![](https://davisvanguard.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Nishi-Forum-11-765x510.jpg)
As I write this there are still about 6000 provisional and absentee ballots to be counted. Given the relatively narrow margin that Nishi is going down, it would only take about 52.5 percent of the remaining votes to flip the result. While that does not sound like much, understand that it is likely a long shot.
The early absentees actually favored Nishi by a narrow margin, about 52.7 to 47.3 percent. However, on the day of the election, the measure failed by roughly 600 votes. It has been my experience that the late absentees mirror the day of election and therefore we can expect the final margin to expand slightly rather than the result to flip.
There are a lot of variables at play and unknowns, but I would say the measure passing at this point is a long shot and so, in this piece, I will act as though it has failed to make several key points.
Bob Dunning was hasty to declare we will never see another Measure J/R project, but clearly a rational developer would think twice before risking what would have to be millions of dollars planning for something that, in the best case scenario, is a coin toss.
We will not get a do-over on this, but clearly key mistakes were made in the planning process that made the project much more difficult to pass.
Nishi clearly wanted to get on the ballot ahead of MRIC (Mace Ranch Innovation Center) – a threat that resolved itself only after the project was on the ballot, but in hindsight it was a huge mistake to push the election onto the June ballot The project was probably harmed by the fact that the election was called for Hillary Clinton before election day, and it likely didn’t help that the Republicans had long since settled their nomination.
The turnout was surprisingly low, around 43 percent, although that number will rise with the counting of 6000 ballots. Still, you would have seen perhaps a 25 to 30 percent higher turnout in November, which may well have helped the yes side.
That being said, pushing it to November probably was not enough to fix several other problems. The fact that the LDRP (Long Range Development Plan) had not come out even in draft form yet was likely not helpful to the prospects of the project. That left open the argument that UC Davis hadn’t agreed to anything in terms of the campus access point. It is hard to know how much of a factor that played – but it was there.
A bigger issue for me, one that might have swung the election, is that the city could have taken several additional steps to remedy the existing traffic issues on Richards. The project actually proposed and was willing to fund a solution to the problem, but had the city fixed the traffic sequencing and figured out a way to start routing traffic to UC Davis via Old Davis road, it would have gone a long way toward remedying the chief shortcoming of the project – traffic on Richards and the belief that this would make the traffic worse.
The council, in retrospect, should have dealt with this issue prior to both the Hotel Conference Center and Nishi – at least from a political perspective. They couldn’t have done this by November, but doing so would have changed the outcome greatly.
Finally, the biggest mistake of the project was the affordable housing deal. This hurt in several ways. First, legit or illegit, the deal had bad optics. The city ended up essentially exempting the project from affordable housing requirements. That allowed the opposition to argue favoritism and argue that Nishi was a $10 million giveaway to developers.
While the developer could note that they were committing huge resources to access, the optics of the arrangement clearly hurt the prospects of the project passing. In addition, at least some of the social justice students and activists turned against the project on this basis. That helped negate what might have been an advantage of the Bernie voters turning out and supporting the project.
Furthermore, you didn’t just have the “Big A” Affordable Housing issue, but the small “a” as well. The opponents were able to claim that these were just $2400 rental units that no student could afford. The developer took a long time to put out an alternative number, but the combination proved perhaps deadly. Students who knew we needed more housing had that argument undermined by the prospect of not being able to afford the new housing.
While I didn’t see anything illegal here in terms of the lawsuit, the developer was probably best off taking the project up to 800 units with a 200-unit affordable component in it.
In a razor-thin election, that would have been enough even with other shortcomings to push Nishi over the top. Likewise, assuring LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum would have gone a long way to help as well.
On the other hand, there was probably little the developers could do about the air quality issue – they pushed back a bit, they had the mitigation, but at the end of the day, the facts were the facts there.
Likewise, I would not have recommended no west Olive access to the project. Having an in-city project with no access to town directly made little sense to me. West Village with no Russell Blvd access makes little sense and that’s a university project.
The bottom line here is that the community does not trust the council on development issues. These trust issues go back a long way. They were highlighted by the 60 percent of the community that opposed Covell Village, even though the council approved it 4-1.
The continuing problems at Cannery only illustrate the point that council was not willing to tie down developers on key issues. That created a huge trust gap. You had the failure of council to nail down the bike access to Cannery. You had the CFD (Community Facilities District) that was given to the developers on a 3-2 vote after the fact. You had the appearance of a conflict of interest with Dan Wolk receiving $20,000 from The New Homes Company as he served as a key deciding vote. You then had the city inexplicably hiring the Cannery Project Manager.
Had the city gone aboveboard on Cannery, Nishi may well have passed. Trust issues are critical on this vote and, time and time again, I saw in the arguments of the No side a critical lack of trust for the city and city council to hold the developers to their commitments.
The fiscal component was also a problem – even though I agreed with the eventual analysis of the Finance and Budget commission. It was pointed out to me that the standard has shifted from net neutral to net positive.
Part of that is that this was originally sold as an economic development project with a revenue component. EPS (Economic & Planning Systems, Inc.) in the end hurt the city because their assumptions were too conservative. That gave opponents something to sink their teeth into – even though again, I believe they were wrong.
