Sierra Club Candidates’ Forum: Part Three

Third in a series of three.

After the jump, find answers to questions about Measure J, relations with the County, how to assist the School District, encouragement of bicycling and others.

Question Five dealt with Measure J, measured by Harriet Steiner, the City Attorney’s definition of it. In essence, though, the question boiled down to do you support continuing Measure J?

Sydney Vergis supports Measure J but that the present measure is too cumbersome and needlessly complicated. She suggests that Davis looks at Central Valley versions of Measure J that convey the same information, mandates, policies and objectives, but does it in a more efficient and succinct way.

Cecelia Escamilla Greenwald supports Measure J and wants to see it made permanent.

Don Saylor supports the general ideas behind Measure J but cannot have a definitive answer on extending the sunset during this campaign, because he feels that dong so would stifle debate on the issue. He mentioned by the time sunset occurs, Measure will have been in place for over ten years and in considering the language of a successor measure there should be a thoughtful review of the Measure J experience over the last ten years and see if it meets the changing needs of the community. He states it may be possible the community may want to strengthen the language of some portions of the Measure.

Rob Roy fully supports Measure J, especially after what he called the jarring experience with Measure X. If anything Measure J needs to be strengthened.

Sue Greenwald stated that Measure J was on the ballot when she first ran for office and that her initial campaign was based around her support of Measure J. She said that the reason Measure J is not permanent is that at the time Measure J was written, our City Attorney (Harriet Steiner) felt that it would not stand up in court if it outlasted the General Plan. That is the reason that a sunset was written into the measure. She would be interested in obtaining other and more current information to see if Measure J can be made permanent. Measure J was the only thing that stood between peripheral developments, specifically Covell Village.

Stephen Souza supports putting Measure J to the voters as is, but with a sunset tying it to the General Plan process. Voting on issues of land use is a part of our community culture.

Question #6 was about the often contentious relationship between the City of Davis and Yolo County and how the candidates would strive to make it better.

Cecelia Escamilla Greenwald feels the relationship has been unnecessarily strained over the past year because of the disagreement on the pass-through agreement. The pass-through agreement transfers over two million dollars per year from the city’s redevelopment agency to the county in exchange, the County leaves all land use decisions, especially development decisions to the City. When the County wanted to look at the possibility of development by the Yolo Causeway through a study area, it did not communicate this very well to the City about its intentions or exactly what study area met. She supports the pass-through agreement and does want to see controverted in any way.

Don Saylor commented that the City and the County provide any of the same services to the same people. They are both much at the mercy of the state budget. There have been good moments in working with the County in the 2 by 2 process. He suggested that a backdrop of City/County relations over the past four years has been the County’s work to update the Yolo County General Plan and the ongoing struggles the County has faced with mandated services and diminishing revenues. It was in this background that the County looked at joint study areas on possible growth, it is the clearest example of competing underlying interests between the City and the County. There are bound to be conflicts and ultimately, the joint study sites were removed from consideration in the County General Plan. However he did say, it is clear that issues of this sort will continue to emerge and it is essential to improve the ongoing communication between the City and the County on these and other matters. The 2 by 2 needs to continue working on drafting a statement of mutual interest and the City and the County must share their planning ideas the earliest possible stages.

Stephen Souza said the relationship of the City and the County during the County General Plan Update was “strained to say the least.” He believes that during the process the City’s voice was heard and the County decided to listen to their position and do away with the joint study areas. He does not want to see a repeat in the lack of good communication during the 2 by 2 process and staff to staff communication about both bodies concerns. We have the process in place to communicate and dialogue before action is taken, but he feels those meetings have not been taking place on a regular basis. The City and County need to work together to resolve situations concerning the City and County before they become problems. A specific project he would like to see the County and the all the cities in the County work together to build a bikeway connecting the downtowns.

Sue Greenwald saw a constructive relationship until the county talked about changing its general plan to include growth on the borders of Davis. It was distressing to see the County violate the terms of the pass-through agreement, a legally binding document. She thinks the County sees urban development as a “cash cow” and in her view; the reality is that is it not. “If the County had approved that County General Plan change, the City could have kept its $50 million dollars of redevelopment tax increment and, as I said as the Supervisors public hearing where I politely pointed out that Davis sure could use that $50 million.” That action would have put the City and the County in a very adversarial relationship. She asks the rhetorical question, if the Supervisors support cities right to control their own growth.

Rob Roy would rather not see “ the great periphery scare of 2007 repeated.” He strongly states that the County needs to adhere to the statues of the pass-through agreement. He sees the pass-through agreement as essentially a ransom of two million dollars in tax revenue that the City pays to the County so that it will not have to grow on the periphery. The pass-through agreement is a way to keep the City of Davis doing its own urban planning and to not have pressure from “invasion.” Slow and steady is the way to grow and we do not need or want growth on the periphery according to Roy.

