Creating a More Perfect Measure J
We the People of Davis, in Order to form a more perfect Measure J…
Ten years ago, city councilmember Sheryl Freeman and I put a lot of time and effort into drafting and then passing Measure J. We, and many others who worked on Measure J wanted to stop the suburban sprawl projects such as Mace Ranch and Wildhorse that had been approved by the city council in the 1990s. Measure J was to serve notice that any new projects must be innovative, such as Village Homes. We did not intend it to be a mechanism to stop all growth in town, helping make housing unaffordable to anyone but the well off and slowly turning Davis into an elitist community.
Since Measure J was adopted, two projects have tested it. Both were innovative and provided many benefits to the City. The projects’ developers, city staff and officials, and concerned citizens spent years working through the process, spending millions of dollars, and thousands of hours on community outreach, public hearings and campaigns. Both projects ended up being voted down overwhelmingly after nasty and divisive elections.
Measure J did succeed in convincing developers to present better projects to the city council. The Covell Village (Measure X) and Wildhorse Ranch (Measure P) developments were both more innovative and better for the city and residents than we had seen in the past. It helped that the projects now had to include features required by new ordinances such as the new general plan requirements for habitat and agricultural land preservation, green building codes, affordable housing percentages and more.
But Measure J has not done what we had hoped it would in terms of creating strong council and public support for projects that have gone through the City process in preparation for a Measure J vote. The city council has been split in its decisions and a lot of division have been created in the campaigns for and against the ballot measures.
Measure J also did not envision the successful work of the city’s Housing Element committee, which I chaired in 2007/08. We used an open process with well-attended public workshops to first determine what Davis residents thought should be the most important criteria for selecting housing locations. After over one year of work, our committee reached near consensus on the criteria and the ranking of every potential project that any developer in and around Davis dreamed of building over the next 20-30 years. But the Measure J process that led to Measure P ignored our work. Wildhorse Ranch was rated 27th out of 37 total potential projects.
City staff spent so much time on the low rated Cannery and Wildhorse Ranch projects that they haven’t made progress on nearly any of the highest ranked projects, like making it easier to build second units on existing lots as Santa Cruz has done to meet their housing requirements.
While Measure J still has an important role in our planning process, we have learned a lot since its inception, most recently with Measure P, which is what prompted me to act at this critical juncture before Measure J is renewed “as is”.
Measure J should be used early in the process as the project’s first test. Applicants should submit a pre-application created in part on the guidelines outlined by the Housing Committee. These guidelines and the other desired information can be refined by the City Council and then the proposed development can be placed on the ballot if the City Council feels the project has merit. The vote should be about the location, the type of housing, the timing of build out, and key issues that would be important to set (above and beyond what is already in city code) as requirements for the project. Why should we waste our time and resources planning these projects if they do not have broad public support in the beginning?
If a project gets the support of the voters based on the set of guidelines, we would then proceed through the multi-year planning process to craft project details and conduct the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) environmental impact report. This would empower our city commissioners and encourage public debate by front loading the community input thus encouraging community-driven projects. The final project entitlements and development agreement would then come before the council for their approval or denial. If the council changes anything that was required in the Measure J vote, the whole project would have to go back for another public vote.
If a project passes a Measure J vote, we can work together as a community to make it the best development possible and recapture our reputation as innovators rather than the dysfunctional City we have become; a city that spends huge amounts of staff and volunteer time, wastes millions of dollars and has to live through nasty campaigns to vote on projects that voters clearly don’t want. As Bob Dunning recently stated,
“In other words, before we wade too deeply into the process, spending all sorts of time and energy and money and creating far more division than necessary, put it to a vote of the people to see if we as a town even want to go down this path.”
I have drafted proposed new language for Measure J and it is posted on Davis Voice (www.davisvoice.com/measurej) where I hope discussion will help improve the wording. I encourage you to also submit commentary pieces, such as this one, to Davis Voice that will help us all better understand the wide spectrum of opinions that exist on this matter. The city council expects to vote on December 8th, 2009 to put Measure J on the June 2010 ballot.