First you had the services CFD that was money guaranteed by the developer to make the city whole. Second, you had the flawed assumption that neither sales tax increase was going to continue. You can argue that the city might allow the 2014 sales tax to expire in six years, but the other sales tax has been on the books for 12 years – I don’t see it going anywhere and that’s $200,000 or so each.
Third, the costs for fire and police were not real. By that, I mean we would not have hired a single additional officer or firefighter based on Nishi, so that nearly $800,000 was not real cost. EPS erred by putting it in and the police and fire chiefs did us no service by arguing for the costs.
Again, it handed the opposition an argument they could sink their teeth into. And erroneously so. It gave them the argument that the $1.4 million in revenue was all just an accounting sleight of hand when, in fact, the problem was that EPS was way too conservative.
In the end, the margin in this race was so close that any slip up would prove costly – and the project died in the end, if it does die, from a thousand paper cuts.
So what does that mean for Measure R’s future? That’s a discussion for another day.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
The votes are not all counted so this has to wait.
But a few obvious points.
The project was too big and intensive for the site and its limited access point to the city. Real estate is all about the L,L, and L.
They rushed it without any plan in writing with Caltrans, UCD or Yolo County.
This deal was mostly done in back rooms. The public process was mostly a sham, for show.
What happens now with the city’s large Unfunded investment in the development process ? The public should have a full accounting of the misuse of public funds to rush this project which had so little benefit the public. It’s all about developer profits.
“The project was too big and intensive for the site and its limited access point to the city. Real estate is all about the L,L, and L.”
Funny both Milbrodt and David Greenwald told me they thought the project should have had much more housing. So on the one hand you have no votes claiming its too big and other no votes claiming its not big enough and therein lies one of the major problems with Measure J/R. It will always be impossible to get a project that pleases this community.
You’re counting Greenwald as a no vote?
Also I believe David stated on here he preferred either a large housing project that would take a sizable bite out of the student housing needs OR a heavily R&D facility. I think he said Poly Canyon Village or USC Village would have been his preference.
I have no idea how David voted. My point is that you had people saying it was too big and others saying it was too small so how does a project manager ever come up with a plan that is going to please this community?
Your point is negated here unless he voted no. After all if people can recognize that a project is not perfect but still vote for it, it completely undermines your argument.
Both Harrington and Milbrodt donated money to No on A so its fair to assume they also voted no. Mike is claiming it was too big and Bob told me it should have ten times as much housing. I think on the basis of the statements of those two my point is valid. You can take David out of it if you prefer I included him for further context purposes.
Michael H. says: “This deal was mostly done in back rooms. The public process was mostly a sham, for show.”
This from the man who when he doesn’t like an outcome sues the city, thus taking the public process out of the light and into the “back rooms” of closed sessions and courthouse conferences out of town. What a hypocrite.
I remember reading many people asking what’s the rush to get it on the June ballot when it was obvious that there were many unresolved issues. Waiting six more months to get everything tied down wouldn’t been prudent.
If you look at the list of needs, six months wasn’t going to change a whole lot other than the electoral calculations.
With so small a margin it would be easy to point to any one thing and claim it made the difference and be right, but I think the biggest mistake that would have been the easiest to fix is Tim Ruff could have treated the Olive Drive businesses better. If the developer had worked with Redrum Burger and Third Space Art Collective early on and found real workable solutions this would have gone differently. Waiting until the last minute to make a deal with Third Space looked like an election trick.
Far worse though was the treatment of Redrum. It is clear the developer had no regard for this 30 year old Davis institution. Redrum was left with no choice but to oppose the project because it would put them out of business, or at least cause them great expense and leave them with a shaky future at best. All Ruff had to do was negotiate a positive way to help with relocation and it wouldn’t even have cost very much.
With some voters angry about Redrum in the final days the Yes on A group did even greater damage to themselves with the last minute relentless attacks on Redrum’s owner. Their attempted character assassination took the Yes on A camp off message and made them seem mean and uncaring about the community right when they needed a final positive push. It made it much easier for people to see the Nishi developers as bad actors. After Kemble Pope’s mean spirited article on the Vanguard and nasty posts all over the internet one wonders if he can ever be seen as an advocate for small business in the future. We will see if the damage to Pope’s reputation has blow-back for the Trackside project.
Developers should learn from this and if they are smart, they will go to great efforts to show how they care about effected small businesses when proposing a project.
I wonder how many people will quietly cease eating at Redrum over this.
I think he missed an opportunity to improve his business, make it ADA compliant, with additional customers and improved access. He can now go back to his battles with the coffee place next door.
Wonder how many hundreds of new student customers will eat there, comfortably knowing that the guy selling that delicious peanut butter milkshake fought for them and their rights to affordable housing and liveable air quality ?
The thousands of new students will be commuting in their cars to Davis from Woodland and Sacramento and Dixon and likely will find places to eat near where they live.
In order to get to UCD from Sacramento and Dixon and many areas of Woodland, which entrance to Davis might the majority of those thousands of students take?
(Edit: My comment has little to do with Murder Burger itself, at the risk of spoiling some of its effect.)
Ryankelly, you act like there was ever a real offer on the table and completely miss the point parroting the ill conceived last minute smear campaign. It would have been easy and cheap for the developer to avoid this pitfall.
I am going to go with Ryankelly and Tim Ruff didn’t eat at Redrum before and won’t eat there now.
