Vanguard Interview: City Council Candidate Daniel Watts

Vanguard:   Of all of the problems facing Davis, why did you choose to focus first on an obscure portion of the municipal code that the city claims has not been enforced since the early 70s?

[The fact that they are not enforced] could justify any law.  They could still have a law banning interracial marriage on the books.  Of course they won’t enforce it but it’s still on the books.  They’d repeal that anywhere else if they had some other law that affected some other fundamental right, they would repeal that immediately.  But they left these two laws on the books because I think they do have the potential for enforcement.  I talk to the people who work for the homeless here and I think they’re afraid that the annoying persons law could be used against them. 

The one about obscene language, they could use that against the homeless.  They could use that against people on Picnic Day.  They could use that against students just loitering, hanging out.  They could use it against minors.  And just because they haven’t arrested anyone for it doesn’t mean that they haven’t actually used it to deter people.  By someone telling a person, you’re being annoying on the streets, that’s illegal in Davis, you need to move, then they move, then that won’t get reported.  So they may have been enforcing it, but just not arresting people for it because the threat of enforcement is enough to deter them.

It’s also indicative of a bigger problem which is that there is probably other flaws in the municipal code that just hasn’t been substantively revised since 1964, since it was enacted, there’s probably a lot of other portions  of it that need to be fixed.  That’s sort of evidence of a larger problem as well.

Vanguard:  what more have we learned about the municipal code problems from IE-gate?

Daniel Watts: The Municipal Code needs to be updated, clarified, and enforced.  I’ll explain how the West/Asmundson letter demonstrates that.

On clarification: I find it shocking that Marty West, a seasoned attorney and law professor,  and Ruth Asmundson, a second-generation mayor, both feign ignorance of Davis election law.  They must have read the Code, since they followed its other requirements, like adding a tagline explaining who paid for the mailer. But somehow they forgot to abide by the notification requirement? After I spoke at the city council meeting on “letter-gate”, Mayor Asmundson emailed me.  Apparently, Marty West asked the city clerk for “clarification” on the IE rules rather than West looking up the code herself.  That’s ridiculous; she’s an attorney and a law professor.  If West can’t find the election rules — or understand the election rules — then we need to change or clarify the rules. 

On updating and enforcing: Earlier in the campaign, I pushed for the repeal of two unconstitutional ordinances. The city council did as I told them, and repealed the ordinances.  Some voters wondered why I’d “waste” time getting the Code updated if Davis police wouldn’t enforce those particular ordinances anyway.  Well, if they’re not being enforced, why are they on the books? What good is having laws if no one enforces them?  Asmundon’s email to me also touched on enforcement of the elections code.  I had told her that the city council needs to clarify or change the rules — violating the IE rule could send her to jail for 6 months, which is excessive — and Asmundson reminded me of the Code’s requirement that her violation be “knowing” or “willful.” Plus, to start the prosecution process, the city would have to administratively decide that she violated the code, and then pass the violation on to the District Attorney. The city’s not about to prosecute its own mayor.  Even though there’s some evidence that Asmundson and West at least “knowingly” violated the law — since they adhered to other parts of the election rules, they must have read those rules, right? — realistically, the rules will never be enforced, especially not with a draconian punishment of 6 months in jail. If the rules won’t be enforced, they should be changed.  This particular provision should either have a lesser punishment (such as a large fine, with no jail time) or an easier method of enforcement.

The Code is full of examples like this – swearing in public was punishable by several months in jail, for example.  The Code hasn’t been seriously overhauled in decades, and it’s high time to fix it.

Vanguard:   In your view what are the major problems facing Davis?

Daniel Watts: The budget obviously.  To me as a student the relationship between students and the police, which is something that Lamar [Heystek] had run on before but it’s still a big problem.  The police in general are a big problem here, they don’t quite obey the constitution.  Those are two big problems.  The budget, everybody is talking about that.  But the police problem is really a big problem too.

Vanguard:   How can we bring more students in to be involved in local government?

