Davis Democratic Club Forum, Part Two

City Council Candidates of the Democratic Persuasion

Yesterday we posted the first part of the Davis Democratic Club Forum that took place last Thursday.  Read that post to get the Davis Voice’s coverage of the 8th Assembly candidates and short statements from the 4th Supervisor candidates.

By searching in the Elections Category, you’ll find plenty of background information on all of the candidates that you’ll be voting for on June 3rd, 2008.

After the jump, find a robust transcript from the proceedings.  We think that you’ll find a lot of new information, along with some emerging differences between the candidates.

All of the City Council candidates appeared at this event with the exception of Rob Roy, who is a registered Green and thus cannot be endorsed by the club.  Don Saylor’s campaign manager, Alan Fernandez, represented Saylor for the first half of the event due to a scheduling conflict with a previously scheduled fundraiser.

Format of the Forum.

The format was the same for the city council candidates as it was for the 8th Assembly District candidates. There was an opening statement and then Arun Sen asked questions submitted by the Club, but the candidates did not see previously. Some of the material has been covered at the first forum hosted by the Davis Chamber of Commerce and some has been shared with the written answers that we have provided you from the UC Davis College Democrats forum. This will cover highlights and differences, though there may be some repetition.

Vergis Opening Statement.

Sydney Vergis, one of the two challengers, was the first with an opening statement.   She mentioned her job as an environmental planner for Sutter County. Vergis is the newest member of the community among the candidates, however she mentioned her activities as a member of the Davis Street Tree Commission and as an alternate to the Business and Economic Commission.

Vergis is currently serving as President of the Yolo County Young Democrats. Her campaign is currently doing outreach to the community and she believes that has the energy to work for the community. It is her belief that Davis has always been at the forefront of good and substantive public policy.

“The reason I am running for city council is that I would like to see Davis at the forefront of good environmental, sustainable policies that allow us to save taxpayer dollars and contribute to a cleaner environment.” She then stated the best way to do this is through our long-term general plan and our general plan update process. The election should be about who has the most land use experience.

Vergis also mentioned the school budget crisis and ways the city and the school district might work together. Vergis offered a specific example: the possibility of the city developing a solar farm at the Grande properties.

Escamilla-Greenwald Opening Statement.

Cecelia Escamilla-Greenwald cited her experience as a member of the Club and the fact that she is a lifelong Democrat and an 18-year resident of Davis.  She is running for city council to provide direction and leadership to the city.

“I think it is important to point that out although this is a nonpartisan office… there is a difference between how Democrats perceive policy issues and how non-democrats perceive them.”  She went on to cite her experience as a co-founder of and first President of the UC Davis College Democrats.

Her service to the community includes a long stint as the Chair of the city Human Relations Commission.  She is currently a member of the Davis Democratic Club and is editor of the Club newsletter. She believes that the next Council needs to look at setting city policy for the next twenty years. Escamilla-Greenwald also mentioned the importance of pursuing green collar jobs and establishing a better relationship with the University, specifically, faculty and staff.

Mrs. Escamilla-Greenwald then listed a litany of questions of importance to the city, the most important being: How do want to see our city grow. As a labor representative in her professional life, she feels this experience would be a benefit to the city because of the large amount of state employees and retired state employees that live in town.

Don Saylor’s (as presented by Alan Fernandez) Opening Statement.

Alan Fernandez, Don Saylor’s Campaign Manager, offered Saylor’s apologies for not being there due to a previously scheduled fundraiser.  He gave a bit of Councilmember Saylor’s biography. Saylor is a long-time Democrat that received a Masters from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Policy at the University of Texas and also worked for a time with renowned Democratic leader, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

Fernandez stated that Saylor has committed to a lifetime of working for the public. He has been heavily involved in the bargaining with city employees, such as firefighters and police officers, looking to see that they have fair pay and health care. Saylor is also proud of the city’s aggressive affordable housing ordinance.