He missed an opportunity to improve his business.
I will agree with you that the developer missed the opportunity to make Redrum an Ally, and in the process it might have made Redrum’s business better. But to suggest that there was any real opportunity presented to Redrum is just parroting the ill fated last minute attacks. If the offers being publicly made by White, Heart, Pope and the army of Spaffordites on the Monday before the election were real (and din’t involve being shut down for several years as it appeared to), why wasn’t it offered earlier?
It only emphasizes the point I made above. If small businesses where treated well from the beginning, this could have had a different outcome, and cost the developer very little.
Ripping out the Shell Gas station on Olive Drive (and across the intersection from Redrum) JUST before the election was incredibly bad optics!
One also wonders if Spafford + Lincoln did more harm than good. People, especially students were bothered by the army of pushy paid operatives.
I have to agree with you on that.
Maybe but if they didn’t pay their interns and spent hundreds of thousands it wouldn’t have set well either. Damned if they do. Damned if they don’t. In the end, I don’t think that’s what lost it for them.
Your comments lead to the conclusion that the community was united on this – it was relatively evenly divided.
If there had been deep heartfelt support for this project there could have been an army of community members as the public face of the campaign, but instead the bulk of the support seemed to be of the, “well, I will hold my nose because I think it’s the best we will get even though it has so many problem” variety. Without real community support they were forced to rely on Spafford.
They also over bought on Spafford’s services. Having so many ill-informed Spaffordites going door to door was a turn off for many. Having so many Spaffordites verge on bullying on line was a turn off too. Probably the worst was the Spaffordite’s appearance at the Bernie Sanders rally. They were out of place and out of synch with the Bernie supporters. Don’t campaign for millionaires’ cash cows at a rally for the presidential candidate who is constantly criticizing unbridled wealth accumulation.
On the other hand it was brilliant (if slimy) to hire ASUCD insiders to bring the proposal to ASUCD for Endorsement, and then reward other ASUCD insiders with jobs. I wonder what effect if any hiring Aggie writers and designers to work for Spafford had on the Aggie’s coverage of the project. I also wonder why Garamendi lets people from his office hold concurrent positions at Spafford.
I agree with this statement to some extent. By contrast, the No campaign enjoyed the advantage of not being marked by easily externally visible trappings of extreme wealth and privilege, which should be a comfort to all those looking for affordable homes to buy or apartments to rent in this city.
Fred: good points. With the unreasonable negotiations and sonetimes vicious attacks on West Olive Drive small businesses, clumsy mistrestment of those landowners, and complete failure to deal in an open way with what happens to those 4700 new auto trips a day into and jamming the Core businesses, I think it would be easy to conclude that Nishi was the single most savagely anti-small business scheme the City and development community has ever attempted.
There clearly would have been a net loss to downtown retail resulting from gridlock and customers avoiding the stores from lack of parking.
The Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Business Association didn’t see it this way. I find your defense of small businesses to be insincere, with your history of being an extremely difficult neighbor of small business owners and non-profits.
Frankly and I get along fine. And he seems to love the super handsome building his neighbors and Stan Forbes helped him design. (The old plan was a huge box with baby diaper colored orange stucco walls and dark Tuscan green trim. Pluuuu-ease!) Thank you, Stan! You ‘da Man!
My Dear DDBA Board: may I ask: what the heck were you thinking when you endorsed this project before there was ANY plan for handling the 1000s of new cars and certain gridlock? I’m a DDBA member too.
Good article. I think you nailed it: there were a number of reasons to vote no (as there were to vote yes) and those of us who voted no voted no for different reasons. Together it appears all those reasons totaled a narrow no. For me the traffic issue was paramount. I did not ‘trust’ the descriptons and promises that would occur if I voted yes. And I am intrigued by David’s comments on the Richards/Olive corridor and what he suggests the city could have done differently. I hope you elaborate on that with information on how ($) it could be done.
You missed one reason that was a minor one for me: with the past energy behind ‘innovation parks’ fading with the exit of Rob White (his replacement has been almost invisible at least to the community) and bowing out of the larger developments, Nishi appeared to morph from a R and D/minor housing development to a housing/ minor R and D, at least to me. I know this was never intended to be a major innovation park but the way the history unfolded, it impacted my decision.
Exactly, I held my nose and voted yes but you hit on a major point here.
While city politics can be ugly, my spirit was truly gladdened by so many outpourings of concern for affordable housing, expressed with quantity and sincerity I’d never seen before in many years of living here.
I look forward to those sentiments getting translated into concrete actions being taken to build affordable housing developments and help remedy the critically low vacancy rate — for all those who were not fortunate enough to have bought property in town at a time when available supply was much higher and demand was much lower, and for the UCD students who are attending college at a time when housing availability and affordability in town are at historic worsts.
Here’s hoping that in the months and years to come, we see many of the people who have recently been so outspoken in championing the cause of truly affordable housing continue to invest their time and energy, and their hearts, into seeing more reasonably-priced housing built in our city.
Unless of course those individuals who never before seemed to care much about affordable housing were only exploiting whatever arguments they could muster and now return to their old ways of opposing affordable housing in their neighborhoods as they did in years past.
While there are people in that category, clearly people like Joaquin Chavez were sincere in their concern here and that alone may have swung a close election.