Daniel Watts: I think that, I’m writing a paper on this for local government right now, my local government law class, and one of the reasons why it’s difficult to get students elected or otherwise engaged is that you [see] these at-large elections where the student vote is diluted.  I looked into it, there’s 30,000 undergraduates.  There’s something like 9000 that are living in the unincorporated area including campus and adjacent to campus.  There’s potentially 20-to-25,000 student voters here in Davis and I think there’s 37,000 registered voters overall.  Students that are registered are not necessarily registered in Davis, they’re registered elsewhere.  So I think if we had single-member districts with a district encompassing UC Davis – after annexing UC Davis and annexing the property around – I think would make it easier to get students elected to city council.

As for getting them appointed to commission – I think it’s a matter of reaching out and actually making an affirmative effort to try to get students represented on the commissions.   Because if you just come here, you’re elected for four or five years, you don’t know what’s going, you don’t know that there’s an opportunity to serve on commissions.  You don’t know who the city council members are.  There are very few students on campus who know who the city council members are or pay attention to that.  They would be students who in ASUCD or students in the Davis College Democrats or a couple of other really politically active clubs like that.  I think that the city needs to do a better job of reaching to students if they want them represented on the citizen commissions, which I think is in the city’s best interest.

Vanguard: Along those lines, wouldn’t a student who is only here a limited time, feel more like a visitor in the community rather than part of the community?

Daniel Watts: I understand that that might be a concern but that would justify not even allowing students to vote because when half the population, half the voting age population of the city is only here for four years, they’re always going to be transitory but they do make up a huge portion of the town.  So I don’t think that they’re interests are going to go away – the interests of students.  Even if each individual student isn’t going to be here for awhile, they still will vote for what their interests are and represent the student voice on commissions.  And if it is a transitory voice, if their interests are something that are very temporary, then that’s still something that needs to be represented because they’re always going to be a giant population of students.

Vanguard: What is your overall thought on residential growth?  Do you believe Davis should expand beyond its current boundaries in the next four years?

Daniel Watts: I’d prefer to see Davis get denser before it gets wider.  I’d remove barriers to building higher-density, multi-story housing near the downtown core. I’d remove barriers barring business owners in “historic” properties from retrofitting their establishments for more efficient purposes, which would help develop Davis as a walkable, livable city.  Basically, I’d remove barriers to development within city limits and focus on infill.

As for expanding boundaries, I wouldn’t necessarily want to build on or annex agricultural land. But I would like to annex the campus and adjacent, existing housing into the City of Davis. That would require approval from the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), after negotiations between the city and county on the reallocation of property tax revenue.  Assuming we can come to some understanding with the county, that would work fine.  The cost savings from combining redundant services may offset the property tax revenue that we’d have to give to the county, so it’s feasible in theory.  Will this happen in the next four years?  Probably not, but it’s something to work towards. The city exists because of the university, so the university should be part of the city. 

In every candidates’ debate, I mention annexing the campus and adjacent land.  And in every debate, Sydney Vergis — the “expert in land-use planning” — insists that this will never happen because Yolo County doesn’t want it.  And yet, Yolo County LAFCO’s latest projections show the city’s sphere of influence expanding to encompass UC Davis’s land within 20 years. The “sphere of influence” indicates “the probable physical boundaries and service area of the City over the next 20 years.” The SOI map defines “the areas likely to annex into the City’s boundaries.” LAFCO adopted this report and Yolo County posted it on its website.  LAFCO’s board includes two county supervisors. The county knows this is coming, eventually. Annexing the campus isn’t a pipe dream — it’s an inevitability.  I’d work to make it happen sooner rather than later.

Vanguard: One of the outcomes of the current city’s water projects is increased cost to the ratepayer, how concerned are you about this and what steps will you take to mitigate cost particularly to low income and fixed income ratepayers?

Daniel Watts: A staff member at King Hall talked to me about this, actually.  She’s concerned about the rate hikes, and so are a lot of other residents. 