Alex Fernandez then mentioned that Don Saylor is the only candidate with children, which somewhat unnerved me.  During my School Board race I heard from some citizens that since I do not have children, “Why would I care about Davis Schools?”  You do not need to have children to care about children or the future; a bit of a sensitive spot with me.

Stephen Souza’s Opening Statement.

Councilmember Stephen Souza humorously mentioned that this was not his first time at the Davis Democratic Club. He has served as a member of the Executive Board of the Club for over seven years, as well as having served as President during those seven years. He has hosted fundraisers for Democratic candidates such as John Garamendi and Phil Angelides at his home.

Souza is a strong believer in party building and in 2004 helped to run the operations of the local Democratic Party. His party credentials also include being elected to a seat on the Yolo County Democratic Central Committee for seven years. He has been an activist all his life, a value instilled in him as a young man.  Before his first term on the City Council, he served on various city commissions for over 16 years.

When he is not serving on the City Council, he continues to be involved in the community, both as a civic and democratic activist.  Councilmember Souza closed with a litany of accomplishments during his four years on the council.  Among those accomplishments are: a balanced budget for four years, development of the Davis-Dixon greenbelt and the toughest, fairest and farthest fair housing ordinance in the nation.

Sue Greenwald’s Opening Statement.

Mayor Greenwald concluded the opening statements. She has served on the Council for eight years, the last two as Mayor and is running for her third term. She has found the experience challenging and exciting and wants to do more to maintain the “feel” of our city and has much more that she wants to accomplish.

For her Democratic Party credentials, she mentioned that she took the lead in speaking out against the war before it was a popular and fashionable thing to do. She suggested that not only yellow ribbon ordinance be tied to trees in support of the troops, but there also be black ribbons in response to those lost in the war. It failed on a 4 to 1 vote.

Greenwald supports a progressive pay wage structure and specifically mentioned that higher salaried employees are making too much money and lower level employees are paid too little and that this will end up in an unfair two-tiered system of payment, especially in regards to younger workers. She has demonstrated the strength to stand up to the employees. “Sometimes, you have to be tough…the payments structure can’t be sustained…” She disagreed with Councilmember Souza’s statement that the city budget has been balanced, citing some examples of particular revenue streams that she says are in deficit. She closed with some of the proposals she would like to continue working on, bringing more bio-tech to the city and a multi-use development project on the PG&E property downtown, that it is feasible, but that it will take leadership to accomplish it.

1st Question: Are Davis firefighters’ benefits at the right amount and if not, what can be done to improve them? It wasn’t clear if that meant that improving them would be to raise them or lowering them!

Escamilla-Greenwald was first in answering. “Davis Firefighters benefits are very generous and not much needs to be done to improve them.” She has met with the Fire Chief and the main concern of the fire department is a 4th fire station. She mentioned specific statistics that would suggest that a 4th fire station may not be needed, however, because the bulk of the calls involve personal safety issues, that perhaps developing an EMT center may be more important than a 4th fire station.  She took the opportunity of this question to mention how happy she is with the new Police Chief and that the ground officers really like him. This may have been mentioned because of the controversy surrounding the previous Police Chief and the Davis Human Relations Commission when Ms. Escamilla-Greenwald served as Chair. She also mentioned the new Police Chief is an advocate of community policing and that that needs to develop in the community, but unfortunately at this time, we have a short supply of officers.  She ended stating that public safety would be one of their top priorities.

Alan Fernandez (representing Don Saylor) stated Mr. Saylor feels the firefighter benefits are appropriate for the job they do. He also stated that Saylor feels they provide excellent services for every population in the community, especially seniors. Mr. Fernandez cited that the Davis Firefighters Local 3994 and Davis Police Officers Association support Councilmember Saylor.