Oh, I suppose that’s a possibility, but that’s a cynical outlook to take.
I would prefer to believe that many of the people who expressed such passion for the issue of affordable housing will continue to back up their words with actions to match. Time will tell whether we see familiar faces and names working to achieve that goal over the near- and medium-term future, and I would hate for the possibility you suggest to be proven correct.
Similarly, I would prefer to believe that most of the voters took the time to look into how bleak the city’s budget picture is over the next 10 to 20 years, and voted with an understanding of the trade-offs involved in their decisions. And I hope that understanding of trade-offs will also inform their voting on measures in the near future which will be needed to generate revenue for the city in alternative ways, particularly since parcel taxes require a 2/3rds margin to pass.
It would be a shame to see city voters rejecting business development, housing development, AND revenue taxes given the state of the city budget — especially since Davis has quite a high concentration of educated degree-holders, and since city budget issues have been emphasized with such visibility by many city officials in the best positions to be aware of such issues.
What, me cynical?
Its true at this point I am quite cynical and have no intention of voting more taxes to subsidize the no growth lifestyle. Perhaps when the roads are bad enough and city services decline enough and the bike trails are impassible enough people will reconsider their vision of Davis.
One other observation that hasn’t been mentioned is that Measure A failed in the core and passed on the periphery so it can be seen as a vote against increasing density. Opposition to growth will now shift to Trackside and the old Families First site. Davis is in a bad situation, it doesn’t want to grow period yet has a growing engine of prosperity for a next door neighbor. I don’t see how we get out of this but I’m not interested in supplying additional tax dollars to keep the current status quo in place.
Misanthrop wrote:
> Perhaps when the roads are bad enough and city services
> decline enough and the bike trails are impassible enough
> people will reconsider their vision of Davis.
My bikes (like my car) are all more than 20 years old and I keep joking to my wife that if the bike trails get worse I may need to retire my hardtail mountain bike and get one of the Santa Cruz full suspension bikes I have been lusting over for years.
http://www.santacruzbicycles.com/en/us/5010
P.S. I just realized that if I sold all three of my current bikes “and” my car I would still not have enough to buy a new Santa Cruz mountain bike with XTR components…
How could anyone expect cynicism from someone who chose Misanthrop as a user name?
Your position is consistent in my eyes, for what that’s worth, and I’m not far off assuming essential police funding isn’t cut.
However, when city council is likely to propose some form of additional taxes in the near future after its preferred methods of revenue generation couldn’t be achieved, it would be disappointing to see widespread opposition to those taxes, which in many cases would signify a certain lack of insight into the consequences of resident choices over the last several years.
You’ve likely seen the Enterprise article about the post-Measure-A future of the Nishi land, with the line that the owner or developer will next turn to working with the county and/or with UCD.
“You had the CFD that was given to the developers on a 3-2 vote after the fact.”
I don’t know how much this was an issue in the minds of the voters on Tuesday but I did tell some council members that I thought the Cannery CFD was too big and that they were making a mistake that was going to come back and bite them in the ass. They cut the CFD in half but they should have done so by three quarters. Lucas survived politically but both Nishi and Dan didn’t. I’m sad about both losing but my big worry is still out there that as people move into Cannery they will tire of their extra carrying costs and vote no on our school parcel taxes.
I’m also not sure the CFD was given to the developers after the fact. A CFD provision was included in the developer agreement with the details to be decided later. The developers only got half of what they asked for although my guess is that if the city manager hadn’t left it would have been small enough that it wouldn’t have turned into the political albatross it became. Not having an engaged city manager who understood the issues and how they developed was a big part of the CFD problem.
This is a good point about the Cannery CFD.
What was in the Cannery Development Agreement was the ‘possibility’ of a CFD, not the promise of one. The decision to give the developer the CFD was made after the fact and gained the City nothing but extra costs. It was a stupid decision by the CC majority.
Mark wrote:
> The decision to give the developer the CFD was made after
> the fact and gained the City nothing but extra costs.
I understand that a homeowner paying in to a CFD may be less likely to vote for parcel taxes down the road, but I don’t understand how having homeowners pay for the cost of the infrastructure around their homes results in any “extra costs” to the city (I really am interested in this so if anyone else knows the answer please post).
Matt has explained this a few times on this site but I don’t have the specifics in front of me. My understanding is that there were significant financing costs associated with setting up the CFD. Extra costs that gave us no benefit.
Misanthrop said . . . “I’m also not sure the CFD was given to the developers after the fact. A CFD provision was included in the developer agreement with the details to be decided later.”
The CFD was absolutely given after the fact. A CFD provision was absolutely not included in the DA. The wording in the DA is explicit. It says “may form” not “will form” or “shall form”. It also says “If requested by Developers” and then leaves the City’s options open even more by saying “City may determine …”
Here is the actual wording from the DA, which is on the City website (see http://cityofdavis.org/home/showdocument?id=710 ).
ARTICLE 11. Special District Formation.
A.[Sec. 11001] Community Facilities District for Public Facilities and/or Services. Developers and City may form a Community Facilities District or Districts (or other public finance district under State law, as appropriate) for the purpose of financing the construction and/or acquisition of public infrastructure and facilities within the Project area or for the provision of services (“Project CFD(s)”).