To mitigate the impact on low-income residents, we can vary rates depending on residents’ income levels. If you’re rich, you pay more. If you’re poor, you pay less. It’s a simple fix for people who really need the help. 

And here’s an idea for everyone else, regardless of income: stop buying bottled water.  Bottled water costs more than gasoline. I’ve seen people pay $2 at a vending machine for 16 ounces of water when there’s a perfectly good water fountain 5 feet away.  Davis’s water is safe — that’s a fact.  The Environmental Protection Agency imposes more rigorous standards on municipal drinking water — tested several times a day, low toxins — than the FDA imposes on bottled water. Some bottled waters have high mineral content that’s too dangerous for kids, but tap water doesn’t have that problem.   It doesn’t taste bad, either, especially if you install a cheap filter. I have a fairly discerning palette, and Davis tap water tastes fine to me.  It’s safe, and it passes all federal standards.

Vanguard:   You have complained about police treatment, is this based on personal experience or a more general concern?

Daniel Watts: It’s based on what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard.  And a little bit of my own contact with the police and the way that they’ve treated me.  When I went to the student protests on I-80 and they were being protested with clubs, tasing and then lying about the tasing –that’s unacceptable.  The way that the police treated students on Halloween – I was walking down the street, I saw police that were basically stopping people randomly on the street and I came up and I told the students that they don’t have to answer questions, they can remain silent.  The police got in my face, they got up and started yelling at me, telling me that I was obstructing something – “do you know what obstruction is?  do you know what obstruction is?”    All I was doing was telling the students what their right was not to say anything at all.  They’ve pulled over my friends and they asked to search their car, it’s a combination of both.

Vanguard: When you talked about the incident with the students on the I-80, that was not Davis police, so is your problem with Davis Police or law enforcement in general?

Daniel Watts: It is a problem with law enforcement in general with the protesters, the person who got tased, the actually officer was a CHP, so he wasn’t even Davis Police, but Davis Police do a lot of bad things and they should be held accountable for that.  So did the CHP guy, he should be held accountable and so should these other jurisdictions.  But all I have control over is the Davis Police Department.

Vanguard: What do you see as the solution – you’ve stated the problem as you see it pretty clearly?

Daniel Watts: I was telling someone at one of the forums, this guy who is just about to be homeless I guess, that since the police have to enforce or follow the municipal code.  I’m not sure about the specifics of this.  But passing some ordinance or some resolution or having the police department having a Memorandum of Understanding with the city about their conduct, saying that people have affirmative rights to certain things in Davis.  For example, the homeless person who is sleeping in an area and not bothering anybody – they have the right to sleep in public or the right to sit on the sidewalk just as long as you’re not obstructing anyone – and have that either codified or have the police department have the formal policy of not harassing people who are just there and not bothering anyone.  That’s something that I would work towards.

Vanguard:   What types of events or store will encourage students to put more of their money into the local economy?

Daniel Watts: I like the local festivals that we have like the Jazz Festival and Picnic Day obviously.  This is something that the Downtown Business Association needs to work on, it’s not something that the city can really sponsor, festivals.

A lot of the problems have to do with retail downtown and if you want to go to downtown, there’s the whole different set of priorities for coffee shops and food places as there are for insurance and law firms. 

Like the Criterion races, those are events that would draw people to Davis, draw out bicyclists in from out of town to bring money here rather than say the firefighters where our money goes out of town to people who live elsewhere.

Students will go downtown if there is a reason to, if there is some kind of event.  Like the Varsity movie theater had a discount Tuesday night – Tuesday and Wednesday are usually really low at movie theaters, if they had discount nights and they partnered with some other business nearby.  Or showcased students’ independent films and partnered with clubs and had them come in. 

Vanguard:   Talk a bit about transportation and what the city needs to better with regards to that?