George Hague and I will be hosting a meeting on November 29th, 2009 if anyone interested in helping write and pass a modified Measure J wherein a project vote comes up earlier in the planning process. If you are interested in attending or helping in any other way, please contact me at (kevinjwolf@gmail.com) or at 758-4211, or George Hague at 757-1921 or ghague@sbcglobal.net.
I’d like to see more attention called out to which Commissions should be visited early in the process. During Measure X, many commissions weighed in several times. Then, during Measure P, ALL of the commissions (including Open Space & Habitat, Parks & Rec, Bicycle) were completely ignored. I would argue that after the initial general community input and before the Council sends it to the voters, we require that specific commissions weigh in on the proposed project. Anyone else feel that way?
Great use of the Davis Voice as a forum for exchange of ideas on this important topic of community interest. Thanks for designing this approach Kevin and Kemble. I look forward to seeing how it unfolds.
I share Kevin’s concern about the future of cutting edge development in Davis under Measure J is bleak. His proposed changes should be considered carefully.
Great work! Thanks for putting all the time and effort in. I’ve added some suggestions to the ordinance post for consideration.
“I would argue that after the initial general community input and before the Council sends it to the voters, we require that specific commissions weigh in on the proposed project.”
I think this is a good suggestion. However, it seems to me that when projects within the purview of more than one commission are discussed on a commission by commission basis, each commission has little or no idea what conclusions or suggestions other commissions have made. Even members of the City Council may not fully appreciate — due to not being at the meetings; or due to a lack of clarity in the offcial minutes — all the work and ideas put forth by various commissions.
To remedy this, I suggest whenever a commission is in position to formally weigh in on a project which will also be considered by other commissions, a special joint meeting* be held on that one topic.
I’m not saying that, for example, Open Space & Habitat could not discuss a project in its regularly scheduled meeting, just the same as Parks or Natural Resources could. That may be necessary.
However, they should hold off all formal votes until there is a joint meeting with all the affected commissions. When it came to voting, the votes would be commission-specific, not universal. But the commissioners from all affected commissions would hear the discussion (and votes) on the project from all other perspectives.
Besides incorporating the ideas and perspectives of the full range of commissions and commissioners, a big advantage would be to cut back on the repetition of presentations by staff and proponents. (I’ve noticed, for example, that every project which comes before my commission, the HRMC, and then goes on to the Planning Commission, is a repeat performance for staff, for proponents and for concerned members of the community.) In time and money, it’s wasteful to use up so much staff time if that can be avoided.
Whenever a project then made it through the joint commission process, the City Council would be fully informed. A project which had serious input and widespread or unanimous approval from every citizens’ commission involved would be far more likely to get approval from the City Council and the voters in the case of Measure J.
*If there is a special committee in place which is affected by a project, like the Housing Element committee Kevin chaired, it too should be a part of the joint meeting.
Thanks everyone for the comments and the civil tone. Rich, I appreciate the nuance of your suggestion and agree with it. Let’s try to put into writing what the minimum process requirements should be. I think your idea of having joint hearings will save time and improve the process. What might be a significant argument against it?. Maybe we require that the developer pay for a city wide statistically valid survey that helps the city council prioritize the goals upon which a decision about a proposed development should first be screened.
Over Thanksgiving, I will write new draft language based on any suggestions from this site, or that I get by email, or from the Reply to Comments I will be posting on the Davis Vanguard site on Monday. If anyone reading this wants to get more involved, please send me an email. Thanks.
“What might be a significant argument against it?”
The most significant argument against the whole proposal is that it will be coming from people who advocated for the two development proposals that lost by decisive margins. I think that most of those who prevailed in the two Measure J votes to date feel that Measure J is working very well: it has prevented two peripheral developments. One could argue quite readily that WHR should not have gone forward at all due to the report from the HESC, and that the only reason the voters faced this divisive election is because the City Council disregarded it.