If requested by Developers, City may determine whether to form one or more Project CFD(s) for the purpose of providing services or financing the acquisition or construction of some or all of the improvements and facilities eligible for CFD financing within and associated with the Project, including those improvements which will mitigate impacts of the Project upon areas inside and outside of the Project with a useful life of 5 years or longer, and will be owned, operated or maintained by the City or another public agency as authorized under Government Code 53311 et seq. and City policy.
David wrote:
> Finally, the biggest mistake of the project was the affordable housing deal.
> This hurt in several ways. First, legit or illegit, the deal had bad optics.
I think that more “affordable” housing would have cost Measure A votes. Most people in Davis “say” they want “affordable” housing but in private with friends just about everyone will tell you they don’t want their property values to take a hit and deal with the increase in crime that “affordable” housing always brings. People I know have been complaining about problems related to Moore Village in Wildhorse and Tremont Green East of Pioneer Park since they opened. There is a (real) short list of people that want a welfare mom (with kids from three different deadbeat dads who steal stuff out of open garage doors) living a block away from their new $1 million home.
affordable housing was the biggest issue for many students, and i heard several comments from students that they voted against it because they couldn’t afford to live there.
Fred wrote:
> affordable housing was the biggest issue for many students
Very few students qualify to live in “affordable housing” since you can’t be claimed as a dependent on someone else’s tax return and live in “affordable” housing.
I couldn’t find the story but the Enterprise mentioned a while back that one of the reasons (other than poor management by the City of Davis that owns it) that the Pacifico Apartments have been MORE than half empty for over a DECADE (10 years) is that few students meet the city guidelines to move in since most are claimed as dependents (I did find the story below from six years ago when the place was 63% empty).
http://www.davisenterprise.com/Archived-Stories-0/Rescue_plan_approved_for_South_Davis_housing_co-op/
I think most people don’t really know what ‘affordable housing’ actually means.
South of Davis – Note the little a affordable. They thought the rent would be to damn high.
To be fair, it’s unrealistic to expect college students to understand the effects Nishi’s 1500 beds might have had on the larger housing situation in the city — rather than focusing only on the rental costs of the Nishi apartments in particular, which resemble those of recently-built campus apartments — when many city residents over twice their age, with much more education and professional experience, also might have had some difficulty in understanding those effects.
The students at UCD are intelligent and they understand that the University just shuttered $900 a month 2 bedroom apartments and the developer wants to build $2400 2 bedroom apartments. They see the way when new housing is proposed it is proposed at the top end of the market and the bottom of the market tries to catch up. Just look at the changes in all of the apartments along F street long some of the more affordable.
I agree with Artem’s point. The broader community-wide supply/demand relationship with respect to housing affordability was a topic I discussed quite regularly during the past three months, but I found it was not a topic that many people identified with.
Clearly, there are no other forces whatsoever contributing to the bottom of the market trying to “catch up”.
Indeed, in the absence of the Nishi apartments, I’m sure the bottom of the market will have no preoccupations with “catching up” to higher and higher levels of rent.
That’s your definition of people who live in affordable housing?
Especially since in Davis affordable can be anywhere from $30K to $60K in annual income.
Don wrote:
> That’s your definition of people who live in affordable housing?
If you ask anyone who has spent years going to “affordable housing” projects in California (I drove out to Hunters Point to tutor kids for years) they will tell you that “most” (but not all) of the residents are single moms on some kind of government assistance and “all” (as in every single one) has more crime and police calls than “market rate” housing in the same area…
When Moore Village came before the council many years ago a woman who bought in Wildhorse and was opposed to the Affordable Housing said almost the exact same thing to me about the type of people who would live there so South of Davis’ remarks do seem reflective of how many people feel about Affordable Housing. This is why I found the Affordable Housing issue so disingenuous during the campaign, all these old homeowners and landlords all of a sudden becoming champions of affordable housing didn’t pass the smell test. Now that Measure A has passed I expect them to return to their busy lives and never do anything for more Affordable Housing.
Maybe I should change my Vanguard handle to Mr. Cynical.
South of Davis
“There is a (real) short list of people that want a welfare mom (with kids from three different deadbeat dads who steal stuff out of open garage doors) living a block away from their new $1 million home.”
Absolutely no stereotyping there right ? Although I voted for Nishi despite the lack of affordable housing, I would have been out actively campaigning for it had here been an affordable housing component.
Same for Trackside. I would be willing to support a larger project perhaps even outside of the design guidelines and zoning in service of the broader goal of affordable ( little a) housing. I cannot see giving up on previously agreed upon city design guidelines in order to build a luxury apartment building that will benefit the very few who will be able to afford to live there and the investors, and no one else.
I live in Wildhorse fairly close to the Moore apartments and have never had any problems and have never heard any of my neighbors complain about them.
There was a lot of student bashing from the A campaign. saying they were loud noisy bad neighbors. its just not true. That might describe some, but the vast majority of students are hard working and studious – that’s how they got in to Davis.
I didn’t see a lot of student bashing by the campaign. I think there are legitimate concerns about mini-dorms and lack of student housing that have still gone unaddressed.
One thing that was interesting during the campaign, the yes on A side kept pounding home the problem of mini-dorms but in turn kept saying that their highly priced apartment rents would be shared by several students in an apartment thereby cutting down their costs. So, in other words, apartment mini-dorms.