Daniel Watts: Some of the ideas that I talked about at the bike forum for alternative forms of transportation, a bike share program where you have bikes around the city and there would be kiosks where you dropped them off.  They’re painted bright yellow and people can just borrow a bike, ride it around, and then drop it off at one of these areas.  I think Portland has something like that and a few other cities, so that would be pretty easy for the city start up.  They’re already impounding bikes, and they might as well instead of selling those back to the highest bidder or doing whatever they do with them, they could donate them to this program and have people use them for free.

Vanguard: Do you think that’s the impediment to people using them around the town more?

Daniel Watts: It is for me, if I were downtown, and this would solve some of the parking problems too, if I could park far away and there was a bike nearby that was free that you could just grab and then ride to downtown and drop it off near your car again at a kiosk.  I think that would help alleviate some of the parking concerns.  For me, I bought a bike and I haven’t had time to take it anywhere to get it fixed, because the tire’s flat, the seat’s too low, and so it’s sat at my apartment complex locked up since September.  I just haven’t had the time to take it in anywhere, but if I’m downtown right now, if there was a bike outside, I’d grab that and ride around.  So I think it would help.

Vanguard: What about busing?

Daniel Watts: I don’t use buses either.

Vanguard: What would encourage you to use a bus?

Daniel Watts: I know a lot of people use the buses, so I don’t think there’s a problem there.  I know they’re really annoying when they park in the middle of the road and the cars get backed up behind them.  That’s a problem with the Fifth Street redesign where they’re going to have one lane in each direction and the bus stops.  There’s really no way around that, right now the bus already stops and blocks a lane and the people are going to back up.  That’s just unfortunate. 

Vanguard:   What are your concerns about the city’s budget?

Daniel Watts: The public employee unions have sort of extorted the city council out of a lot of money.  It’s kind of unfathomable over the last few years that they’ve been getting raises still when a lot of people elsewhere are getting laid off.   So that needs to stop.  We need to negotiate harder with them next time the contracts are up and even before that I think it might be prudent to ask them to renegotiate early.  Especially if the sales tax measure doesn’t pass then we really need to go back to them and say look, we need cuts otherwise there’s going to be big problems.  I don’t think it’s outside of the realm of possibility, renegotiating the contract structure early if it becomes necessary because of the budget. 

I had talked about contract employees who are hiring people on an ad hoc or temporary basis.  If we can’t get enough concessions out of the unions we may need to lay off full time employees or stop hiring full time employees and instead hire employees on a temporary basis.  Like consultants that come in, do their job, and then leave.  That’s a way to get around future pension problems.

Vanguard:   How can the city become more affordable not just for students for the average person?

Daniel Watts: If it were unnecessary to use a car in Davis, although it wouldn’t show up in housing prices, that would be a huge cost savings.    If we had this dense, livable, walkable city, where people could live downtown.  I think there’s a lot of people who would be happy living in a small apartment rather than a gigantic house.  That’s a way of keeping costs down.  In New York and San Francisco and lots of big cities, they don’t live in huge houses.  They’re perfectly fine with the space that they have, and they’re willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money to live in a cramped little tiny apartment.  I would pay for an apartment downtown and not use a car, that would save a lot of money.  It would be incredibly affordable.  Not everybody needs a giant house.

Vanguard: Road repavement has virtually no money for things beyond basic road repairs, how serious a problem  do you view this as and what would you do if elected to address any shortfalls?

Daniel Watts: Trees block road signs, and they need trimming. The street signs need repainting, and a lot of them are poorly located.  It’s hard to navigate Davis at night, especially if you’re elderly or driving in an unfamiliar area.  I’ve got “trim trees” on my sample ballot candidate statement, so I take this seriously.  To the extent federal stimulus money is available for road safety projects, we should jump on that.  But we do need to make safety and navigability a priority, rather than landscaping or beautification projects.  I would’ve preferred to use the city cash we’re spending on the 5th St. redesign to repair existing roads, trim trees blocking signs, repaint faded striping, and make other necessary repairs.  But what’s done is done.  In the future, I’d de-prioritize “experiments” like 5th St. and spend money where it’s needed.  That’s what you do with a limited budget.

—David M. Greenwald reporting