Stephen Souza cited the fact that 51% of the firefighters’ calls are medically related and in most of those cases the firefighters are first on the scene.  He went on to say that even though the Davis police officer / firefighter to citizen ratio leaves much to be desired, we continue to have some of the safest streets in the nation.  Souza feels it is most important to negotiate with first responders. “Benefits are important for stressful jobs, even if the jobs are safer in Davis.”   He does feel that we need to examine retirement benefits but that Davis is nowhere near the “pension benefits to public safety employees crisis” which many cities throughout the region and the state are experiencing. Souza would like to see discussions on Co-pay and Cafeteria programs.  He feels that a two-tiered system may be desirable and possible.

Sue Greenwald cited a study that shows firefighters actually live longer than those in other professions and thus stress and possibility of harm are not really a good reason for early pensions. She wants to see Davis be part of the solution and not part of the problem and, unlike Souza, does not believe that a two-tiered system is workable. She reiterated that such a system would not be fair to young people. Greenwald mentioned that she feels there is too much overtime paid to Captains. Again, she states that someone has to say no and that in order to maintain fiscal viability in the city, she has had to vote no on a bunch of stuff. She would like to see a reform of firefighter benefits, even at the risk of losing their endorsement. (Ed. Note: According to an anonymous source:  Greenwald did not vote “No” nor did she abstain from the last salary negotiation with the Davis firefighters’ union.  Apparently, she actually walked out of the room at the last minute and stood outside of the door to avoid voting.)

Sydney Vergis called for an internal audit of all city departments to where the waste is and to go from there. She did mention that firefighters are taking a lot of heat lately (a pun?) and Davis firefighters salaries and benefits are actually in the middle of regional fire departments. She cited the confusion over overlapping districts and jurisdictions and suggested that what we need to do as a community is discuss how we want to tax ourselves. This has been a staple of her campaign: How do we tax ourselves and provide services in the most efficient way possible?

2nd Question: How does UC Davis developing housing, such as West Village, affect the overall growth of our community and what other effects will it have on the entire community?

Councilmember Saylor’s surrogate, Alan Fernandez, had a bit of a difficulty understanding the question and mentioned that Don Saylor would supplement the answer, possibly by email.  Mr. Fernandez did state that housing developed by UC Davis would have a significant impact on the community.  The city needs to do is make sure that the impacts are properly addressed.

Councilmember Souza stated that the West Village proposal is a step in the right direction to ensure housing availability for UCD Davis students, but not nearly enough for the over 8,000 current UC Davis students live out of town. Fiscal neutrality must be presented in order to support annexation of the development to the city. If fiscal neutrality cannot be provided, then the University will be responsible for transportation and other infrastructure needs.

Mayor Greenwald started her comments with the assertion that she is in favor of annexation whether we grow fast or slow. She stated that the real question is what kind of community do we want to be.  We do need not need huge subdivisions and it appears that West Village is not the kind of housing we need, especially with today’s market. She went on to use this question to talk about her stance on growth and that she favors taking a project-by-project approach. The city needs to take an environmentally sound approach to growth.

Sydney Vergis said that the actual question is: Will this take pressure off the city to grow more? Today, there is an one percent vacancy rate for rental units and West Village will be a part of the solution, but not the entire solution.  There will still be a need to plan for the future and find ways to provide more housing to those that want to live in Davis.

Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald stated it is important to have a good working relationship with the University. She is in favor of annexing West Village and that the people who live there will need to have a voice in the city.  She went on to state that of all the campuses in the UC system, UC Davis has the least amount of housing available on campus. UC Davis needs to look at more on-campus housing, rather than developing around the campus. Such an approach would free up much of the occupied housing in the community, places where students are now living and provide housing for middle income families. This, she feels, would alleviate much of the pressure on the housing market in Davis.

3rd Question:  If elected, would you support extension of Measure J? Measure J that calls for a vote of the citizenry when peripheral developments are proposed.

Stephen Souza supports the extension of Measure J as is.

Sue Greenwald supports the extension of Measure J as is.

