Monday and Tuesday brought us two communications from Mayor Dan Wolk. The first was his Mayor’s Corner article here in the Vanguard (see https://davisvanguard.org/2015/02/affordable-housing-arts-alliance/comment-page-1/#comment-269029) and the second was in the Briefly section of the Enterprise announcing that Davis Mayor Dan Wolk invites community members to join him for another “Morning with the Mayor” from 7 to 8:30am Friday, at Common Grounds, 2171 Cowell Boulevard, in South Davis (in the Oak Shade Safeway Shopping Center). This is a great opportunity to meet and discuss issues with the mayor. I applaud these efforts to increase communication between the citizens and the City’s electeds.
For many people, early mornings are fully committed, and getting to Common Grounds then isn’t an option. For those people, the Vanguard would like to provide an alternative method for making the Mayor aware of their issues. Don Shor, in a comment in the Mayor’s Corner article Monday planted the seed for the idea of this thread when he said:
I would be curious to hear from Dan and Lucas whether they are concerned about the 0.3% apartment vacancy rate, and, if so, what the current council might be doing to address that.
Another commenter in the the same Mayor’s Corner article asked the following two-part question:
(1) I would like our City Council members to take the time to explain their thoughts on the CFD. Especially how providing $12 million to the developer is in the best interest of the city. Looking at our roads I wonder how $12 million might address this issue?
(2) Do our City Council members think that the CFD will impact the new residents of the Cannery project when voting on parcel taxes? Much of what Davis provides to its citizens is included in the parcel taxes.
In another thread the following question was asked, which would seem to be a good one for input from the Mayor:
Has the City considered selling the DACHA homes so the State, City and DJUSD would start getting property tax and parcel tax revenue from them (because city, state and UC owned property does not pay property taxes or parcel taxes)…
So, what are the questions you would like to see the Mayor include in his periodic discussions with the citizens of Davis?
Not sure what you are proposing here… are you going to go to Common Grounds with these questions and report back with the answers? That would be kind of cool, actually… I would like to know the answers to the questions posed above. I’d be happy to start with those and then go from there.
I believe that was exactly Matt’s plan.
davisite4, what the exact process will be is going to be a bit of an evolution, and the biggest variable of that evolution will be how many Davis citizens show up to dialogue directly with the Mayor on Friday. I know from experience that there have been quite a few “Mornings with the Mayor” where the whole hour and a half was filled by questions from people in attendance. Because of that, I can not and will not promise that I will come back from each session with answers. With that said, all the questions submitted by the Vanguard readers will be formally presented to the Mayor for responses. Some may end up with immediate answers. Some may/will receive answers once the Mayor has enough time to formalize the answer, and share that answer with the citizens.
Just like the very intriguing discussion about how “right of way” worked in the bicycle vs truck at the 2nd and F Streets corner, it is reasonable to say that citizens who have taken the time to come to “Mornings with the Mayor” in person will get first priority with respect to the Mayor’s discussion time. I will be bringing the collected questions as a proxy for the person who has submitted each question.
Bottom-line, the issues are serious. They are being presented to the Mayor in an equally serious manner, and I am confident that the answers provided will be equally serious.
first question: when do you anticipate addressing the issue of roads and infrastructure?
second question: do you think the city is economically viable without adding innovation parks, the hotel conference center, nishi?
third question: since you are concerned with pricing families out of davis, do you anticipate adding either housing, workforce housing, or affordable housing in the near future?
four question: would you support mixed use at the innovation parks?
fifth question: do you anticipate raising salaries for employees?
sixth question: will you support extending the joint management of the davis and ucd fire departments?
You do realize of course, you can ask all those questions (and more, as you think of them ) by sending an email to dwolk@cityofdavis.org, and why not copy Lucas, Rochelle, Brett and Robb, as 3 of your questions appear to concern all 5 before any action is taken?
I haven’t hesitated to contact them directly when the issue is important enough to me. But I don’t do so for “sport”, and definitely not to lure them into a “gotcha”. Think 2 or 3 of your questions fall into that latter category.
i would prefer to remain anonymous. also i’d prefer they do it on the record.
Good submissions DP. May I suggest that you modify both your third question and your fifth question to include time frames.
be my guest. this term i guess.
Matt… thank you for providing this mini-piece.
My question to Dan: What is the procedure for enrolling children in the summer Parks and Rec programs? Do City of Davis employees, and their friends and family members, still get first choice? This isn’t fair.