I frankly don’t see how your proposals improve Measure J, and I can see how they would likely provide more power to city staff to interpret the guidelines. As such, I think this is a non-starter.
Like Don, I’m not yet convinced that Measure J should be tinkered with. However, if we’re going to revise it, I’d like to see it altered slightly to explicitly include something that I think everyone figured didn’t need to be covered: existing parks and open space within the city limits.
While the original drafters of the measure may have been focused on peripheral ag lands and open space, I believe that the success of the initial measure at the ballot box reflected a deep distrust of the city council by the citizenry. Council approval of unpopular projects occurred often enough to convince the voters that they wanted a more direct say in the process, and that’s what Measure J offered. But Measure J as enacted doesn’t extend to the parks, greenbelts and open space within the city limits that we all take for granted.
Most citizens probably consider the notion of converting an existing park to residential or commercial development as so outrageous that no one would dare to propose such a thing. However, there is currently no legal bar to a council doing exactly that. In fact, there are already two such conceptual proposals on the table: Civic Center Park and the Little League Fields. I believe that both share the same status with every other park, greenbelt and open space area in town: owned by the city and subject to disposition by ministerial act.
While there may be merit to the idea of developing all or part of the parks under consideration, I think that the voters should have at least as much control over the conversion of existing parks as they have over peripheral projects. Extending Measure J provisions to parks and open space lands can be accomplished simply by adding a line or two to the language of the ordinance, and would be in keeping with the spirit in which the citizenry has applied the measure.
Don
Measure J has succeed in stopping projects. I believe an early Vote Measure J will also stop unwanted projects that a city council might otherwise pass. But by having the vote come in early, we all save a lot of time and resources, and we have a chance at seeing other projects be proposed that might not have wealthy enough backers to get through a full EIR without any clear idea on whether the public would support it in an election.
I support Jim’s proposal but only with an early vote. Both projects he mentioned are relatively small and there won’t be a lot of resources by a developer to get through the full process before a vote occurs. The council with the help of commissions can bring the projects forward without a developer, and then see whether the public supports what they are proposing in a public vote. . If we do, probably a number of developers would compete to make an application for a final project. We could also include in the list of infill developments the conversion of some of the decaying shopping centers (e.g. Westlake and Davis Manor into housing as well as shops). An early vote will tell the city if they should go forward with an RFP for possible development of these sites without investing all the resources that would be required under the existing Measure J.
One last response to Don. I opposed Measure P and supported Measure X so I don’t know what you mean when you say the proposal “will be coming from people who advocated for the two development proposals.” How about we argue for or against the ideas without making decisions on them based on who is making the argument. Either their arguments are good or they are not. If you want to argue that Measure J is needed as written so that the no growth advocates have a better chance to stop all projects, make the argument. I think my reasons for advocating a change in Measure J language is because I think it will save us all time and effort, free up staff and citizen time to focus on higher priority issues in the city, and lead to better projects. I’d like to hear why you don’t agree with my conclusions of the benefits of an early vote. Thanks.
Hi Kevin,
Sorry, because of your prior position on Covell Village, and your comment “…both were innovative and provided many benefits to the City,” I assumed you also supported WHR. My apologies.
“How about we argue for or against the ideas without making decisions on them based on who is making the argument…” As you know, prior positions will affect the reception this proposal gets.
“If you want to argue that Measure J is needed as written so that the no growth advocates have a better chance to stop all projects, make the argument.”
No, it is more likely to continue to stop all peripheral development, which IMO reflects the current will of the Davis voters anyway. I think the margin of the recent vote indicates that the voters really don’t want to annex land for development, regardless of the green features included.
A big concern is that a project that there is a lot of room for staff to tinker with projects as the development agreement is hammered out with the developer. Just ask the Chiles Ranch neighbors how well community input was regarded. So unless the voters have the full development agreement before them, they are not really making an informed decision about the project.