Sydney Vergis supports Measure J, but as she has stated at previous forums, not as it is now. She feels that it needs to be reformed. As it is, she feels it is not transparent enough. She says substantively, it is fine, but that it needs to be simplified. She would like to see it about two pages long. She did bring up that planning by ballot box often does not work and that the state has seen problems by legislating by ballot box. That in a number of communities, such a thing would not work, but here in Davis, with the active electorate, it does seem to work.

Cecelia Escamilla-Greenwald supports Measure J as it is and supports eliminating the sunset provision.

(At this time, Don Saylor walked in and replaced Alan Fernandez at the candidates’ table and started answering the questions.)  In his first answer of the night, Saylor stated that the citizens’ right to vote on how we grow is part of our culture and that is going to continue. He also said that the United States Constitution allows for amendments and so should Measure J. He feels it reasonable to have a full discussion of how effective Measure J has been and what can be done to make it better. He cited that there has only been one test of Measure J and in the next couple of years, there will be more tests of the measure. Saylor did state that Measure J does give the city a significant amount of leverage when negotiating with developers on projects. One of the lessons that he learned from Measure X, the one test of Measure J, is that any project must have more benefits than the Measure X project did. We need to have a thoughtful discussion of Measure J during the next couple of years and he has yet to develop a strong opinion on extending it, but will not commit to supporting an extension of Measure J as it is now at this time.

4th Question: What is your definition of affordable housing and what concrete proposals do you have for affordable housing in Davis?

Sue Greenwald suggested that this is a really thorny problem. In her answer she mentioned data on the number of permits approved. She also stated that you can go over the definition again and again and not come up with the same conclusion. She went on to talk about housing in Davis in more general terms. She feels there is no correlation between how much we build and the price of housing in Davis. Prices are higher here, because of the quality of the community. Good schools and quality of life make Davis a desirable place to live and if prices were lower, than much of it would be because we will have become a less desirable place to live. She feels real affordable housing needs to be built and neither it nor middle-income housing is being built now. Developments in Davis continue to be of the “McMansion” style. We have a good affordable housing ordinance in place and she feels the problem will start to solve itself, that the irrational exuberance of recent years will correct the market as it is has in the past.

Sydney Vergis stated that affordable housing is the percentage of your income that you pay for housing. We need to look at the range of housing and where do we want to put it.  It needs to be part of our long range planning process and have a more prominent role and be better defined in the General Plan.  She stated what range of housing she wants to see in Davis. Do we want to see housing for young families? Do we want to be a community where grandmothers can live nearby with the ability to baby-sit? We need to look at what our no-growth policies have done to the community and ways we can bring young families here, especially with the problem of declining enrollment in the schools.

Cecilia Escamilla-Greenwald wants to know what we can do to bring middle-income people, working families, families that she represents as a labor organizer, to Davis. She stated that we couldn’t develop our way into affordability; it is dangerous to think in those terms. Such thinking could affect the character of our town. She would like to see more affordable homes, but does not want to see the character of the town change. She reiterated her view that more on-campus housing will help to free up housing in the community and we can see what the real prices will be when students are living on campus. This will lead to more reasonable ways to deal with the housing dilemma.

Don Saylor started his comments on this question by stating that state suggests the amount of low and very low income housing that cities should have and that Davis had added twenty percent onto that as middle income. We go over the state’s suggested requirements. He stated that any project that goes ahead in Davis would be income targeted. He also mentioned the 8000 students that do not live in town (as Souza had previously) in the context that they cannot afford to live here. Statistics show that 45 percent of those in Davis pay a higher price in housing than they should according federal guidelines. Housing is inextricably connected to the school system and as we face declining enrollment, the most important thing in our community is how our schools function. Mr. Saylor says we are hurting our community on a long-term basis if we do not have housing for students and seniors. The discussion has to go beyond whether we grow, but rather, how we grow.