Sydney Vergis says there have been concerns that the existing pass-though agreement provides 2.5 million dollars in revenues to the County that could otherwise be used for various improvement projects. While the pass-through agreement does provide a financial disincentive for the County to develop on the City’s periphery, it may not provide enough incentive to protect the City sphere from County controlled commercial/residential growth. “As the County struggles with its own finances and takes on new, unexpected State-mandated costs (like parole costs) – it is important that the City leadership work closely with the County to reach solutions that benefit all.”

Question #7 – Bike Friendliness in Davis and the final prepared question (There were only seven, the rest of them were from the audience) and after a 10 to 15 minute break.

The question was what will you do to see Davis continue and improve its reputation as a bicycle friendly city. We have been joined by two other cities as bicycle platinum cities! We may even have lost our spot as number one and we are statistically lower in bicycle use than we were ten-fifteen years ago, how do we reverse that trend?

Don Saylor believes the reduction in the percentage of work commute trips by bicycle is correlated with an increase in the number of work commute trips overall and the an increase in the percentage of commute trips involving people driving from Davis to other cities and commuting to work in other towns.

Davis needs to develop a new Bicycle Master Plan that includes school commuting by bike education, dual striping of city streets and better safety techniques for sharing the road with cars. The Master Plan should look to the future where people living in Davis work in Davis and are able to commute by bicycle to work. Saylor sees a great opportunity with the UC Davis Centennial to work on having the premier Bicycle Museum in the Country.

Roy stated he is offended that we are not now the only city in the Platinum category, but that he is proud other cities are emulating us. He mentioned the obvious answer is that the Mace Ranch and Wildhorse subdivisions were built to be bedroom communities to Sacramento. When the City caters to those that will commute to other cities or places to work, there is going are going to be less people riding bikes to work. If the trend continues, he feels we will have to change the City’s logo. All the good things we have done in Davis appear to be in the past, Davis has rested on its laurels and therefore other cities have passed it in bike friendliness. He closed with the statement that Bikes have become an afterthought in Davis as to how the roads are designed.

Stephen Souza cited two factors for the decline in bicycle ridership. More people work out of town and more people ride the Unitrans bus. Unitrans ridership has tripled since 1990. This is due to development farther from campus and more use of the capitol corridor for auto commutes. He stated that many people argue that our bike culture, which Davis holds so dear, is not being passed on to the new residents of the town. Even though Unitrans is a successful transit system, Davis needs to continue to work to get people out of their cars and on to their bikes. “We must do a better job of convincing Davisites that it is possible and safe to take care of household and family errands and tasks on a bicycle,” The Davis Bikeway system is continually being improved. Bikestriping needs to continue and there needs to be education in the schools about the importance of using your bicycle for both health and environmental improvements.

Sydney Vergis said this was her favorite question of the forum, which bringing the back the bike is a personal passion of hers. To do this there needs to be a focus on three areas, education, encouragement of use and making the usage as easy as possible. Education in the schools, use of bike helmets and developing ways to make bicycling safer on the streets on a part of her plan. She mentioned she had been in Europe and came back with renewed enthusiasm of ways Davis can highlight and support more use of bicycles. Another specific area she mentioned was more use of round abouts.

Cecelia stated that she never owned a car he whole time in school at Davis. She would make a concerted effort to keep what we already have, bike lanes, bike paths, and greenbelts. There maintenance would be a priority for her. She mentioned a concern about green waste dumping in bicycle lanes. The droppings create a new hazard for bike riders in addition to the potential hazards from motor vehicles. The green containerization pilot program drew widespread complaints from the people in affected areas. She wants to work with the affected citizens to develop a good compromise. She did state that there are good reasons for green containerization but that she would not impose things on residents and neighborhoods that they do not want. She also brought up bicycle education as well as specific proposals to have additional bike loops.

Mayor Greenwald brought up a Mayor’s conference she attended where she jokingly said “It’s lonely at the Top” about the success Davis had had with bikes and bicycling. She pointed out that Stephen Souza had made a good point with its comments about biking declining because of more out of city commuters and higher Unitrans usage. She wants to see an increase, not only in biking, but also in walking in the City. “As we have grown in a suburban fashion, it is not surprising that we have more auto trips. The further people have to travel, the more they have to use their autos.” She sees the answer in doing more with traffic calming and making streets safer for bicycles. She wants to see a safe routes program for students bicycling to school and more driver and bicyclist education.” There needs to be more investment in the bicycle infrastructure, as a member of the Yolo County Transportation Board she is urging for better bicycle connections between Davis and Sacramento. She again mentioned the importance of having jobs close to housing and housing close to jobs as a way to increase bicycle usage. She took the opportunity to talk up her priority for keeping Hunt-Wesson Hi-tech, residential compatible housing and the PG and E sites as examples of developments that will encourage and increase the use of bicycles in the City.