Originally Minidorms referred to houses that have been altered to expand the number of bedrooms beyond traditional single family homes allowing far more students to live there. Over time this phrase has come to be a code word for students who share single family homes in neighborhoods. There are legitimate concerns about the impact on neighborhoods from houses altered to have 10 bedrooms, but that is an outlier. Now the use of the phrase is to advocate for segregating students from the rest of the Davis community. The Minidorm letter to the editor, and the unattributed flier containing that letter that was dropped at the last minute in the campaign are anti student. Students are a wonderful part of the Davis community and contribute greatly to our town. Last minute dirty tricks and unattributed targeted hit fliers against students is not how students should be treated, and not a nice way to campaign.
I used to have five students living next door to me, some of the best neighbors I ever had.
BP wrote:
> I used to have five students living next door to me,
> some of the best neighbors I ever had.
I’m sure you did, but you have to admit if we interviewed 100 people asking them to describe the “best neighbors they ever had” we might not get even one other person who says “the five college students”…
ANyone else find it interesting that the No side took at face value the vague commitment for 90 percent of new student growth housed on campus but not the grade separated crossing?
I didn’t find it interesting, I found it completely illogical and disingenuous.
The likely Measure A result is a clear sign that I was correct and justified all along in demonizing and denigrating a certain class of resident in this city. And it is also a definitive bit of evidence that Davis has an electorate and governance problem that both contributes to and supersedes all other problems.
When you need to truly solve problems, the first step is to complete an honest and factual root-cause analysis.
We have met the problem… it is our neighbors.
Dear Frankly: going to call us geezers like David Greenwald does ? Two of our most effective No on A committee members can barely walk. Another effective supporter is blind. Most of us work fulltime and cannot spend more than a few hours a day trying to save the city from disaster, again.
Nishi lost because it is a bad project and terribly arrogant developers and CC members prematurely forced it onto the voters. Measure R did its job beautifully
Come off with the rhetoric. It was a close vote and it squeaked your way at the end.
Pugilist, that is a fair point and it shows that measure J/R is a good measure. If the City hadn’t rushed this, if the developer treated small businesses better, if there was housing at a reasonable price, if Spafford + Lincoln wasn’t such bully A would have passed.
“The likely Measure A result is a clear sign that I was correct and justified all along in demonizing and denigrating a certain class of resident in this city.”
Actually Frankly the result is no sign of your correctness in defining a class and demonizing them. Speaking with a major organizer of the Yes campaign just this morning revealed that even areas that they thought would be solidly in favor of Nishi, voted against it including areas that are heavily populated by students. So much for this being only a group of grumpy old people. It seems that plenty of young people were also grumpy about what they saw as being unaffordable to them, a point which I had also heard from a number of young acquaintances. Your attempt to draw distinctions that in fact did not actually exist was mean spirited and counter productive.
1. The City Council/city staff made the huge misstep of firing CIO Rob White. It sent a bad signal that this city was at best lukewarm about innovation parks. Couple that with the city’s other huge misstep of communicating that Davis’s fiscal picture was improving, it sent the muddled message that we don’t necessarily have a pressing fiscal need for innovation parks or economic development.
2. The City Council/city (except Councilmember Swanson) did not engage in a proactive campaign to support economic development, but instead remained fairly neutral, leaving it up to the developer to fend for themselves against an onslaught of negative campaigning from the No side. You had better believe other communities will not make the same mistake, but will roll out the red carpet for innovation parks/new business.
3. The No on A side used unsavory/unethical tactics to get their message across, as they so often do, e.g. spreading disinformation such as the air around Nishi was “toxic soup” and would cause autism in babies, disrupting public forums with disparaging remarks against those who disagree, interfering with tabling at the Farmer’s Market, etc.
4. I am still waiting to hear from the No on Measure A side what the city is now supposed to do about its fiscal woes, now that economic development is not likely to be a viable option. Our roads are deteriorating at an alarming rate. All I hear is deafening silence from the No side. If this city has to resort to higher taxes and/or continue to suffer deteriorating infrastructure, we know exactly who to blame.
5. Meanwhile it is highly likely economic development will instead locate just up the road in Woodland, as DIC has chosen to do, or in West Sacramento or Sacramento. Davis will suffer the impacts of that new economic development in surrounding areas, but gain absolutely no benefit. And we also will know exactly who to blame for that.
6. I predict Measure R will be revisited, and will not be supported as it once was. I know I will no longer support Measure R, even tho I was originally a proponent. There were cogent reasons for supporting Measure J/R to address the undue influence of developers that occurred in this town at one time, but unfortunately Measure J/R has shown itself to be more of a problem than a solution.
My read is Measure R worked, although the developers were still able to slip in some questionable items. The CC totally failed to police the deal and gave away huge amounts of public resources to entice these ultra rich developer families to come up with the worst project the city has ever seen ….
“They wanted to pocket the cash and stick us with the traffic!”
Our team is drafting an R update that the community will love.
Many others in town are now concerned that Measure R is unworkable and will not support it in the future. And if Measure R goes down, we know who to blame yet again.