A big issue with Measure P was the fiscal neutrality (or lack thereof). If, for example, the actual developer fees per unit are not spelled out, it is impossible to assess that. The B & F commission can’t really assess the proposal without the agreement.
In sum: the council, commissions, and voters need the project details in order to assess the project. You seem to be proposing that they assess the project and vote on it before they know all those details. It seems that is likely to cause a second Measure J vote for each project that passes a first one, due to the myriad changes that a project undergoes in the staff review.
As with the proposals for charter city and choice voting, my inclination in general is to take a conservative and skeptical position in the absence of compelling arguments. What problem is this trying to solve, and what is its genesis? I think you are assessing the source of the problem incorrectly. The problem wasn’t Measure J. The problem was the council majority disregarding the commissions it appointed.
“A big concern is that a project that there is a lot of room for staff to tinker with projects..”
Try…
“A big concern is that there is a lot of room for staff to tinker with projects…”
Measure J exists because it is the will of the electorate. It exists due to a desire to very carefully manage peripheral growth, and reflects a distrust of officials elected under our current city council process to manage peripheral growth in a way that fully reflects the will of the electorate.
Measure J does not exist to ensure a project is innovative or not, but to ensure that more peripheral growth can happen only if voters approve; it is only secondarily a feature of Measure J that it might promote better projects to be proposed, in the sense that more ecologically sustainable, innovative, affordable, and/or economically positive projects may garner more votes than less sustainable, more mundane, and more expensive project proposals might. Still, it has been made clear during public debates over past proposals subject to Measure J votes that scale, style and substance are part and parcel of what goes into the public’s evaluation of any proposal’s intended use of a site, not simply is it on the periphery. None of the projects put to a vote so far have been modern versions of Village Homes (sic) — that is, they have failed to exhibit the same blend of human scale, cutting edge green, and affordability — else they might have been approved by the voters; who can say? What we do know is that, despite the developers massively outspending opposition, the voters rejected their proposals by wide margins — exactly as Measure J was supposed to provide voters the chance to do if they so chose — and part of that rejection, surely, for many involved the specific attributes of the proposed projects.
I’m dubious then, in light why Measure J exists, and how voters have subsequently endorsed it as a means to reject unwanted growth, that they would approve any version of Measure J which didn’t lock-in details of a development sufficiently such that it allowed for bait-&-switch to be applied after any initial approval was granted at the ballot box.
Perhaps, however, to save developers from throwing good money after bad, whilst still ensuring it acts effectively to provide voters the control of growth it is meant to do, Measure J could be made a two-step process — that is, the first step would be general approval of the site by the voters, followed by a second vote finalizing approval of the developments essential details? That would address Mr. Wolf’s wish to streamline the initial step, so that developers save money and city staff save time reviewing projects for sites which the electorate has no interest in approving, period; yet it would ensure final control of any project, in its essential elements, rests with the voters, as Measure J intends.
A two-part process may be somewhat awkward for developers to navigate, but in light of the fact that once open space is gone, it rarely comes back, and given voters wariness of approving anything that could be turned into something different than they’d voted on by the time it got built, plus their chariness with trusting the City Council with managing growth, arguably this might be the only way to gain acceptance of a “tinkered with” version of Measure J. Otherwise, I’d bet that the same percentage of voters which used Measure J to reject Covell Village would say Measure J ain’t broke, so don’t you dare “fix” it.
I’m really glad there is another place, other than the Vanguard, to discuss issues like this. I’d never comment on the other site for fear of one of the dozen or more wackos that inhabit that site attacking me any time I disagree with them. It’s really pretty over the top over there.
I think its clear that Measure J is a “zero growth outside city limits forever” ordinance, as it is currently written. If you are in favor of that, you should support it. If not, you shouldn’t. It’s as simple as that.