Stephen Souza talked about how financial institutions define affordable housing: spending less than 30 percent of your income on housing is an affordable ideal.  Mr. Souza says that dependent on those definitions and incomes, prices for the purchase of affordable homes for most Davis residents should be anywhere from $177,000 to $464,000. There were 44 permits for new housing processed last year and, of those, a certain amount were affordable by law. A significant problem is that you cannot get the 45% affordability by city ordinance if you do not build anything over 25 units. Souza actually agreed with Sue Greenwald in stating that housing is at a premium in our community because of our quality of life and the wonderful town we live in. He closed his answer to this question with the fact that the cost is the dirt, that is to say, it is more expensive because the dirt is located in Davis. He asked, How do you remove the cost of that dirt?  One idea worth exploring is the idea of involving land trusts, the long-term leasing of that dirt.  It’s an interesting possibility to keep the cost of housing down in Davis.

5th Question: The Davis Democratic Club only supports Democrats. Would you support a Republican or Decline to State against a well-qualified Democrat?

Sydney Vergis stated she thought the question was kind of silly, however she generally supports Democrats, but if the best person is a Republican, she would support the Republican.

Cecelia Escamilla-Greenwald stated she has always been a Democrat and she has never supported anyone that is not a Democrat. She stated the Democratic Party stands for her core values and stands up for those that have been not been treated fairly.  She closed with the fact that she supports Democrats even though everyone in her family is not a Democrat.

Don Saylor said that he always looks at the values of the person that is asking for his support. He will support the person that he feels can do the best job for that particular position. He then specifically mentioned the Yolo County District Attorney Race in 2006. In that race, there was a Democrat running against a Republican and the Democrat asked for his support. (While he did not mention names, I think we knew he means Pat Lenzi, the Democrat and Jeff Reisig, the Republican), and he met with the Democrat and felt that her views were more intransigent on the three strikes law and that the Republican actually had a view closer to his, though the views the two candidates for District Attorney had were very, very similar. He felt that since the views of the candidates on that topic were so similar and that was an issue he was particularly interested in. He did not want to see the broad brush used in the three-strike determination; that he had to look at other qualifications of the two candidates.

Stephen Souza also chose to address the question not in terms of support or endorsements, but terms of how he would vote.  He would look at the Democratic qualifications, but he is concerned about the privacy of the ballot box.  He used the possibility of someone that might have recently changed their party just to obtain votes, but is not clearly wedded to the philosophy of that party. He cited US. Senator Joe Lieberman as an example of a Democrat (or recent Democrat) he would not vote for.  He does not believe in a litmus test and that to not be allowed to vote for someone other than a member of your own party is a violation of a sacred trust we hold very dear, the right to a secret ballot. (In a conversation after the forum, Mr. Souza cited the example of Tom Metzger, a member of the Ku Klux Klan that registered as a Democrat to run for Congress in San Diego a number of elections ago. Of course, this is a severe, but valid example.)

It is of interest to note here that Democratic State Central Committee Members can lose their position if they endorse someone that is not a Democrat. However, this is not true in nonpartisan races or in examples such as the Metzger one. There is also a difference between a vote and an endorsement.

Sue Greenwald answered with when she was 21, she wanted to vote for Robert Kennedy and was depressed that Hubert Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party (1968), but that she did end up voting for him.  She also stated that there are a few people in the crowd old enough to also remember that election. Greenwald stated that she has never voted for a Republican in any partisan election. She concluded the evening with the statement that she might vote for Rob Roy (Green Party) in this Council race.

—

So, another forum down and if you have read through this entire treatise and the previous one we covered, you can see differences emerging from the candidates on the various issues facing our city. Once again, all the candidates were articulate in presenting their views. I do want to mention that Sydney Vergis seemed to have gotten over her nerves from the first forum and was much smoother in her presentation in this forum.

Well, there will be more forums to cover next week and The Davis Voice will be there to cover them. Also, look for upcoming analysis on the city council race and others as we forge through the next 35 days to the election.

—

For a full political disclosure from your editor, please click here.  Beware: snark ensues after jump.