“Measure R is unworkable” – clearly not. There have been so many mistakes identified here on the part of the city, the developer and the campaign any improvements and this passes. After 3 measure J/R elections the bar for approval was just very clearly set. I look forward to the development and developer that learns from this.
If you look at City’s that are successful creating a vibrant local economy, they tend to have Mayors who are very active in working to expand business activity and encourage redevelopment and evolution. At the most critical time for our move towards economic development, we were saddled with a Mayor intent on running for another office and not interested in dealing with the problems of the City. That problem was exacerbated because none of the other Council members were willing to fill the void. Two years ago we were in a strong position with multiple opportunities and the chance for a sustainable future. Today, thanks to Dan and his City Manager, along with our local culture of political entitlement, we have nothing more to look forward to than higher taxes and deterioration of our quality of life (and many more self-serving pronouncements from Michael Harrington).
I knew Mark West could not help himself … Had to throw a stone at me
As I said…
Anon: 2. The City Council/city (except Councilmember Swanson) did not engage in a proactive campaign to support economic development, but instead remained fairly neutral, leaving it up to the developer to fend for themselves against an onslaught of negative campaigning from the No side. You had better believe other communities will not make the same mistake, but will roll out the red carpet for innovation parks/new business.
I think this is a good point. More councilmembers & candidates campaigning the way Swanson did probably would have swayed enough critical votes in the yes direction.
wdf1
“More councilmembers & candidates campaigning the way Swanson did probably would have swayed enough critical votes in the yes direction.”
I partially agree with your comment. I do believe that more proactive campaigning on the part of City Council members and candidates might have been useful. But only if it was positive campaigning. The self righteous, divisive and dismissive comments by Rochelle Swanson, who is supposedly a representative of the entire community were needlessly negative. Such a presumptuous attitude that she knew what was in other people’s hearts and minds for opposing Nishi, when in reality there were many different reasons and concerns is not becoming of a city leader and I certainly would not have found such a needless attack as a compelling reason for voting for Nishi. Calling opponents selfish, greedy old people is a uniquely poor strategy to sell the community on the strong points of a desired project. The negative tone from both sides was one of my major problems with this campaign. But I feel it is especially egregious when a City leader takes this kind of negative, divisive approach.
artem: “…my spirit was truly gladdened by so many outpourings of concern for affordable housing, expressed with quantity and sincerity I’d never seen before in many years of living here.
I look forward to those sentiments getting translated into concrete actions being taken to build affordable housing developments and help remedy the critically low vacancy rate”
This makes absolutely no logical sense. If Nishi is not built, the affordable housing fund gets nothing, nada, zilch. Voting against Nishi eliminated 1,500 new beds for students, thereby continuing to perpetuate the almost zero vacancy rate and the extremely high costs of rentals in Davis because of lack of supply of rental housing.
I could be wrong, but I was assuming that ‘artem’ was being sarcastic.
Point taken!
Anyone here think UCD has much to gain by allowing Nishi to run large numbers of cars under the RR right into the heart of what is supposed to be the heart of high density student housing? I think it’s all one big scam to get the huge upzone in value then sell it to UCD. And then the City would get …. N- O-T-H- I-N-G.
Make them lock down all the plans and agreements first …
The CC negotiating team on this deal was terrible …
Again, silence on where the city goes from here to address its fiscal problems. No surprise.
Or housing
Thanks for reminding me of the other huge problem.
It seems unfair to ask the same person to help “save the city from disaster” yet again after so many noble efforts already expended in doing so.
Anon, you clearly missed Susan Ranier’s post yesterday. I’ve copied and pasted it below.
Misanthrope: “I’m also not sure the CFD was given to the developers after the fact. A CFD provision was included in the developer agreement with the details to be decided later.”
Matt Williams: “The [Cannery] CFD was absolutely given after the fact. A CFD provision was absolutely not included in the DA.”
From the DA: “If requested by Developers, City may determine whether to form one or more Project CFD(s) for the purpose of providing services or financing the acquisition or construction of some or all of the improvements and facilities eligible for CFD financing within and associated with the Project…”
I am at a complete loss as to how it can be claimed the DA did not contemplate the possibility of a CFD. The developer approached the City Council and requested the formation of a CFD as per the development agreement, and the City Council voted to approve it. The CFD did not come out of thin air after the fact, but was contemplated by both the city and developer as a future issue TBD.
You are a lawyer Anon, and you know the legal difference between the use of the word “may” in a contract as opposed to the use of the word “shall” or “will”.
The word “may” was very specifically used twice in the relevant Article of the DA, and the words “will” and/or “shall” were used exactly zero times.
You appear to be being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse . . . and you are doing it very well.
Matt, Anon’s analysis is correct and you are there one being obtuse and adhering irrationally to the letter of the law giving the city the option to just say no because of the wording. The reality is that New Homes and the city put it in there expecting it to be determined at a later date. The question for the three who voted for Cannery was never if a CFD. It was always how big a CFD.
Misanthrop, you are 100% correct. I am indeed adhering to the letter of the law.
You may believe the reality you have outlined, but it might be very interesting for you to check in with Joe Krovoza to get his take on why “expecting it to be determined at a later date” was the approach rather than being up front with the public about the intention. It was a strategy/tactic to muzzle Joe. If the public had known that there was going to be an additional $10 million give away to New Home, then the public would have demanded $10 million of value in return.