The break took place; people milled about and took in the rather substantial amount of information that had just heard. Finally, the gathering came back together and Matt Williams picked the best audience questions that were picked up during the break.

The first audience question was how the candidates would have the City work with the School District in improving the financial concerns of the schools.

Rob Roy would work together with the schools to develop a City/School District partnership. He stated he was a strong opponent of closing Valley Oak Elementary School.

Stephen Souza mentioned declining enrollment brought about by the “graying” of the population of the City and we need to do something to reverse that. This leads to an older population downtown which means there were not enough children in the area to support Valley Oak. His answer went on to include looking at more communal living opportunities for seniors in
Davis and ways to attract families back into the downtown area.

Sydney Vergis started her answer with the fact that there are many overlapping government entities and two of them are the City of Davis and the Davis Joint Unified School District. There is no question that they need to help each other and the City can serve in a function of underwriting for the School District, if necessary. She too, decried the lack of range of housing in the downtown area, as well as the entire region and suggested the Nishi Property as an opportunity for mixed range and use of development close to the downtown. She said this would encourage walking and biking to increase in the City.

Sue Greenwald said the problem is the core area is such a great place to live that people do not want to move out if it, therefore their children grow up, leave and the “empty nest” parents continue to live in the family house. The natural progression of that is less students in the schools. She also saw the growth patterns of the City as the cause for massive fluctuations in the enrollment of the schools. She warned declining enrollment and school fiscal problems are a statewide problem and Davis must not use this concern as a reason to pursuer a growth agenda. The best way we can help our school district is by keeping the City’s fiscal house in order.

Cecelia Escamilla Greenwald echoed much of the Mayor’s concerns, especially agreeing with the sentiment that “we cannot grow our way out of the school budget crisis.” She supported keeping Valley Oak and Emerson Junior High open and will work with the School Board, if on the City Council to find ways the Student Achievement Gap is addressed and we do not “sprawl” our way to school fiscal stability.

Don Saylor praised the schools as the “heart and soul of the community.” He is working with the Davis Schools Foundation to see if we are able to come up with the 4 million dollars that are lacking in this year’s school budget. He serves on a legislative action team with School Board member Susan Lovenburg to see how the City and the School District can work together. He wanted to make it clear that the Davis Schools Foundation is a short term approach to finding revenue for the schools and we need to look at more long range approaches, included in that long range approach needs to be looking at real estate assets. We do not want to be a Roseville or Natomas, but we need to find ways we can bring new people into the school district and help with fiscal stability. This seems to be an approach diametrically opposed to that of the Mayor.

The next question was about economic development in Davis.

Councilman Stephen Souza stated the City needs to study whether to look for another large scale employer or look for smaller scaled businesses that are not related to education. He stated the two largest employers in the City are the University and the School District. In the last few years, the University had 14 different activities spin off into private business opportunities and not one of them located in Davis.

Mayor Greenwald touted her leadership in leading the 2000 initiative to change the Hunt Wesson property to be zoned as light industrial/hi tech. If this does not happen, where will we put the businesses that sprouted up out the University research? Davis just loss Genentech to Dixon. She is concerned that we will lose more job and industrial opportunities to Dixon and that a hi-tech corridor will develop between Davis and Dixon that does not include the City of Davis, if there is not a firm stance on the zoning at Hunt Wesson. “We need to have jobs next to houses and houses next to job. It is the only way to a more sustainable future.”

Sydney Vergis sees the Council working closely with the Business and Economic Development Commission on this issue. It has been the major focus of the Commission while she has been serving on it (the Commission).  Davis needs to work closely with the University in encouraging UC business spinoffs to locate in the City. She mentioned the work of Dick Dorf on a City Website streamlining business opportunity efforts in Davis, Davis needs to create more demand for businesses here and that can be done by cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce.

Cecelia Escamilla Greenwald wants to maintain a strong and vital downtown. She would work on strengthening neighborhood shopping centers and encourage satellite businesses to evolve around those centers. The City needs to hire outside consultants to work with staff to assess the City’s business needs. She would promote green businesses and promote green collar jobs while on the Council.

Don Saylor serves as the Council’s liaison to the Business and Economic Development Commission. Davis needs to focus on start up businesses and the key to where start up businesses want to locate is the quality of life of the community and how good the schools are in the community. They want to live where they work and to do that, they must be able to afford to live there. He is optimistic about the efforts to bring business to Davis. He mentioned one company that started in Davis, then moved to West Sacramento and is now coming back to Davis.

