck with any big-scale business development, or with getting any housing for families, “workforce,” or anything affordable built any time soon.
Hard to argue with that . . .
Matt and Alan offer different visions and realities. But what they agree on is that without economic growth our choices are higher taxes or declining infrastructure and services.
As for Davis being a commuter suburb of Sacramento what we don’t know is the long term impact of Covid on work from home. I just saw a headline about many workers being more productive when working from home. This makes sense for those who can sleep in instead of drive. The future of commuting might be different going forward and with it the VMT of Davis workers might decrease too.
The margin in the Measure B race might be narrow enough that Ramos will try again after the pandemic when students return to live classes. If not I think it will be a long time before we see another proposal this big go to a measure D vote.
Or, somebody else… the area under the Mace curve is also attractive… but it is not a separate lot… the property goes much farther north… and would still require a Measure D vote… but that owner is not “at the table” today…
Actually Bill the area under the Mace curve is a separate parcel of its own, as shown in the graphic below copied from the Yolo County GIS System. It is APN 071-130-005, and is designated as having 43.85 acres in the GIS system. The property to the north of it across Mace is also a separate parcel of its own with a legal designation as APN 071-130-003 and 18.48 acres in size. Further north is a third separate parcel of 188.35 acres designated as APN 071-130-002.
To the best of my knowledge all three parcels are owned by Mariani Nut Company of Winters.
Check your e-mail, Matt. Please note I said LOT, not PARCEL. There is one legal lot. There are 3 Assessor Parcels. Big diff…
Likely seperate for lease purposes to farmers…
BTW… Harper Jr High is one lot, two parcels…