$10 million of taxpayer money was a terrible thing to waste. Then compounding the problem by ill-advised financing made $30 million of lost local economic value an even worse waste.
Matt you also need to broaden your sources on this. I suggest you talk to those who actually negotiated the agreement. It was never intended to be an allocation of zero, the allocation a rejection of the CFD would have meant. The question was how much, not if, but those of you that wanted to hang the CFD on the language actually make the lawyers look good. As I already pointed out once the majority passed the Cannery with language that allowed a CFD zeroing it out would be like reneging on the deal. You can make the argument that the word “may” gives the city the right to drive a truck through the hole in the agreement but there is also something to be said for leaders to make good on their commitments. The problem with the CFD was the size of the debt. New Homes asked for the whole loaf and got half. They should have gotten a quarter or a tenth. After studying it I think Robb Davis came up with a much smaller number of a few million but I think by staying at zero as a bargaining position he was unable to reduce the amount by more than what was negotiated in the end.
Misanthrop, you have gotten to the crux of the issue. When you bring it down to a tenth of its proposed size or to the level of a “few million” then the cost of issuing bonds for such a small amount and the cost of the bond reserve requirements become even more exorbitant than they already were. The logical approach was for the City to use some of its $122 million of liquid capital (held in various reserve funds) and loan New Home Company the small amount of money for the short duration of time that they needed it (from the beginning of the construction period to the time when they began selling units to buyers), with New Home repaying the City for the loan when the sales started.
That would have been the fiscally responsible course of action. It would have accomplished everything that Rochelle laid out as objectives … acceleration of the amenities in time so that they were ready when people started occupying their Cannery homes.
Has the City mentioned how they are going to spend the $11,000,000 the developers were going to steal if measure A had passed?
The eleven million was reduced to zero by the rejection of Measure A.
Spot on!
I’m sure some was being sarcastic. It’s okay Sam, I got it.
“You are a lawyer Anon…”
If this is true it explains a lot. He sounds more like an advocate than someone interested in logical discourse.
How so? The clear language of the DA contemplates the possibility of a CFD, pure and simple. Anyone that states a CFD was not contemplated at all in the DA is trying to rewrite history, or in this case trying to rewrite a contract.
Anon, you miss the point. There was nothing illegal or improper about New Home Company asking for a CFD. Where the failing was, was that the City and the Council did not do the necessary fiscal analysis to ensure that we were getting $10 million of value in exchange for the $10 million of value we were giving away.
It wasn’t legally irresponsible. It was fiscally irresponsible.
Correct, Matt… would add politically irresponsible, but as only few citizens were getting screwed, the politics of the majority of voters’ representatives governed.. they can all thank Lucas as the swing vote, but who apparently was not held responsible…
Matt Williams: “You are a lawyer Anon, and you know the legal difference between the use of the word “may” in a contract as opposed to the use of the word “shall” or “will”.
The word “may” was very specifically used twice in the relevant Article of the DA, and the words “will” and/or “shall” were used exactly zero times.
You appear to be being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse . . . and you are doing it very well.”
You have failed to address my point, to wit: “I am at a complete loss as to how it can be claimed the DA did not contemplate the possibility of a CFD. The developer approached the City Council and requested the formation of a CFD as per the development agreement, and the City Council voted to approve it. The CFD did not come out of thin air after the fact, but was contemplated by both the city and developer as a future issue TBD.” Who is being obtuse here? Are you trying to argue that a CFD was never contemplated by the DA? If yes, how do you explain the CFD language?
Anon, once again you are being obtuse. You know full well the difference between “may” and “shall” and you have as a result moved your own rhetoric from “anticipated” to “contemplated.” “Contemplated” is a “may” word. “Anticipated” is a shall word. The Development Agreement absolutely contemplated the possibility of a CFD. That was the only way that they could snooker Krovoza. The Development Agreement absolutely did not anticipate a CFD.
If in fact the Development Agreement anticipated a CFD, then the Council was dishonest in its communication with the public. If they anticipated a CFD, then the honest (but not pragmatic) thing to do would have been to tell the public (the bicycle community, and Cool Davis, and Valley Climate Action Center and Citizens for Healthy Aging and the small business developers, et.al.) that there was an additional $8 million “pot” of taxpayer money that they needed to divvy up as a public benefit. Absent that kind of honest communication, the money would be given away to out-of-town interests.
Of course we know that no such honest communication ever took place.
Sorry Matt, to disagree, but “anticipated” is a ‘may’ word. ‘Guaranteed’, or “shall”/”will” are shall words…’anticipated’ is a ‘lick and a promise’ word… think of promises made in the heat of sexual desire where someone says “I anticipate that this will be a commitment”… often results in someone being…[your choice of the finish line]
Actually pierce, you and I agree. I was being more charitable with my words than you are. Misanthrop and Anon appear to be willing to let the Council members “skate.”
hpierce… Rochelle, Lucas and Dan have an obligation to explain the misuse of such words, and the misuse of the public’s trust, the public’s money, and the public’s expectations.
Matt… what is the point of debating the obvious? Nearly all of the readers know you are correct. It is the community at large that senses the City is a mess, and they need to learn the details. That isn’t going to happen on a blog.
skeptical, both Misanthrop and Anon are “the community at large.”