Rob Roy wants to foster good relations with the University. The people that work in Davis want to live in Davis. He has concerns about 2nd Street, where he thinks there are areas of blight. He supports the Hi-Tech campus idea at the Hunt Wesson property. He would like it to be a mixed-use project where we could go beyond Davis as a work force and attract more hi-tech and green collar jobs.

The last audience question was about the one percent growth rate.

Sue Greenwald does not support the one percent growth rate, especially when affordable housing is taken into account. She cited statistics that show houses being built do nor result in housing prices going down. Davis wants to be a small compact city and this can be accomplished with development at the PG&E site and the Toomey Field site, She ants us to continue to be a bicycle friendly city and her constituents do not want to see a megalopolis. She finished with the statement that people from her generation made Davis great and she wants to continue their efforts.

Sydney Vergis feels the number for the percent of rate of growth is not important, but the range of housing. She feels the range of housing we have today keeps young families from being able to move into Davis. She would like to see more housing for seniors. Housing for seniors and young families can be accomplished with infill and she again cited the Nishi Property as a potential site for mixed use and mixed housing development.

Cecelia Escamilla Greenwald pointed out an one percent growth rate does not sound like a lot, but that over time, it accrues too much growth. She did say that it is less about the number than the kind of projects in Davis. She would like to see the University offer more student and faculty housing on campus which will free up much of the housing stock in Davis and make infill developments that much more attractive to buyers. She stated that the one percent growth rate would have allowed Covell Village to be built and the community rejected that proposal.

Don Saylor is comfortable using the one percent growth rate as a cap, which is a ceiling, not a floor. It allows the City to continue its commitment to open space. Davis is a great place to call home and he wants to see that continue. We do not want to price seniors or young families out of Davis. The one percent rate strikes a balance with neighboring towns and keep prices in Davis feasible.

Rob Roy says a one percent growth cap is too high. It makes us grow too fast. He reiterated his view that “slow and steady” is the best way to go. He would like to see better use of space, higher density. As an example, he cited Village Homes. He wants to look at infill projects with a variety of affordable housing ordinances involved. He supports UC West Village project. He ended by saying that “Davis is the prettiest girl at the dance, she can’t dance with everyone.”

Stephen Souza said the one percent growth cap was designed for gap projects, it was not meant to be a beauty contest. He also mentioned it as a ceiling and not a floor. He stated there 8,000 commuter trips in and out of Davis everyday. That leads to more environmental degradation than the density of development projects in town. We need to work towards a density for tomorrow that will lessen commutes to UC and thereby reduce carbon emissions. That is a far better approach than building more commuter homes.

Final Statement: Each candidate had a one minute closing statement where they were asked to address the two most important questions they addressed during the Forum.

Sydney Vergis – “How we provide incentives for alternative transportation.” She also stated bike education and how to address the range of housing available in Davis. What she does for a living (land use planner) can help with our new general plan. She wants to work on “where we put what we put” in Davis.

Cecelia Escamilla Greenwald – good land use planning, how to reduce or eliminate overall general sprawl, public safety, transparency in government and the fiscal situation of the City.

Don Saylor said the most important issue is the water supply and wastewater treatment plant. He also mentioned fiscal stability and the state of the schools. He closed with the importance of working with real joy being grounded in the values that make Davis the place that it is today.

Rob Roy – bike friendliness, streets safe for bikes, the environment, concern about developments, the general plan and the importance of Measure J. He closed with when we talks to his Junior High school students about Davis, they ask: “Why do we need a Borders or a Target?” He does not want Davis to be Anywhere USA.

Stephen Souza praised all the groups that put on the Forum because of their environmental concerns and how to get them into the community. He closed with his hope that Davis will become the first city that is powered by all green energy processes.

Sue Greenwald closed with stating she first got involved in politics because of her passions for city planning and can bring 15 years of experience as a community activist and council member to the job. She closed with once again stating she wants to put the jobs where the housing is and the housing where the jobs are.

Matt Williams closed after the three hour or so extravaganza with the statement that he would feel comfortable voting for any of the six candidates and how informative the night had been.

Closing observations.

At this forum, all the candidates were good. That may have been because they were provided the questions early and had time to dissect them. It may be because the questions themselves were so detailed. Although you could detect real differences in the candidates, there was no animosity and it seemed that people were comfortable in the presentations.

The Forum did start the process of weaning out where the candidatures are on the issues and if you pair them in threes (since we vote for three). It does appear that Souza, Vergis and Saylor agree on a number of issues and that Greenwald, Escamilla-Greenwald and Roy agree on a number of issues. Will we see slates?

I also need to point out that as of this writing; Don Saylor is the only candidate to have put his written answers on his website.

One word reactions:

Saylor – Studious

Souza – Enthusiastic

S. Greenwald – Passionate

Roy – Humorous

C. EscamillaGreenwald – Earnest

Vergis – Sincere